This is an embarrassing case for Dell. Tara Fitzgerald, a Sacramento based woman trusted the Dell technician in India, when she called up the customer support – that’s the mistake she did.

When some pictures was missing in her computer, she called up the Dell technician in Mumbai, India for help and granted him remote access to her PC. And while he was trying to help her, she claims that she saw him find the pictures, and download them.

The problem is that the pictures were personal and only meant for her boyfriend. Things got worse, when the pictures got posted on an adult website.

The technician Tara says called himself Riyaz Shaikh and had interesting stories to offer since then. Riyaz Shaikh later offered her help to take down the adult website, and even offered her new Dell gear that he promised to ship her. Later, Riyaz called Tara to reveal that he had fallen in love with another woman from the US and that he had used her credit card details to buy her several other Dell devices !

Now, this is like the weirdest WTF story I’ve heard recently. One question that pops up is what is Dell doing with such situations ? Are they enforcing strict laws and guidelines for technicians in customer support ?  I mean, we’ve heard about the credit card story time and again, but aren’t they doing nothing about it ?

Source

I wouldn’t expect Twitter employees to spend a lot of time on Twitter, of course they’re busy with the servers and codes. But if someone ever asks me how not to use Twitter, I’ll point them to my Twitter employees list, without any doubt.

Okay, if you thought that was lame, you might be on the wrong side here. Before making such criticisms, one should understand that Twitter is very personal for people, they have the luxury of doing whatever they want with their tweets..so get over it.

I’ve written plenty of articles on this blog that goes through the length and breadth of Google search algorithms and the process. Today, I see this infographic and thought – this is more like it. This explains visually how a google search works. Infographics #ftw !

Via

I’m an Android user and a proud one. No, I’m no anti iPhone or anti Mac either, but I believe in imperfection and an iPhone is too perfect and closed for me, hence I prefer an Android which is open and more “me”. Its like preferring Firefox over Safari. That’s it.

But an Android user is not likely to be as happy and satisfied as an iPhone user in more than one ways. There are several crippling factors for the Android that’s slowing down the market growth in an alarming rate, and what’s more alarming is that on the Android platform you don’t see the enthusiasm like any other successful open-source environment like Linux, or Firefox. The energy is depressingly missing. Why – you may ask.

Here’s why !

The Android market sucks & is broken !

At least when compared to the iPhone store. If you’re outside the US, then you’re almost doomed. The reason is that there is no market at all, so to say. You can get a bunch of free apps but that’s it. I haven’t found any direct, easily accessible method to buy apps from the Android market – if at all it was supposed to be available. Today, the Android market is nothing but a couple of free apps, with no categorization, no search function and virtually a broken store.

You can neither search for apps, nor download them from any site, except a few developer sites, which you don’t necessarily need to know about.

To me, this is one big crippling factor. And a major one because this whole thing is supposed to be open source, and technically nothing is open on the market except a couple (les than what you can count on your fingers) of crap apps.

And the plight of Android app developers is no different. There is no market outside the US, there is no where you can submit an app to, and there is no way to track the app performance etc etc. Apple on the other hand, does a great job at the store, enabling all the above mentioned things and even beyond. It is their USP and unless Android can do something close to or similar to the Apple app store, the Android market is taking the ride downside. At least outside the US.

Now that we know the iPad owners community is growing, its probably time to give them some recognition. The mobile device browsing community is on an all time high and iPads are not far away. And while having a mobile version of the website was enough to cater for all sorts of mobile devices, iPads need some special treatment. They cannot use the mobile version of a website because the dimensions are completely different.

So how do you create an iPad compatible version of your website without any drastic change in code ? Let’s find out.

1. Testing how your website looks on the iPad – Simulation

If you’re unable to test with an iPad, you can simulate an HTTP request from Safari on iPad in Safari on your computer. First, download the Safari browser. Load your website in Safari ( Mac OS X or Windows). Then go to Safari’s Advanced Preference pane and enable the checkbox next to “Show Develop menu in menu bar”.

Next, select Develop -> User Agent -> Other from the menu.

When prompted, copy the following string and paste it in the box.

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

Click OK, and the page will reload. That’s how the iPad will see your website.

2. Testing website compatibility on the iPad

Now, its very likely that some plugins, won’t work on the iPad like flash (obviously!), some animations etc. This is because the iPad supports HTML5 and not certain web formats. Unfortunate, you have to either remove those elements manually or convert them to HTML5 format.

Go to Safari’s Security Preferences pane, and in the “Web Content” options, you’ll see the checkboxes for each plugin. Uncheck “Enable plugins”.

Now reload the page. Now, wherever there were non-compatible plugins used, will be shown blank. This is how it will look on the iPad. You might want to remove them for the iPad version.

Once, all the non-compatible plugins are removed, and the site looks good, you might want to create a new URL specific for the ipad. Something like yourweb.com/ipad

And make sure that you add a canonical tag to the header pointing the iPad version to the original URL – so that you avoid duplicate content issues with the search engines.

