Some of the Latest Camera Based techniques.

The days of augmented reality tread closer and closer to us with apps like these. TechCrunch talks of Word Lens, an app for the iPhone that can translate languages even from images. The first thing that struck us we heard that is the Google Nexus S, as the introductory video also shows of a similar function made possible by the app Google Goggles. P.S.: This app is also available for free on the iPhone (iOS 4.0 and above required). 

Coming back, Word Lens is a paid app ($4.99) and currently translates only between English and Spanish. It uses the popular Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology - the same that is used when you scan a paper full of text and then edit it on a computer. The developers plan to introduce more languages, especially major European ones to begin with. 

So, what's the advantage of the ability to read content in an image? It could be quite useful when you're in a country whose language you cannot understand. You could translate sign-boards, restaurant menu cards (also, the bills later) among a lot of other things by simply pointing your phone camera to it. 

Have a look at it in action: 

New Facebook Features Exposed in Accidental Update

Facebook accidentally went live with a handful of prototype features earlier today, including a site-wide yet short-lived overhaul of Pages.

Roughly 45 minutes after the mistaken update, Facebook disabled the site, reverted back to its previous state and then tweeted apologetically about the downtime. But that brief span of time was enough for Facebook members and Page admins to get a sneak peek at new features in the works.

Facebook admitted to pushing features before their time. “Also, some internal prototypes were exposed to people and resulted in us disabling the site briefly. It’s now back to normal,” read a tweet from Facebook.

So what were those prototypes exactly? Screenshots shared with us and surfaced through other media outlets suggest all of the following: new Facebook Pages (with Questions integration), a “Switch Accounts” feature for Page Admins, a new Memories feature that chronicles photos and status updates from years past and an “Outside World” filter for the News Feed.

What follows is a deeper look at what some Facebook users saw today.

Update: We’ve added two new prototypes to this post based on your comments: A lightbox UI for Photos and a comment box that no longer includes the “Comment” button.

Were you privy to these or other changes? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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New Facebook Pages

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Pages got a temporary facelift with a tab-free design — the navigation instead being placed on the left-hand side of the Page — that more closely resembles Facebook Place Pages and member Profiles. We also noticed that Questions were integrated into the Pages experience and that Facebook introduced a “Switch Accounts” feature for Page admins.

We initially thought it strange that new Facebook Pages would be released without an announcement from Facebook. Commenters agreed; many of you expressed displeasure at the idea that Facebook would overhaul Pages without notifying you of the changes first.

When pressed for clarification specifically around Pages, a Facebook spokesperson shared the following statement: “While we are always experimenting with new features internally we are not making changes to Pages right now. Organizations invest a lot of time on their Facebook Pages because millions of people find them useful everyday. We remain committed to providing ways for Page owners to customize and control the experience on their Page. If we do make changes, we will provide partners with advance notice.”

Update: Some Page admins are also reporting that they were able to comment on other Pages during the misfire. Page admin Bryson White got to toy with this particular update. He writes, “I quickly visited another page listed on my page’s ‘favorites’ list … While there I was able to post a comment on that page’s wall … Basically, brands can comment on other brand’s walls, but they cannot comment on individuals walls.”

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Memories

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Several users reported having access to a new “Memories” option listed below Photos in the left-hand menu on their Profile Pages.

A Mashable commenter said of the feature, “I was online during the glitch and also saw a new MEMORIES link under my profile pic. It’s gone now but I did get a sneak peek while it lasted. It allowed you to look back at status updates, photos, and new friends…giving a snapshot of each year I’ve been on FB.”

The Next Web reporter Courtney Boyd Myers saw the Memories option and described it in a similar fashion. “It showed options for jumping to photos grouped by years: 2010, 2009, 2008, etc. with complementing information like status dated status updates, the number of friends added per year, events attended and Facebook places check-ins,” she wrote.

Memories would make for a pleasant (hopefully) walk down memory lane, so we hope this features finds its way back to Profile Pages in the near future.

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Outside World News Feed Filter

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We also found some evidence that Facebook may still be testing a filter for the News Feed called “Outside World.” Twitter user @casschin posted a TwitPic of the filter that shows the News Feed with a Most Recent drop-down menu that includes “Outside World” as a filter.

FBHive first unearthed the filter back in 2009 and speculated that it was an RSS-like option for the News Feed. At the time, TechCrunch confirmed with Facebook that the filter was for internal staffers only. We’re not quite sure to make of this one just yet.

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Photos Lightbox UI

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Several commenters have said they also saw the lightbox UI for Facebook Photos, albeit with a few bugs. The photo included here comes courtesy of Mashable reader Andrew Mrozkowski.

