The program is available in web version and accessible though browser extensions and add-ons. Sign up at Textme (you need to confirm your mobile number), build out your contact list, install browser extension and enjoying sending free SMS from any webpage you are viewing.

I also get my hands on TextMe browser extension for Chrome. The chrome extension add a new option to your context menu. To send something to a phone as SMS, simply select the text, photo or video on a webpage, choose the “TextMe” option from right-click context menu. A TextMe compose windows is displayed where you just type in the mobile number or choose one from your contact list, followed by message (up to 140 characters).

Features Overview

•  Service is available for mobile phone users across India.
•  Browser extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.
•  Maximum message length is 140 characters.
•  URLs are automatically shortened before sending.
•  Free and unlimited SMS

For a quick overview of the service, hit the play button to watch the introductory video of TextMe.

Difficulties in Typing Indian Scripts

Due to complicated structure Indic scripts and absence of standard keyboards for regional languages, it is very difficult to learn touch typing in any Indian language.

You may have seen that most of the people still using Hindi typing tutors which offers fonts, courses and applications for memorizing complex sequence of Indic characters on an English (QWERTY) keyboard (also called Inscript keyboard).

No matter whether it’s about chatting or writing a big document, Inscript keyboard are difficult to learn- it’s not easy for a person to learn the complicated character-by-character input method. And, what if someone want to type in Tamil or Punjabi from the same PC ? It is also difficult to ask everyone to practice on a new type of keyboard for a different language.

Hence, we come to a unanimous decision that those learn-in-60-days-courses offer very difficult training and a clumsy solution for learning touch typing.

Rise of Transliteration Tools

Familiarity with English and QWERTY keyboard has given rise transliteration which is a technique for conversion of one language using alphabets of other language usually based on phonetics. Here’s a quick demo of transliteration – you type Hindi words phonetically in English script, hit ‘space’, and boom, it’s Devanagari !

This way, typing is easy and comfortable. No need to remember complex combinations and ALT key combos, just type as you pronounce.

Now we are presenting four best transliteration services for Indian people who are more comfortable communicating in their mother tongue.

1. Google Transliteration (Web-based, Browser Extensions and Desktop version)

Google Transliteration (Formerly Google Indic Transliteration) is our favorite transliteration tool for expressing words of Indian language using alphabets of English language phonetically. It currently support 13 regional languages – Bengali, Guajarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telgu and Urdu.

Google Transliteration has various formatting options to its main page that control thing such as font sizes, color and alignment of text. The best feature of this service is its ability to transliterate text as you type, including correction of typos and ambiguity resulting from phonological variation.

Google Transliteration also provide a desktop version of transliteration based IME (Input method editor) which can work offline without depending on Internet connection and enable users to type Indian language text in any application in Windows.

2. Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool (Web-based, Bookmarklets and Desktop Version)

Microsoft is similar to Google Transliteration, and offers instant transliteration of English text but features 10 Indian languages which includes Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Tegulu.

The best thing about this tool is that it provide you a code that can be embed on any website so that your visitors can easily comment on your website in Desi (Indic) Languages. The main difference in features between Google and Microsoft is that in Microsoft, you don’t have any option for formatting your input text.

Online version for web browsers and the offline desktop version, both are available. Additionally, the offline IME provides a visual typing assistant that help you to get the regional language character.

3.QulliPad (Online and Mobile Apps)

QulliPad is another transliteration tool that allows you to type in different Indic languages without having to remember a new keyboard layout and keys combination.

The web-based IME has a nifty design and it is loaded with many options for format the text in your messages. The language can be changed at your whim. Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali & Gujarati  are the Indian Languages currently available on Quallipad.

The best part about Qullipad is the option for sending e-mail directly from its interface which is very useful feature when you need to send emails quickly- just compose and send !

An iPad app is also available on iTunes store which makes it simple to send SMS or email, share Facebook and searching information on Google.

4. Webdunia (Online)

The last service we present here, is entirely web-based. You may not be impressed by its archaic interface that seems stuck in time when this program was first created, but the service does a great job in transliterating English into eight Indian Languages.

