The Apple iPad 2 Mini Review: From a Productivity Perspective

Its been long since I’ve blogged about anything at all, and I doubt I’ll be blogging regularly for the next two years thanks to severe shortage of time.

Recently, I managed to get my hands on the Apple iPad 2 16GB WiFi-only model. Well, I got it for free and its mine to keep. As to HOW, that’s not the scope of this blog post. Anyway, I decided to set it up and use it. When I initially got my iPad 2, I hoped to convert it into an awesome productivity device that I can carry around everywhere. Think the style of a powerful PDA. But in the course of my usage, it ended up doing something which I had not envisioned. How and what ? Read on…

Must Try Firefox Addons

Firefox is one of the best web browsers for a reason: It can be infinitely customized with extensions or plugins. Lets take a look at some of the best plugins for firefox shall we ?

AD Block Plus

Every ad-company’s bane but every bandwidth conscious internet surfer’s boon, adblock plus removes advertisements from websites. On installation it asks for a source to download the blocklist from. Easylist is the best. Select it and notice most of the ads on the internet disappear.

Remove It Permanently (RIP)

RIP is a companion addon to adblock plus though it has other uses. When you block an ad, you still load its frame on the web page. RIP removes a frame from the page and makes the page look cleaner. You could, for example remove right and left ad-panels and make the page a lot more broader.

FlashBlock

Have you been irritated by the countless times unwanted flash animations load and waste bandwidth and CPU ? Well, flashblock replaces every flash object with an icon which can be clicked to display that flash object. This way you will only see flash if you WANT to (for example, youtube or another flash based video site).

NOScript

This is an interesting addon. Since most browser vulnerabilities and phishing attempts are through the use of scripts, NOScript blocks all scripts, like javascript. Obviously, this removes a lot of functionality from the browser. But hey, you could re-enable it with a single click.

DTA – DownThemALL

This is the first and only dedicated download manager and accelerator based on firefox engine. It supports pause and resume of downloads and downloading multiple chunks of files at a time to accelerate the download speed. It has support for calculating checksums of files after downloading them if you wish to verify their integrity. For the tiny download it comes in, its an awesome install for anyone.

FlashGot

Don’t like DTA ? Then you can use your favorite download manager right from firefox, using flashgot. Its an addon which helps you to integrate other download managers with firefox. And it supports almost every popular download manager existent, from FlashGet, DAP, etc to even commandline download managers like wget and cURL.

ChatZilla

This is a neat IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client for firefox which makes a great alternative to standalone IRC clients for those who want something with a smaller hard disk footprint. It may be small but its LOADED with features.

FireFTP

This is a MUST-HAVE addon for people who share files over the internet through FTP. Its a full featured FTP client for firefox.

KeepVid

This is not an extension, but a bookmarklet which can be downloaded from keepvid.com by following the on-screen instructions. This service helps you download videos from youtube, etc.

Cache Viewer

This is an addon that presents  a fully graphical interface to view firefox’s cache. You can use this to browse your cache’s contents after, for example a a youtube video has loaded fully, so that you may save it offline for future viewing.

Developer Toolbar

This is an awesome addon for web developers which adds a toolbar to the browser full of advanced controls which can enable and disable several things for those testing and creating websites. Note though, that for everyone else, it might seem to be plain bloat.

Google Toolbar

How could one leave out this addon ? This is the google toolbar for firefox. It has several of google’s search functions integrated into one toolbar.

Extended Statusbar

This useful addon makes your statusbar display lots of useful data like page load time, loading speed, etc. Another must-have for power users.

User Agent Switcher

An addon for advanced users, this can make the browser appear like another browser to the site its visiting. This way if a website checks for IE and refuses to allow firefox visitors for example, you could just disguise yourself as IE and see if the site loads.

WML Browser

This useful addon helps you to browse pages encoded in Wireless Markup Language, in which mobile WAP sites are encoded.
There are a lot more addons than the ones discussed here. So head over to addons.mozilla.org right now to see more !

Guess Who’s Back ?

So it’s been what, 15 months  since I stopped active blogging ? Well then, these have been the most entertaining 15 months of my life. Some things change, some things stay constant. Life can show its love for a person in crazy ways. The more ridiculous it makes itself for you and the more it messes with you, the more it likes you. Then there are some of those things which can’t be enjoyed within “the internets” which was my home for a long time. Physically being around crazy people is a lot different than hanging out in IRC and bulletin boards with crazy people.

Twenty Ten

A new set of resolutions people seldom keep. A new beginning which ends gracelessly fading into obscurity. A so-called new life which makes you go DeJaVu never really doing anything new. I bet this is how most of you would have started off your new year today.

