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Microsoft Office 2010 vs Google Docs

Paritosh — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:19:26 +0000

The clash of the Titans continues, as Microsoft announced that it will soon be launching Microsoft Office 2010 which will feature broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualization capabilities in Excel, and co-authoring in Word.

For a detailed list of Microsoft Office 2010 features refer to this post :

Microsoft Office 2010 Unleashed

Microsoft is testing a new version of its market-leading productivity suite for Windows PCs that will tie-up with new Web-based Office. The applications offered by Microsoft will be similar to those offered by Google including a suite of lightweight online applications.

Google’s online spreadsheet and office related applications has been gaining popularity. To counter that Microsoft plans to take Office online, with a new series of free Office Web applications.

“Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications will allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online,” says Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview Website.

It will be an ad-supported web-suite, which will be available to more than 400 million Windows Live consumers at NO extra cost.

Google has been struggling to match the reputation of Microsoft office, as its own suite failed to perform up to their expectation. But Google is offering free version of this suite, thus attracting more than 15 million customers. Since then Microsoft has been under pressure to provide more free applications. Microsoft is also set to announce the launch of its internet-based operating system, called Azure. This will see it give tough competition to Google in the business of selling computing resources over the internet and by allowing developers to buy capacity to run their applications based on the amount of storage, bandwidth or any other resources that they use.

Microsoft has also announced that it will reduce the number of office editions from 8 to 5. The Microsoft Office suite will be available in the first half of next year.

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Day to Day Uses of Search Engine(s)

Paritosh — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:25:01 +0000

In the early days of the Internet, the job of a search engine was to take you someplace else, usually to the Web site that had whatever information you were looking for.

Increasingly, though, search engines are themselves becoming a source of information, giving direct answers to questions without making you click over to a Web site.

Here’s a list of 10 things that you can do on your search engine besides simple searching :-

Dictionary : In this, the age of emoticons and “OMGs”, it may be news to people that there are still such a thing as dictionaries. But not only do they still exist, they are no further away than your browser, ready to help with definitions and spellings. When you’re confused about a word, just type, for instance, “define perspicacious,” ( It means having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning ) though you surely already knew what that word meant on account of your great perspicacity.
Calculator : There is no need to open up a spreadsheet or pull out a pocket calculator to do simple–or even complex–arithmetic. Search engines will do it for you. They not only do simple expressions like “139 * 252″ but they can also handle nested terms, exponents and more. Be careful with your parentheses, since “(5+5)/3″ is very different from “5+(5/3)”.
Travel Adviser : You don’t need to navigate your way through an airline’s Web site just to find out of a flight is arriving on time. Just type in the airline and the flight number into the search bar.
Currency Converter : It’s easy to use your browser to find out how far a dollar will go this summer in Europe. Type “1,000 euros in dollars” and the search engine will do the conversion for you, at whatever the trading level happens to be at the time. Search engines handle some abbreviations, too; you can use “USD” for “U.S. dollars” or GBP for “Great Britain pounds”.
Savant : Search engines don’t “understand” language the same way people do. But on account of the tricks and short-cuts that programmers have built into them, they sometimes act as though they can. Often, if you have a free-form question, like “What were the causes of the U.S. civil war” or “How long is the Mississippi River?,” you can get surprisingly effective results by typing the whole question into the search bar. At a minimum, you’ll usually get the relevant Wikipedia page; often, you’ll get something more specialized.
Help Desk : It always helps to have a tech-savvy friend or relative standing by when your computer does something it isn’t supposed to. In their absence, try your search engine. For example, if you get an error message you’ve never seen before, type in the name of the program and the exact wording of the message. Chances are good you’ll come across someone who had been down the same path but who had figured a way back home. Here’s one help desk hint: An easy way to speed up searching is to use the “Preferences” option at search engines to change the number of results you see in a single screen. The default is usually 10; switching to 100 lets you zoom through results nearly 10 times more quickly.
Specialized Search Engine : Everyone knows that search engines crawl the Web in search of information. But did you know that you can also get them to limit their search to a specific Web site? If you want to know what folks at MIT are saying about Albert Einstein, type “site:mit.edu Einstein” and you’ll get tailored results.
Yellow Pages : The combination of search engines and mapping programs will usually tell you everything you’d need to know about the stores and services available in your neighborhood. Type in your ZIP code and what you’re looking for–car repair, dry cleaning, Chinese food–and you’ll quickly see who is nearby, often accompanied by phone numbers and Web links.
Caller ID : New area codes are proliferating, making it harder than it ever was to know where someone is calling from. When you see an unfamiliar area code, type it in, as in “area code 323″ and learn the territory with which it’s associated. In this case, it’s Los Angeles.
Librarian : True to their origins, search engines will by default give you information they have gleaned in crawling through Web pages. But there are other buckets of information you search through, offering vastly different results. Near the top of every search engine, you will see a menu with choices like “Web” or “News” or “Images.” With “Obama,” for instance, a search through the Web will take you to the page from last year’s presidential campaign, while the same search through “News” will give you up-to-the minute headlines.

