What is Unicode:

Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.

Why Unicode ?

Any given computer (especially servers) needs to support many different encodings; yet whenever data is passed between different encodings or platforms, that data always runs the risk of corruption.

Unicode 5.1.0 contains over 100,000 characters, and provides significant additions and improvements that extend text processing for software worldwide. The new standard has significant character additions for Indic and South East Asian scripts, expanded identifier specifications for Indic and Arabic scripts, improvements in the processing of many Indian and other Indic scripts. Now, you can type in Indian languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi more efficiently.

Altogether, it’s good for the Indian languages. Google says:

The new Unicode 5.1.0, is now available in search, so people speaking languages such as Malayalam can now search for words containing the new characters in Unicode 5.1.0.

You can find the Unicode Character Code Charts for all supported scripts here.
You can read the official announcement and a graph showing Unicode Statistics here.

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So, I wanted a better way to have WebPages saved on my computer, so that, I may do a search to find the one needed. Thus, I came across Htm2PDF - a web app which gives you a PDF Version of any webpage you need. This way, you could save any webpage as single PDFs. There are two ways to use it:

• You may go to the App’s homepage and enter the URL of the webpage to be saved
• OR you could make a bookmarklet on your bookmarks tab of the browser, so that you can convert a webpage to PDF, with a single-click, on the fly.

You get to set some preferences like, whether to make the links click-able etc. on their homepage.

Later, at Digital Inspiration, I found a review of another tool, that does the same job. It’s actually an Firefox addon, named LOOP to PDF for Firefox. You can read more about the addon here.

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My mornings start with RSS. It’s like a bed coffee for me. My day life starts after a daily dose of RSS feeds.

So, you’ve heard many times: RSS, RSS. But, do you know what actually it is? (Frankly, I didn’t knew anything about RSS, until I started blogging!!). Well, it’s a technology that makes it possible to read & stay updated with the content from any isites/blogs you like, without actually visiting those respective websites. This ground-breaking technology is NOT new, but still it is not utilzed to the fullest. So, why don’t you start using it right away by subscribing to my feed !!

People like Daniel (& me too!) felt the need to make the netizens aware of this great service/technology and has initiated, what is called, “RSS Awareness Day” on May 1st. The aim:

“By creating the RSS Awareness Day and celebrating it every year we should be able to get the general public exposed to this format, hopefully increasing the usage of RSS feeds and related applications among Internet users.”

So, if you still don’t use RSS, it’s high time that you must start your RSS Ride. Despite the fact that the number of internet users using RSS is low, RSS is probably among the subjects for which thousands of tutorials are written !!. I am not going to write just another one. Many have already done that very efficiently. I’ve sorted the best RSS articles I’ve read. Here they are:

• What Is RSS ? (RSSDay.org)
• RSS Explained by ProBlogger (Comprehensive)
• History & Technicalities (Wikipedia)
• A List of RSS Readers/Aggregators (Wikipedia)

There are many more articles on RSS, but I think reading tens of articles on a single nice topic is pointless. If you want more, there is always, Google

Try It Now Itself !

Well, you’ve got the theory part well. Now it’s time for some practicals!! Start your ‘RSS Ride’ right here:
Subscribe to my Blog; get all the new posts delivered to you.

Subscribe in a Reader

Subscribe through E-Mail (Easiest!!)

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Plotbot is web-based screenwriting software. You can write your script with as many or as few people as you want—here’s nothing to install, it’s free, and it’s easy to use!

You could create an account in one single step and then you can add projects, invite your team mates or make it public so that anyone could contribute. It adopts an approach similar to “wikis” i.e. each element is editable by any member of a project. You can also comment on, delete or restore any element.

Through the buzzwordalicious magic of AJAX, you can quickly and easily write your screenplay from almost any browser. You just click to edit any element and push submit to store it—no cumbersome page reloads!

They claims that even the administrators can’t view the private projects
you are working on. They back up your data every day to ensure that you don’t lose your work. At any time, you can download your screenplay
as an XML or RTF (Rich Text Format) document.

The people behind this, are two classmates. One of them is a Project Manager of an University’s web services team. And the other one is a hardcore coder who “frequently finds himself accidentally terminating sentences with semi-colons.”
(I loved it !!).
You can know more about plotbot here.

Basically, it is intended to be used for writing scripts online, but I’m sure that new nifty uses will be found out !! When Twitter was launched, anyone thought that it will transform into a micro-blogging tool and tool for a product laucnch etc ?

Have you got any ideas to use PlotBot in a more innovative way? Share them !!

Update: Two other similar services have been reported by Jeff:  Scripped & Zhura

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These are NOT “just another poll”s. Doesn’t they tell us something? Something about what the web is now! Yes, they certainly does. The WebWare awards had 10 categories, and now proves to be a way of finding the true performers in each category as the votes were casted by real people who use those services. We’ve had many reviews of
Web Apps & Services. But, here in this poll, it’s not any reviewers, it’s the common public who voted, the whopping 1,901,373 votes!!

Thus, this Web Awards showcases the best in the business. It will be a great resource to find the successful performer(s) of every category.

I’m happy to see many of my personal favourites making it into the top!!
Have you voted for this poll? If yes, were you correct with your entries? What’s your opinion about online polls like these?

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• It’s your personal life. Don’t make it too public.

• Understand that the potential viewers of the photos are not only those who invite, but includes anyone searching the Internet.
• So, whenever you share personal or sensitive photos, make sure you mark them as PRIVATE or PROTECTED. That is, just make sure that, the photos could be viewed only by those who invite.
• NEVER upload your images where you have no control over the display/accessibility/management of your uploaded photos.
• Use only quality services to upload like Flickr, PhotoBucket, PicasaWeb etc.
  