How do you type in your regional language ? Sound off in comments below.

Tabs Notifer alerts you when you receive new web-mail, Instant Message and social networking messages. If you are an Internet junkie, you probably noticed that webpage titles change whenever new updates are available on the website. This add-on use those information to display a system tray notification when the title changes to indicate an update.

This extension is customizable too- you can add filters to specify websites that should be ignored when sending desktop notification and you can configured notification to close after a set amount of seconds, which may be useful for users especially Facebookers, who receive hundreds of updates everyday.

The extension is quite handy, as it lets you keep tack of new alerts on all your social networking, web-mail and Instant Messaging sites without having to visit these websites regularly.

Tabs Notifier for Chrome | Tabs Notifier for Firefox

So, what exactly Google Drive all about ? Google has actually replaced its popular web-based office suit, the Google Docs, by it’s latest web service Google Drive thereby creating a place to backup and manage all your documents and different types of files.

From now on, all your request to Google Docs address (doc.google.com) will be redirected to the new Google Drive address (drive.google.com). Below is the screenshot of the web-interface of Google drive which is tightly integrated with your Google docs.

With this new web interface,  users can now view over 30 types of files including documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, MP3, Videos, Photos, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD and many more. Users can also share files with friends for viewing and collaboration.

Like its rival service Dropbox, Google Drive lets you download a file synchronization app to your computer. This app is convenient for those users who wants to sync files directly from PC. Once installed, this app adds a new folder to your hard drive and anything place in it automatically synchronize in the cloud. This makes your files available across all the internet-enabled computers on which Google Drive app is installed. Below is the screenshot of Google Drive’s Windows app. The two arrows on files or folders indicates that those files or folders are syncing with the Google drive server.

Like Dropbox, Google Drive also support file versioning, where older versions of files are accessible through the web interface. You can access up to 30 days old versions of your files, with the ability to revert back to any of them anytime.

As a freemium service, Google Drive offers a few different pricing levels. First, there is a free plan, which gives you 5GB storage at no cost. Second, if you need more space, you can sign up for 25GB and 100 GB storage plan, which costs which costs $2.49/month and $4.99/month respectively. Finally, there is a tier for small business which costs from $9.99/month to $799.99/month and provides up to 16 TeraByte of storage.

To get started, visit this link- https://drive.google.com/start. Login with your Gmail to enable Google drive for your account. Once enabled, you will presented by an introduction page and then taken to the web interface of the service where you can also download its PC or Mac app (which gets detected automatically, depending you your platform). There are also apps for Android devices, so you can access and sync your files from anywhere.

Where it excels ?

Dropbox has only three paid plans, on the other hand, Google Drive offers different levels of premium plans and you may probably find the best plan that suits your needs.

Dropbox web interface does not allow people to view documents, PDF, PPT and many other file types in browser. People need to download and then open files separately. Google docs, on the other hand, has built-in support for viewing and editing documents, PDF, Spreadsheets and Presentation.

What is missing ?

Dropbox PC app lets you share files with your friends via a public URL- just right-click and grab the link for your files and folder. Dropbox users find those public links a convenient way to share their files or folders quickly. Unfortunately, Google Drive does not provide such public sharing links for your files and folders.

Currently, there is no Google Drive client for Linux, iPhone and iPad. Users have to wait for few weeks or months because the apps development is underway.

Instagram Pokki is an elegant app that brings the gigantic mobile photo community Instagram to your Windows desktop. Instagram was officially available as an Android and iOS app only. And, we should say thanks to Pokki team for bridging the gap between the mobile and PC users.This well designed app allow you to view literally hundreds of most interesting photos on Instagram in a seamless grid view. The infinite scroll starts with 28 photos and there is no need to  press next or anything, just keep scrolling down in your application window and click on any photo you like to enlarge.

With this app, you will get lots of options such as viewing photos that others are sharing, commenting on or liking photos and loads of other options such as viewing user profile, Geotagging, finding photos, subscribing feeds and accessing public link to a photograph. There are number of ways in which you can explore the tons and tons of public photos uploaded to the Instagram service. With this app, you get to browse photos by users, by tags or by location.

