Everything is new…

domain hosting: We have shifted to Blogger (for better and not for worse…)

new name: layman tech tips

(http://laymantechtips.blogspot.com/)

authors: 🙂 nice try… they do remain the same…

new content: ofcourse… we will be shadow blogging on this blog for the next 5 posts and after that we will discontinue entirely. though the archives will be still available no updates will be posted 5 posts hence… if you notice a glitch pls. comment or mail, we will try to smoothen that out…

reason: well there are many reasons

1. wordpress makes no adsense (check out the screenshot below optionally follow this link)
2. wordpress was is very restrictive in terms of what it allows you to insert in posts
3. you cannot customize your layout
4. you cannot add lots of widgets
5. you have to use predefined tags… and that sucks…

create abstract images…online

Do you feel sad when you see a masterpiece like the one on right thinking “I will never be able to make something like that”? Well the days of thunder are here… you can create an equally interesting masterpiece or even better…

All you need to do is head over to Viscosity. Viscosity is an award-winning random image generator which takes minimal inputs from you and helps you create masterpiece of your own…

Viscosity image starts out as 9 shaded horizontal stripes, but a few clicks will make it bloom into a multi-colored, semi-transparent, almost sculptural piece of transcendent web-stuff. You can also customize the size and the quality of the image.

To learn more about Viscosity visit here

photoblogging with shozu…

One more photo-blogging tool apart from the ones already mentioned is Shozu…

Here are all the ways in which ShoZu keeps you connected.

Upload Photos & Videos. ShoZu enables one-click uploading of camera phone videos and pictures to over 30 online social networks, blogs, photo sites and other popular web destinations and of course email…

Download Friends’ Feeds. With ShoZu you can get your friends’ Flickr photos on your phone. Every time your friends add new photos to Flickr, they’re instantly sent to your phone so you’re always in the know.

Read & Reply to Comments. Posted a fun photo to your online profile last night? As your friends post comments, they’re sent to your phone where you can read and reply to them all.

Update your Status. Away? Keep your friends in the know while you’re on the go. Change your status for your different accounts direct from your phone with ShoZu.

Add Tags, Titles and Descriptions. Keep your photos and videos organized online with tags or do a little moblogging with descriptions. With ShoZu you can add tags, titles and descriptions before or after uploading your photos and videos.

Geo-tagging. Have a GPS enabled phone? ShoZu can geo-tag your photos and videos.

Sync google and outlook calendars…

Confused between using google calendar for all it’s features and outlook for it’s accessibility? You can now use both, the way is to sync them…

Sync your Google Calendar with your Microsoft Outlook™ calendar. Access your calendar however and whenever you want. Check your Microsoft Outlook events on the go with Google Calendar. View your Google Calendar information offline through Microsoft Outlook calendar.

Google Calendar Sync: Getting Started

Google Calendar Sync allows you to sync events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. You’ll be able to determine the direction of information flow, as well as the sync frequency. Staying on top of your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar events has never been easier!

Keep in mind that it’s not possible to sync events on secondary calendars at this time. Google Calendar Sync will only sync events from your primary Google Calendar and your default Microsoft Outlook calendar.

Get started

To begin syncing, follow the steps below:

1. To download Google Calendar Sync, visit Google calender sync Installer
2. Once a dialog box appears, click “Save File.” The download should open automatically. If it doesn’t, manually open the download from your browser’s download window.
3. Click “OK” to confirm that you’re aware this is an executable file.
4. Read through the Google Calendar Sync Terms of Service, and click “I Agree.”
5. Continue to follow through the Installation Options and click “Install” to finish the set-up process.

Once Google Calendar Sync is installed on your computer, the Google Calendar Sync Settings window will appear:

In the Settings window, enter your email address and password and select the Sync Option you prefer. For more information on each Sync Option, please visit Google Calendar Sync: Options

You’ll also be able to set the time interval for syncing to occur. Please keep in mind that 10 minutes is the minimum time interval allowed.

After the initial set-up, you can access the Google Calendar Sync Settings window again by double-clicking on the calendar icon in your Windows System Tray.

my cellphone speaks…

I was trying to find a Text-to-Speech for my handheld PDA and finally managed to get a utility software that able to perform this function and is suitable to be installed in any Windows Mobile Devices. Known as TellMeText version 1.1.0, it is able to convert your SMS messages and play your messages as sound.

