Technology.eface.in

Google Demos Offline Gmail for Webkit-based devices

Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, demoed a ‘technical concept’ at MWC that would allow devices with Webkit browsers to use Gmail offline. Such devices include the iPhone, Magic aka G2 and Palm’s upcoming Pre.

The app is dependant on HTML5’s AppCache and Database standards, so developers need only code one application for multiple platforms with a GUI that’s identical for all. I’m not familiar with HTML5, but I guess the application will store not only the user data but also the software. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

No word on when or if Google will release the application. Hit the jump for the video demo.

via iPhone Buzz

AdSense For Domains Now Available For All Publishers

Any publisher with a domain name he or she isn’t using (yet) can now squeeze a couple of extra dollars out of it by using Google AdSense For Domains, another way for the search giant to make more money from online real estate and give some of it back to people with parked domains. The company is opening up to ‘English-language AdSense publishers located in North America’ in phases, but says it will soon expand to other regions and languages as well.

If I remember correctly, Google AdSense for Domains has been around for many years under the name ‘Domain Park’, but the program was previously reserved exclusively for owners of domain names wielding in a lot of traffic (1M+ monthly pageviews), up until yesterday. GAFD received a lot of criticism for returning advertisers poor quality traffic in the past, and yesterday’s launch won’t exactly reduce that criticism. You don’t have to be a genius to know this will attract more domain squatters to expand their questionable business. Here’s a step by step guide for advertisers who want to block domain parked sites on Google AdWords.

If anything, this shows Google is scrambling for every penny it can get its hands on these days even if it means lowering their quality standards, but I have to add that I can’t exactly blame them for it either.

What is adsense for domains?

AdSense for domains allows publishers with unused domains to help users reach relevant information by presenting content on the domains.

Users often type domains into their address bar or follow expired links leading to sites with no content. Instead of an “under construction” page or 404 error, AdSense for domains provides links, search results, advertisements and other content. To do this, we use semantic technology targeted to the domain name. You earn revenue when users interact with the ads on your site.

If you have a site that has content on it (e.g., articles, reviews, forums, blog postings or other text), then your site should be used with AdSense for content. If you have a page with no content on it, then AdSense for domains can help your users. To get started with AdSense for domains, check out our set-up instructions, or search or browse our AdSense Help Forum for more information.

iPhone Nano from Apple coming soon? Wait

Is the iPhone Nano from Apple coming soon? The plot has thicken more now a reputable mobile phone case manufacturer,Vaja, known for high quality leather cases, has added an entry for the iPhone nano to its site. Earlier few other case manufacturers had also added iPhone nano to their sites but the entry by Vaja like company is makes us think that the iPhone nano is a real thing and is coming soon. An iPhone fan blog iPhone Alley has reported that the iPhone nano will not have 3G.Nothing is confirm yet..Let’s hope that iPhone nano will make us forget the most popular iPhone..

(source:boygeniusreport.com)

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Kerala IT.Com at Technopark from March 13

Technopark is organising Kerala IT.Com 2008 and National e-Governance Programme (NeGP) Advocacy Conference from March 13 to 15 at the Park Centre, Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.

Kerala IT.Com 2008 will be inaugurated by Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on March 13 at 3 p.m. Kerala – The IT Destination Hub is the theme for Kerala IT.Com. IT Secretaries of various state governments, IT policy makers and decision makers from the Government of India, state governments, industry associations and various other departments of the government will be attending.

The NeGP seminar at Kerala IT.Com will focus on factors like service delivery infrastructure and capacity building, Kerala success stories and challenges, IT Education, Infrastructure and Best Practices. The exhibition will have over 100 major IT companies showcasing their products and services.

COmpanies like Infosys, Wipro, IBS, NIIT, C-DAC, Sun-Tec, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, Sybase, Computer Associates, CMC, HP, 3i Infotech, DOEACC, K2 and Dell are expected to participate in panel discussions, presentations and .

The event is supported by Department Of Information & Technology, Government Of India and the Kerala State IT Mission as part of creating increased awareness for the State as a preferred IT destination.

There will be presentations and discussions on IT Best Practice, IT Infrastructure, Kerala Success Stories and Challenges, IT Education in Kerala and Common Service Center. S Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys will be addressing the conference on IT Vision 2020.

