Add a Subscribe Button to your Facebook Profile

 

Add a Subscribe Button to your Facebook Profile

Like most other Facebook users, I have a public page where I share updates from my blog and a personal profile which is private and I primarily use it for connecting with my offline friends and family members.
Most of the stuff that I share on my personal Facebook profile – like pictures of kids, songs, cooking recipes, etc. – would be extremely boring to the external world and, fortunately, they don’t get to see any of that.
Having said that, I occasionally post updates on my personal profile page that could be of interest to a wider audience and I would therefore be more than happy if people - who are not my “friends” on Facebook - can see or comment on them. How can you do that without making your profile public?

Let Non-Friends Follow you on Facebook

Facebook has just added a new option to profile pages that would let people “subscribe” to your profile just like the way people follow you on Twitter. Whenever you post an update on Facebook with the privacy set as “public,” it will appear in the news stream of your subscribers.
To put this in more simple terms, Subscribe is to Facebook profiles what Like is to Facebook pages. The only difference is that you get each and update when your “like” a Facebook page whereas you only get public updates when your “subscribe” to a Facebook profile.
You can subscribe to my public Facebook updates at facebook.com/agarwal.amit.

Add the Subscribe option to your Facebook Profile

If you would like to add the Subscribe button to your own Facebook profile, go here. Before you do that, it may be a good idea to double-check that only stuff that you really want to share with non-friends is public.
To confirm, go your Facebook profile page, hit the “View As” button and then click the “public” link to see what updates in your profile are public. You can have unlimited number of subscribers to your profile but you can subscribe to a maximum of 5,000 profiles.
You can download this PDF, courtesy the Facebook Public Figures page, to learn more about the new Subscribe option and how it differs from a regular Facebook page.

On a related note, Facebook is using the standard RSS icon with the new Subscribe feature which is confusing because, technically, these aren’t really RSS feeds – you can’t get them in, say, Google Reader.

Extend the Range of your Wireless Network

Setting up a wireless home network is pretty simple now. Get a wireless router, connect the Internet port of the router to your broadband modem and then connect any of the numbered LAN ports to the desktop computer through an Ethernet cable.
Wireless G (or 802.11g) routers offer fairly good Wi-Fi signal strength but if you plan to transfer large files or stream videos around the house, you may well consider switching to a slightly more expensive Wireless N (or 802.11n) router – these offer better signal strength and higher data transfer speeds than Wireless G routers.
There’s however one problem with Wi-Fi signals emanating from your wireless router – they only have a limited range. The wireless signal strength will degrade as the distance between the router and your laptop increases and it will further weaken if you have too many brick walls in the house or if your computer is located on a different floor than the router.

Ways to Boost the WiFi Signal Strength

 

If you too have a problem getting Wi-Fi signals in every corner of your house, here are some tips (and accessories) to help you extend the range of your wireless network.
#1. Install the DD-WRT* firmware on your wireless router – this might help increase the range of your Wi-Fi router by a few meters if not more.
To increase the signal strength, you can increase the router's transmit power and also disable both frame burst and afterburner (the settings can be accessed from the router's web dashboard). If DD-WRT firmware is not available for your router, try the Tomato firmware on your router.
#2. Most routers have omni-directional antennas so they emit wireless signals in all directions (just like a light bulb).
That’s fine if you have placed the router in a central location but if the router is in some corner of your room or against a wall, consider adding a home-made reflector behind the antennas of your router.
#3. InSSIDer is a free utility that can help you detect the presence and strength of wireless networks. Install InSSIDer on your laptop, walk around the house with your laptop to determine the wireless signal strength at various places and, based on this information, you can quickly find a more suitable location for the router.
#4. Ideally, you should place the router at a height in some central location and away from other cordless devices. Make sure that the router is not placed near something metallic (like an almirah or window grills) as that will weaken the wireless signals. Avoid mirrors as they can reflect the wireless signals away from the desired direction.
#5. Wireless routers generally ship with omni-directional antennas but you can replace them with more powerful uni-directional antennas and that will keep the signal from getting broadcast in all directions.
If you can’t find a compatible directional antenna for your router model, consider a booster antenna that’s omni-directional but will still boost both the range and strength of wireless signals.