This is especially useful when you want to read an SMS message that you have just received. Without straining your eyes on the mobile screen, or crashing into the car ahead and losing your life, the tool is intelligent enough to read out the message pop up on the screen word by word without any miss. Good thing is, it will also translate the sender’s mobile phone number prior to the message contents. So, in case you want to prevent some privacy or sensitive contents to be translated, you still can do it. The trouble is that you’d have to remember the cellphone numbers 🙂 But I am sure that’s doable…

The utility can be installed on any Windows Mobile smart phone or pocket PC with version of 2003SE, 2005 and even latest Windows Mobile 2006. It is a freeware downloadable at Blondiesoft.

fring, fring…

Do you have tons of contacts, friends, and family members in your instant messaging (IM) chat clients like google talk, skype, icq to name a few? But how do you stay connected with them if you are on the move and all you have is just a mobile phone? fring provides a simple mobile solution. fring is a mobile Internet service and community that enables users to access and interact with their social networks on-the-go, make free calls and live chat with all fring, Skype, MSN (Windows Live) Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM contacts and friends. In other word, fring is another multi-protocol instant messenger or softphone that supports voice talk or chat similar to Trillian, but for Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone, Symbian and UIQ handsets device.

fring uses handset’s Internet connection available such as GPRS, EDGE or WiFi data plan to connect to instant messaging servers, and thus bypassing the expensive and costly traditional GSM mobile call network airtime minutes.

Features of fring:

1. Connect to all IM buddies from Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! and more into mobile phone and view them from one, integrated contact list.
2. Place voice call to local and international calls over the Internet, which can be as cheap as free, rather than costly airtime minutes.
3. Live free chat instead of SMS.
4. Know who’s online before dialing, with presence or availability status or indicators for all of your contacts.
5. Invite friends to fring.
6. Ability to send and receive files on Windows Mobile device such as videos, music, games, ringtones, docs with fring file transfer feature.
7. Choose incoming call and message tones.
8. Auto-roam in and out of WiFi hotspots.
9. Engage in multiple conversations simultaneously.
10. Calling is simple with just pick a contact and hit the green button.
11. Usage of fring application is free.

fring require a Symbian 8 or 9, Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and UIQ handsets with 3G, GPRS, Wi-Fi network coverage. Preferably users should subscribe to unlimited usage data plan which can surf the Internet. Also requires is 200-375kb of available space on memory card or phone.

fring can be downloaded directly into your PDA phone. To download click on the download now link…

Social network sync-ing

There is a way to sync all your social sites i.e. Blogger, Delicious, Digg Faves, Flickr, GoogleDocs, GoogleReader, Metaweblog, MindMeister, Picasa, Slideshare, WordPress, and YouTube. Introducing Second | Brain. Second Brain combines all of your Picasa/Flickr photos, Youtube videos, Blogger posts in one single searchable location. The first time you add a particular stream it syncs all the information available and thence forward it does that all by itself…

Highlights:

• Get your own homepage e.g. http://ankitdesai.secondbrain.com/
• Share your content stream with others
• Browse and organize your content by tags and folders
• Follow content from other people and let other people follow you; you even get notified when this happens
• After the first sync when you add up a stream the following updations happen automatically

Second Brain: http://secondbrain.com/

mobile fusion…

MoFuse – an online mobile site creation app which lets you use your blog’s RSS feed as a basis of your mobile website – just launched their MoFuse Grow beta app today and it’s really nice. In just one step, you can enter the address of your blog, and instantly get a mobile website and unique URL created from your site’s feed, and then if you want you can continue to optimize it from there using the rest of MoFuse’s tools. It looks gorgeous, and works super simply. Definitely go check it out.

MoFuse Features:

• Custom domain name* – Use your own domain name or sub domain. (paid membership feature)
• SMS Widget – Place MoFuse SMS Widget onto your blog so your readers can get your mobile link via SMS message.
• Automatic Redirect – Use Automatic Redirect code to detect and redirect your mobile visitors to your mobile site.
• Brand your mobile site* – Upload your own image header/logo, grow your brands presence. (paid membership feature)
• Generate revenue – Enroll in revenue sharing program and earn 50% of all advertising profits using Google AdSense Mobile and AdMob!
• Automatic Image Resizing – Got images? Too big for a mobile screen? No problem, they’ll shrink them down for you!
• It’s affordable – By affordable we mean free. Yes we have a Professional level account, but all of their core features are available to everyone free of charge.
• Fully Compliant – Your mobile site will render perfect on your visitors mobile devices as they’re 100% .mobi compliant!
• Fully Hosted – No need to download anything! Just create your mobile site and they’ll do the rest!

Become a member here

Nice and useful – Google2Go Application

If you want innovative, interesting and simple applications, you should have a look at the application provided by the guys at Google, totally world class.

I came across an application, Google2Go, which lets you access Google services right on your handheld and this application takes second to install and is free. You can access Google’s mobile services like –
· Google Web/Image Search
· Google Local Search
· Gmail
· Google Calendar
· Google Reader
· Google Docs
· Picasa
· Google News
· Google Notes

Other features:
· Amazon
· EBay
· Weather.com
· Wikipedia
· Dictionary/Thesaurus

This application is really cool and pretty handy. Why not download it and give it a try. [Update: The admin-guy at techturf mentioned that there are various versions available so that even if all you have is a nokia e50 you can still use this application, head over here to download]

Blogging tools – 2

I started with ‘blogging tools – 1‘ and now it’s time for part 2.

