Naveen’s Blog

Have you ever looked at the web pages in Telugu? e.g.: Wikipedia in Telugu. Cluttered Telugu rendering makes you leave the pages immediately. Until I have known about enabling the Telugu Indic script in Windows XP, my situation was also same. Now, I enjoy reading TeWiki (Telugu Wikipedia) and also BhashaIndia’s Telugu version run by Microsoft. See below images before and after enabling the complex script in XP.

TeWiki before enabling the complex script support

After enabling:

BhashaIndia Before:

After:

So, we will see how to enable the Indic script support in Windows XP. Open the “Control Panel” in Windows XP and select the “Switch to Classic View” on the left side. Select the “Regional and Languages Options” Then go to the second tab “Languages” and select the check box “Install Files for Complex Script and Right-to-Left Languages (Including Thai).” Make sure that you have the XP installation dump in your system or installation CD with you. It requires the fonts to be installed into the system from the CD. Once you have done, restart the system, and now you can see the Telugu websites in a readable form.

Refer to my Orkut scrapping in Indian languages post and using that you can scrap in Telugu also. Use Lekhini or English to Telugu Converter hosted on my blog to type in Telugu, then copy and paste it into your blog or on any webpage. You can paste that into messengers to talk in Telugu.

In Telugu Wikipedia, there are lot of articles are pending for translation into Telugu. If you want to enjoy and learn while translating, then go to this page.

Happy Telugu Writing! — ఇక తెలుగులో వ్రాయండి!

written by Naveen

Browzar is a tiny browser that is only 220K in size and a standalone application. Just click and run, no installation needed. It is mainly aimed at browsing the net with privacy. It dose not store any cookies, cache, or browsing history, so you don’t need to worry about the traces that browsers normally leave. It is too small and you can carry it on a USB stick to browse the net safely at net cafés.

When I wrote about the Browzar for first time in December of 2006 on my WaveNine blog, I pointed out the downside to change the default homepage, which was set to Ask. Now, the new version 1.4.0.0 does allow the user to change homepage and the interesting thing is that it supports tabbed browsing.

Browzar is becoming thin as it is growing. It was 273K when it was introduced and now it is only 220K with more number of features. It is currently available only for Windows with two themes, black and silver. Mac OS X and Linux versions are on the way.

Browzar’s home page: http://www.browzar.com/
Read all the features here: http://www.browzar.com/keyfeatures/index.html
Download it here: http://www.browzar.com/download/index.html

written by Naveen

TechSmith’s Camtasia is a complete professional solution for recording, editing and sharing high-quality screen videos. It is easy-to-use, affordable, and is the quickest and most effective way for you to communicate. Easily record your screen to create compelling training videos, screencasts, and presentations without ever leaving your desk.

Click here to go to the promo page on TechSmith’s website. Enter your correct email address to receive the serial key of Camtasia Studio 3.1.3. You can upgrade it to the latest version that is 5.0 at a concessional rate of for just 88 £ (New version is 176 £).

I think this promo will be for a short period, so hurry up and download it before it is closed.

Camtasia Studio 3.1 Features:

• Capture everything you see on your screen.
• Edit and enhance the videos - pinpoint cursor movements with special visual effects, perform sophisticated moves such as highlighting, zooming, and panning, and even record what you draw on the screen.
• Share in the industry-standard AVI and streaming media formats.
• Side-by-side display that allows users to determine the dimensions of the camera and screen video windows to provide emphasis and focus the viewer’s attention.
• Flash 8 support with direct publishing to FLV that ensures bullet-proof delivery of any content for any audience via the ubiquitous Flash player.
• Section 508-compliant open captioning that makes content more accessible and more memorable. Users can add their own text captioning, import speaker notes from PowerPoint, or paste in text from any document.
• Interactivity and quizzing enhancements that allow instructors to embed questions into their multimedia content and to receive feedback via email without requiring a Learning Management System (LMS).
• QuickTime 7 and H.264 support in Camtasia Studio that delivers the industry’s highest quality video with spectacular compression for customers who want to publish their content in the QuickTime format.
• Third-party Project Streamer hosting so individuals can easily share their content online with others by simply emailing or posting a link to a website. The option to upload a video from within Camtasia Studio is now available and users can choose which of their videos they want to make available for public viewing.

written by Naveen

My friend called me asking a solution for the above question. He runs a small medical transcription company. When transcriptionists are busy with searching medical terminology, there is a chance for accidentally going to the sites with adult content. He also wants to restrict the net use for the night shift people. He don’t want to spend money buying the content filtering software and it must be easy to setup because they don’t have system administrators to do that. Everything related to systems is taken care of by themselves.

So, I have started searching the net and found these easy steps to stop the adult content showing up in browsers. It is basically about changing the DNS servers in your system.

What is DNS?
DNS (Domain Name System) is a process that translates easy to remember addresses (like www.scrubit.com) to a numerical IP address used by computers (67.138.54.99) Everyone uses DNS. Most DNS is provided to the user by your internet service provider, or a recursive DNS service like ScrubIT. More info you can read on Wikipedia here.

Here I explain about two services OpenDNS and ScrubIt.

