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S amsung's HMX-E10 camcorder does HD video and sports a 270-degree swiveling lens, while the ST80 camera offers WI-Fi and a 14.2 megapixel resolution. South Korean electronics giant Samsung has taken the wraps off two new consumer photography products: its HMX-E10 high-definition camcorder and ST80 digital camera. The HMX-E10 features a 270-degree swivel lens that enables users to capture video from almost any angle; meanwhile, the ST80 digital camera offers a 14.2 megapixel resolution and integrated Wi-Fi for easy photo sharing. First up, the HMX-E10 camcorder captures full HD 1,920 by 1,080 video at 30 frames per second, and can also be used as an eight megapixel still camera. The back of the unit features a 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen display, and the camera features both HDMI output and USB connectivity so users can connect it to any computer without using a USB cable—users can also charge up the camcorder via USB. The HMX-E10 stores video to microSD cards, but perhaps what’s mos

U sers' personal information cannot now be made private, security consultant says. The personal details of 100 million Facebook users have been collected and published online in a downloadable file, meaning they will now be unable to make their publicly available information private. However, Facebook downplayed the issue, saying that no private data had been compromised. The information was posted by Ron Bowes, an online security consultant, on the Internet site Pirate Bay. Bowes used code to scan the 500 million Facebook profiles for information not hidden by privacy settings. The resulting file, which allows people to perform searches of various different types, has been downloaded by more than 2,400 people. This means that if any of those on the list decide to change their privacy settings on Facebook, Bowes and those who have the file will still be able to access information that was public when it was compiled. Bowes’ actions also mean people who had set their privacy setting

T his poster has a list of top 500 common passwords that you should absolutely avoid using with your online and offline accounts. A printed version of the password poster is available on Etsy .

T he search box is located in the upper right corner of IE and Firefox while Chrome has this thing integrated in the address bar itself. The function is however the same – it offers you a convenient way to search using your favorite search engine. Other than search, there are some more interesting uses of the search bar as well. 1. Avoid Spelling Mistakes If you writing an email inside the browser and are unsure about the spelling of some word, you can simply type that misspelled word in the search box. Google will immediately offer you the correct spelling as a query suggestion that you can copy-paste into your email message. 2. Clean-up Formatting from Copied Text When copying content from a web page into an email message, you can first paste that text into your browser’s search box and then copy it to the clipboard. This will automatically convert the rich text into plain text removing all the hyperlinks and other formatting that you don’t want to add to your email message. 3. Corre

C loud Computing can help your business reduce costs as you don’t have to invest in hardware and other physical infrastructure, your data is stored on a secure location and you only pay for what you use – there are no licensing fees associated with cloud computing. Legal Issues associated with Cloud Computing That said, there are some important legal issues that must be taken care of before you sign-up with any of the cloud vendors for your business. These issues, discussed below, are more relevant for business owners who are planning to shift to the cloud and may not really matter if you are a consumer who merely uses the cloud for storing emails or office documents. 1. The Physical Location of your Data 1a. Where is your data stored physically? Your data could be stored in any country and you may not even know where the data centre is situated. The ‘physical location’ raises the question of legal governance over the data. The customer must be clear so as to the provisions of the prev

W indows 7 comes in two flavors – there’s the x86 32-bit version and the x64 64-bit version. When you buy a Windows 7 DVD, you have the option to install either of these editions so which one should you choose for your computer? Choose between 32 and 64 bit First, it depends on the processor that you have on your computer. For instance, if you have a 32 bit processor chip (like Intel’s Pentium or Celeron series), you have no option but to install the 32-bit edition of Windows. However, if your CPU has a 64-bit processor (like Intel’s Core i5 & i7 series or AMD’s Phenom and Athlon range), you have the option to install both 32-bit x86 and the 64-bit x64 version of Windows. A major advantage with 64-bit is that it supports more RAM (> 4GB) so if you have any of the ‘big’ software applications (like a video editing software), it should run faster on a 64-bit Windows machine provided the RAM is more. All software programs written for 32-bit version of Windows should work on the 64-b

T he touchpad provides full mouse functionality to your laptop but there are instances when you may actually feel more productive without the touchpad. For instance, if you have attached an external mouse to your laptop, you may not need an alternate input mechanism which is the built-in touchpad. Sometimes your thumbs or palm may accidentally touch the touchpad while you’re typing and this may inadvertently move your mouse cursor to a different location in the document. If you were not looking at your screen when the pointer jumped, you may end up typing at the wrong place. How to Turn off the Touch Pad To avoid running into such situations, it may not be a bad to disable the touchpad at least during the time when you are using a mouse or are typing a long document. Some laptops don’t have dedicated buttons but you can use Function keys (like Fn + F5 on Dell computers) to toggle the state of your touch pad. In the case of HP laptops, you can hold the top-left corner of the touchpad fo

