Staying Tuned to Notification Messages

Staying Tuned to Notification Messages

It is a basic Internet etiquette to respond to any of the good email requests and messages within normal acceptable time, unless you have categorized them as spam aka junk email. Towards this, in this blog post, I would like to summarize a few webmail services and desktop email clients that come with good features to keep you staying tuned as and when email arrives in your Inbox.

Webmail:

1. Inbox Notifier -- Besides access to your emailaddress (at) inbox.com, it provides a host of other services like hosted notes, Virtual Storage, Photo Upload Wizard etc.
2. FastCheck -- It provides a desktop utility to check your Fastmail.fm emailbox.
3. Windows Live Messenger -- The Instant Messaging Service that gives a sneak preview into your MSN Hotmail emailbox.
4. Yahoo Messenger -- The classic desktop messenger utility to provide a sneak preview into your Yahoo emailbox.

Desktop:

Most of the desktop email clients have an agent that can hide the main window of the application from the system tray and make an icon near the clock to keep monitoring your email server for new messages. A few of the good ones are:

1. Netscape Messenger
2. Microsoft Outlook
3. Saberquest Mailspy -- This has been a very good tool to monitor your email server and launch your preferred email client. I could not locate the new download location.
4. Email Remover -- This handy utility helps you to preview into your email server without actually downloading the full messages. Typically helpful in the case of heavy attachments and spam control.

Featured in Dotnetspider SpiderTeam

Featured in Dotnetspider SpiderTeam

I am happy to share the joyous moments that I am currently featured in the current month SpiderTeam webpage of Dotnetspider, India's premiere .NET tutorial website. Just after having a trip to my bank and came back to my workplace for a brief surfing on Saturday, I got the email from Spider Team informing the same. I have attached the screenshot of SpiderTeam webpage for quick reference of my readers. You can find under the following section in the screenshot 'Our Technical Board'. When you scroll down a bit more, you can find a few members who have been chosen as 'Most Value Professionals'. If you are now interested, to get featured here, then click online to http://www.dotnetspider.com/ to demonstrate your passion for the community and get recognized.

Note: The screenshot was generated using Create Panoramic Image feature of Irfanview. You can find two review articles on Irfanview over the following URLs:

1. Irfanview -- Quick and Best Web Developer Aide
2. Irfanview -- General Review

With the page itself scrolling multiple vertical scrollbars, you can take individual screenshots and then use this feature to combine them into a single image. However, you need to be a bit careful when it comes to browser scrollbars and other elements since even these may be captured by the panoramic image by Irfanview, which is very precise and accurate in image operations besides the salient advantage that the size of the image too is relatively very less.

With the grace of my Lord, it makes me feel more happier and enthusiastic in being more passionate with vibrant community spirit helping out my peers. The most interesting part of Dotnetspider is that it helps little peers who are just out of colleges by streamlining their software development habits making them more robust and resilent in thier coding and development efforts. It is a pleasure to serve the youngsters through this ever-vibrant forum that you get the bliss and happiness of serving as a little torch light (if not as a full-fledged beacon light) in taking newbies in the technology playground to greater heights gently by hand.

Digital Signatures and Safe E-Enabling Written Signatures

Digital Signatures and Safe E-Enabling Written Signatures

Today while playing around my Zoho writer account, I came across a very innovative business model website called 'EchoSign'. The concept is simple. The document needs to be uploaded or published onto EchoSign server, where it is encrypted unalterably. Then the document can be sent to all parties. The sample trial option has two ways the parties can sign the document:

1. Digital Signature
2. Written Signature

In Digital Signature mode, a form is displayed. The parties are expected to type thier full name and initials. Then click on the button captioned 'Echo Sign'. The document is generated as PDF and sent to all parties for filing.

In Written Signature mode, the form is emailed as PDF. The parties are expected to take a print out the document, affix thier hand-written signature and then fax to a toll free number.

I feel that this is a very innovative effort by EchoSign to speeden up electronic business model. In my observation of a quick five minute tour, here are the advantages and limitations of the website.

