FREE eBook!!”The Photoshop Anthalogy”

The guys at Sitepoint are giving away a fantastic eBook called the “The PhotoShop Anthalogy” for nothing! That’s right, you don’t have to pay a cent to lay your hands on this fantastic eBook which contains 101 Adobe Photoshop and Imageready techniques to make you a web imaging expert.

I just glanced over the book and it seems to be very well written and illustrated. It contains some really cool stuff like creating buttons, adding effects to text and images, the works. Just what the doctor ordered for you to master the techniques efficiently and become a Web bling-king. I am glad I got to lay my hands on this brilliant book and I’m going to pour over it once my exams are done and apply them to my website. Hope my readers derive inspiration from it as well.

At the time of writing this, the giveaway, sponsored by 99Designs, would last for 20 more days. So leave all else and head to Sitepoint!

If you’re not the one to read eBooks and prefer old-world paper books, they’ve got it on sale at Amazon.

Beta Browser Wars: IE8 vs Firefox 3 vs Opera 9.5

One of the most debatable topics on the net is up for debate, yet again. Yes, we are talking browsers, the pieces of software that are everybody’s gateway to the mystical world of The Web. And which run into long pages of rants on various forums online.

All the 3 major browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundations Firefox and Opera Software’s Opera are going through an upgrade cycle. The beta versions are out and today we shall see what to expect from them.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

I would be lying if I were to say that I wasn’t surprised at such an early upgrade. I mean, IE6 was around for donkey’s years before the boffins at MS decided that it was time for IE7. Appearance wise, there is little that has changed, but the way pages are handled have. IE finally looks to be following all the web standards quite competently. But all this doesn’t really seem to increase performance at all. It still seems fairly sluggish, but then this is an early Beta and IE 8 gets the benefit of doubt from me.

With that safely tucked away, we have some cool new features like Activities (select text, and it’ll give you options to do something with it. Like search on a map or on any search engine) and WebSlices (MS speak for a spruced up version of RSS feeds. Only eBay and Facebook support this, as of now), an improved phishing filter and auto crash recovery. Oh boy, IE needs this one. All said and done, IE 8 is a step in the right direction.

IE8 Beta 1 Changelog

Download IE8

Mozilla FireFox 3 Beta 5

This is the browser that gave Microsoft the heebie-jeebies and for good reason. It was small, fast, infinitely customizable and best of all, it was open source. And given the Mozilla Foundations marketing muscle, the browser spread like wildfire and replaced the shoddy IE 6 on many a computer.

In the latest Beta, Mozilla seems to have addressed tons of performance issues and it does seem faster than the older one. They have also added a load of personal features which allows you to organize your favorites better. The address bar also allows you to search page titles, in case you forgot the name of ‘that’ website which sold salted peanuts.

My only gripe is that it takes a relatively long time to start up. I hope this will be fixed in the final version.

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5 Changelog

Download Firefox 3 Beta 5

Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I have been an Opera fan boy for as far as I can remember and have been using it since version 6. It’s always been ahead of its times and was the first browser to offer tabbed browsing. It also offers a mail client, bit torrent support, mouse gestures, widgets, themes apart from offering the old lady to cross the road, even if she doesn’t want to. Its claim to fame however was of being “The world’s fastest Internet browser”, which was a conclusion reached by many a tech magazine and website.

In the latest version, Opera offers better a completely search-able database of all your goddamned visited pages. Yes, even the content is indexed which is accessible from the address bar. There is little that it did not have in the first place, to be improved in the newer version. Though, there are lots of performance enhancements to keep you happy.

Opera 9.5 Beta 2 Changelog

Download Opera 9.5 Beta 2

I would have loved to do some performance testing, but since only Firefox is in the final stages of the Beta, it will, quite obviously, ace all tests. IE seems to lagging far behind in the script test, a bit too much for comfort, actually. So, we shall wait till the final versions of all the 3 browsers are released and we shall have a bigger Web 2.0 battle.

Till then, happy surfing.

Tags: browser, internet

Indiblogger Mumbai Meet

Pro-bloggers are a seriously crazy lot. They think about blogging all the bloody time. This includes me, to an extent and I try to keep my eyes and years open for the “next blog post on SatishHasGoneBonkers dot Com”. I never really imagined what went on when a bunch of such post-pests met together. I presumed everyone might be having a dead serious look, with conversations about traffic, SEO and all that abnormal nonsense we would like to keep to our computers. I mean, we go digging enough brain cells on how to get more traffic to our sites to talk about it whilst chilling out.

But I was dead wrong. The IndiBlogger team are a bunch of crazy people hell bent on having fun in the name of a Bloggers meet. “We were overloaded with Old Monks one certain night and the next morning we discovered IndiBlogger was up and running. I mean, Who f***ing did this?!?” is their story behind the creation of IndiBlogger. Now you know what I mean.

The turnout was decent but was a lot lesser than expected and no sooner I entered and settled down I found myself shaking hands with the entire IndiBlogger team in the rather decent hall they booked for the place. Microsoft sponsored the entire meet, so there were a load of drinks and munchies to while time away.

Everyone had their one minute of fame introducing themselves and telling everybody what their blogs were about. One thing I did not like, was that, everybody seemed to have personal blogs. Unless you are a big celebrity or have a very good way of putting things across, people are not going to read your blog. So what if you danced naked at some swish pub and got published in the Pg3 of that exercise in uselessness called ‘Bombay Times‘. (Hey, thats not a bad idea!).

Jokes apart, I know I am no one to tell you what you should be writing in your blogs, but the world would be a better place if you offered some useful and/or entertaining stuff. This was something I myself had realised after 6 months into blogging.

I met some great people, like some guys from Rediff, Webaroo and a chap who’d just shifted into Bombay from London. Its always a good feeling to meet like-minded people, who, for the life of me, would not want to talk about abnormal nonsense all the time.

Since the meet was sponsored by Microsoft, they had something to sell to the bloggers. I mean, all bloggers might not exactly think that Microsoft are cool(Bloggers know, they just). So they’ve come up with Windows Live Writer, a blogging software, which I shall be reviewing shortly.

P.S To my readers, there are tonnes of reviews of supercool gadgets and software in the offing, so stay tuned!! I shall post them ASAP.  Exams beck-on and mom’s like shriek-on.

Tags: blog, meeting