Hold Off on Upgrading to BlackBerry Desktop Software v7.0 for PCs

In case you have been considering updating Desktop Manager on your PC to v7.0 I highly recommend holding off for now. We have been hearing reports of multiple problems with Sync and connections working on the new version. Users who have been calling RIM support have been told to wait a few days for the fix and @Bla1ze has confirmed as much on CrackBerry. If you have upgraded to v7.0 and are having issues you can downgrade by downloading the older version from carrier sites like T-Mobile here.

Learn How to Create eBooks for the iPad with this O’Reilly eBook

 

Apple’s iBooks Author is a free software program that lets you create eBooks with minimal effort. You can either publish your eBooks as standard PDFs, that can be read anywhere, or export them in the iBook format that can also be distributed through Apple’s iBookstore.

iBooks Author, as this video demo suggests, is like a WYSIWYG editor for eBooks. It is nowhere as complex as some of other book authoring programs (for example, Adobe Indesign) and yet you get nice professional-looking eBooks that may also have an element of interactivity.

The downside is that Apple has developed iBooks Author exclusively for the Mac platform and second, eBooks created using this authoring tool can only be sold through the iBookstore. You are allowed your give away your eBook as free PDFs but you cannot sell them outside the iTunes store.

If you are fine with the various restrictions of Apple and are looking for some help to get started with iBooks Author, here’s brand new title from O’Reilly Media –Publishing with iBooks Author – that should definitely interest you.

This 94-page eBook, authored by Adam Witwer and Nellie McKesson of O’Reilly, discusses every single feature of the iBook Author app but my favorite parts are the little tips and common pitfalls that you are less likely to find in the official help manual. For instance:

1. You can ditch the Media Widget and just drag and drop an audio or video file right from Finder or the Media Browser onto a blank spot in your book, but the end result is the same.

2. If you managed to get Author working on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier, you don’t get to play with the 3D chart options. These depend on the Scene Kit framework, available in OS X Lion. It may seem like you can add one, but Author slows to a crawl and your chart just looks like a garbled mess.

The eBook is available as a free download on the O’Reilly website and you can have it in either PDF, ePUB or MOBI formats depending on where you want to read that book.

Publishing eBooks with iBooks Author – Apple Demo

-by Amit Aagarwal(Digital Inspiration)

Easily Monitor System Resources in Ubuntu With Indicator-Multiload

Do you like to keep an eye on system resource usage in Ubuntu?

Like many people I only tend to do so when my desktop is grinding to a halt because of a misbehaving app. Because of this I’m sometimes too impatient late to gracefully rectify the situation; my desktop becomes so unresponsive that nothing short of a hard reboot is required inorder to solve the screw up in a timely fashion.

But maybe if I kept a cautious eye on hardware usage I would spot rogue apps before they got out of hand. Perhaps by using something like Indicator Multiload: -

Features

By default only one graph - Processor - is displayed. If you’re using a multi-core CPU do note that it graphs usage on an ‘overall’ basis rather than per-core. Clicking on this graph displays a menu with more detailed data on other aspects of your system, such as memory, swap, network usage, etc.

The Preferences pane lets you fully configure what parts of your hardware are monitored, how often, and which graphs are displayed on the panel. If you’re a stickler for detail you can also adjust the colours used on the graphs themselves, though I find the default settings to be more than adequate.

Install

Indicator Multiload is available to install in Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 via the following PPA: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:indicator-multiload/stable-daily
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install indicator-multiload

After installation open the Dash and search ‘Indicator Multiload‘ to launch it.

OpenShot Version 1.4.2 Released!

Another Openshot version is out. Now its the turn of version 1.4.2. This version fixes many locale and translation-related bugs. Find out what all...

The highlights of this release includes

• Fixed many critical locale-related bugs
• Fixed reversed clips, for accurate IN and OUT points
• Updated translations & fixed missing translations
• Improved help manual
• Fixed h.264 exporting for non-English languages

Surf the Internet privately with Browzar

 

Privacy is the flavor of the season! Every one values privacy on the Internet, but no matter how hard to you try to eliminate your browsing and other online history, temporary internet files, cookies, index.dat file, Flash cookies, etc, you will always end up leaving traces behind on your computer. While this may not affect most computer users, if you truly value your privacy and are looking to surf privately on the web, you can check out freeware Browzar.

Browzar is a shell browser for Internet Explorer which lets your browse anonymously without leaving any trace. Being based on Internet Explorer 9, makes it that much more secure. It also offers a Private Search too, but you are free to set any alternative search engine of your choice. It does not support ActiveX downloading and auto-complete too.

