Google has launched a new service with which you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. Though GrandCentral is currently in a private beta test and currently only available from within the US.

When you add GrandCentral’s WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number. This is similar to what many do with a Contact-Us form, by hiding away their e-mails id’s to avoid privacy concerns and spam.

You can screen calls, either accepting them or sending them to voicemail, and you can even block unwanted callers altogether similar to comments.You can receive voicemail notifications by email or SMS, access your voicemail from a mobile phone or computer.

All your voicemail are kept in a visual online inbox that is easy to manage, there is no limit on the number of voice messages you can store.

Screenshots :

1. Call Me Widget 2.GrandCentral Inbox

Check out the features of GrandCentral here.

You can get an invite from here, if based in US or a user of GrandCentral.

I think this could be a more better service if this were to be present inside Gmail. Let’s wait and see if Google integrates this into Gmail. What do you think of this service from Goolge.

Via - Blogger Buzz

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Few days back I mentioned a tool called Folder Protection here’s another tool called My LockBox which helps password protect any folder on your computer.The best feature is that the protected folder (lockbox) is hidden from any user and application of your system, including Administrator and System itself. It is impossible to access the lockbox not only from the local computer, but also from the net and it also works under Windows Safe Mode.

You can set the lockbox location and the password during the setup procedure. After the setup is done, lockbox will be hidden and locked until you enter the valid password.

You can change settings like : lockbox location, protection status, password from the My Lockbox Control Panel or (Ctrl+Shift+P by default).

When you unlock My LockBox, It prompts you to input your password. If you close Control Panel, a small Folder Lock Box icon appears in the system tray notifying you that Lockbox is unlocked. You can click this tray icon to run My Lockbox Control Panel to lock the folder again.

Features

• Almost any folder on your computer can be password protected
• Instant protection - no file scrambling or moving to another place
• Lockbox folder is inaccessible even by the system administrators
• Lockbox folder is inaccessible both locally and remotely.
• Lockbox folder can be protected in Windows safe mode
• Windows XP x64 support
• Hotkeys support - you can popup Control Panel with a simple keystroke.

Check out the guide on how to install and use My LockBox here.

Download My LockBox from here.

My LockBox works with on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and also supports 64Bit.

Technorati Tags: MyLockBox,Security Tools,Folder Protection

Apple has cut the price of Apple 1GB iPod Shuffle to $49 and the company will be launching a new 2GB model for iPod Shuffle which will be available later this month for a price of $69. Currently the prices for the 1GB iPod shuffle have be revised on the Apple International store.

Having a built-in clip, iPod shuffle goes with anything, making it easy to carry anywhere. Weighing only 0.55 ounce and measuring 1.07 inches in Height and 1.62 inches in Width and 0.41 inches in Depth. Having a capacity to store up to 240 or 500 songs in 128-Kbps AAC format. iPod Shuffles supports these Audio formats : AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), WAV, and AIFF making it a really good product.

Lets wait and see if these cuts are followed by anymore price cuts on other products as well.

The competition for the world’s slimmest notebook and also for a power packed slimmest notebook is heating up.Apple introduced the MacBook Air at the recently held MacWorld Expo 2008. Apple claims it to be the most light weight and thinnest notebook laptop in the world. But it still lacks some of the features that many might want to have on their notebook like a DVD Drive, Ethernet Port, more USB ports.

Lenovo has come up with a superslim ThinkPad X300, which has more features than the MacBook Air, leaving aside the looks of an Lenovo notebook, whereas the MacBook Air is definitely has good looks. I feel one would definitely give more importance to features than to looks. What good is a notebook that looks good but does not deliver with its specifications.

Here a look at a comparison of both the notebooks

Image : BusinessWeek

ThinkPad X300 also ports with GPS and and your choice of Windows XP or Vista.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 will be announced on Feb 26th 2008.

Via - TecFre

Technorati Tags: ThinkPad X300,MacBook Air

FancyZoom is designed to view full-size photos and images inline without requiring a separate web page load providing a smooth, clean, truly Mac-like effect.

Why Use Fancy Zoom??

• Focused on the smoothest, most polished zooming animation possible
• Automatically scales images from any image link, with no HTML changes
• Preloads full-size images in the background on link mouseover
• No resource-heavy Javascript libraries — 100% coded from scratch to zoom
• Draws a nice drop shadow under the full-size image to offset it from the page
• Uses Safari 3’s “box-shadow” feature to draw the drop shadow natively, no images required
• Requires only two new lines of code in your HTML
• Tested and works with Safari, Firefox, IE7, and IE6, and Opera.

How To Add FancyZoom To You WebSite ?

• Download the FancyZoom package. Version 1.1 Size : 53 KB
• Unzip the package and upload the two folders inside the package to the root of your webserver.
• Add the following two lines of code to the <head> section at the top of your web page(s):<script src=”/js-global/FancyZoom.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
  <script src=”/js-global/FancyZoomHTML.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
• Add onload=”setupZoom()” inside your page’s existing <body> tag.

For example: <body [...] onload=”setupZoom()”>

• The rest is automatic — links to images in your page will automatically zoom the images.

You can add a few more functions

• To add a caption - Add a title tag in your href.
• FancyZoom will attach itself to any jpg, gif, png, bmp, or tiff link in your page.
• If you don’t want an image to zoom, add a rel=”nozoom” tag to your href.

ScreenShot :

Click on the small magnifier on any image to see the magnified image.

FancyZoom is totally free for your non-commercial website and can be downloaded from here.

Technorati Tags: Zoom,FancyZoom,Javascript

In this age of technology data is gold, so we need tools for securing our data more efficiently.

Here are 3 tools for securing your data, 3 tools for 3 types of data.

1.File Encryption - This tool can be used to encrypt files on the Windows platform.

Features

• Four encryption algorithms (Blowfish, AES, MD5, Triple-DES).
• Strong key support, handling and cryptographic implementations.
• Encrypts megabytes of file data per second on modern machines.

Screenshot :

The cons with this tool is that

1. All the files would be having the same password

2.The protection is also a one time protection, when you open a locked file,the protection is removed and the file is no longer protected.

Download FileEncryption from here.







2. Folder Protection

You can encrypt any folder including flash disk and removable hard disk.

Features :

• Fast and Simple:With one-click encryption and decryption. Instant encryption and decryption
• Strong Encryption technology:Using the Strong encryption technology that can effectively protect your data.
• Encrypted folders are protected against copy, deletion or real size check.

Check out the step by step guide on how to use this tool here.

Download FolderProtection from here.

Via - WhoisMadhur

3. ExeLock

This tool lets you password protect Windows executable programs. It works on the program files that are 32-bit Windows-9X/NT/2000/XP/ME executables.When protecting a program, the tool modifies the binary executable itself, so that it first asks for a password and runs the program only if a valid password has been entered.So that it does not matter where you exe file is located ie., on your hard drive, floppy disk, or pen drive.The exe file remains locked even if you run it from plain command line.

Screenshot :

Features :

• 1.Not change the size of protected file.
• 2.Not change the icon of protected file.
• 3.The protected exefile will still work fine in a different machine.
• 4.Safe and efficient.Does not run in the background to provide its functionality.

Download Exelock from here.

Technorati Tags: Security,Folder Protection