Advantages:

1. Terrible speed up of the processing of business transactions, offer letters, sales orders etc.
2. Zero paper work. With these days of every banking institution and service provider switching to eBill to save cutting of trees for paper, I see this is a terrific innovative business model that anyone would appreciate.
3. Third party document management by experts. We can be comfortable and feel free from processing and handling fragile and take-double-care documents.

Limitations:

1. Document Interchange over Internet is not that safe. At least email verification can not be handled with a reliable security. In particular reference, is Phishing security attempt. I have not seen any convincing method that EchoSign has mentioned in 'How It Works' on how it is able to manage Phishing attempts. So at the moment, Fax option can be considered safe, taking into account a few hours delay. The few hours delay is justifable for the security of the document and data concerned.
2. The document is being stored in a different country. So we need to consult the lawyer first on whether the document can be allowed to travel across the borders. At least, I think, loan related documents would come into this restriction with respect to the financiers who support the loans.

Just wanted to share with you a brief review on EchoSign and I think anyone should give a try to EchoSign -- a good business model to speeden up and make environment-friendly business transactions.

Very Good Tutorial site on Java Servlets and JSPs

Very Good Tutorial site on Java Servlets and JSPs

A friend of mine wanted to know about some online or offline tutorial or books on Java Servlets and JSPs. He is a just fresher out of college and hence I was searching a while for some good references which would not use very heavy terminology and make learning a breeze and encouraging.

I came across this website "Servlets and Java Server Pages (1.0) -- A Tutorial" which addresses our requirements of simple but comprehensive reference on Java Server programming. I would keep adding more tutorial links as I come across them for the benefit of readers. Also, readers: If you find some good tutorial links on the topic, please feel free to share with other readers too over here.

Winner of Master T-Shirt in Experts-Exchange

Winner of Master T-Shirt in Experts-Exchange

I am glad to publish the news that I have been chosen as the winner of Master T-Shirt in Experts-Exchange. I am currently in the Master rank in both ASP.NET and Web Development topic areas. For more details, you can select the 'My Experts-Exchange Profile' in the right navigation widget of this weblog.

I am publishing the Experts-Recognition appreciation email that I have recieved to this effect sometime yesterday.

The Classic Daffodilnet Express

The Classic Daffodilnet Express

After a while today I casually dropped onto my own Daffodilnet Express weblog on searching something. As such, powered by .Text blogging engine, this presents an excellent wonder blogging environment. However, the current setup, the URLs might be bit cryptic numeric.

I have hence hyperlinked Daffodilnet Express currently to the 'Links' section of this weblog. Sometime in future, when I get some time, I would try assign friendly URLs and try to load each permalink into that. For now, I guess, this 'Links' should be able to help you out with navigating Daffodilnet Express.

FireBug -- Good WebDeveloper Aide

FireBug -- Good WebDeveloper Aide

Most of us who are with web development applications would be facing the problem of supporting cross-browser compatible applications. Particularly with Netscape and Mozilla FireFox, web page development would be a little involved process because the browser is bit strict in HTML and JavaScript and a bit more standards-compliant unlike Internet Explorer which is more flexible, developer-friendly and user-friendly.

Today, while casually browsing the Internet in a library, I found an interesting addon in my web browser. I was heard of it and just today found it installed in one of the systems that I was using. It is 'FireBug'. I was playing around it for a while. It seemed to be really packed with tons of information regarding the webpage, its content, network speed on various page contents that are getting loaded.

At this moment, I would like to recall about our earlier post long back on 'Interesting and Useful features in Mozilla Firefox'. I would say that FireBug can also be added as on the very inevitable tools in enhanced webpage development with Mozilla FireFox.

Free Undelete Utility from OfficeRecovery.com

Free Undelete Utility from OfficeRecovery.com

Many a times I have a practice that after deleting a file and I periodically right click the 'Recycle Bin' and chose 'Empty Recycle Bin', to save/conserve and reclaim disk space. Recently I had a necessity of a few files that were such accidentally deleted (or rather expunged off). I came to know of (though I have heard of before) Undelete utilities from a few discussion groups but the downside with many of them is that most of them are commercial applications. Though a few of them are offered as free downloads, they come up bundled with shareware and we run the risk of getting spywares and other malware applications loaded onto our system.

