Apple's Magic Mouse: With A magical Multitouch Surface!!!

The Evolution Of Technology:

It began with iPhone. Then came iPod touch. Then MacBook Pro. Intuitive, smart, dynamic. Multi-Touch technology introduced a remarkably better way to interact with your portable devices — all using gestures. Now they reached another milestone by bringing gestures to the desktop with a mouse that’s unlike anything ever before. It's called Magic Mouse. It's the world's first Multi-Touch mouse. And while it comes standard with every new iMac, you can also add it to any Mac with Bluetooth wireless technology for a Multi-Touch makeover.

Seamless Multi-Touch Surface:

The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.

Laser-Tracking Engine

Magic Mouse uses powerful laser tracking that’s far more sensitive and responsive on more surfaces than traditional optical tracking. That means it tracks with precision on nearly every surface — whether it’s a table at your favorite cafe or the desk in your home office — without the need for a mousepad.

Wireless:

Magic Mouse connectsto your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology, so there’s no wire or separate adapter to worry about. Pair Magic Mouse with your Mac and enjoy a reliable and secure connection up to 33 feet away. When you combine Magic Mouse with the Apple Wireless Keyboard, you create a workspace free of annoying cables.

And because Magic Mouse is wireless, it can venture beyond the confines of your desk. A quick flick of the on/off switch helps conserve battery power while Magic Mouse is tucked in your bag. Even when it’s on, Magic Mouse manages power efficiently, by detecting periods of inactivity automatically.

The Windows Command Line a Short Guide

This is not another post about smilies. This article deals with the Windows command line.

The command line lets you communicate directly with your computer and instruct it to perform various tasks. For this you have to use specific commands. The commands are not necessarily intuitive, so they have to be learned, just like words in a language. Fortunately, there are graphical user interfaces (GUIs) replacing most procedures that formerly required using the command line.

However, sometimes using the command line is quicker or even the only way to access certain information. Thus knowing how to use the command line can be extremely valuable. And that’s where this Windows command guide comes in.

To access the Windows command line in XP, click > START > Run, type cmd into the > Open: field, and click > OK.

Or just press Win+R key combination to open run command box and type the program name.

Alternatively, you can go through > Start > All Programs > Accessories and select > command prompt.

This launches cmd.exe, a window that reminds us of the old days in computer history: pure white text on a uniform black background. Despite its resemblance to a DOS windows, cmd.exe merely is a command line interpreter merely similar to DOS.

Now that you have successfully accessed the command prompt, what is there to do here?

To operate at command prompt level, you need to know some commands. Let me give you some basics to play with.

Help

First let me say that there is intrinsic help in the command prompt. If you’re not sure whether a certain command really exists or what it does or what switches there are to it, type the command followed by a /? and you shall be enlightened.

Switches

Switches are optional extensions to a command, which change the command’s behavior. We actually saw an example of a switch in the previous section. /? is a switch to any command, explaining its function rather than executing it in any way.

Note that you can add several switches to each command, but always leave a space between the command and each switch.

Now let’s get on with serious commands.

dir

The dir command lists the contents of the current directory.

There are some useful switches to it. For example dir /d (/d being the switch) will list the directory contents in up to three columns. Alternatively, you can use dir /w, which will sort the contents differently. With dir /p the information doesn’t scroll, but pauses at the end of the screen, until you hit a random key for the next screen full of data.

cd

To change directories, use the cd command.

Pick a directory seen in the previous dir listing. Directories are indicated by

in the directory listing. For example type cd desktop and you will switch into the Desktop directory. Type cd.. to return to the previous directory. To go directly to a specific directory, rather than haggling your way through each single one, type in the entire path. Let’s say you went back to C:\> and want to return to the Desktop directory. Simply type cd documents and settings\administrator\desktop.

Note that switching between drives doesn’t require the cd command. Simply type in the respective drive letter and a colon, e.g. d: to switch.

mkdir

This one is used to make a directory, i.e. create a new directory. Type mkdir name to create a directory called name.

rmdir

To remove a directory, use this command. So that would be rmdir name to remove a directory called name. Only empty directories can be removed.

You can of course create and delete directories located in any other directory, you just have to specify the respective path in your command, starting from where you are.

For example mkdir documents and settings\administrator\test when you’re in C:\ or mkdir administrator\test if you’re already in the documents and settings directory.

del

This is the command to delete files. It works similar to the mkdir and rmdir commands. So you type del example.exe to delete the file example.exe in your directory. If you’re not already in the right directory, you add the respective path.

