Google just launched yet another feature . Now you can add a GTalk widget directly to your Google Homepage.
Its cool I gave it a try a minute ago. Conversations appear in tabs.
Now you can access your Gtalk via GMail , the Gtalk desktop client and also from your Google Homepage.
Wow I got published on one of the sites I love reading the most lifehacker !!!
I was baffled to see so many comments at one go in my mail box then I came across one comment which was talking about an entry on lifehacker about my How to Read Hotmail from Gmail post.
Tears flowed down my cheeks as I got the news (5.6mins ago) that my puberty heroes were back ..yesssssss.. KAWABANGA! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are here for some serious ass kicking action.
The trailer looks awesome apart from the fact that in 3D our turtles look more like lizards ,seems as if they been on a serious diet.
Man all the sewer adventures , ninjas , stupid jokes , mutants and the Pizzas that will show cast cant wait to see it! I bet Pizza hut is gonna make a max of dough with this flick... i started licking pizzas while watching TMNT cartoons ... can you believe that?
By the looks of it our mutant amphibian friends will need to fight against some new evil baddies .. can't see good o'le shredder anywhere in the trailer.. oh yeah I forgot he is in our office kitchenette :P .
The animated movie is to be released on the 23rd of March in the US and probably by December in Mauritius (wild guess :P ).
Am a great fan of mauritiusblogtracker.com I think this must be the site I visit most after engadget and lifehacker .
Some 3 years back when I first started blogging there were only a few Mauritians on the Mauritian soil that were actually publishing on the web and now when I see all the names in the mauritiusblogtracker.com blogroll I feel really proud.
Lately however I was confused seeing entries like Result transcripts and Protected:Yr3:Slides for Advertising on the tracker which was pointing to a Communication Studies blog for UoM students.
I think thats a good initiative and a change of mind from lecturers and students . Although am not sure if student-teacher talk should be make available to the eyes of everyone online , its a nice way of initiating students to the world of media ..and the internet is nowadays the best distributor of information.
The fact that UoM students are showcasing themselves on the web prove that we are really moving towards a new era .
However people (all new bloggers) be careful with what you post , being visible is not always a good thing and sensitive information should not be disclosed to everyone ..some rodents are always present to prey on what you say.
But on the whole its a nice picture , I hope next year at this time when I check the tracker's blogroll its even bigger ..and i have a feeling that it will :) .
This is a simple hack that will allow you to read your free Hotmail (No POP3 enabled) emails directly from GMail.
Recently GMail has enabled a feature that allows you to read mail from other POP3 enabled email accounts . (To learn more in detail how to set this up please read the instructions ...however this is of no great importance to our hack.)
Now my problem was that I always forgot to check my hotmail account so I thought why not make use of this new GMail feature to automatically poll my Hotmail messages into one inbox.
As you might (not) be aware however that Hotmail (the free version) has no POP3 support so I registered an account on IzyMail which basically asks for your username and password and then provides a POP3 server on IzyMail from which you can connect to retrieve your HotMail electronic mails.
After you register this is what you will get on your IzyMail screen as settings:
User name:
(Account name) javed@hotmail.com
including the ...@hotmail.com part!
Password: •••••• (your password)
Incoming server: in.izymail.com
Outgoing server: out.izymail.com
Server type: POP / POP3 or IMAP / IMAP4
Now all you need to do is to fire up your Gmail then you click on Settings -> Account
Here you can see I have already configured a hotmail account , it gives me an indication on when it was last checked.
Click on Add another mail account to retrieve email from in the Get mail from other accounts section.
Now fill in your hotmail username and password :
In the POP server section however replace the default value with the following: in.izymail.com
You can optionally add a label to messages that come from your hotmail account such as you recognize from where they originate. To do this check the Lable incoming messages option.
Hit Add Account to finish the wizard.
Thats it now you can check your Hotmail directly from Gmail !
[3/3/07 update: It has come to my attention that www.izymail.com is not a totally free service so am busy looking for an alternative , if you have one please post in comments.
Maybe the people hosting www.izymail.com will come to realise that they could make more bucks if they prolonged the trial period or provided a free version of izymail thus opening up to more customers with the help of google's new feature :P
]
I've got 2 invitations to give away for Joost .. if you are interested please let me know by writing a comment.
As you might have witnessed we are gradually moving away from Satellite and Aerial antennas to watch our favorite channels and series. Many people are now downloading Heroes , Stargate , Lost or Prison Break , all their series directly from the internet(and at times illegally :P..bad!).
The way we watch TV is shifting as the Web has now the capacity to provide for our thirsty eyes... although our ISP still can't :P deliver as fast as we wished it would . Here is where Joost comes into play .
Joost as you will see on many review sites comes from the makers of the popular Skype , they want to do what they did with telephony but this time with video s'il vous plait.
