Travelistic.com – YouTube of travel world

If you are among those who watch Lonely Planet in TV and think I wish I wee there. But for this you need to get off from your couch and start traveling. If you are among those types who hates packaged tour and like travel as per your plan. You must try the site Travelistic.com. It describes the service as “a site that lets you explore the world through video”. The site has more than 8000 travel videos from around the world which user can explore. It is YouTube of the travel world.

Additionally it also offers a travel blog for users who are interested in reading about the places. The site is a kind of social community for traveling enthusiasts where they can share their memoirs. And if you like shooting videos and think that Television channel will not air your videos then don't worry. You can upload the videos to the site and broadcast it to the whole world.

I like to visit different places but hate traveling and I am passing my hot summer holidays visiting different places vicariously sitting on my couch and watching videos at this site.

Technorati Tags: family vacations,family vacation ideas,travel tours,vacation spots,travel videos,weekend getaways,travel,tourism,travelistic

Open OpenOfice ODF files in MS Office

Many organizations are now gradually switching over to OpenOffice from Microsoft Office. This change is primarily due to huge cost, licensing hassles etc. So it is quite frequent now that you may receive .ODF format documents of OpenOffice. SUN Microsystems has developed an MS Office plug-in which enable MS Office to read and write ODF documents.

This plug-in for Microsoft Office gives user of MS Word, MS PowerPoint and MS Excel the ability to read, write and edit the ODF documents. This ODF plug-in works with Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2000. The ODF Plug-in seamlessly integrates with the Load and Save As dialog and the Save (Ctrl+S) shortcut of Microsoft Office Word. A new toolbar in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint simplifies the import and export of ODF documents.

Technorati Tags: add-in,docx,Microsoft,odf,office,OpenOffice,pdf,Plugins,odf to Word

Transfer your files fast with FastCopy

My 5 years old 60 GB hard drive started giving trouble and I realized that now it is time to move all the files to my new 160 GB hard drive. I did what everyone do. I selected all the files in one partition and pasted it in my new hard drive. And the result........ dead slow data transfer, error errors, system hanged three times and then I resorted to xcopy command of DOS to transfer the files.

But there are some better alternatives like FastCopy (freeware). It uses different strategies (multi-threading, buffering) to ensure maximum device throughput. It does not use the system cache, so other processes do not get bogged down during the copy process. It supports Unix wildcard style include/exclude filters.

My observation is that FastCopy usually copies 30-50% faster than windows and it is easy to use as well. You may download it from here .

 

 

Technorati Tags: FastCopy,Copy and Paste,Copy File,Paste File,Transfer File Fast,Copy File Fast,Data Transfer

 

 

Web Messenger in Hotmail

Microsoft has finally released Web IM feature in Hotmail and now it is in the same league with Yahoo and Gmail. User can send instant message right from your browser and you need not install any software for this. I accept that I heavily use the Messenger client as it has lots of functionality which is not available in the Web IM. However, the big plus is that you can chat from any public system where Windows Live Messenger is not installed.

Right now the service has been rolled out to the customers in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and USA.  And within a month it will be available to the users in France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the UK last month.

The interface is very simple and you can send instant messages from the Windows Live Hotmail and People pages.

If you have multiple Hotmail IDs then you can sign in to Web IM and Windows Live Messenger at the same time. And now I am expecting more to come maybe voice chatting and video conferencing from the Web IM itself. So that I can keep my system free of lots of installed software.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Hotmail,Messenger,updates,IM,Web IM

Pixelpipe : Distribute content to 75+ social network sites

With growing number of social networking sites it is getting very difficult to manage all of them and keep them updated. If you are updating one picture in Facebook, you would like to have same uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, etc. You would also like to send it to your blog and want to tweet this with a link of picture or file. It is possible through the service Pixelpipe. And that your mobile phone or computer.

Right now Pixelpipe support around 75 social networking sites. You can upload pictures to Flickr, Picasa etc, videos to YouTube, Vimeo etc. and other files as well. You can also share PDF files, Pictures, videos in micro blogging service like twitter as well.

