I wish a very successful, cheerful and peaceful year for all of you...
keep all the faith in what you believe and have a wonderful year ahead..

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Watch this Video first. Its amazing and I can say its just begining. Watch the video and you will understand to how much extent this can change our lifes.

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper 'laptop'.

In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

I really felt well after watching the movie, coz tollywood is still having some good stuff. Sukumar did an excellent job in choosing everything.

Some years back I was wondering why it is not possible to do everything on a browser from working on documents, watching movies, songs, mails and working on other applications like Office and Photoshoop. Time has come for it, watch out for coming years, its the age of Web Apps. Everyone and every thing is going into clouds. I am so happy to see what I whished is happening.


The Google's Chrome OS is just a curtain raiser for the race of the new age. Expect more n more in future. All the information is at a go, not only the public info but also your workplace may also will be with you always.

And anyone who wishes to give a try at Chrome OS just follow the link.
It's from TechCrunch, guides you on how to install ChromeOS using VirtualBox.

The Chrome OS team has a produced a new Common Craft style video that gives an overview of the new Chrome OS is 3 minutes.

Here’s a high-res screenshot of Chrome OS..

..and here are some Chrome OS screenshots captured from the press event:

1. Chrome OS Application Menu

2. Chrome OS Media Browser

Cloud Storage - Everything you save inside Chrome OS is put on the cloud like this notepad application which will sync with Google Docs.

4. Switching between Chrome instances - It’s much like Alt+Tab of Windows 7 with live preview

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

WOW! - This is the first word that you will say after watching the first half of this movie. The graphic work and sounds are pretty well. I was overwhelmed with the way they created deja vu in the movie. Though all the scenes will be like other Hollywood flicks where there will be always a narrow escape, but mostly I felt all the excitement. But coming to the second half, it won't that much exciting. I felt some thing lacking in the second half, may be bcoz there wont be much senti while the whole world is tearing apart into pieces.

All the credit should go to the movie backstage crew, and credits to the imagination of the Director (Roland Emmerich).

I heard the budget of the movie is around 1000cr. After watching the movie, I was wondering how come they make a movie worth 10% of our state(AP) budget (that feeling was very strange to me )

Anyway it is a must watch film only at theatre. Go for big screens. BTW do you think this kind of things gonna happen in 2012??? watch out guys we have only left with a couple of years :P . . .njoy to your maximum.

I came across this site from a friend
There is a site: http://www.friends2support/ .org
where you can search for a Particular blood group, you will get thousand of donor addresses.
Pass this message 2 all you know. It will help many.

Tata Indicom, in association with Corporation Bank and PayMate, has launched 'Green Money Transfer'- a person-to-person mobile money transfer service. The transfer of funds via mobile will be facilitated by PayMate's technology, Corporation Bank's banking system and Tata's PCO and True Value Shop (TVS) network.

Customers can register for this service at a Green TATA PCO, TVS or with Corporation Bank. Upon registration, they will receive an mPIN to enable them to authorise the transaction.

Example:

1. A sender in Mumbai goes to a Green Tata PCO or TVS and places a request of transferring Rs. 5,000 to his parents in Pune
2. The sender hands over the cash to the Green Tata PCO or TVS. The PCO or TVS triggers an IVR call to the sender
3. The sender enters his mPIN to authorize the transaction and gets a Transaction code on his mobile to be conveyed to the recipient.
4. The recipient goes to the nearest registered Tata PCO or TVS and shares the transaction code.
5. The PCO or TVS triggers an IVR call to the receiver who enters his/her mPIN to verify the transaction
6. Once the verification is done the cash is handed over to recipient

The companies say Green Money transfer service is primarily targeted at the un-banked population of the country by providing them a branchless banking service to send and receive money effortlessly.

Corporation Bank says this facility is being proposed as an additional service to the rural masses who can now receive remittance in their Bank account instantaneously and draw through Business Correspondents at their own place. This will enable the Bank to augment customer acquisition as well.

This facility has been launched on a pilot basis in Kerala and will later spread to other areas.

