What?

Today’s point of interest is a fantastic little app called Threadsy. It aims to pull together your entire online life to one place.

Why? It pulls together

• EMail – GMail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail and Hotmail
• Social – Twitter, Facebook

in a really cool interface that reposes your faith in the power of a good interface and Web 2.0 in general.

Really?

Initially, you can do nothing but smile when you are discovering what Threadsy can do for you. The interface is seamless, especially on Facebook. The photos, user bios, everything is super cool. You’ll stop visiting all the aforementioned accounts once you get used to Threadsy, which wont take too long. And you’ll find that you see a lot more information in one look of the screen and that means reaching out to more people.

Tell me more

Its a nice email client but an even better Twitter and Facebook client. For Facebook, its like brushing away all the faff and getting to the point. You know, the stupid games people play on Facebook and worse when they turn up on your feed.

“XYZ’s enemy for the day is ABC. Go poke them, no Super Poke them”.

On an average visit to Facebook, I block 5 apps every time hoping that this world will be free of inane apps the next visit. But why bother when you’ve got Threadsy?

Suggestions for Improvement

1) A lot of people have linked their Twitter and Facebook accounts. It’d be nice if Threadsy could merge these 2 entries into one. A reply posted on the merged entry should probably be able to reply to both Facebook and Twitter.

2) Twitter client: Can we please see a link that says “in reply to” in reply tweets? Or even better, create a threaded conversation?

3) Can something be done so that the GTalk gadget remembers the login credentials? Link Me! Alright, Threadsy isn’t open to everyone, but we do have a backdoor entry here, thanks to TheNextWeb. Click on the link below and experience wholesome Web 2.0 goodness.

>Threadsy Private Beta Invite Link

What?
We’re gonna take a look at Microsoft’s latest anti-virus software, called Microsoft Security Essentials.

Why?
Some wise soul at Microsoft probably got a prick to his conscience about how much money Windows users are spending on the mistakes the guys at Redmond are making. And their last solution, OneCare didn’t exactly take off. This time however, Microsoft seems to have gotten it right.

Really?
Microsoft finally seems to be taking notes from competitors and customers. The software seems very simple to use and even the ‘Advanced’ section is easily understandable. SE features a bright and clean interface. And it does its job without a lot of fuss at that.

To test this, I headed off to the heavily infested PC’s in my college lab. Insert a thumb drive for like 60 seconds and a barrage of virii will step right in. Take heavily infested thumb drive and plug it back into the test bed. Real time protection kicks in, insists on initiating a scan and does its job silently. Life is so good when form meets function, no?

Of course, by no means do I say this is a comprehensive test, but it sure was a real world test for Security Essentials. The guys who are serious about security report that SE had a pretty decent rate of catching worms and virii.

Tell Me More
I found the system usage to be sitting at a very usable 40-50% during a full system scan. Virus catching ability was good enough for a free product. This sure is going to give the folks who peddle anti-viral software to home users some sleepless nights. And yes, you do need to have a genuine copy of Windows to use this software.

So, you’re saying this thing is perfect?
Not entirely though. I wish the scans and updates would be faster. But yeah, thats about all anyone can nit pick.

Alrighty then, link me
Download Microsoft Security Essentials

A word of caution
Keep your eyes open when using your computer and update regularly. Anti-viral softwares can help only the wise, not the fools.

Creating a play list for the right mood can be quite a task, considering the ever expanding size of the music folder on our hard drives. Most us randomly navigate to a folder, click on the first song that catches our eye and press play. Imagine when you are in the mood to listen to some light music, your play list randomly picks and plays the loudest death metal on your computer. “I hath will get on my Viking ship, rip your intestines apart and feed them to my dog. Growl, growl, growl, SCREAM!”

But thank the heavens for Musicovery.com that plays songs according to your mood. Its a low-fuss online radio that lets you choose from four moods such as dark, calm, energetic and positive. The site will automatically dish out music rabbits from its enormous magic hat.

There are a bunch of filters to fine tune the kind of music you want to listen to.

• Select from a pretty comprehensive list of genres.
• Set the decade to play songs of a certain era.
• You can even select the tempo of the songs you want to listen to.
• Shift from one genre to an entirely different one in a matter of clicks.