Extend the range of WiFi signals with Hardware

If your router is placed on the ground floor of your home, the Wi-Fi signals will be very weak or may not even reach the basement computer or the printer upstairs. The situation will be no different if you work in a fairly large premises or if there are too many walls in the area.
In that case, here are some hardware device that you can consider to extend the reach of your Wi-Fi network:
Option #1. You can attach a WiFi Repeater (also known as Wireless Range Expander) to your router and quickly expand the coverage of your wireless network without using any cables.
The Repeater should be placed within the range of your existing router and it will reflect the signals to other areas where the wireless reception was earlier poor (or totally absent). The Repeater can connect wirelessly to both routers and access points (see #3 below).
Option #2. (This is my current setup) You can get another wireless router and connect  it to your existing router using an Ethernet cable. The advantage is that this setup comes pretty cheap and the Internet speed stays almost the same even for computers that are accessing the web via the new router.
You can get a 100 feet long Ethernet Cable (also known as Cat5 or LAN or RJ45 cable) for less than $10 and wireless routers start at $20.  Here’s a detailed guide on how you can connect two routers together.
Option #3. You also have the option to use an Access Point instead of a router to extend the WiFi range but that’s often not required because Wireless Access Points can be more expensive than equivalent routers.
The other advantage with a router is that is has extra LAN ports so, in future, you can connect more wired computers for sharing files or you Internet connection.
Option #4. If you have an old desktop or laptop computer, you should consider adding  an external (USB based) wireless adapter or upgrade the internal network card to improve the wireless reception (and thus Internet speed).

A Trillion Pageviews for Facebook

Google today released an updated list of the most-visited sites on the web and it should not come as any surprise that Facebook takes the top spot with 870 million uniques. YouTube and Yahoo are next with 790 M and 590 M uniques respectively.
Google, maybe for competitive reasons, doesn’t share traffic data of its own site, or that of Gmail, in the Ad Planner report. Google+ is growing but the user base is still relatively small for the site to become part of this report.

A Trillion Page Views
Facebook hit a new milestone in June this year - the site touched a trillion page views from the 870 million* people who visited Facebook that month. Check this info graphic to get an idea of how big a trillion – or a million million – is.

[*] Officially, Facebook has 750+ million users but the number of unique visitors who flock Facebook every month is much higher because certain section of the site – Facebook Pages and Profiles for example – are open to non-users as well.

Facebook says that people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the site and now we also know that, on an average, one user visits 1150 pages on Facebook in a month. That’s impressive considering that YouTube, with all the entertaining and viral content, manages only 126 views per unique visitor per month.

Keep Your Passwords Safe on a Piece of Paper

If you use the same password on multiple websites, your may be in for some trouble.

Say your password for website badwebsite.com is the same as the password for goodwebsite.com. Now if the website badwebsite.com gets compromised (or the owner is malign to start with), they’ll know your password. Chances are that your username is the same (email address) for both websites so the badwebsite.com people can can easily log in to your goodwebsite.com account and impersonate you.

Yeah, there are quite a few reliable Password Managers that serve as a strong room for your complex passwords but that they require you to install specific software on the computer. What do you do when you want to check your web email on a different computer where you do not have your security tools installed and you do not remember your secure, random, email password?

In addition, I doubt you can memorize all your passwords for each and every website, if they are secure from brute-forcing and unique, that is.

Write your passwords down on a paper

What I am trying to solve is to give users a simple way of generating strong passwords unique to every website they visit using just a piece of paper, credit card-sized, that you can carry in your wallet

What you need is just a piece that has a unique (per card) combination of secret letters to help you create a unique password for each website. You may use the RAND() function in an Excel spreadsheet to generate unique password cards.

To create a password, take each letter of the website you want to create a password for and then take the corresponding code from the table. For example, if you want to create a password for www.amazon.com, it would be:

1st letter is a –> a (Column 2, Row 1)
2nd letter is m –> jv (Column 7, Row 2)
3rd letter is a -> AN6
4th letter is z -> xs7
5th letter is o –> enb

So the password for your Amazon website becomes ajvAN6xs7enb.

You can optionally (make sure you do this with all your passwords) intertwine the generated password with a memorized password – it could the city name where you were born, your childhood hero, name of your favorite author or anything memorable.

For instance, if you were born in Philadelphia, the password for Amazon.com would be ajvAN6xs7enb intertwined with Philadelphia: PahjviAN6lxs7aenbdelphia. This would ensure that your identity consists of something you know (Philadelphia) and something you have (the paper password card).

Even if a malicious administrator of website badwebsite.com retrieves your password for that website, they cannot impersonate you on say PayPal or Amazon because you aren’t reusing passwords anymore.