On 15th November 2009, Sachin Tendulkar will complete 20 years in international cricket. In a build up to that momentous day, MSN India presents a series of features dedicated to the Mumbai maestro. Take a look at the first one in the line-up.

• Highest run scorer in ODIs: 17178 runs
• Most number of hundreds in the ODIs: 45
• Most number of nineties in ODIs: 16
• Most number of man of the matches in the ODIs: 60
• Most number of man of the series in ODIs: 15
• First Cricketer to pass 10000 run in ODIs
• First Cricketer to pass 15000 run in the ODI
• Highest run scorer in the World Cup: 1,796 at an average of 59.87 as on 20 Mar 2007
• Most number of Fifties in ODIs: 91
• Appeared in Most Number of ODIs: 436
• He is the only player to be in top 10 ICC ranking for 10 years.
• Most number of 100's in Tests: 42
• He is one of the three batsmen to surpass 11,000 runs in Test cricket, and the first Indian to do so
• In 2003, Wisden rated Tendulkar as No. 1 and Vivian Richards at No. 2 in all time Greatest ODI player
• In 2002, Wisden rated him as the second greatest Test batsman after Sir Donald Bradman.
• Tendulkar is the only player to score a century in all three of his Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy and Irani Trophy debuts
• In 1992, at the age of 19, Tendulkar became the first overseas born player to represent Yorkshire
• Tendulkar has been granted the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Arjuna Award and Padma Shri by Indian government.He is the only Indian cricketer to get all of them.
• Tendulkar has scored over 1000 runs in a calendar year in ODI's 7 times
• Out of his 56 man of the match awards only 5 times India has lost.
• In November 2006, Time magazine named Tendulkar as one of the Asian Heroes.
• Most Centuries in a calendar year: 9 ODI centuries in 1998
• Highest individual score among Indian batsmen: 186* against New Zealand at Hyderabad in 1999.
• Sachin was the fastest to reach 10,000 runs taking 259 innings and has the highest batting average among batsmen with over 10,000 ODI runs
• On his debut, Sachin Tendulkar was the second youngest debutant in the world
• When Tendulkar scored his maiden century in 1990, he was the second youngest to score a century
• Tendulkar's record of five test centuries before he turned 20 is a current world record
• On 3 January 2007 Sachin Tendulkar (5751) edged past Brian Lara's (5736) world record of runs scored in Tests away from home
• Second Indian after Sunil Gavaskar to make over 10,000 runs in Test matches
• Became the first Indian to surpass the 11,000 Test run mark and the third International player behind Allan Border and Brian Lara.

Earlier this year, Microsoft and Lenovo teamed up to tackle the first Windows 7 activation workaround. It was based upon a leaked OEM volume activation key, and was neutralized fairly quickly.


Things have been fairly quiet for a while. Microsoft's anti-piracy team had cooked up WAT - Windows Activation Technology - in hopes that it would prove more successful at thwarting unlicensed Windows use than its predecessor WGA. And so began the latest round of cat-and-mouse with pirates. 'You've got a better activation system? We'll build a better crack,' is how the game usually plays out.


It should come as no surprise, then, that there are two new activation bypass tools spreading like wildfire on the Internet. Called RemoveWAT and ChewWGA, the apps provide one-click patching of Windows 7 RTM installations.


Microsoft, of course, has promised a speedy response. Still, once a system is patched and a user shuts off Windows Update, there's really not much Microsoft can do - or is there? Maybe they know something we don't.


[via CNet]

Doodle - choosing new GOOGLE LOGO (INDIA): This was the amazing contest run by Google, they have kept one competition along the india to choose the best logo visit Doodle for Google for more information.

After taking numerous entries they have come up with the different results which are posted in this page. These finalists are divided into three categories

1. 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd standards
2. 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th standards
3. 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th standards

Do visit this page and encourage these small kids by casting your vote.
I dont tell you this will not take even one minute but you surely enjoy seeing the ideas of the children and the different logo's of the students if you love Google..

Here are some LOGOs

It appears that both Yahoo and Microsoft are duking it out to help power the technology for India’s Unique Identification project. Spearheaded by Indian tech czar and Infosys co-chairman Nanden Nilekani, the project aims to assign every Indian citizen with a unique identification number that will identify him or her, similar to a U.S. social security number.