Resident Evil 5 In 3D For PC Coming Soon

Rahul — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:38:11 +0000

There is a good news for the hardcore gaming fans of Resident evil. Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 5 will be released on PC in September. For the people of North America the game will be available from 15 September and for the people of Europe on 18 September. The game will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360 much before.

The PC version of the game will be available with new content and Nvidia 3D Vision support. For the best experience of the 3D version you will need a monitor that supports a 120Hz refresh rate, compatible GeForce graphics card, Windows Vista or Windows 7, and the Nvidia 3D Vision Kit.

The new and added features include the Mercenaries mode which is like the time challenge mode. Capcom are claiming the PC version of this mode can cope with three-times the enemies seen on the PS3 and Xbox 360. In addition, there are new costumes to unlock for Chris and Sheva.

Well I am a hardcore fan of the Resident Evil series and loved the fourth part of the series (though it was really tough) a lot but this new version will test the gaming desires of the people as the whole 3D concept is new and I think that it will compliment the game making it a huge success. Lets wait and watch what this new version has to offer Friends.

Max Payne 3 Announced

Reasons why you should buy MacBook Pro

Paritosh — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:42:38 +0000

There are so many reasons you will love a MacBook Pro.

Aluminum unibody enclosure, advanced longer-lasting battery, enhanced LED-backlit display. MacBook Pro has been precision engineered down to the smallest detail.

With its advanced features and its hardware and software that are designed to work together from the start, MacBook Pro puts precision engineering in your hands. And what more, it’s now available in 13”, 15”, and 17” sizes.

Following are some of the few good reasons for purchasing Mac :-

Innovative – Inside and out – With its advanced battery and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, MacBook Pro lasts longer and performs even better. The sturdy aluminum unibody is a true engineering achievement. And anything you view on the enhanced LED display is flat-out stunning.

Breakthrough battery - The innovative battery lasts up to 7 hours (8 hours on the 17-inch MacBook Pro) on a single charge.

Unibody enclosure - Carved from a single block of aluminum, the MacBook Pro is more durable than ever.

Multi-Touch trackpad – Interact with your files, photos, and more in amazing new ways. Scroll up and down a page with two fingers, pinch to zoom in and out, and even flip through photo libraries. And the entire trackpad is the button, so you can click anywhere.

Full-size, illuminated keyboard - There’s plenty of room to type comfortably. And when you’re in low-light settings, such as airplanes or conference rooms, you can always see what you’re typing.

Better at the things you do every day - The things you do most often on a computer, like browsing the web, checking email, and working with Microsoft Office files, are some of the things the Mac does best. The first time you use a Mac, you’ll quickly discover the benefits of a single company making the hardware, software, and operating system. The Mac can even run Windows—so it’s compatible with the PC world. Exception being, it doesn’t get PC viruses.

Your own team of experts - We’re always here to help with professional advice in our Apple Retail Stores, award-winning service and support with the AppleCare Protection Plan, and a world of online resources.

Environment Friendly – MacBook Pro is designed with the environment in mind. It’s highly recyclable and free of many harmful toxins. And thanks to its reduced packaging, it has a reduced carbon footprint to match. It’s also energy efficient, meeting the EPA’s stringent low power requirements.