I found the .com button to be very handy and useful. No need to type the URL including .com or press Cntrl+Enter. Simply type the URL in the address bar and click on the .com button to add www and .com before and after the domain name.

Browzar comes in the installer version as well as a portable version, thereby letting you carry it on your USB stick. So the next time you are using a public computer like maybe at a cyber-cafe, your school or college library and you want to check out some sensitive information, you can simply plug in the USB stick and start browsing with Browzar.  And if you need to close Browzar quickly or don’t want to have the clean up box showing when you exit, simply hit the “Boss Button” or Ctrl + Space keys and Browzar will close instantly.

On exit, Browzar deletes:

• Temperory Internet Files
• Cookies
• Browsing History like list of sites visited
• Index.dat file
• Media files
• Temporary Application data like Flash and Java files.

There is also an option to Secure Delete all your web history. The Secure Delete function can be activated by selecting the function under the Browzar ‘Tools’ menu.

Browzar comes in three flavors or themes:

1. Browzar Black theme
2. Browzar Silver theme
3. Browzar Windows theme.

It is a very light-weight app - just a 222 KB download, and you can download it free from its home page.

You might want to also check out this link which talks of over 25 alternate web browsers for your Windows computer, each offering a different set of features or this one about portable browsers.

If you have liked this post, you might want to check out some more, on topics like Browsers.

Download and Search Music File in 16 Search Engines using Songr

 

There are many programs that let you search the Web and download songs. However, only few are effective in their function. Moreover, they are pricey and sometimes do not offer enough options to download music from multiple services.

If you are a music junkie or the kind of user who regularly downloads and stores the music on computer, try Songr, a freeware with an ad-free interface to search your favorite music.

Freeware to search and download music

Songr lets you search for download music using around 16 search engines, right from your Windows desktop.

The main window of the program, along with simple and minimalist interface offers a dedicated search aggregator for MP3 songs. All a user need to do is enter a keyword. The program then searches the string entered in various search engines shown in the screen-shot below.

In Songr, files are not required to be downloaded first. If you want, you can play them right away, once they have been located, right there in the search field. By simply double-clicking it, the item in the list can be played.

Alternatively, you can download the same item to a hard drive by right-clicking and selecting ‘Download’ or accessing ‘Save’ button from the top of the window. The results are invariably displayed and sorted in order of quality, thereby giving you the chance to easily download the one with best quality.

There is an additional search option in Songr, ‘Search by Lyrics’ that lets a user search for a song by typing part of its lyrics. This is really helpful for someone who remembers just part of lyrics but not the title of the song. Apart from all this, You can download HQ/HD YouTube videos and extract the audio track and even buy your favorite songs from Amazon, eMusic, Rhapsody and Zune.

Songr Features:

• Download or listen to streaming music from 16 mp3 search engines
• Full album search
• Automatic conversion of results to direct links to listen with your favorite media player
• Audio extraction from YouTube videos
• Search by lyrics: Type some words and get the name of the song and an audio preview!
• Search by artist
• Download HQ/HD YouTube videos and optionally extracts the audio track as mp3
• Double clicking a mp3 file opens it directly in Windows Media Player
• Automatic updates check, to get more search engine connectors
• Links to buy music from Amazon and Rhapsody
• Ad-free interface

Pros

1. Easy to use
2. Lets you search songs by lyrics
3. Also downloads YouTube videos

Cons

1. Results are not perfect always
2. Downloads can’t be paused

Songr is very light on resources, weighs only 4.0MB and works well on Windows 7 too. Requires .NET Framework 3.5.

5 Best Free Word Processors – Comparision Chart

 

A Word Processor is a software that lets you type, edit, format and customize text. It can also refer to an Office application that lets you type your documents. While there are lots of word processors out there, it is difficult to choose a good one and the one which is perfect for you. To help you out, we have compared the features od some free word processors. Have a look on the comparison chart and let us know which you prefer.

Word Processors Compared

This is a comparison chart that compares 5 different free world processors and tells you about features of each word processor application. The chart is in image format, if you can’t view it properly then click on it to enlarge.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice is an open source Office productivity suite. The suite comes bundled with a word processor, spread sheet, presentation and much more. OpenOffice was first developed and started as StarOffice and was developed by StarDivision and then it was taken over by Sun Microsystems. Click here to download OpenOffice.org.

Jarte

Jarte is a free word processing application for Windows users powered by WordPad engine. The standard version is offered free of cost, but the program is also available in Pro version. The interface and the looks of Jarte are powered by Mac OSX and it has a lot of features. Click here to download Jarte free version.