This is no small task considering India’s population of 1.2 billion citizens. It will involve a powerful technology to assign the numbers and a vast database to organize each unique ID. That’s where Microsoft and Yahoo come in.

Earlier this year, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates expressed a strong interest in participating in the project, meeting Nilekani and assuring him that Microsoft would be able to assign the IDs swiftly.

This week Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz lobbied India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to use Yahoo for the project, but Bartz says that there’s no commercial interest in the deal and Yahoo would help power the project on a non-profit basis. Bartz added that Yahoo would be the optimal choice because Yahoo has a major presence in India. The company claims that three out of four Indians access the Internet through Yahoo.

While Yahoo is vastly popular in India thanks to sites like Yahoo Cricket that appeal to the population, its hold may be slipping. Gmail recently overtook Yahoo Mail as the most trafficked email site and Yahoo was forced to shut down its Indian social network SpotM a few months ago, as Google’s Orkut and Facebook emerge as the dominant social networks in India.

It’s unclear if Microsoft has the same “non-profit” stance as Yahoo, but obviously both companies want a piece of a highly ambitious project that could be implemented in other emerging countries. And it looks like IBM is also throwing its hat into the ring as well, so it should be interesting to see which tech giant wins out.

via TechCrunch

Y'day while I was watching the news, trailer of COD4 - Modern Warfare 2 caught my eye. After watching that trailer, I was so excited about it. After so many days I felt very interested to play a game. You can catch the trailer at this link.

Earlier I have played Call of Duty 2. I can recall that game, it's a master piece. Hope this version of COD also rocks. Watch out for torrents..

Here are some more specs:

IGN rating - 9.5

IGN link: http://pc.ign.com/objects/142/14280895.html

Min Specifications:

Minimum Requirements
OS: Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported)Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor or better supported Memory: 1 GB RAM Graphics: 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT or better or ATI Radeon 1600XT or better DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 9.0c Hard Drive: 12GB of free hard drive space Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card Internet: Broadband connection required for Multiplayer Connectivity. Internet Connection required for activationRelease Medium
1 DVD-ROMMultiplayer Functions
Online Versus Multiplayer (18)
Online Co-Op Multiplayer (2)
2 Local Co-Op PlayersOnline Play: 18 Versus/ 2 Co-op

When's the last time a barcode caught your eye? If you lived in Japan, it could have been fairly recently. D-Barcode is a Japanese design firm that has been mixing it up in the barcode world since '05, and — as you can see from the samples above — the end result is a lot more interesting than a uniform series of lines. It can be pretty pricey, though: $1,500 for a design, and $200 a year for licensing fees. If you want a code all your own, that can even cost as much as $4,000. That begs the question — what's a unique design worth?

Granted, Japan is the undisputed king when it come to eyecatching design in packaging, and these barcodes are an extension of that. For me, a cleverly designed product can tickle all the right places and get me to make the purchase. What about you? Does design and attitude factor into your decisions when choosing a product?

Fast Company, via swissmiss

Google’s Go: A New Programming Language That’s Python Meets C++:

Big news for developers out there: Google has just announced the release of a new, open sourced programming language called Go. The company says that Go is experimental, and that it combines the performance and security benefits associated with using a compiled language like C++ with the speed of a dynamic language like Python. Go’s official mascot is Gordon the gopher, seen here.

Here’s how Google describes Go in its blog post:

Go attempts to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. In our experiments with Go to date, typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go is designed to let you move fast.

We’re hoping Go turns out to be a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing and a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, with some cool features like true closures and reflection.

For more details check out Golang.org.

To get things started the right way, here’s Go’s rendition of Hello World!:

05 package main

07 import fmt “fmt” // Package implementing formatted I/O.

09 func main() {

10 fmt.Printf(”Hello, world; or Καλημέρα κόσμε; or こんにちは 世界n”);

11 }

Wave will be good for people, who runs many thread of mails. There wont be any difference if mails are one to one. If there are active people in a chain of mail, Wave can show it a lot better.

