Windows 7 is faster than Windows XP ?

We all know by now that Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista. But does it perform better than Windows XP ? My experience tells me that it does.

I have a 3 years old laptop at home. The hardware configuration reads 1.73 GHz Intel processor with 2GB RAM. Recently I tried Windows 7 Release Client on that laptop for about 10 months and it was working very well. No noticeable lags and the system looked fast and zippy. I had to switch back to Windows XP that came with my laptop as the Windows 7 RC is expiring today. And the first thing I notice is that there is some lag when I open programs like iTunes. Yesterday I was using Windows 7 that is almost 10 months old and today I'm using Windows XP that is freshly installed on the same hardware and it feels like Windows 7 did in fact perform better than Windows XP on this hardware.

Dollar to Rupee website disabled temporarily (Updated)

There is something wrong with the number of requests hitting the Dollar to Rupee conversion page that I have setup. There were more than 296K requests in the past few hours and the app has crossed its usage quotas on Google App Engine. I have disabled the app temporarily. I will monitor the traffic for the next few hours and then bring the site online again after that.

If you have tried to access the page and got a 404 message or over-the-quota message, please wait for few hours and try again.

Update : I have temporarily changed the URL of the page from http://www.dollar2rupee.net/ to http://new.dollar2rupee.net/. You can access the dollar to rupee rates at the new URL now. Please note that this is a temporary change until the issue is resolved. Sorry for any inconvenience and thanks for your patience.

Meebo is the best IM App on iPhone

The latest entry into the already crowded space of iPhone IM clients rules them all. Meebo for iPhone is now available in the app store and it is the best I have seen to date. And it is available for free.

I have tried many different multi-chat apps for iPhone so far (IM+, Trillian, eBuddy, Fring, Palringo and Nimbuzz to name a few) but I have never been so much impressed with the simplicity and usefulness of Meebo. It is blazing fast and supports every IM network on earth (like Google Talk, Jabber, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MySpace, Facebook) except Skype. It has push notifications for you to receive messages when you are not having the app open on your iPhone. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of other apps but it is the simplicity that stands out.

Meebo is free. You don't have to buy premium apps to be able to receive push notifications for IMs or remove the promotional messages inside your chats. I had some issues with the Trillian iPhone app that I purchased. But Meebo just works in all those scenarios. Try it out and I'm sure it will be your go-to-app for IM on your iPhone.

iPhone restrictions go beyond the phone

Apple controls everything on iPhone. They get to decide what you can and what you can't download on to your phone and they don't play nice with everybody. That is why I consider iPad a bad idea for a tablet / netbook computer. But Apple's restrictions for iPhone go beyond the phone and affect other domains.

I have a home laptop that came with Windows XP and I badly want to upgrade the operating system. I like Windows 7 and I'm currently using the RC version which is going to expire at the end of this month. But, to purchase Windows 7 upgrade I need to shell out a couple of hundred bucks. Instead, I wanted to try Ubuntu or Linux Mint which are getting very good reviews and are available for free. So, as a first step, I tried to check what software I have installed on my machine that is not compatible with these operating systems. As it turns out, its iTunes. Except for the iTunes, I could find a Linux version of all other software I use (there are few good alternatives for the ones that don't have a Linux version).

iTunes is needed for not only backing up and syncing iPhone, it is a must to upgrade to any new version of the software. So, I can't just live without it or use an alternative. I can't use Ubuntu or Linux Mint because of this reason. There are millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users and Apple is limiting the choice again for them by not supporting over-the-air upgrades of the OS (like Android) and not providing a version of iTunes for Linux.

Next time you want to buy an iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad or anything else from Apple, think about how many ways it is going to limit your choice and freedom.

Things to consider when using Google Buzz

If you are a Gmail user, you might already have noticed that Google added a social networking feature called 'Buzz' to Gmail. While it is definitely useful, there are some privacy concerns that you should take note of when using Buzz. I will list below what I have noticed so far. If you find anything not listed here, you can always put it in the comments.

1. All your posts and comments are public by default. You can choose to send your message to only few of your friends (check the drop-down with Public and Private options). If you comment on your friend's public post, your comment will be public too. So, be careful while posting and commenting as it is not a one-to-one chat window or email.

2. If you create a public profile (Google asks you to create one when you are sending a message using Buzz), the list of people you follow and the list of people who are following you is visible to everyone by default. If you want to keep this private, go to your profile, click on the 'Edit profile' link and uncheck the option "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me".

3. When you post a message and when somebody replies to your message in Buzz, it will be added as a mail in your Inbox. You can safely delete these mails without disturbing the message inside Buzz. To delete these mails, search by typing 'is:buzz' inside the search box. You can automate this by creating a filter.

4. If you have an iPhone or any Android phone, be careful while posting to Buzz from your mobile. It will add your current location to the message. You can choose to hide your location.

5. Google automatically adds you as a follower of your friends in Gmail contacts. Click on the 'Following 9 people' link and remove those you do not want to follow. Similarly, click on '9 followers' link to block unwanted people. And click on the '3 connected sites' link to remove sites like Picasa, if you don't like to share the link to your photos.

If you are tired of all these and think you don't need Buzz, you can just turn it off by logging into Gmail and clicking the 'turn off buzz' link at the bottom of the screen.

Happy buzzing ...

Add keyboard shortcuts to your browser

Keyboard shortcuts let you do more in less time. Some browsers (example : Firefox) let you add shortcut commands to your bookmarks so that you can open the bookmark quickly or perform actions like searching that site. I wrote about a great way to add shortcuts to all your browsers using Shortwave. This week I found another great app that basically works like Shortwave but has more power and is extensible.

Quix looks and works like Shortwave. You have to add a bookmarklet to your browser and click on it to get a dialog box to enter the shortcut command. You can obviously customize the commands to your liking the same way you do for Shortwave. You can launch a site with a shortcut command or search it directly by entering the search time after the command. And what's great about these bookmarklets is that they work on all browsers and your commands are in a central place which always stays current.

Try Shortwave or Quix and see how it improves your browsing experience.

Always login using https - Secure Login Helper for Chrome

Password is the key to access all your data. So, keeping your passwords safe is very important. That is why you should always use SSL/https while logging into any website. This week I came across a new tool to help me in this area. It is the 'Secure Login Helper' extension for Google Chrome.

It is a standard practice for websites to use https on the login screens even if they use plain old http to transfer other data. But, strangely, not all websites force you to login using https. And some websites don't even have a secure way to login. When I switched to Google Chrome last week, I came across a very good extension. It is called 'Secure Login Helper'. It will help you login to sites using SSL, if possible. And the best thing about this extension is that it turns the password field color to dark red if it is not using https. So, if you are on a site and about to login using http, you will notice that the password field is red in color. You will immediately know that it is not secure way to login. If that site has https login, you can then immediately choose to login using https.

How will you know if a website you are using supports https or not ? Just add the letter 's' after the http URL to turn it to https and see if the page loads. If the website supports https, you will most probably be now on https page.

After installing this extension, I came to know that there are about 5 websites in my bookmarks (which I use regularly) that have https support that I'm not using. I immediately changed my bookmarks to point to the https login page for these sites. I also found that one of my favorite site doesn't even support https login. I have contacted the website owners to check on the problem.

If you are not using Chrome yet, you should be. If you are, try the 'Secure Login Helper' extension. You will be surprised to find how many websites you use send your password in plain text.