MultiEyeVision, has launched a tool called Observer that turns mobile phones into remote monitoring cameras. The camera’s images can be viewed from any internet connected device. You need a GPRS enable smartphone for this, or you can buy a pre-configured mobile phone from them
How does it work? You need to download and install the Observer software on your mobile phone (or use the pre configured mobile phone sold by the company). Once thats done, just start the application and point it where you want to shoot. The streamed images are viewable from your account on their website; you can also control the settings of the observer (capture frequency, picture resolution, capture timings) from the web. The images can be stored for viewing later or even get emailed to you at specific times. The tool/software can run continually for 48 to 72 hours after which it needs to be restarted. On battery, it runs for 4-8 hours.
What the Observer does not support is video streaming, due to the limitations of GPRS (which requires higher transfer speeds). It can however transmit image streams upto a rate of 3 images per minute, which is adequate for many situations. The Observer is aimed at a variety of consumer or business use cases.
The pre configured phones are based on Nokia & Sony-Ericcson models (Nokia 3500, Nokia 6300 & Sony Ericcson W810i) and cost between 8K-12 K INR. For using the software with your own phone, you’d need to pay 2.5K INR.
In fact, if there are unused mobile phones lying with you, they can be configured as well for this application. Details here.
Turn your mobile phone into a remote monitoring camera
Group SMS messaging solution
Tagg is a free web & mobile based mass messaging platform that you can use for any of your purposes. This could be for (seemingly) noble causes like group SMS, micro-blogging etc, or for less noble ones like spamming users with unsolicited SMS (by users, not by Tagg).
The way it works is fairly simple. You can start a group (called Taggivity) which others can subscribe to. You can send out updates that will get forwarded to all the subscribers. This can be done from the web interface or from the mobile usings SMS. Their revenue model is based on advertising - text/banners ad on the website and a short ad that is appended to SMS’s being sent out.
Group SMS is actually a valuable service. I can imagine lots of people wanting to use this - organisations, schools, teachers, salesmen etc. The ability to send our free SMS to all subscribers (who could be students, employees, friends, family members etc) is fairly useful. Specially when its free. And SMS is a proven winner…. no GPRS, EDGE, 3G hangovers there.
SMSgupshup is a similar service and I believe, it has a fair bit of traction as well. So how is Tagg any different from SMSgupshup? Well the Tagg team insists that they are more focused on user experience- as a result they have a normal number 9980199801 as opposed to a shortcode, which also means its cheaper for user to post through their service. Not entirely convincing, I would say!
The web application could do with better layout & design, specially on the landing page for an individual group.
Configuring Gmail IMAP on your phone with Airtel & Vodafone
For ex: if you delete a mail on your phone, it will be still there in server. IMAP is more advanced which syncs both mail boxes. Whatever you do on any place, gets reflected everywhere. Thankfully Gmail provides IMAP access for all the accounts, you have to enable it by going to “Settings–>Forwarding & POP/IMAP”. Basic GPRS plans like Airtel Live & Vodafone Live doesn’t provide IMAP access, you have to activate Airtel Mobile Office & or Vodafone Mobile Connect.
Configuring on Phone:
This configuration is for Phones which come up with inbuilt mail client, if your phone doesn’t have that try using gmail mobile app available at http://m.google.com.
Open email client on your phone, goto “Settings–>Add new email” & configure as mentioned below:
Incoming Mail Server:
Email/user ID: Your Gmail ID
Password: Gmail Password
Incoming Mail Server: imap.google.com
Mailbox name: Gmail (you can use anyting)
Mailbox Type: IMAP4
Security Ports: SSL
Port: 993 or Default in some phones
Outgoing Mail Server:
Email/user ID: Your Gmail ID
Password: Gmail Password
Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.google.com
Security Ports: SSL/TSL
Port: 465 or 587 or Default in some phones
After configuration connect to your mailbox, now you wil receive emails as soon as they arrive!
