GMail Ninja

Most people I know have an inbox which holds every email that was ever sent to them thanks to the virtually unlimited mailbox sizes being provided by GMail/yahoo & others. Trust me organising your mailbox will be a fruitful activity especially when you want to find something or keep track of all those emails. With GMAIL we got to realise is that it is not your vanila email account, it has a a lot more capability than you realise. Have a look at these tips and you will realise how much more you can do with GMAIL.

Excerpt from the original post :

The GMail product management team has combined the best of tips into a guide at www.gmail.com/tips, cheekily entitled "Become a Gmail Ninja." The tips are categorized into ninja belts (white, green, black and master ) based on how much mail you get each day. There is even a printable 2 page version :-).

Home-2009

I watched this movie yesterday and I can't find words to describe how I feel. Guilt, anger, fear are few words that come to mind. Now we all know what we have been doing to earth with our mindless industrialisation but I think after watching this movie we will have to accept the harsh reality.

Mother earth is dying ! Are we ready to do something about it ?

Synopsis -

In 200,000 years (majority of it in the last 50 years) humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it's too to be a pessimist: Humanity has barely ten years to reverser the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth's riches and change its patterns of consumption.

By bringing footage from over 50 countries, all seen from the air, by sharing with us his wonder and his concern, with this film Yann Arthus-Bertrand lays a foundation stone for the edifice that, together, we must rebuild.

We can no longer afford to bury our heads in the sand and think the danger will pass away.

Another suggested watch on the same lines is the documantery An Inconvenient Truth.

The Missing Link - Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar

I have been a strong advocate of using Google Apps for business but it lacked a major feature which was of using Outlook as a full fledged client. Well they seem to have fixed this with the release of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Now you can use outlook to sync all your emails, calendar, & contacts. I am not sure yet whether you can sync notes or tasks. I will soon find out and post an update.

With the release of an offline mode and now this, Google Apps seems to have turned a full circle.

Update : In case that just made you think about deploying Google Apps in your organisation, here a link that can help.

Update 2 : I cannot confirm whether it can sync tasks/notes. I guess they would get added once Gmail itself has notes (it does have Tasks though).

REPORT: Pollution from 15 of world's biggest ships equal that of world's 760m cars

"The problem isn't necessarily with the ships' 109,000-horsepower (wtf!!) engines that endlessly spin away 24 hours a day, 280 days a year. In fact, these powerplants are some of the most fuel efficient units in the world. The real issue lies with the heavy fuel oil the ships run on and the almost complete lack of regulations applied to the giant exhaust stacks of these container ships."

Whenever I thought about pollution, Motor cars, power generation stations, industries came to mind, never thought about ships being such a big contributer.

Click on the title to read more.

Test Your Site in Different Browsers Using Adobe BrowserLab

Cross-browser testing has been one of the biggest challenges for Web designers because it is such an arduous and time-intensive task. Now with Adobe BrowserLab, designers have a simple solution that enables comprehensive browser compatibility testing in just a matter of minutes,The bad news is that the service is free for a limited time.

Another way to test your site is to use online services like BrowserShots, which generates screenshots for a web page in more than 80 versions of the most common browsers used in Windows, Linux, and Mac. The process takes time and you may have to wait up to an hour to see the screenshots.

Freeware to make your geeky life easier.

Any self respecting geek has a list of his favourite utilities/tools which he/she cannot do without. I personally carry a folder called MUST at all times on my USB drive which has all these little utilities which can come in handy especially when you are trying to fix somebodies computer or using somebody elses computer.

I generally use a utility which is free, portable (no setup should be required) and small - in that order of preference.

Some of the stuff that I use regularly.

KeePass - Password manager

Recuva - Undelete Files/Folders

VLC Player - Hassle free video player which plays almost anything you throw at it

Duplicate Music Finder - Reclaim you harddisk space

Foxit Reader - Blazing fast Tiny PDF Reader

Microsoft ImageResizerPowertoy - Simplest Picture Resizing-No you don't need Photoshop for that !

Karens Replicator - Schedule backups of your files on you computer to your USB drive, vice versa

TotalCopy - Copy with a Pause

Directory Statistics - When you don't know what is occupying your new 250GB hard drive.

Portable Apps - A great site for a lot of portable apps.

Most of these have a portable version, make sure you look for them.

Here is another list which talks about nifty little utilities (all under 1 MB) which can make your life easier. Take a peek.