But PLEASE, can we make this year different ? I mean, for a change, why can’t we atleast be more realistic ? This year is hardly any different from the one gone by. The global economy is still recovering from its near meltdown the year before last. Some old giants have had huge falls and some old dwarfs are seeing raise in a short span of time. Many things which we took for granted are no more.

So many things have been lost: companies during the recession like Lehman Brothers & Sentinel,  people who include legends like Michael Jackson & Les Paul as well as the numerous victims of the latest epidemic, Swine Flu, and other not-so-easy-to-mention things, like the hair on the head of the guy whom I talk to often.

So many things have been gained too: the world is wiser thanks to the recession. Science has been progressing faster than ever and newer technologies keep rising trying to solve the problems we have. The economy had a meltdown but it also had a new energy inforced into it to make it more robust than before, so that when it recovers finally, it will have a harder time failing like it did before. On a personal note, I turned legal last year. Yeah I’m an adult now by definition.

But it never really STOPPED at 2009. NO SIR, it continues into 2010 and the change in year is of no significance to the entity which we call time. And in spite of all this it’s still a “new” year. A time when the calendar asks you to make a fresh start just to make the date seem special.

But regardless of what has been happening in the past, lets march into this year’s end with a new outlook. Let the ghosts of the years gone by guide us to make this one of our best so far. Our good times shall inspire us to work for more while our bad times shall make us sadder but wiser, steering us away from paths which lead to ill. Lets welcome 2010 with a warm applause: It’s not always that you get an excuse to make a change as big and yet so simple. Lets finally think for a change. Before any action, let us not be guided by animal-like instincts and hunger for power and short-term gains but by long-term planning, an all-inclusive outlook, humanitarian values and a smart mind.

In a nutshell: I wish all my readers a Happy New Year 2010 !!!

Upgrade :D

So here is the news of the event I have waited 1 year for – I finally got my upgrade and replaced my old junk of 256MB RAM with a brand new Hynix DDR 400MHz 1GB RAM stick.

Performance has gone up a lot, and I am able to benchmark several apps and several desktop environments more comfortably now. Most notably, I am using KDE 4.2 on archlinux (I ditched KDEmod, which is hardly different from KDE vanilla at the moment, for good till it becomes as strong as KDEmod 3.5.9).

Here is a pic for you:

Not the neatest, but I guess the comic strip explains that part more than anything else

Google Toolbar says Non Compatible Browser ? No Problem.

Many of you may use Distros which ship a custom build of firefox. For example, ArchLinux has an i686 optimised version of firefox which is named Gran Paradiso to avoid copyright issues with Mozilla Corp. who hold trademark rights to the name. Now, the problem is that these browsers don’t properly identify them when a site checks for Mozilla Firefox. Google is an example, and due to this I am not able to install Google Toolbar. I finally found a solution. Here it is for you

Tutorial: Remove Recently Used Items List in Linux Apps

Are you one of those guys who is pissed off because many applications log things you don’t want them to log ? Then continue reading. I am going to tell you how you can disable history of most apps except firefox, because, luckily, they store their information in the SAME place. I am using the easier way, using GUI, so that some of you newer users won’t have difficulties.

KDE 4.2 – “The Answer” Reviewed

The post I am writing, is a small mini-review of KDE4.2, released a couple of days back, nicknamed “The Answer”. If you want a single line review and a picture (worth a thousand words) before reading the rest, let me put things in a nutshell:http:

KDE 4.2 is simply AWESOME!

The KDE 4.2 Desktop - Simply Superb

Why Corporates are forced to Continue using Windows XP

Windows XP has several flaws. Its 7 years old. Any modern computer would be able to run Windows Vista or Linux anyway. There are cheaper options out there in the market. There are better options too. Its just completely outclassed by today’s standards. Yet its still being used by corporates. And yeah, microsoft recently had to extend its lifetime even more.

The following tries to analyse reasons why corporates still need to use Windows XP while there are several better options available, and it also tries to present reasons why migration and hardware upgrading would be quite difficult.

BSNL – The worst ISP in India

The most popular ISP in India has to be BSNL. Its cheap and affordable for many, thanks to a few very good plans it has for broadband. But here is my review of BSNL after using it for a few years – ITS HORRIBLE.

BSNL promised to deliver cheap 2.0Mbps broadband to every house in India. But that is hardly broadband anymore. Its more like online torture for its customers. Personally speaking, I use BSNL H500, a Rs. 500 plan which, if not for BSNL’s shitty nature, would have been actually GOOD by Indian pricing standards. It has a monthly data cap of 2.5GB, with happy hours from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM when there is no data cap. During non happy hours, it bills Re. 0.90 for every MB which exceeds the 2.5GB cap. But yeah, its still horrible, and yet I am forced to use it. Why ? Read on…