Juzer Burhani

If you have been looking for a free, light and feature-packed instant messaging client that works with most popular IM clients like MSN, Yahoo! and Google Talk, then do give Instant-t a try.
Instant-t Messenger is an easy-to-use, fully-featured and a very secured instant messaging client suitable for enterprises where you need to have access to multiple IM. It comes in two versions, a desktop client and a web-based version. Both of them allows you to chat with MSN, AOL, ICQ, Yahoo! and GTalk contacts and are developed to fully improve internal communications. It also features multiperson video chat room with your friends on other IM networks.
Features

• New multiperson video chat
• Interoperability with Google Talk
• Multiple ways to see your contact list
• Support for tabs in message window
• Contact list search
• Rename contacts on all networks
• Display picture
• Custom status text
• Webcam as display picture
• Improved toaster (online notification)
• New skins (Classic and Dusk

It contains no advertising, spyware and is absolutely free to use!
Download
Download Instant-t Messenger 5.0
Web-Based Version
You can access the web-based IM from Instan-t aka Instan-t Express from here.

This is an reference chart for geeks who may want to teach ABC to their kids. Creative.

Got a secret message to share with someone? Check out Privnote.


Privnote (short for Private Notes) is a simple web service for creating web notes that self-destruct or become unavailable as soon as they are read.
Type a text note in the space provided and you’ll be provided with a one-time use hyperlink that you can send over an IM or email message. Once the link is clicked, the associated text note is deleted forever.
There’s a read receipt option if you like to get notified as soon as your web note is opened by the recipient.
PrivNote - If you send a note and suddenly regret having done so, just click the link yourself which will erase the note forever so no one can read it.

Launched in 2006 as an online extension of the Picasa photo management application, Picasa Web Albums didn't become very popular, as Flickr continued to grow. Besides lacking a community of photography enthusiasts and leaving out a lot of basic features like stats or adding a photo to favorites, Picasa Web Albums is not a great name and many might not even know that Google has a photo sharing service.



There are many references in Picasa Web's code which show that the service will change its name to Google Photos. The navigation bar already uses "Photos" as an anchor text, there's a Google Photos Screensaver and the service's blog is titled Google Photos Blog.





Other upcoming features referenced in the code include content licensing options, uploading photos by email and tagging people in your photos.

As announced at Google Webmaster Central, Google has released a public API to automate the usage of Google Webmaster Tools. The Webmaster Tools gives web site owners detailed statistics about their site’s “visibility on Google”. According to the announcement, the new API supports the following interactions with the Webmaster Tool:

• Managing sites: retrieving, adding, verifying, and removing websites)
• Working with Sitemaps: retrieving, adding, and removing sitemaps

To get started, check our new Webmaster Tools API profile and consult the Developer’s Guide - Google Webmaster Tools API.

While not all of the functionality of the Webmaster Tools are available from the APl, the current API will probably be of interest to webmasters who manage many websites and who update sitemaps by manual processes. And as Google notes, “this [version] is only the beginning”.

How do you share a bunch of websites with grandma? Normally, you would put all the links in an email message and send it across.

This is fine but imagine if your list of websites is long – that would require her to make way too many clicks and she will also end up opening several browser windows on the desktop.

So here’s a more elegant solution that uses Zoho Notebook – a very powerful note taking app on the lines of Microsoft OneNote. And you can easily login through your existing Yahoo! or Google Account credentials.

First, check this public page to get an idea about what the final solution would look like. And here are various steps involved:

Create a new book in Zoho Notebook and click "Add Web Page” from the toolbox in the left sidebar. Type the URL of a website (e.g. cnn.com).

Continue this process until you have added all your favorite web pages to that particular book.

These web pages will appear as vertical tabs in the right sidebar. You can double click the tabs to give them a more meaningful name (e.g. CNN). You can also change the order of website tabs by simply dragging them up or down.

When you are done, go to Publish –> Book. Copy the URL of the Zoho Notebook and email it to your gradma – she will love this. Here’s a finished presentation.

