When I get home, I kick my shoes off
What makes you feel relaxed when you get home.
Removing the shoes makes me feel one free and if you are tense you feel relaxed which is the way you want to feel when you get home.
Pali Madra’s notes
Just another WordPress.com weblog
Got a great idea? – get $10 million support from Google
Google as part of it’s 10th anniversary if offering $10 million as a reward for changing world’s best ideas into products. The project is called “Project 10 to the 100th”. Participants can submit ideas in 7 categories. They include
- Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
- Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
- Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
- Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
- Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
- Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
- Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
- Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.
Phishing attacks on the rise – be careful when opening emails from you bank
With the global crises in the finance industry the hackers have realized that this is the best time to propagate phishing attacks.
The trick is an old one. Security firm SonicWall say that they have been seeing an increase in traffic of emails that lure the people to their bank’s fake website and asks them to verify their personal and bank account information. One of the reasons used most for re entering your information is because of a bank merger or take over and these days there are many.
A lot of customers of Washington Mutual are being targeted as it was taken over by Chase.
Hackers use sophisticated tools and measure trends to ensure that they do not got. Cnet recently reported that that hackers are increasingly using Google Trends to find out what people are searching for and build phishing attacks accordingly.
How to catch such emails
- Unsuspecting users do that as the fake website is exactly like the original one except for the URL (Universal Source Locator) in the address bar of your browser. To find out more about how to locate a URL go here.
- Banks will never ask for your personal information and banking information online. Usually traditional mail is used for such information exchange.
- Use this test at SonicWall to assess how much you know about phishing.
So the next time you get an email asking for personal or sensitive information online avoid it.
New phishing attempt targets bank customers | News – Security – CNET News
Postacards, ecards, online greeting cards web 2.0
Postcard.fm is a service that allows you to create and send postcards or greeting cards which are customizable.
The way it works is
- Upload a picture (jpg, gif or a png file)
- add music or a song to it (an mp3 file > 20 mb)
- add your message and preview your card and
- send the card
What makes the service fun to use is the usability and the customization that one can do!
The service was launched about a week back and till date 3000 postcards have been created. The top 5 cities by usage are
1. London
2. New York
3. Budapest
4. Chicago
5. Paris
I would recommend the service as it gives a personal touch to your online greetings. This is the good thing about web 2.0 applications – they are useful!
Brick by apple?
Apple has again successfully created a controversy over the release of their product later this month (October 14, 2008). Rumor has it that it is called ‘brick’. The internet is rife with rumors of what ‘brick’ is.
- While some insist that the new product is a iteration of Apple TV
- others feel that it is a updated Mac Mini like Eee PC (source BusinessWeek)
- another rumor speculates that it would be a some new smaller touch based device (source Blargkaboom)
The latest rumor which originated from a apple rumor 
site (and there are many of them), called 9to5Mac says that the term ‘brick’ was not coined for the product but for the process that has been used to produce the product.
Useful and fun resources on the web
Some of the interesting services I came across on the web
I t is a tool for photo collage. The best feature is the ability to move a part of a photograph to another photograph without worrying about adjusting the background of the part you imported into the second photograph the software does it for you. Some of the other features are
- Montage
- Chameleon
- Blend Mode
- Emersion Mode
To know more about the features visit the Chameleon website.
Give it a spin and I’m sure you will find it interesting. There is a free demo for 10 days.
Usability testing for your interface in 5 seconds
This is truely a web 2.0 app. It is the website at fivesecondtest.com.
Website and interface designers biggest challenge is to ensure that users understand what they want to communicate through their website or application. For example if you build a website you would want to know if the design of your website actually says or sells what you want it to sell. How would you do that?
This is where the service at fivesecondtest.com comes in handy. Fivesecondtest.com is based on the 5 second test principle which is supported by Usability Interface Engineering. UIE is a leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in web site and product usability and was founded by Jared M. Spool. The website shows a image (might be a web page or an interface) for 5 seconds and evaluates as to what the user remembered about the image. Five seconds might not seem much but people usually form opinions or make decisions in the those first five seconds specially in case of websites.
HOW IT WORKS
The website provides a simple service which allows you to upload an image of your interface. Once it is uploaded a link is generated which you can share with others whom you might request to take the five second test. When the users (those who take the test) click on the link they are shown the image you uploaded for 5 seconds. They are then taken to another page where they are asked to list five things they remember from the image they saw and submit the information. The results are submitted which are mailed to you. The results help you analyze as to what visitors to your website would remember from your interface. Based on the feedback you can redesign and test the new design again.
I have created a test. I would be grateful if you take the test at http://ping.fm/b94uv
Critics might argue that a service is not needed for this and that what can be accomplished in lesser time is done over a period of time. But then fiveminutetest.com makes the whole testing process fun to do and also helps your in maintaining records of the tests.
Once can also expire or retire a test after some time. The service is being managed by User Interface Engineering who are pioneers in usability testing. The website also gives an example of how the service was used to tweak the look of the Red Cross website so that visitors remembered donation options within 5 seconds of visiting the website.
Make others more aware of your social networks using Wisestamp
Wisestamp is a Firefox extension that allows you to add personalized email signatures on any of the webmail services. You can add multiple signatures and can also include your social networks.
The features of the service are
- Personally designed signatures.
- Easy setup and configuration interface.
- Use multiple email signatures (Business and Personal)
- Signature Rich Text editor (WYSIWYG Editor-choose color and font) and allows preview. It also supports special characters.
- Add your logo or image to your signature.
- Automatically insert your signature to your webmail services like Gmail, Google App’s, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL and more…
- Easily Include all your IM (Instant messaging) ID’s + icons.
- Easily link to all of your social services-links & Profiles + icons
- Manually add your signature at mouse cursor location.
Advantages
- Popularize your social profiles.
- Drive traffic to your social networks.
- Improve networking.
- Makes otherwise dull signatures something interesting.
Disadvantages
- Works in only Firefox as it is only a Firefox extension
- Some people are of the opinion that signatures are not that important.
Conclusion
I would recommend everyone who is into social networking sites to try it for sure. It will increase traffic to your social networks for sure. If Wsestamp does not work for you then disable it.
Snail mail with a twist – Letterfu
In this day and age there is very little incentive to write snail mail. The main reasons why snail mail has taken a back seat are
- it is cumbersome,
- your handwriting is not good and
- it takes time to deliver
But the advantages of writing snail mail are there as well
- it is more thoughtful as people take time out to write snail mails,
- it has a personal touch to it
- and the feel good factor for the writer and the recipient.
Letterfu is a service that gives you reasons to write a snail mail as it makes snail mail fun and is also fun. Letterfu provides you templates for your snail mail, which you can print out, that are the mail templates and the envelope templates rolled in one. Some of the features are
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