Yup, took the plunge and got myself an iPad 3G 32gig. Already jailbroke it. Expect some iPad and iPhone posts coming through soon.

Because I travel frequently, I wanted to have a device that can work well with my iPhone and can replace the need for having a netbook as well as a paperback stored in my hand luggage.

The iPad has finally delivered an on the go solution that allows me to connect to my work machine whenever i need to, carry a range of electronic books and media with me for the plane/hotel and being able to browse on a larger screen (than the iPhone).

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:

I had a chance to look at my spam folder in Gmail and I was amazed to see so many emails from “Blizzard” asking me to verify my password:

If you get an email like this, the first thing you do is NOT TO CLICK ANY FRICKIN’ LINK IN THE EMAIL!!!!

Here is how you can spot a fishy email and some steps around keeping your WoW account a bit safer….

Ensure that you look at the email headers and see where the emails originate from. If you are using Gmail, the easiest way to do this is to click on “Show Details” on the top of the email:

Just checking the “from” address is never ever enough. In this case, some idiot tried to send me to a nice looking page to give him my username and password.. lovely.

If you need more information, see if you can see the entire message header. In Gmail, you can click the little drop down button beside the Reply button and select “Show Original” to see the entire trail:

And the real address is now shown:

The funny thing is that my Gmail address is NOT associated with any battle.net accounts :)

Some Suggestions to keep a**holes from stealing your keys

1. Blizzard will NEVER EVER EVER ask for your password. So if you get an email from anyone purporting to be Blizzard and asking for your username and password, its a hacker trying to get your hard earned account.

2. NEVER EVER EVER click any link in any emails that come from Blizzard. It may look like its going to the WoW or Battle.Net sites, but trust me, its not. If you mouse over the link, looking at the status bar on your browser will show you where the link is actually going. This is done by showing you one address, but the on-click takes you somewhere else:

3. If you are in doubt, enter the link to the Blizzard site manually in a browser. Don’t click on any links! (worth frickin’ repeating!)

4. If you are still paranoid, don’t even open any emails that look like these especially if they are not trapped by your spam filters. At the very worst, it is possible for hackers to put malicious code that can redirect you to sites that contains key loggers that can be used to steal your WoW and other personal details.

5. As a general rule, always be careful when using online cafe’s or other public places to log onto any sensitive sites. You cannot guarantee that these machines are not infected with key loggers.

6. Always ensure that your battle.net password is not easily guessable and is different from what you use for other sensitive sites.

7. Always ensure that your machine is up to date in terms of its updates and virus software and that you do run regular scans. I know a few people who have downloaded dodgy software and the “setup.exe” come frequently with a bootstrapper that installs a virus first and then runs the real setup.

8. The most important item that you need to ALWAYS have secure is your email address. Its amazing how often people think that it doesn’t need to be that secure because you don’t have sensitive enough information in it. But imagine how easy it would be for a hacker (once they have your email account) to “reset” any services and be able to have that sent to your email box.

Having your email address details is the first step in terms of having the ability to reset most things that address has been registered against. This includes financial institutions, your battle.net account, etc etc etc. At the very least make sure your email password is frickin’ secure!!

Summary

There is a LOT that can be written around the areas of keeping your “stuff” secure. I’ve only brushed on a high level some of the common sense practices.. There are entire sites dedicated to online security and best practices. Just saw a whole bunch of spam in my Gmail, hence why I thought I’d write something about it to convey my opinion.. :)

Related Posts

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…

In order to get around this, Jing offers a means to configure your buttons. When you have captured a screen, you will be taken to an editing window:

Click on the rightmost button (spanner) to configure your buttons and remove the “Upload to screencast.com” button”. This way, the only actions you can do is to either Save it or Copy to Clipboard.

Jing comes in both a free version and a “pro” version. For everyday use, the free version is perfect. It sits unobtrusively on the top of your screen ready to be clicked on whenever you need a new capture.

There seems to be a dedicated and fun bunch of people behind Jing and it shows on their blog which has some excellent tips on getting the best out of their software.

