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Google, the easiest Pac-Man game I ever played

Today, May 22 is the anniversary of Pac-Man. And to celebrate what is undoubtedly the most famous computer game, Google changed it’s homepage logo for a Pac-Man game.
This year Pac-Man is 30 years old. And this says a lot.We are talking of a time where people were rushing through the cinema halls to watch the [...]

Please Rob Me dot Com

All too often, people don’t realise the danger of posting details about their planned holidays away from home on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter or on their blogs. Giving details on when and how long your holidays are scheduled or where you are going, exposes your house to robberies.
To sensitize people on this [...]

Haloscan will be obsolete as from February 19 2010

JS-Kit’s Haloscan is being shut down on the 19th of February, this year. This is what the team from Haloscan announced today in a mail to registered members:
The Haloscan hardware and software is physically failing and we have no choice but to discontinue the service.
Haloscan users now have the choice to either switch to Echo, another [...]

The VAIO goes all flashy

Sony just announced the new E Series VAIO. Big surprise concerning the laptop, its physical appearance and its price tag. Indeed, the new E Series will come in a series of flashy colors to choose from. Sony states “Caribbean Green, Iridescent Blue, Hibiscus Pink and Lava Black”. Moreover, flashy keyboard skins and mouse covers are available too.
The [...]

Google shows IE6 the door

I have seen several attempts, in the past, to dissuade people from using IE6. All in vain, though. But this time, Google is trying to show IE6 the door. Let’s be honest about IE6 for a while. This browser has done its time and has had its share of glory, but it really needs to [...]

Comparison of the major types of memory cards

Posted by Jevin on January 20th, 2010

It’s ridiculously easy, these days, to get lost among the different types of memory cards on the market. All new phones come with a memory card slot and each have their own compatibility issues.

There are 6 major types of memory cards that you should know about: SD, miniSD, microSD, SDHC, miniSDHC and microSDHC.

SD cards

SD (Secure Digital) cards were among the first cheap memory cards to be sold. They were released in 1999 and are now becoming obsolete. This card can hold a maximum of 2GiB.

MiniSD cards

MiniSD cards came right after the SD card. For the 2 years after its release, it was the most popular memory card. The must have among geeks. These cards had the same maximum capacity as the SD cards.

MicroSD cards

When the first microSD card was released, it was a real revolution. For its 11 mm x 15 mm size could hold 4 GiB of data. These cards proved to be conveniently sized for phones, which were getting thinner and thinner at that time.

SDHC cards

The SDHC card looks exactly the same as the SD cards. But their capacity are in two leagues, since the SDHC card can hold up to 64 GiB of data. This is an enormous amount considering the size of the card. SDHC also has faster speeds of transfer.

MiniSDHC cards

The miniSDHC cards can hold up to 32 GiB of data. They share the same dimensions with miniSD cards, but offer faster speeds of transfer.

MicroSDHC cards

MicroSDHC cards are similar to microSD cards physically. MicroSDHC cards can hold much more data and have faster transfer speeds. These cards can hold a maximum of 32 GiB of data.

Additional advice

You should note that while SDHC and SD cards share the same size, devices supporting SD cards do not necessarily support SDHC cards. However, devices supporting SDHC cards do support SD cards.

Sometimes, microSD cards are sold with a miniSD or SD skeleton. This means that you can plug the microSD in a slot in the bigger card. Be aware that it is not 2 separate cards.

Memory cards are fragile, never buy them second hand. They are very cheap commodities, so buying a new one will be more profitable.

Be aware that there are a lot of memory card imitations sold. Buy from a trusted buyer.

When did you join Twitter?

Posted by Morinn on January 18th, 2010

“When did I join Twitter?” That’s a question that you might not be asking yourself often but when you do, you often find that the answer is not so easy to find, mostly because Twitter itself does not show you the age of your account. But there’s a way to go about this… and it’s rightly called When Did You Join Twitter?

When Did You Join Twitter is pretty simple to use. You only have to correctly type you Twitter username and the age of your account is given to you. You will get to find the date on which you created your Twitter account and it will also specify the age of your account in terms of days! You can also tweet the result directly from the page.

When Did You Join Twitter is a project by Neville Ridley-Smith, an Australian coder who is the creator of yet another Twitter-related webpage, How Often Do You Tweet which gives you the frequency of your tweets in terms of time lapse and average number.

When Did You Join Twitter and How Often Do You Tweet are arguably two not very essential services but they sure provide some answers to the inquisitive “twitter”.

