Tech ‘n Tricks: iTunes controller for iPhone
DIY – How to build your own G-Force Meter!
Google does not work! Google cannot find its own keyword!!!!
Like it or not, Orkut is potentially one of the largest social networks around. While people in general, and industry specialists in particular have always termed it as Google’s unsuccessful social network, to be only successful in India, Pakistan and Brazil, but they always ignored the number of users that Orkut has from these three countries. The communities that Orkut brings in have recorded members more than a million. Yes, as huge as that!! Anyway, this post is about how Google is actually revealing more and more new features into the social networking site.
In the latest post on Orkut Blog, Orkut’s Vlad Patryshev talks about the new privacy features that Orkut has brought into the forefront. We aready have been seeing the changes in the add-friends section. The appearance of the check box and manage friends section. The blog says,
In addition to having your privacy settings to be just “friends” or “everyone,” you can now select also “friend of friends.” We feel that this is a good choice for those of you who may wish to share your information with an extended group of friends without making it public to everyone. We hope this additional flexibility helps you manage your experience on orkut better.
What could be next from their sleeve? Guess, we just have to wait and watch. At Techkeyla, we definitely are watching.
How to Watch and Download HQ videos on Youtube
Posted on: 27-04-2008
**UPDATE**
If you are looking for Youtube HD, please look at the following posts
Search for HD videos on YouTube
How to Watch and Download Youtube Videos in HD
YouTube HD for Dummies : Search, Watch, Download
We all know that Youtube had introduced the option of uploading High Quality Videos and also given the option of viewing these Videos in the High Quality Version. Now, out of the millions of videos out there,
only a few have the option shown on the video page itself which reads : Watch in High Quality. Now the HQ version definitely take longer time to buffer. But here’s how you can even watch those videos in HQ where the “Watch in High Quality Link” is not available. Here’s the hack: Just add &fmt=18 at the end of the URL of the Video (i.e. The Youtube link in the address bar of your browser), and the video which will be shown will be the HQ version.
Now, some videos do show a significant difference in the Quality of the Sound as well as the Video Quality. But for some, the Video remains as compressed as the Low-Q version. But one thing’s for sure. The audio bitrate of the HQ version is definitely much better. So that’s it: Just by adding &fmt=18 at the end of the Video Link, you can watch the HQ version of the video. (It is advisable to opt for the HQ version only if you have a fast broadband connection, else you might just be spending ages for the video to even start buffering).
e.g. Here’s the original Low-Q version of Paul Pott’s on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and here’s the HQ version. The Video doesn’t show much of a significant increase in quality here, but the audio is definitely much better.
Second example: Here you will watch a smudged, compressed Low-Q version of Paul Potts’ Hello Message. And then, here the sharper,a bit pixelised, but definitely Higher-Q version. Not only did the audio quality increased, but there is an evident increase in the Video Quality as well.
And how to download them. Although there are many Firefox extensions to do the same, here I’ll suggest a one-stop solution. Just visit KeepVid.com. It has a very green address bar. Just paste the URL of your Youtube video you wish to download and hit the Download button on the right. You’ll be given two links. One is of the Low-Q version (which is in FLV), and the other is the High-Q version (which is in MP4 playable on your PMPs,iPods etc.). So there you have it, you have learnt to view your Youtube Videos in High-Q and now how to download them as well. Now thank me. C’mon, be a bit generous to the services
Awright!!! It is finally here. Facebook IM. It is cool, it is handy and it’s almost non-existent, at least by the looks. It is really cool , coz you don’t have to actually browse away to some other application to chat with your buddies. And this is what you get. On your Facebook page, on the bottom right corner, you’d have noticed a change today. Yes, it is IM integrated into Facebook. See the screenshot below.
Unlike orkut, which just shows who’s online on GTalk, with that green dot beside your profile pic, Facebook IM is what it is!! A simple and functional IM within the social networking giant. It is very easy. You can check who among your buddies are online and well go ahead and strike a conversation. The functionality doesn’t work with IE 6 or below. But then, who’s using that? Works on Firefox and Flock just perfectly. Haven’t checked on Opera or Safari.
If you are facing any problem seeing Facebook Chat, here’s the official help page.
Inside Facebook has the details in their story here.
Check out Nick O Neill’s post as well on the new Facebook IM .
And for those who are still hungry, here’s the Official Facebook Blog Link titled “Now we’re talking“.
So you chat hungry people, enough reasons to throw around those emoticons. Oh did I mention, it is Emoticon READY!!! *wink* *wink* ;D
You see the following logo on the Google Homepage today. It is 22nd April, the Earth day and Google is celebrating it.
The interesting thing is, Yahoo is also showing it’s green colors. Should we say, it’s “green with envy”. LOL. See the logo below.
Anyway, Google has many plans rolled out for the Earth Day. Google ’s Official blog reports the following:
1. A Google Desktop gadget called the Energy Saver. It is a plugin for the Google Desktop and will manage power settings for your computer and turn it to sleep when you are not using it for a long period.
2. The post also tells us of many other blogs who are celebrating Earth Day . One of them is a story of the reduction of paper use by using the online ( read Google docs) alternative.
It’s 9 pm, and HBO is showing “An Inconvenient Truth” here in India. It is indeed high time that we all geared up and acted positively to make our planet Earth a better place to live in . From today onwards, I shall be actively blogging about environmental issues and also about news from all across the world related to it. Do remember to check out the category GREEN to stay updated with my posts. And what better to call this little project as “Project Green”. So all my posts pertaining to Project Green will be indexed on a single page as well, and expect PG on the titles. Peace! Green Peace!!
And to all my readers, and also to all who do not read this: Happy Earth Day 
There has been a notifier above my dashboard for quite some time. Initially, I had just ignored it. But it was quite some time now and I thought, a Sunday afternoon would be good to upgrade to the latest Wordpress version. I had a 2.3 version running and had plans of upgrading to the latest 2.5 version. So, the first thing I did was search on the instructions. Apparently I didn’t need to search for it. I clicked the link to download the new version from the Wordpress page and it redirected me to a page, with links on the official guide to Upgrade. It even contained links to fully install the new version or upgrade to the new version. I’ll be telling you the instructions in as detailed steps as possible, but first, let’s first consider why it is necessary at all to take the pain of upgrading.
Firstly, I heard Blog indexing websites like Technorati are leaving behind sites which have older Wordpress versions. Apart from that, there is the obvious reason of trying out something spanking new and be a member of the New League of the New Wordpress users. And yes, the new Dashboard is a welcome change. Although, there are some flaws and shortcomings which I’ll discuss eventually. So, anyway here are the steps to upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.
Step 1: Ensure that you have backed up your Wordpress DB. How to do that? Check out my post on it here and the things to remember while backing up post. Keep it ready, just in case anything goes wrong. If possible keep a back-up of your wp-content folder. This is very necessary as you might need it in case you deleted it by mistake. Also keep a copy of the wp-config.php file. This contains the information to connect to your DB. This shouldn’t be a problem as the new Wordpress folder will have a wp-config-sample.php file. Anyway, so you should have all your back-ups ready.
