Jash’s Blog

So there has been news about a Google Web Drive or GDrive that will provide online storage to users. There were numerous posts on this topic on various blogs, one of them was by me over here. After all this time, Google has decided to allow users to upload all file types to Google Docs. So you can upload, store and share any type of file you want with Google Docs. There is a detailed post by Google over here.

There is also a brief storage limit section that tells you that you get 1 GB space and cannot upload a file larger than 150 MB. More storage can be purchased at 25 cents per Gig.

I think this is a great step for Chrome OS…

Last Christmas, Mac Heist had the Mac Giving Tree with many apps that were given on Christmas Day. This year, MacStories has a huge Apps Tree with 450 Application licenses for Christmas. There are numerous Mac and iPhone applications like 1Password, MailPlane, CSSEdit, FontCase and ExpanDrive. To get your favorite application, just visit this page and follow the instructions…

MacStories will give the licenses on 22nd of December. So stay tuned…

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is breaking free form US Department of Commerce. Since 1998, ICANN had a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Government, but now has signed an “Affirmation of Commitments” which breaks ICANN free. Previously, ICANN was only answerable to the Department of Commerce, but now it is more internationally-balanced. It has its own Government Advisory Committee which will manage ICANN. Now ICANN will have to send reports to reviewers selected by its own Advisory Committee and to international governments, besides the Department of Commerce.

ICANN was criticized for delays in intentional domain name arrivals and slow to adapt measures useful to adapt browsing in other countries. But now with the new affirmation, those are expected to be overcome.

One big change brought by this is domain names in international languages. By next year, top-level domains in international languages will be available. So you could get your domain in Chinese or Russian.

More on ICANN Accouncements.

Everyone was expecting a tablet from Apple. But HP has come up with their new Dream Screen tablet. It does not run Windows or Linux, but uses its own platform that can play music and videos, open photos, and run web apps like weather, facebook, etc. It comes in 10 inches (US$ 249) and 13 inches (US$ 299) and 2GB internal memory along with a HP version of Apple Remote with volume and navigation buttons. You can also hook up Memory cards and USB drives and copy content.

Personally, I think it definitely needs a web browser! and a Video-out or HDMI port. This will be useful to connect it to a LCD display to watch movies and movies from a USB hard drive. That’s what I use my Mac mini for. A DVD drive is also welcome, it will then also act as a complete media center solution. And as HP has an AppStore for their Printers, they can also release apps for this device and it will be perfect.

Releasing October 11th. Buy Now: 10 inch | 13 inch

Apple’s next generation OS finally starts shipping. Snow Leopard is available for $29 for Leopard users as an upgrade. The family-pack comes for $49 (5-user). If you are not a Leopard user or use an OS older than Leopard, then you have to get the Snow Leopard box set for $169. However, there was an article on Lifehacker blog about installing the $29 version on Tiger. Link is here. Snow Leopard only workes on Intel macs so Power PC users will have to upgrade their macs.

Amazon is giving Snow Leopard for $25 with Free Shipping. So, that’s the greatest deal on the internet. Buy Snow Leopard for $25 from Amazon.  Buy Snow Leopard Family Pack.   Get Box set.

And after the whole RIP drama, tr.im is back up! tr.im has been my favorite URL shortner, but not any more. I do not trust them, they can close down anytime (maybe next week) and come back up next month. Or even add Advertisements to URL redirects. So, you may not be sure how long your URL is going to be good. I do not trust them. I am using TinyURL at the moment.

Anyways, this was just for the information.

Happy trimming!

Twitter tremendously increased the number of URL shortening services with tr.im being very famous and preferred by many. tr.im had a simple and nice website with a dashboard that gives statistics of each URL trimmed.

The Nambu Network has however decided to shut down tr.im as they wanted to get money out of it by selling the service, or at least a part of tr.im, but no one showed interest in purchasing the service. The next thing was to start charging the users, which was not possible as there are a hundred other similar services that offer free URL shortening. So, to stop the database from expanding and bandwidth from being consumed, The Nambu Network decided to shut down tr.im.

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Google just announced about a new project they are working on. Its the Google Chrome OS. Google is amazed by the feedback of their web browser Google Chrome with over 30 million users. Now, Google thinks that the Operating Systems today are not Web-friendly or Web-optimized. So, Google is making an Operating System called Google Chrome OS which will be focused on Web users.

Google Chrome OS will be a light-weight and Open Source OS targeted for netbooks. The source code will be available in around the last quarter of 2009 where as the OS will be available to consumers in the end of 2010.

More on official Google Blog post.

Microsoft has just announced the pricing of Windows 7. Windows 7 is a major OS Upgrade from previous versions of Windows yet pricing well decided. So here it goes….

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Yahoo! has announced that Yahoo! 360, the social networking service by Yahoo! will be closing on July 13th. Yahoo! 360 consisted of a blog and “connections” or friends. The reason behind discontinuing this service is not mentioned, however users of Yahoo! 360 were sent an E-mail saying that they are re-branding Yahoo! 360 as Yahoo! Profiles. Yes, I know Google just launched Google Profiles, and this is exactly the same thing by Yahoo! but with a little bit of enhancements.

I would call this a mixture of Google Profiles with Wordpress and Twitter. The main page of Yahoo! Profile displays information about the user and a display picture, along with the status (What are you doing?). Users also get a blog and friends list.

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