Run Windows and Mac apps Side by Side

[Credit: Lifehacker]
LifeHacker published a post about running Windows apps side by side Mac apps on your Mac. This killer hack requires a virtualization product from parallels. Track the full story here.

Heres a screencast:

Calc 5 - Calculate, Draw 2D & 3D graphs

Calc5 provides interface to draw 2D and 3D graphs. It is coupled with some basic mathematical functions including derivatives. The interface is easy to use and possess only few simple functions which can be learned within seconds, just check out some samples in the right hand corner of the interface, or better still check out help section. You can obtain an approximate rough plot or a precise one.

Also see: Instant Web Calculator

Darejunkies : Do u dare to dare.

A new social network typo but with a difference is coming up. Darejunkies, a site that will award you for doing the craziest stuffs. The users can take part in contests by taking up the challenges posted on the site. Challenges such as wrapping yourself in peanut butter and go to a dog park, or get your grandma to tell you something embarrassing. Challenges are listed across categories such as embarrassment, dating etc. All you have to do is to shoot a video of yourself performing the act and upload it to their site, you can win a minimum of anything between 500-1000 USD. Users can also post challenges which will be reviewed before posting to chech its legality. At the moment of writing the site was showing "coming soon" status and accepting emails to let you know when the site goes live. [via Techcrunch]

Google launches Click to Call ads in India

Google adwords, a advertising portal for advertisers launched its new Click to Call(?) service in India. This service allows advertisers to connect directly to users/consumers. It works as follows:

» Advertisers registar at Google Adwords for the Click to Call service.
» Users see a small phone icons next to Google ads.
» Users click on the icon, and it expands and prompts you to enter your phone number.
» Users phone almost immediately rings and they are connected to advertiser free of charge.

Google ensures that your phone numbers are not leaked to the consumers. Google is also trying to ensure that you do not become to prey of pranks when someone enters your phone number.

This service is already launched in US, and you can use it in conjunction with Google Maps, just click the Find businesses tab while searching (via Official Google Blog).

Wikia launching OpenServing

Going by the philosophy of open source Wikia unveiled OpenServing, which will enable users to create their own collaborative sites. It will have the following features:

» The contents of the site could be created or edited on any topic by you as well as by your users/viewers.

» Users can vote the articles, much like Digg.

» You can comment articles, also vote on comments written by others.

» Articles with most votes will make it to the frontpage.

» Add or edit additional feeds (drag-drop) related to topic.

» Most important-- You get 100% of the revenue that the site generate with ads.

Maps Mania

Google by virtue of its two killer apps Maps & Earth brought the revolution and reduced the world to fit into your monitor ( see Google Earthopedia) and it has got a lot of takers worldwide. They take Google earth, leverage their APIs and come up with their own apps. Here is a brief compilation of user created Google Maps apps:

» Webcams of the World : A collection of webcams geographically laid out.

» 7 Wonders : Seven wonders of the world classified by ancient, medieval, modern and nature.

» Ascii Art : Google maps made with ascii characters. Creative one.

» BBC news : See the news as it happens at places in Britain.

» Cheap Hotels : Affordable hotels worldwide.

» Travel n Blog : See what people are writing about places they visit. Good guide.

» Classifieds : Classified ads laid out geographically.

» Photos & Videos : Google maps + Flickr + Youtube. Lets you see pics n vids shared by others.

» Frappr : Social map. Add maps, add yourself to others maps, track your site traffice & more.

» Link with Friends : Add buddies. Good for blogs, groups, forums.

» BuddyPing : Google maps+Flickr+Del.icio.us . Shoot & Share pics geographically.

» Life History of George Bush : Bush biography geographically.

Theres a lots more useful maps spread all over the cyber space. Do a Google for them using relevant keywords like hospital maps , hotels google map etc.


See Also : Maps & Maps,
Virtual World.

Pimping Photos

In my budding days I had an immense passion to alter or pimp any human face I found on my textbooks, or some old cherished family photographs. As soon as I spot a face, a pen suddenly appears in my hand and the innocent picture is turned into a monstrous one. Today I got another chance to recall that passion. But this time it was in the form of a web-service, with my mouse as the tool. Pikipimp allows you to pimp the pictures you upload. You can choose from a range of beards, moustaches, eyes, glasses, hair styles,hats, music, tongue, teeth and lots more with each item customizable in several aspects such as size,color,transparency etc.[via Techcrunch]

See also:

» Draw Professional Criminal Sketches

» Passion = Drawing

Sites that link here

Technorati lists the sites that link to your blog or site. Just do a search for your site at technorati (if you registered) and it will give you a link to the link containing list of sites that link to you. But thats not really I wanted to say here.

