Technology Zone

KhojGuru claims to offer exclusive discount coupons from local businesses in Delhi/NCR

2009-10-17T14:40:00.003+05:30

KhojGuru.com, which started as a local information search service in 2008, has now shifted its focus to become an online platform aggregating discount coupons and offers from various brands across India. The company claims to have tied-up with over 100 brands covering over 600 outlets such as restaurants, salons, pharmacy, gyms, opticians and florists in Delhi/NCR (National Capital Region) to offer exclusive discount coupons to its users in the NCR which includes Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad.

When asked about the reasons for this shift in focus, Nitin Gupta, co-founder, KhojGuru.com, told “Local search in India is a volume game and there are too many players following the JustDial model. This model is expensive as the cost of data acquisition and updating is very high. Moreover, the distribution medium is also expensive and you don’t get revenues unless significant leads are generated for the retailer.”

“However, couponing is a new concept and it requires significant retailer and customer education. The coupon market is very fragmented. We get coupons along with our bank's credit card, mobile operator etc. There is no structured way of distribution and KhojGuru is trying to fill the gap,” Nitin Gupta has added. According to Gupta, KhojGuru.com aims to create an alternative cost effective sales channel for retailers and get paid by retailers for generating footfalls in their stores.

Indiatimes launches Photo Centre powered by HP SnapFish

2009-10-17T14:07:00.003+05:30

Indiatimes.com, in association with HP SnapFish, has launched a co-branded Photo Centre that will enable over 11 million Indiatimes users to print, share and store unlimited number of photographs. The service will also allow Indiatimes users to createand order customized photo gifts such as greeting cards, calendars, t-shirts, mugs and drinking bottles.

Rishi Khiani, CEO, Times Internet, has said, “With the SnapFish co-branded photo centre, we aim to provide a fantastic platform to Indiatimes users to create personalized products as well as store and share unlimited number of personal pictures effortlessly online.”

Bala Parthasarathy, managing director, Europe and Asia Pacific, SnapFish, Hewlett Packard, has said, “We always look for avenues to diversify our consumer base. Web-alliances with premier websites like Indiatimes, allow us to extend our product and service offerings to wider audiences.”

The online printing market in US is expected to grow from the current $500 million to $1 billion by 2011. However, in India the online photo printing market is still at a nascent stage. With its tie-up with HP SnapFish, Indiatimes hopes to corner a significant share of the emerging Indian online photo printing market.

LinkedIn to increase its staff by 50 per cent this year: CEO

2009-10-17T13:49:00.001+05:30

US-based professional networking site LinkedIn.com plans to increase its staff by 50 per cent. “We are growing from 340 employees to 500 employees this year,” Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn, has told Reuters.

Nearing its 50 millionth member, LinkedIn claims to add a new member each second. The website is believed to get 28.5 million users per month. According to Jeff Weiner, the fastest growing area for LinkedIn is now India.

LinkedIn, with annual revenue of more than $100 million, has been profitable for two years. The company has three revenue streams -- advertising, premium membership subscriptions and software as a service that helps recruiters look for people to fill jobs.

Translate Any Site Instantly in Firefox with Google Toolbar

2009-10-16T20:20:00.002+05:30

There’s a whole lot of translation action going on this week, with both Google and Facebook already announcing a translation product for webmasters earlier.

Now Google has another translation announcement, this time bringing multi-language support right into the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

With the translate tool available right in your browser, a webmaster won’t need to have translation enabled for his or her site — he or she can simply select the translate button in the toolbar and have the page rendered into any of the 51 languages Google Translate currently supports.

Mystery Google: The “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Re-imagined

2009-10-16T19:56:00.000+05:30

The Mystery Google website offers a seriously strange riff on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button: instead of taking you to the number one result for your own query, it takes you to the search results for the user who searched just before you.

If you’re in the mood for discovery or just plain randomness, Mystery Google might just teach you something new.

Our search for “Donors Choose” took us to the results for a search on “life is normal today :[” which turned up the My Life is Average site, which is awesome (the same folks put out the recent AverageCats LOLcats parody, which is also awesome). In other words, serendipity: check!