I f you spend a good part of your day using the computer, the 20-20-20 rule, that I recently learned recently from my doctor, might also help you relax your tired eyes. The rule goes something like this. The screen is bright and therefore, if you don’t blink your eyes as often as you should while working at the computer for long hours, you can have dry eyes sometimes even followed by redness. To help you deal with this problem, the 20-20-20 rule suggest that after every 20 minutes, you (the computer user) should take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at objects that are 20 feet away from you. Since it is nearly impossible for any computer users to remember that they have to take a break every 20 minutes, there are free software programs that can help you in your mission. For instance, there’s a Windows utility called Eye Defender that sits in the system tray and, after a fixed interval, it will auto-run a visual training (see video below in full screen) for the eyes on your scr

D o you ever embed YouTube videos in your web pages? If the answer is yes, you should create an XML Video Sitemap as it will help improve your site’s performance in Google and other search engines. Why Create XML Sitemaps for Video? Video Sitemaps are plain text files containing a list of videos that are either embedded or hosted on your website. During regular crawling, Google mostly ignores video content that’s embedded in web pages but with the help of a video sitemap, you can easily inform Google about all the videos that are on your site. Video Sitemaps will help your site pages rank in both video search results as well as Google’s universal search. If you would like know more about XML Sitemaps for Video, watch this video or visit google.com/videositemaps for more technical details. How to Create XML Video Sitemaps? If you run a WordPress blog, you can use my Video Sitemap plug-in to generate an XML Sitemap for your site with a click. Install the plugin, click the “generate”

P ageRank, in simple English, works something like this. Google assigns a fixed number of points to a page that are then equally divided among the other pages that are linked from that page. For example, assume that Google has assigned a web page some 100 points and there are 5 hyperlinks on that page. Each of these pages will therefore get 20 points from Google. If two of these hyperlinks are written using the rel=nofollow attribute, Google won’t give them any points but the remaining three pages will still get 20 points each as before. The balance 40 points (100 – 20*3) are lost. So should you use the nofollow attribute at all in your internal links? Google’s webmaster site recommends the use of nofollow in some scenarios: Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’

M y tech blog  is powered by the very-awesome WordPress software. Following is a complete list of all the WordPress plugins that work behind the scenes to add new functionality to these sites that’s otherwise not available in the vanilla version of WordPress.org. Must-Have WordPress Plugins for your Site 1. Google XML Sitemaps – Since you want Google and other search engines to know about each and every page of your WordPress website, you should have an XML sitemap and this plug-in makes it a one-click process. 2. All in One SEO Pack – While WordPress software now includes the rel=canonical directive by default, if you wish to write search friendly titles that are different from the heading of the page, get this plug-in. 3. Automatic WordPress Backup – I host the static JS and CSS files of this blog on Amazon S3 and this plug-in helps me create a backup of all the essential WordPress files (like themes and plugins) and the MySQL databases to the same S3 account. 4. Hyper Cache – Thi

Y our website can display 404 errors for two reasons: Reason #1 (in your control) – If you change the URL of an existing page or decide to delete it completely from your server, your visitor will get a 404 or “File Not Found” error when they try to access that page. Reason #2 (not in your control) – You page URL is abc.com/xyz and another site decided to link to your page but they mistakenly used a wrong URL (say abc.com/xyy) – if anyone visits your page through the other site, they’ll see a 404. Track all the Missing Pages on your Site It is extremely important that you get your 404 errors fixed as soon as you spot them because they not only spoil the visitor experience but your site is also losing Google juice. You get juice from every incoming link to your site but the benefit is lost if that link is pointing to a non-existent page. Let me now share the various tools that I use to track track 404 error pages on my site. If are using Google Analytics, you can slightly tweak the sam

I f you are thinking of more creative ways to reuse the old CDs, here’s another one   – this ‘panda chair’ is constructed from a simple base covered in CDs lined up in rows.

I f your tech-savvy kids are spending a fair amount of their computer time surfing the Internet, there’s a chance that they may sometimes accidentally stumble upon adult sites that you would definitely not like them to see. Keep your Kids from Seeing Adult Content on the Web It is nearly impossible for any parent to manually monitor their child’s entire computer session and what you therefore need is a solution that works in the background even while you aren’t around to watch over them. There are couple of options. For instance, YouTube has a safety mode to block videos that aren’t appropriate for children. Then you have OpenDNS that you can configure with your router or computer to block an entire category of websites that contain violent or adult content. There are some site blocking programs (NetNanny for example) that monitor your kid’s activity on the computer and will automatically restrict them from visiting sites that aren’t meant for them. Then you have the slightly-geeky 127

W hen you upload a video to YouTube and mark it as private, the video can only viewed by your own Google Account. You can choose to share that ‘private video’ with select YouTube users but they again need to be signed-in before they can watch your clip. For instance, here’s a private video – youtube.com/watch?v=FkTSUqPqsGE – that I recently uploaded to YouTube. There’s nothing interesting inside except its private nature and therefore you should see a message saying “this video is private” if you try accessing that video from your computer. What’s Not Private about ‘Private’ Videos That said, if you know the URL of a private YouTube video, you can easily see some of the still frames of that video even if the owner has not shared that video with you. The trick is simple – just get the ID of any YouTube video from its URL (in our case, FkTSUqPqsGE) and replace it in the following links. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ FkTSUqPqsGE /0.jpg http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ FkTSUqPqsGE /1.jpg http://i.ytimg.co

A s of today you can use a rich text signature in Gmail, meaning that you can add links and images to it, as well as change the text’s format, font and color. To change your signature in Gmail , click on “Settings,” and scroll down to the “Signature” section. You’ll see a new signature editor which contains the same functions that are at your disposal when you compose an e-mail. If you have more than one e-mail address associated with your Gmail account, you’ll be able to choose a different signature for each one using the drop-down menu (the menu doesn’t appear if you have only one e-mail address associated with your Gmail account).