I know there are quite a few screen capture applications out there, but I’ve found Jing to have met my needs perfectly at the moment. They would make the product even better to allow for round frames instead of just rectangular ones but I’m not one to complain when its free and does pretty much everything I want :)

Relevant Links

• Jing Home Page
• Getting Started with Jing Help Site
• Jing Blog (worth a read :) )

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)

1. Translation Accelerator for IE8

With the release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, there is a built in accelerator to translate languages on the fly. First brought out with IE8.0 Beta 2, it allows the user to highlight any selected text and translate to various languages immediately.

It is as easy as highlighting a section of text in IE8, and clicking on the little blue arrow that brings up a context window. At this point you have two options:

1. If you hover your mouse over “Translate with Live Search”, another window will pop up with choices to translate from and to different languages.

2. Clicking on the “Translate with Live Search” will actually take you to the microsofttranslator.com site (opens in a new window) with the text pasted in and ready for you to translate.

That’s excellent for translating quick blocks of text on the fly (rather than the whole page).

2. Translation Bot for Windows Live Messenger

If you add mtbot@hotmail.com to your Windows Live Messenger contacts, you can call the translation service on the fly via your messenger client. This is a robot translator that you can converse with and you can type “Tbot ?” to get a list of commands that it understands.

The first thing to do is to set up your language preferences. To do this type “TBot Change”. You will be led through a couple of menu choices to choose your source and target languages. Once set up, feel free to converse with the bot as if you are talking to another human, and everything you say will be translated and returned accordingly.

Really easy to use once you get used to the interface and an excellent use of the translator API’s. You can go to the Bot’s Live Space in the Relevant Links below for additional information.

Hint: You can add this user to any chat client that can understand MSN contacts (such as Pidgin for Linux!)

3. Windows Live Toolbar Translator Button

If you use the Windows Live Toolbar, you can easily incorporate online translation by adding the Translation Button to the toolbar. This is achieved by clicking the “+” icon in the toolbar and following the menu to add the Translator button.

You will be taken to the Live Gallery where you can Download and install the button.

Clicking on the Add button will download and add the button to your toolbar automatically. Now, whenever you are at a webpage that you need translating, simply hit the button on the toolbar and a new window will appear with the original and translated text.

When you mouse over any sentence in the original webpage, it even highlights the translated sentence in the translated page view. This is excellent for pinpointing which sentences go where.

If you don’t like the side by side view, you can click on the various view options on the top left to change to a top/bottom or a hover type navigation (where you can be on the original or translated page and hovering over the sentences shows a tooltip with the appropriate translation in it.

4. For Webmasters

Microsoft Translator Services have two services for Webmasters. You can add a Microsoft Translator easily into your website by including a quick line of code in your website code

This puts a small drop down into your page and allows the users to quickly select a language and translating the page. Hitting the arrow will take the user to a similar full page translation as above.

In addition, there is now a Widget available that allows on the fly translation without having to go through to a separate page. This increases user experience significantly. To get the widget code, you will need to get an invite from here: (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/Widget/)

I’m in the process of getting that widget installed on newbtech.

In Conclusion

Microsoft Translation services are good and easy to use. They provide value to both users as well as website authors and provide a better user experience overall. The Microsoft Team behind Translation Services have done a splendid job in expanding our capabilities to view information on the web that may have been otherwise hidden behind a language we may not understand.

Relevant Links

• Microsoft Translator Official Team Blog
• Microsoft Translator Forums
• Microsoft Translation Bot Space
• Webmasters and Blog Authors: Adding a Translator to your webpage

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.

SME (Subject Matter Expert)

The “SME” or “Subject Matter Expert” – someone who is technically adept at some particular product or service and will go to great lengths to describe in detail all aspects of that product/service.

These frequently have a blog or website where they can “share” their wisdom. Usually in the form of tutorials or how-tos.

Usually analytical in nature, the good SME will provide step by step instructions on how to get the best out of their products/services.