During this search, I came to know of 'OfficeRecovery Undelete Utility'. Of course, while running it was also running 'TaskManager Extension' to ensure that it does not trigger any malware applications. WinPatrol Scotty was anyway monitoring my system for any spyware activities. Interestingly, I found out that this is clean of any spyware and it even rescued the expunged documents.

But remember that such recoveries are possible as soon as you run the Undelete utilities since if the allocated disk areas is reallocated to a new content, the files are gone once for all. The Undelete utility actually scans for disk tracks and recovers the contents from the said places.

TrialPay -- A New Innovative Product Purchase System

TrialPay -- A New Innovative Product Purchase System

Today while casually browsing WinZip website, I found another way of purchasing WinZip. They support something called TrialPay. This seems to be a very innovative concept. The bottomline is that you want a software and visit the trusted partners and/or advertisers listed for them in TrialPay directory.

While you signup for trial or free membership with the partners, TrialPay would pay for your software and you can get the software for free. The software is still not free but instead of you paying for it, advertisers pay for it.

I think, this should be a good innovative way to 'contain' and 'end' the nagging software piracy issue which is threatening 'healthy' software development worldwide.

Inbox Compose Editor chides with Mozilla FireFox

Inbox Compose Editor chides with Mozilla FireFox

The most elegant web application (http://www.inbox.com/) has two interesting issues that I observed. I have also supported trouble tickets to them. Just thought I would have a small brief review on the issues on most generic terms so that similar web applications can use this as a stepping-stone and a learning experince to circumvent such similar issues.

1. Powerful Regular Expression AutoComplete slows down Internet Explorer heavily. Sometimes I get the message the script on the page makes it to run slowly. Your webpage might become unresponsive. The support suggests that to use Mozilla FireFox.
2. Deducing from (1), when I use Mozilla FireFox, the compose HTML Rich Editor does not support full-fledged keyboard based shortcuts like CTRL+B, CTRL+C, CTRL+K. Mozilla FireFox triggers its web browser navigational widgets like sidebars etc.

This is one such analysis that we have to learn to address in our web applications, which we are increasingly pushing to be on latest state-of-the-art AJAX based technologies.

1. Focus on the browser share.
2. User-friendliness
3. Best performance and fast loading webpages besides minimum load on the Internet pipe.
4. Impact Analysis on bugs that we fix so that it does not hamper accessibility from applications or web browsers.
   

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Free 3D Marine Aquarium Screensaver - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas on your desktop!
Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/marineaquarium

Elegant Tamil Unicode Editor

Elegant Tamil Unicode Editor

My sincere thanks to Lakshmi Rajagopal, for pointing me to the very friendly Web-based Tamil Unicode editor, எழில் நிலா, developed by Nila Mahen (nila.mahen (at) gmail.com). You can visit this Tamil Unicode Editor here. Hitherto my Tamil weblogs have been powered by either Baraha or Indic IME Editor for Microsoft Word. The downside of these was that these need to be downloaded and installed. When I surf from public internet kiosks, download and internet was presenting a problem.

Now that it is a simple Javascript webpage, this encourages more live expressions in Tamil. Perhaps the first and humble word I would like to convey to Lakshmi is million thanks for the cool new utility. Here is the thanks in sweet Tamil:

எழில் நிலா இணைய தள முகவரி வழிகாட்டுதலுக்கு, மிக்க நன்றி! You can check out Lakshmi's எழில்மிகு நந்தவனம்: http://malarvanam.blogspot.com/

I am sure this post would be a mix of English and Tamil, appreciating Lakshmi for her kindness in guiding me to the Tamil editor link besides discussing about the greatness of the editor itself. That itself, I think, places a great emphasis on the the power and prowess of both.

வாழ்க தமிழ்! வளர்க தமிழ்!

எங்கள் வாழ்வும் எங்கள் வளமும் மங்காத தமிழ் என்று சங்கே முழங்கு -- பாவேந்தர் பாரதிதாசன்.