There is a premium version as well where you can stream higher bit-rate media and get access to an even bigger list of songs. There are some more nifty features that’ll make the $5 registration seem worthwhile. If you’re not entirely someone comfy with the idea of listening to music from a browser, you even have a neat iTunes workaround. Say goodbye to creating multiple playlists on your computer. Just head to Musicovery.com, set the mood, sit back and enjoy the music.

Now that has to be the weirdest equation you’ve read in a while but read further and I assure you, it’ll make a lot of sense. Yes, even Intel the kid in white coats, large glasses and the purposefully aligned jaw is now on Facebook. And according to most reverend people, Facebook is a mighty waste of time. But you and I know that when platforms as big as these come together, it should cause nothing but a small miracle.

Intel’s out with a new Facebook app called Progress Through Processors, which aims to harness the idle power of your PC and use it for the betterment of mankind. You could contribute to one of the causes (see the leading image) which have problems actually pertaining to the people on this planet, rather than trying to find extra-terrestrial life forms. You’d be doing your good deed for the day, everyday running the application in the background.

5 minutes is all that you will need to be up and running with PTP. The app has been developed in collaboration with BOINC at the University of California, Berkeley. “Small contributions made by individuals can collectively have a far-reaching impact on our world” says the Intel VP, Deborah Conrad. Sweet, I say.

And if you are on your laptop, dont worry, it’ll run only when its plugged in. You can easily multi-task even with the app in the background. CPU usage does peak out to 80-90%. But hey, thats what this thing was meant for, right?

Link: Progress Through Processors

Just a thought. If corporates switched this app on during lunch/coffee breaks, it’d act as some mega powerhouse of processing power, I say.

The writing’s on the wall. If you are a responsible organization in today’s world, you’ll go a step beyond typical phone/email customer support. And that step is called Twitter. I’d say so because, every tweet is visible to anyone  and a simple search will reveal all there is to about a product/service.

Recently, Forbes launched its magazine in India. I instantly fell in love with the quality of content and subscribed then and there. But I had problems like the magazine not being delivered on time and later on, never got the magazine at all. Every effort in trying to contact their subscription team evicted unsatisfactory answers. I had almost written off the money I’d spent and felt like a thorough idiot reaffirming my belief that dead tree magazines are going to be dead sooner than later.

Thats where Twitter stepped in to save the day. And this time it was a lot faster than conventional methods. After my tweets, I got a call from the Forbes guys telling me that my mail went to the spam folder or something to that effect. To compensate my loss, they offered me the 2 issues I had missed and even extended my subscription by 2 issues. Way to go!

This is Web 2.0 and if you want to come across as a responsible organization, better be active on Twitter.

What?

When the guys who painted the Eiffel Tower come up with something revolutionary, you have to sit up and take notice. Jotun Paints has unveiled a fantastic new tool called the ColourAdvisor.com which makes trying out new shades of paint easy as a pop.

Why?

Existing solutions involve the customer either going to the paint shop or actually trying out a small patch of paint themselves. Apart from being time consuming, older methods look lame compared to what Jotun has on offer. Plus, you can also co-ordinate the colours of your upholstery, furniture, curtains, cat, dog etc.

Really?

The web app takes some time to load, but it definitely is far better than making a fool of yourself with a brush and imagining things in your head. “Imagine the shade of pistachio shells with a beige twist”. What rubbish, I say. They have  a huge pallet of colours for you to play around with and a fair number of stock images to play around with. You can even upload your own pictures and colour them to your missus’ hearts content.

How?

If you have uploaded your own image, all you have to do is define the areas you want to paint and then go crazy. Even better if your existing setup looks like one of the many stock setups that the site provides. After you are done painting, take a print and go to your local paint shop. And the guys at Jotun are cool if you land up to a competitors shop. One journo said, “Corporate Social Responsibility”. Save me, someone.

Where?

Alright, irrelevant. But the launch of this website was inside the Taj Palace, Mumbai which was the victim of a terror attack not too long ago. I went there for the first time after the attacks and am happy to report that the first floor has been restored beautifully. Yay!