The feature was first previewed when Facebook upgraded Photos two months ago. “Any time you click on an image anywhere on Facebook, be it in an album or in your News Feed or on a friend’s Wall, you’ll see a black box hovering over the rest of the screen with some minimal navigation controls and relevant social features, allowing you to concentrate completely on the image at hand,” said Mashable reporter Jolie O’Dell at the time.

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Removal of “Comment” Button From Comment Box

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Facebook may have pushed a premature update to comment boxes earlier today, according to Mashablereaders. Readers are reporting that comment boxes temporarily mirrored those in the new Facebook Groups product and did not have the “Comment” button. Without the button, a user simply needs to hit the Enter/Return key to submit a comment.

The screenshot above is merely a mock up, but these reports sound about right. Facebook consistently updates older products to match the style of its newer ones.

Hat tip to Long Nguyen, Dep and the rest of our astute readers on this find.

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Automatic Mentions

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Facebook has long allowed members to mention and tag their friends in status updates using the @ symbol. A handful of commenters noticed that mentions for people and Pages became automatic as they typed — no “@” required — during the mishap.

Dep writes, “You don’t have to type @Name anymore. It just automatically starts finding interests and names as you type them. So if I started typing a page name or interest, a dropdown would appear to try and autocomplete that name or thing.”

USEFUL WEBSITE - WWW.SHORTCUT WORLD.COM

                          Today we are going to see about a useful website. The website is www.shortcutworld.com. It is very useful to the computer users. It gives the shortcut information to many more latest software like MS office 2010, photoshop cs5, firefox 4, Ubuntu, Windows 7, Gmail etc. It is easier to use the shortcut keys instead of mouse. And it saves our time also. This website specifies the available software in its left pane. It categories the available softwares in to two types.

1. New     - Describe the shortcuts of newly available software.

2. Popular - Describe the shortcuts of most popular software.

Its is very useful for us. Try this website if you think it is very useful means please comment it.

World first PC2Mobile Scan Technology

What if your mobile phone gets infected with some virus and you're unaware of it? Need not panic at this moment for Quick Heal has launched PC2Mobile Scan - the world's first mobile phone virus scan that can be used by connecting your phone to your laptop via a cable or Bluetooth. This software was available since May this year and now supports over 550 different mobile handsets. 

Quick Heal PC2Mobile Scan is a one of its kind software that will let you scan your phone from your PC. This application comes as part of Quick Heal Total Security 2010 suite. A large majority of phones made by popular handset makers like Asus, Apple, Fujitsu, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC, BlackBerry, and several others are supported by PC2Mobile Scan program. 

The beauty of this software is that you can connect it to your PC by using photo's data cable. In case you don't have one then use the phone's Bluetooth connection to connect it to the PC. You may need a Bluetooth dongle for it. 

Quick Heal Total Security 2010 with PC2Mobile Scan is available for Rs. 2,000 for one year's subscription. 

How to Identify Fake Torrents Uploaded by Anti-Piracy Organizations

Did you know that MPAA and RIAA are always setting traps for pirates to get caught of downloading copyright materials? I didn’t know that until I read one article from TorrentFreak. The anti-piracy organizations can easily trace you when they upload a very popular .torrent file to some popular torrent tracker site. When you download the .torrent file and load it, your bittorrent client will start connecting to the anti-piracy organizations trackers. That’s when they record your IP address and can possible get in touch with you for downloading copyrighted materials!

This is a very scary trap because I know a lot of people who knows how to download from bittorrent but don’t know anything about peer, leecher, tracker and etc… In short, they don’t know how bittorrent works but they know that by waiting for days, the download will complete and they get what they want.

Here’s how you can know if the Torrent or Tracker is fake.

Fenopy has created a Fake Finder page that lists the most popular fake torrents and the latest fake trackers. It also allows you to search for fake torrents by keyword or infohash.

Put the Hash number in Fenopy Fake Finder and it came back as a your torrent "Fake or Not".

‘Most Dangerous Trojan Virus Ever’ Steals Over $1 Million

The Zeus Trojan, called the “most dangerous virus ever created” has stolen £675,000 from a British financial institution, and it isn’t done yet.

It is like the plot of a Hollywood movie, only the bad guys are definitely winning so far. Earlier this week, the internet security group M86 uncovered a Trojan virus targeting an unnamed financial institution in the UK. The “Zeus Trojan” has already siphoned off over $1 million from over 3,000 British customers between July 5 and August 4, and it shows no signs of stopping.


The thefts were discovered after M86 gained access to the command-and-control server in the Eastern Europe country of Moldova. As for the money, M86 could not give an exact location for where it was going, other than to suggest that it was heading into the former Soviet states- which likely meant that the money was going to the Russian mafia, or another Eastern European gang.

“We’ve never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat. Always check your balance and have a good idea of what it is.” M86 said in a security report released on Tuesday.