As a guest user, you get to do lot of things such as viewing photos, comments and searching photos uploaded on Instagram. But there are of course few restrictions for guest users like they can’t view user profile, post comment or like photos. So, I recommend you to sign up for a free account. Once installed, this app sits in your taskbar like along with other Pokki apps, display real-time alerts and can be open with one- click.

I’ve been using Pokki for Instagram for few weeks and i must say that the application is pleasure to use and give users the full iPhoneography experience on Windows PC.

Instagram Pokki works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Download Instagram Pokki | Also see, Best Pokki Apps for Windows Users

Sometimes you need to copy & paste unformatted text (or plain text) from a webpage into an email and text editor like Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Windows Live Writer and so on. But, when you copy and paste text from a webpage, you’ve noticed that the formatting(font size, color, style etc.) comes with it, which can be pain to remove. Some smart folks use notepad as an intermediate for copying and pasting text without formatting. But there is a much easier way.

You can use Copy Plain Text extension for chrome, to ensure you always copy content as plain or unformatted text to your clipboard.If you wish to copy something, all you need to do is highlight the text that you wish to copy. And click the Copy Plain Text option on the right-click context menu. The copied text will not contain any hyperlinks, different fonts sizes, styles like Bold or Italic and unwanted space.

Just like the web- based version Google Translate – you can select input and output language from the drop down menus, type words or phrases into the text box and then click the translate button for translation. With gTranslate Pokki, you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 30 languages. Like other Pokki apps, gTranslate automatically pin itself to the Windows taskbar and can be open by one-click.

If you are a non-native English speaker (or reader), this app is useful  to eliminate the language barrier. So, when you encounter a word that you’re unsure of, simply use this handy app.

The gTranslate is completely free and available for download from Pokki Store.

Download gTranslate Pokki.

InstantPhotoSketch may have an unwieldy name, but the application is dead simple to use. The application recognizes most image formats, so just open any photo in the software and press the green color “process” button to turn it into a black pencil sketch. There are two sliders(black level and white-level) to control darkness and details level. You can also zoom in and zoom out an image to view particular details.

Changes to photo can be previewed in real-time and when you find the best settings for your sketch file, the app allows you to save sketch as a JPEG or PNG file.

Instant Photo Sketch is freeware and compatible Mac OSx, Windows XP, Vista and Win 7.  A Pro version also available with few more features such as pen, brushes, custom background etc.

For free version, see the “Other software” section on download page. InstantPhotoSketch Download Page.

Chrome has a useful but lesser known built-in tool for converting webpages into fully formatted PDF file format. This feature is useful for collecting information from a website for offline viewing. The resulting PDF will contain all the text, links and images from the webpage.

Instructions

1. If you find an interesting webpage while browsing the web, just press CTR + P key combination to open preview window. You can also open preview window from right-click context menu.

2. The print preview window is divided into two panels (shown in the screenshot above). Left panel has options to customize look and feel of output file and the right panel display preview of changes you make on a webpage before conversion.

Choose ‘”Save as PDF” from the Destination drop down menu (screenshot above). You can also adjust page layout, number of copies, color scheme and margin for the PDF file. Once you choose the best settings as per your need, click the save button at the top of left panel, specify a location and filename for the PDF file.

Upside

You can save webpages as PDFs without installing extension.

Downside

It’s does not create professional quality PDF files like Joliprint and does not preserve the website layout in PDF file like Web2PDF. Read review of Web2PDF and Joliprint.

*I’ve tested this feature in Google Chrome(18.0.1025.162).

Why you need mobile version of a website ?

Smartphone users are painfully aware of the shortcoming of mobiles, the biggest of which is opening a full-size web page. Websites in non-mobile format are difficult to navigate, hard to read content, have lengthy load times and can dramatically affect sales and traffic. Honestly, as more and more consumers are using smartphones, it makes sense to focus on improving the mobile user experience and usability.

How to make a website Mobile Friendly ?