Collector

The “Collector” – also recently known as the “ReTweeter”, this person loves browsing and researching. He/she will go through all the news feeds and sites finding links for the subjects they are passionate about. They thrive on finding sites that may have nuggets of information that they believe is important enough to forward.

Then this person will collate these links and put them on their website or recently use Twitter to propagate the links. They usually don’t write their own posts, apart from “list posts” to tell everyone where to go.

These people perform one of the most important functions in terms of internet collaboration. These list posts along with search engines are usually the best way to find information.

Fake Extrovert

The “Fake Extrovert” – someone who creates a website with the intent of getting their thoughts and knowledge public, only to freak out when someone disagrees with them. This results in them being overly cautious when publishing any post or comments.

Frequently analytical in nature, the Fake Extrovert wants to show their emotions, but may find it difficult to do so when under pressure.

These people, when browsing, seem to think that everyone is an author/contributor (because they don’t see the lurkers) and wants to conform to what they believe is the normal standard.

So they start by making small remarks on forums and if their confidence increases, they may even create a blog or two.

Reader Types

This is only a subset of the different types of readers out there. In particular, I wanted to write about people i describe as Lurkers, Fanbois and the Avid Commenter :)

Lurkers

The “Lurker” constitutes the majority of Internet users out there. These make up the biggest user base. They usually have a wide range of sites they go through every day but only for the sake of browsing. They can be looking for something in particular, or generally meandering.

1. The “Voyeur” – someone who gets pleasure from going to many different sites and reading what other people are thinking about. They get the most buzz from forum or news sites where the information is flowing through fast.

They normally don’t make any comments at all even if they feel strongly about a subject. Generally introverted in personality, these people don’t want to make themselves known.

They are usually afraid of even the possibility that someone will disagree with them in public.

2. The “Nonchalant” – someone who loves browsing and will spend time doing so, but hasn’t got the need to reply/contribute to the subject. They are more laid back and will reply if they want to. They are not fussed about what other people think and will take things with a grain of salt.

For them, browsing is an enjoyable activity and one associated with little to no stress. Generally non-competitive.

Fanbois

The “Fanboi” is someone who feels extremely strongly on a particular product or service and so strongly that they are unwilling to see any criticism placed on their product/service. Their belief is so strong that they are against seeing any alternative out there and will often see only the upside of their products and downsides of any competing products.

This is quite frequent on game sites where “fanbois” from competing games will often congregate on a forum and have pointless arguments about why their game is the best and how the others will never match its capabilities.  Eventually, these types of threads end up in the “Rants” section.

The Avid Commenter

There is the “Avid Commenter” – someone who likes to comment on anything and everything. These normally come in four varieties:

1. The “Naysayer” – someone who loves to rant and disagree. They thrive on attention but are unwilling to start any conversations. However, they are more than happy to disagree on every post and will often go around in circles around a every point to render the thread useless.

2. The “Troll” – this is a term popularly used to describe a person who starts arguments up for the sake of arguments. Again, this may be an attention seeker who may start a topic that they know is controversial in nature or intentionally tries to instigate argumentative discussions.

3. The “One Sentence Replier” – a person who replies to any and all posts that they see, usually with a single simple sentence that adds absolutely no value to the post. Something simple like “Thank You” or “Excellent post” or “Agreed!”.

There may be ulterior motives behind this behaviour.

Frequently, these people have a blog or website that they want links to, and by replying in this fashion, they normally associate their website URL to their login name. This results in link backs to their website.

4. The “Informer” – usually someone who has the inherent need to comment on all posts but because they have some research skills, they will usually put helpful links to related websites. They are generally helpful in giving some level of guidance to the other readers.

In Conclusion

No one fits into any one of the above boxes completely. I’ve written this intentionally in an open manner to solicit comments. There are many other “types” that I have in mind, but I think I’ll keep them there :)

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.

If you want to move jobs or houses, its very much a situation where you cannot revert back if things go bad. IE, you’ve jumped off that bridge and now find yourself in a whole new environment from which you have to learn your “workarounds” all over again. And face it, there will never be a perfect environment where you won’t have to make any changes at all. Every change brings with itself some joy and some regrets. Its in our nature to miss what we no longer have even if we changed willingly.

