Microsoft Research has developed a sleek solution which it calls Street Slide, a direct competitor to Google Street View.A multi-perspective street slide panorama with navigational aides and mini-map. It allows you to  Zoom out of your panoramic bubble and the street is presented as a dynamic, multi-perspective “strip” giving you an instant visual summary of the surroundings — similar to viewing the entire 360 degree view of street from a distance. Cool isn’t it? Check out the video below.

Above and below the strip, you can see navigational and informational aids like clickable business logos and building numbers relevant to the current strip or slide.

Further more, Microsoft is already working on taking Street Slide mobile with an iPhone port, and no doubt a version for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series of devices.

Unfortunately, this will not be released anytime soon as the team has only processed about 2400 panoramas so far covering just 4 kilometers of streets.

Check the video after the break, you’ll be glad you did.

Visit Microsoft Research for more details.

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All Google Android Smart phone owners will be delighted to know that Barnes & Noble Nook content can be downloaded and read on their devices, as Nook for Android is available in the Android Market for FREE. It will provide you full access to your existing Barnes & Noble eBooks with additional support of LendME loan feature. In short it is a free & full featured eBook Reader.

Features of Nook :

• Sorting and filtering of book titles,
• Page turn feature selection (animated or sliding) real book with different levels of movement
• sync your bookmarks across the B&N network
• Shop for ebooks

To Access and read your existing eBooks follow the steps below :

• After signing into your account you will see ebooks in your library appear
• Tap download button to get the existing books onto your Android device.
• You can read a summary of the book by pressing the i icon
• Press the menu button to manage how the books are sorted, filter titles, manage the page turn (animated or sliding), sync your bookmarks across the B&N network, shop for books, or view your account.
• After opening up an ebook, you have menu options for font sizes (5 to choose from), font types (8 to choose from),
• You can choose to to go to a place in the book, view book details, sync your reading location and bookmarks, control the orientation, and go back to your library.
• By tapping on the center of the page brings up a bottom scroll bar to quickly move through the book.

Download Barnes & Noble Nook eReader for Free or search it on Android Market from your handset.

It is expected that soon  B&N NOOK eReader client will be found on the iPhone, iPad, etc. where these mobile clients will be known as Nook for iPhone and Nook for iPAD. We will keep you posted on this.

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Logitech TouchMouse is a free iPhone/iPod  iOS3 and iOS 4 compatible application which when connected  with its server software installed on your Mac or Windows computer, turns your iPhone/iPod  touchscreen into a fully functional wireless mouse and keyboard.

This is a great utility if you connect your computer to your TV or Media Center and wants to control it lying on couch over wireless.

How to Use it :

Once you download the software to your iPhone or iPod touch you need to install the server software on your Windows PC or MAC—Logitech has versions of the TouchMouse Server software available for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X. Once server software is installed and running, and given that your PC and iPhone/iPod are connected to same wireless network, you’ll be able to use your device as a mouse for controlling your computer.The iPhone application will automatically detect the computer running server software and will allow connecting to and control it. The interface allows you to click the mouse buttons, move the cursor via the touch screen, and pull up a small keyboard to enter text on the computer.

Get the app from iTunes

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Looking to boost up speed and performance of your shiny PC running Windows 7 operating system ? Well We’ve got just the right tips and tweaks for you. By Installing a high-speed solid-state drive (SSD) you can say goodbye to slow Windows 7 boot-ups, lengthy application load times, Slow Application performance, and gain blazing fast performance in term of video encoding, video editing and other performance demanding tasks.

Consider the following points for enhancing Windows 7 performance, Windows XP performance and overall applications performance:

• If you want the fastest possible performance, invest in a new motherboard which supports 6-Gbps SATA, and also consider buying a second drive for a RAID Level 0 array.
• To speed your Windows 7 startup time and the loading time of applications, any SSD is going to provide a significant improvement. SSDs can also help in overall boosting performance of applications.
• Using SSDs can cut more than half the time off how long it took Windows 7 to load using a typical 7200 RPM Hard Disk.
• As mentioned above, Just as with physical drives, installing two identical physical drives or SSDs, tied together in a RAID Level 0 array, can make for a very significant speedup.
• Instead of buying one large SSD of the capacity you’re seeking, you should consider purchasing two drives of half the size and combining them in a RAID Level 0 configuration for fastest performance
• Optimize the Windows 7 usage of SSDs by disabling Both Disk Defragmenter and Superfetch services. This will help in not be putting extra stress on SSD and decreasing its life. Learn how to disable these services here.
• Microsoft recommends placing the paging file on a SSD claiming, “there are few files better than the pagefile to place on a SSD”