At a 9.8MB something install this new Television on the desktop application is not very big in size which is a good thing as I wanted to test it out as soon as I was sent my beta testing password.
The user interface I must admit was very simple and pleasant to use. You can select from a wide variety of channels proposed by Joost and here I must say they did get some nice channels like National Geographic and Fifth gear , just to name a few.
The image quality is much better than YouTube for example . Actually you can't really compare Youtube with Joost as the latter has for objective to replace the channels you watch on your conventional TV set whereas Youtube is more about sharing videos . Joost provides quality image and content.
The application itself starts in full screen mode which is a bit surprising if you are not used to having your media player spread automatically across your display.
However quality has a price and that means for us My.T users that the video is really sluggish and stops every 5 seconds . What I do is that I just let it play in mute and after it has streamed I rewind back and look at the videos... its painful but what can you do .
Joost is still in beta so there is much improvement to expect before they finally deliver something nice and smooth.
So for me this is a brilliant piece of software but the biggest drawback is that its not for users on slow connections and at times the commands just disappear by themselves from the screen.
Joost provides free contents legally and is funded by adverts which pop up now and then ...see so you still are watching commercials after all ...yaaayyyyyy!
Ok got to leave you I need to watch the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Road test on the FIFTH GEAR channel ...tough life :P.
Gamede is still outside howling and shaking big trees as if they were made of paper. There has just been a power cut in Port-Louis and the AC current has been fluctuating a lot making my pc restart at least a dozen times.
I hope I continue getting power its really annoying not being able to watch anything on the TV or not being able to use the PC. I wonder what people would do in the old times when electricity was still a luxury and a cyclone raged outside. I guess they must have been worried about whether their houses would stand or not. Its only quite recent that most Mauritian families live in solid concrete houses. I do know that some people must be playing card or board games or just talking around a hot meal.
I have another satellite picture of Gamede , the storm doesn't seem to want to move away it has slowed down its pace meaning tomorrow is still not going to be better.
Just an update on the weather here in Mauritius .. we are now in class 3 the weather has deteriorated a lot over the pas 6-7 hours . Now its absolutely insane to go outside its not that its raining a lot but the winds are quite strong.
Here is an additional satellite photo of the beast:
Some links for you to track down Gamede:
1.Cyclone bulletin: http://metservice.intnet.mu/wfcmrue.htm
2. Mauritian Meteo Homepage: http://metservice.intnet.mu
3. Australian Meteo service: http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/index.html
I wish you all a very nice weekend too :D
Its been a while since I heard people mentioning the cyclone shelter points in Mauritius. There has not been any cyclones since a long while until yesterday when a class 1 was issued.
We are right now as I speak in class 2 which means:
no school =lots of happy kids
The official meteological bulletin can be accessed here
and it looks like this :
SEVERE TROPICAL STORM GAMEDE WAS CENTERED AT 0400 HOURS WITHIN 50
KM RADIUS OF LATITUDE 15.3 DEGRES SOUTH AND LONGITUDE 61.6 DEGREES
EAST, AT ABOUT 660 KM TO THE NORTH EAST OF MAURITIUS.
GAMEDE IS NOW MOVING AT A SPEED OF 20 KM/HOUR TOWARDS THE WEST-
SOUTH- WEST.
ON THIS TRAJECTORY GAMEDE CONTINUES TO APPROACH MAURITIUS AND HAS
BECOME A THREAT.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.
WEATHER WILL BE CLOUDY WITH INTERMITTENT SHOWERS, MODERATE AT
TIMES, MORE FREQUENT OVER HIGH GROUNDS.
EAST SOUTH EASTERLY WINDS WILL STRENGTHEN WITH A MEAN OF 50 KM/HOUR
AND GUSTS OF 100 KM/HOUR.
SEA WILL BE VERY ROUGH.
THE PUBLIC IS ADVISED TO TAKE PRECAUTIONS.
NEXT BULLETIN WILL BE ISSUED AT 1010 HOURS.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.=
It is expected that a class 3 will be issued around 15:00 from a reliable source...no I can't tell you who it is ..yes it is top secret ... no you can't buy me ....ok for $3000 i could tell you.
Anyways Gamede or not Gamede our weekend is ruined for sure .. or is it? ...I am however certain that there will be cyclonic conditions on My.T bandwidth with so many people staying at home , they are bound to hit the information superhighway.
Some things to remember during a cyclone class 2+
1. do not roam about the streets on foot
2. buy candles , they are nice to look at (that would be my main reason)and work great when there are powercuts
3. buy food provisions
4. get something nice to watch on TV or on DVD
5. call your friends and chit chatt about anything and everything
6. eat a lot of homemade rotis!
7. turn your pc , tv and other appliances off if there is a power cut
8. go to sleep
9. look outside your window at trees dancing a wild tango
10. listen to your battery powered radio if nothing else works
In the meantime this is how our region looks like from outerspace:
