BrowserShots takes in the web site URL and the list of browsers to test, that varies across Linux, Windows, Mac and BSD. Then the jobs are queued up, processed by distributed systems and results are uploaded as screenshot images. These screenshots can be downloaded by the web developer.

This is a really quick way of performing a smoke test on the web site, during development.

Via Smashing Magazine

Huge number of online storage services, some completely free and some free to a certain limit, have been burgeoning over the last few years. One such service worth mentioning is, Windows Live Skydrive. To use this service, you must sign up for a Windows Live account, which is a Single-Sign-On for all Windows Live services.

Key Features of Windows Live Skydrive:

• Part of Windows Live family.  Can bet on its existence and may not be withdrawn or given up
• Free storage space upto 25 GB
• Single File upload limit of 50 MB
• Simple user interface for Folder Creation and File uploads
• Embeddable links for Folders and Files
• RSS feeds for Public Folders

Skydrive, at the startup, provides the following folders with varying access levels - Documents, Public, Favorites, Shared favorites

But you can create any number of folders and assign suitable access level for each of those. You can choose to make the folder - Private, Public, Share with network (Windows Live), Share with selected people (email list)

Once a folder is made Public, you can also publish the RSS feed link for that folder. This is very useful when you frequently add documents and wish to have it available for the public. Also, the public folders and files can be embedded into web pages using the <iframe> HTML snippet that Skydrive provides.

With Skydrive, you can also create photo albums, add photos and share it with your friends.

Thus, Skydrive is ideal - if you are an active member of Windows Live community or looking for a quality free online storage service with good amount of space.

Their ideas are truly awesome. I suggest you read the entire proposal and sure you would appreciate. Congrats to the winners!!

Currently the following filters are supported - News Content, Faces, Clip Art, Line Drawings, Photo Content

You can read more about the new feature, at the official Google post.

Did you get an invoice or a report in the mail body and wish to save it in a document?  Forget about copying the content and look no further than the “Create Document” Labs feature.  Once you have enabled Labs as discussed in the introduction post, navigate to Settings -> Labs and choose to enable the “Create Document”:

Once this is enabled, whenever you get a mail, following can be noticed on right top corner.

Click on the “Create a Document” link and a nicely formatted document from the mail gets created and saved into your Google Docs area. Simple isn’t it! Try it out and let me know.

1. Seamless Incognito Browsing

One of the greatest strengths of Chrome, is its seamless incognito browsing mode. While in Incognito mode, any pages that an user visits does not make it to the browsing history and none of the details entered are saved for auto-fill. In short, Incognito browsing mode enables private browsing, especially suited for sensitive transactions in public computers.

Firefox has entered private browsing, in its recent release. Here is an early look at Firefox’s private browsing capabilities. Based on the first look, Google’s version of private browsing stands out due to these reasons:

• Auto-fill addresses work in the private mode too, for websites visited in the private mode. This appears to be missing in Firefox 3.1 Beta
• Firefox closes the current browsing session, before opening the Private browsing mode. This is not the case with Chrome, where both private and non-private sessions can co-exist

2.  Omni Bar

Firefox users are generally used to the address bar and a search bar at the right-top corner.  Chrome has tried to optimize space and made better use of the address bar.  Thus, the address bar has evolved into what is known as an omni bar.  Here, you can read more about the Google Chrome’s Omni bar.. Omni bar makes re-visiting web sites and searching for keywords across search engines, a breeze. This is another edge that Chrome has over Firefox

3. Smaller Navigation Bar + Collapsible Bookmarks Bar = More Browsing Space

Definitely, the first look at Chrome emphasizes the larger browsing space that it offers. The navigation bar with buttons and the address bar is too lean and the bookmarks bar can be toggled in/out using “Ctrl + B”. Thus Chrome has managed to achieve larger browsing space, without sacrificing any comforts

4. Task Manager to monitor Memory usage

This is a really handy feature that Chrome offers. It enables the user at any time to monitor

• Overall memory used by Chrome
• Memory used by each of the browser tabs
• Memory used by each of the plugins

This is extremely useful when the browser starts eating up more memory and helps the user to identify the culprit!

5. Minimal memory usage

Chrome definitely has an edge over Firefox, when it comes to memory usage. Chrome is very fast to load, consumes lesser memory per tab opened and deliver better overall performance. Though there are instances when Chrome crashes in the middle, time is still available to improve on its performance

6. Tab page with most visited, recently closed and recently bookmarked pages

Whenever a new tab is opened, Chrome shows the list of most visited pages along with the pages that were recently closed and bookmarked. This is handy to visit the web pages, that are often viewed

Chrome has certain areas to improve - especially reliability and customization. Also, I would love to see the “Save and Quit” option with Chrome, to retain the open tabs on next start. Keeping fingers crossed on Chrome extensions and other improvements!!!