Sounds good. When I heard Kerala IT.com, something like Bangalore IT came to my mind. Later I learnt that Kerala IT.com does not even have a website of its own. (keralait.com domain is owned and parked by someone else.).

Let us not forget AK Antony’s GIM (Global Investors Meet) exercises, which wasa given much publicity and didn’t turn out beneficial for the state as hyped.

Anyway, all the best for the programmes and hope that, the event will get more visibility and would help attract more companies and investors to Kerala.

Aircel Launched GSM services in Kerala state

Aircel, the fifth largest mobile service provider in India, launched GSM Service in Kerala. Actor Prithvi Raj inagurated the service in Kochi. Aircel claims to have far reach in almost all villages in Kerala. They have signed agreements with other mobile providers for sharing the towers for locations where Aircel do not own their own cell phone tower.

Aircel has a subscriber base of over 16 million. In the first phase Aircel will be investing Rs 500 crore in Kerala. Kerala has a mobile penitration of 42%.

Aircel introduced the lowest inbuilt Gulf (UAE, Saudi, Bahrain) tariff at Rs 5.99 per minute. Aircel also has special tariff for calls and SMS between Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Aircel announced a Prepaid Start-up Kit of rupees 296, which contains an Aircel Prepaid SIM card, customer engagement form, prepaid booklet, first recharge card and rate cutter of rupees 198.

Local calls and calls within Kerala telecom circle are charged one rupee for the first minutes and 50 paise for subsequent minutes. STD calls to Tamil Nadu is only 50 paise only. STD calls to other states is 1.50 rupees.

Multiple Inboxes in Gmail – New Feature added by google

Gmail Labs has just launched a new feature to view multiple panes in the same Gmail window. You can setup your labels or searches as a new pane.

If you have setup multiple email accounts with Gmail, and have associated a label for each of those email accounts, this new pane feature helps you view each of the accounts new emails separately in the new panes. I really like this new feature, very useful.

To use this new feature, you have to first enable Gmail Labs for your account (if not done already), then go to Settings -> GMail Labs and enable “Multiple Inboxes” from the list of Labs options. Now you will get “Multiple Inboxes” menu on the Settings pane. You can create up to five different panes by manually entering the code for label or Gmail search options.

Innovation: Robotic faces… for humans

The design of prosthetic limbs has taken huge strides in recent years – sometimes literally. Modern prosthetics incorporate “mechatronic” elements borrowed from robotics to ensure that they are almost fully functional replacements for missing body parts, sometimes even controlled directly by the wearers’ brains.

But internal prosthetics, like those used to reconstruct injured faces, have yet to incorporate such advanced features, and still tend to be awkward and unrealistic.

Now surgeons Craig Senders and Travis Tollefson of the University of California, Davis, plan to change that by using artificial polymer muscles to reanimate the facial features of people suffering from severe paralysis.

“The face is an area where natural-appearing active prosthetics would be particularly welcome,” they write in a recent patent application. They believe their approach provides a solution, and report having tested it successfully on cadavers.

• Changing faces

The most detailed example given in the patent document describes how these artificial muscles could help people regain control over partially or fully paralysed eyelids, after suffering spinal injuries or nervous disorders like Bell’s palsy.

A person that loses control of their eyelids will struggle with social interaction and can have low self-esteem, but there are health implications too: without working eyelids, eyes can become ulcerated and blindness can eventually occur.

Tollefson and Senders suggest using the arrangement shown in the diagram, right, to address those problems. A polymer muscle anchored to the skull, labelled “41″, pulls on cords that connect to the upper and lower eyelids of both eyes.

If a patient tries to close their eyes, the effort triggers electrical activity in the muscles that would normally close the eyelids. The polymer muscle detects this activity and contracts, pulling on its cords to fully close the eyelids.

Offer methods could be used to control the polymer muscle for differing circumstances, they say. If a person has lost control of only one eye (after a stroke, for example) the system could monitor the activity of the healthy eye and synchronise the actions of the paralysed one to match.

The patent also envisages using other sensors to close the eyes in bright light, or if an object moves close to the eye. Timing systems could also be used to simulate natural blinking patterns.

Senders and Tollefson think a similar approach could be used to reanimate other facial features, create an artificial diaphragm to assist breathing, or in replacements fingers and hands.

Capture Fox – Create Screencast of Firefox Browser and Desktop

Need to create screencast of a software setup or tutorial video of a web application? Try this Firefox extension.

