Tech Tips for Home Office Beginners

The computer desk next to your bed is fine for getting assignments done and to surf the web. But for the serious ones out there get ready to invest on some good home office equipment. Yes, your clients or your employer (if you're working from home that is) very rarely get to see your workspace, but maintaining a level of professionalism could give a boost to your productivity.

1. THE COMPUTER:

  Speed is very important. If your old desktop takes ages to even boot up, then you'll be wasting a lot of time. Your productivity will be much lower. Chuck it away and invest some money in a new computer. Get a solid workhorse machine with a good processor, preferable 2-3GB of RAM (should be more than enough) and quite a large capacity hard disk. If you have the moolah go for the Solid State Hard Disks (SSDs) as they are more reliable. You won't be needing fancy GPUs as your computer will be tailored to do business work. Many manufacturers out there like Dell, HP etc. have a variety of computers for small businesses. They

Airtel Unveils New Logo

Old vs. New

Airtel has started off with its adverts for its 3G services, which however have not been rolled out yet. But, Airtel has unveiled a new logo a couple of days ago. Airtel says that it is part of the re-branding. The new logo will be for India as well as overseas.

 Airtel has also crossed the 200 million subscriber mark with 150 million Indian subscribers, 4 million African Subscribers and the rest being from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The new Airtel logo claims to give the brand a more "youthful & international" look.

Nimbuzz 3.0 (For S60 5th Edition)

Nimbuzz recently launched a new version of its mobile app for S60 5th Edition devices. A lot of improvements have been made in it. Most of it being good. Nimbuzz developers claim that it was optimized for the new Symbian ^3 devices N8, C6 and C7.

The new features in Nimbuzz 3.0:

• Customizable tabs: select which tabs you want to see and in what order.
• NimbuzzOut call rates are displayed in real time below the number before placing the call.
• Recent calls tab: see all your received, missed and outgoing calls.
• 2 new chat styles: with avatars and without.
• 3 options to view the Contact List.
• Sort contacts by status.
• My info tab: gives you quick access to your profile, NimbuzzOut credits, accounts,  suggested friends and friend invites.
• Facebook Connect: removes the 400 contacts limit and connectivity issues.

The new version also includes a couple of new tabs for getting the history of NimbuzzOut calls and Gtalk -> Gtalk (or) Nimbuzz -> Nimbuzz calls. Also you can get your tabs in a list sorta format by just hitting the back button on your screen. Overall the UI is much better. The biggest relief is the new Facebook Chat which removes the 400 contacts barrier. All your friends are now visible to you. The NimbuzzOut dialing keypad is significantly bigger (atleast in my 5800) and the UI looks refreshing.

iPhone users beware :D

A lil' warning to all my visitors using iPhones. Here's what you'll be experiencing if you don't cut down on your iPhone usage ;)

(Source)

Cheers,
Kaushik

Home-made Beam Antennas for WiFi Routers

The correct antenna achieves more range and speed for your WiFi network, but it does leave a hole in your pocket. These home-made antennas are a great alternative.

                          The mountable parabola antenna directs signals specifically in one direction as opposed to the standard antenna from the manufacturer. It ensure even more data throughout with even more obstacles in teh way. The instructions for making these antennas are available @ http://www.freeantennas.com/projects. Make two parabola antennas for routers with two antenna terminals. They transmit concentrated signals in one direction. As the basic material, use cardboard bound with metal foil. Believe me you'll only need a few household tools for this.

Effects are certainly noticeable. You can get an increase of 10db from a old WiFi G router using an omnidirectional copper transmitter and rigging it to an old CD spindle. However the latest router models based on the 802.11N standard do not operate with this kind of antenna. (www.skifactz.com/wifi/biquad_enclosure.html)

Project Titan

Facebook is already very popular and it is taking yet another giant leap by introducing E-Mail services. Google is the undisputed leader of email and though the introduction of email will have very little effect on it, other struggling email companies like Yahoo will take a huge hit.

Though Yahoo and many other email providers have tweaked and tuned the interface and tried all sorts of things with their email services, they haven't been able to attract as much traffic as Gmail. Facebook with its huge traffic already will only see another jump in it! Also it has been rumored that blue & white design of Facebook will also see a change soon.

Though it is called the Google killer by many bloggers, I don't think it can beat the likes of Google. Lets's wait and watch!

Cheers,
Kaushik

Hello!

Hi there guys! Am no new guy to blogging. I've started two blogs before but I haven't been able to keep  updating them. Hope to do well on this one atleast. I just started this blog to share my views on everything tech. Will keep y'all updated. :)

Cheers,
Kaushik