You can find more details on it here – Canonical tags to avoid duplicate content.

3. Redirect iPad users to specific URL using .htaccess

Now that you have an iPad ready version of the site, add a browser detection script for the iPad on your .htaccess file, as below. This will detect all iPad users and forward them to the iPad version site, while the rest of the folks remain on the original URL.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPad.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/ipad [R=301]

So, that should be it. This is a fairly simple process of creating an iPad version of your website.  There are several technical glitches to sort, if you dive deep into it, like mouse gestures and other scripts, but unless you’re an expert in that area, you don’t need to check it. Meanwhile just creating an iPad version to cater to your growing iPad visitors is good enough.

If you have further inputs, do let me know.

Clearly, the iPhone 4 is the best phone yet from Apple, no doubt. We had seen it before via Giz, so the hardware wasn’t that impressive, its shifted from the typical smooth iPhone look to the crisp, edgy Macbook Pro kinda look. Also, its gotten thinner, impressive !

But in the software section, I think most of the improvements were predictable. Improved camera, Video chat (come on, its available already on Android phones and that too Android – other handsets), Better battery life etc. In my opinion, these weren’t surprises, these ought to have been there on the next iPhone, so it didn’t excite me much.

Image credit – Telegraph
The striking thing is that, iPhone is going in a completely different direction as the Android. While the Android goes the “cloud” way, iPhone is going the typical Apple way with sexy hardware and a pay-me-take-it app store market. Many Android devices have shown close to or even better tech specifics than the iPhone 4, but no one yet has put things together as the iPhone, except for the HTC Evo.

Even the new features like iMovie edit is not really a value addition unless you’re someone who’d taken an oath that you’d use only Apple products. A better movie editing app is probably in the Android Market now and getting an update most likely.

Android is no match for the iPhone and vice versa

An iPhone is an iPhone and comparing it to an Android is unfair because both even though crosses over at various functions, are growing in different directions. iPhone is looking at creating its own slice of market, while Android is going the more popular way of open source even without the charm of an iPhone.

So which is better – is an unfair question. A lot of it depends on what the user type is. If you’re the open source type, Android is for you, but if you’re an Apple fan and the loyal kind, the iPhone is for you.

However here’s a feature by feature comparison considering the HTC Evo 4G on Android 2.1. Correct me if wrong.

Just me personal thought, your thoughts might differ. If yes, feel free to share.

Easter eggs are awesome, no doubt! Be it notepad or Adobe Photoshop, the joy of finding one and sharing it with friends is something you have to expereince yourself. Here are 10 such amazing easter egg surprises from common softwares that we use daily. Hope you find them interesting.

1. The iPod Easter egg !

Select “About” from the main menu, then hold the center button for a couple of seconds. A miniature Breakout game, created by the founders of Apple Inc. when they worked for Atari, appears on the screen.

2. The Mozilla Firefox Easter egg – Message to IE team

Type "about:Mozilla" in the URL bar. You’ll read a message which is a reply to the Internet Explorer 5 team’s joke about Mozilla crashing computers.

3. Open Office Easter egg – Star wars game

Create a new spreadsheet in the OpenOffice.org Calculator.
Type "=game()" into a cell and validate it by pressing Enter. The cell will display, "Say what?" to which your typing finger will reply “=GAME("StarWars")." A new window will open with a little game called Star Wars. Simple as that.

4. Skype Easter egg – Hidden Icons

Enter a chat session and type words like “drunk” and “ninja” with the brackets to view amusing emoticons. Also, try these words.

(finger)
(bandit)
(mooning)
(swear)
(drunk)
(rock)
(poolparty)
(bug)
(ninja)
(smoking)
(fubar)
(tmi)

5. MSN Messenger Easter Egg

When in a conversation, type “/patchou” without the quotes and you’ll get a picture of the creator of the software, with the message: "Thank you for using this software. The best reward I can get for my work is to see you highly satisfied. Sincerely, PaTchou."

6. Adobe Photoshop CS 5 Easter egg

This is a traditional easter egg, because you find this commonly in many Adobe products.

Open Photoshop CS5
Once open, hold down the CTRL key
Select HELP –> ABOUT
Follow the White Rabbit.

7. Winamp Easter Egg

With the defualt skin chosen (Modern) stretch the main window until the Beat Analyzer (it says "beat" under it) appears. Hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift and Click the Center (be very precise here) of the beat analyzer. Now play any song and enjoy the show.

8. Mozilla Firefox Easter Egg 2 – Firefox inside Firefox

Simple one. Open FF, type the following to the address bar.

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

Enjoy the show.

9. Windows Notepad

- Open an empty notepad file.
- Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes) 
- Save it with any file name with as .TXT file. 
- Close it, and re-open it. Presto!