Capture Fox, the Firefox add-on can record your activities inside a Firefox browser window or your desktop, frame by frame into a video file. You can also record your voice via a microphone along with the video.

Download Capture Fox and install. The Firefox status bar will have the icon in the status bar. Click on the button to start recording and click again to stop recording. Users can adjust the video quality.

Bharti Airtel Launches Mobile Payment Services through banks

Bharti Airtel has partnered with leading banks such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI, Corporation Bank and VISA to launch M-commerce solutions like Mobile Money Transfer (MMT), post-paid bill payment and prepaid recharge on the mobile phone. Customers having a VISA credit or debit card issued by ICICI, HDFC, SBI, or Corporation Bank, can now send money to another VISA credit/debit card holder.

The M-commerce solutions have been developed by mChek. mChek provides a safe and secure way to use your mobile phone to make credit and debit card payments including over-the-counter and Internet purchases, and person to person payments. The M-commerce solutions are totally secure and had been certified by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Airtel subscribers can avail the service by simply sending a text message AIRTEL to 543219 from your Airtel cell phone.

404 File Not Found Email Notification Using PHP for WordPress Blogs and Other Websites

404 File Not Found Email Notification Using PHP for WordPress Blogs and Other Websites

Do you have a 404 page in your website or self hosted blog? If not, wordpress.org has given instructions on how to create custom 404 for WordPress theme. For your website, you may just google it out.

If your hosting supports, define the 404 error handler page as 404.php in the .htaccess file, like this.

# For general website
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

# For wordpress
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?error=404

where 404.php is the error handler. The file will be located in the website root folder or in the current theme folder for WordPress. Now you can write PHP functions in this page to take care of your page not found requests.

There are various options like log file analysis to find out the 404 for the website and make changes accordingly. For smaller websites and blogs with very less number of visitors, you may feel that it is not worth log analysis.

And we still use email as the instant notification mechanism. I am also like that. So I setup up email notification for the 404 file not found error. Whenever someone access any webpage or other resource which is not found i this server, I get an email.During the initial days I had many emails, and then I fixed one by one and later I receive very less number of emails per day.

Since I am using Google Apps for domain, which is in effect gmail, I label such emails with a 404 tag and archive them using filters. I check it a few times daily to see if there is something which needs real attention from my side.

Here is the script I put at the end of the wordpress 404.php file in my current sky blue theme. (I have defined this in custom_functions.php, which I have included in functions.php.)

// Email the admin about the 404 error.
function custom_404_email() {
$request_uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

//The following conditions are used to avoid some meaningless 404 errors from being notified.

//like: Google MediaPartners crawler for Adsense, http://www.msoffice-cltreq-asp.info/, etc.
if ( ($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] != ‘Mediapartners-Google’) &&
( strpos($request_uri, ‘/MSOffice/cltreq.asp’) === false ) &&
( strpos($request_uri, ‘/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll’) === false ) &&
( strpos($request_uri, ‘/_vpi.xml’) === false ) )
{
$website_name = “WEBSITENAME“;
$website_url = “http://yourdomain.tld“;
$mail_to = “you@yourdomain.tld“;
$mail_from = “noreply@ yourdomain.tld“;
$mail_subject = $website_name . ” 404: “.$request_uri;
$error_message = “”;
$error_message .= “Requested URL (404): ” . $website_url . $request_uri . “\r\n”;
$error_message .= “Referring URL: ” . $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] . “\r\n”;
$error_message .= “User Agent: ” . $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . “\r\n”;
$error_message .= “Remote Host: ” . $_SERVER["REMOTE_HOST"] . ” – “. $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] .”\r\n”;
$error_message .= “Whois: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=” . $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] . “\r\n”;
$error_message .= “Cookie: ” . $_SERVER["HTTP_COOKIE"] . “\r\n”;
$head = ”;
$head .= “Content-Type: text/plain \r\n”;
$head = “From: ” . $website_name . “<” . $mail_from . “>\r\n”;
mail($mail_to, $mail_subject, $error_message, $head);
}
}

The function custom_404_email() is called at the end of the 404 page like this.

Thats’s it, you are all set to receive all 404 notifications in your mailbox!

Note: There are a few 404 handler WordPress plugins also available. I generally shy away from using plugins wherever I can custom code the functionality for my theme.