The Zeus Trojan, also known as Zbot has infected more than 37,000 computers in the UK through a drive-by download. Users visiting a compromised site would unknowingly receive the virus as a cookie, hidden as part of a legitimate ad on potentially any website.

Once the virus is on the computer, it waits until the user goes to their bank’s website — it is only one specific bank that has yet to be named as the investigation is ongoing — and then it intercepts password information before it can be encrypted.  Once the trojan has access to the account, it checks to make sure that there is at least £800 available, then it begins to transfer anywhere up to £5,000 to various bank accounts. Once the transfer is complete, the virus then creates a false electronic statement to conceal the missing funds.

Most, if not all, of the victims will have their money reimbursed by the bank.

“In the vast majority of cases, if people had kept their computer’s operating systems and software such as Internet Explorer up to date they would not have been attacked,” Ed Rowley, product manager at M86 said, according to the Daily Mail.

“More often than not Trojans exploit known vulnerabilities that can be simply patched and fixed by downloading updates.”

Earlier this month, the UK based security group, Trusteer warned that more than 100,000 computers may have been infected with the Zeus Trojan, meaning that this is far from over.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Review

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 came and left our labs a few months ago failing to win our hearts. It was a decent phone, but a couple of flaws couldn't be overlooked. Plus, now with quality competition the game has become even tougher. For those who feel the X10 felt like a slab in the pocket, Sony Ericsson offers you variety with the X10 Mini. 

When I first set eye on this phone, I exclaimed "Oh my god, they really meant it by calling it the Mini!". This cute little phone has the internals of an HTC Legend with certain compromises that allowed SE to cram it into a shell this small. So is this a classic case of form over function? Or has Sony Ericsson managed to maintain a fine balance. Read on to uncover the truth.

Design and Build

The big brother X10 was quite a handful with that humongous 4-inch screen. The X10 Mini on the other hand is really tiny in comparison. It reminded me of that tiny Bipasha Basu branded Panasonic A100 from ancient times. The phone easily fits in the palm, and the pointy edges of the X10 have been curved off in the X10 Mini, providing a better feel. At under 90 grams, the phone packs in so much inside as is still quite light. The build quality is pretty good. With limited space to play with, SE withdrew the privilege of a removable battery in the X10 Mini; just like the iPhone. As a consolation, you can change the back cover and you get a variety of colors to choose from. They've even thrown in a few in the package itself, so you can start matching the phone to your daily apparel from day one.

The screen is much smaller at 2.55 inches, which is even smaller than your typical 2.8-inch Samsung Corby. Fortunately, being of capacitive nature, the finger response is pretty good. The swift UI also deserves appreciation, but more on that later. My initial skepticism about usability of a touchscreen this small was completely washed away. But it sports a QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) resolution which in comparison to today's HVGA (320 x 480) phones feels pale. It also could be because of the 65K color limitation of Android 1.6 that's making it look that way. The brightness also isn't too satisfying; we preferred keeping it at max. For a touchscreen, the real estate felt a little too small to browse full-fledged websites. But it is fine to act as a viewfinder to the camera at the back. All in all, it's a responsive screen but not as crisp and readable as bigger Android phones.

The front face looks pretty similar to its bigger brother; the menu/home/back buttons below the screen have the same styling. A power-cum-keylock key is placed on top and the volume control/camera shutter buttons lie to the right. A 3.5mm earphone jack and a microUSB port is placed at the bottom. The camera sensor is blessed with a LED flash at the back. One slight niggle was the placement of the earpiece, which is positioned to the left, instead of center. So I had to adjust the position when speaking left-handed. After getting used to holding brick-long devices to the ear, holding the X10 mini to the ear felt a little different. Lastly, there's no front-facing camera, so if you're kicked about making video calls in the future then they wouldn't be possible on this one.

User Interface

Like the XPERIA X10, the X10 Mini also runs the now 'eons-old' Android 1.6. Sony Ericsson has done heavy customizations for the small screen. Instead of app shortcuts on the home-screen, they are placed at four corners of the screen. The menu has multiple pages that can be swiped sideways, like on the iPhone. Let's get to that UI swiftness that I mentioned before. 

While we weren't entirely happy with the operating speed of the original X10, I can happily state that the X10 mini's interface is quick and fast. There was hardly a lag anywhere throughout our usage. Maybe the decently-powered 600 MHz processor isn't finding rendering of just 320 x 240 pixels too taxing.

Now, for the bad part; there are times when certain applications portray content, with what I thought to be tiny fonts, that affected readability. I'm not just talking about third party apps, even in Gmail and Gtalk the font size seemed a little too small to my liking. While web-browsing you at least have the option to zoom into text to make the fonts appear bigger. But for Gmail there's no way to increase the font size from the settings menu. 