I want to share this:

In order to find some really good blogs I Googled "sites that link here". This way it will show up the most relevant site with most links and traffic. And oh yes I got a good blog. I got first result from technorati and here it is -- The Gurgling Cod.

And heres a serendipity: Ctrl+5 is same as Ctrl+a , that is "select all"

Large File Sharing Services

Sharing large files have become a need in recent years. Some do it for really useful purposes such as music,movies,games, xxx and others do it for boring tasks such as projects, books etc. I thought its worthless to reproduce the whole list here which has already been prepared and put on net by some great guys. So, I just provide the links ok.

Classic list (2005) : This is a link which has been linked by most of the sites. Though slightly old, but old is gold.

Hyperguru: Good one. Gives a good list of browser based sharing services and that in Russian and German too besides English.

Wikipedia : Comparision of file sharing applications.

Wikipedia : Comparision of BitTorrent Software.

Slyck: The best one. Lates news and views about file sharing innovations.

Wordie -- Like Flickr but Without the Photos

Like Flickr, but without the photos. Yes, thats the tag-line of Wordie. It lets you maintain a list of words ( good-bad-anything). The words have links listed alongside for ready reference (NinjaWords, TheFreeDictionary, EtymOnline, Dictionary, M-W, UrbanDictionary, Wikipedia and Google). The service is addictive and one can spend hours adding words, going through words submitted by others and adding comments.

Download of the Day

Try the 2007 Microsoft Office System with all its features loaded. The trial period is 60 days. It is poised for release in Jan 2007. See the estimated price of products here.

The trial links for individual office products are:

Microsoft® Office Professional 2007
Microsoft® Office Small Business 2007
Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007
Microsoft® Office Accounting Professional
Microsoft® Office Groove 2007
Microsoft® Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft® Office Publisher 2007
Microsoft® Office Project Standard 2007
Microsoft® Office Visio Professional 2007
Microsoft® Office Visio Standard 2007
Microsoft® Office Accounting Express 2007
Microsoft® Office Standard 2007

You can save the documents created with Office 2007 in pdf format by installing an Add in "MIcrosoft Save As PDF". Get it here.

You can also open,create, edit and save Office 2007 documents in earlier version of Office. All you need is to download Compatibility pack [here].

Google Earthopedia

A so called Geographic Web Layer has been added to Google Earth by integrating Wikipedia, Panoramio and Google Earth Community to itself making it a good storehouse of geographical information. This means that you gotta see a layer consisting of icons from the above services and when you click on them you will get information put up on those services about that landmark. This integration really opens up a completely different Earth where you can fly to places while learning secrets about them, besides you will be able to see a good number interesting places or sights bookmarked by other peoples.

[via Official Google Blog]

Yahoo Search vs Google Search

Langreiter lets you compare Google vs Yahoo searches side by side with a slick graphical report. The search results of the two sites are connected by lines to show their relative position of appearance. The dots are clickable in order to get to the results.

Test Drive:

Get Mails from other Accounts into Gmail

Very recently a new feature called Mail Fetcher has been added to Gmail. Now you can have emails from your different accounts bundled into single platform Gmail. Gmail allows you to add upto 5 accounts from which you want to fetch mails into your Gmail account, thus enabling a centralized administration over all your mails. You can also create a customized From: address which lets you send mails from Gmail but appear as if send from your other mail account that you have configured. All you have to do is to go to your settings section on the top right corner of your Gmail interface, click account tab and click "Add another email address". Heres a step by step guide. Be informed though that it can be confiugred for only those webmails which enable access to there POP servers. So, at this point of time its not possible to add free Yahoo or Hotmail accounts to your Gmail.

» One last note, this feature is already there in Yahoo Mail, Go to Options->Mail->Mail Addresses. Yahoo also allows you create an extra mail account.

» In case you want disposable email addresses see "Fighting Spam with Disposable Mails".

» In case you want to do some comparative analysis of Email providers see -- Webmail Comparisions, Email client comparisions.

Link Preview -- Snap of the Target

A link preview functionality has been added to this blog. Now when you hover over a link, a snap of the target site will be fetched and previewed in a snap box (kind of tooltip). The obvious benefit is to decide between going for the target or remaining on the page depending upon your liking of preview. This service can provide your readers a better reading experience without having to leave your page now and then. Snap.com freely provides this facility, even you do not need to register, just enter your site's url and script will be generated for you which you can paste in the head section of your page. If it works fine, very good. In some cases when your site follows strict Doctype conventions as is the case with this blog, you have to do slight changes in the code. Just find out the portion of the code that resembles the highlighted portion of the above code snippet and simply delete it. This is because the script is not well formed as it contains "defer" attribute without any value and hence not well formed.

