Skype Available on Windows 8

Skype recently announced a new version of its VoIP software, Skype 5.5.0.117 whichsupports Windows 8.

Microsoft officials said relatively little about Skype during last week’s Build conference, which was for developers interested in writing apps and building hardware for Windows 8. However, Istartedsomething.com noted that Microsoft may be counting on making Skype integration a key piece of Windows 8, citing a screen shot showing a Metro tile featuring missed phone calls.

Microsoft announced last May that it will acquire Skype for $8.5 billion dollars, then transform the provider of VoIP software and services into a business division headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates. Skype will support Microsoft products such as Windows Phone, Outlook, and Kinect, and integrate with Microsoft’s already extensive communications portfolio, which includes services such as Lync and Messenger, the companies announced at the time.

Google+ is open to all! Join now

Google+ has shed its invite-only status, and is now open to all in public beta. That’d be a bigger deal if the service wasn’t already open to anyone with a Google account, and if existing members didn’t each have 150 additional invites to hand out.

The real news here is about Google+ Hangouts, which began as a 10-way video calling service but is now showing grander aspirations.

Through a new feature called “Extras,” Google+ users will be able to collaborate on documents, share what’s on their computer screens and draw together on a communal canvas. (If the expanding scope and eye toward collaboration reminds you of Google Wave, recall that Hangouts uses the same technology as that failed project.)

Google is also adding an API for Hangouts, so developers can bring games and other new features to the video chat service. Google’s own YouTube video player, which is built into Hangouts, is the first example of how the API can be used.

Google+ Hangouts is also adding new features for video chat. Mobile phone support is now available on Android 2.3 smartphones and is coming soon to the iPhone. A new “Hangouts On Air” feature will allow select users to host one-way live broadcasts (starting with the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am. on September 21). And public Hangouts–another “Extra”–will allow users to congregate around specific topics.

All these new features make Hangouts seem more like its own service, rather than something that’s inherently tied to Google+. The features that Google is adding today have little bearing on the rest of the social network–not yet, anyway–and from the beginning video chats have launched in a separate window, further isolating them. If Google+ crashed and burned, Hangouts would probably survive.

Or, to look at it another way, Hangouts is the perfect example of what Google+ is supposed to be. The “Google+ project”–as the company insists on calling it–is not mainly about posting status updates and adding +1s to what other people write. It’s about adding a social layer to services that are already useful on their own. And Hangouts just became a lot more useful.

Google+ update brings massive Hangout upgrades, APIs, and more

With no warning, no pomp and circumstance, and no press conference, Google+ received the most significant batch of updates it has seen since the day the service was launched. Among the many changes that were rolled out today includes a massive upgrade to Google Hangouts. Here’s a look at the new features Google has rolled out today.

First off, 28 Google+ ambassadors, some who work for Google and most who do not, were given the ability to test the new Hangout features. Shortly after the new features were deployed, Google+ user Jake Southers discovered that Hangout Extras were accessible to anybody who created a Hangout by going to https://talkgadget.google.com/hangouts/talk.google.com/___ (just fill in the blank with whatever you choose). So despite being new the features have been accessible.

The biggest change to Google Hangouts in the UI. Nearly every facet of the experience has been changed. Google+ Hangout Engineering Director Chee Chew noted that the majority of this user interface is subject to change as they continue to test new features and tweak the settings of the new Hangouts. The screenshots below show how things are currently configured.

Screen Sharing

Many Hangouts that I have been in are setup for tutorial purposes. The person who opens the hangout might be editing photos, or mixing music, maybe even playing a game. To share what is going on to their audience, most have found third party screencasting solutions that work with Google+. This is no longer required, as Google includes the ability to share your screen natively in a hangout now. Just click Share Screen, and you will be invited to either share your desktop or just a browser window to the Hangout.

Only one person in the Hangout may share their screen at a time, and while the screen is being shared the larger window has focus for everyone to watch. When you have finished sharing your screen you can click the Stop Sharing button which is now over the original share button.

