Next generation geeks

Picture Puzzles Quiz

Google Voice, the New Version of GrandCentral

Nearly two years after acquiring “one telephone for life” service GrandCentral, Google is finally preparing to relaunch the service with new features. GrandCentral has been in private beta for the last two years. Over the next few days Google will be prompting existing beta users to upgrade to Google Voice before rolling out the service to new users in a few weeks.

GrandCentral lets you set up a sngle phone number that you can give out to anyone. When they call that number, it will ring any phone number you’ve linked to the account. So you can print a single number on your business card, and people will be able to reach you on your home, work, and cellphones. The service also lets you record phone calls, screen calls, create rules for calls coming from specific numbers, and receive email notifications of voicemail messages.

Google Voice has all those features, plus a few new ones, like the ability to make free calls to US numbers and cheap calls to other numbers, make conference calls, and send, receive, store, and search SMS messages.

You’ll also get transcripts of all your voicemail messages.

Google will use an automated method to convert speech to text which will help them to decide relevant ads that will show up in your sidebar. And in order to determine what ads are relevant, Google needs to translate speech to text.

The company admits that the automated transcripts won’t be perfect. But the company has been fine tuning its speech recognition software for the last year or two with the Goog-411 service.

You can find a more complete list of Google Voice features at the Google Voice homepage.

Find the man in the beans

THE TRICK IS TO FIND THE MAN IN THE COFFEE BEANS:

This is bizarre – after you find the guy – it’s so obvious.  Once you find him – it’s embarrassing, and you think, Why didn’t I se e him immediately?

Doctors have concluded that if you find the man in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, the right half of your brain is better developed than most people. If you find the man between 3 seconds and 1 minute, the right half of the brain is developed normally. If you find the man between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein. If you have not found the man after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger!!!

And, yes, the man is really there!!!

How to encrypt, password protect and lock files in Excel 2007?

Excel 2007 offers better file protection options. You can easily encrypt, password protect files and thereby lock files created using Microsoft office Excel 2007. 

How to password protect files in Excel 2007?

• Open the excel 2007 file that you intend to encrypt, password protect and lock
• Click on the office Orb on the top left
• Select Prepare >> Encrypt document 

• An Encrypt document dialog box pops up with an option for you to set password
• Enter a strong password and click Ok
• A confirm password dialog box pops up with an option for you to re-enter password and confirm it
• If you are done with your work on the excel 2007 file, save your excel file
• Another microsoft excel dialog box pops up with the message “This document is both encrypted and password protected. The office Open XML Formats available in the 2007 release provide stronger encryption.Do you want to increase the security of this document by converting to an Office open XML format ?”
• If you want more stronger security, click Yes else click No in the above dialog box
• close the excel 2007 file

That is all!!! When you try opening the encrypted and password protected excel 2007 document, you will be asked to enter the password. However,if your forget or loose password it cannot be recovered in a straight forward manner.Special softwares may be required to recover the password.Hence it is advisable to keep a list of passwords and their corresponding document names in a safe place. 

Did U Know????

Can anyone spell out what is the name of this lake?

Apple Launches New iPod Shuffle – ‘World’s Smallest Music Player’

Apple has introduced a new iPod shuffle, and it is half the size of the current model. It is being dubbed the “world’s smallest MP3 player” on the market. 

 

It has the same functions as the previous model plus some bonus features.

The 4GB version holds up to 1,000 songs. It comes in silver and black colors and is priced at $79.

The changes in the new iPod Shuffle are:

1.) It is smaller than an AA battery size. The dimensions are 1.8″ tall x 0.3″ (4.57 cm x 0.76 cm).

2.) It incorporates a new VoiceOver feature that will recite the song titles, artists and playlist names (the iPod shuffle has no LCD display). It will recite in up to 14 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese (Mandarin), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish).

3.) The controls are moved from the iPod shuffle body to the ear bud cord with forward and backward buttons and also activate VoiceOver feature.

4.) Battery life is 10 hours.

5.) It will have the clip just like the previous one, but at only half the size. The clip will securely attach to y our shirt, jacket, workout gear or backpack and is made of aluminum.

6.) The previous iPod Shuffle had a shuffle switch, with an on and off switch separately. Here it is incorporated at one place. When you flip to the left, it plays the music in random order, and when you flip to the center, it plays in order. And when you flip to the left, it turns the Shuffle off.

Restroom Signs Around The World

Prevent E-mail address from spam program

E-mail icons which is generated by the E-Mail Icon Generator can be use as a replacement for your textual e-mail address (eg. “blogger.techlamp@gmail.com”)

wherever you might normally put an e-mail address that could appear publicly, for example as a signature on a public forum, on your personal web page or “blog”.

By showing your e-mail address in an image form, rather than text, spammers’ e-mail harvesting programs are unable to see it, and so will not be able to add your e-mail address to their mailing lists.

Any where if you are not able to add images then you can mention you E-mail as shown below.

blogger(dot)techlamp(at)gmail(dot)com