Remote logout from your Gmail account
Many of us use gmail because of it’s simple design & featureset it has to offer us. Google has introduced a new security feature for gmail, remote lagout. Many of use more than two computers to login to gmail. If you take my example, I login to gmail from home & office. Some times we often leave the browser opened & not being logged out of gmail, if the computer is at office or any public place your account might be mis-used. Now sitting at home computer you can logout of gmail in office computer or any other computer.
Footer in gmail contains your session details, when you last logged in & from which IP.
You can click on “Details” link which shows you a pop-up having details about your last sessions.
Check for all the sessions, see all are yours or somebody else is logging into your account! Click on “Sign out all other sessions” to sign out of gmail at all other places exept the current.
Microsoft offers 5GB of online space to store your files |Skydrive
Microsoft is providing 5GB of space to store your files online. As the above picture illustrates, you can save files for yourself, share files with friends & also share on world wide web. It provides three level of access control for your files.
Private: Store files which are only accessible to you. This could be used to store files which are private & should not be accessible to anyone else.
Shared: Share files only with your friends, but they need to have an MSN or Hotmail account. Other than your friends can’t access these files.
Public: Upload files to public folder to make it available to everyone. After uploading files you can share link with anyone & they can download the file. If you have a web page or blog & want to provide a download to your visitors, it also provides attractive badges to insert in your web pages. Clicking on it, user can download that file.
Users who already have MSN or Hotmail account can straightaway start using it by logging in. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for a free account. Sign up or login to Skydrive at http://skydrive.live.com/
Freeware to download & convert streaming videos from video sites
“Vdownloader” is the software which need not to be installed, just run .exe file (good news to guys who are using office PC without administrator privileges!). It has a very good interface, just give the URL where you are watching & select output format, click download. The video will be downloaded & automatically converted to the format you had chosen. It also has an inbuilt browser so that you can browse video sites (ex:YouTube) & download.
Feature Set:
Following are the video site that are officially supported by Vdownloader:
- Youtube
- Google Video
- DailyMotion
- MySpace
- Stage6 DivX
- Porkolt
- Metacafe
- Break.com
- 123 Video
- Bolt
- VSocial
- Lulu TV
- Guba
Following are the output format that Vdownloader provides:
- AVI
- MPEG
- VCD (NTSC & PAL)
- SVCD (NTSC & PAL)
- DVD (NTSC & PAL)
- Ipod & PSP Compatible videos
- Original (this will original FLV file)
Links:
IF u want to convert the .flv files downloaded from streaming sites and in your hard disk try this freeware flv converter converts flv video into four popular formats. AVI,MOV,MP4 & 3GP (for Mobile Phones). Its a very tiny
software 2.53Mb of download & takes 8-9 Mb of disc space after installing.
This FLV converter saves output file at the same path where input file was provided.Converted videos
are of good quality & doesn’t contain any Labels/Ads/Links.Totally its a very good FLV converter.Only two features lacking are:
1. There is no provision to select output path.
2. No batch conversion.i.e,If you have large number of files to convert,then you need to
convert them one by one.
But these are negligable since its a Freeware & tiny.
DOWNLOAD
Re design the web with the stylish firefox extension
Stylish is a Firefox extension which enables you to change the look & feel of a web site. . If you take example of Gmail, it has the same interface from the day one. Though slighter changes were made in adding functionalities like chat inside email, there were no changes made in color scheme & look/feel.
Stylish enables you to define your own stylesheet for a website. But for writing a stylesheet of your own, you should be having knowledge of CSS. Hey, don’t stop reading! there are lot of ready stylesheets for many websites, which you can just load into Stylish.
Stylesheets are available at http://userstyles.org
Procedure to install Stylish & load new stylesheet:
- Install Firefox if you don’t have from getfirefox.com
- Install extension Stylish for firefox from addons.firefox.com
- Browse available stylesheets at http://userstyles.org & load stylesheets you want
- That’s it!! start re-designing the web!
