IT Masala

Making phone calls from a computer should be as easy as typing a URL, and with the release of  GizmoCall.com - a new service from SIPphone - it is. Typing http://gizmocall.com/1800555121 2 is all it takes. And it's not just easy, but free. You can get 10 minutes of free calling per day to call just about any phone number in the world (sorry Antarctica). Before Gizmo Call, you had to download a big program, install it, register for an account and buy calling minutes. With Gizmo Call, you just install a Flash plug-in into your web browser and begin talking.

With Gizmo Call, people can call a wide range of numbers and devices.Gizmo Call lets you dial numbers for almost any country - even mobile phones - by typing them into the number field at gizmocall.com or simply typing a gizmocall.com URL into a browser. This will take you to the GizmoCall.com web site and load the flash plugin (if you don't have it), and you're ready to talk. It's the easiest way to initiate a call.

Conditions :

- Talking for 10 minutes per day is free to registered users with unregistered users getting 5 minutes per day.
- International users now even have access to previously blocked US 800/888 numbers with no per minute charge.
- Charge $4 for custom CallerID which you can set so that Gizmo calls will look like they are coming from your mobile or office phone.

There's no advertising yet on Gizmo Call which is why free calls are limited to just 10 minutes.

[ GizmoCall.com ]

A major hurdle to the widespread adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop (and, at times, at the server-level) is the lack of drivers for specific hardware.

Now comes an offer from senior Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman - kernel developers will develop free drivers for manufacturers who provide the necessary technical details. "All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while.

A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done," Kroah-Hartman wrote in his blog.

The manufacturer is then assured of having a working driver in the main Linux kernel source tree; the driver will be updated through any changes in application programming interfaces and will also work with all the architectures on which Linux runs.

Kroah-Hartman's pledge goes further - the driver will be included in all GNU/Linux distributions, including those which are focused on the business sector. With regard to the hurdle of IP, he writes that if the manufacturer in question is worried about non-disclosure issues, then all needed requirements can be arranged through the Linux Foundation, a recent creation from the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group.

One has to assume that Kroah-Hartman has discussed the issue with at least some of the 1500-odd kernel developers before going out on this limb. He has even offered support: "As for support, the driver will be supported through email by the original developers, when they can help out, and by the "enterprise" Linux distributors as part of their service agreements with their customers."

Can publishers specify that some parts of the site should be private and non-searchable?The good news is that those who publish on the web have a lot of control over which pages should appear in search results.

The key is a simple file called robots.txt

A simple example
Here is a simple example of a robots.txt file.

User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /logs

The User-Agent line specifies that the next section is a set of instructions just for the Googlebot. All the major search engines read and obey the instructions you put in robots.txt, and you can specify different rules for different search engines if you want to. The Disallow line tells Googlebot not to access files in the logs sub-directory of your site. The contents of the pages you put into the logs directory will not show up in Google search results.

Preventing access to a file
If you have a news article on your site that is only accessible by registered users, you'll want it excluded from Google's results. To do this, simply add a META tag into the html file, so it starts something like:

<html> <head> <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"> …

This stops Google from indexing this file. META tags are particularly useful if you have permission to edit the individual files but not the site-wide robots.txt.

Learn more
You can find out more about robots.txt at http://www.robotstxt.org and at Google's Webmaster help center, which contains lots of helpful information, including:

• How to create a robots.txt file
• Descriptions of each user-agent that Google uses
• How to use pattern matching
• How often we recrawl your robots.txt file

Here is an useful list of the bots used by the major search engines: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc /active/html/index.html

via [Google blog ]

Your mp3 links (<a xhref="my_file.mp">Link</a>) will automatically turned into a little player that allows you to easily play mp3 files directly on your blog.

Example #1
Example #2

How to include:
Copy the code below and place it in anywhere in your HTML.

<script type="text/javascript" xsrc="http://googlepage.googlepages.com/player.js"></script>

PimpFish is an download manager, site ripper, file sharing tool through which we can easily download videos from Youtube, Google Video, Myspace.

With PimpFish, we can save pictures and Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media and other embedded video in a single click to our computer, from any webpage. The extension is available for both IE and Firefox and it's free!.

[ PimpFish]

Most of the bloggers on blogger.com don't like that nav bar on top of their blogs.So you want to get rid of it . So here's a hack from blogger-templates &  Praveen

To hide the Blogger NavBar paste the CSS definition between the style tags:

First, login into your blogger (beta) account and click Template.

Now, click on Edit HTML…and paste this piece of code.

<style type="text/css">

#b-navbar {

height: 0px;

visibility: hidden;

display: none;

}

</style>

<style type="text/css">

#navbar-iframe {

height: 0px;

visibility: hidden;

display: none;

}

</style>

Note : Some say its against the TOS of Google for blogger.com to remove navbar.But its not mentioned anywhere in the Google TOS .

This is what they have mentioned on their site - thats all.

The Navbar appears on all freely-hosted Blog*Spot blogs, but can be disabled for users publishing via FTP.

• Unless you publish your blog via FTP, the Navbar cannot be disabled.
• We've made every effort to make sure the Navbar doesn't interfere with custom template designs.

But you can disable it without using FTP publishing too with this trick..so enjoy !

Here's a very useful tip which allows you to run iTunes from your taskbar, Windows Media

Player has a similar feature(quick launch-bar ). Read the instructions below to find out how to control iTunes from the taskbar.

1. Right-click on your Taskbar, go to Toolbars and click on iTunes. (iTunes does not have to be open for you to do this.)

2. From now on whenever you minimize iTunes it will sit in your taskbar as mini player.

Note: You may need to go to the iTunes preferences and uncheck the "Minimize iTunes windows to system tray" checkbox in order for this to function.

[via Taylor Hayward]

What is Snap Preview ? Do you like it or Do you want to get rid of it ?

Snap Preview Anywhere makes it easier for people to know where they're going when they click on a link.It makes the site easy to navigate. And if the link doesn't go where they want, they'll know before they click or leave.

Besides Snap Preview is really a cool app.But some people get irritated and annoyed by these Snap Previews.

For those who don't want these previews on any of the site you browse.Simply follow these steps :

Snap Preview Anywhere Disable:
- Just click this snap preview disable link. This will set a cookie that will block the snap script from working.

If you feel anytime that you need the Snap Preview enabled on all the sites which you browse

Snap Preview Anywhere Activation :

People and are always confused about the file extensions such as these . . Here's how to use these files.

*.bin
*.cue
*.iso

These file extensions are commonly used to show that a file is an image of a CD or DVD.

The most simple way to access these files is to use your CD or DVD Burner to burn them to a disk. Nero is a common program that is used to burn bin/cue files to hard media(cd or dvd).

One really nice thing to do is to treat these files as a virtual CD or DVD without ever burning them. Daemon Tools is one program that is often used to do this. Microsoft now has a free program that does it all.But now they have discontinued it support.Its called Virtual CD-ROM.

Here's the download link:
winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel

The other place that *.bin files are frequently used are in emulation software. Gaming roms are often stored in compressed files full of bin files. If you have a zip file full of *.bin files, try Mame or some similiar emulator.

Related : WinISO