What is interesting that you come across anything interesting and have taken picture or shot short video from your camera mobile. And you instantly want to share it with the world, give Pixelpipe a try. If you push content quite frequently then you better create routing tags (e.g @facebook) or pipes as per your preference and push your content in one shot to the web services. One problem which I have faced is that it does not create album. So you have to do that manually. This service has multitude of plugins and supports almost all device e.g Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone, Nokia N Series phones, Android, Picasa, Windows Windows Live Photo Gallery and Movie Maker etc.

Our verdict is it is a versatile service and will liberate you from the drudgery of going to one service to another to upload the same content.

del.icio.us Tags: distributed web,Pixelpipe,photo sharing,social media,video streaming,Nokia N Series,Photo Blogging

Skype Founders planning to buy it back from eBay

Skype the famous online peer to peer phone service is in news again. Its founder Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are talking to equity firm Warburg Pincus, KKR, Elevation Partners and Providence Equity Partners to raise money to buy Skype back from eBay. As per the New York Times eBay has not commented anything on it.

Its quite clear that eBay don't see any synergy between its online business and Skype. They have realized that its seller prefer emails instead of relying on Skype. And another reason is eBay long pending lawsuit against Joltid . This company holds the technological rights of the peer to peer technology used by Skype. This company happens to be of Skype's founder. eBay has understood that without this technology eBay has to rewrite new technology for it from scratch. As eBay market share is dwindling it will be easy way to pump some capital in its core business.

Skype has booked $550 million in revenue in 2008 and equally important as PayPal. However, now 

it is time for eBay to decide that do they want to pursue lengthy lawsuit and develop new technology for Skype or sell it off.

Technorati Tags: eBAY,inthenews,Janus Friis,John Donahoe,Niklas Zennstrom,Skype

Related articles

• Cross Your Fingers: Zennstrom and Friis Might Buy Back Skype From eBay (readwriteweb.com)
• Will eBay sell Skype? (vator.tv)

Check the availability of your desired username in 80 + social networking sites

You want to have common username in all the social networking and social bookmarking sites so that you can promote your brand consistently. Namechk is the service that let you check the availability of the username in 80+ social networking and bookmarking sites in one shot. Please note that it does not check the username in Webmail services.

What I have noticed that the speed of search is pretty impressive. I tried few names and the search result averaged close to 10 seconds.

The link to each site is available in the search result itself, so you can go straight away to the site and sign up for the username. And the big plus of this service is that you do not have to remember multiple username.

Technorati Tags: Namechk,usernames,user names,username check,squatting

Embed Image in Gmail Now

Gmail has finally added the feature of embedding pictures in emails which was long overdue. All of us who use Gmail extensively always felt the feature of embedding pictures missing. To overcome this we were using one way or another to add the image to the mail. I was using Outlook to this and Pranav used to forward mail from other account and was editing it in Gmail.

Now you don't have to use any workaround to embed pictures in your messages. Enable the "Inserting Image" features in Google Labs and make sure that you are composing mail in Rich Text Format to enable this feature.

Once the feature is enable you can see the icon in the toolbar. Now to add image to your message click on the icon and you have option to insert image from your computer or you can insert image directly from the web. All you have to do is to fill the URL of the image.

Please note that Gmail does not show the images by default to protect you from spammer like other email provider. Click on the "Display images below" to see the images.

Read More:

• New in Labs: Inserting images

Technorati Tags: Gmail Labs,Gmail,Images,Embedded,HTML,Embed Picture

De-clutter your Windows desktop with Stardock Fences

Most of us have habit of keeping frequently used files on desktop. One of my friend keeps all his files at desktop and it is so cluttered that quite often he attaches wrong attachment in his mail. I have seen him struggling to find the file he has kept at desktop. Clean desktop looks good an it is good productivity booster as well.

Fences a free program (for personal use) for Windows released by Stardock will help you to de-clutter the desktop by creating transparent containers where you can place the desktop files and arrange it in logical way. The icons which are not in use can be hidden by double clicking on the desktop.

If you want to to have certain icons always visible then it can be achieved by the Fences setting. So the next time when you will double click on the desktop to hide the icons, these icons will be available. The one glitch we have noticed is that Fence disables the right click menu item "Arrange Icon By". And this is quite bit a pain if you keep some items on the desktop and want to arrange this. Overall, it is good program for Desktop and pretty low on resources. You should give this a try.

Technorati Tags: Software,Freeware,Windows,Applications,Downloads,Stardock,Fences,Get Organized,Organize,Clutter