For a complete list of feature refer the official page of Apple Here.

Microsoft Office 2010 Unleashed

Paritosh — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:22:43 +0000

Yes ! You read it right.

For the past year or so, there have been numerous rumors about the features, launch dates, etc of Microsoft’s latest office suite.
However, nothing was know before its official launch today at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. The Microsoft officials have confirmed that Office 2010 will be released by the first quarter of 2010.

They also have made a mini-movie about there latest venture.
Check out that video below :

The Movie

Official Teaser

Here’s a summary of all the functionality that has been added in this release :-

PowerPoint 2010 :
PowerPoint has been upgraded with a new browser version. Users now have the capability of editing video and images within PowerPoint with a basic video editing tool and an image editing tool, which is like a basic, simple version of Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft has also added the ability for users to launch a WebEx-like live sharing feature with other users. So if you create a slideshow in PowerPoint, you can share it with other people in real-time.

Excel 2010 :
Excel spreadsheets can now run in the browser, and similar to PowerPoint, spreadsheets can be published to the browser via the desktop version. The browser version of Excel has limited features, but offers more in-depth functionality than Google Spreadsheets. Microsoft has added a particularly innovative feature called Sparklines, which gives a visual snapshot image of a data trend over time within a cell. You can also share Excel via the browser with other users and set special permissions on who can access the document.

Word 2010 :
Microsoft has introduced a new feature called “document fidelity”. This means that, in the browser, documents retain the same look and feel as in the desktop. The browser version still has the “ribbon user interface,” where you can change fonts, size, formatting, styles etc. Microsoft has also updated the desktop version to have collaborative features so that multiple users can be editing a document at once.

Outlook 2010 :
Outlook 2010 now has a ribbon user interface, like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The UI of email conversations has been upgraded to look almost like a message tree, allowing users a more visual view of sent and incoming emails. Search functionality has been improved as well, making it much easier to find content. Also, you can preview calendars in emails and choose to ignore selective email conversations.

To sum up, the improvements seem to be good and the software promises to be a complete package.
However, nothing can be confirmed till it is released.

Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 – Launched

Paritosh — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:32:28 +0000

Microsoft, yesterday released the third version of its rich media application platform, Silverlight 3. Microsoft Silverlight 3 is a cross-browser, cross- platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering media experiences for the Web.

Microsoft’s Silverlight, the “Flash Killer”, was launched earlier this year with a beta tag and since then a lot of improvements and bug fixes have been made in the final launch.

Some of the new features of Silverlight 3 are :-

1. Smooth Streaming:

Its new streaming feature improves the quality of streaming video on the browser so that it compares to watching video on television. As a user, you’ll experience HD video playback of content if your bandwith is high. If a user’s bandwidth is below 3 Mbps, Smooth Streaming’s dynamic capabilities will kick in.

2. Digital Rights Management:

Silverlight 3 comes with increased protection of content for businesses using the platform to stream or publish content. Studio and content owners have greater abilities to monitor and protect content from being distributed.

3. Immersive Experiences:

Silverlight 3 comes with a few innovative capabilities for developers to harness, including th ability to have a deep zoom into images and an experience, almost making users feel like they are on a virtual ride. Silverlight 3 also has a more powerful 3-D technology.

4. Out Of The Browser:

Silverlight has been a browser based technology since its launch in 2007, but this ends with the new release. Microsoft has now given developers the ability to build applications on Silverlight that can be viewed in the browser and on the desktop.

The above mentioned are some of the features of Microsofts Silverlight 3.

For a comprehensive list visit the official page of Silverlight Here.

Personally speaking, i think Silverlight will certainly give a tough competion to Flash and AIR.

My Recommendation :- I will definately advise you to try out the Silverlight plugin. One thing i noticed while installing the plugin was the support for Chrome browser. It installed easily in Firefox 3, however chrome was not supported !!

Maybe its because of the Microsoft – Google rivalry !!!!

{ Source : TechCrunch }

Watch Star Channels Online For Free !

Paritosh — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:11:17 +0000

Missed a star network serial ?
Looking for a place to watch the repeat telecast of your favorite soaps without messing around the ‘proxies’ or downloading unwanted software ?