Although Intel currently has the best selling solid state drive in the market, thanks to the impressive pricing and performance of the 80GB X25-M. I have ranked the following SSDs for your consideration in term of performance of SSDs and pricing:

1. Crucial 256GB SATA6 – 6Gb/s – $699  (See specifications and Buy here)
2. OCZ Vertex 2 100GB – W/S 275MB/s – 639$ -  ( See specifications, read review  and Buy here )
3. Intel X-25M 160GB – 250 MBps -   $471 ( See specifications and Buy here )
4. Intel X-25V with RAID – $108 ( Setup RAID for intel X-25V , See specifications , Buy here )

Windows 7 Startup Time Improvement

More Useful Tips :

• To maintain performance of your SSD over the long run, you’ll want to be sure that your drive, controller, and operating system all support TRIM. TRIM is not supported in Windows XP and is a good reason to switch to Windows 7.
• TRIM is important because unlike conventional hard disks, SSDs can’t simply overwrite area that contain deleted data, which can cause write performance to degrade over a drive’s lifetime because the drive must spend more time writing when saving, in order to clear old data. TRIM solves this problem by using system idle time to physically erase deleted data. TRIM is supported by Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Linux 2.6.33; Mac OS X support is in the works.
• Furthermore, in multiple drive setups, consider moving your Windows swap file, and any application temporary file folders, from the SSD to your conventional drive. This isn’t as much for performance reasons—you likely will see little or no difference either way—but to help maximize the life of your drive.SSDs have a limited number of write cycles before their memory cells become unusable

Useful software for benchmarking HDD and SSDs performance:

• HD Tach
• ATTO Disk Benchmark
• Crystal Disk Mark 3
• PC Mark Vantage

Also read following :

Boost up performance of your PC/Server by using Ramdisk-Virtual disk

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Opera Mini was launched about a year back for the Android. It was called Opera 4 then, now we have Opera Mini 5 (Beta) available for download which has some very impressive features. The guys at Opera say that this browser “makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience.” The new features introduced are:

• Tabbed Browsing: Needs no explaining, but this is feature is a must for smart phones.
• Speed Dial: On opening a new Tab, users are presented with a list of small icons, a click takes them to the desired page.
• Opera Link: With this feature users can synchronize their bookmarks and Speed Dial between their Mobile Phones and Desktop Computers.
• Download Manager: OMG, manage downloads form your smart device. This options lets users Pause and Resume downloads at will.
• Page Compression by about 90% ensures that browsing speed are greatly increased.
• Page Zoom.
• Password Manager: Users won’t have to remember those countless passwords instead the manager will store them on the Phone.
• Landscape Mode.

Download from the Opera Mini Page and better still watch the Demo via a neatly designed Simulator that will leave you dazed.

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Sometime back I wrote about a bunch of useful Chrome extensions. Quite frankly one could have a separate Blog for the Chrome extensions because of the rate at which are coming up, and believe me some of them are very useful. This post is dedicated to some of the newer ones.

• Webpage Screenshot. This extension lets users take screenshots of the web pages they are viewing. The screenshots are taken in Jpg format. It is fast and simple to use. Users can choose the exact size before saving/capturing the page. This can also be done in offline mode, thus ensuring a user’s privacy. Download and install at the Webpage Screenshot page. 
• One Number. Remove the clutter on your Chrome toolbar with this extension which lets you have access to Gmail, Google Voice, Google Wave and Google Reader in one go. It also shows previews of unread items. One can can check the status of the desired service selectively or open up all unread items in all the four services. Can be downloaded from the One Number page.

• Google Dictionary. The name says it all! After it is installed a small icon (book) appears in the address bar. Simply select the text you want to find the meaning or definition of and Double Click it to have an instant result displayed in a small window. One could also Single Click the Book icon in the Address bar and type in the word and hit Define for a Definition of it. Download and Install at the Google Dictionary Page.

• IE Tab. Sometimes websites do not display results in Browsers other than the Internet Explorer. This is where the IE Tab extension comes in handy by opening the desired website within Chrome in an IE Tab! This is also useful for web developers fro testing purposes and people who access sites with ActiveX controls. Download and Install at the IE Tab page.

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The world at large downloaded and used Windows 7 RC innumerable times. some of us are still doing it. Well nothing comes for free and so the joyride is bound to end soon. From March 1, 2010 people using Win 7 RC will experience shutdowns after every 2 hours and sorry the documents they will be working on won’t be saved. As if this wasn’t enough the Win 7 RC will expire on June 1, 2010 completely.