NeoOffice

All the Mac users, here is something for you, a friend of OpenOffice.org for Mac. Yes, NeoOffice is a free and open source office suite for Mac and it even looks like OpenOffice.org It was ported to Mac by Planamesa Software and it used JAVA technology to do so. It can be run on Windows by some emulation means. Click here to download NeoOffice.

AbiWord

AbiWord is yet another free and open source word processors, it was originally developed by source gear corporations and then was soon adopted by AbiSource. Then they continued with the development of AbiWord and today it is the one of the best free word processors in my opinion. Click here to download AbiWord.

Libre Office

Libre Office is one more free and open source Office suite and is a fork of OpenOffice.org. Libre Office was developed with intentions of good format support. It runs perfectly on Windows. Click here to download Libre Office.

Word Processors Comparison Poll

Please vote for your word processing software. We appreciate your vote.

What do you think is the best word processing application?

OpenOffice.org
Jarte
NeoOffice
AbiWord
Libre Office
Other:

Hope you liked our comparison chart. Comments or observations would be most welcome.

Featured Ubuntu Software Centre apps for January 2012

 

We’re back with a new edition of the featured apps in the Ubuntu Software Centre. The theme this month is going to be gaming, and for this we’ve carefully hand-picked and brought you 3 of the coolest, slickest games now available in Ubuntu. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

 

Core Breach

 

CoreBreach is an anti-gravity racing game with combat-based gameplay. Its unique graphic style, with a cell-shaded look, sets up a very futuristic atmosphere with a wide range of choices for ships, race tracks and powerful weapons.

Its intuitive controls support common types of steering wheels and game pads to enjoy the full driving experience directly from your computer.

 

And Yet it Moves

And Yet It Moves is an award-winning physics-based platform game in which players rotate the game world at will to solve challenging puzzles. Tilting the world turns walls into floors, slides into platforms, and stacks of rocks into dangerous hazards.

Players navigate through a paper collage world created with colorful pieces of cardboard and set to distinctive music. With four different environments and unlockable modes, And Yet It Moves is a platformer that will provide gamers with endless challenges.

 

Oil Rush

Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defence.

Fight the naval war between furious armies across the boundless waters of the post-apocalyptic world. Pump the ever-so-precious black gold by oil rigs, capture platforms and destroy the enemy in the sea and in the air. Be ingenious to unlock super technologies and quick to send your squads straight into the heat of the battle!

 

Want your app to be featured next?

So are you a developer and would like your app to be featured in the Ubuntu Software Centre and available to millions of Ubuntu users? Well, nothing easier than that, then: head up to the Ubuntu App Developer site and get your app published in 6 easy steps ›.

We’re confident these cool games will keep you busy until the next featured apps post!

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Amazing Software’s of the Week

QQ Messenger International 1.1:

QQ Messenger may not sound familiar, but it's the most popular IM client in China.When you think about IM clients, the first names that come to your head are Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and the likes. But have you ever heard of QQ Messenger?With more than one billion registered accounts, QQ Messenger is now more than just a simple IM client: it's a whole social phenomenon that millions of people use on a daily basis, and an essential part of their lives.

Download  QQ Messenger

Real Desktop Standard 1.69:
Real Desktop is one of those PC applications that aren't really that useful, but have such an attractive effect on your system that you want to install them anyway.Real Desktop turns your Windows desktop into a three-dimensional environment where all your shortcuts look like small pieces that have been dropped on the floor – and they actually behave like that. You can move them, rotate them, lift them a bit from the floor and mix them all around the desktop surface. The only icon that remains in Real Desktop somewhat apart is the Recycle bin, probably to help you find it faster.

Download  Real Desktop Standard 1.69

Rhapsody 2.1 Build 0.163:
Simple, fast and reliable, Rhapsody seamlessly combines complete music jukebox software with award winning music services to bring the world of music to your fingertips.Whether you are playing your personal MP3 collection or exploring our on demand catalog of over a million pristine digital songs, Rhapsody is ready to deliver the music experience you're looking for.Rhapsody's jukebox software is packed with all the tools you need to build and manage your digital music collection. Import and organize your music files, burn CDs, download songs and transfer them to your portable music player. Rhapsody makes it easy.