To learn all about Wave, watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ
this video is of 1Hr 20 mins in duration, if you cant spare (even bare :P) that much time,
watch the below short form of it (this is just 7mins).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw

Wave is spreading at a great pace, there are already apps created for iPhone and other smart phones to access Wave. I have also seen a Wave notifier application for desktop which notifies new waves. And the most surprising, amazing and funniest is Gina Trapani from LifeHacker
came up with a Complete Guide to Google Wave. This book will tell u all about a Wave.

Hope this Wave will be available to all my friends, coz unlike a mail id the other guy to whom u wish to communicate should have a Wave too :(
And you can all wave me @ nageswar3@googlewave.com and thanks to Balaji for sparing me a invitation.

Windows only: Paint.NET is a free, fast, and powerful image editor for Windows. It's a giant leap above Microsoft Paint, and a serious alternative to bigger, bloated (for most users, at least) image editors like Photoshop or GIMP.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

We've highlighted Paint.NET in the past, but it just released its first significant update in years, so we'd recommend grabbing the latest. Paint.NET handles most of the basics you'd expect from advanced image editors, and the update has added new effects (including new blurs and distortions), better performance (though Paint.NET has always been really light and fast), and a complete refresh of the user interface (enhanced for Aero/glass). Check out the release post for a more detailed changelog.

If you need to do the occasional image tweaking or heavy image editing but don't want to spend a lot of cash on Photoshop or dive into GIMP, Paint.NET is well worth the download. It may not be able to do everything Photoshop does, but it can do everything most users need. Paint.NET is a free application, Windows only. Thanks Paul!

Google Talk to Add Video Conferencing: Gmail Chat, the web-based version of Google Talk, added last year voice and video chat. The feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but it will probably be added to other Google services, as well.

SFGate reports that Google will improve the service significantly in the coming months.

Gmail's voice and video chats are now limited to one-to-one communications, but Google wants to broaden that capability to more than two participants and make it more robust all around for Apps.

'This [current Gmail capability] is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next six to 12 months around video [and voice] chat capabilities,' said Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager. 'It's a great opportunity for us to push that space along.'

It's not clear whether Google plans to integrate Marratech's video conferencing software, acquired in 2007.

Other features that will be added to Google's services: 'intelligent meeting scheduling in Google calendar', 'intelligent workflow in the [Google Docs] applications', 'lots of new functionality being developed especially around formatting' in Google Docs.

Microsoft Office Web Apps is a free online version of Microsoft Office that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the OneNote Web App.

Using Office Web Apps, you can view as well as edit Office documents on any computer and since these apps work inside the browser, you can even edit Office files on a Mac without requiring the Office software.

Sign-up for Office Web Apps

If you are not signed-up with Office Web Apps yet, here’s another opportunity:

Step 1: Create a Windows Live ID if you don’t have one already or if your existing Live ID uses a country other than US.

Step 2: While signing up, make sure you select 'United States' for the Country field else the program won’t let you in. You may use NY for the State field and 10001 for the Zip Code.

Step 3. Once your Live ID is setup, just click this link, accept the license agreement and the Office Web Apps Technical Preview will be activated for your Live ID.

If you face any issues while executing Step 3, here’s an alternate approach -- go to skydrive.live.com, upload any dummy Word file to the Documents folder and you should then see an invite to join the Office Web Apps programs. That’s it. Thanks Sean.

If you have a huge bundle of Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint Presentations on your hard drive that you would like to convert into PDF at once without investing in commercial software like Adobe Acrobat, try Google Docs.

While it has always been possible to convert Office documents into PDF using Google Docs, the new export feature makes it even easier for you to batch convert Microsoft Office and OpenOffice file formats into PDF (or HTML) in three easy steps.

Batch Conversion to PDF with Google Docs

Step #1 – Create a new “input” folder in Google Docs where you’ll upload all your documents and presentations that are to converted into PDF.

Step #2 – Now select the Upload Document option in Google Docs, set the destination folder to the one that you created in Step #1 and upload* all your documents.

Google Docs officially supports the following file formats though you may also upload images:

• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps).


• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), OpenDocument (.odt) and StarOffice (.sxw).


• Microsoft Excel (csv, .xls, .xlsx) files and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods).