Text entry won't be pleasant if you've gotten used to QWERTY phones. The Mini's screen being to small to fit a full QWERTY in either orientation, you just get an alphanumeric pad in portait mode. It is designed rather well, and has T9 dictionary mode as well as multi-tap entry options. There are many emoticons that one can choose from. But still, chatting on Google Talk or typing long e-mails isn't quite convenient as it would be on other phones that have some form of QWERTY based input.

The basic apps work as usual. Google Maps was spot on during my drives in Mumbai. There's also a turn-by-turn app called Wisepilot installed. But we couldn't test it since it had apparently expired its usage period. The chronological event based app in the X10 called Timescape is also present in the Mini. While we think it looks cool and functional, the design is somewhat of a hindrance. First of all, the messages have the person's image slapped into the box, super-imposed with text in white, which hampers readability. Youtube player works well, and videos embedded on a website can also be played in the browser.

The 'Album' app shows tiled previews in a simplistic format, and flipping through photos is an ease. Despite the lack of pinch-zoom, it is fairly simple to just press-and-hold to zoom into a picture. The music player is very basic, it doesn't even have categorization according to artists, albums, genre, which kinda put us off. You can choose songs alphabetically or play them in shuffle. There are no EQ settings either.

Web-browsing was a so-so affair, presumably due to the small screen. Pages rendered fairly fast and scrolling through them was pretty smooth. But the rendering of fonts on screen made me zoom a lot for the content to be readable. As text size gets bigger, you'll have to constantly keep scrolling if you're reading through a long page. All in all, the web browsing experience was mediocre due to the screen.

Lastly, this is still Android 1.6, a few generation old OS which none of the newer Android releases sport. As I've mentioned in detail in another article, other than missing features like Flash support and multi-touch, some of the newer apps work on Android 2.1 and above. If that wasn't enough, the QVGA resolution could serve as another hindrance to use apps that weren't designed to work with this resolution. Let's just hope Sony Ericsson updates the OS soon and apps start supporting the QVGA resolution as well.

Like all SE phones, TrackID is pre-installed. This app lets you identify the name and artist of the music being played by simply recording a few seconds of the track, which is then sent to their servers over the internet for analysis. In my usage, it worked pretty well.

Performance

Call quality was pretty good and the ear-piece volume is also pretty loud. The loudspeaker is fairly audible and gives clear output for voice and music. Sony Ericsson phones have been known for their superiority in imaging and audio finesse. They had somewhat lost track in between with providing sub-par earphones with even "Walkman" branded phones. While the camera clarity on some "Cyber-shot" branded phones was nothing to boast of. I'm glad that SE's got hold of that department back!

The 5 megapixel sensor on the X10 mini delivers very good quality snaps. Daylight shots look good on the screen. Night shots are well illuminated, thanks to the tiny but powerful LED flash at the back. The camera interface is quite snappy in operation, which also makes using it a pleasant affair. It doesn't have too many tweaks; just the basics like Auto, Macro mode, Twilight and Sports mode. Videos are also shot at a fairly smooth frame-rate and at VGA resolution. 

Audio quality was another striker for the X10 mini. It is ironic of Sony Ericsson to bundle an average pair of ear-phones with the Rs. 30,000 X10, and bundle the nice-sounding in-ear style ones with the X10 mini, which is half its cost. They have decent bass response and are good enough to make you not replace them with a better pair. In case you want to use better earphones, the 3.5mm jack allows you to do so. Although the built-in music player app is simplistic, there are better ones available on the Android Market. Thus the X10 mini would serve as a good replacement for a stand-alone MP3 player.

Battery Life

The X10 mini, owing to its petite form, could only hold a comparatively low-power 950 mAh battery. The battery life isn't great; it lasted me for a day with moderate usage. If you're going to use Wi-fi and GPS heavily, then expect even worse. Now, most phones with 3-inch+ touchscreens unfortunately have such battery life. But for a phone sporting a screen as small as the X10's, we'd expect better. Some people like to keep spare batteries that they can swap, but the X10 mini's non-removable nature won't let them do that.

Price and Verdict

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini sells in the market for Rs. 15,000. It is a pretty likable phone due to its cute size, good audio as well as camera performance and the possibility to expand its functionality with the underlying Android OS. It's a shame that its size also ends up being its downside. Similarly priced phones like the HTC Wildfire have a fairly big 3.2-inch screen that offer better display. In that sense, we feel that paying Rs. 15,000 is a little too much. We feel this suggested pricing would be a fair price-point for the Mini.

If you're going to use its features, for instance - GPS mapping, internet browsing, heavy text input etc. - then you're better off with a screen bigger than the X10 mini's. But if you just want a cute little phone with a good feature-set crammed inside, then the X10 mini is workable choice. But that is, provided your text input is going to be minimal. Otherwise, we'd highly advise spending Rs. 1,500 more and getting the X10 Mini Pro, which is exactly same as this phone but with a landscape slide-out QWERTY keyboard.