Take a look at Nokia N97 — To be released

After a disappointing iPhone sales in India(Due to its insane price), and release of many new iPhone killer phones like Samsung omnia, GPhone(HTC) and many other phones, Nokia has comeup with another smart phone(N Serious), Nokia N97. It is rumored to be released in European and Asian markets in Q2 of 2009 with a price tag of $700(Fingers crossed)!
Nokia-N97 (1)
Nokia-N97 (2)
Nokia-N97 (3)
Nokia-N97.jpg

As for now, we don not have much accurate information about this phone. What we have is, some photos and an official video. We got all the below information from YouTube videos. So just have a look at these videos:






Features:
* 3.5 inch TFT touchscreen display
* 360 x 640 screen resolution
* QWERTY keyboard with haptics
* 32GB of internal storage memory
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED Flash
* GPS with Nokia Maps 3.0 app
* Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Infrared
* Accelerometer and proximity sensor
* 3.5mm headphone jack
* HSDPA
* Huge battery life, offering 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video
* microSD supporting upto 16GB external memory
So its total capacity would be 32+16 = 48GB! Great:)

Did you just postpone your decision to buy a mobile phone? Think again, I know that N97 is awesome, but N98 or N100 Would be much better and amazing(surly). Then would you wait for N100 to come?
Buy the present phones and change it if you really think the newer one has something really worth the change.
Only thing, which helps due to the release of these new improved devices is, companies like Nokia, Apple, Samsung, Sony HTC, Motorola etc will keep coming with newer devices with much more attractive features and price. Thus it will help the customers(most of the time, but not always!) and the people keep buying the newer once(benefiting the companies) or keep postponing the decision to buy a phone and wait until the next update! — These are just our views. Please share your thoughts about buying or changing a mobile phone. And also comment about the New Nokia N97. We would be happy to know something more from you people.

Orkut allows photo sharing with friends who do not have Orkut a/c

You can now share your orkut photos with anybody with an valid email ID.

Here’s how it works:
After creating an album, go to the “share with” drop down menu and choose “only selected friends”. In addition to being able to enter the names of your friends on orkut with who you want to share photos, now you can include the email addresses of all of your friends who aren’t on orkut as well.
screenshot-only-selected-friends
screenshot-contact-picker
Add/Remove the friends with who you share your photo album any time by using the blue “Share Album” button.
screenshot-share-album-button

When you invite your friend to view a photo, he will be mailed with a link which is linked to a limited access page of Orkut. Note that, if your friend decides to share those links with others and if he mails that link to some other people, they too can view those photos.
So be careful while sharing your photos with non-orkut friends.

Now I wonder, what if some people start using Orkut as a image hosting site!
We use and recommend using flickr to share photos with friends and family. Integration of this feature in Orkut isn’t that bad either, but surly needs lot more improvement. But being a Social Networking site, the features are well enough for photo sharing.
Here is a sample image that I have shared with some of my non-orkut friends click here[hmm..now there is no need of a valid email ID either, if you want to share the photos in the public places, by sharing the link].
Note that, people visiting your photo need to have an orkut account and permission of the image uploader, if they want to comment there.

Fully integrated chat in orkut = GTalk + Orkut

One of our favorite features in GMail is its integrated Chat box. Now I have got another reason to stay logged into my Orkut account, whenever I am not blogging!
But with this integration, I think that the scrap books will become much like a testimonial page or spam book! Because most of the people will use the sophisticated Chat box instead of sending scraps to eachother and keep waiting and refreshing to see the new scraps!

And people may argue that, in offices and schools, the administrators will block the Chat box, so people will still be sending the scraps(as chat messages). But we think, if the administrator thinks that Chatbox in Orkut isn’t safe, then he is also likely to think that Orkut itself isn’t safe to be allowed to access!

Anyway, with this new feature we can:-
* Chat with your orkut friends in real time from directly within orkut.
* Control which of your orkut friends can chat with you.
* Chat with your Google Talk and Gmail chat contacts.
* Visit different orkut pages while keeping your chatboxes open.

My favorite thing would be, chating with GMail and Google Talk buddies using my Orkut account. Thats cool, isn’t it?
orkut-gmail-chat

You get full control of who can see you online, who can chat with you etc, in Orkut “Settings” page.
If you don’t see this feature enabled in your account yet, just be patient, Google will rollout this feature to all its users in a couple of days.
orkut-chat-settings

Till this feature is enabled to you, have a look at:



What do you think about the new features in Orkut? Do you think it will reach a state of facebook soon?

Avoid Confusion between Search form and Email subscription form!

Have you ever found the email subscription form and the search form boxes confusing?

I have seen many people keying in some keywords(query) and hit the subscribe button bymistake and they will be taken to the popup subscription form and they will close it. And sometimes people put there email ID in the search form and press search button, expecting the subscription form to come!
email-search-form
This happens because the search form and the feedburner email subscription form somewhat look alike.

To avoid confusion it is recommended to show some message inside the box, like Subscribe now, Google Custome Search Engine etc. Take a look at the below image:
email-search-form
Along with these changes[adding custom message], changing its look is better, to avoid any sort of confusion.

So inorder to avoid confusion among your readers, just make them look different.
Do not make any changes(manually in the coding) to your Adsense Search Form, as it may be against Adsense TOS.