10. Google Picasa Easter egg

This is for the Picasa app.

Open Picasa 2, then press Ctrl + Shift + Y That’s all.

Do you know more of them ? Drop in comments please.

If you thought U.S is the country with the fastest internet in the world, you’re wrong. Its Korea, followed by some very interesting countries like Latvia, Aland Islands, Japan, Romania and Lithuania.

And the countries with the slowest internet are: Guyana, Zambia, Nepal, French Polynesia and the like. Surprising isn’t it ? Here’s the entire chart where all the countries in the world are ranked according to their internet speeds. Both the speediest and the sluggish internet connections of the whole world !

Source

Paintings are nice and digital paintings are awesome.  Here are ten such examples of amazing digital art, that will keep you staring.

1. I have it covered

By Theresse Larson

2. Man’s best friend

By Theresse Larson

3.  Lion

By Theresse Larson

4.  Portrait

By Theresse Larson

5. Boats at Staithes

By – Simon Dominic

6. Megan Fox

By Yannick De Smet

7. Sktch

By Chonlada Duangduean

8. King Crow

By Kamonchanok Sawatkosit

9. Girl

By Nimmarn Tonglim

10. Montoe

  Via Krit Parnsanay

Hope you like it !

We watch YouTube almost every day. I mean, even if we didn’t want to there’d be some instances where we need to log in. I’m a bit apprehensive about using YouTube especially at work because most of the times, the things that pop up are NSFW. However, I’m a big fan of YouTube and these tools make sure that we don’t end up in the YouTube loop, but make things a little more useful, effective and fun for all of us.

1. Download Audio from any YouTube videos the easy way

So you like that new Lady Gaga song and the video is out on YouTube, but you want it as a ringtone for your mobile, and you don’t want to go through the messy process of using a video editing program to rip off the music. What do you do ? Use this website, copy paste the URL of the video and let it rip off the music in mp3 format for you. Download it to your cellphone and you’re done. Easy as that.

2. Share particular parts of any YouTube video

Sometimes, we’re just interested only in a certain part of a video. Like 12-26th second of a 5 minute vide and while sharing the whole video is what most of us do, the person you’re sharing with might not watch the entire video or he might miss the part you want him to see. So what do you do ? Use Tubechop to select the particular time in the video, slice it up and share the URL is gives with your friends. When your friend clicks on the URL, they see only the selected part in that YouTube video.

3.  Add extra controls to YouTube videos other than the default buttons

If you’re a power YouTube user, you always wanted those extra controls like beyond the play and pause button. This Greasemonkey script will grant your wish. Its got a series of additional buttons for that seamless power user experience.

4. Get sing-along lyrics on any YouTube music video

This is a nifty utility for singers and music enthusiasts. What it does is, while your favourite music videos are being played on YouTube, it displays a small window next to it, that will search a database of lyrics and popup the right lyrics for that particular song, so you can sing along. Cool huh ? Download

5. Bookmark, Organize and Save YouTube Videos for later viewing

This is a standalone program for you to save, bookmark and share YouTube videos, much like a personal collection. You can search for videos, save them, bookmark them all from the application and open up for later viewing.

6. How not to show the “Related Videos” pane while watching a video

Many of us would’ve encountered the bad experience of other inappropriate videos popping up in the related videos section while watching an interesting video with our friends on YouTube. There is a simple trick that will keep the related videos from popping up.

In the URL of the original video, just add ‘&rel=0? to the end part and you’re done. Or if the parameter is at ‘&rel=1?, change it to ‘&rel=0?.

7. Play YouTube videos inside the browser, without clutter and in a playlist

Some people like to use YouTube like winamp sometimes, like while at work listening to a list of songs, side by side. And having your YouTube site open can be a bit annoying, especially when your boss is looking over your shoulders. But there is a solution. Grab this Firefox extension and it lets you add a little sidebar to the browser, where you can queue up an entire list of YouTube videos that will keep playing within the sidebar. Nice !

8. Watch YouTube videos on a slower Internet connection, without breaks

If you’re on a slower internet connection, then watching YouTube videos can be a pain. Frustration and more frustration. In fact, YouTube realizes that this could be a problem, and have alternate methods for you. YouTube has a Feather tool that lets you watch YouTube videos on slower connections. It doesn’t include those items that eat up bandwidth and make YouTube videos slower.

9. Upload more than one video in bulk to YouTube

So if you’re the type who have a lot of uploading to do on YouTube, things can get a bit out of hand. There is a lot of waiting to do for one video before you can do the next upload. So batch uploading is the only way out. And is there a tool that lets you do it ? Yes of course – YouTube Universal Uploader.

10.  Create ringtones from YouTube videos in one easy steps

Creating ringtones from YouTube videos never was so easy. All you got to do is copy paste the YouTube video URL, mark the portion where the song appears (or the whole video) and click create. The ringtone can be downloaded in various mobile audio formats. Check it out