Yahoo rolling out unlimited storage

Yahoo mail has started showing "You now have unlimited storage" in my account! Yahoo has come a long way from providing just 5 MB some five years ago. Although this feature won't bring me back to using yahoo, I would definitely use it as a dumping ground forwarding mails automatically from all other accounts :)

Google goes offline with google gears

Google has announced Google gears which attempts to take browser offline. At present, it supports Google reader and very likely it would start supporting gmail and google docs in near future. This development is in sync with the announcement of mozilla to support offline browsing in firefox 3.0. This application being open source can be used by other developers and soon we would see a number of sites allowing offline access to data. If implemented in google docs, it would be a huge advantage over other competitors providing similar service.

On the results of public examinations

Results of a number of public examinations are being declared. Today, the result of IIT entrance was declared where some 7000+ students were given place in the merit list. This is a huge increase from last times, maybe because some new institutions are added in the list which would use JEE for their student intake.
A few days ago, results of Class-X CBSE results were declared. Intrestingly, more than 3000 students have got more than 95% marks. A Patna boy is the topper this time with 99.4% marks!

Google maps now has street view

Google has announced Google Maps street view.

They had licensed some related technologies and this was a natural addition. Google maps is quite fast with new feature addition and they are bridging the gap between google earth and this online version.

Surface Computer from Microsoft

Microsoft has announced a new product category of surface computers. A surface computer is able to recognize physical objects like cell phone, pen etc. and allows control of content like maps, pictures, files with hand.

Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface™, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.

This is an interesting product and is ground-breaking. Such research was till now limited to universities. Concept of "Hand control of objects in computer" will soon definitely attract a good number of customers!

MyblogLog adds tagging feature

MyBlogLog has added a tagging feature via which you can easily tag blogs and people. MyBlogLog is good service now bought by Yahoo. After a good start, I hardly see any improvement in their services. Moreover, after being acquired by yahoo, it does not encourage Google's blogger platform. High spam is another turn-off which may eventually force me to stop using it.

Zoho notebook coming out of private alpha

Zoho notebook is finally coming out of closed alpha. Its features had impressed me when it came but initially it had some problems with speed and it made my firefox crash. Now in beta, those problems seem to have gone and it looks like a promising application for storing and collecting web content while browsing. A firefox plug-in makes it even more complete.

Its features (as told to me):

• Add text, image, audio, video, RSS feed, HTML content from web, Zoho Writer doc, Zoho Sheet spreadsheet etc
• Share with friends / colleagues, permission settings at object level
• Versioning support to view/revert to any past version
  
• Add comments to pages or to individual objects
  
• URL to access Zoho Notebook Beta : http://notebook.zoho.com (also at http://nb.zoho.com)
  
• Firefox add-on for clipping web pages
  
• Demo Video of Private Alpha
  

Firefox tricks

Firefox is always a great asset. Here is a blog post on some basic Firefox tricks!

Create flickr slideshows for your web-site.

Embedding flickr pics in your website or blog is an easy thing. If you are still guessing how to do that, flickrSLiDR provides an easy way. Just enter the flickr address and tags from which you want to create a slideshow and flickSLiDR gives you html code to be embedded into the website.

I am back

For last two weeks I was down with fever and am just back. Everything had come to a standstill and maybe now things will slowly come back to track.