The first way to make mobile browsing experience more smoother is to buy a good but costly responsive theme for your WordPress based website. A responsive theme can be easily viewed full-screen or in a resized browser window on a desktop monitor, and even adjusts itself to fit into small screen of your mobile phones.

The second way to use plugins that can render webpages for mobile device viewing without modifying a single bit of code of your regular desktop theme. So, if you have hoping to make your website readily available for all your mobile visitors, we recommend you to install free version of WPtouch plugin.

An Overview of WPtouch Plugin

WPtouch plugin lets you create a site that’s optimized for viewing on mobile devices. This plugin actually provide mobile-friendly layouts that work in all the popular devices and platform including iPhone, Blackberry and Android. When people try to access your regular website from a phone or other mobile device, the plugin automatically show a mobile-friendly design which gives your visitors a mobile-app like look and feel. 

The new design that this plugin offers to your visitors, is, obviously, a lot more slimmed down version than its desktop version, without missing out on essential features such as images, videos, tags categories, comments, zoom etc. This makes its easier for mobile users to get content in digestible format, rather than scrolling and getting lost on a large viewing space that’s trying to fit on a tiny screen. However, if your visitors want to see your regular website, there’s a theme switcher button at the footer area that lets switch between the WPtouch view and your site’s regular appearance.

WPtouch transform your WordPress blog into mobile friendly site in less than 10 minutes. Isn’t it time saver plugin ? Here is a tutorial to set it up and running on a WordPress platform.

Step One : Find and Install WPtouch Plugin

Use the WordPress Plugin search system to find “WPtouch”. Click “install now” once you found the plugin.

In case, you are facing trouble in finding the plugin, download the WPtouch plugin zip file from the Word Press plugin directory, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/. Once you have uploaded the plugin- you will be asked to activate your plugin. Simply click Activate.

Step Two:  Adjust Settings

The next step is changing some of the WPtouch preferences to work better for your blog. Clicking into Settings -> WPtouch will bring up a preferences page allowing to select how the plugin will serve your mobile phone ready blog.

The setting page is divided into four or five major sections : General, Advanced, Custom Icons, Advertising, Push notification, Style and Color options. Below is  the screenshot of WPtouch settings panel. (click the screenshot for larger image) 

As you can see in above screenshot, WPtouch is loaded with all the features necessary for a complete makeover of your website. From setting, you can customize many aspects of display and appearance settings such as listing, categories, tags, font, skin, Gravatars, logo etc. and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your WordPress website to mobile visitors.

The plugin also gives you the ability for visitors to switch between WPtouch view and your site’s regular theme. You can even add AdSense code to monetize your content on mobile devices and best of all you don’t need any programming knowledge to operate the plugin.

A pro-version of the plugin is also available, however, its basic features are available in the free version and should be quite sufficient for the vast majority of bloggers. Pro version, on the other hand, includes more customization options such as new styles and themes, web-app mode, as well as support for about 10 languages.

Step Three : See your mobile site in action

If you have an iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung  or BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile device, you can test your website on them. But, if you want to see your website now, here is a small trick for doing it.

To get started, open Safari browser. If you don’t already have it installed, download it by clicking http://www.apple.com/safari/download/. Now you need to enable Develop Menu in from settings. In Safari preferences, click Advanced, then select “Show Develop menu in menu bar,” as shown in screenshot below.

Once you enable developer menu, a Develop Menu will then appear between Bookmark and Window menu in Safari menu bar. Pull down Develop Menu and choose “User Agents”. The “User Agent” menu contains a set of tools that simulate an HTTP request from Safari on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Safari then shows you how that page would look if you were viewing it on the actual iDevice. Choose iPhone User Agent and open your website and it should look like the one shown in the screenshot below.

WPtouch is a indispensable plugin for WordPress websites, I highly recommend this plugin to everyone.

The Bing Bar alerts you Facebook updates, friend requests, messages and invitations. It also lets you share links and photos from wherever you happen to be on the web.

Simply install Bing Bar, a new Facebook icon should appear in the toolbar. And, to set it up, just log in with your Facebook account.

