Video Accelerator (for Youtube) from SpeedBit - the makers of Download Accelerator Plus has become nothing short of a sensation. It has been downloaded a million times in 49 days. Video Accelerator promises to fix one problem that many users face on websites like Youtube - videos getting stuck due to slow loading. This is a problem that even users with relatively fast internet connection are confronted with.

How Does It Work ?

Video Accelerator enables smooth playback of streaming media by ensuring the the total bandwidth provided by your ISP is used efficiently. Normally, your browser establishes a single connection with the content provider and downloads the media file linearly. In this process the content is often downloaded at a much slower rate than your connections maximum transfer rate. Hence you experience buffering problems even when the bit-rate of the video is lesser than your internet connection speed. Video accelerator on the other hand uses a complex algorithm to split the media file into multiple segments and establishes multiple connections with the content provider. It downloads all the parts simultaneously, thus ensuring efficient usage of the bandwidth available to you. Once, downloaded it reassembles these chunks and sends it to your browser. This is very similar to how Download Managers work.

(more…)

Today Microsoft released new Windows Live Hotmail to some 280 million users. Microsoft hopes to pose a serious challenge to Google and Yahoo!’s offering with WLH. Like Yahoo! Microsoft has tried to bridge the gap between a desktop email client and their web email interface. WLH retains the basic three column system present in previous versions (you can change the arrangement of the reading panes). But, don’t be fooled by looks. Under the hood WLH sports several new features.

A quick look at the new features -

Now you get 2 GB of storage for free.

WLH provides you nine skins to choose from.

Like in Gmail you can send and receive email from other email accounts.

Available in 32 Languages. Surprisingly no Indian language is supported.

AJAX has been liberally used. You don’t need to use refresh to view new messages.

A security bar which turns yellow or red upon depending upon the suspiciousness of the emails. The only time the security bar wasn’t yellow, was when I was opening email from Microsoft or my contacts.

A check-box appears beside every email on hovering. This is a very nice touch.

If you use Internet Explorer then you can play mp3 and wav files attached to emails using in-line media player.

WLH displays a pop-up notification when your contacts come online and gives you the option to chat with them using Windows Live Messenger.

While composing new messages the in-line spell checker automatically underlines spelling mistakes. WLH also allows you to do basic operations like resize and rotate on image files before sending them. However, these features don’t seem to work with Firefox.

One feature that is missing, but should be present is the ability to preview Microsoft office documents and spreadsheets.

Another disappointment is lack of support for Opera browser. Opera users would have to use the classic version. And this raises the question. Why didn’t they use Silverlight? There couldnt have been a better way to demonstrate it’s potential, and also it would have meant compatibility with Opera.

(more…)

Google has been toying around with it’s search results page layout for some time. They randomly serve these modified layouts to a small fraction of Google Search users and track various user patterns.

Below are screenshots of some of the layouts that Google has played around with :

The newest layout looks something like this -
(more…)

LaFlecha is reporting that due to a bug in Opera Browser, a malformed Torrent file (*.torrent) can cause it to consume 100% cpu resources thus making the system unusable. According to this report, this bug affects Opera for Windows running on Windows SP1 or SP2. A proof of concept code has also been published. It’s unclear if previous versions of Opera and Opera running on other platforms are affected as well. I am not sure about the severity of the exploit either. If it’s just a problem of high cpu usage, then its not a critical vulnerability. I checked with Secunia, but couldn’t find any mention of this vulnerability there. However, as a precautionary measure you can disable torrent integration in Opera. You can disable it by un-checking the box next to “Enable“.

If the report on LeFlacha is true then this would be the 4rth exploit to be discovered in Opera v9 in 2007 - compared to 3 in Mozilla Firefox v2 (of which 1 is unpatched), and 5 in Internet Explorer v7 (of which 3 are unpatched).

(via TorrentFreak)

Update (22nd May) : This vulnerability has been fixed in Opera v9.21. Opera’s advisory related to this exploit is available here.

According to Nypost Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo!. This is not the first time such a rumour has surfaced on the web though.

Google has been pushing Microsoft hard. Very recently it overtook Microsoft has the Most Valuable Brand. A week before that Google won a bidding battle with Microsoft and acquired DoubleClick. And of course in spite of it’s best efforts Microsoft has failed to make any headway in the Search Engine Market. Given, these circumstances buying Yahoo! seems like a smart thing to do.

The combined marketshare of Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Search Engines is 27% worldwide and 38% in the US. Microsoft also stands to gain from this deal in another important market – Online Advertising. Recently Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that his No. 1 regret is that Microsoft was late to enter the Online Advertising market. And Microsoft’s adCenter isn’t exactly setting the market on fire and would probably find it hard to even overtake YPN. On the other hand Yahoo! is expecting it’s revenue from Search Marketing to increase thanks to Panama. Yahoo! also stands to gain from this as Microsoft can deliver it’s content to a larger and wider audience. Based on numbers, this deal should be a win-win situation for both the companies.