What?

“The interactive playground of Paul Neave”, says the website. And boy oh boy, is it some playground. It has to be the most awesomely jaw-dropping usage of Flash I’ve ever laid my eyes upon.

Really?

No seriously. He’s got some really crazy stuff lined up over there, that Neave guy. They are interactive not only in the sense of keyboard and mouse inputs, but they make good use of your microphone and webcam as well.

You have a fairly detailed world map (with maps from NASA too), a planetarium with a heck load of stars, some abstract art and some more zany creativity. And when you mouse over all this on the front page, you get some soft geeky computer game sounds. Awesomeness!

Tell me more

The website also features some classic arcade games of yore for killing some time. Also pay attention to things happening when you surf around the site; amazing attention to detail.

Link: [Neave.com]

“These Indians are crazy” was exactly what Obelix would have said, if he was for real. But this man Chirantan Patnaik is very much real. He slogged on his Playstation 3 for 40 hours (forty hours, no typo there) and smashed the existing record which was at 28 hours.

He's the mahn!

I feel he has comprehensively smashed it and the record is going to be in place for quite some time to come. I’ll be meeting this guy soon. If you have any questions, do sound off in the comments. Here’s some PR luhv.

Chirantan Patnaik, has made India proud by setting a record of 40 hours and 20 minutes of ‘Longest Marathon playing Grand Theft Auto (Series)’ and get his name entered in the ‘Guinness World Records’. If successful, he will become the first Indian ever to get his name in the ‘Gamers Edition’ of Guinness World Records TM.

The last record for ‘the longest continuous play session on Grand Theft Auto IV’ is 28 hours 1 minute, held by Jim Patton (USA) in Los Angeles, California, USA since April 2008. Chirantan is an MBA and works with a Private Equity firm in Mumbai and is also certified Scuba Diver. He always had a great passion for video gaming from very early days.

Chirantan started his feat on 4th September 2009 at 10 am at his residence in Mumbai and went on till 6th September morning 2:20 am.

What?

BitLet.org allows you to download torrents without the need for any torrent client like uTorrent, Vuze etc. with a pretty good feature list to boot.

Why?

Torrents have become the de facto standard to distribute large files. No matter what your connection speed and state, torrents work for anybody and everybody. But what if you are using a platform which does not support your favourite torrent application.  Or what if it isn’t installed on your system and you do not have administrator privilleges to download that bloody file you so badly want and its only on the Torrents?

How?

You just need to head to have Java VM installed on your computer. You should have it by all means, but you can still check here. I tested it across four browsers viz. Chrome 4, IE 8, Opera 10 and Firefox 3.5 . I could not get it to run on Opera 10 though. If anyone does get it to run on it, do sound off in the comments.

Is that all?

If the torrent file has video and audio files (ogg and mp3 only), BitLet.org will happily play it for you.

Stop and think moment: If this is the way video is distributed, it could create a revolution all over again. But that comes with its own problems too. Alright enough thinking.

Tell me more..

Since this is a web application without any need to sign in or register anywhere, you can link directly to the download window. In fact, services like suprnova and gameupdates already have a download by bitlet link.

Even more…

Shut up you greedy piglet running Java applets. Point your browser to BitLet

So, you seem to be getting bored with your daily newspaper and would seriously like to know about whats going on in north Ireland for instance. “Can I still hijack some castle and make my retirement home inside it?” Of course, the Newseum doesn’t exist to answer such insipid questions but to bring to you front pages from across the globe. Which in itself is a pretty daunting task.

Newseum is a place where you can read the front pages of 820 newspapers from 74 countries. And front pages are generally enough to stay clued in about any region in particular. You might notice that some countries are poorly represented, like India and China for instance. But according to Newseum, the news houses are not sending in their front pages. Bad news houses.

They also have a pretty cool looking building in Washington with a 74-foot-high marble engraving of the First Amendment to the American Constitution. You see, the building was made when it wasn’t recession.

Here you can enter, for a fee, and read front pages and also know about important moments that created tidal waves of news. Digital or real, the Newseum guarantees that you will be drowned in news. Which cannot really be a bad thing.