It is a bit cumbersome to use if you had to use it to type in passwords each time, but when used in conjunction with your everyday "remember password" feature found in every browser, you get extra security at the cost of just tiny real state in your wallet.

Security involves trade-offs, in this case is between usability, portability and robustness against collusion or more sophisticated attacks. Arguably though, for a vast majority of people, this is more realistic than carrying an electronic password generator.

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Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select Contacts

If you are connected with too many people on Facebook and need to hide your online status on Facebook Chat from certain contacts, here's some help.

Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online.

So you can stay visible to your family members and close friends while the rest of your Facebook friends won't know if you are logged into Facebook.

Earlier you had to completely turn off Facebook chat in order to hide your online status from other contacts.

The Facebook chat window has easy sliders so you can easily toggle your online status for any friends list in a click.

Use Facebook Chat without opening Facebook.com

Facebook includes an awesome chat feature that lets you instantly start conversations with your Facebook buddies without installing any IM software but the only small issue is that you need to be on the Facebook.com website in order to use Facebook chat.

If you find this a bit inconvenient, here are some good workarounds that will let you chat on Facebook from anywhere without even having to open the Facebook site in your browser.

Facebook Chat Inside the Web Browser

If you have Google Chrome or Prism for Firefox, you can open this address in your browser address bar and then create an application shortcut to Facebook chat on your desktop.

Firefox users may bookmark the above link and set the "Load this bookmark in Sidebar" property to true in order to use Facebook chat from the Firebox sidebar.

Update: Use Skype as Facebook Chat Client

If you an IE user or hate to use Facebook chat from the sidebar, try Geotactic - this is a minimal desktop client for Facebook that looks exactly like the web version of Facebook chat but will also send you notifications of new messages and chat requests from the system tray.

Meebo, the very awesome web based instant messaging service, now supports Facebook chat as well. You can connect your Facebook account with meebo via the Facebook Connect service (so there's no need to share your Facebook credentials with anyone) and instantly chat with your online buddies inside the web browser.

There are two advantages here - you can use Facebook chat even if the main Facebook.com site is blocked in your office and two, you can simultaneously connect with friends on other IM networks from the same website.

Facebook Chat Clients for your Desktop

Chitchat - If Facebook were to develop a standalone messenger on the lines of Yahoo! or Google Talk, it might look something like ChitChat.

ChitChat is a Windows-only desktop client for Facebook that provides a tabbed window to make it easy for you to talk to may friends at once. It will also show notifications in the tray when your friends go online or when they have signed out. The application is in RC stage so expect a few bugs.



Digs by - This is again a very useful all-in-one app that helps you stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn and other online accounts.

If you have multiple accounts on Facebook (like you and your spouse), you can associate all of them with your Disgsby messenger and chat with the combined buddy list simultaneously. Facebook doesn't allow audio or video calls but Digsby indirectly brings that feature to Facebook Chat via tokbox.

Adium - If you are on Mac, Adium is probably the best choice for you to chat with Facebook friends from the desktop.

Like Pidgin and Digsby, Adium too supports multiple IM networks, including Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AOL AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, Twitter and Jabber (XMPP). And it uses the same Facebook Chat plugin that is available for Pidgin users on Google Code.

Pidgin - While Facebook Chat is not officially supported in Pidgin, there's a free plug-in that lets you connect to the Facebook chat server from Pidgin. And like Digsby, Pidgin too would let you chat with buddies on multiple Facebook accounts from the same interface.

Pidgin vs Digsby - Pidgin is purely for instant messaging while Digsby will also display notifications like when a friends sends you a message using Facebook email or if he or she writes something on your Facebook wall. Some people in the comments say that even Pidgin displays notifications but at least that doesn't work in Windows 7.

Pidgin will show all your Facebook contacts in one giant list (see update) while Digsby will group contacts under logical "Friends list" just the way you have them on the main facebook.com site. Update: The new version of Facebook Chat plugin for Pidgin displays your online friends under groups just like Pidgin.

Keep your Kids from Seeing Adult Content on the Web

If 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. 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 127.0.0.1 trick to that helps you block any of the known websites on your computer.

A More Straightforward Solution to Block Sites

If you are looking for a more simple solution to keep all adult sites off your computers, switch to Family Shield as described in the following video:

FamilyShield is part of the previously described OpenDNS service but the advantage here is that you don’t have to do any tweaking to block adult content – just change your DNS server entries (these are different from the original OpenDNS values) and the web filters are immediately activated.

