Welcome to another edition of Opera Bytes. Since I am blogging fairly regularly now, I plan to do this on a monthly basis. In this edition I look back at the month of May.

Opera v9.21 for desktop was released on 21st May. This release fixes a critical vulnerability present in Opera’s torrent downloader.

Opera is one of the applications nominated for Webware 100 awards. You can vote for Opera here.
CNET is known for being biased against Opera (and towards Firefox). That is again evident from the nominations. How did Greasemonkey get a nomination? Greasemonkey is nothing unique or extraordinary. Opera provides the same functionality out of the box and similar addons are available for other browsers too (e.g. Creammonkey for Safari). Even more surprising is the exclusion of Opera Mini from Mobile category. Opera Mini is innovative and useful. PC Mag had commented that “If you only ever download one cell phone app, download Opera”. According to Hitslink Opera Mini had 0.16% of the browser market share during May. That is huge for a mobile browser. Accoding to Sun Microsystems Opera Mini most popular Java Application for mobile phones in the world.

The next version of Opera Mini (code named “Dimension”) is coming soon. Little is known about it as the moment other than that it would feature enhanced navigation. You can sign up for beta testing here.
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The last thing you need to worry about if you have a trojan wreaking havoc in your innards is empty printer cartridges. Find one that is right for the job, and find it fast, so you can get back to running your AV software. Printer ink is widely available on the Internet, at prices cheaper than your local computer joint down the road. Epson ink, HP ink, Lexmark ink - get your ink cartridges fast. Worth a look-see, don’t you think?

Earlier this week AV-Test.org - a reputed antivirus software testing group, released the results of their latest Antivirus shootout. In this test only detection abilities were tested, not cleaning. Over 600,000 malware samples (which included backdoors, Trojan Horses, bots and worms) were used to test twenty nine software. The top ten performers were :

Software - Detection Rate

AVK 2007 - 99.56%
AntiVir - 99.42%
F-Secure - 97.93%
Symantec - 97.77%
Kaspersky - 97.64%
Fortinet - 97.06%
Avast! - 96.32%
AVG Anti-Malware - 96.15%
Rising - 96.02%
BitDefender - 95.68%
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Couple of weeks ago I had reviewed a startup called Spool.fm. Today I came across an almost identical service called Jiwa Music. Jiwa Music enables users to play the song they want to listen to. Although both the services are appear to be similar there is a major difference. Spool.fm doesnt host any of the music files on it’s servers thus falling in the legally grey area. However, unlike Spool.fm Jiwa allows it’s users to upload songs which are then stored in it’s server. Not surprisingly, majority of the user uploaded content is illegal.

Users can search for their favourite tracks and save them in custom playlists. These playlists can be accessed from anywhere and shared with friends. You can even embed Jiwa Music player in your website. However Jiwa doesn’t allow you to synchronize your Now Playing list with friends. Also missing is the ability to integrate with audioscrobbler (last.fm). The sound quality is decent. Jiwah also seems to have a larger collection of songs. I couldn’t find any Indian songs though. Jiwa has some nice community based features. You can see what other Jiwa users are listening to and can interact with the community through the Shoutbox. The interface is rather simplistic. It isn’t as pretty as Spool.fm but works rather well. However, there are a few bugs here and there. The ability to search for videos is also thrown in. However only videos from youtube are indexed so it offers little advantage over a youtube video search.
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Hey, can this thing smell? That functionality can’t be too far off, and we hear great strides are being made in the world of artificial olefactory reception. Check out the Web for that info and much more, including how to operate an online loan calculator and how to make a proper swing with each of the golf clubs in your bag. How’s your  Internet speed? Learn about that topic, too!

This is breaking news and believe me this is big. In a press statement released earlier today Microsoft unveiled a revolutionary new product called Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface is a combination of ground breaking software and hardware technology that will change the way we interact with digital content. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. Surface can simultaneously recognize dozens and dozens of movements such as touch, gestures and actual unique objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes. Microsoft Surface eliminates the need for a mouse and a keyboard and allows users to directly interact through the screen.
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Many of you must be wondering “What is Email Bankruptcy?”. Double-Tongued defines it as “choosing to delete, archive, or ignore a very large number of email messages without ever reading them, replying to each with a unique response, or otherwise acting individually on them“.