Download Rhapsody 2.1 Build 0.163

 

Amazing 3D Aquarium 2.50:

Amazing 3D Aquarium is a unique, living underwater world, inhabited by fish from various families, including plankton, starfish, sea anemones and other underwater plants and corals. You can watch the Aquarium life in two modes - Animated desktop Wallpaper and Animated Screensavers.Not only can you simply sit back and watch but you can add new fish packs into the aquarium, add and change coral landscapes and apply other accompanying aquarium add-ons, such as clocks. The aquarium will give you an opportunity to watch a living underwater world on your computer´s desktop.

Download  Amazing 3D Aquarium 2.50

Blender Portable 2.60a:
Reviewing Blender Portable was like one of those nightmares where you suddenly realize that you are in deep water, but can't swim. Amazing in its variety, flexibility and features, Blender is a huge program, and no matter how thorough the review, it just doesn't seem to do it justice.
Blender Portable is a no-install version of the 3D content creation suite. As it doesn’t need installation, there is no messing around with managers or complicated set-up processes. You simply open the file, and away you go. For the uninitiated, the Blender Portable interface is a little overwhelming.

Download Blender Portable 2.60a

Xara Xtreme 4.0.1.5601:
Xara Xtreme's integrated Xara Picture Editor can handle all the most common photo work in its sleep - a simple, fast and effective one-click auto-enhance can adjust brightness and contrast etc, you can crop, rotate and resize, and repair red-eye. And Xtreme is even better when you want to get more ambitious - maybe adding a neat transparency effect or adjusting the colors, maybe using a plug-in to add awesome effects. And don't forget that Xtreme is a drawing tool too, so it's a snip to add text, add a frame or any other drawn image - making it ideal for everything from simple cards to knock out photo compositions.

Download Xara Xtreme 4.0.1.5601

Torq 2.0.2:
Torq is an impressive audio mixing app that helps you create your own music. Developed by Avid and used by thebest DJs around the world, Torq features professional tools and results.The interface in Torq will surely look confusing, even overwhelming to those not used to music mixing software. The program can have up to four mixing decks, though you can have only two visible at the beginning, while you get to grips with it. All buttons, sliders and menus are conveniently laid out for ease of use.

Download Torq 2.0.2

Marine Life 3D Screensaver 1.0:

Underwater screensavers are usually my favourite because they're the most interesting. There's always something happening and the colours are awesome. Since I've managed to kill every real fish I've ever owned too, it's also a lot less hassle.
Marine Life 3D Screensaver is one of the most realistic I've seen yet featuring an amazing array of fish and coral. You get clownfish, dancing seahorses and many other exotic creatures I have no idea existed swimming in crystal clear water. It's really relaxing just watching them swim around as they seem to have a very distinct life of their own. There are even sound effects although you might want to turn these off if you're working in an office.

Download Marine Life 3D Screensaver 1.0

Windows Phone Device Manager Version v1.8 public beta now available

 

For those looking to literally explore more of your developer-unlocked Windows Phone (including CheveronWP7 Labs), you'll want to grab v1.8 of the Windows Phone Device Manger by Schaps. The app is a one-stop place for doing all sorts of cool things on your phone via your Windows Desktop--it's basically the old Device Manager from Windows Mobile but augmented with many news functions. Here are just a few:

· Applications management: view, install/uninstall & update applications

· File management: explore device, exchange files with your phone

· Sync files, folders and favorites with phone

· Send to Windows Phone (to send files, apps, ringtones, web links in one click)

· Detailed device information (CPU, ROM, RAM, storage, network, battery, OS,...)

· Detailed storage information

· Add and manage custom ringtones

· Send SMS, E-mail, notes directly from PC (without needing cloud services)

· Remote screen view and take screenshots of the phone

· Backup/restore files and application data

· Create and manage backup/restore of the phone

· Full access to apps isolated storage....

Facebook Messenger For Windows Launched

After widespread adoption of Facebook Messenger on Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone, the social networking behemoth had begun closed beta testing of the Windows flavour of its messenger a month ago. As expected, it didn't take long for the app to leak out. Call it a cleverly-orchestrated marketing ruse or smart fire-control measure, but FB stole the pilferer's thunder by officially  launching the application hours after the leak. Click here to download the desktop client, or visit the help page for a comprehensive FAQ.
The application is only compatible with Windows 7 at the moment, and requires you to log into Facebook through your browser, after which it can be closed. The lack of a basic inbuilt login feature points towards a hasty release. Even functionalities such as privacy and visibility settings, video calling, group chat, and the settings menu are sorely absent, but they are expected to be added in the future through automatic updates.
The messenger's main purpose is to relieve FB addicts from keeping their browser open for live feeds. Like any messenger app, it lies dormant in your system tray and keeps you updated of the latest Messages, Notifications, and Friend Requests. You also get features such as tabbed conversations and pop-up notifications near the system tray.
Check out these screenshots to decide if the app is worth the half-an-MB download (joke).


