Mansoor Ahmed
I am a Software Engineer, Software Developer and a Blogger as well.
Homepage: http://www.geekword.net/
Posts by Mansoor Ahmed
10 useful Firefox Add-ons for daily use
Jun 28th
This is a quick overview for those new to Firefox: Add-ons are little free tools that make your application experience better and easier. Add-ons don’t stop at browsers, either. Email applications like Thunderbird have them, too.
Just go to Firefox add-ons, browse, click “Add to Firefox” and click “Install” in the popup window. Once installed, you’ll need to restart Firefox to complete the process.
Some of the them are here:
Adblock Plus — No. More. Popup. Ads. Or auto-playing videos. You can easily download a Filter Subscription. You can create your own filters to block ads on specific sites.
Better Gmail 2. Folders4Gmail helps you to have labels in folder-like sub-folders. It is the replacement of attachment icons. You will see the Word’s blue ‘W if your document is of Word.
Download Statusbar. Downloads appear across the bottom of Firefox where they don’t intrude. When you’re ready to open one, just double-click the relevant filename in the status bar.
Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE). A backup tool for an application is worth because it restores data with little effort. This one backs up your add-ons and rebuilds them.
Long URL Please. This add-on automatically expands shortened URLs. Even if you can’t see the full URL, you can mouse over the link to see the full link tooltip-style.
Print/Print Preview. Adds a print icon to the tool bar with a down arrow giving you the choices of Print, Print Preview or Page Setup. This add-on helps because it ensures I print only what I need and nothing more.
Read it Later. The add-on puts a checkmark in your browser. Click the checkmark to add the page to Read it Later, click it again to remove.
Web Developer. This toolbar has helped me out many times. You can disable Java, Javascript and colors, manage cookies, change up styles with CSS, adjust form options and much more.
Word Count Plus. Simple tool where you highlight the text, click the icon and see the word count. Now it just needs an added feature to count characters for Twittering outside the box.
Xmarks. A bookmarks synchronizer that works between computers and across networks. It can synchronize passwords, give you information about a web page and create separate profiles. You can have a profile for each computer so you can pick and choose which bookmarks to display at each location.
Lenovo will offer free Windows updates
Jun 28th
Lenovo has become the latest PC vendor to offer users a free upgrade to Windows 7. The company said only those systems will get update which are being sold between 26 June and 31 January with the Home Premium, Business and Ultimate versions of Windows Vista.
One can consider that this offer is limited to home and small business system purchases. Customers who purchase more than 29 systems will use Microsoft’s volume licensing program instead.
The offer makes Lenovo the second major PC vendor to roll out a free upgrade program in recent days. On Thursday HP said that it would be offering a similar deal to users who purchase new systems between now and the 22 October release of Windows 7.
Microsoft is also pressing users to plan an upgrade to the new version of Windows. The company said yesterday that it would offer discounted pricing to those who pre-ordered copies of Windows 7.
The company is also offering a deferred cost program to encourage more PC vendors to offer free upgrades to Windows 7.
Microsoft and PC vendors are hoping that the free upgrade campaigns will serve as a way to keep users purchasing new systems throughout the summer rather than waiting until after the release of Windows 7 to purchase a new PC.
Fennec Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile released
Jun 28th
Fennec, the mobile version of the popular Firefox browser, has been updated. While until now Windows Mobile users were able to enjoy the Alpha 1 release of the software solution, the Alpha 2 version has been released into the wild, and is now available for download. At the same time, the development team also updated the Fennec version for Maemo, as well as those for Windows and Linux PCs and for Macs.
Fennec 1.0 Beta 2 for Maemo and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile. Download desktop builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux are also available.
The Windows Mobile Fennec now in Alpha 2, has more improved panning performance, newly designed themes, the JavaScript error console, improved add-on support, major bug fixes, and an improved UI polish.
The Fennec version for Maemo has been updated as well, and now the Beta 2 version is available, which comes with about the same improvements as the Alpha 2 version for Windows Mobile. The release can be downloaded for the Nokia N810 Internet Tablets, yet those that do not own such a device but would like to take a look at the browser should know that they can try it on their desktop PCs. The browser is available on Softpedia as well, just follow the links.
Fennec Add-ons being built by the community, including things like GeoGuide which will use the new Location Aware APIs to show you things like maps and weather near where you currently are, and other things like GraffiTwit, a Twitter client that lets you not only write tweets but also post images you’ve drawn.
WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2 is out now
Jun 27th
About a week ago we reported that WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 1 is out. The 2.8 version fixed around 790 bugs or more and brought quite interesting new features.
Along with the release comes a side note from the WordPress team which states:
We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues.
The major bug fixes in Beta 2 include:
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Translation of role names fixed
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wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
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Upload error messages are now correctly reported
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Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
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Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
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SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
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Switched back to curl as the default transport
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Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload
Download WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2
Check out the changes since Beta 1
Check out all bug fixes in 2.8.1
YouTube has doubled the upload size limit..
Jun 27th
YouTube has doubled the upload limit for the normal YouTube users. The new updated upload limit for any video is 2 GB from 1 GB. This development comes at the heels of another news that the rate of video uploads on YouTube has increased considerably after the launch of iPhone 3G.
According to NewTeeVee, YouTube has already made it little easier to embed HD videos now. You can now simply add &hd=1 to any YouTube URL to play in HD. Now, it’s quite simpler: add &hd=1 to any YouTube URL to play in HD. There is also a “play in HD” option while you’re configuring an embed code to copy and paste any where else.
Barry Schwartz had actually got the upload limit was raised to 20 GB today, but a YouTube spokesperson said that the new max is 2 GB. Lucky guy, Schwartz must have gotten in on some user testing for cool kids.
It’s clear that HD videos are becoming a significant portion of the new YouTube library. YouTube raised the upload limit to 1 GB from 100 MB in the September last year.
One can probably expect some pirated full movie uploads on YouTube with this generous upload limit. YouTube has gotten strict against the copyrighted content and removed a lot of such videos. It is however still not free from all the copyrighted content and a simple search of your favorite Hollywood film might show you the complete movie on on YouTube in parts.
This upload limit might cause some copyright problems but that is a matter which YouTube has been dealing with since a long time.
Firefox 3.5 to be released on Tuesday; as Firefox 3.5 RC 3 released
Jun 27th
Mozilla confirmed that, Firefox 3.5 is one of the biggest release of world’s most popular browser, will be released to the on Tuesday, June 30th.
Mozilla’s Director of Evangelism Chris Blizzard said in an interview:
the next evolution of the browser,
Chris explains:
It will mean a faster browser and a new generation of Web applications including video,
Mozilla senior platform engineer Damon Sicore told BetaNews:
What’s important here is that somebody has to take a stand,
Firefox 3.5 going to include a plenty of new capabilities offering developers. One of which is open video. In terms of how it interacts with the rest of the browser in terms of JavaScript and html.
As this browser is going to be the next evolution of the browser so there is a chance that now developers can build these large really wonderful Ajax enabled applications.
Damon Sicore answered a question that What Mozilla is doing for the Web developers to adopt development principles such as HTML5 embedded video tags, even though Firefox doesn’t have the most usage share?:
Somebody has to put open video on the Web. It’s important that these formats are unencumbered. We feel that it’s something that’s in our mission that we have to do to keep them moving forward, in keeping the Web open.
Vladimir Vukicevic, infrastructure developer for the Firefox browser said:
Video tags have a way to do fallback, so many of these sites can use the video if its supported, or they can fallback to a plug-in such as Flash or Windows Media Player, to actually deliver some type of content to users on other browsers,
Mozilla has also announced the availability of the third release candidate (RC3) for Firefox 3.5, code named “Shiretoko”. Details of the changes in the open source web browser between the second release candidate and the RC3 release, are limited.
Mozilla only says that the release is based on “user feedback”. Based on previous releases, this likely means that the RC3 only contains bug fixes and stability and security improvements.
Pentax Optio W80 camera; waterproof, dustproof and coldproof
Jun 26th
HOYA CORPORATION PENTAX Imaging Systems Division is pleased to announce the launch of the PENTAX Optio W80 digital compact camera. In addition to its outstanding waterproof, dustproof and coldproof capabilities — which allow for up to two hours of continuous underwater photography at a depth down to five meters — the new Optio W80 offers outstanding shockproof performance to withstand a fall from a height of one meter.
The Optio W80 is a water/dust/shock/freezeproof 12-megapixel camera with a 2.5-inch LCD selling for less than $300. The W80 can easily survive an impressive dunk: down to 16 feet for up to two hours. It’ll also take a decent fall of up to 3.3 feet and keep working in temperatures as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
On top of its “proofing,” the W80 has extremely good camera specs. The internal lens has a zoom range of 5x and is wide angle at 28mm. It records 720p, HD-quality video at 30fps. It also has the expected convenience features such as face, smile, and blink detection; auto scene recognition; and a bunch of other automatic shooting options.
