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Microhoo is no more

by Sujoy on May 4, 2008

Open up today’s Techmeme and you will see this splashed across almost throughout the entire page. Because this is HUGE news. Microsoft has withdrawn its plans for buying out Yahoo, more popularly known as Microhoo in the speculative blogosphere. So what does it mean finally for us?

Does it mean that we can actually breathe a sigh of relief before some other giant (Google) makes the next move? Or has Yahoo got some other plans up its sleeve? Almost 3 months after the initial speculations of Microsoft’s plan of acquisition of Yahoo, and almost a 16 billion $ increase in market value, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer released his statement that it was withdrawing its offer of acquiring Yahoo. And now that the beans have been spilled, speculations are making the rounds.

Of course, most of them surround the Big Goog tying up with Yahoo to do things OpenSource. Also under the radar is the question of how Yahoo’s shares would turn out on Monday when the markets open. And unless there is a huge miracle, the stock-prices are expected to decline drastically. And well, as Techcrunch states in their post here, if Yahoo tanks badly, Microsoft can even be back with a lower bid. Hmm, so we just can’t count out Microsoft out as yet.

Indexed below are the sites which have covered the entire chapter from every possible angle and every possible aspect.

Yahoo Responds: “The distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us”

Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft

Guessing Yahoo’s Opening Stock Price

OK, so what’s Microsoft’s plan B?

Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees

Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

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Edit Contacts in GMail Chat

by Sujoy on May 1, 2008

Chat Edit

So what’s new about this. Nothing actually, only it’s faster. GMail Blog has put up the details. But anyway, I am gonna tell you exactly the same. And may be a bit more as well. Remember the old days when a friend added you on Gtalk and his Email ID used to show on the chat panel, and you always ended up in a confusion as to who is this guy. Especially when you have friends like mine with usernames like havoccreatorxx, or headbanger_allnite, et al. And what did you do to avoid this? You went to the contact list, searched for the name, and then edited the information, and then saved it.  And come back to your inbox to what you were doing. Not any more.

All you need to do now, is to just do a mouse-over on the name/email id you want to edit on the chat panel, just click on the name when the info pops up, and you are ready to edit , on the fly. A big time-saver, ain’t it? And, oh just to make sure, it is only for the new version of the GMail (for Firefox, Flock and IE7 ie). So all you IE 6 users, (whom I prefer calling loohoo..saahaars), STAY BEHIND.

Image courtesy: GMail Blog.

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Orkut goes Private

by Sujoy on April 29, 2008

OrkutLike 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.

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How to Watch and Download HQ videos on Youtube

by Sujoy on April 27, 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

Youtube HQ

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

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