Zoho Notebook also offers annotation tools for web pages so can you highlight sections, add freehand drawings to web pages, etc before compiling them into a single web page. There’s more – the final book can be embedded in blogs as well via an iframe.

In the post The Google Browser from earlier this year, someone going by the name “the Lizard” says that Google is developing its own, WebKit-based browser. Lizard argues that it is strategically dangerous to bet too much on just Firefox, which sends a lot of paid search traffic to Google, and that this made Google start an internal project in mid-2006 titled “GBrowser.”

According to the Lizard, GBrowser is built on top of the open source WebKit browser framework, which was also used by Apple to create Safari, and is also used for the browser of Google-initiated mobile platform Android. “More than that,” the Lizard writes, GBrowser “will offer integration with many Google services, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Blogger, and likely Google Talk.” Lizard continues:

<
Google, always known for iterating slowly on most of its projects, has taken its time on GBrowser for a very good reason: it only has one chance to get it right. Failing to succeed in its browser move means rocky negotiations with a core partner, Mozilla, and could negatively impact its financials in a significant manner. A move into the browser market requires perfection, and GBrowser has undergone at least one substantial rewrite and many major user-interface iterations.>>

Lizard adds, “Mozilla knows GBrowser is coming and discusses it at length internally.” And then, I heard another rumor that Google will be creating a standard which allows the toolbar of GBrowser to change when visiting certain sites – say, when you visit Google Docs you get a special Docs toolbar. Now, I don’t know if there’s indeed such a browser in the works, and have to file all of this under rumor until further details are known... but thought it’s an interesting rumor nevertheless. Once in May 2006, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked in a Q&A whether Google would consider building their own browser, he replied “We would only do so...if we thought there was a real user benefit.”

When you need a word's definition, translation, pronunciation, synonym, or antonym, you don't have to haul an enormous tome from the bookshelf, dust it off, and ruffle through its delicate pages like your grandparents used to do—you can just hop on the internet. Beside the standard-issue dictionary and spellchecker offered by most word processors and operating systems, there are several web-based language tools at your disposal that can get you just the information you need. Let's take a look at some of the best online language tools for word nerds and regular people who just want to say that word correctly in conversation.

Online Dictionary and Thesaurus Webapps

You already know that Google can give you definitions in search results—try it, search for define thesaurus—but there are a few other dictionary webapps besides the obvious Dictionary.com that can also get you your definition fix (often with pretty pictures!).

Definr is a super-fast, suggest-as-you-type dictionary which you can add to your Firefox search box or use in bookmarklet form (original post). My favorite Definer Firefox trick?

In Firefox's address bar, type definr/hangover and press Ctrl+Enter to look up the word "hangover". Firefox will type the "http://" and ".com" parts for you.

Visuwords defines and displays relationships between words in an animated graphical node map that you can navigate around by clicking related words (original post).

When you just can't think of the name of that thing which you can picture in your mind, you want the Visual Dictionary. Go through what Adam describes as a kind of reverse 20 questions to get to the word you're looking for, starting at one of 15 visual themes and narrowing down your search image by image as you go (original post).

Slang, Catchphrases, Acronyms, and Common Mistakes

A formal dictionary will only take you so far—and will usually stop short when you need the definition of a catchphrase, buzzword, idiom, slang word, or acronym. When your dictionary fails you, take a look at some of these alternatives.

When someone uses a slang word or phrase (especially online) you don't recognize, proceed directly to the Urban Dictionary. This collaborative community dictionary has saved my bacon more times that I'd like to admit. Add this sucker to your Firefox search box or as a search keyword for quick access.

Along the same lines, What Does That Mean? is a community-run source of definitions (and calls for them) of idioms, catchphrases, and slang. This is the place you want to go to find out what "any who" or "pissed off" means (original post).

When it's a string of capital letters that stand for who-knows-what staring you in the face, the Acronym Finder can come to your rescue. If you always forget what the heck IIRC stands for, here's where to look.