This was a short list of commands to make you familiar with the command line environment. For an entire list of commands, please refer to this list.

We will now look at some very helpful commands for tasks that can not easily be completed by any other means. For all of them you can use the /? switch, to find out what all you can do with these commands.

driverquery

For a list of all drivers installed on your system, driverquery is the quickest solution.

ping

Ping must be the most popular command line prompt. It’s used to check an IP address and see whether the respective computer is online or responding, i.e. whether network communication between your and that computer is possible.

ipconfig

Here you can reveal network data of your own computer, such as the name of your computer in the network, your IP address or your MAC address.

systeminfo

The command to retrieve extensive information about your system, including Windows serial number, computer model, and available RAM.

This Windows command guide can merely touch on the surface of what the command line can do. For more extensive information, please refer to The Command Line in Windows and PCStats’WindowsXP Command Prompt Guide.

What command do you find most useful?

Want To Be A Linux Command Line Master???

The truth about Linux today is that one may never have to actually touch a terminal or issue a single Linux command in order to run some versions of this flexible alternative operating system. While there are times when using the Linuxcommand line could be expeditious and the benefits of possessing the ability to use it are numerous, many users can be intimidated by the prospect.

They may think it’s too difficult or too much to remember. But once a user becomes accustomed to using the command line interface, it soon becomes the preferred method in many tasks. Not only is it much quicker to accomplish just about any given task at the command line, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. It allows the user to begin to understand how an operating system is structured and functions. It gives the user very powerful tools to do the things graphical interfaces will never be able to reproduce. And best of all, it’s just fun.

There are several shells, the interface between the user and the system, with their own set of built-in functions and commands. The most popular is probably Bash, which is an improved clone of the Unix Borne Shell. Not only does Bash include lots of handy built-in commands, but a user can execute (or fork) a multitude of other application executables from within it.

There is a short list of commands that one can learn to get started. With this short list, you can begin to build your toolbox and with the help of a few good reference sites, become a command line master yourself. Not only will this enable you to feel comfortable running just about any Linux distribution available, but every programmer working today began with that first command.

But how might one go about trying to use the dreaded command line? Once open, the user stares at the prompt wondering what to do first. They know folks work from the command line all day every day, but what do you do? Fortunately, you’re not on your own. There are a plethora of sites with all the information you’ll need to take you from beginner to advanced user or anywhere in between.

LinuxCommand

One of the best places to get started is LinuxCommand. This site gently introduces the first time user what a shell is and how to use it. Then, if desired, it will instruct the user on how to write their first shell scripts.

The homepage of this site is very relaxing. It merely shows an image of a terminal and reassures the user “Don’t worry, we’ll show you what to do.” Its Table of Contents addresses usage in an task oriented manner. Instead of listing the command and explaining what it does, it lists an operation one might want to perform.

For example, the first thing any user might want to learn is navigation. With a reference to the graphical hierarchy, it begins the user with the first babysteps of moving around their system with the command line.

Then one is taken on a tour of the Linux filesystem hierarchy and shown how to manipulate files such as renaming, moving, or deleting, and permissions. Once you learn this beginning information, you are already on your way to fixing a Linux system on which the Graphical User Interface is broken.

Next the site gets more involved walking the user through writing shell scripts, first easy then more and more complicated. If you finish this latter section, you are already almost a master.

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory is a wonderful quick reference chart-like guide. This page lists not only the built-in commands, but also many little utilities commonly included in all Linux distributions. This is great for the beginner or even more advanced users as the listed commands are links to full information as to what the command is and how to use it.

While this information may be available right on your system as Main pages, it comes in handy for those who forgot the command or perhaps doesn’t know which to use. For example, you’d like the current system date and time, so you visit this page and see the command time. This must be it, so you click on it and find out that time is actually used to measure the elasped time of a given process. So, you know that isn’t it. Then you scroll down and spot date. Ah yes, that’s the one. What was that command to quickly check to see if a certain word or phrase is in a file? Oh yes, you remember now that you see the command grep listed.

By clicking it you’ll find all sorts of ways it can be manipulated to output just what you need. A favorite activity is just reading through the list for unfamiliar or forgotten commands and learning what they do. This is just a particularly handy site to bookmark.

The Linux Cookbook

The Linux Cookbook fits in somewhere between LinuxCommand’s Learning the Shell and Writing Shell Scripts. It takes the user from logging in to as deep as they want to go.

However, its best resource is its intermediate instruction. After learning a few commands one might want to know how to edit a file and the cookbook features introductions to common text editors.  It also tells a user things such as how to change their password, listing directories in color, and how to understand help files and documentation.

