Yahoo Gets You Texting, Out Of Beta Now!

The news is out. Yahoo Mail is said to come out of Beta on Monday (Pacific Daylight Time). After shifting to Beta about 2 years ago, Yahoo has incorporated a lot of changes in it's email service. Keeping in tune with GMail and Windows Live Mail, Yahoo had been forced to up the bar for its competitors. After announcing unlimited quota for it's email users, Yahoo Mail had also incorporated chat feature from within the mail window, courtesy Google Chat, and had also improved the performance of Yahoo Mail Beta a lot.

So, we know all about it. What's the news, buddy?
News? News is Yahoo has upped the ante again. Just like Yahoo Messenger, you can now even send text messages to mobile phones in USA, India, Canada & Philippines using Yahoo Mail. Although I'm sure rest of the world won't be kept waiting for long, the very fact that India has been included in the very first list is a pleasant surprise indeed! Well, whether it's free to send unlimited SMSes to the same number or whether you need to get at least one reply from that number after you've texted thrice (same as yahoo messenger) is unknown, yet.

So, what do you say? Wanna start texting your buddies?

Mozilla FireFox Plugins : Recommendation #2

Here's the second installment of recommendations of FireFox plugins, as promised in my earlier post. Hope FasterFox made a difference in your browsing activity. The very second extension that you should install is -

Google Browser Sync: Google Browser Sync is one of the best bookmark manager I've ever seen. All you need, to be able to use this feature, is an account with Google. Now that that obstacle is out of the way, you just need to download the extension from this link and you are ready to go! Once you have this nifty extension installed, it doesn't matter what PC you're working on, wherever in the world, you can easily access you bookmarks , address bar history, saved passwords and even sessions, any time and any where! Here's what the official explanation says:

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

By the way, just in case you are interested in online bookmarks, that you don't need to install and can access irrespective of the operating system and browser you use, you can give Del.icio.us a try!

Other FireFox PlugIn Recommendations -

• #1 : FasterFox
• #3 : AdBlock Plus
• #4 : StumbleUpon

Mozilla FireFox Plugins : Recommendation #1

If you remember correctly, I'd already pointed out, in one of my previous posts, the advantages of using Mozilla Firefox as your preferred browser, over Internet Explorer. I've also posted 2 videos (Part 1 & Part 2) that'll show how to personalize your Firefox and use it to suit your needs. Well, the actual fun of using Firefox is the ability to customize it with the help of extensions. Extensions are nothing but little nuggets of programs that you need to install in the browser. These are often very powerful features that go a long way in making your online stay pleasurable. I myself have been using the browser for over 2 years now and have been following it's development pretty closely. There are so many extensions that I've come to love, in all this time. There are also a few that I just can't do without. So, I thought I'd share a few of them and tell you how to use them & why!

FasterFox: This is one extension that I just need to have, be it on my own personal comp or on a shared PC. Here's what the official explanation says :

Performance and network tweaks for Firefox.

Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with the unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.

After you install the plugin from this link, you can find it at the bottom of your status bar, just like in the picture below.

And yeah, you know what I find the coolest about this extension? It also shows the time it took to load a certain page! Can you see "8.470s" written right beside the FasterFox icon? That's it?

Well, there goes the first recommendation for you. As for the rest, they are in the pipeline. Oh by the way, just in case you don't wish to install the extension, you can even tweak your browser for the same effect. Here's the video on how to do that.

By the way, you can also check out Recommendation #2 : Google Browser Sync.


Other FireFox PlugIn Recommendations -

• #2 : Google Browser Sync
  
• #3 : AdBlock Plus
• #4 : StumbleUpon

Spruce Up Your Firefox : Video Tip #1

Check out this great video. I'm sure you're gonna love the way Mozilla Firefox has been personalized, in the video. Well, in my previous post, I'd already cited the reasons for shifting to Firefox, here's some more ;-).

Update: You can check out the second video here.

Phew! It's been a tough & tiring day. To start off, there has been this project that I'm working on, courtesy Crompton Greaves. Have been working on it right since 7 in the morning. Then in the evening, I suddenly got this urge of zap up my desktop a li'l bit. The hordes of icons on my desktop had been upsetting my moods for quite some time, now. And since I'd re0installed my Windows XP just about a week ago, I was getting bored by the unexciting default blue theme. So, spent the whole evening sprucing things up. And well...here comes the finished product for you to check out. What do you say? Like it? Chenged the icons et al as well, but didn't get any of those screenshots.