Images: screenshots of Whendidyoujointwitter.com and Howoftendoyoutweet.com

Replying to Facebook comments made easier.

Posted by Morinn on January 13th, 2010

Replying to comments on status updates, photos, videos or Wall posts has now been made easier: users can now reply directly via email.

Previously, users were only notified by mail about new comments on their content or on other people’s contents they have commented on. Replying to comments meant logging in to Facebook and posting the comment. This was not always possible due to companies banning the site from work offices or users being on the go, receiving notifications on their mobile phone.

Reply to a comment by email

Email-reply successfully posted on Facebook.

As from yesterday, Facebook users can simply click “Reply” on their notification mail and type the comment they want to send back without having to log in to Facebook.

This new feature would predictably make the site even more active.

To know more about it, head over to the announcement post on Facebook’s blog.

How does the Nexus One compare to iPhone 3GS?

Posted by Jevin on January 11th, 2010

Google’s new phone, the HTC Google Nexus One has been creating a buzz all over the Internet ever since it was released on January 5, 2010. The phone has been dubbed state of the art in mobile by Michael Arrington.

We at Technoreply, strongly believe that this offering from Google is a worthy competitor to Apple’s iPhone 3GS. So we set out to compare the two phones… Hardware wise. Because, let’s not kid anyone, comparing the inside has been done already by lots of sites.

To the naked eye, this means that the Nexus One is a lot more sleeker.

Size matters

The Nexus One is longer but the iPhone 3GS is larger. The latter is also heavier by 5 grams. To the naked eye, this means that the Nexus One is a lot more sleecker.

Screen

The Nexus One’s 480×800 pixels display almost makes the iPhone’s 320×480 screen look tiny. The size is 3.7″ for the Nexus One and 3.5″ for the iPhone, so the Nexus One should have better video playback quality.

Memory

The iPhone comes with either 16 or 32 GB of internal storage memory. It is a great deal for a smartphone. The Nexus One unfortunately comes with little internal memory and users have to rely on micro SD cards.

Connectivity

Both comes with 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth 2.1, EDGE and a USB 2.0 port. The Nexus One has a Wifi connectivity that would please the die-hard geek. Indeed, the smartphone from Google comes with a/b/g/n standards. Granted the a standard is becoming more and more rare, but the n standard is starting to take off.

Camera

The iPhone’s camera was always laughed at. The pictures are very bad. To a point where people stopped taking pictures with their iPhones. The Nexus One however boasts a 5 Megapixel camera. This means that the photos and videos will come out better.

A variant of the Snapdragon will be found on the next iPhone.

Processor

The iPhone used to be among the best when it came out. The 600 MHz ARM sourced processor was a mighty one. But today, with Qualcomm’s 1 GHz on the Nexus One, things have changed. The Qualcomm, more commonly known as the Snapdragon is currently the most powerful processor ever fitted on a smartphone. There are even talks that a variant of the Snapdragon will be found on the next iPhone.

Operating system

The Android OS v/s the iPhone OS deserves a post on it’s own. We’ll update later.

Battery

Both phones say they will do around 300 hours standby time, with the iPhone having longer talk time on 2G, 12 hours (2 more than the Nexus one). On 3G however, the Nexus One will do 7 hours, 2 more than the iPhone. The battery times seems confusing to all of us.

Price

The Nexus One can be had for $179 through T-Mobile where as the iPhone can be had for $199 through AT&T.

Verdict

The iPhone is a great phone. It’s very easy to use and very nice to look at. It feels classier. But now that the Nexus One is out, we cannot help to look at the iPhone as a dated smartphone. The Nexus One looks younger and sexier. And that Android OS… That’s just geek’s play.

Google with gravity

Posted by Morinn on January 10th, 2010

Gravity would take everything down and that’s just what happens with Google Gravity; it shambles down all elements of Google’s homepage as you can see below.

Google Gravity

Google Gravity is a project by Hi-Res!, a London-based company consisting of a team of developers. It is perhaps a tribute to Isaac Newton, the guy behind the discovery of gravity, who was born on the 4th of January 1643 and to whom Google recently dedicated a doodle.

Google's Isaac Newton Doodle

Google Gravity is fun to use as you can see all your search results floating right in front of you. A slight downside of it is that it works with Google Chrome only, nothing unusual though, since it’s one of Chrome Experiments projects.

Floating search results on Google Gravity

Google is “breaking borders”.

