Cool gadgets and new gizmos - news and reviews » Internet

Facebook Timeline – Guide for the new Facebook

Ionut Popa — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:42:58 +0000

Competition is the engine of progress in any domain, including on the internet. The best proof for this is that Google needed to launch its own social network in order for Facebook to change the most radically in its history. After in the last days a few small updates copied from the Google Plus model were introduced Facebook released the major changes it will make to its social network and which will be available or all the 750 million users in the next weeks. Facebook Timeline – The story of your life on one page The first and the most [...]

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How to resume failed video uploads in Youtube

Ionut Popa — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:15:48 +0000

I’m one of the Youtube users who like to also contribute by uploading videos from time to time (here’s my channel btw), but unfortunately I live in Canada where high speed Internet is just a marketing tactics, with no real support. So on my 2Mbits upload connection (roughly 256 kB/s) it takes around 4000 seconds to upload an 8-9 minutes long HD clip, that if the connection doesn’t drop, which needless to say happens at least a few times during one upload. So you understand my frustration when this happens and I have to start uploading again. Sure I can [...]

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How to create an RSS Feed from someone’s Google+ public stream

Ionut Popa — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:12:10 +0000

Let’s say you’ve been around the Internet for a decade or so. If that’s the case most probably you’ve witnessed the birth and death of lots of web technologies and you use some of the services considered geeky by normal consumers. One such technology is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) that allows you to build a centralized place to read news and updates by adding RSS feeds to your reader program. The Google+ project is nothing more than a social network, a competitor for Facebook and some even say Twitter. It’s simple to use compared to Facebook, but it’s nothing like RSS, so [...]

Original article - How to create an RSS Feed from someone’s Google+ public stream

How many social networks do we really need?

Ionut Popa — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:12:14 +0000

I was wondering today when I read the news about Microsoft leaking, ‘by mistake’, their social network name and a few screenshots, if we do really need so many social networks. You might argue that it’s important to be present on all popular services like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ recently, LinkedIn, Flickr and so on, but first question that should pop up into our heads should be: is it worth spending so much time updating statuses, following people, uploading pictures and clips? And believe me; you need a lot of time to be active, not just present, on all those social [...]

Original article - How many social networks do we really need?

Brinked – really free ringtones for your phone

Ionut Popa — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:03:58 +0000

Cellphone ringtones are a big thing for many people, being one of the easiest way to customize your mobile. It’s a form of expression which also has the benefit of being able to identify a certain caller by the way your phone rings, before take it out from your pockets, in the case of phones supporting assigning ringtones to contacts. While searching for ‘free ringtones’ on Google will reveal tons of sites advertising this feature in this post I’m going to present you only one service, Brinked.com, which advertises as the Real Free Music Ringtones for any Mobile Cell Phone. What [...]

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Select Netflix streaming video quality to prevent ISP bandwidth caps

Ionut Popa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 19:18:36 +0000

Sometimes I feel we’re not making any progress when it comes to Internet speed, as more and more ISPs are trying to impose bandwidth caps and make us pay extra for every bit of data over that monthly limit. You can argue all you want that extra bandwidth costs more, but it’s not the case, as many studies have discovered. Also consider that a lot of users are not using their Internet connection so much, so where Internet Service Providers are losing from 1% of the heavy users, they gain back from the monthly fees paid by those who are [...]

Original article - Select Netflix streaming video quality to prevent ISP bandwidth caps

Digsby – Instant messaging and social networks: Free download

Ionut Popa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:10:44 +0000

Every day we use a diversity of communication channels such as the phone, mail, instant messaging and social networks, according to the situation we are in. What if we had all our contacts gathered in a place in order to communicate faster? Digsby offers you a solution: you can communicate simultaneously over more instant message accounts (Yahoo Messenger, MSN, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, ICQ, Jabber, MySpace IM), mail accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL/AIM, POP Email, IMAP Email), and your preferred social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn), without introducing your password each time. All you need to do is to [...]

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Freelancer.com – freelance projects to work how, what and where you want

Ionut Popa — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:26:18 +0000

Who would have thought we would reach the point at which we are able to sell and buy our work force online? Are you looking for a job but you do not want to work 8 hours a day in a 9 to 5 race in an office where you will probably fight with your boss? No problem, because there is another way. Create an account on freelancer.com, complete the domains in which you have knowledge and see what projects are available. There are a lot of domains available. It’s easy to find a work from home (or other place [...]

Original article - Freelancer.com – freelance projects to work how, what and where you want

Firefox 5 is ready to be downloaded for free

Ionut Popa — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:10:03 +0000

It took a long time for Mozilla to launch Firefox 4, but the jump from version four to Firefox 5 took only a few months, following organization’s commitment to launch major versions faster. That’s always a good thing, on paper, and only played out well for Google with its Chrome browser so far. Hope Mozilla manages to keep the rhythm and not embarrass itself. Anyway, today is the day of the Firefox 5 official launched, also as a free download, both for desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux), and mobile (Android and iOS), making it a simultaneous software release that brings Do Not Track functionality [...]

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Free Internet Speed Test: easy way to measure your connection speed

Ionut Popa — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:46:38 +0000

Whether you want to test the claims of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or just make sure you eliminate the Internet connection as the cause for a choppy videochat conversation, it’s always useful to know and to be able to test your Internet speed connection. For this purpose an Internet speed test is required and while there are quite a few options out there, none of them is as fast, accurate as the one I’m going to talk about in this post. The service in question is a site for measuring your Internet speed, and it’s called Speedtest.net. It’s one of [...]