E-mail is fast, cheap (often free) and supposedly convenient. But, due to rapid increase in volume it is becoming a burden for many. Just separating the stuff you need from all the junk present in the inbox has become a time consuming and frustrating process.

Although venture Capitalist Fred Wilson popularised this phenomenon by declaring email bankruptcy last month, the phenomenon itself isn’t new. Washington Post suggests that Sherry Turkle - a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, had coined this term as early as in 1999. Last September, singer Moby had announced that he wouldn�t be using email for a year. And this trend is likely to grow. Boston dot com is reporting that more people are following suite.

But, the big question is - “If not email, then what?”. Undoubtedly, e-mail has many unique advantages and at the moment it is not possibly to completely replace email. Instant Messages, SMS and Phone calls are emerging as the preferred replacement to E-mail. Fred Wilson himself has discussed the alternatives here.

If you receive large volumes of e-mail everyday and don’t want to get bankrupt you should check out this interview with Robert Scoble. He explains how he absorbs 1000 plus e-mail everyday. The video is included below.
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Lots of links here, and link rhymes with “ink,” so it’s only logical to talk about running out of printer ink - it happens to all of us. HP ink is almost prohibitively expensive in a retail store; buying online is the way to go. Trust us - laser toner cartridges are best purchased over the Internet.

I came across this rather interesting link building system at Tobsy’s Blog. It’s called Viralink. As the name suggests its a pyramid link building scheme.

———copy and paste the Viralink and instructions below this line———

Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto one of the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

Viralink

********************
********************
********************
********************
********************
********************

When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site!

———copy and paste the Viralink and instructions above this line———

There are three simple rules that you need to follow :
i) No porn sites
ii) Only one link per person
iii) Please dont change other’s link

There are still empty spots. And as with every pyramid scheme it makes sense to join early. Have a look at the possibilities. If at every level 3 new people are added then -

Level - Backlinks
0 - 0
1 - 3
2 - 12
3 - 39
4 - 93
5 - 336
6 - 1065
7 - 3252
8 - 9813
9 - 29,496
10 - 88,545

This can help you in dramatically increasing authority at Technorati and would even benefit you with Google.

IrfanView by Irfan Skiljan initially started off as an simple image viewer but has grown into an extremely functional and powerful tool. However, even people who have been using it for a long time aren�t fully aware of what IrfanView is capable of doing. Here are 10 simple things that you can do with IrfanView.

1. View Multimedia Files : The most obvious feature. IrfanView can open an impressive number of file types. It is a true multimedia viewer with the ability to open not only images but also audio and video files. Click here for the full list of file formats supported by IrfanView.

2. Compress Images : Save your bandwidth with IrfanView. Compress images before you upload them on the web. While saving images check the “Show Options Dialogue” check box. Now you can set the quality of your output in the options dialogue box. Fiddle around with it till you manage to strike the right balance between quality and file size. I generally use 70% quality setting for jpg images. While saving png images you can use the PNGOUT plugin by Ken Silverman for effective compression.

3. Convert Images : With IrfanView you can save Images in as many as 20 file formats. Choose the one according to your requirements. I would recommend JPEG for most purposes, gif when you require transparency and PNG when quality matters. Avoid using JPEG format when the image contains a lot of text. Also be careful while using transparent png images on the web as Internet Explorer has a lot of issues with PNG images (more info)
You can even create high quality transparent icons from images using Irfan View.

4. Resize Images : Press Ctrl+R (or clicking Resize/Resample from Images Menu) to bring up the resizing tool included in IrfanView.
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Previous Thursday (Wednesday in US time), LOST delivered one of its most shocking episodes to conclude what I consider to be the best season in its short history. I had previously listed my favourite moments from Season Three - Part 1. Now, I am going to list my favourite ten moments from part two of this season.

Room 23 : This is a signature LOST scene from “Not in Portland”. We see that Karl is being brain washed with the help of a mysterious clip. Not only that, apparently when the audio is played in reverse it reveals a hidden message - “Only fools are enslaved by time and space”.

A Grave Prophecy : Desmond revealing In “Flashes Before Your Eyes” that Charlie’s death is imminent definitely had the shock value.
In Demond’s words :

Desmond : No matter what I try to do, you’re gonna die, Charlie.

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