Posted by Morinn on January 9th, 2010

Breaking Borders Award is a Google endeavour in collaboration with Global Voices, an NGO and Thomson Reuters.

The purpose of the awards would be to honour “outstanding web projects by individuals or groups who have shown courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression, making us aware of diverse political viewpoints and standing up to those who censor information.”

More information and candidates for the award can be nominated on Breaking Borders’ official page.The closing date for submissions is the 15th of February 2010.

BeautifulPeople.com

Posted by Morinn on January 8th, 2010

If you thought Facebook.com was full of superficial beings then you should try BeautifulPeople.com.

BeautifulPeople.com is a global dating site which boasts having around 550, 000 members worldwide and is supposed to be “an exclusively beautiful community, founded for the purpose of creating personal and professional relationships.”

Aspiring members of BeautifulPeople.com are expected to submit a photo of themselves while signing up. During the 48 hours following the creation of the account, the potential member’s photo will be rated by existing members of the opposite sex on BeautifulPeople.com. A new member is admitted only if the other members give a positive rating on his or her photo.

Recently, there has been some buzz in the media around this site when it kicked off 5000 members mostly from the U.S, UK and Canada for the simple reason that those members have gained weight during the festive period. New pictures that those members have uploaded post-holidays showed them with additional pounds.

BeautifulPeople representatives have justified the kicking off of those members as being a necessity in order to preserve the essence of the site and to keep the interest of existing members seeking to meet beautiful people on the site.

This action has given rise to disagreements with social groups such as the Fat Acceptance Movement and FatRights.org which try to sensitise people about going beyond looks when judging people.

One thing’s for sure, however, is that the BeautifulPeople.com has gained a lot of attention recently due to this notorious feat. It might be wondered whether that was purposefully intended to serve as a publicity stunt.

Groovle and Froogles

Posted by Morinn on January 7th, 2010

Do you know what Groovle.com and Froogles.com have in common? Apart from the fact that the domain names slightly resemble that of the web giant Google.com, they are also the only 2 companies out of 65 who have managed to keep their domain names after Google launched a complaint against those domain names.

Groovle.com

207 Media, a small Canadian enterprise, the owner of Groovle.com, a search engine, has managed to convince the three judges of the National Arbitration Forum, an agency approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to solve domain name disputes, that Groovle is related more to the word “groove” than to Google.

Although being powered by Google, Groovle allows users to personalise their search homepages with images of their own and to use that homepage to carry out searches using Google.

As for Froogles, it was in 2004 that its owner, Richard Wolfe won the case against Google by persuading the arbitrators that his e-commerce site could not be confused with Google.

Froogles.com

One thing’s for sure, better choose a domain name farthest away from Google.com than go through the hassles of a lawsuit.

Fix “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”

Posted by Jevin on January 5th, 2010

A few days ago I received a mail from a reader, notifying me that my contact form was not working. I use Contact Form 7 on my blog and I was very surprised by the fact that it was not working. It usually is just plug and play.

The error message I was getting was “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”. A quick Googling and I came upon this post by Mario Vargas. I then realized that the error I was getting was because my mail settings were messed up. You can find my mail settings on the screenshot below:

Wrong config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.

As you can see, I was using the reader’s email address to send me emails. This was the wrong thing to do. Even if the mail would be sent, it would be flagged as spam. As a general rule, you should only send emails belonging to your domain from your domain. (send only @technoreply.com mails from www.technoreply.com).

So, I applied this formula. I changed the senders email to one that belongs to me. The screenshot below speaks for itself:

Good config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.

This simple little trick worked for me. It saved me a lot of time since I did not have to tweak my server.

Facebook wages war against suicide sites

Posted by Morinn on January 5th, 2010

The social networking giant Facebook is waging a war against Web 2.0 suicide sites (Suicide Machine and Seppukoo) that serve the purpose of eliminating the accounts of users on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, amongst others. Suicidemachine

According to Facebook, Suicide Machine is violating its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR) by collecting login credentials from Facebook users, so access of Suicide Machine to Facebook has been blocked and further action is being considered.

seppukoo

As for those online suicide sites, they do not seem to flinch from Facebook’s threat. Suicide Machine has even announced the Facebook ban joyfully on its homepage.

While the duality between online suicide sites and social networking site is interesting, Facebook might have the upper hand in the arguments as the social network leader stated, “Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely”. Users wanting to delete their accounts completely sure would not have to recourse to suicide sites.

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