Opera Mini, which is probably the best browser for BlackBerry and other Java enabled mobile phones, just got better.

Opera today released a new version of Opera Mini that includes tabs so you can open multiple web pages in the same browser simultaneously without having to close the previous ones.

Other new features in Opera Mini 5 that lot of you may find useful are copy-paste and a built-in password manager so you don’t have to type your logins and passwords over and over again.

Screenshots of Opera Mini 5

Opera Mini 5 is still in beta but the good part is that you can install it alongside your existing installation of Opera Mini 4. To download Opera Mini 5, visit m.opera.com/next from your mobile phone browser and download the Opera Mini 5 installer specific to your phone.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Windows only: Chrome turned one year old just a couple weeks back, and as a belated celebration, the folks at Google have just pushed out a brand new stable release in the form of Google Chrome 3.

Chrome 2 (stable) hit servers back in May, and while the folks at Google are currently on Chrome 4 in the dev channel, those of you who haven't been eager to play on the bleeding edge of Chrome releases have a lot of nice improvements in store for them in Chrome 3, including:

• Speed Improvements: Chrome 3 is faster than any previous stable release on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks. (Google's calling it a 150% increase in Javascript performance since their first beta.) In the current Chrome 4 dev release, Chrome continues to outshine other browsers on most speed benchmarks.
• The New Tab Page: Again, this is only new to those of you who've been sticking to stable releases, but the new tab page is more customizable, allowing you to rearrange thumbnails via drag and drop and pin thumbnails you want to keep around permanently.
• Better Omnibox: Firefox has its awesome bar, Chrome has its omnibox. As of the stable Chrome 3 release, the omnibox adds contextual icons to help you see whether autocomplete results are suggest sites, searches, bookmarks, or sites from your history.
• HTML5: Google has been pushing the envelope with what developers can do with HTML5, the new standard set of tools in the next evolution of HTML (the backbone of web pages). In Chrome 3 stable, HTML5 is standard—meaning support for video, audio, and canvas tags that bring a rich web experience to your browser without the need for third-party plug-ins like Flash.
• Themes: We've highlighted a handful of the great new Google Chrome themes already, but now they're available to the stable channel users, as well.

Of course, none of this is all that exciting if you've been using the beta or dev channels for your Chrome updates, but if your workplace, for example, won't let you use anything but stable releases of software, the stable Chrome update is very welcome. Chrome 3 stable is a free download, Windows only.

(Note: Google continues its rather speedy version number jumping here—having dropped three "major" releases in just over a year. It may seem a little silly that it's now on the same version number as Firefox and looks like it'll easily beat Firefox to 4.0, but keep in mind that version numbers are largely arbitrary, so while Google may well hit Chrome 10 in another year or two, it has little bearing on how it compares to other browsers.)

If you're still using that Chinese phone sans an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number - or worse, a fake IMEI code - expect your phone to become a brick Dec. 1 onwards.

After sufficient time given by the government to telecom service providers to get subscribers to legalize their handsets by acquiring a genuine IMEI number, it's time for headcounts and headshots.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has instructed Indian telecom operators to disconnect connections of handsets with fake or no IMEI numbers.

To check whether your phone has an IMEI number:
1. Dial *#06#A 15-digit number will be displayed on your handset.

2. To validate the IMEI, sms IMEI <15> to 53232 (Rs. 3 per SMS)For eg; IMEI 351869910223340 to 53232

Message displayed for correct IMEI - Success!!
Message displayed for incorrect IMEI - Alert!!! Invalid IMEI

3. In case of an invalid IMEI, you can either buy a handset with a genuine IMEI number or can follow the below mentioned instructions:

• Visit only authorized GII (Genuine IMEI Implant) centers, set up on Government approved process, which can implant new genuine IMEI on the handset.
• Pay a nominal charge of Rs. 199 (all inclusive) and obtain a receipt.
• Carry your handset with a valid identity proof for identification purposes while visiting these centers.

The DoT has asked operators to submit their compliance report by Dec. 15.

You probably have a copy of Microsoft PowerPoint (2007 or 2010) on your computer for creating slides but do you that the same software can also be used as an easy alternative to Adobe Photoshop for applying some very impressive effects to your photos and screenshot images.

Apply Photo Effects in PowerPoint

Fire up PowerPoint, insert a blank slide and add a picture into the slide that you want to manipulate. Now select the picture while it’s there on the slide and apply any of the effects from the Format menu. Both PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 include a wide range of effects from reflections, photo frames to rounded edges that you may apply with a single click.

Once the effect is applied, right click the edited picture and choose "Save As Picture". PowerPoint will ignore all other objects that may be on the slide and will save just that edited image for you to use it at other places.

Now that was using the default settings but if you are looking for that extra bit, here’s a video tutorial from David Anderson that demonstrates how you can quickly create your own photo effects (e.g. Polaroid) in PowerPoint using tools and shapes that are already available inside the application.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

All hail Dhoni .....


He is the one who ensures us a victory in many of the games India recently played. After watching y'days game no one will ever think that Sachin need to think of retirement. He is just justifying his name 'God of Cricket'.

Despite the poor Indian fielding, Srilankan's too played some silly cricket, throwing away wickets in wee overs. If they could have stood steady for atleast 10 more overs, India could have faced a bitter day. Anyways a ton of thanks to them, who placed the victory in our hands.

Thanks to Dhoni, Sachin n Bajji for their super efforts in bringing the cup home.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand keywords. Today at TechCrunch50, Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi announced a new visual search feature on Bing which returns results as an interactive gallery of images.

For instance, if you type in “dog breeds,” it organizes them for you in a grid of images that you can scroll through using a slider on the right. When you hover over a particular image, it enters the name of that dog breed in the search box. And you can re-order the image results by size, breed, exercise needs, and Bing popularity.

There are more than 100 visual galleries ranging from movies, books, and cars to products, animals, and sports teams. The sorting categories change each time. So for movies, you can filter by release date, title, or rating. Cars can be sorted visually by make, price or mileage.

When you resort, the images fly around the screen to find their new positions. The visual search acts as a showcase for Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which makes the animations and visual rendering possible.

“The whole concept,” says Mehdi, “is that the world of search will change. There will be a more graphic way people will search, and it will pivot how people search.”

The judges were impressed with his demo. Ron Conway noted, “I think the huge winner here will be consumers because competition breeds innovation, and this nice little battle between Google and Microsoft is fantastic for consumers.

Well, here’s how you can quickly enable Bing Visual Search in your browser.
Go to bing.com/worldwide and set your country as United States. Save the settings and you will then be able to enjoy the visual search feature of Bing at bing.com/visualsearch. Probably, Microsoft has limited the feature to US for the moment.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Google Earth, the software package that lets you play Superman and find food and other spots of interest from thousands of feet overhead, has released a 5.1 version that skims the globe a bit smoother.

Google's Earth team says it's improved memory utilization to show more buildings and other content when you're zoomed in, and worked on reducing 'stuttering,' or frame drops, to make the flying feeling more smooth and, well, fun. Google goes into detail at their blog post, but we can verify that, having last used Earth in its 4.0 release, 5.1 definitely feels a bit more fluid while grabbing and pulling past our neck of the woods.

Google Earth 5.1 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. A browser plug-in auto-installs with the Windows release, and Windows versions also load the Google Updater; the Google Operating System Blog points out a direct Windows installer link to avoid the Updater.