[*] You may also use the email option to upload documents onto Google Docs but that would put everything on the main folder and managing documents can therefore become a issue especially when you have too many files.

Step #3 - Once all files are uploaded onto Google Docs, open the dashboard again and select the “input” folder from the right sidebar. Select all the files in this folder and choose “Export” under “More Options”.

Here’s select “PDF” (or HTML) as the output format and all your Word Documents, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. will be instantly converted into PDF.

And if you are converting a large batch of documents into PDF, you don’t have to wait in the browser for the conversion to finish as Google Docs will automatically send you an email once the processing is over. The email will have a link from where you can directly download all the PDF files in one large ZIP.

Thanks to Amit...

Google has been rolling out to a small subset of users that takes the search giant's obsession with minimalism to the extreme. The page features exactly two elements: Google's famous logo, and its search box. That is, until you move your mouse, when a nifty fade effect reveals with rest of Google�s standard navigation options.

This morning Google Blogoscoped posted a special snippit of code that you can copy and paste into your browser to enable the new minimalist design. But that version falls short of greatness: it includes the Google Search and I'm Feeling Lucky buttons. For those looking for the ultimate in austere, these buttons are little more than ugly blemishes marring an otherwise perfect design.

To set the cookie, do the following:

1. Head to google.com

2. Paste the following code into the address bar of your browser:

javascript:void(document.cookie='PREF=ID=2602f2ce49362929:U=7b6893b1882d5a94:TM=1239881060:LM=1254195610:L=0qXJlAA:GM=1:S=CwDGQD20E8U14zDg;path=/;

domain=.google.com');

3. Hit enter or �go� to run it (you have to be on google.com at the time). It will not give you any feedback, it will just run and set the cookie.

4. Refresh the page.

Thanks to Don MacAskill over at SmugMug for the tip.

This image may not make sense to the human eye but if you were to show it to a barcode scanning machine, it would immediately recognize the text hidden in that image as "Google".

How to create a 2d Barcode Image

If you are excited about Google�s barcode logo and would like to generate a similar Barcode image for your own name or brand, go to morovia.com, choose "Code 128" as the Barcode format and uncheck the setting that says "Show human readable text".

For instance, here�s a barcode representation of "digital inspiration".

How to decode a Barcode Image

Now the reverse case. Say you come across a barcode image on the Internet and would like to read the text that�s hidden inside that graphic. You can either get a barcode scanning machine, or a more easy option would be that you upload the image to ZXing.org and it will try to decode that image for you online.

You can either upload the barcode image from the desktop or simply pass on the web address of the image and ZXing will decode it for you as in this example.

Related: What are QR Codes

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

A young second generation Indian in the US was asked by his mother to explain the significance of "Diwali" to his younger brother, this is how he went about it... "

So, like this dude had, like, a big cool kingdom and people liked him. But, like, his step-mom, or something, was kind of a bitch, and she forced her husband to, like, send this cool-dude, he was Ram, to some national forest or something.... Since he was going, for like, something like more than 10 years or so.... he decided to get his wife and his bro along.... you know....so that they could all chill out together. But Dude, the forest was reeeeal scary shit... really man...they had monkeys and devil s and shit like that. But this dude, Ram, kicked with darts and bows and arrows... so it was fine.

But then some bad gangsta boys, some jerk called Ravan, picks up his babe (Sita) and lures her away to his hood. And boy, was our man, and also his bro, Laxman, pissed... all the gods were with him... So anyways, you don't mess with gods. So, Ram, and his bro get an army of monkeys...Dude, don't ask me how they trained the damn monkeys... just go along with me, ok...

So, Ram, Lax and their monkeys whip this gangsta's ass in his own hood.... Anyways, by this time, their time's up in the forest... and anyways... it gets kinda boring, you know... no TV or malls or shit like that. So,they deci ded to hitch a ride back home... and when the people realize that our dude, his bro! and the wife are back home.... they thought, well, you know, at least they deserve something nice... and they didn't have any bars or clubs in those days... so they couldn't take them out for a drink, so they, like, decided to smoke and stuff ... and since they also had some lamps, they lit the lamps also...so it was pretty cooool... you know with all those fireworks.... Really, they even had some local band play along with the fireworks... and you know, what, dude, that was the very first, no kidding.., that was the very first music-synchronized fireworks..... you know, like the 4th of July stuff, but just, more cooler and stuff, you know.. And, so dude, that was how, like, this festival started."