If you chose to setup FamilyShield on your router, sites that contain adult content will automatically get blocked on all your computers, gaming consoles and even mobile phones that are part of your home network. It even blocks proxy sites that are commonly used bypass the web filters.

It can’t get easier than this and there’s no software to install though your kids are likely to encounter ads when a site they’re trying to visit gets blocked – that’s the business model of OpenDNS.

Test your Eyes Online

They say that you should get your eyes checked every two years but if haven’t had the chance to see a doctor all this time, you can test your vision on your computer as well.

Of course these self eye tests are no substitute for visiting your doctor but if you follow the steps well, you may get some idea about how good (or bad) your vision is.

The Snellen Eye Chart

Most of us are familiar with the Snellen Chart that is made of rows of alphabets of different sizes – you read these letters from a distance, usually twenty feet, and the smallest row that you can recognize accurately indicates whether you have normal vision or not.

The various eye testing tools that are available online make use of the same Snellen chart.

Test your Eyesight Online

You should start with University at Buffalo's IVAC tool. Use a physical ruler to measure the length of the line on the screen (the length will vary depending on your screen resolution). Also measure the distance of your eyes from the computer screen. Now read the row of letters on the screen and press ‘smaller’ to display more rows in decreasing sizes.

While performing the test, you need to cover one eye and when you have read all the characters from top-to-bottom, read them again but cover the other eye this time. When you can no longer read the letters, stop!

Another Flash based eye testing tool is hosted on thinkquest.org – this can work accurately only with computer monitors that are either 15”, 17” or 19” in size. Stand four feet from the screen and then follow the on-screen instructions. When the characters are no longer readable, hit the stop button and it will display your visual acuity.

Finally, if you are looking for more DIY solution, try this. Open the Snellen Chart image on your computer screen and measure the size of the big letter E using a ruler. Multiply that number by 2.838 and stand that far from the screen while taking the test. Now try reading the different letters, top to bottom, to check your vision.

Easily Find the Serial Number of your Computer

You’ve got a problem with your computer, you call their technical support team and the person on the other side requires the machine’s serial number (also known as the Service Tag) before he can even log your request. If you using a laptop computer, you can easily find the service tag by turning the machine upside but for desktops, especially the older models, the sticker that holds the service tag is often placed at a more harder-to-reach location.

There’s a alternate way to find the computer’s serial number without you having to slide beneath the table.

Open the command prompt (Start –> CMD) and type the following command:

wmic bios get serialnumber

Another command that will also print the model number (or make) of your computer is:

wmic csproduct get name, identifyingnumber 

The system model number can also be found using the System Information program available under All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools.

The above commands should work on Windows 7, XP and Windows XP Pro machine as wmic.exe didn’t ship with the previous editions of Windows. Refer to this page to learn about all other system details that you can retrieve with the help of wmic.exe command.

Tips for Using Multiple Sign-in with Google Accounts

Google offers a handy multiple sign-in feature to help users toggle between their different accounts in the same browser without having to go through the sign-in / sign-out cycle. The facility is available in regular Google Accounts (that have @gmail.com address) as well as Google Apps accounts.

You may use multiple-signs with Gmail, Google Docs, Reader, Google Calendar, Web Search and couple of other Google products.

A: How to Switch Between Different Google Accounts?

Let’s say are signed into two separate Gmail accounts, using multiple sign-in, and would like to switch from one account to another? How do you do this?

The popular option is that you click your email address on the Google bar (see the screenshot above) and choose “Switch Account” from the drop-down menu to sign-in to your other Google / Gmail account.

There’s however a second option as well that is a lot quicker. Go to your browser address bar and simply change a digit in the URL. When you use multiple sign-in, Google appends a number to your Gmail URLs and you just have to change this number to switch accounts.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/ - Default account (n=0)

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/ - Second account (n=1)

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/ - Third account (n=2)

Alternatively, you may add the above URLs to your bookmarks bar to directly access the different mail account with the click without using that drop-down.

B: Set any Google Account as your Default Sign-in

When your open any of the Google websites that are enabled for multiple sign-in, like Gmail or Google Docs, it will automatically sign-in using your default account.

In some cases, this “default account” set by Google may not be your primary account and thus you have to switch to another account every time you open a Google service. Is there are workaround?

If you have multiple accounts, you can actually set the order on your own so that your main Google Accounts becomes the default (n=0), the next account you frequently use becomes the second account in the sign-in order (n=1) and so on. Here’s how:

Step 1. Open google.com/accounts/Logout to sign-out of all your Google accounts.