Wikipedia Academy is a global, non-profit initiative that aims to train people to edit and contribute back to Wikipedia. Those who train are volunteers, who regularly contribute to Wikipedia. Enthusiasts can join any of the existing Wikipedia academies or start new ones.

Following are some of the ways to make Wikipedia better:

1. Use Wikipedia

I think most of us are already doing it. But for those who don’t, start actively using Wikipedia. For many keywords, Wikipedia generally tops the results in a search engine. But I would suggest users to search for keywords, right from within Wikipedia, to not miss the relevant information. A good way for Firefox Users is to choose the “Wikipedia Search” in the global search bar, when searching on keywords

2. Edit Content for Missing or inaccurate information

This is something really crucial. Many of us might find that some key pieces of information are missing or are inaccurate, when reading an article. But most of us leave it there, mainly due to the lack of understanding on Editing Wikipedia content. I would strongly recommend Wikipedia users to register themselves, so that they are eligible to edit/add content. Then the Wikipedia tutorial must give a great starting point - explaining the basics of Editing and Formatting content. Wikipedia has a strong version controlling mechanism, so drop the fear of “screwing up something” that already exists

3. Add Missing Content

How often you find that a search for something in Wikipedia yielded no positive results? This should be a trigger to contribute content to Wikipedia, if not anything else. Wikipedia provides a lot of tools like sandbox for novice contributors, to get started with publishing content. Here is the detailed information, on getting started with the First Wikipedia article. In addition to these, Wikipedia provides tons of resources to get going. Also make sure to refer Copyright guidelines and “Things not to write about in Wikipedia” before publishing the first article

4. Donate to Wikipedia, if possible

As many of us know, Wikipedia is a not-for-profit project. But, definitely the Wikimedia foundation needs money to keep things going and get started in new areas. So, if possible donate to Wikipedia and its growth!

5. Use Related Services from Wikipedia

Wikipedia is not alone. There are a lot more related services, that are provided by Wikimedia foundation. Here is a list of some Wikimedia projects. Make sure to use them appropriately, as per the need and reap the maximum benefits.

6. Contribute to Local Chapters

Wikipedia is currently available only in 250 of about 7000 languages. Local Chapters were started in an effort to localize the concept of Wikimedia across countries and provide the best possible information in each geography. If possible, try and contribute to the Local Chapters in your geography and spread the word about Wikimedia projects

Let us do our best to help Wikipedia grow and be useful to a lot more people, around the world.

In a related note, check out the post by Kiruba announcing the Wikipedia academy in Chennai.

sniff lets you instantly locate your friends in real-time, anytime, anyplace, using your mobile phone.

As you might think, privacy is of concern here. Sniff claims that the users are unambiguously prompted before their location details are given out. Users can at any time move into an “invisible” mode, thus evading “sniff”.

Sniff works on these principles:

• On Demand request for an answer to the question, “Where are you?”
• Cross Carrier support
• Open and Integrates with popular social networks including Facebook

Though registration is free, Sniff users are charged for each “sniffs” and standard text messages.

My 2 cents:

Privacy is a serious concern here. Though the user can switch between “visible” and “invisible” status, they are highly prone to unfavorable “sniffing”.

Now you can tweet right from inside Feedly, when reading a post. Also it automatically shortens the URL, using TinyURL. I found this cool and wanted to share.

Mediafire allows users to store files and images. These resources can be securely accessed over the web and also shared with other users. The major pro of this service, is that it allows virtually unlimited storage for the free account. Following table gives a comparison between the Free account and a Paid account.

Following are some of the salient features, that are worth mentioning:

File Uploads

Mediafire supports uploading multiple files in a single shot. Though the free account limits a single file size to 100 MB, the Paid account allows file sizes up to 10 GB.

Folder Management

Files can be seamlessly organized into multiple folders and sub-folders. The interface is neat and provides a desktop like experience. Also files and folders can be tagged for better organization.

Security and Privacy

Files can be attributed with different access levels - like public, private etc. This provides an option to secure some of your files, while providing public access to others.

Sharing

Mediafire provides various sharing options like MySpace, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, IM, Email etc. Also it provides HTML embedding code, so that you can share the files through your website or blog.

In summary, Mediafire provides unlimited storage for casual users and an intuitive user interface that makes sharing a pleasure.

To be updated on further development at Mediafire, you can subscribe to their blog here.