Once you give it Facebook authorization, a handy drop-down will allow you to access your wall, notifications, inbox, and photos(uploaded by friends) in magazine-format. Thanks to Bing Bar, now users are able to check what’s going on in Facebook without having to leave their current page.

Download Bing Bar

Microsoft recently revealed more new features in its Bing Toolbar including the integration of Facebook instant messaging service. This new update allow you to chat with Facebook users right from Bing Bar.

When you install the toolbar, you will see Chat button on the right of Bing search box. Click on the chat button in menu bar and log into your Facebook account. Press the button again, and you should find the Facebook chat window open there. From the chat window, you also have options to go offline and clear chat history.

Bing Bar is available for Internet explorer (IE7 or later) and you can download it from the Discover Bing website.

For those who don’t know about the reverse email lookup– I’ll bet there will be few- It’s an email-based search functionality that lets users to search for other Facebook user based on their email address.

Using this feature is dead simple. Just paste the email address of the a stranger or unknown email sender into the Facebook search box and an auto-suggest drop down will let you know if a matching profile exists in the social network.

Upside

A major advantage of this feature is that it provides a method for validating unknown email addresses and help you to find a person in seconds.

Downside

A major blunder of this feature is that spammers can easily map harvested email accounts to user profiles, and use the publicly available information to craft very convincing personalized emails (for phishing). So, if you are on Facebook, avoid sharing your email address with strangers on forums and chat rooms.

With the latest update, Pokki replace its old homepage with an impressive webstore (Pokki Store) for applications, ratings, reviews and users comments. The new interface is very much similar to chrome webstore – featuring popular apps with thumbnails and categories that gives you instant access to popular sections such as  education, utilities, music, productivity and more. As you scroll over the images of popular apps, the thumbnails flip over and a description of the app appears. Finding apps is now easier than ever and you can download app easily and share your favorite one on Twitter and Facebook.

Pokki has also relaunched its apps with new interface. The Pokki apps are now free from the taskbar and can be move around on the desktop.

About Pokki

For those who don’t know about the Pokki – I’ll bet there will be few- here is a brief introduction.

Pokki is a platform of light-weight, single-purpose applications that are designed to fit with other pinned programs on your taskbar. The aim of Pokki is to bring mobile-app-like experience to your desktop by providing “always on” apps that can accessed by one-click.

Related: Best Pokki Apps for your PC

Using .torrent fIle

The torrent file itself is a tiny file that contain all information required to connect to the server and retrieve source with file you want to download. The size of the torrent files is from few kilobytes (kB) to few hundred bytes, depending upon the size of actual files that is to be distributed. You can download .torrent files from online sources like Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent, then double clicking on the torrent file should automatically start your torrent client (utorrent or Bittorrent) and ask you to start downloading process.

Using Magnet Links

Magnet links have been around for a quite a few years now, yet most people have started noticing them recently, when the popular torrent indexing website ‘The Pirate Bay’ implemented them. A Magnet link is just hyperlink containing the hash code for the torrent downloads, which your torrent client use to immediately start finding people (or peers) sharing particular files. So, it means that clicking the magnet links immediately start downloading torrent content and does not require you download a separate file.

If you go to the Pirate Bay now, you’ll notice both .torrent file and magnet links, as shown in the screenshot below.

Comparison

The only advantage of magnet links for peers is that downloading torrents takes one or two fewer clicks. The disadvantage of magnet links, as opposed to the .torrent files, is that they do not provide any additional  information of the actual file.

Torrent files, on the other hand, have a big advantage. When the torrent file is opened with a torrent client, the program show the window presenting general information of the torrent content to be downloaded. The best part is that users can select just specific files, which is convenient when downloading multiple files download or want to remove unnecessary files from torrent.

Torrent File :

Magnet Links :

Since the technology for magnet links is still being actively developed, I hope that the disadvantages will most likely be corrected in the future.

* I have tested this feature of .torrent files on uTorrent and Bittorrent which are the best torrent clients for any platform and are widely used by peers.