If you’ve used Microsoft’s one note you will truly appreciate what Evernote has to offer. I usually have trouble explaining how good a service Evernote offers since its not really just another web2.0 service. Its merely the future of one of our humblest inventions, a notebook. Now what would you use a notebook for? It’s not fancy and does not have anything to do with the web or anything to with technology in general. Evernote and other notebook apps bring the power of technology to an ordinary notepad.

A notepad can be used as a scrapbook, a contacts list, a journal, a telephone directory and even some place to jot down instant ideas. Evernote offers you the ability to add pictures and even voice to your notes. You can retrieve a screenshot from your desktop and make it a part of a note.

Evernote like most notebook apps (Other prominent ones being MS Onenote and the more popular web app, Google Notebook) allows you to save notes inside notebooks. You organize related (or unrelated notes) inside notebooks (think of them as folders) In addition to creating notes from your desktop using the desktop application, you can create using mobile apps which support most mobile technologies (sadly, symbian is ignored) There is also the less intuitive and convenient web/mobileweb interface just in case you don’t feel like using any of the apps. Google notebook no longer accepts new users and its out of active development.

But my favourite feature has to be the abilty to mail stuff out to a private mail address on evernote and it creates a  note automatically. Works like magic, take a pic with your mobile phone and mail it across to your notebook. For saving those web titbits which you pick up while you are straying on the internet, they also have a simple bookmarklet (or a firefox extension, as you like it)

Tag all your notes and keep them organized. Evernote’s free service does have ads, but the ads weren’t all that obtrusive and the limits for upload should be well within what you can use. But of course, if you are power user, consider buying the evernote premium account.

Somewhere I read that Evernote could help you remember almost everything. Its quite true..I use google search history as well, so that makes sure my digital memory is really really good!

Now all Evernote needs is a symbian app. It supports the iphone, but just like facebook, ignores the symbian community. Yeah, really irritating, because I’m forced to use the mobile web interface which isn’t too much to write about. But I love the desktop app and its all the more awesome on my netbook.

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Set up Dropbox (http://getdropbox.com) and installed it on all my laptops. Now that should keep them all synced. I always had trouble carrying around files on a USB drive. Especially when I think that USBs are meant to run operating systems and not to carry files.
Now that lets me access all my synced files from anywhere in the world, not just my laptops. But then its a bit of redundancy. Why would I need to sync files across machines, when I carry my operating system with me?
Dropbox is easy and lets you sync upto 2GB for free. Just download Dropbox and signup with an email address and password. The dropbox folder inside your My documents folder is just another folder, except that its synced across all your linked computers.

Still haven’t tried Dropbox for Ubuntu, which reminds me..I’ll need make a post on the Ubuntu installation as well.

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A test post to test the facebook posterous integration. Read more about posterous and how you can use email to write your blog post. Just configured Google analytics for my posterous blog as well.
My primary offline blogging tool has been the windows live writer (Yeah, from M$) But, then since I'm running Ubuntu, I needed a good blog post editor. And what better than the gmail compose interface.

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Make Reading easier on your eyes.

One of the main reasons everything looks better on a Mac is because, Mac uses better font-smoothing technology as compared to a Windows. But, font smoothing is subjective and its more a matter of personal preference. (Scroll down to see the difference)
Mac uses a stronger form of font-smoothing which makes letters look more darker, clearer and less fuzzy. It’s the same technology which the Apple safari browser uses to render clear text. It might take sometime for you to get adjusted to an OSX’s font smoothing, but once you get used to it, its one of the most comfortable ways to read loads and loads of text (no wonder, the Mac is popular with designers, it makes everything seem good..) 
     Font hinting is the method preferred by Microsoft. Unhinted font is used on OS X and Linux. and you cannot disable font hinting in windows. GD++ is a tiny application which seeks to do this by changing the windows font smoothing during runtime. Simply download the GDI++ zip file, extract and run GDItray.exe.

The font smoothing might take sometime to get used to. But, like they say..once you’re used to a Mac..You’d never go back. I love reading Ebooks with strong font smoothing so the file is in my startup folder, just so that, it runs at every windows startup.

see the difference between the windows font smoothing and font smoothing with GDI++ enabled.

