Last chance to download Bump Top, you really don’t want to miss this!

Bump Top is a 3D desktop environment which aims to provide user an interface to manage desktop which is close to real desk. Bump Top converts your desktop into a 3D environment where you can play around with the icons, pile up similar files,  and do hell lot of stuff using well defined gestures. Though Bump Top works on normal desktops & laptops, it’s more usable & intuitive on touch screen tablets. Have a look at this video which can give you an idea about Bump Top:

Acquisition by Google:

Google has acquired Bump top few days ago. There is no clear picture about what Google is going to do with it. First thing which comes to my mind is Chrome OS, next Android & then rumored tablet from Google! Definitely, Google isn’t really interested in the product & more interested in technology which it can use in it’s various products. As a result of this acquisition Bump Top will no longer be available to download, after a week.

So, this is your last chance to download and try it out if you haven’t yet done. Download it over here and have fun playing with your desktop!

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Google has announced it’s own phone “Nexus One”. Following are the key features of the phone:

• Powerful 1GHz SnapDragon processor
• 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen
• 512MB of RAM
• 512MB of ROM (Internal Memory)
• MicroSD slot expandable up to 32GB
• 5 Mega Pixel camera
• Google Android OS
• GPS, Google Maps
• Accelerometer, Light sensor & proximity sensor
• Active Noise Cancellation for clear calls
• Google Earth debuting on this handset & will be available to other Android devices soon via Android App Market

Nexus One is priced at USD 529 & not yet available in India. Check out the phone at http://www.google.com/phone.

Hello to readers of Tech Bangalore! I am writing this post to announce another blog from me which is not a Tech Blog, not on Mobile Phones too, not on Hacking & off course not on free GPRS trick . A blog completely dedicated to Google Wave. The idea is to create a single place to get updates/news about Google Wave & to review all interesting Robots & Gadgets. All posts will be nicely categorized & tagged which makes it easy to find robots & gadgets.

Check out the new blog at www.go-wave.net

If you are still wondering what is this Google Wave is about, check this video: A Simple video on Google Wave

I made this presentation long back to present in a Blogcamp. But due to technical problems, I was unable to present it. So just thought of sharing it here. If you are in blogging from years, you might already know all the points mentioned in it!

All of us know Google Transliterate, which we often use to write something in Indian languages. Google has added this transliterate support to many of it’s services including Blogger, Gmail & Orkut. For other sites we used to go to Google Transliterate page type there & copy/paste it, which is a long process. To encounter this problem, Google has Bookmarklets for each language it supports, which magically enables users to type on any site using Google Transliterate.

How it works?

All major browsers have bookmarks & a bookmark bar. You just need to drag & drop the bookmarklet provided by Google Transliterate for the language you select. Get these bookmarklets from this page (This page is actually for Kannada, there are links to other languages on the same page). Now go to any website, like twitter, facebook…etc & click on this bookmarklet. Magic happens & all the text boxes on the page get converted into Google Transliterate boxes!! Screenshot shows how it’s loaded on the Twitter home page. User can toggle Indic language with English by using keyboard shortcut CNTRL+G. The bookmarklet loads Google Transliterate javascript upon clicking which does the magic.

(Sorry about the screenshots, lost my tools due to hard disc crash, had to rely on MS Paint!!)

Have fun typing in your language!!!

I recently acquired the domain prashanth.net, there’s no domain left with this name since it’s a very common name in South India. And also blame it on Tamil Star Prashanth So, one & a half year running backorder finally accomplished the domain. Now what!!? Since the domain is really good, I wanted all my stuff to come under it! I started learning jQuery & built a pretty neat home page for prashanth.net. Moved my personal blog to this domain & made the previous domain to redirect here (permanent, wildcard).  These were all initial setup. One of the main reasons for buying this domain was having a nice email ID which stands out!

Google Apps Registration:

There’s no better option than Google Apps account which comes for free (Standard Edition). I registered the domain with Google Apps account & did all initial setup of creating MX records to make email to work.