It reminds us of a recent post on Japan’s Ogori Cafe, where you receive what the person in front of you ordered. Neither of these things is for the unadventurous, but if you’re craving a little mystery in your life, Mystery Google is the easier of the two to get to for most of us!

It’s also vaguely reminiscent of Google Suggest, which shows you a zeitgeist of what others have searched on in the past based on the string of text you’ve input so far (sometimes with hilarious results.) Have you had a chance to try the quirky Mystery Google? Let us know if you made any illuminating discoveries in the comments.

What Does Google Think of Twitter?

2009-10-16T19:51:00.003+05:30

When you start typing a search on Google, if you have auto-complete enabled, it will start to recommend different queries based on what you’re typing. So, for example, if you write “George,” it will suggest George Washington, George Bush, and George Clooney, among others well-known George’s.

However, if you’re using Google to try and figure out what exactly Twitter (Twitter) is, the results are a bit suspect. Type “Twitter is” into the iconic search box and Google will suggest words like retarded, useless, lame, and pointless. Take a look:

A bit of resentment towards the microblogging startup being played out on Google (Google)? While that would make quite a story, that’s almost definitely not the case. How do we know? If you type in “Google is,” you’ll get suggestions like “making us stupid” and “watching you.” Nonetheless, it’s an amusing little intricacy of the search engine we previously weren’t aware of.

Can Biz Stone Get Former President Bush to Tweet? [PIC]

2009-10-16T19:44:00.001+05:30

Oh, the people you’ll meet … if you do something like create the phenomenon that is Twitter. Its co-founders have been guests at The White House, thrown out ceremonial first pitches, and even been on Oprah and Martha Stewart.

Add another name to the list of close encounters between Twitter (Twitter) and the world’s power brokers: President George W. Bush. This afternoon, co-founder Biz Stone posted an image of himself with the former President on yFrog.

Stone’s message: “President Bush told me he just got a new BlackBerry, will tweets be next?” While that remains to be seen, Bush would be joining dozens of prominent political figures now using the service, including Al Gore, Sarah Palin, John McCain, and of course, the current President, Barack Obama.

Twitter Warning: Don’t Change Your Email, Username or Password!

2009-10-16T19:36:00.001+05:30

This is just a quick service announcement: Twitter is investigating an issue with users becoming locked out of the service after changing their email address or username, or resetting their passwords.

In the meantime: do not change your password, email address or Twitter (Twitter) handle. Until Twitter corrects the issue, it’s best not to attempt any of these changes at this time.

They go on to say that if you have made any of these changes but do manage to successfully log in, try to stay logged in for a few hours and don’t use any third party applications. They suspect it may be a caching issue, and have prioritized it to be fixed as soon as possible.

Facebook Voice Chat Is Coming Soon

2009-10-16T19:07:00.002+05:30

We’ve been aware for some time that Facebook is working on video chat within Facebook. While it may be a while until you can video chat with your friends like you can in Google Chat, audio is only a few weeks away.

The new feature won’t be powered by Facebook (Facebook), though. According to CNet, it will instead rely on Vivox, a company that has built voice chat for video games and virtual worlds, including Second Life.

The new feature will require a plug-in, but once it’s installed, Facebook Voice Chat will be available in not only the Vivox app, but in any third-party app that wants the technology.

While it’s unclear how involved Facebook is on the new feature, it’s likely Facebook will have a hand in its implementation or gave Vivox the thumbs-up for its deep site-wide voice integration. The chat feature not only allows for one-on-one conversation, but large groups as well.

Yes, it’s annoying to install a plugin, but even Google Chat requires a plug-in to be installed to use its video chat feature. Facebook could very well begin to push voice to its users, but we think it’s more likely that they’ll wait until Facebook Video Chat is complete.

CareerBuilder’s Facebook App Searches Personal Data

2009-10-16T18:56:00.001+05:30

CareerBuilder has launched a Facebook application that’s designed for college students looking for internships and jobs.

Called “Find a Better Job,” The application will search your profile information for items like your hometown, your college, network, and major in order to match you up with upcoming jobs and internships. This is really an extension of CareerBuilder’s CBcampus service, which is targeted towards college students seeking jobs and internships. The opportunities listed in the database at CBcampus are used for matching Facebook (Facebook) users to jobs. The Facebook app also allows you to apply for jobs directly from your Facebook account.