The mother fainted...

HAPPY DIWALI ...

While the majority of international communication happens in English, a lot of these people, who communicate in English on a daily basis, aren’t very comfortable in English as it is not their native language.

They therefore sometimes struggle to express themselves correctly in English, only to be dismayed that native English speakers can immediately notice the flaws in their writing.

When English is a Foreign Language for you

Microsoft Research has created a useful online proofing tool to help people who use English as a foreign language.

This tool, called ESL Assistant, is a web service that analyzes text for common mistakes that non-native English speakers, especially those from Southeast Asia, often make in their writing such as the choice of determiners and prepositions.

Type some English sentences into the text box and the tool will look for possible problems in your writing and indicate them with wavy green underlines.

Once it identifies possible mistakes in your writing, the tool will generate suggestions to correct the problems. What’s even more interesting is that the tool will find real-world examples of both the incorrect and correct usage from other web pages on the Internet using Bing.

You can just hover your mouse over the suggested phrase and the search results in the two Bing windows will change automatically.

Check Errors in your Outlook Emails with ESL

Anyone can use the ESL (English as Second Language) Tool to check their emails and other writings for errors online though the site does require the Silverlight plugin.

Another way to use it it to download the ESL addon for Microsoft Outlook and integrate the web service into your email program.

There’s a bit of a privacy issue here because when you click the ESL Assistant button in Outlook to check your message for errors, the program will send the entire text of your email to the ESL website where you can review it for problems. Also, if you correct errors online, you will have to copy the text back into Outlook manually.

Although ESL Assistant will not catch or correct all errors, it often finds problems that are overlooked by normal spelling and grammar checking tools. This makes it a great tool to expand your options and make sure that your English sounds as correct as possible.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

You have seen visual search in Bing, now here’s another Silverlight based site that might leave your impressed.

Windows OS – Made of Silverlight

The site is windows4all.com and it feels like you are running an online copy of the Windows operating system in the browser. (Hit F11 to experience in full screen mode)

Windows4all not only replicates the look and feel of a freshly installed Windows Vista desktop environment inside your browser but comes with a variety of applications that are similar to the default applications included with Windows. These include Notepad, Windows File Explorer, Media Player, Calculator, Sidebar gadgets and even games like Solitaire and Spider.

Double click the IE icon on the desktop (or use the Vista start menu button) to fire up Internet Explorer and you’ll be able to browse the internet live inside this impressive Silverlight application.

It also includes a Notepad and when you save text files using this application, you can open the files again the next time you visit Windows4all on the same computer. You can install additional Silverlight applications into the Windows4all interface; you can pick the installers directly from from the internet or upload the files from your own computer into the Web OS.

If you are a Windows geek who is curious to know how this app was made, go to Codeplex and download the full source code. It would be neat if Microsoft offers some of these features, especially the ability to import Silverlight apps, to Live Mesh in the future!

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Want to draw like an artist? Now you can.

Livebrush is a free motion-based drawing tool that lets you create beautiful graphics in few strokes. It’s like a free alternative to Corel Painter but extremely easy to use at the same time.

What’s unique about Livebrush is the brush tool that responds to the speed of your mouse movements. The program also ships with a wide range of brush styles and decorative patterns to help you to create impressive drawings in no time – just select a particular style and add some random strokes to the drawing canvas.

You can install Livebrush on Mac, Windows and Linux though it requires Adobe AIR. Do watch the screencast demo below to learn more about the Livebrush program.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

If you're a developer looking for changes in code then there's a tonne of applications available for comparing two bits of code, but what if you're writing a paragraph and want to easily see the differences between two copies? It's complete overkill to create two text documents and feed them into your file comparison app of choice.

