Welcome to another edition of Opera Bytes.

As far as Opera Browser for desktop is concerned this has been a rather non-eventful month. Kestrel (Opera v9.5) is still few weeks away and details are still scarce. Earlier this week The Desktop Team provided some teasers about Kestrel in their blog. This release should please Linux and Mac users. Not only will Opera integrate better with these platforms Mac users would also get a refreshed UI. Kestrel is also expected to deliver significant performance improvements.

The real big news this month was the release of Opera Mini 4 beta. Since I don’t have GPRS/Edge on my mobile phone I wasn’t able to try it out, however it has received largely positive feedback so far.
This is a significant upgrade to Opera Mini and features many changes. Airlan San Juan did an in-depth review of Opera Mini at his blog. Do check it out. If you want to testdrive Opera Mini head over to mini.opera.com/beta. You can even test it before installing on your mobile phone using the Opera Mini Simulator. However please keep in mind that this is a beta version intended only for testing and it is still buggy.
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Last month I recieved an invitation from Diogenes to share my opinion on blogging and related matters on his blog - Quassi Fictional. Quassi Fictional has been running a series called The Fine Art of Blogging for quite some time. Bloggers are invited to share their opinion on blogging and related matters. So far more than fifty bloggers (including me) have contributed to the series. You can view the full list here. Be sure to check out all the posts and if you have a blog you are also invited.

Time for another edition of Link Love. Every week I feature some of the best content from my reader’s blogs.

Nirmal wrote about five statistic tool you can use on your blog
Benedict did a quick-review of fourteen blogging platforms
Manas reviewed Smorty - another paid to review service
Ram explained how to find out if your friend is appearing invisible in y!m
Shankar wrote a guide onadding ‘Safe Mode’ to WindowsXp bootlist

Do you think the real Spock can do pdf conversion with a simple mind-meld?That may be the way of the future, but for now you need old-fashionedpractical pdf conversion for your small company. The Internet is the best source for more info about pdf to word and pdf to image conversion. Find out about how to convert pdf to doc, too!

Spock is a new (vertical) search engine with a difference - it’s a people search engine. According to Spock press release thirty percent of all internet searches are people related, and this is the market they are targeting. Like other search engines Spock employs bots that crawl the web looking for people related information. According to its CEO Jaideep Singh it has so far indexed more than 100 million people.

I have been playing around with Spock for last couple of days and I must say I am extremely impressed. It presents the search result in a very well organised manner which ensures that you are able to find the information about the person quickly and easily. Below is the search result for famous Indian author and film maker Satyajit Ray.
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When it’s time to print the work you’ve just finished with IrfanView, don’t get stuck without enough ink in your printer. Get online and find cheap printer ink.  It’s quick, easy, and frankly, even more dependable than the flunky who works at the local computer store. Find Epson ink cartridges (and HP and Lexmark, too, for that matter) in no time. Laser toner cartridges are available, too!

Last month I blogged about “Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView” (you should read my previous article on IrfanView before reading this). I covered basic image manipulation options offered by IrfanView in the previous article. This time I shall highlight some of the more advanced functionalities offered by IrfanView.

1. Screensaver/Slideshow with Music : IrfanView allows you to use create simple slideshows and screensavers using multiple images. Press W (or select “Slideshow” from File menu) to bring up the Slideshow/Screensaver tool. Now simple add images you wish to include in your Slideshow/Screensaver. If you want to add background music, add MP3 files into the slideshow file list, usually at the beginning or before an image. The MP3 file is played until it ends or until next MP3 is loaded from the file list. IrfanView Plugins should be also installed, at least the MP3 Plugin.

2. Panorama : IrfanView allows you to create panorama images by merging multiple images. You will find this option under “Image” menu.

3. Batch Resize/Convert/Compress/Rename : Batch Processing abilities is what makes IrfanView really powerful. Launch the Batch Processing tool by pressing B (you can also find it under “File” menu). You can resize, convert and rename a whole bunch of image files at a time. You can also use it to compress multiple images at a go. This is very useful if you are going to upload images to the web. In order to compress a JPG or GIF image just reduce the quality of image from “Options”. Normally a value between 60 and 70 works best. For PNG images also you get the option to choose compression level. For better results you use the PNGOUT plugin. You can even rotate images , adjust colours or add overlay text.

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Welcome to the the third installment of my Tiny Utilities series. In each installment I take a lot at three extremely useful yet free utilities which are less than 2MB in size.

Process Lasso from Bitsum Technologies is a tiny utility that can save you some headaches. Its objective is simple – to prevent a problematic application from freezing your system. It does that by quietly running in the background and monitoring the CPU usage of all applications. If any application starts using up abnormal amount of CPU resources then Process Tamer reduces the priority of that application. This prevents those familiar situations where your computer stops responding because a single application is using 99% of CPU resources. Process Lasso itself has a small memory footprint and can work in invisible mode. Certain applications (example: games or video encoders) require high CPU resources to function properly. No need to worry – you can ask Process Lasso to exclude those applications from it’s purview by adding those processes to the exclusion list.

Download Process Lasso (500 KB)
Platforms Supported : Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista
Version Reviewed : 2.30

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Ever since Facebook opened itself up and released an API to programmers, there has been a mad rush to take advantage of Facebook platform. Tons of new apps are being added everyday. To those who don’t know - Facebook is a social networking website. Recently it opened itself up to 3rd party developers giving them access to its functionalities. Facebook applications are essentially widgets that can be added to enhance your social networking experience. So far several hundred Facebook applications have been created. Obviously I haven’t tried them all. However, among the ones I have tried my top five Facebook applications (in random order) are :

HotLists : Hotlist is based on the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words. Use icons to display what you like - be it companies or television shows or movies or music or celebrities. I prefer this to using simple text to list out your preferences.

Graffiti : Let your creative juice flow. Instead of just posting simple messages on the wall you can draw them using this application. This can be loads of fun and is a nice way to kill time.

Last.fm Music : Last.fm is a website that tracks what songs you listen to and suggests music based on your music taste. Not only does the last.fm widget display recently played tracks it also allows you to create custom (tag based) radio station. It also displays your top artists for the previous week.

You can also use the Last.fm Plus application. It doesn’t have last.fm radio but provides a lot more options as far as displaying statistics is concerned.
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Welcome to another edition of Link Love. Here are some useful posts I came across this week.

Earlier this week Nirmal released an e-book with all the commonly used chat abbreviations.

Many softwares unneccesarily add their own entries to the context menu thus making it slow to load and cluttered. Shankar wrote about three free utilties that can clean up your context menu is a safe and hassle free way.

Keith wrote about a service that allows you to submit your article to 33 social networking/bookmarking/content sites.

If you are a blogger then you must have exprienced bloggers block. All bloggers (and writers) have those periods of time when they can’t think of what to write about. Webd360 has some tips to overcome Bloggers Block.