Google Phone- Nexus One

In the current telecommunications market, smart phones like iPhone, droid.. are selling like hot cakes. There is a huge competition by leading players like Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola to dominate the smart phone industry. Now there is an another major competitor added to the list.It is the web gaint Google.

From past few years Google was involved in the Cellphone industry via its mobile O.S Android. Now after catching everyone's attention and having gained the momentum, Google is all set to sell its own phone, built by HTC and named the Nexus One.

The cell phone will be released in Jan 2010. It will sell the Google Phone online and the good news is it will be unlocked!!, so you’ll need to buy your cellular service separately. The software would be Android 2.1 and hardware will be built by HTC. 

 

Below is the extract from the leading social media site "Mashable" about the possible cell phone and its plan details

"Here are some of the key details you should know:

- Price: $530 unsubsidized and unlocked (ouch!), $180 subsidized on the T-Mobile network with a 2 year contract.
- Rate Plan: $79.99 per month on T-Mobile, which includes unlimited texting/MMS and web data, along with 500 minutes. This seems to be the only plan available, even if you’re already on another plan with T-Mobile
- Purchasing: You can buy up to five Nexus One phones per Google account.
- Cancellation: If you cancel within 120 days, you have to pay the subsidy difference ($350) or return the phone to Google.

"

 

Enjoy the new year gift by Google!!.

Linux Distros

This article provides some insight about various popular sites to get/download Linux distributions.

DistroWatch is a website which provides news, popularity rankings,reviews, updates and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and BSD. It now contains information on several hundred distributions. The site was established, developed and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar, a Slovakian-born South African living in Taiwan.

The site maintains extensive comparison charts detailing differences between the package sets and software revisions of different distributions. It also provides some general characteristics of distributions such as the price and the supported processor architectures. As per the website currently, the top 3 distributions based on Hits Per Day are Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint.

DistroWatch is on Twiiter.  Click here to follow it.

A similar site DesktopLinux.com, is exclusively devoted to the use of Linux as an end-user desktop operating system for personal and business purposes. The site features news, opinions, HOWTOs, FAQs, product previews/reviews, a lively discussion forum, and links to other web resources, all focused on using -- or learning to use -- Linux as a desktop operating system.

You can also look into Linux Distribution Chooser and Linux.org for more about Linux distributions.

Sources: Wikipedia,DesktopLinux

How to download Youtube videos: Chrome and Firefox Plugins

Want to download your favorite Youtube videos ? Don’t know how? Here are few quick and easy ways of downloading Youtube videos.

Chrome Browser:

Step 1:  Download the developer release of Google Chrome browser here. The youtube video download plugin for chrome browser works only with the beta or developer release version.

Step 2: Download the youtube download plugin for chrome here. After you have downloaded the .crx file on to your computer, just drag and drop the .crx file into the chrome browser. A message pops up as shown below.

Click on ‘Continue’.

Click on ‘Install’ and you are done installing the addon.

Step 3: Now on the youtube page a number of download options are available(See picture below). Choose the video format of your choice and start downloading.

Firefox Browser:

There are a bunch of youtube related addons for firefox. Here I will be giving you a tutorial on some of the popular ones.

1.       Video DownloadHelper:

You can get the addon for the Video DownloadHelper here. After installing the addon, you will be prompted to restart the browser.

After restarting firefox Video DownloadHelper will appear in the top left corner of your browser. Whenever you are watching a Youtube video, you can just click on the icon, choose the video format of your choice and start downloading the video.

 2.       Orbit Downloader:

This is another popular tool for downloading youtube videos. You can download the Orbit downloader here.

Once you have downloaded the tool, it has to be installed in your system. Please close all your browsers before installing Orbit downloader.

To download Youtube videos using Orbit downloader, just hover your mouse pointer over the video and you will see a “Get It” button pop up. Just select the video format from the drop down box and start downloading the video.

 

Best Ajax Video Tutorials on Web

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has revolutionized the way we interact with the web and nowadays it hard to find good websites that don’t use Ajax.   Are you learning Ajax or about to begin Ajax and looking for good video tutorials?.  Then here is a collection of best Ajax video tutorials that assists in fast and easy learning. 

Ajax video tutorial series (40 videos) from ajaxtrainingblogspot.com

AJAX VIDEO TUTORIAL WEBSITE from KillerAjax.com

Web 2.0 AJAX Programming from Google Code University

Ajax Video Tutorials from ajaxprojects.com          

Ajax video tutorials from deathmonkeyz.com

Introduction to Ajax from Ideal Programmer

Quick and Dirty AJAX from 15 Days Of jQuery

If you are looking not just for video tutorials, then look into the below links which provides the information about the best Ajax tutorials on web. 