The only thing missing is optical image stabilization; the W80 only has Pentax’s digital Pixel Track SR, which though it’s good, still degrades photo quality. Look for it in July in the three colors pictured above: Cardinal Red, Azure Blue, and Gunmetal Gray (just in case you were confused as to what those colors are actually called).
Bing is copying Kayak..
Jun 25th
Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, has stated that Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users. The travel search company sent Microsoft a legal letter last week telling them to cut it out.
There’s no question Bing feels like Kayak. When Microsoft showed us the search engine under embargo, this reporter’s first comment upon seeing the travel page demo’d was:
This looks like Kayak.
Kayak’s chief marketing officer Robert Birge said:
We have contacted them through official channels about concerns about the similarities between Bing and Kayak, from the look and feel of their travel product, they seem to agree with our approach to the market.
Microsoft’s Whitney Burk denies that there’s any copying going on.
We are discussing the matter with Kayak, Bing Travel is based on independent development by Microsoft and Farecast.com, which Microsoft acquired in 2008. Any contrary allegations are without merit.
Douglas Sims, the president of an IT consulting firm in Tennessee, noted the similarity too, inspiring him to write a short essay on his website:
Bing Travel is like Kayak in more ways than just the layout and visual design. The navigation, the automatic loading of results from different airlines (using ajax), even the results themselves are almost identical.
Sims said he had no connection to Kayak but was moved to write about the comparison because he was a longtime admirer of Kayak’s interface.
Sims said:
I felt offended, I thought Kayak did an awesome job, and now my friends are giving credit to someone else.
Sims noted that Microsoft’s travel search engine includes the same shading on the gray sliding bars as Kayak’s site does.
Sims goes on saying:
I design stuff like this sometimes, I’ve always said I can’t just copy other people’s work, you can’t just rip it off, but in hindsight, is it fair game? Maybe I should do that.
Format conversion comes to RealPlayer
Jun 25th
RealPlayer is the indispensable tool for playing postage stamp-sized videos on your PC. The Real Networks software is one media player among many.
The last version of RealPlayer now has the ability to record streaming video, such as that from YouTube, for offline playback. The latest offering, RealPlayer SP, released today as a beta, it also adds the ability to share video through social networking sites such as Facebook, and, more interestingly, to reformat the saved video so that it can be viewed on different number mobile devices.
RealPlayer post a link to the video on its original site, something that can be done in a many other ways. But the transcoding capability could be very useful. The widely used Flash video format doesn’t work on most mobile devices at all.
Converting a video in RealPlayer is simple. You can click on a title in your video library–it can be streaming video you saved with RealPlayer downloaded content form other sources. Then press the “Convert to” button and you are offered a list of devices , which includes iPod/iPhone, various Windows Mobile handsets, BlackBerrys, the T-Mobile Sidekick, the Sony PSP, and the Nokia E71x.
The thing to note is that there is nothing new here because there are many other software solutions that do the same thing. The beauty of the Real approach is that it is easily used by people who don’t know anything, and don’t want to know anything, about codecs, bitrates, and display resolutions.
Google announces Adsense for Mobile Applications
Jun 25th
We want to contribute to the growth of these mobile applications, which is why we’re happy to announce our beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications. And so saying Adsense has sort of opened gates for a mini revolution of sorts in the mobile applications field. It’s a revolution for not many reasons and it is mini for a whole lot more, nevertheless it is an important step.
Mobile applications have become more and more popular, helping people find music or check bank balances as a result of lower prices, faster network speeds and unlimited data plans mean that people often reach for their cell phone rather than their computer while seeking information.
So by considering all the facts Google has announced the beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications. Because advertisers are looking for ways to reach potential customers when they are engaged with mobile content, and application developers are looking for ways to show the best ads to their users. According to Google, they already had a successful trial of this service with a small number of partners, and are excited that they can now offer this solution to a broader group.
AdSense for Mobile Applications will allow developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications. For the beta launch, Google have created a site where developers can learn more about the AdSense for Mobile Applications program. Advertisers can also learn about the benefits of advertising in mobile applications.
Google is so excited to open up this beta to more developers, and they are also looking forward to offer more new features for mobile advertisers and publishers in upcoming releases.