OpenDNS: It offers more free services than ScrubIt and more it is faster than ScrubIt. But, adult content filtering is not turned on by default. You have to create a free account on OpenDNS to turn it on. It will give you access to a number of interesting features like Adult Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Stats and Logs, Typo Corrections, etc. Change your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220, create a free account on OpenDNS, add your IP address, and turn the adult site blocking on. Now you are free from adult sites.

Note that this works only with static IPs as your free account is linked to the IP to gain the control. Lot of broadband accounts comes with static IP and if your internet provider does not support static IP, you can download the Dynamic DNS client to update your IP address automatically. More information is here: http://www.opendns.com/support/dynamic_ip/

Below are some screenshots. It is totally free, so give it a try to learn more about OpenDNS.

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written by Naveen

I got the free serial from a promotion campaign run by TechSmith for SnagIt screen capturing and image editing software few months ago and I really liked it. It stops working after one year and I have started looking for an alternative free software for it. Today, I am able to find a free alternative for it. Photoscape is a free photo editing software with amazing features like batch editing of multiple photos, screen capturing, color picker, merging multiple photos to single one, GIF animation, adding text and images to photos, and normal photo editing software features like auto contrast, black & white, cropping and resizing. It has features like SnagIt and I think it is a free alternative to SnagIt, a $39.95 commercial product. I like Photoscape’s video help.

See more screenshots of the software here: http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/screenshot.php

Go to Photoscape and download it.

written by Naveen

Here is a good news! Now, you can get DivX Pro serial key for free from DivX site. Don’t know why they are offering it for free. Go to http://www.divx.com/dff/. You can also download Mac version by clicking on the “Mac” link on the top right corner. Clear instructions are given on the site. During the installation, enter your email address to receive the serial key for it.

What is DivX®?
“A simple question like “What is DivX?” probably deserves a simple answer, so here it is: DivX is a digital media format like MP3 for video. DivX technology compresses video to a fraction of its original size for efficient storage on your hard drive and easy sharing online.

DivX is a common media language that delivers a pure digital experience, powering a whole range of video services and products that all work together. From video creation tools like Dr. DivX and the DivX Converter to media playback applications like the DivX Player and the DivX Web Player, DivX delivers a seamless PC video experience. Thanks to the DivX Certified Program, it also frees digital video from the PC allowing you to easily transfer any DivX video to a DivX certified device like a DVD player or portable video player so you can watch it on the living room TV, on your morning commute or almost anywhere else you can imagine.”

Update: The offer is no longer valid.

written by Naveen

What is SnagIt?

Showing someone exactly what you see on your screen is sometimes the quickest and clearest way to communicate. With SnagIt, you can select anything on your screen – an area, image, article, Web page, or error message – and capture it. Then, save the screen capture to a file, send it to SnagIt’s editor to add professional effects, share it by e-mail, or drop it into PowerPoint®, Word®, or another favorite application.

With SnagIt built-in editor, you can convert the images into lot of formats – PNG, GIF, ICO, PDF, TIF, etc. You can also merge the images, resize them, trim, rotate, put watermark, and add boarder or a caption. Read more about SnagIt on TechSmith.

SnagIt is offering free software key for the version 7.2.5. Though it is a little bit old version, it has all the features except few.

Get the SnagIt 7.2.5 by clicking here. Get the Key here.

written by Naveen

JAlbum is an easy-to-use album creator for your digital images. It comes with lots of skins and you can also download extra skins from the JAlbum website. It supports 31 languages. It has an in-built smart FTP to upload your photos directly to the website. Your host does not need to support php, mysql or any advanced features. It runs nicely with thumbnails, photos, and simple HTML files.

JAlbum creates index pages with thumbnails and slide shows from the images supplied. You can choose the folder or drag and drop the photos onto the software, choose the skin, press “Make Album”, and you are done with the sleek online photo album. You can add watermark, apply the filters, add logos to images, rotate them, and add borders. It also has a feature of “smart upload” that only uploads newly added files whenever you add some more photos to your old album. Moreover it’s a free software.

Some of its features:

» Ease of use. Just drag and drop an image folder and press “Make album”.
» Flexibility. While many competitors offer some degree of customization through user interface controls or simple templates, JAlbum allows you to generate virtually any imaginable album look as it allows the album designer to use any HTML mixed with JAlbum variables and interpreted java to define the album look.
» Works anywhere. With JAlbum you generate static HTML web albums so there is no need for extra software to view albums, not on the server side either (just a plain web server). You can put an album on a CD-ROM too if you wish.
» Runs anywhere. JAlbum is made in the Java programming language so it runs not only on Windows machines, but also on Macintosh OS X and Unix systems like Linux (That’s the “J” in “JAlbum”). Being a Java program it needs a VM (Virtual Machine) that adopts its code for each machine. I recommend Java 1.5 (or “Java5″) from www.java.com

Watch the sample album I have created with JAlbum at Geocities: http://www.geocities.com/naveenkumarmt/ It looks pretty nice…isn’t it?

Get JAlbum here: http://jalbum.net/download/

Have a look at the screenshots: http://jalbum.net/screenshots.jsp

Tutorials can be found here: http://jalbum.net/tutorials.jsp

For screenshots…Read Rest of the Post

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written by Naveen