If this wasn’t enough the wallpaper will also change to the default Black with a message urging users to Upgrade or face the wrath of Microsoft. This will be followed by frequent notifications telling users that their Windows 7 version is not genuine. This will off course mean no more Windows 7 updates.

Users therefore should either buy a Windows 7 or switch to their previous version of Windows. More information is available at the Microsoft Knowledge Base and the Windows 7 Blog.

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A cluttered Desktop is what we usually have, in Windows I mean. Organizing it is difficult if not impossible. I can tell by experience that most of place files, folders and frequently used app shortcuts on the Desktop. It is easier this way to access them instead of looking deep in to the hard drive or even the Programs Menu. A utility called “Fences” makes it easy to organize those innumerous icons on your desktop. The idea is simple, put fences around folders, icons or whatever and organize the dreaded Desktop.

This makes it easy to access them since they are organized better, besides it gives a good look to the whole setup. The Fences can be customized and given names according to one’s choosing. The utility is free for personal use and works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The Pro version costs $ 20.

Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are supported on Windows 7 and Vista. The application has been developed by Stardock, a company that specializes in Windows experience software and games. The app can be downloaded from download.com. Check out the screenshot below.

A Desktop Organized with Fences

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It’s a busy world we are living in. Technology was supposed to make it more easy for us, but now its getting more complicated, we spend more time with gadgets just to make our lives easier and end up wasting more time. But there’s nor escaping it now, either go to the stone ages or do the techie thing. All right enough of this rambling, lets get to the point. Today we talk about online reminders, how do they work, are they useful and finally which ones to use?

Ok first things first, What is an online reminder?. An online reminder is simply an utility that is available via the web for reminding oneself about any upcoming event like a birthday, meeting, anniversary or whatever.

How does it work? Quite simple, you register via web, you are sent an email for verification purposes and you verify it, finally you start getting reminders in your mail box. (Some services also offer reminders via SMS)

Are they useful?  Obviously, that’s why there are so many of them. In order to use them you have to check your mail on daily basis at least, because otherwise it won’t make much sense. Given that most of us have an E-mail address and we check our mails more than once a day so an online reminder is a very useful service and more importantly because it comes for free. Check out some of these, they will do you good.

Online Reminders is a free web service that will send you reminders regarding Birthdays, Family and Relationship goals, Personal Finance, Education, Recreation, Heath & Fitness, Time Management, Career and Home Improvement. Off course it is for free and you will be emailed every time you set a reminder.

Freminder is yet another free service that will send you reminders for free. The company plans to introduce SMS reminder service shortly. Moreover, it also has Share Reminders for sharing your reminders with a Group of people which might come useful for office work.

Memotome will do all these things which Freminder does plus it will send SMS to your mobile or even your pager, but that off course is paid.

Besides the above some good reminder services are anyreminder, remindtime and backpackit.

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Sometime back I wrote about 5 useful add-ons for Mozilla Firefox, the we also talked about creating a Persona for FF besides some easy and free tools for the world’s most loved browser. Firefox is gaining ground. I have now made a list of some useful add-ons for sharing with you guys, gals included The vary in category from getting updates on weather to finding a websites original location etc. Read on for some rich web surfing experience.

 1-Click YouTube Video Download. This add-on does exactly what its name says, it downloads the YouTube video that you are viewing with a single click in FLV, 3GP modes and saves it to the desired location on PC. The best part is its simplicity and ease of use. Upon installation a small button will appear on the left bottom window of the YouTube video screen, all one has to do is click it and Presto! Try it out, it is available here oh and watch the screenshot below.

Simply Click the Red Download button

FlagFox. The little add-on sits in your address bar and displays the location of the current website server in the shape of a country flag. It also provides access to detailed location and webserver information. This thing works by accessing the IP index contained within the extension.Click the Flag and it will display info like map of the location, ISP, local time etc through a GeoTool. Get it from here.

FlagFox showing location of server

Weather Watcher Live. I would rather call it my personal Weather Station instead of the name assigned to it. Add it and configure it to view detailed weather info of the intended area in multiple formats like Celsius, Fahrenheit etc. The add-on displays a three day forecast with three icons on the desired area in one’s browser. A single click on the tiny globe will open up the infra red satellite weather picture of the whole area, whereas a mouse over will show the scene in a small window. Can be downloaded from this location.

 Weather stats of the desired location.

Clipmarks. Bookmarks let us save a webpage’s location for later retrieval whereas Clipmarks in a totally new concept that lets users save selected text, images and even videos for viewing later or even sharing online with friends. Besides one can share his/her Clipmarks on Facebook and Twitter, save them on Clipmarks.com , post them directly to his/her blog, print them or even E-mail them. Download from this location.

 Clipmarks in action.

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