Social Browser Flock Goes 2.0

Mozilla powered social web browser, Flock has released a new beta version of Flock 2.0 for early adopters and bug hunters. So far, Flock was using Firefox 2’s code under the hood, so it didn’t include all the performance and security improvements featured in Firefox 3, which is due for release tomorrow. Flock 2.0 uses Firefox 3’s latest Gecko 1.9 rendering engine, which promises better performance and smaller memory footprint. It also incorporates Firefox 3’s favorite manager and the nifty “awesome bar”, which auto-completes based on your browsing history. The new download manager can resume downloads after restart.

For the most part, Flock 2.0 retains the same look and feel of Flock 1.2, except for the Media Bar and People Sidebar, which have been slightly polished to make things go more intuitive. If you seriously crave for performance improvements, they you should certainly download a copy of Flock 2.0 and give it a try.

how to build orkut themes?

Orkut has introduced over a dozen themes for their users to choose. But unlike iGoogle themes, Orkut doesn’t have the API required for third parties to build themes for the service. If you use Firefox + Greasemonkey, then you can build your own Orkut themes in just a few seconds. Here’s how:

Go to http://nbfun.net/orkuttheme.php and enter the url of a valid image. (Make sure that your image has enough width, else it’ll get repeated)

Click on the submit button and you’ll get the greasemonkey script with the background image of your choice.

It took me several trial and errors to determine the best width for Orkut. If you are already using an official theme, then make sure you switch back to the classic theme before using the custom greasemonkey theme. Else, it’ll screw it up.

Custom themes will extend the pageload time by several seconds. This is because it has to fetch the image from an external source after the page is fully loaded. Personally, I’m not a great fan of themes for Orkut. I’ll stick to the classic Orkut theme for now.

More Orkut themes

Orkut has introduced over a dozen themes for their users to choose. But unlike iGoogle themes, Orkut doesn’t have the API required for third parties to build themes for the service. If you use Firefox + Greasemonkey, then you can build your own Orkut themes in just a few seconds. Here’s how:
Go to http://nbfun.net/orkuttheme.php, and enter the url of a valid image. (Make sure that your image has enough width, else it’ll get repeated)
Click on the submit button and you’ll get the greasemonkey script with the background image of your choice.
It took me several trial and errors to determine the best width for Orkut. If you are already using an official theme, then make sure you switch back to the classic theme before using the custom greasemonkey theme. Else, it’ll screw it up.
Custom themes will extend the pageload time by several seconds. This is because it has to fetch the image from an external source after the page is fully loaded. Personally, I’m not a great fan of themes for Orkut. I’ll stick to the classic Orkut theme for now.

interoperatability between Gtalk and YM

Ever since Microsoft pulled out of Yahoo’s acquisition deal, Yahoo’s stocks have been tumbling. While some Yahoo! investors blamed their CEO, Jerry Yang for not pursuing the deal, others said Microsoft would make a second effort to buy Yahoo, once their stocks are down.
In the mean time, Yahoo! tried to revive itself by signing an advertisement deal with Google. As per the deal, Yahoo! would run ADSENSE ADS along their natural RESULTS in U.S and Canada. The advertising deal is estimated to bring another $800 million for Yahoo!
This deal was not completely about advertisement. The same press release from Google brought some good news to Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk users as well. Both the instant messaging service will soon be interoperable, which means Google Talk users can seamlessly chat with Yahoo! Messenger users and vice versa. This definitely puts Yahoo! Messenger in a stronger position because they have partnered with both Google and Microsoft (for Windows Live Manager). Yahoo! Messenger users can chat with both Live Messenger and Google Talk users without any third party add-on or Jabber transporter. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

iPhone Unlocking to be Exterminated?

Apple took a different business model for the iPhone 3G. As per the new business model, the cellular carrier will provide the iPhone at a subsidized price, make-up the cost in monthly charges and don’t provide a chunk of their revenues to Apple. Previously, the customer had to pay the full retail price of the iPhone and carriers had to funnel their some their revenues to Apple.

What if you buy an iPhone 3G and unlock it? Since cellular carriers have subsidized the phone, every unlocked iPhone is a potential lose in revenue for them. According Crave’s source, Brits who walk into O2 stores to purchase iPhone will have to sign-up a contract before they can actually see the iPhone.

This means the only possible way to get an iPhone without being tied into the contract is by opting for pay-as-you-go (prepaid) options. The plans and pricing of such a prepaid scheme has not been announced yet, but it will definitely cost a little extra.

Moreover, the App Store will be launched in July and probably unlocked iPhone users won’t be able to lay their hands on the third party Software, which are available. To add more fire to the business, iPhone is coming to 70 countries. In the past, people living in these countries had no other choice but to buy unlocked iPhone. Unlocked iPhones will lose their appeal and that puts the whole unlocked iPhone business at risk.

Firefox 3 launching on june 17th

Official date has been set! The Mozilla Developers News blog has made an announcement earlier today, saying "After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th"

Yes, there is a small possibility of a major bug being discovered, like the one found in the Mac version of Firefox 3, due to which a third release candidate was put out. Hopefully, everything will go smoothly and we’ll have the browser on next Tuesday.

If you are participating in the "Download Day" campaign, then don’t forget to download and install Firefox 3 on Tuesday. Mozilla is attempting to set the Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours.

It’s not just Firefox, but Opera users have a reason to rejoice as well. Opera software has announced the availability of Opera 9.5. After months of beta, Opera 9.5 is finally released. Along with the new look and feel, Opera 9.5 also features a new rendering engine for better performance, and several security measures for safe and secure browsing. You can download Opera 9.5 or read the Changelog.

Google with Gmail Labs

Google has decided to experiment with new and unique ideas on Gmail with a new section called Gmail Labs. Google receives lots of cool ideas from employees and their users, but they don’t really implement those ideas because they are not sure, whether users will like it or not. Gmail Labs will fill the gap between ideas and implementation. Here’s what Keith Coleman, Product Manager for Gmail says:"The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break".

Gmail Labs is slowly being rolled out to users. If it’s enabled on your account, you’ll notice a new tab in the settings page called "Labs". It has a list of experimental features (13 at the moment), you can enable or disable any of them. Some experimental features don’t work, when another labs feature is enabled.

Just incase, you don’t find the labs tab in your settings page. You can manually go to https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=1#settings and activate the labs feature on your account. Before you head over and start playing with Gmail Labs, please keep in mind that they are experimental. It may break, change or disappear without any notice.

orkut with foto tagging

Lately, Orkut has been closely trying to imitate Facebook. It started with applications, then status messages and the latest is the newly implemented photo tagging feature. If you log into your Orkut account, you’ll notice a new section called “Photos of Me” in your homepage.
This section will contain all photos in which you have been tagged by your friends. The same section is visible to your friends on your profile as “Photos of Him”. The process of tagging your photos is awkwardly simple:
1. Enlarge the photo that needs to be tagged. Click on the “Add tag” link at the bottom right of the photo. Your mouse cursor will change into ‘+’.
2. Drag the ‘+’ cursor over anyone’s face to show up “Add person tag” dialogue box.
3. Enter your friend’s name and click on save.
4. This photo will appear on your friend’s profile under his “Photos of him” section.
If you are concerned about privacy, you can completely disable this feature from the privacy settings page.
Orkut’s photo tagging feature reminds me of Flickr’s note feature, where you can leave notes on any part of the photo by dragging a box on it. Ironically, when I saw this on Orkut, I confused it with Flickr’s photo tagging feature, which happens to be completely different. Nevertheless, I find the photo tagging feature to be extremely useable.