The messenger window displays your online friends, the ticker feed, and the usual notifications icons.

The chat window supports tabbed conversations.

Notifications pop up near the taskbar.

Top 3 Twitter Clients for Windows 7

Twitter, the micro-messaging service today has become the most popular place to view, share and post one’s thoughts. The battle among various Twitter clients is ever-growing, getting fierce and therefore no surprises why many more are coming up to win you over or bring more flexibility and power to you. The Top 3 Twitter Apps for Windows 7 are being listed and discussed here.

Twitter Clients for Windows 7

TweetDeck: By far, the best Twitter client! It includes a built-in spam-monitor to fight Twitter spam. Apart from this, it has the ability to monitor and manage multiple Twitter accounts from one interface. The social media dashboard application for managing Twitter is compatible with several operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

TweetDeck features:

• Geolocation feature
• Auto-updating Twitter lists
• A single ‘+’ button to open up a new dialog, allowing you to add lists and Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn columns to your view
• Customize background colors and more. Hide columns like Direct Messages, etc if you don’t want them displayed, shorten URLs, schedule tweets and many more features.

Seesmic: Seesmic is available in two versions, both working just fine with any browser.

•  Desktop application
• Web application

The desktop application is compatible with Windows and Mac OS and supports over 90+, 3^rd party integrations. The web version of the application supports not only multiple Twitter account but Facebook, Linkedin, and Salesforce Chatter accounts too. Seesmic devotes the option to insert videos and pictures and share them directly.

Seesmic features:

• Multiple Accounts
• Lists
• Photos and Video
• Support for Social Networks
• Stability
• Shorten URLs
• Search

MetroTwit: MetroTwit is a Twitter client that presents a brilliant implementation of the Metro UI for Windows. The application takes advantage of the latest Microsoft .NET 4.0 and Windows Presentation Foundation 4 frameworks.

The clean Twitter desktop client is integrated with Windows 7 taskbar, offers a good range of settings and customizable notifications.

The application also includes some cool functions such as auto-complete and spell check which can be enabled or disabled via MetroTwit settings. You can even use Proxlet, a Chromeextension to mute any user (temporarily or permanently, block any Twitter app, or filter out any hashtag.

Metro Twit features:

• Auto-complete for usernames and hashtags
• Windows 7 taskbar integration
• Themes and accents
• Quick-glance notifications
• Resizable and reorder able columns
• Flawless high DPI support

These are some of the best Twitter Clients for Windows 7. Apart from these, there are also others. Blu has a great interface and animations. If you like a minimalistic tool see Destroy Twitter.

If you would like to recommend others or share your experiences with any of them, please do so in the comments section below.

Reduce Size of Multiple Pictures In One Go

In our everyday life we use so many gadgets, but there is one thing that is common in almost all of them that is camera. All of us like clicking pictures as images can capture the best moments. But after we click the pictures we have a lot of formatting to do with them in terms of their size, format and sometimes also their name. I have got a solution to all your needs, an application named Lightning Image Resizer.
This tool will help you perform all the possible tasks that you want with your images such as changing them to the desired format, resizing them and changing their name by either prefixing something to their name or post fixing something to their name. The tool as it’s name suggests, Lightning Image Resizer works lightning fast due to the concept of thread being implemented in it which will allow you to decide the maximum number of threads being  used to perform the task which will speed up the task.
The above window will open up when you will run the software the software for the first time after downloading it, the software doesn’t require any installation. The software has two buttons at the top viz. Source Folder and Source Files. The Source Folder button will help you to select the folder where you have all the images present in case you want to run an operation on a large number of images. If it is a directory you can use the same option i.e. Source Folder and check the Include Sub Folders option. The other option that you have is Source Files button that will help you to select the various files that you want to want to modify

The bottom section of the tool contains various options like Output Format, which can be selected from any of these formats Source, .jpg, .bmp, .gif, .png and  .emf. The other option that is there is Max Dimension in which you can alter the height of the image by specifying its value in the Size textbox. The title addition option will let you Prefix or Postfix something to the name of the image. Then the other important option is Overwrite files, you can check this option if you don’t want your original images. In case you do want them you can specify the path where they should be saved using the Destination button. Now the best feature of this tool Max running threads, you can specify any number in this box that will help you to speed up the process with a large number of threads running. If we put 0 in the text box it will use unlimited threads which will make it work fastest for doing a process.
Download Lightning Image Resizer.