So the leftout option is email Subscription form. Make it look different. Add colored borders, make it thick, change the length of the email form, etc.
Here is some code to help you change the look of your subscription form:
Put these codes into your style.css (StyleSheet)

.emailformbutton{
cursor:pointer;
border: solid 1px #ccc;
background:#2683AE;
color:#EAF3FA;
font-weight:bold;
padding: 1px 2px;
}


Look at the below codes[marked area] and change your codes accordingly:-
email-search-form
And before feeling happy about the changed subscription form, just check it once, whether it is working properly or not. Some times it gives the error message like, you have not enabled the email subscription option in your account or something like that.
If this is the case with you, just check the coding once again and it should work(if done correctly), if you have not disabled the email subscription option in your feedburner account!

Use two Search forms to increase the pageviews

We have been experimenting with the Google Custom Search Engine, and we had put two CSE on our blog. As you can see, we have placed one at the top and one at the footer of this blog.

We could see that the number of search almost tripled and the page views were four to five(fluctuating) times more than before.

This is because, when people read the entire article, they will reach to the end of the page. Now they can see the “Related Articles”. And if they do not want to read those things and want something else, then they obviously need to search for it, and showing a search form at the end of the blog reminds them to search for the things they want.

People are lazy and they will not always scroll up and do a search on your blog. They may just think that the information isn’t available on your blog. And its frustrating to search for the required article from any achieve page manually!

So a search form at the footer helps a lot.

Now what about the page views?

Google Custom search engine and most other search engines which you can put on your blog, has the feature to select the websites from where it should search for the keywords. So each time someone uses your Search engine, he is likely to visit some other article of your own blog. This will just repeat and result in the increase of your page views.

There are many other benefits:-

1. You can know, what people are searching.

2. Earn a bit of revenue(if you want– Optional).

3. Increase page views.

4. Very useful for visitors.

Now to add Google Custom Search Engine to your website, just follow this article- “Add Custom Search Engine to your wordpress blog easily“.

After adding the Google Custom Search Engine to your blog, make sure that your articles are indexed..

Watch this video to know more about indexing, in Google Custom Search Engine:

Having two Adsense for Search or Google Custom Search Engine on a single page is allowed. But having more than two forms is against TOS and will also annoy the visitors!

Adding 2 search engine to this blog showed some positive results, but you need not take this as a rule. Every blog is different and results vary, so do some research and experiments on your blog and analyze the results and then decide whether to keep one or two search engine forms on your blog.

While placing the Search Engine forms, just keep in mind that, their placement also play a major role.

And also keep in mind that, you need to have more articles on your blog. If you have just 10 to 25 articles, then you cannot relay on the results. If that is the case with you, then stop the experiment and concentrate more on blogging and do further research when you have more articles.

Microsoft Windows 7 and Multi-Touch Technology

hh_promo_windows7_croppedWindows 7 is the next version of Windows for PCs, which mainly promises things like enhanced reliability, responsiveness, and faster boot and shut-down. Make everyday computing tasks easier, like connecting and syncing devices, browsing the web, and managing a home network.
Here is a Video showing the power of multi-touch, which uses Windows 7:




This video shows the multi-touch innovations first previewed in Surface that will ultimately play a part of the next version of Windows.
The OS you see in the video is Windows 7, which looks much like Windows Vista.
Windows 7 is expected to be released sometime later in 2010! So it has a long way to go.
[ But Windows 7 Beta Version is already available to download in net, its not a official release, so use it on your own risk. ]
Windows Vista wasn’t a big hit, so Microsoft wouldn’t take a chance again and we believe that Windows 7 will be much better.

Windows 7 Multi-Touch @ PDC08(HP Computer):



Being a programmer and a geek myself, I have a desktop computer dedicated for testing all the software releases. So we have used almost all Windows OS. WindowsXP SP2 was simply great, while Windows Vista wasn’t so bad(our experience).

Anyway, we use and recommend Unix and we don’t find any other product to be better than that. OpenSource, reliable, secure etc.

Would like to here your views..

Link love for people who involve in conversation @ Technotip.org

We started this blog mainly for the purpose of building a community over here. And wanted to share our views, thoughts here and let others share their thoughts and views. Remember, we always believe in these words – “If two people exchange 1$, both will have 1$ each. But if they exchange 1 idea, both will have 2 ideas each”.
So involve in the conversation and make this blog more lively. As a bonus, we link back to our Top 10 commentators from our homepage.
We love to link to everyone reading our blog, but you know, that is not possible. As this blog would look spammy to search engines and mainly its not the purpose people visit Technotip.org, people want some good information out of our site and they wouldn’t like to see bunch of links to someother blogs.
Please do not comment on our blog, just to get linkback from the homepage!
Make sure that your comment adds value to everyone reading it. You will get more traffic to your site, if you comment more relevantly. This practice will bring in traffic to your blog consistently over time.Share your ideas liberally. The benefits from accountability and feedback outweigh the risk that someone steals your idea! Many productive creative professionals and entrepreneurs claim that they become more committed to their ideas after telling people about them! The fact is that great ideas are plentiful, and very few people have the discipline and resources to make them happen. When you feel accountable to others, you are more likely to stay focused.
SubmitYourIdea-in-comment-section
Wordpress has made the commenting so easy and adds more fun. You can interact with the blogger or/and even with the other commentators. Share your thoughts with other commentators, this is a best practice, in terms of getting traffic as well as to get attention and make the conversation more valuable.
The philosophy to “share ideas liberally” defies the age-old instinct to keep ideas secret. However, the creative person’s tendency to jump from idea-to-idea-to-idea causes most ideas to die in isolation. Creative professionals should take every opportunity to communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of accountability.
And do not be harsh or abuse other commentators or the blogger! etc etc etc, we hope you know all those bla bla bla..
And remember, we have comment moderation. “Akismet” plugin will help us fight with spams.
Be wise, be responsible, be cautious….thats what we can say, rest you know 🙂