Keep these things in mind and protect your privacy online.
Have you been following these guidelines? Or have you had any experience where, leaving your images public caused you some sort of trouble? What’s your opinion about the billions of images being uploaded to the internet?

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There is a banner in your “Home” page to notice you of the addition:

You can access and manage the apps at MyApps page which can be accessed from your Home page (Right under the profile picture).

Currently, there are 18 apps available for Indians to add to their profile. They include Games, Music, Movie Ratings & Reviews, Photo-related ones etc. You can have the full list of available apps in your MyApps page.

You can have music in your profile, a slideshow, Favorite Movies’ reviews etc..

Once added, the apps will be shown at the bottom of your profile page.

A screenshot of an app, i just tried out:

These newly-launched apps are sure to create a wave among the Indian Youth. We will see more Orkutting.

Most of these apps, are granted “root-level” access to your profile on adding. Since, every single app is tested and approved by Orkut before publishing, security is assured (at least for the time being!!).

(It was just last week, Orkut launched Orkut Mobile Version & Orkut Low-Bandwidth Version. Good going!!!)

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A guy named, baramunchies (http://digg.com/users/baramunchies) submitted the article to Digg and at the time of writing this, my post has a total of 22 Diggs.

Today, I googled “imageshack torrent” and the results were all on the “launch of New Torrent Service From ImageShack”. Almost all posts were made on or after 5th April. The search result showed the p2p-news-giant, TorrentFreak (acclaimed of reporting latest scoops), in the 6th slot with their post dated 5th April.

Even then, their post was digged a whopping 990 times (as at 23.00 IST, 6th April) just in a single day.
Remember, the SCOOPer got only 22 diggs in 7 days.

Yes, I KNEW that TorrentFreak is among the 50 most popular domains featured on the frontpage of Digg.
And now I KNOW a SCOOP is NOT a SCOOP, unless you are that reputed.

What do you say?
(P.S. I was not complaining. The AIM OF THIS POST is to explain, how important is a solid reputation for your blog to be read & digged)

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This needs attention. Imageshack.us, the leader in image hosting, today added a great new feature to their ‘already-nice’ feature-set: “Online Torrenting”.

What Is It?

It’s a cutting-edge technology by which you can download the contents of a torrent file to imageshack.us’s clustered servers and download it to your computer through direct links.

That means, you literally need no torrent clients or p2p clients running in the background, hogging your resources. Just add the torrent file at imageshack and let them do the torrenting for you. And, once it’s finished you can download the files as direct links. Sounds great, isn’t it !!!

Specs

You get 15GB Storage Space & 15GB Bandwidth

How To?

1. The service is still in the early BETA and requires you to register for an account at imageshack.us
2. After Registering, LogIn and Go to Imageshack Torrents’ Home.
3. You can either upload a .torrent file from your computer or else provide the URL to the .torrent file. Click GO
4. That’s it. Now, Imageshack starts torrenting for you and you may shut the computer and have a good night’s sleep.
   Nothing is downloaded to your computer, NOW.
5. When you check back, it might be finished or else you can see the status of the given torrent download.
6. In the torrents’ homepage, you get to control torrenting, like, Start, Stop, Download, Delete etc. (screenshot below)
7. Clicking on “Download” will take you to a file listing page. (screenshot below)
8. If you are downloading a torrent with many sub-files, you can download the individual files in the order of finishing. That means, if your torrent contains 50 files and only 25 of them are finished at the time you check, you can download those 25 files individually while the torrenting proceeds in the background.

You might’ve used BitLet, which allow you to download the torrent files to your computer without a torrent client. But, Imageshack has gone one more step ahead, and downloads it to their servers to provide you with DIRECT LINKS.

Screenshots

Showing Status of torrents

(This one facilitates HTTP downloading of Torrents!!)
What do you think about this cool, new service?

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You would’ve probably heard about some Free Online Storage Providers. If you haven’t already, you may want to take a look at them. (Zshare and box.net are only some of them).

Let me introduce to you, a new service that literally allows you to create and manage an Online Media Center >> wixi.com. They have both FREE and PREMIUM plans with a storage limit for the FREE plan. I know you love to have unlimited storage for all your precious-media-files. So, at the end of this post, I’ll share with you, a link to a special offer to create a PREMIUM account with unlimited storage. Read On..

wixi.com could be transformed into an efficient and ultimate Online Media Center (as they call it).

It’s a ” new cool way to organize, mix and share all your songs, photos and videos. Enjoy a unique drag & drop, click & play experience!”

Yes. As you would’ve probably guessed, the service is fully AJAX-ed. You will be given a public page with a custom URL to share your public media. It supports embedding and thus you can have the videos you uploaded there, playing right there in your blog/site/profile. wixi has an awesome mobile version designed primarily for the iPhone too. And you wanna’ have some chat out there, an active forum awaits you.

The FREE version has limitations on storage capacity and bandwidth, whereas, the PREMIUM version gives you UNLIMITED storage and bandwidth. The site is still in BETA and the signup is invitation-based. But, here is a link that i found in their site, which allows you to create a PREMIUM account (i.e.Unlimited Storage)for FREE. I’ve already joined there and the service is pretty cool. So, jump in, Create Your Free (PREMIUM) Online Media Center.
This is a limited-period offer; so rush in.

Have you been to wixi? What do you have to say about it?

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