Step 2. Next go to google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions and sign-in using the Google Account that you want to set as default.

Step 3. Now go to google.com/accounts/AddSession and sign-in to your other Google account. Repeat this step until you are signed-in to all your other Google accounts.

That’s it. You have now set a custom signing order for all your Google Accounts and that should save you some time. See additional tips on using Gmail and Google Docs.

Keep your Online Accounts Safe and Secure

You probably use strong and unique passwords to prevent hackers from taking over your online accounts but is that enough? Maybe yes but I can’t say that with enough confidence because my Google and Facebook accounts have been compromised in the past despite using very complex passwords that can’t be easily guessed.

Like most other people, I have a few dozen online accounts now and have spent the last few days evaluating the security and recovery options for each one of them. In response, I have taken a few extra steps, listed below, that I think may help improve the overall security of these accounts. If you find anything useful in the list, do try implementing it in your own workflow for better piece of mind.

A Security Checklist for Online Accounts

#1. I have enabled the “Always use HTTPS” setting for Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google and all the other online services that support secure HTTP. This is especially important when accessing Internet over a Wi-Fi network because without HTTPS, anyone (and not just skilled hackers) can capture your login details using Firesheep, a simple Firefox extension.

#2. I have a few Google Accounts and they all use 2-step verification now. That means if someone tries to log into my Google account from a different computer, they’ll have to type an additional code that is sent directly to my mobile phone as an SMS text message or over a voice call.

#3. The 2-step verification can also alert you to potential hacking activity. If I ever get an SMS (or a voice call) from Google with the verification code but without requesting one, it is an immediate hint that someone knows my password though they won’t be able to get in without entering the verification code.

#4. I have connected my mobile number with my Facebook account. This is extremely important because I get an instant SMS and an email alert whenever my Facebook account is accessed from a different computer or another mobile phone.

#5. I carefully reviewed third-party sites that have access to my online accounts and revoked access to all the unwanted apps that I no longer use. In case you wish to do the same for your accounts, here are the direct links for Facebook, Google and Twitter.

#6. I maintain two email addresses – one is public that is displayed on the blog while the other email address is known to a select few. Why?

6a. The public email address is associated with services like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, Skype and a couple of other social sites where I want people to find me if they have my email address in their address book.

6b. I use the other “secret” email address with services like Dropbox, Amazon, Google Apps, my bank, my hosting service, Apple iTunes, PayPal and few other places where account security is even more critical and where I am not looking to get social.

#7. If I am testing a new online service, I almost always use a disposable email address to create a test account with that service. Some online services reject disposable addresses to prevent fake registrations but the one I use goes through as it is only an alias (or nickname) of my main email address.

#8. I prefer using a virtual credit card with shopping sites that I am either using for the first time or where the fine print is too long and there’s a risk that I could be billed again if I don’t cancel the account. This also helps keep my credit card safe from relatively unknown sites.

#9. Once in a while, I do mock drill with my most important online accounts to test the various recovery options I would have in case I forget my password or if I lose access to my secondary email address or misplace my mobile phone.

#10. The last point - how do I remember and manage so many different passwords?

Some people prefer to use password managers which are very convenient but at this time, all I use is a simple 1-page document (see sample) to store information of all my online accounts and the corresponding passwords. This file is password-protected and I put it on Dropbox so the information is available on all my computers.

This may surprise some but I also have a hard copy of this file that family members can refer to in case I am travelling and they need urgent access to any of my online accounts. Also, since they would need my mobile phone to access my Gmail or Google account, I have included backup verification codes in the printed document itself – thus the Google account can be used without requiring the phone.

One more thing. If you have two email accounts, never ever set one emails as the secondary (or recovery) email address of the other. That’s because if one of your email accounts gets compromised, the hacker can easily take over the other account as well.

How to Add Speech Recognition to your Website

Your website pages probably contain a few text fields that require user input. For instance, your site may have a search box where people type in search queries, a comment form (commonly found in blogs) while some sites have a contact form that visitors can use to quickly send a message to the author /webmaster.

The visitors to your website currently need to use the keyboard to enter text in the various input fields but wouldn’t it be nice if you could also offer them an alternate form of input where they can just speak instead of typing?

Well all you need to do is add an extra word – highlighted in red - to your existing search code and your site will able to accept voice based input.