Email, IM Migration:

Since I wanted a complete shift to this new ID from my Gmail, I wanted to move all my mails for future refernce. I setup the mail fetcher which is available under “Settings–>Accounts–>Get mail from other accounts”. This mail fetcher copied all mails from my gmail ID to new Google Apps account, though it took few days! Similarly moved contacts with Import & Export options which gmail has.  Once email gets activated, it automatically activates IM. You can use Google Talk to connect with all other people who are on Gmail or Google Apps account. I couldn’t tell everyone on my Google Talk about my migration to new personalized ID. I used answer.im to auto respond those who try to contact me on my old gmail ID. Answer.im makes you look online all the time & when somebody pings, it replies with the message you have set.

Docs, Calendar & Custom URL:

Google Apps account also comes with other services from Google, Docs & Calendar. So all these services looks more personalized when you have custom URLs. Setting up custom URLs is very simple, you just need to change it in Google Apps service settings & create appropriate CNAME records on your domain. It might sound a bit geeky, but nothing once you know how to do it. So with Google Apps services & custom URLs, I actually got the following:

Mail: http://mail.prashanth.net

Calendar: http://cal.prashanth.net

Docs: http://docs.prashanth.net

Life looks so simple & organized now! And also gives personalization touch to it! Beleive it or not, I don’t have a office suite installed on my computers. I am a fulltime user of Google Docs! Docs also provides offline access to all your documents on it. All you have to do is enable offline access (requirs Google Gears installed). You can access, modify all your docs even when not connected to internet & all the changes you have made get syncronized when you connect next time.

Syncing with Mobile Phone:

I have Nokia E66, Symbian S60 3rd edition phone. I use System Seven push email service to receive emails in real time. System Seven recently launched syncing contacts & calendar with Gmail/Google Apps. With that my phone’s calendar is always in sync with my online calendar. It doesn’t matter whether I add an event on mobile’s calendar or my google calendar, it gets reflected everywhere.

There were so many instances which kept on proving vulnarabilities of Gmail. Many people on Orkut lost their account including my cousin due to this vulnurablities. In most of the cases it’s hard to get back your account. My friend Parashuram, who is also an Open Social developer has created a widget/gadget which keeps looking at the activities on your Gmail account & notifies whenever something suspecious happens. To use this Gmail Burglar Alarm application, you should first enable labs feature “Add any gadget by URL” by going to “Settings–>Labs–>Add any gadget by URL”. After enabling it, goto “Gadgets” tab under Settings & add gadget from URL “http://gmailids.appspot.com/gids.xml“. You can view much detailed video demonstration on adding this application/gadget into your gmail account here.

The gadget sits in your gmail sidebar & keeps tracking login/logout time, browser, OS, IP …etc. The gadget creates two calendars inside your google account, one to keep track of all the activities on your account & the other to send notification SMS when something suspecious happens. Interesting fact about this gadget is, it uses Google calendar to send SMS! Since gadget makes use of your calendars to keep the data, all the data remains with you.

Limitations:

Though this is one of the steps you can take to avoid hackers getting into your account, this can’t be ultimate. This gadget has few limitations. Gmail Burglar Alarm tracks logins only from web browsers. Can’t track logins from other applications like Gmail Mobile client, Mail Clients like thunderbird or from mobile browser.

Disclaimer:

Be careful while adding these kind of gadgets into your gmail account. Add them only from trusted sources. Gmail Burglar Alarm gadget is made with good intentions in mind. But similar gadget can also be made to steal your account password!

Headover to Parashuram’s blog to know more & install this security gadget.

Gmail Labs has released a new feature called “Offline Gmail” as announced on official gmail blog. Offline gmail uses Google Gears to download all your emails to system cache when you are connected to network. Offline Gmail keeps syncing the local cache with server when connected. When you are offline, turn browser into “Offline Mode” by going to “File–>Work Offline” & visit gmail.com as usual. All the emails will be accessible as usual.

To enable this feature goto “Settings–>Labs” & enable “Offline Gmail”. You might have also required to install Google Gears to get this functioning. This feature is not yet released to all accounts yet, but will be releasing soon. Keep looking at your Setings page.