Thank god its not the same for operating systems. Technology these days allow us to experiment with different operating systems all the while having a back up ready to revert back to if you don’t like what you see. It gives us the opportunity to leap over the fence and truly see if the grass is greener.

We as users are spoilt for choices. With the latest builds of Linux and Windows coming out and developers listening more and more to their followers, the quality of operating systems are increasing with every release. With that comes better application interfaces that allow developers to create amazing software.

There are alternative application solutions to practically every software out there. See my post on alternative applications for Linux as an example. Also, check out http://alternativeto.net/ if you want to see alternatives for Windows and Mac based software.

People can also dual/tri boot or use Linux Live CD’s or use Virtual Machines to experience other operating systems. We’re truly spoilt.

With so many choices available as well at the ability to revert back, I still see many people wanting to go one way or the other. So, its either Windows or Linux but not both. People gravitate towards the two extremes and always looking to get rid of one or the other.

I am happy.. in both the Linux and Windows worlds. I can honestly say I’ll never get rid of Windows. Applications like Adobe Photoshop and Windows Live Writer while having alternative solutions, will never be replaced in my toolbox. They have become a staple part of my daily user experience and I cannot see that changing in the near future. However, it will always allow me to play with other software knowing I have those as my “back up”..

As long as we have a choice to come back, we will continue to experiment and will eventually change on our own. We don’t need to be pushed, coerced or actively look for a reason to change. That will come naturally.

Its important that people continue to have choices and our need for change will always result in corporations striving to ensure that we all have quality user experience. And that is something to look forward to.

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…

Stardock Fences

Stardock Fences is not a revolutionary new way of organizing your desktop (a la  Bumptop). Rather, it provides a variety of dock-like structures called containers that enable you to quickly organize and layout your shortcuts and icons on your desktop to keep it as tidy and accessible as possible.

Made by the same folks who made ObjectDock, its a free (for personal) product that can help a lot of folks at home. Creating the containers is quite simple and you can move your documents between containers (or out of them) using simple drag and drop. New containers can be created quickly and named for convenience. These containers can also be resized and provides scrolling if there are many items in the container.

Fences is not a desktop replacement. Rather its an add-on that compliments your desktop and user experience.

Fences requires Microsoft .Net version 2.0 to run and can be downloaded from here:

http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/downloads.asp

The version that is currently available for download is a beta one and will expire around August 2009. There is a Pro version scheduled to come out in the future. Stardock’s site generally is an easy to read and has a comprehensive sections on its features and an active forums section (though I must admit, i didn’t see a section specifically for Fences).

In addition to Fences, Stardock has many other applications centered around the area of desktop organization, look & feel and completely changing your user experience. They do have an integrated version which has most of their applications packaged into one called Object Desktop, that is a commercial application, so you need to pay for it. But by all means, please do go check out some of Stardocks offerings. The eye candy certainly did catch my eye :)

BumpTop

BumpTop, takes things a lot further than Fences whereby it tries to simulate a real desk environment complete with walls to pin up items, ability to group items (called “piles”), shuffle through  these and integration into social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

It is touch screen friendly and allows dynamic icon resizing for important files as well as thumbnail previews.

It try’s to revolutionize the way we use our desktops by making it simpler and quicker to get things done. BumpTop makes use of grouping and gestures all in a “3D” environment that looks pleasing to the eye.

BumpTop is using similar technology to what we have seen in Microsoft Surface but I have a  feeling that these types of desktops will become more popular once touch screen technology replaces the keyboard and mouse as the primary means of user input. Additionally, unlike the desk in the video below, my real desk is like my computer desktop, minimalistic and clear of objects as possible. For someone like me, it will take quite a bit of re-learning to get into the habits of “throwing” icons everywhere :)

BumpTop does a free and pro version but the free version has some essential features missing. You can download BumpTop from here:

http://bumptop.com/download.php

Below is a video of BumpTop in action.

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!