Add Speech Input to your Search Box

<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">

 <input type="text" name="q" size="30" x-webkit-speech />

 <input type="submit" value="Google Search" />

</form>

Try a live demo - click the microphone icon, speak and hit enter:  

 You may also find a live speech-enabled search box on the site’s homepage.
When you are done speaking, the audio is sent to Google servers where it gets
transcribed and delivered as plain text.

Currently, only Google Chrome supports the HTML speech input API and thus, the microphone icon will only be visible to users who are accessing your site through Chrome. If they are using a different browser, they’ll see the standard search box.

The speech input attribute that does all the magic - x-webkit-speech - works with <input> fields only but there’s an easy workaround that will help you enable voice support for any other text field the <textarea> tag.

Add Speech Input to any Textarea like Comment Forms

Speech input for textarea - click the microphone icon and talk:  

The code looks something like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

  function transcribe(words) {

    document.getElementById("speech").value = words;

    document.getElementById("mic").value = "";

    document.getElementById("speech").focus();

  }

</script>

<textarea cols="50" id="speech" ></textarea>

<input id="mic" onwebkitspeechchange="transcribe(this.value)" x-webkit-speech>

Internally, when you click the microphone icon and speak, the transcribed text still goes into the <input> field but with the help of a JavaScript function, a copy of that text is instantly sent to the textarea as well.

The above trick will come handy in case you wish to voice-enable the comment form or the email form of your website that accept long-form text.

Find the Perfect Mobile Plan and Save Money!

If you are based in India and carry a mobile phone, which you do for sure, here’s something that may help you pick the best (or most cost-effective) voice and text plan for your phone based on your current actual usage.
The service, known as 3gsimplified, is available as a mobile app for Android phones and also as a web app in case you are using a different phone or would like to compare mobile plans from the desktop.

Which is the Best Mobile Plan for you?

You install the app and choose your region (or circle) and also your existing cellular operator from the available options. The app will read the voice call logs from the phone and based on the local / national (STD) usage, it will recommend you a list of the most cost-effective plans from different operators in your region.

With mobile number portability (MNP) available across India, it has become so easy to switch operators now. Alternatively, you may configure the Plan Hound app to only show plans from your existing operator or from the preferred operators.

Then there’s the web app, available at 3gsimplified.com, for mobile users who are not on Android. Here you need to manually input your monthly voice usage for Local and STD calls and the service will use the exact algorithm to determine a more cost-effective plan for your mobile phone.

The idea is impressive and well implemented except for one limitation - the mobile app does not consider the roaming usage – calls you made while you were outside your circle – while recommending the voice plans. For frequent travellers, the roaming charges may often constitute the bulk of their monthly mobile bill.

The Plan Hound app was one of the shortlisted entries at the Nasscom Emerge contest and secured the third position. If you want to save on your monthly mobile bill but don’t have the time to analyze your call logs, get this app!

Yahoo! Brings Full-Length Bollywood Movies to your Computer Screen

A few months ago, YouTube India launched a new box office channel where one can watch popular movies from the Indian cinema every month. YouTube already had a huge library of Hindi and regional films online but the box office channel is more about showcasing the blockbuster hits.

Now Yahoo! is also getting into the online movie business in India.

They have introduced a new service called MoviePlex where you can enjoy full-length Bollywood movies on your computer screen anytime, anywhere. The movie collection at this is limited but does include some popular titles.

Unlike YouTube which streams movies in both standard and HD resolutions, the movies on Yahoo! are currently available only in SD. Also, Yahoo! uses Flash Video and thus you cannot watch the movies on iPad or other devices that do not support the Flash Player.

The movies on Yahoo! India are currently available for free and there are no in-stream ads to interrupt your experiences. I however doubt if people outside India can watch these movies.

Drive a Car Anywhere in the World on Google Maps-

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to drive a car on the congested streets of lower Manhattan in Now York or the scenic Transfăgărășan road in Romania?

Meet Mini Maps, a Google Maps based Flash mashup that lets you drive a car virtually anywhere in the world using the controls on the keyboard. Simply select a location on Google Maps – you can either type the address or choose a point on the map visually – and hit the car accelerator (the up arrow key) to start moving.

Unlike the other Google Maps based car-driving games, Mini Maps is smart enough to recognize the terrain and the roads in your driving area and adds virtual boundaries on either sides of the road as you drive. If the area you’ve selected for driving is too dark, the car headlights will turn on automatically or your can press the “N” key to turn-off the night mode.

There’s more. You can create your own track on Google Maps by clicking at different points on the map or you can invite your other Facebook friends to Mini Map for a quick game of car racing. The stuff is very nicely done and can be addictive!