That's where Quick Diff comes in: a super-simple webapp that lets you enter two pieces of text (or code) and quickly compare them side-by-side. Sure it's not the prettiest web-app you've ever seen - but for a quick-and-dirty text comparison, I've not seen anything quicker.

originally appeared on Download Squad

Yes, Google, you can proudly herald this one as a major victory for your browser in my books. If other Javascript benchmarks haven't been anything you could get excited about, maybe this one will do it. Ben Firshman's Javascript NES emulator runs best in Google Chrome.

Just head on over to his site (which will likely start bogging down today as this little baby inevitably moves from Reddit to Digg), pick a game, and get ready for some early 90s video gaming excitement.

One downside: you'll have to be cool with a similarly early 90s style screen (think original Gameboy). You'll only get a viewable area of about 256x240. If size isn't a major concern for you, here's a list of the games you can play:

• Contra


• Donkey Kong


• Dr. Mario


• Golf


• Legend of Zelda


• Lemmings


• Mario Bros.


• Pac Man


• Super Mario Bros.


• Tennis


• Tetris


• Tetris 2


• Zelda II


• Super Mario Bros. 3 (partially working)

JSNES works in other browsers, of course, but not quite as well. Firefox frame rates are generally reported to be about 1/10th or less those from Chrome. Safari (and most other Webkit browsers) should be up to the task.

[via Reddit]

Windows: Have some windows you might need to stash in a hurry? Don't want your boss to catch you goofing off? Everyone needs a break now and then and Don't Panic! will help you keep your breaks discreet.

While most 'boss-key' applications limit themselves to simply hiding specified applications at a keystroke, Don't Panic! strives to avoid being a one-trick pony by offering a wide variety of options for you to toggle.

You can activate Don't Panic! by either keyboard shortcut or, as seen in the screenshot here, by hitting the Don't Panic! button in the lower right corner of your monitor. You can adjust the transparency of the button or disable all together and stick to the keyboard shortcut.

Don't Panic! can simply hide the windows you have specified, even hiding the application from the Task Manager, or it can close the application either by terminating the process or closing it properly. You can also have Don't Panic! delete all the shortcuts in the recent files folder, dump your Internet Explorer history and temporary files, and purge the Recycle Bin.

One thing to keep in mind when using an application like Don't Panic! is that all of its powers are limited to changing things at the workstation you are sitting at. If your company, for example, enforces internet usage policies by monitoring the traffic coming from your terminal, Don't Panic! won't do anything to stop The Man from putting the brakes on your cubicle party.

Don't Panic! is open source, Windows only.

Around this time last year, Google introduced SMS Channels in India that allowed mobile phone users to subscribe to information channels like news, weather, stocks, etc. through text messages.

Even bloggers could create SMS channels for their own blog (example) and send updates about new articles to their subscribers through SMS messages. The service is still around and continues to remain free for both publishers and mobile phone users though Google adds advertising in text messages.

Facebook recently introduced something similar in India so you can receive text updates on your mobile phone from the Facebook pages of your favorite brands, celebrities, restaurants or even websites.

As a mobile phone user, you can can join any Facebook page by simply texting fan <page_name> to 9232232665 (92FACEBOOK) from your mobile phone*.

For instance, if you want to join Digital Inspiration’s Facebook page, you can text “fan digital.inspiration” to 9232232665 from any mobile phone, and you will show up in the list of fans immediately.

Similarly, if you want to receive updates about a page on your cell, you can open that page on the Facebook site and choose “Subscribe via SMS”. To turn off updates, choose the unsubscribe option on the page itself or SMS “stop” to the same Facebook number – 9232232665.

Unlike Google SMS Channels which can be be used for both push updates and group communication, the SMS feature in Facebook is primarily push (for receiving updates from a page).

As a blogger, you can use this feature to notify readers about your most recently published articles while businesses can use Facebook SMS to communicate deals and offers with their customers (like Pizza Hut sending out discount coupons to all their fans in India via SMS).

*Before you start receiving updates from Facebook page, you need to activate Facebook Mobile. For that, just send a text message containing only the letter “f” (without quotes) to 9232232665 and you are done. I am not sure if your mobile carrier will charge your for any incoming text messages from Facebook but you’ll of course have to pay for sending one.

via Digital Inspiration