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Google Announces Music Beta, Movies, Android 3.1 and Ice Cream Sandwich

Ionut Popa — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:34:15 +0000

Today was the first day of Google IO conference, a place were the Mountain View company meets the developers and presents is future plans for Android and all other Google services. We have a huge list of announcements for the 2011 Google IO so let’s get started. Android Honeycomb 3.1 This is the biggest update for tablets after Android 3.0 and includes some improvements and new functionality worth mentioning more than on a normal scheduled update. The most important interface addition to Android 3.1 is the support for resize-able and scroll-able widgets. Developers will be able to change a few [...]

Original article - Google Announces Music Beta, Movies, Android 3.1 and Ice Cream Sandwich

Where Can You Download Dual Monitor Wallpapers For Free

Ionut Popa — Thu, 05 May 2011 23:34:07 +0000

I know that most people use one monitor, the one on their laptop or the one on their desktop, but for a select category of people it’s normal to have two or more monitors on their desk. I’m talking about engineers, architects, graphic designers, programmers, journalists and such, so why stare at a plain monitor background when you can express yourself with a cool wallpaper that expands nicely over your screens. Imagine you have to leave the office for a coffee and instead of a nice dual monitor wallpaper, you leave behind an ugly small tiled wallpaper. In this post [...]

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OVI Maps 3D: one of the best 3D mapping services

Ionut Popa — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:31:44 +0000

I remember that one of the reasons I bough the Nokia N97 Mini one year ago was the Ovi Maps application from Nokia that offered free navigation and maps with updates you can preload on your smartphone. A lot of things have changed since then as I’ve switched to Android, Nokia announced Microsoft as its partner for future smartphones and Google Maps became a very interesting navigation solution, even if it does consume data from your cellphone monthly subscription (how much depends on how you use it). So what happened with Nokia’s best software? Apparently it wasn’t let to expire, [...]

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FireFox 4 Mobile is ready to take over your smartphone

Marc — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:51:38 +0000

FireFox is one of the top four internet browsers today. Battling alongside Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Opera and Google’s Chrome, FireFox already made a name for itself in terms versatility – its open source software allows FireFox to load numerous third-party Add-ins, which is a very popular feature for a web browser. Mozilla launched a new and improved version of FireFox 4 Mobile this month. The mobile web browser market is dominated by Opera Mini, which, through it’s low size, fast load times and efficient resource use, is a favourite in small environments such as a smartphone or a tablet. FireFox’s [...]

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Mozilla Firefox 4.0 – an excellent web browser

Ionut Popa — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:14:33 +0000

About the Mozilla Firefox 4.0 many have been said even before the launch of the first beta version for tests. The software is scheduled to appear in October 2010. Firefox 4.0 is now a Beta release. This month Firefox 4.0 beta 5 appeared; a browser which seems to be focused on security and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I admit that I usually do not hurry up installing beta versions, but due to the fact that I wanted to write an article about Firefox 4.0 I downloaded and installed this new version. The install kit can [...]

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Google Art Project – Visit museums with a single click

Ionut Popa — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:14:28 +0000

Initially launched as a simple search engine Google has become a company with increasingly diverse activities during the last decade. All this because Google wanted to win as much money as possible and dominate as many markets as possible. Even so sometimes Google proved it can provide us with interesting and useful things. The Art Project is one of those things. Many of us wish they had the possibility to visit touristic locations from all over the worldâ€™s important cities, but few of us can actually fulfill this dream: limited time and the expenses are sufficient to obstruct us from [...]

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Web Browsers: The fastest Internet browser in the world

Ionut Popa — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:39:37 +0000

A year has passed since my colleague Daniel wrote his article on the web browsersâ€™ war. In this interval of time a few small changes have happened.Â Each producer has launched new versions of their browser. Even so, one thing has remained unchanged. All producers say their browser is the fastest in the world. This is of course impossible. There has to be a single browser that is really the fastest. In this article we will try to figure out which browser is really the winner in this competition. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Firefox 3.6.13 is the latest stable version of [...]

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Internet Explorer 9 preview

Ionut Popa — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:58:25 +0000

Internet Explorer continues to have 60% of the web-browser market, but its popularity is constantly decreasing ever since the Mozilla Firefox and more recent Google Chrome alternatives have appeared. The alert upgrade rhythm of the Firefox and dazzling rhythm of the Google Chrome made people prefer these alternative browsers. Experienced users all go for alternative browsers. Remaining on the 1st place because of the default presence on to operating systems Internet Explorer tried to reinvent the wheel with its 8th version, but the results were really poor. This is why it did not come as a surprise that Microsoft immediately [...]

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Preview of the iPhone 3GS. Is it any good?

Mike — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:59:06 +0000

Iâ€™ve recently found out what the new iPhone 3GS is capable of. First of all, it will appear the 32GB version, along with the 16GB one. The price will be 299 and 199$, associated with some monthly plans to fit. We donâ€™t know yet how much it will cost without monthly plan and if they will be available this way. The 8GB version will still be available for a while for 99$ (but the 3G version, not the new one). We know that the 3GS was realeased on June 19th and itâ€™s expected to be available in stores now already. [...]

Original article - Preview of the iPhone 3GS. Is it any good?

Boost up your gaming experience

Ionut Popa — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:09:08 +0000

Itâ€™s simply too great to play games while enjoying comforts of the home. The development in technology over the past few years has changed the gaming world. Games have gone more realistic as the graphics have improved greatly. Present day games offer exciting gameplay when compared to old games. Companies release new games every now and then, and they keep making improvements so as to offer great gameplay. Now, thanks to development in technology, you can boost up your gaming experience with the help of gaming servers. Gaming servers are used to run clans and support multiplayer games. They allow [...]

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