To sum it up, Microsoft currently dominates the desktop market. However, its still struggling to make significant impact in the online world. Over the next decade internet is going to see lots of growth and has a lot of potential. And, Yahoo - being primarily web based, would considerably ease the task of getting a stronghold in this area for Microsoft.

However, there are other things to consider. Yahoo! itself is one of the largest brands on the internet with it’s own slew of products. If this deal does go through, then it it would be interesting to see how Microsoft goes about integrating Yahoo!’s products with it’s own. Integrating such a big company may well turn into a logistical nightmare. Also, there is the possibility of cultural clash as Om Malik points out. A partial solution to that could be allowing Yahoo! to exist as a separate entity. Whatever the case may be, if Nypost has got their facts right then this could well be a defining moment for Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and the Web in general.

Update : Wallstreet Journal is reporting that the takeover is not happening. (via TechCrunch)

The web is a good place to look up many gems of wisdom - like whether “userjs” is a real thing, or just a typo. Find out how to improve Internet speed, locate a loan calculator. Hey, you can even learn how to perform an oil change all by yourself!

Userjs is a powerfull tool that allows the user to modify a website according to his needs. It basically allows you to specify local JavaScript files for Opera to include on every page that you visit. It’s identical to what Greasemonkey does in Mozilla Firefox and Creammonkey does in Safari. It was introduced in Opera v8. However, only very few Opera users make use of this excellent option. My article on Customising Opera had an entire section devoted to userjs but that article is pretty much outdated. Hence, I decided to compile a brand new list.

Before Getting Started - Installing Userjs is very simply. You need to create a separate directory for storing all your userjs files. It may be anywhere on your hard disk. Then go to Tools –> Preferences –> Advanced –> Content –> JavaScript Options.Enter the location of your userjs directory in the My Java script files box. Now you need to place all downloaded scripts in this folder.
I would also suggest that you download this script �by Tarquin for better compatibility with greasemonkey scripts.

13. Windows Media Player ActiveX Control - Recently Microsoft released WMP ActiveX Control plugin for Firefox, which made all WMP videos playable in Firefox. Of course, no big corporate gives a damn about a browser with 1% market share. Hence, as usual Opera users were left high and dry. Thankfully Hallvord has come out with a script that attempts to make websites using WMP ActiveX Control viewable in Opera. It’s not perfect, but you should install it.

12. The world through a Google - This script by Jo�o Eiras (xEarth) fixes most of the issues presented by Google Services like Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Calender and Google Picassa Web. A must have if you use any of the services mentioned above.

11.�Linkifier Plus�-�Converts text links to clickable hyperlinks. More information is available here.
If you experience problems with Linkifier Plus, give Ayush’s version a try.

10.� Ajax for Yahoo Mail Classic - I have written about this script previously on my blog. If you prefer the classic look of yahoo mail over its present clunky version (some of which doesnt work in Opera even after extensive patching through browserjs), then this script by Vivek Jishtu is a must have. It adds the ability to open emails inline, without opening a new page.

9. �No click-to-activate - Opera 9 requires you to click on embedded content like Java applet or Flash videos to activate them (if you want to know the reason behind this move click here). This can be extremely annoying while browsing an website which uses multiple flash videos or java applets. Allthough the webdesigners can easily override this behaviour very few of them actually do this. This script by Mark Wilton-Jones (Tarquin) allows users to override this browser behaviour.

8.�Extra-download-links�-�Normally links to embedded objects are not visible in Opera’s Links Panel. This script by Jo�o Eiras (xEarth) adds invisible anchors for every image, embed, object, applet and iframe to the page�which�makes�them�available via the links panel for quick download.

7.�Link Alert - This script by Mark Wilton-Jones�(Tarquin)�identifies links to specific file types, and displays an appropriate icon when the link is hovered. Additionally, it can also highlight links with “nofollow”, however this functionality is disabled by default.

(more…)

Are you trying to find a pdf converter? Then joost look at all of the services provided on the Internet, such as a pdf
to doc converter. pdf to excel, too!

I just recieved 998 invites from Joost. So anyone without an Joost invite just drop a comment and it would be sent to you. The email would contain the download link for Joost. After downloading and installing the software, you would be asked to create an account upon first run. Just make sure that you use the email address to which the invite was sent during registration.

I have got 3 Joost invites which has been lying around for some time. Joost invites are quite easy to get these days (Joost should go public in a few days). However, if you haven’t managed to get your hands on an invite yet, just drop a comment, and the invite would be emailed to you.

I have given away all invites (six) that I had.

Comments Closed.