Windows font smoothing

GDI++ enabled

Read how to make your Windows look like OSX here.

via Estevão Mascarenhas

The latest news doing its rounds on the internet is the futuristic looking, theme mockups of the Mozilla Firefox 4 browser. The new theme reminds me of the minimalistic feel adopted by both Chrome and IE8. The wiki states the mock ups are only for brainstorming and might be revised several times before they make it to real browser arena..

But, the interface looks really minimalistic and I loved it so much that I went around searching for a download. And here it is, in all its glory. Download the file, extract, click and drag the *.jar file to your Mozilla addons window.

Thanks to “BoneyardBrew“  and “SoapyHamHocks” @ DeviantART for the awesome theme. Do check out more of his work at his DeviantART gallery!
You would also need to install the Firefox Personal menu extension to complete the look.
Have a cool theme to recommend? Leave a comment!

Even though face recognition is not as popular as other biometric means of security such as fingerprint recognition, it still is a powerful and easy to use way to increase your security. Banana screen lets you harness the facial recognition to login to your PC without typing in your password.

Being used to a biometric fingerprint scanner on both my work and home laptops, I was disappointed when I started using my ASUS netbook. I had to think of an alternate way to login without typing in passwords. Searching online gave me results on only one application, Banana screen from Banana Security. But even lifehacker’s links weren’t alive since Banana security’s website had nothing on it, let alone a download link. After a bit more googling, I found a link to a Banana screen download at Softpedia.

Banana screen requires that you enter the windows password before the first time you use it. After installation, you create a profile of yourself called a model. The Model is a webcam capture of your face which allows you to login. I would have liked BS to completely replace the windows login screen, but BS only creates an alternate windows lock screen (Alt + L). Every time it fails to recognize (the first few times, since it needs to adapt the model to different lighting environments) you’d have to enter your password to login. And it updates the model. It learns!!

One tip would be to set the camera timeout to a low value on the settings. That way the camera doesn’t stay on for long. To login, press shift to activate the camera, and lo, access granted!! If you enjoyed the application, leave a comment..

1. Twitter is bigger!
2. Follower/Subscriber count does not matter on friendfeed.
3. The general quality of content on friendfeed is better than that on twitter (ok..I made this up..I don’t have any scientific data to prove this)
4. To maximize their reach, spammers believe they need followers
5. Friendfeed is a content aggregator. Spam bots and ppl would have to be on more than one network to actually utilize friendfeed.
6. Many spammers do not even know of friendfeed, Most spammers just copy what other spammers do. (spammers are not as educated as you think they are!)
7. Friendfeed caters to an exclusive audience, while twitter serves almost everyone
8. Most people on friendfeed know how to combat spam!
9. There is spam on friendfeed. And you can report it (instead of just blocking them)
10. Some spam still gets through, like this blog post..and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You need to edit an image real quick and you are working either on a netbook or someone else’s machine which doesn’t have a copy of your favourite photoshop. Or maybe you never had photoshop in the first place.
Adobe Photoshop has become the premier digital one stop solution for image editing and it should come as no surprise that more than a few would have attempted to ride the photoshop success wave with their own clones.

The first clone which I have been using for a while is the Aviary Phoenix online image editor. Mind you, this has even support for layers and can handle almost anything you might want to get done with an image. Its completely on the cloud (and free as well) and all you need is your trusty Firefox (or any other browser) by your side to edit your image. I guess there’s a sign up required but that’s not so cumbersome. Being a web app has its advantages, such as being able to capture any webpage easily and Aviary even has a firefox addon. Aviary has a complete suite of applications for every possible form of image editing requirement online.

The second is a very light weight application called the Artweaver. Now artweaver is a fully functional free image editor. Users of photoshop would find themselves completely at home because of the interface. What’s more, it even supports export/import as Photoshop format files (PSDs).
The Artweaver interface (I love GITS!!)

Artweaver even has a portable version which you can run off a USB key. You can further enhance artweaver with a number of plugins (which you can find on the download page), you even get to extend it to use XnView, the freeware image viewer.

Both these applications would not be able to replace Photoshop for power users. But when it comes to basic image editing, they get the job done quite well!