Dr Google

The way the IT has been revolutionizing all the aspects of life,empowering organisations and at the same time vesting more and more power within individuals, how can the field of Medical Science be left behind. Today it has become more than necessary to be aware of ones own health,and carry ones 'VitalBase'(health database) with oneself. Thats why Dr Google is now aroundthe corner.

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Google started its foray into the area of health and medicine with an enhancement to its search results. Search for a medical issue or a treatment like diabetes,aids,malaria etc and you will know. Just above the search results as shown in the snap you will find links to refine the results according to treatment,tests,symptoms etc. You can also refine search based on roles such as patients,medical authorities or health professionals.No doubt this has been made possible by the recent introduction of Google optimized search (previous coverge here).

Alternatively, you can also do optimized search as laid below:

»Treatment:- diseaseName more:condition_treatment (ex. "diabetes more:condition_treatment")

»Tests/diagnosis:- diseaseName more:tests_diagnosis

»For Patients:- diseaseName more:for_patients

»From medical authorities:- diseaseName more:medical_authorities

»Symptoms:- diseaseName more:condition_symptoms

»Causes/risk factors:- diseaseName more:causes_risk_factors

»For health professionals:- diseaseName more:for_health_professionals

»Alternative medicine:- diseaseName more:alternative_medicine

[link: Google Official Blog]

YouOS -- Another OS Over Web

Found another online OS which has been there for quite some time. This one seems even more powerful in terms of readily available programs ,around 482 created by users as it claims.You can spot a shell displayed in the screenshot. YouOS, by virtue of its popularity seems to have a great future ahead.

EyeOS -- Your OS on Web

How about running an Operating System inside your browser, and accessing itanywhere on the web. I am talking about EyeOS -- a web service based on Ajax that features a basic replication of an Operating System. Besides basic file system it supports programs like word editor, web browser ( browser inside the browser !!), bookmarkingservices,calculator,calendar and a lots more. It can be furthur extented to include many other widgets by clicking on the plus sign in top right (ref Screenshot) suchas games,chat,ftp client,port scanners,flv players etc.

Online Compilers

Suddenly came to mind to look for online compilers. Though I had a somewhat greater speculation about finding Online Compilers, it failed to disappoint me as I came across a few. These compilers come handy when you do not want to go through the process of downloading or purchasing desktop compilers, or you want to compile on the fly or just to test a code snippet if it works or not. A word of caution though, these compilers do not come even near to the power of desktop compilers. In case you want a free compiler or tool here is a good collection.

Heres a little list of Online Compilers

♠ Java :Online java compiler, lets you upload a no. of files and provides download for compiled file. You can also view the compiled applets directly.

♠ DJGPP C Compiler : Online version of DJGPP compiler. Write the code and download .exe file.

♠ C/C++ Compiler : Lets you write online code and shows compiler messages upon compilation. Good to check codes.

♠ C#, C, VB.NET, FORTRAN : Compile the stated languages. (link not working at the time of writing)

Fighting Spam with Disposable Emails

Very often we come across sites that requires you to provide email address to receive their services, mostly they use it for verification purposes. But the very next day your inbox starts flooding with spams and then you decide to end your life(?). Surely your email address is leaked and sold to professional spammers following the age old business mantra "everythings fair in love and cyber world".

Fortunately, or rather driven by the need, of late some sites has come up with disposable email concept to fight the spammers. The sites provide email addresses which remain active for a limited time mostly a day or week, or limit the number of emails after which they expire. Some of them are full featured while others receive only. Almost all of them are no frills and let you create email adresses on the fly. Here are some of the sites that provide disposable email services:

DodgeIt- no registration required, provides RSS feeds, receive-only.

E4ward- requires registration, provides mail forwarding, allows multiple aliases of an account.

GreenSloth- no registration required, receive-only, e-mail expires automatically after a week.

KasMail- requires registration, allows up to 25 aliases, can set aliases to expire after a certain amount of time.

Jetable- provides mail forwarding, account autoexpires after certain amount of time.

Mailinator- no registration required, provides handy spam map, receive-only, e-mail expires automatically after a few hours.

MailNull- requires registration, provides mail forwarding.

PookMail- no registration required, very simple to use.

SneakeMail- requires registration, provides mail forwarding.

SpamDay- requires registration, provides mail forwarding, account is automatically destroyed after 24 hours of opening.

SpamGourmet- requires registration, provides mail forwarding, can create custom aliases which automatically expire after a certain number of e-mails received.

Spam.la- no registration required, no frills. You can see all spam being sent to all Spam.la accounts, or just your own.

SpamMotel- requires registration, provides mail forwarding, mail can be accessed through desktop e-mail clients, can reply to e-mail from your real e-mail address using SpamMotel e-mail.

TempInbox- no registration required, provides RSS and Atom feeds, receive only, supports many different languages.

Will Hack for Food- requires registration, account expires after user indicated period of time, best name ever.