 

50 Excellent Ajax tutorials from Smashing Magazine

Most wanted Ajax tutorials on web by ajaxtrainingblogspot.com

Hope this helps :)

Top Free Music Streaming Sites

Here is a list of top free music streaming sites:

1. Lala.com

Lala is the newest and the most fascinating site for online streaming music. It has all the latest recently released music albums. Any song can be listened to only once and there is no limit on the number of songs that you can listen to. You can login into lala using your facebook account and can create your own custom playlists. It  has the list of top 10 songs categorized by music genre. So you will come to know the latest popular songs in each genre. 

2. Grooveshark.com

Its layout is similar to a music player. Has all the latest songs. You can play any song any numbero f times. You can also create playlists and share the playlist with your friends. 

3. Slacker.com

Slacker also has a huge collection of songs but the user doesn’t have the option of selecting the song of his choice. Each artist is classified as a radio station and the user has to select the station corresponding to the artist of his choice. The station then plays few popular songs of the artist along with the songs from other related artists who make similar music. It also has a playlist of songs categorized by genre. The playlist Today’s Hits usually has most of the current chart toppers.

4. Last.fm

Last.fm is similar to slacker with regard to the playlist feature and songs categorization by genre. It has most of the latest songs but some are missing or they have sample limited 30 second playback. But overall it’s a pretty good site for listening to music. It also has artist profiles and videos of artist interviews. Also music videos from video sharing sites like youtube are embedded into last.fm. So you have instant access to both the audio and the music video.

5. Pandora Radio

Pandora radio came into the limelight through its iphone app which was a huge hit among the iphone users. It was among the top ten free apps in the itunes app store for couple of weeks. It had instant free music streaming which was a cool feature to have on the iphone. The web version entends the same feature to your pc. The site is not visually rich, it has a simple layout and serves the basic purpose of music playback. It is similar to slacker and last.fm , it creates a playlist of the artist of your choice along with related artists. But you don’t have access to the recently released albums.

6. Rhapsody.com

Rhapsody has a limited playback of only 25 songs per month. You have to sign up and pay 12.99/mo for unlimited playback. It has millions of songs in its collection but you have to pay to listen to music. Author:RSB Disclaimer: The above ratings are authors view only and is not based on any external data or ratings

Book Cheap Air Tickets: A guide

Planning a vacation? Looking for cheap air tickets online? Not sure where and when to buy air tickets? Here’s a quick guide to finding the best deals on air tickets. 

Do a quick research on the place you are traveling to. Check the best time to visit and the peak season for your destination. A good resource for this information is Frommer’s and lonely planet.

There are a couple of good sites that offer cheap air tickets. You can go to these sites and start looking for air tickets.

Some of them are:

Airfare     Cheapoair     Expedia      Priceline

Travelocity   Hotwire    Orbitz

A quick way to find cheap tickets is by using an air ticket search engine. They search all the above sites for your choice of destination and give you the best deal available. One of the most popular air ticket search engine is Kayak. Just enter your origin and destination and it will search Hotwire, Airfare, Priceline, Expedia and Travelocity for you and list the search results from all these sites based on your criteria like non-stop flights, travel times etc. It also gives you an option to search for hotel reservations, car rental locations.

Other similar search engine is Sidestep and Farecompare.

This is the best way to start looking for air tickets as it saves a lot of time.

Some tips and tricks:

Clear browser cookies:

Some travelers have complained about airline sites tracking the browsing history of customers and hiking up the prices based on it. So it is better to clear your browsing history now and then to avoid these airline sites from sneaking on you.

You can read more about this here. 
Deals and Price tracking:

You can also look into sites like Airfare Watchdog which provides a regularly updated compilation of the best air ticket deals online. 
Also a more intelligent way to look for cheap air tickets is to use the price tracking option provided by Yapta. Here you can input your origin and destination location and search for air tickets. Then you can select a bunch of air tickets and choose the ‘Track Price Drops’ option and wait for the prices to drop. Yapta will track these prices for you and send you a notification when prices drop.

Another similar feature is provided by Bing Travel search engine. You can search for air tickets and the search engine will provide you a prediction of when the prices are going to drop. Now, you might doubt the prediction accuracy of the search engine, but surprisingly the predictions are  found to be 74% accurate. You can read more about farecasthere. technology used by Bing travel

Author:RSB

Happy holidays from Gmail-Free Gmail Postcards

Nowadays most  people use email for not just conversations, even to send personal invitations for important occasions, greetings.... Email has almost replaced the postcard which was widely used send greetings  just a few years ago. I personally like getting greeting cards rather than emails. If you are one who wish to mail cards this Holiday season and don't have time to mail cards to your dear ones, then think of the option by Google which has come up with Gmail Happy Holiday Cards ,where you just need to fill a simple online form and Google will send one free postcard on behalf of you. Isn't it cool!!.

You can type in your message of maximum 255 characters. This card will only be delivered if the address in is USA. The cards come with are of 6 designs and you can choose one. I like "M-velope in Snow" and "Snowflakes" design. This is a limited till the supply lasts. So Hurry!!