Category: Technology

Hey Mac Lovers! Check this ultimate Mac Software Guide that you will ever need – Indispensable Mac Software…

This is the best collection that I have come across…It has Browsers, Games, Mail Clients, Utilities, File Sharing, RSS, Multimedia Player, HTML Design Tools, Office Suites, FTP Tools and more…

I downloaded the following…
OnyX – OS X maintenance & optimization tool. This is actually the only program you need to keep your Mac operating system healthy…still, at least 5 other free apps. does the same as OnyX, but there’s no reason to mention them here.

iPod Freedom – Copy iPod MP3s to other storage devices. Free!

MacJournal – Create personal logs & diary entries. Great little app. for taking notes and keeping them organized. Free!

iComic – Subscribe and view new comic strips. Good for your mental wellbeing! Free!

QuickSilver – Application launcher and much much more…allows you to find what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard.

MPlayer – Play 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, and other video formats. Will play almost anything. My favourite. Free!

Hey Per Madsen– Thanks a million!

Hi!I was worried that German Plug-in featured in my earlier iSync Mac N73 Blog had gone commercial. I could no longer update my address book and calendars and photos.

Luckily, I found out that Nokia has solved the big problem for all Mac Users. They have provided their own plug-ins for iSync. Great!

Go to the Nokia iSync Plug-in page. Select your phone. And download the plug-in. Rest of steps as mentioned in my above blog.Note – N73 Plug-in is not there. But N75 Plug-in worked for me!

The internet browser space is getting hotter with the launch of Apple‘s Safari for Windows. I liked the following features in Safari 3:

Tabbed Browsing
This is one feature that was badly needed in Safari. So no need to open multiple windows or shift to Mozilla for tabbed browsing.

With tabbed browsing in Safari, you can open and switch between multiple web pages in a single window. Drag and drop your tabs to rearrange them, open one in a new browser window, or merge all your current windows into one tabbed window.

Private browsing
Your browsing is your business. Which is exactly why Safari offers private browsing — to keep your online activities private. Turn on private browsing and Safari won’t store your Google searches, your cookies, the history of sites you’ve visited, your download history, or information from online forms you’ve filled out.

Faster Performance
The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.

Pop-up blocking
Steve Jobs launced Safari at Apple’s Conference for Developers for Apple Products and also talked on Leopard, the highly awaited OS from Apple.

BBC News reported the following:

Chief executive Steve Jobs said Apple “dream big” and wanted to expand the 4.9% market share Safari enjoys. A test version of Safari 3 for Windows XP, Vista and Apple Macs running OSX, is available for download from the Apple website. Apple is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines.

Mr Jobs used the conference to lift the lid on new features of its forthcoming operating system (OS) for Macs, called Leopard. He said the OS has 300 new features and demoed 10, including a new organisational system for the desktop called Stacks and a new folder system which lets users browse files and applications visually, just as music lovers can browse album covers in iTunes.

Magnet Team has developed a small application named Contact Grabber for fetching your contacts from the desired site and display them. The application has seen great response and seen 550 downloads within few days.

Magnet is contributing this application to the Open Source community. Gmail, Hotmail & Yahoo were already available as open source scripts. We have developed scripts for Rediff, Orkut & Myspace.

Special thanks to Vishal Kothari, Pravin Shukla, Tapan Moharana & Janak Prajapati who have contributed to the development of this application.

Download Contact Grabber!

McKinsey recently conducted a global survey on How Businesses Are Using Web 2.0?

Excerpts from McKinsey Survey:

1. More than 75% of executives indicated their plan to increase investments in Internet Technologies that encourage user collaboration
2. Web 2.0 Elements in demands are : peer-to-peer networking, social networks and Web services
3. India as a region invites more attention and optimism

Businesses are united in their view of benefits of Web 2.0. The investments decisions in Web 2.0 seem to be strategic in nature. Not like the irrational exuberance of Dot Com boom period. This indicates the maturing of internet as an important tool for businesses.

I had bought Nokia N73 recently and wanted to Sync my address book, photos and music with my Mac OS X. Nokia has Software Tools to enable all of the above but Apple Users are ignored by Nokia. Call it iPod Effect or Arrogance!

I read Manual of N73. No help!

So I Googled my problem. Voila! A wonderful blog named Urban Puddle is there to resolve all my queries.

There is a link to iSync Plugin developed by a German developer named Tom. iSync allows me to Sync my Address Book. It allows Syncs my calendar and associated events too. Great. The plugin is currently at version 2.6. How do you about it?

1. First download it.

2. Open the Folder Contents of iSync and drop the folder in Contents/Plugins/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/Plugin.

3. Then Open iSync and let the Magic Happen!

The next wonderful application is called iTuneMyWalkman. This will syncs playlists in iTunes to your phone. It can also sync pdocasts and it is smart enought to take into account memory card space etc. It has a few limitations though. But whatever it provided me was totally amazing. I am happy and not greedy for more!

I had some problem installing iTuneMyWalkman. Read Me file was not very helpful to me. So I again Googled for help. And now I found PopGandhi to help me out. A comment help me there. It said:

When you connect your phone with the USB cable it will prompt you for which mode you want to take it into.

There’s Media Player, Lifeblog, etc, and “Mass Storage”.

Choose Mass Storage.

You will then see you phone mounted on your desktop.

When you start up itunemywalkman, to make it point to the actual path, click ‘change’ (as you mentioned) and WHILE your phone is mounted, simply navigate to where your phone is. Then go to Sounds -> Digital. That will change your path.
Urban Puddle also has instructions for connecting to Internet with Mac OS X using N73 Bluetooth.

Google is the answer to all our tech issues. Just search for it, apply your mind and enjoy!

Vaishali Mistry, my close pal, emailed me about this new Yahoo Messenger today morning. Vaishali  was magical with Flex development and was pleased to see Yahoo Messenger go the Flex way.

http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/

User Interface looks cool! Check it out!

Blogs are increasing with each passing second. So how do you make your blog stand out?

Robert and Maryam Scoble offer some practical and cool tips on creating a killer blog!

Blog because there is a purpose and not just because you want to. Collaborate. All this and more on the site.

Happy Blogging!

Technology change is the only constant. The speed and breadth of technology change as only widened over the last decade. Today, many new and emerging technologies are competing for the attention of IT Leaders. CIOs are also hard-pressed to choose the right technology for their organization as technology is a competitive differentiator today.

Recently, The McKinsey Quarterly carried an article on that addresses the above topic – Two New Tools That CIOs Want. The two technologies identified to bet the future on are : ‘server virtualization’ and ‘software as a service’.

Excerpts:

• Among the many new technologies competing for the attention of CIOs, two in particular—server virtualization and software as a service—are high on their radar screens and have a strong potential to bring real savings.
• Virtualization is a software technology that allows servers to run multiple operating systems, thus raising utilization rates. Software as a service is delivering savings of 20 to 40 percent and freeing some companies from the chore of maintaining certain common business applications.
• Together, these technologies signal a shift: instead of running programs on specific machines, companies are adopting a more flexible architecture that allows them to host and manage applications more efficiently.