The main search page for Google has always tried to have a minimalistic design. However, recently, Google seems to have taken a page out of Bing’s playbook and now offers a way for users to customise the background of their Google main search page.

In order to make best use of this, you need to be logged into your Gmail/Google account.

Once logged in, there is an option on the bottom left hand corner of the screen to “Change Background Image”.

This allows the user to change the background with a picture from their Picasa Web Albums, or uploaded from their computer or from a public gallery.

In order to use your own pictures, the minimum image size is 800×600. The image is scaled as the window is resized.

The results are still displayed against a white background. It is a bit flaky and doesn’t “feel” like Google. But hey, if anyone wants to, here is it :)

An increasing number of phishing emails are getting sent out asking people to verify their World of Warcraft credentials. The sad thing is that more people are falling for this every day resulting in forum posts like this:

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A while ago, I looked at a screen capture tool that I used for quite some time called Cropper. I’ve recently been introduced to an alternative that has replaced all my screen capture requirements and is now my primary tool for capturing screenshots and screen casts.

Having been around for a few years, TechSmith has improved Jing’s capabilities as a viable screen capture application and has resulted in a user-friendly and robust application.

This is one of the few applications where I do not feel the need to write extensively about the product due to its excellent website. I would advise my readers to go there for more information as it is quite comprehensive in explaining how to use Jing.

The only thing I would suggest here is that Jing by default has a set of buttons so when you have finished capturing a screen, it can “save to disk”, “capture to clipboard” or “upload to screencast.com”. I personally do not like the “upload to screencast.com” button as its too easy to hit and I’m frequently capturing screens that are commercially sensitive…

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After procrastinating for ages, I decided to give our twitter page a bit of a make-over. Following the excellent guide by Chris Spooner (Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices @ Blog.SpoonGraphics), I think I’ve finally come up with a look and feel that I was happy with.

  http://www.twitter.com/newbtech

Its a little on the lighter side, but I think it works for me :)

My previous attempts was a little too Web 2.0’ish… so i decided to change the colour scheme around a bit to make it look less so:

I actually wanted a darker “logobar”, but then decided against it.

Anyways, let me know what you think :) and if anyone wants any backgrounds done, I’ll looking for practice :)

Microsoft Translator is a free translation service to allow you as the user to get the most out of on the fly translation of web pages and excerpts and provides tools to users and webmasters alike to deliver these types of services to the web user.

It is API based and there are several applications that use this API that would be useful to both webmasters as well as developers in addition to IE8 users.

Today, we’ll look at 4 ways to use Microsoft Translation services:

1. Translation Accelerator for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0
2. Translation Bot for Windows Live Messenger
3. Windows Live Toolbar Translator Button
4. Webmaster uses for Microsoft Translator (via Widgets)

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I’ve been an avid user of the Internet for many years now and have noticed several types of behavior associated with browsing. Over time, I’ve even given some of these types of people names and descriptions that I’d like to share with you.

Disclaimer: this are my opinions and descriptions only. This isn’t industry standard or based on extensive study. Its merely my observations over the years. So take with a grain of salt :)

Author Types

Open Extrovert

There is the “Open Extrovert” – someone who writes about every facet of their lives and are not afraid to give their thoughts on everything.

These people usually have long and wordy blog posts and are conducive to open discussions. The posts that they make may be opinion based and will pose open questions to their users.

They generally have a wide range of followers and frequently these websites tend to build into a community. These people love social networking and frequently have an account in just about every social networking site in their age group.

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Lets face it, the grass is always greener on the other side. Whether its moving jobs, houses or operating systems, people are always lamenting their present situation and looking for changes. That’s natural human behavior. Mix that with the other human trait “procrastination”, and you have a lot of people who are unhappy where they are but refuse to move on.

There may be a lot of reasons why people need to change, but there are always more reasons to delay the change as much as possible. We tend to get comfortable living with the inadequacies of our current situations and finding workarounds to get things done. While at the same time we complain about how our current world can be a whole lot better. Funny thing is that it can, but putting a change into what we perceive as a working environment, can be like jumping off a bridge.

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A typical user rarely re-installs Windows on his/her machine regularly, and over time, the desktop becomes cluttered with shortcuts to installed applications, documents that one needs saved quickly and within reach and quick downloads and extracts. I used to be one of these people though over the years, I’ve taught myself to become better at managing the number of desktop icons I have. Nowadays, I rarely save many documents on my desktop simply because that saves it to my c: drive which is the first thing to go if I have to do a reformat/reinstall. And I don’t really want to lose those documents if I forget to back them up (which unfortunately I have done in the past).

While Windows offers many ways to put quick links to your documents, such as the quick launch bar beside your Start button or the pinned Start menu items, etc, the desktop is usually the most convenient place to put important shortcuts (application or documents/folders).

Today I’ll look into two of these applications, Stardock Fences and BumpTop…

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I’ve been thinking.. This blog was initially created as a personal blog to hold my thoughts and views on practically anything. So I wanted an online diary of sorts. However, when i started setting up everything, a clear purpose behind this site suddenly eluded me.. and i started going in all sorts of tangents..

I saw that the majority of the blogs out there served two purposes: 1. a personal blog that was hardly visited apart from family and friends, and 2. a resource blog that specialized in one or more areas and over time grew to have a wider audience.

Also, i noticed resource blogs coming in many flavors. A lot of resource sites out there are simply portals that spin out dozens of posts every week with links to everything to do with their subject. This is "good" in some ways, but the articles are not really written by the site owners.. they are simply pointers to other peoples work.

Then you get the great tutorial sites that pick a product such as Photoshop and go hard out in teaching its audience on how to best use that product.

I didn’t (and still don’t know) the purpose behind my blog.. Ideally I want this site to be a place where people can come and see my experiences with test driving new applications or technology. This doesn’t mean that I need to be an expert at these applications. Rather its more of a casual look and more than just providing a blurb and link. Certainly a product may take more than one article to cover off and we want to start doing that as our knowledge of that product grows.

I want a wide set of audience and LOTS of comments :). I don’t want this to be a portal site as such (y’know… the articles that begin with "25 ways to do something" and end up with 25 links to other sites).

So, if there are any products out there that you want us to test drive and play around with and give our thoughts on, please let me know via email or leave a comment here. Our next applications will be the Zoho suite of online applications and ScreenToaster (a great little tool everyone can use to "Record" their desktop and create mini movies)..

Till then.. thanks for reading my ramblings and leave a frickin’ comment!

Erm.. surely it can’t be true? Where has Firefox and Chrome gone? Could this be just another marketing hype released to coincide the release of Microsoft IE 8.0?