M otorola today announced some specs, images and availability details for a new Android phone.Dubbed the Motorola Charm, this oddly shaped device will ship to T-Mobile subscribers this summer with a 2.8-inch screen, the current Android 2.1 operating system (not Froyo), and a slew of social features. If you’re thinking this looks and sounds a bit like the ill-fated Kin — small screen, square-ish shape, social emphasis, physical keyboard — we can’t really blame you for your déjà vu. But we won’t consign the Charm to the technological junk heap just yet; we still don’t know just why the Kin failed, so we aren’t convinced that similar features in another phone will lead it to the same demise. In addition to its keyboard — a welcome feature for heavy texters and social media addicts — the Charm sports a touchscreen and a navigation pad. Called the “Backtrack” pad, this hardware feature is located on the back of the device and works like a laptop touch panel. Without having a review model, w

T he HM4 Thunderbolt Watch isn’t just a watch, it’s a horological machine, which has just been recently unveiled by designer Maximilian Busser, represents an intriguing mixture of high-grade materials, precision engineering, and outlandishly macho design. A traditional wristwatch has a relatively straightforward role: to tell the time. All that is needed is a hand for the hours, another for the minutes and perhaps a power reserve indicator to keep track of running time. Horological Machine No4 Thunderbolt has a hand for the hours, another for the minutes and a power reserve indicator. HM4 Thunderbolt tells the time. However, HM4 Thunderbolt is not a traditional wristwatch, it’s a horological machine. The sleek aerodynamic form of the Thunderbolt’s titanium and sapphire envelope has its roots in Maximilian Büsser’s childhood passion for assembling model plane kits, though none looked remotely as futuristic as this. The Thunderbolt’s engine is the culmination of three long years of devel

C arry a BlackBerry mobile phone? Here’re some keyboard shortcuts that will help you quickly navigate through any of the long email messages that you may have in your BlackBerry Inbox. If you in the middle of a lengthy email message, the “T” key will move you to the top of the screen while you can hit the “B” key to scroll to the bottom of the message. Then you have the space key that lets you scroll through an email message one page (or screen) at the time. You can also use Space with the Shift key to move up the screen just like the Page-Up key on your desktop. Finally, you have the very useful but lesser-known “G” key. Let’s say you are reading a long email inside your BlackBerry and then have to close the mail app because there’s something more urgent at hand. When you re-open that same message later, you can hit the “G” key and it will take you back to the exact position in the message where you left off. If you are using Pearl with SureType, press GH instead. This shortcut was re

T he dream of a “paperless office” is still far from reality and printers continue to be an ubiquitous part of our homes and workplaces. Printers are still “dumb” However, in the last few years, while mobile phones have transformed from being mere “calling devices” to “smart computers”, printers are still seen as “dumb” devices that are too dependent on the computer. That’s because you always have to install device drivers on a computer for the printer to work and second, you can only send printing jobs to a printer through a computer. So, for example, if there’s an airline e-ticket or an Excel sheet on your BlackBerry or iPhone that you want to print on paper, you’ll have to first transfer that file to a computer before printing because printers and smartphones are still not familiar with each other. Yes, there are some apps that permit printing from mobile phones but these are again tied to the computer. HP has recently launched a new range of consumer printers that seem to tackle th

E therpad , as you know, is an online word processor where multiple people can edit the same document at the same time and changes appear on everyone’s screen in almost real time. This feature, called collaborative editing, is now present in almost every other tool including Google Docs, Zoho and Microsoft Office 2010 but let me highlight a slightly more interesting feature of Etherpad that’s unique to the service – you can use the tool to visualize your writing style. Start a new (blank) document inside Etherpad and then compose an email message, a Word document, an article for your blog or even a chapter of your next book in the available writing space. All your editing related actions are automatically captured in Etherpad and you can hit the Time Slider to replay the entire writing session. Here’s a demo:

I f you are to share a large file with someone over the Internet, there are generally two options – you can either attach the files to an email message or, if the files are too big to fit in an email program, you can upload them to an online storage service and then share the download links with the recipient. Let’s now explore some of the popular services that’ll make it easy for you to transfer large files over the Internet without any hassles or costs. A: Share Large Files over Email The Gmail service cannot handle email attachments that are larger than 25 MB but the recently-revamped Hotmail service is a much better alternative as it lets you send email messages as large as 10 GB. The maximum size of an individual file that you can attach to an Hotmail message is only 50 MB but you can use a file-splitting utility like HJ-Split to break a big file into smaller chunks and then attach them all to a single message. The recipient can then join these chunks to restore the original fi