Cloud Computing

Modern computing in the age of the Internet is quite a strange, remarkable thing. As you sit hunched over your laptop at home watching a YouTube video or using a search engine, you’re actually plugging into the collective power of thousands of computers that serve all this information to you from far-away rooms distributed around the world. It’s almost like having a massive supercomputer at your beck and call, thanks to the Internet.

This phenomenon is what we typically refer to as cloud computing. We now read the

news, listen to music, shop, watch TV shows and store our files on the web. Some of us live in cities in which nearly every museum, bank, and government office has a website. The end result? We spend less time in lines or on the phone, as these websites allow us to do things like pay bills and make reservations. The movement of many of our daily tasks online enables us to live more fully in the real world.

Cloud computing offers other benefits as well. Not too long ago, many of us worried about losing our documents, photos and files if something bad happened to our computers, like a virus or a hardware malfunction. Today, our data is migrating beyond the boundaries of our personal computers. Instead, we’re moving our data online into “the cloud”. If you upload your photos, store critical files online and use a web-based email service like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, an 18-wheel truck could run over your laptop and all your data would still safely reside on the web, accessible from any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world.

Facebook test 'Happening Now' feature

Facebook just began testing a new feature "happening now" in a sidebar to the right of their news feeds. It's filled with links friends have posted that other friends like.


Similar to a Twitter timeline, the Happening Now sidebar displays additional information that isn’t usually on the main news feed – i.e. friends liking a link or making new friends. The Happening Now sidebar also updates in real time, letting users read updates as soon as they happen without having to click a link to refresh.


It looks a lot like a Twitter feed with a bunch of re-tweets in it. A re-tweet effectively does the same thing as "liking" someone else's link, shared on Facebook: share a link you like with others.

Facebook enables Facial Recognition

   Facebook photos now have facial recognition strategy. The tagging is still done by your friends, but the facial recognition software detects your face and pushes it in an advert-like style to the right hand side of your friends’ screen. Facebook does not allow you to pre-approve tags; only the ability to remove tags once they have been tagged.
   Here’s how to check the setting to make sure it is how you want it to be:

1. Go into your Facebook privacy settings.
2. Click Customise settings.
3. Under Suggest photos of me to friends, click Edit settings.
4. Facebook automatically enables this feature. On the dialog box, select whether you want the feature to be enabled or not. Click Disable if you do not want it.
5. Press Okay.

Google cooks recipes

   Google will now cook recipes into its search menu in a way that lets people easily find instructions for whipping up dishes in the kitchen.

   A "Recipe View" feature that Google is rolling out in the United States and Japan turns the search engine into an online cook book of sorts.

   "My parents follow the art of cooking by intuition, where the right amount of each spice is measured out by gut feel, but that's never worked very well for me," Google product manager Kavi Goel said while introducing Recipe View.

   "As a math geek and computer engineer, I prefer to work with concrete numbers and instructions, including when cooking."

   The feature narrows search results to only recipes along with ratings for each option.

   Recipe search terms can range from names of dishes to favoured foods, such as strawberries, or holidays. Searches can be filtered by calorie count, cooking time, or ingredients.

   "We like to 'eat our own dog food' at Google, meaning we like to test our own products and features ourselves before releasing them for public consumption," Goel said.

   "With Recipe View, we've taken this more literally than usual."

   The feature is to be rolled out to other countries after it becomes more seasoned.

Gingerbread + Honeycomb = Ice Cream Biscuit ?

   Eric Schmidt the CEO/Chairman of Google addressed the company s keynote at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Schmidt had a few surprises in store for us.

   Schmidt started the keynote by expressing his disappointment about the Nokia and Microsoft deal.

   He said, "We would've loved if they chose Android. They chose Windows. The offer to adopt later is still open. "We certainly tried."

   Schmidt also clearly outlined that Google did not see Facebook as a threat but Microsoft was a more direct threat with Bing improving by leaps and bounds.

   He stated, They have scale, brand, and reach to do good things. Facebook today appears to be additive. Facebook users use Google more, no evidence Facebook advertising is hurting Google's in any way. Right now, Facebook is zero to net positive, and Microsoft is a core competitor and will likely remain so for a long time.

   Schmidt took the time clarify all the confusion related to the different versions of Android. An also stated the expected version of Android will combine features of Honeycomb and Gingerbread.

   Schmidt said, "Today I'll use the commonly used names. We have OS called Gingerbread for phones; we have an OS being previewed now for tablets called Honeycomb. The two of them... you can imagine the follow up will start with an I, be named after dessert, and will combine these two."

   Schmidt also clarified that Google had launched the Chrome OS specifically for keyboard devices while Android was meant for touch-based devices. But he hinted a convergence of both the operating systems could take place in the future once the technology was more mature.

   Schmidt also announced a new app called Android Movie Studio which would allow creation of media. This app reminded us of the iMovie app Apple launched last year with the iPhone.Google faced some embarrassment as they were facing network issues and they could not complete the demo of the app.

Google to Add 2-Step Verification

   Passwords are a pain sometimes. Use the same one at too many places and you risk losing everything, use too many different ones and they’re too difficult to remember. Google are now trying to avert these problems by adding another layer of security to Google Accounts– two-step verification. 

   Google will first ask for your password, then a verification code that you can obtain using your phone. This is similar to the system introduced for Google Apps customers a while ago. This will added in the next few days, with a new link poised to appear on your Account settings page.

   If you’re absolutely sure no one else will be using your computer, you can even set the account up to remember your verification code for a 30-day period, following which you’ll have regenerate and enter it again.

Secret Items in Send To Menu

      When you right-click on a file you will find only few default items in Send To Menu. In Windows 7 there is a simple trick to see the secret items in Send To Menu.

To View the Secret Items:

•  Hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on the file, and see the Send To menu. You can find all sorts of extra options.

• If you want any of those to show up normally without holding down the Shift key, you can create shortcuts in the Send To folder.Just type the following into the Address bar, shell:sendto

• And then drag shortcuts to your preferred folders into this folder.

Gmail Notifier

    Gmail notifier is a tool to check Gmail messages without opening the browser. It alerts when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

   Click to download Gmail Notifier.

Some Windows Tips

Your Name on Taskbar

• Right click Taskbar > Toolbars > New Toolbar
• Make a new Folder and name it with your name
•  Now you have your name in the Taskbar
• You can also hide that folder by going to properties and check hidden.

Notepad

• Open Notepad
• Type ''.LOG" without quotes
• Save and close the document
• Open the document again... You will see current date and time...!!!

Google Multiple Account Sign-In

   Till now only single Google Account login was possible at a time in a browser. 
   Google has now enabled the option of Signing in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously from the same browser.This option can be enabled by going to the Google Accounts page and enabling the 'Multiple sign-in' option. 
  When multiple sign-in is enabled, a drop-down is displayed next to your email address at the top of the page, so you can quickly switch to a new account.
  If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don’t support multiple accounts after you’ve signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once.