Apply To College From Facebook

2009-10-16T18:50:00.002+05:30

From now on, not only can you spend your college days idling on Facebook (Facebook), you can even apply to college from Facebook. You can do this through an application called College Planner, which is a tool for student wannabes to research their options and see which colleges their friends are interested in. After you choose the ones you like, you can send your application directly from College Planner.

This application is created by Embark, a company specializing in helping youngsters research, choose and apply to colleges and schools.

Sounds like a surprisingly useful Facebook app; however, I cringe at the generation of donut-throwing, vampire-biting Facebookheads getting their hands on something like this, and I feel sorry for the folks at colleges who are actually going to have to look through all these applications.

Search YouTube

2009-10-15T19:55:00.001+05:30

A search module, which searches YouTube by tags. Add to your Webpage

Current Moon Phase

2009-10-15T19:53:00.000+05:30

See the current moon phase, phase name, percent of full, and date, based on your local time and hemisphere. Add to your Webpage

Amazing Photos of Places to See Before You Die

2009-10-15T19:50:00.001+05:30

Vivid color photographs of world heritage sites and awesome travel destinations worldwide. New photo with every page refresh. Add to your Webpage

Google Calendar

2009-10-15T19:46:00.001+05:30

Google Calendar The Official Google Calendar Gadget. Add to your Webpage

Fish

2009-10-15T19:35:00.002+05:30

Add a touch of nature to your page with these hungry little fish. Watch how they eagerly swim toward your mouse hoping that you’ll drop a few flakes of food. Click the down arrow and then Edit Settings to change the number of fish, the color of each fish, and the color of the water. You can also add an image to the background. Add to your Webpage

Gmail Manager

2009-10-14T19:37:00.000+05:30

Gmail Manager The original Gmail notifier for multiple accounts. Allows you to receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets. Add to Firefox

Flagfox

2009-10-14T19:35:00.001+05:30

Flagfox Displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information. Add to Firefox

FireShot

2009-10-14T19:33:00.001+05:30

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part).

Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

The captures can be:

- uploaded to FREE public screenshot hosting
- saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP)
- printed
- copied to clipboard
- e-mailed
- sent to configurable external editor for further processing. Add to Firefox

OneRiot Realtime Search

2009-10-14T19:29:00.000+05:30

OneRiot Search the realtime web - the news, blogs, and videos that people are sharing right now! Add to Firefox

FireFTP

2009-10-14T19:25:00.000+05:30

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Add to Firefox

FastestFox - Browse Faster

2009-10-14T19:22:00.000+05:30

FastestFox Save time by speeding up common tasks. Get faster, parallelized downloads, one-click downloading of videos, easy-to-use shortcuts and more. Add to Firefox

SkipScreen

2009-10-14T19:15:00.000+05:30

Skips unnecessary pages on sites like Rapidshare, Megaupload, zShare, Mediafire, and more. Try it out, or watch a demo at skipscreen.com

SkipScreen will be tenaciously maintained and improving all the time. Why click through ad-laden pages and wait for countdowns when your computer can do it for you? Add to Firefox

TrackerWatcher

2009-10-14T19:12:00.001+05:30

TrackerWatcher shows you what companies may watch what you do on any web site and how they promise to handle your information. Add to Firefox

Greasemonkey

2009-10-14T19:10:00.001+05:30

Greasemonkey Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Add to Firefox

NoScript

2009-10-14T19:07:00.001+05:30

NoScript The best security you can get in a web browser!
Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks. Add to Firefox

WeatherBug 2.0.0.4

2009-10-14T19:04:00.000+05:30

Get live, local weather conditions in Firefox with the WeatherBug extension. Featuring forecasts, radar, and severe weather alerts from WeatherBug's community of neighborhood weather. Add to Firefox

FoxyProxy 2.14

2009-10-14T18:50:00.000+05:30

FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's limited proxying capabilities. It offers more features than SwitchProxy, ProxyButton, QuickProxy, xyzproxy, ProxyTex, TorButton, etc. Add to Firefox