Finally, if you still find yourself pausing over whether or not to use "effect" or "affect," the Confusing Words web site is the place to consult (original post). Search for one confusing word and see what word for which it's commonly mistaken, and see the difference between the two.

Pronunciation

What, you not only have to read and write unknown words correctly—you have to say them, too? A few pronunciation helpers are available online for your benefit.

Perhaps my favorite of the bunch because of its convenience, the Pronounce Firefox extension lets you select a word on a web page, right-click it, and select "Pronounce" from the context menu to hear how it sounds (courtesy of Merriam-Webster (original post).

Similarly, Forvo (original post) and HowJSay (original post) also provide audio pronunciations of words.

More Language Tools and Tricks?

To use these tools easily from the Firefox address bar, try installing Lifehacker's quick search bookmarks, which include several of the sites mentioned above. If you don't want to forget a definition once you look it up, do what del.icio.us user Tim Bonnemann does and use del.icio.us as a personal dictionary. Finally, if it's translations you're looking for, check out Wendy's previous feature on how to get lost in translation sites.

What are your favorite online dictionary, reference, and other word nerdery tools? Shout 'em out in the comments.

Google I/O's keynote, titled "Client, Connectivity, and the Cloud", discussed the latest Google developer-orientated initiatives and their significance. Vic Gundotra, vice-president at Google, explained that Google wants to make it easier to develop web applications by transforming browsers into powerful clients and by making "the cloud" more accessible.

Gears is an open source plug-in that adds offline storage, a local database, asynchronous threads, and other features which could be used to create web applications that are closer to their native counterparts.

In the fragmented mobile space, Google bets on Android, an open mobile platform that includes a powerful browser and APIs that enable developers to create applications which take advantage of the connectivity.

Google App Engine lets you build web applications without having to worry about infrastructure, setting up servers and databases. Anyone can create a web application for free and pay for more resources, once the applications becomes popular.

Google APIs could be used to enhance web applications by integrating them with Google's services: you can get data from Google's apps or from the content indexed by Google.

Web Toolkit lets you use Java to create the front end for AJAX applications and translates your code into optimized JavaScript.

OpenSocial is an effort to make the web more social by providing a standard for creating social web applications.

Most of Google's solutions are open source software (Gears, Web Toolkit, Android) and steps toward creating standards (Gears, OpenSocial) that should move the web forward. Google says that its only incentive for building these tools is that enabling the development of more web applications brings more Internet users and, indirectly, more Google revenue. Some of that revenue is invested in other initiatives that fuel Internet's growth and the cycle continues.


Here's the full 90-minute keynote. Don't miss the cool Android demo at min. 26.

Popout

via Google Operating

The next-gen web is starting to gather pace, as this week MySpace integrated Google Gears, Yahoo! announced their new BrowserPlus product and Google launched a browser-based edition of their 3D Earth product. Technologies and formats such as AIR, Silverlight, JavaFX, Gears, XUL, Web Applications 1.0 (DOM5, HTML5 etc.) allow developers to accelerate beyond AJAX and towards a new generation of web applications with better performance, more functionality and tighter desktop integration.

Developers and users are now presented with more web technology choice then ever before; “DLL hell” has been succeeded by “plug-in hell”, as a variety of companies present their versions of what the next-gen web will look like. But on the web, such choice can come at a cost to both users and developers. More than a decade has passed since the first battle over web formats, back then it was Microsoft, Netscape, Apple, AOL and others laying different foundations in the form of browsers, scripting languages, web servers and more. The legacy of that battle is still being felt today, as Javascript developers rely on whole libraries to assist them in developing cross-browser code and CSS developers depend on a catalog of hacks so that their sites can look consistent across different browsers.

With the new rich web application technologies still in the development phase, there is an opportunity to not repeat the mistakes of the past and instead take a standards-based approach. Thankfully during the course of the previous decade companies such as Microsoft became more receptive to open standards, data portability and cross-platform support. Having broad support for open standards simplifies technology for both users and developers, but it is obvious that not all of the currently announced technologies, such as those listed above, will succeed or survive.

via TechCrunch