When you blog and blog frequently at that sometimes you worry about everything getting lost… To remedy that we recommend you to two of the best blog backup services…

Blogbackuponline – BlogBackupOnline offers an easy way to create full blog backup, schedule and store backups online, and restore/export blog from a backup file.

BlogBackupOnline Features

• Securely store and backup your blog data online (SSL 128 Secure site…)
• Schedule automatic backups (daily, weekly, monthly) and backup reports
• Export: Download and Save backups to your PC
• Restore Backup: quickly restore or transfer your blog to another location
• Supported blogging platforms: Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Friendster, LiveJournal, Serendipity, Windows Live Space, Movable Type, Terapad, and Vox
• Receive up to 50 MB of free backup space (this is more than enough for almost all of you…)
• Backup blog images (JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP)

[Update: BlogBackupOnline is out of beta and are now offering full range of service. The good news is that they will still have a free account, they call it ‘freemium‘ apart from this they offer professional and enterprise accounts. The freemium offer includes 5MB of space this means for you that subscribers using less than 5 MB of storage space will be upgraded to the newest version automatically. Those users using more than 5MB of storage space will have an extended period of time (6 weeks) to continue to use the service while having the opportunity to decide if they would like to upgrade to a Professional or Enterprise account. After 6 weeks, they will continue to store your backups for one year, however new backups will not run. Techrigy will provide you with a guideline for exporting everything in your account and will continue to provide access to the backed up content.]
Blogbackupr is a web-based backup service for blogs. It takes less then a minute to setup and can automatically backup all blog articles and comments on a daily basis. It also comes with one-click restore functionality. The only problem, it requires your blog login details. And while this may not be a big issue for small personal blogs, for bigger blogs it definitely is an area of concern.

 

BlogBackupr – Feature List

• Automatically backup posted articles, user comments and blog categories.
• Automatic blog restore option: WordPress.com, Blogger.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs.
• Works with all blogs that offer RSS-feeds.
• Backup multiple blogs at the same time.
• Download (export) backup files as WordPress RSS, standard RSS, Text or HTML.
• Easily preview backed up articles online.
• Coming: Ability to backup images and template files.
• For additional details go to BlogBackupr FAQ page.

gimme more…

“Give me more…” This seems to be the mantra for enticing customers to use your service…

Box.net started with 1GB (Basic & Free) now Windows is in competition. Windows SkyDrive is here. Upload and share up to 5GB of data to Windows Live SkyDrive, an online storage solution from Microsoft that’s just graduated from beta.

With your SkyDrive account (which requires a Windows Live ID), you get that 5GB of storage (which bests Box.net’s 1GB free plan) for personal folders accessible only to you, shared folders accessible to your friends, and public folders open to everyone (which can be subscribed to via RSS).

Details on SkyDrive limitations and usage are sketchy right now, but it looks like individual file sizes may be limited to 50MB.

Mindmaps are easy…

Glinkr – Glinkr lets you create visual mind-maps using simple text boxes and arrows. Ready maps can be stored and edited online, shared with others and easily published on any other blog or website.

Features:

• Create and edit visual maps online. There is nothing to install or download.
• Rearrange and style (color) text boxes as you like.
• Attach to maps additional links and descriptions.
• Publish ready maps on Glinkr or embed them on your blog or profile page.
• View maps in ‘Full Screen’ mode.
• Import / Export as XML Documents.

Blogging tools – 1

After the comparison between different blogging domains in one of my previous posts the next logical step would have been to talk about several blogging tools that you can use…

Today we are featuring two of the most basic blogging tools…

JDarkRoom is a popular, simple full-screen text file editor with none of the usual bells and whistles that might distract you from the job in hand. If you are writing a novel, essay, thesis or just need to be able to concentrate on your writing, then JDarkRoom will definitely help. It comes immensely handy when you are writing a long post, a story, or recounting an experience to the community at large and need to focus on your content. (Download here) Type: Freeware

Windows Live Writer is a desktop blog publishing application. It features What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Authoring, Photo Publishing and Map Publishing. Windows Live Writer is currently compatible with following. (Download here) Type: Freeware

• Windows Live Spaces
• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• TypePad
• WordPress
• All blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability)
• MetaWeblog API
• Moveable Type API
• Community Server
• PBlogs.gr
• JournalHome

Firefox Beta Version 3

It time for Firefox Beta Version 3. Firefox is one the most used Internet browser today. It is used mainly because of 2 reasons, tabbed browsing and open source; people can create lots of add-ons for their Firefox Browser using their coding skills.

Today Mozilla will be launching the Beta Version 3 of this popular browser. This version will be having theme updates for all the platforms like Windows XP. This Version will also have a well integrated and full of options History and Bookmarks Tool. There are a new set of icons and toolbar menus also. You will find a complete list of features here. And if you close a session with multiple Tabs it will every time ask you, not like earlier when it asked only when the browser crashed.
[Image Via: Mozilla]