Well, if Yes, then your search is over !
India’s leading television channel group Star TV has launched their official website to access videos of their shows from Star Plus, Star World, Star One, Channel [V] And Star News TV channels via internet.

The site currently features few episodes but the company plans to upload its video archives on the website in future.

The website makes use of Star Player ( a Adobe Flash based player ) and is monetized by in-video advertising. The company also plans to make this platform available to other broadcasters and is currently in talks with threeTV channels.

The quality of the video is good enough to watch, however, it takes time to load on a 256Kbps connections ( which i think average indian internet user has ). Plus slomost every episode is divided into parts, which sometimes becomes annoying. All in all, the service is good and i would suggest my readers to try it out.

You can acces the site by clicking on this link or copying and pasting http://www.startv.in/ in your browser.

P.S – I dont know whether this site is available to visitors outside India. So, you are able to access this site from outside India, leave a comment. This will help others too !

Perfect Utility To Find Icons For Websites & Blogs

Paritosh — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:01:25 +0000

Its pretty hard to find out new icons ( Favicons ) for your blog(s) or websites. Although there are numerous tools that allow you to construct your own icon but it requires hard work.

I, myself faced a lot of problems while looking for a suitable favicon for my blog TechVorm however, couldnt find one and therefore had to construct it. At that time i wasnt aware of the site named Iconfinder.I came across this site while searching for favicons on google.

Icon finder is basically an icon search engine, which can allow us to find prefect icons for blogs, websites, etc. Once you open the site page you will see a search page like this :-

All you need to do is just search for the kind of icon you need and it will display the matching results to you !!

You can select to download the icon in two formats i.e. .ico or .png . This means you can use these icons like a favicon and add them to your blog or website.

There is also an option to browse their Icon set. They have somewhere close to 154 icon sets ( at the time of writing this post ). You can search them by browsing Iconfinder site or by clicking this direct link.

Do share your experience, of using this service, with us.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 – Available For Download

Paritosh — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:26:29 +0000

After 3 Release Candidates, Mozilla finally released the final version of its much hyped browser on Tuesday (IST).

If you are using Firefox 3.5 RC3, you don’t need to download or install this final version as both are absolutely same, as no such change log is available to make any comment about it.

However, you will still get an ‘update available’ message screen !As claimed by Mozilla, their new browser is “more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times as fast as Firefox 2″

Mozilla has always committed to what they have said and lets hope that this time also it proves to be the same !!

(Image Source : Mozilla )

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 can be downloaded from the official page.

See the Release Notes Here.

And yeah don’t forget to comment on your experience with the latest “firefox” !!

Deluge : A New BitTorrent Client

Rahul — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:00:25 +0000

Using torrents has become a day-to-day activity for us as it helps us to download and share things from and with the other people on the internet. Utorrent ,BitTorrent ,Azuerus ,etc are the common torrent clients in practice.
Today, i share with you another new and feature rich torrent client Deluge.

Deluge features a rich plugin collection; in fact, most of Deluge’s functionality is available in the form of plugins.

Its lightweight and easy to use features make it a friendly application. Besides being handy it also offers various other features like :-

Web UI
BitTorrent Protocol Encryption
Mainline DHT
Local Peer Discovery (aka LSD)
FAST protocol extension
µTorrent Peer Exchange
UPnP and NAT-PMP
Proxy support
Private Torrents
Global and per-torrent speed limits
And much more !

There are times when you want your torrenting activities to remain hidden from curious eyes that might roam around your PC while you’re away. Instead of shutting down the application altogether, you can simply minimize it to the tray and set a password, so whenever you want to bring it back up, you’ll have to provide Deluge with the password. Useful, indeed, but don’t rely on it too much, as one can simply kill the process from the system monitor and start Deluge again, thus bypassing the password.

Deluge offers an all-in one pack for those people who use torrents as a part of their routine. You can download the latest version of the free software from the official site Here.

My Reccomendation – Although a majority of users go with utorrent primarily because of its light weight and low CPU usage, however, it doesn’t provide you with all the necessary function.
Hence, i will suggest yoo to give this new torrent client a shot and let us know how you liked it !