Later, it instructs on how to configure the X Windows System, how to start X, and all other aspects of using X.  Then it even goes further into using the graphical interface and includes things like audio, printing,  networking, and communications.  It basically gives the user a full overview of using Linux.

This site is the online version of a hard copy book sold in many stores and featured on Amazon. Once you complete this book and the LinuxCommand.org instruction, you’ll be a Linux Kung Fu Master.

Do you have any favourite websites for mastering the Linux command line?   If so, let us know about them in the comments.

See What Recently You Googled & Why should you Do So??

Without doubt, Google is the premier search engine for the Internet world. So much so that its name is both a noun and verb. We not only link to Google, but we also “google” stuff. Many of us “google” something several times a day because of its speed and accuracy of search results. But as a Google user, you may not know that this mighty search engine actually keeps track of your search history – of what, when, and where you looked for stuff on the Internet.

If you don’t know how Google does this, simply link over tohttp://www.google.com/history and sign into your account, if need be. On your Google search page, you will see a calendar that links to all your daily activities across the web, including recent searches on Google. It breaks down your search history into nine categories, including images, products, and blogs you’ve visited or searched for.

Advantages Of This Service

The advantages of this search history is pretty obvious. It can save you time in keeping track of your recent searches on Google. Searches are not as specific as keeping personalized bookmarks in your web browser, but say you spent a day or two researching a particular consumer product, or a topic for a school assignment. If you need to retrieve those queries and activity, you could simply click the dates in the calendar relevant to your search, or you could “google” the topic or keywords and have Google provide results based on your search history.

Also, you’ve no doubt noticed that when you begin typing in the Google search box in the Firefox or Safari web browser, for example, you typically get a list of suggested keywords that you might be looking for even before you finish typing. Those suggestions are based on your prior searches and visitations across the web, which in essence speeds up your search.

The search history also provides an organized list of sites and pages you visit the most. It keeps track of your web experiences only when you’re logged into your account. This is called “signed-in personalization”.  However, if you share your computer with others and you don’t sign out from your Google account, the results reflect searches by other users.

Disadvantages Of This Service

One of the biggest disadvantages to this is that if your Google account is ever accessed by others, they can view your recent searches on Google. If you log into your Google account on another computer and don’t log out, any searches done by other users can be saved to your account.

For example, when I view my Google search history, it includes topics like “horse riding,“ the “California State lottery,“ and “buddytv.“ These topics reflect the web activity of other members in my household, not me. But what might this service mean for users accessing their Google account on their job or public computer? If users don’t log out of their account, their search history is available to anyone who accesses it.

Removing Searches from your history

If there are some surreptitious search results that you would liked removed from your web history , it’s pretty easy to do so. Simply log into your web history account and click the “Remove items” link. You can delete selected links or your entire web history. However, remember, if you delete your entire history, Google will have to rebuild your signed-in personalization history, so all your new searches may take a little longer to conduct on your computer.

If you’re conducting some searches that you don’t want recorded, simply click the Pause link to turn off the service for your account. It remains paused until you re-enable it. You can also go into the settings of your Google account and totally disable the service all together. When you link into your Google account, click on My Account, and where it says “My products,” click Edit. From there you can remove the service.

So do you access your Google web history regularly? Do you find the service useful, or do you think it invades your privacy? Let me know.

Cool Cooliris for Cool people

If you are very graphic loving person and love to explore images and galleries then the GOOGLE CHROME  has brought some very good extensions for you.
In this post you will find some interesting add ons as you say it or may be plug in would be a better word for that.
So coming to the point COOLIRIS
is such an extension provided in the google chrome browser.




Cooliris is a kind of web gallery with 3D wall structure and a very attractive look and feel .

CoolIris is compared to a 3D wall of photos. The comparison is apt because with a click on the extension icon you can start the almost endless conveyor belt style image search. We have covered Cooliris before. The extension brings the same cool features to the Chrome. You can go into the Preferences and customize a few settings like the Wall angle and the Wall Scroll speed. To make it a bit more personal, set a background image for the CoolIris main page. CoolIris is a bit hefty at 2.7MB.

Also, download it from the Google Extensions Page.

The Firefox Photos, Music and Videos addons section has nearly 750 plugins listed. Chrome has just opened its doors, so it will be a while before we see it catching up. The good thing is that now, we do have some extensions to ‘extend’ the potential of Chrome. Which is your favorite extension that makes adds to your love for images? Have we missed out any on this list?