Notes and Sketchpad

In a step towards making hangouts the ideal office and collaborative tool, your Google Docs is now accessible via Google Hangouts. From the new left hand menu, select Notes. Notes will allow you to share any document you have in your Google Docs with the people in the Hangout.  The same level of document control exists here as does in docs, allowing you to adjust who has the ability to edit, share, or view.

Sketchpad is a freehand drawing and doodling tool. You can place images here and manipulate them, add text, highlight, and more. Any thing you create within sketchpad is immediately saved to Google Docs for you to use later. The sketchpad is saved with everyone who is in the hangout.

Mobile hangouts – tablets and phones

The most clamored for, and in my opinion most impressive, feature to be delivered is the mobile Hangout. Any Android 2.3 or higher device is capable of joining a Hangout from the updated Google+ mobile app. It’s promised that iOS devices will be able to us this feature “soon”. When you join the Hangout, you are only able to see the person or event that currently has focus, or you can tap one of the icons in the top left to only give focus to that person. While in a mobile hangout, you can use either the front or the rear camera, and the video quality as you can see from the screenshot below is very nice.

If you are using a Honeycomb tablet, the Hangout will remain open in the background, should you choose to go and do other things on your device. Your video will freeze, but you will still be able to hear the hangout and talk.

Hangout APIs

While the drooling gaze of early adopters touching the shiny new Hangout features is sure to last for a little while, Google also made sure that developers had their chance to keep us in hangouts indefinitely with Hangout APIs. With this, developers will be able to use many of the Hangout features in app sof their own, but more importantly they will be able to write apps to work inside of a Hangout. Similar to notes and sketchpad, it looks like Google plans to make it easy for apps to be used inside the hangout. While the posibilties of this are still in the minds of hungry devs everywhere, the first thing that comes to mind for me in the inevitable merger of Google games and Google Hangouts, completing the interactive gaming experience in Google+.

Final Thoughts

Google has taken the social networking fight to Facebook by greatly improving the one thing Facebook is lacking in. Despite the partnership with Skype, Facebook is not equipped to combat Hangouts, and certainly cannot compete with a mobile offering like this one. Google is clearly headed in a very positive direction with Hangouts, making me wonder how long it will be before the service is ubiquitous for businesses and projects alike.

How to Increase SMS quotas in Gmail

Gmail recently introduced to send SMS via their servers to local mobile operators. That is limited number of SMSs per day.   A quota is an allocation of SMS (text messages) that you’re able to send to a mobile phone:

• Initially, you’re granted a quota of fifty messages.
• Every time you send a message, your quota decreases by one.
• Every time you receive an SMS message in Chat (for example when a phone user replies to one of your messages) your quota increases by five, up to a maximum of 50.

If your quota goes down to zero at any point, it will increase back up to one 24 hours later. So, you won’t ever be locked out of the system.

How to increase the Number of Text Messages per day.

Keep in mind that if you’d like a higher message quota, you can always send an SMS to your own phone, and then reply to that message multiple times. Every time you send a reply message, your quota is increased by five. Effectively, you’re buying more messages by paying your phone company for these outgoing messages.

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Google Talk

To get Google talk.  Download

Text chat

• Instant messages: share quick thoughts in real time
• Status updates: see if friends are around and what they are up to
• File transfer: instantly send and receive files, pictures, and more

Voice chat

• Free long distance: make PC-to-PC calls to people anywhere in the world
• Audio conferencing: talk to multiple people at once
• Gmail integration: chat with your friends on Gmail

Free 3000 TV Channels

You can Watch up to 3000 TV channels totally free.... Enjoy.....

Use this Links to get the Software.

you can use any of them.

1.download

2.download

Sending SMS from Gmail

Did you know that you can send a free SMS or text message to your friends from Gmail. Gmail is listed many countries and particular mobile carries in each country. Here in Sri Lanka we can now send SMS to Dialog GSM (077) and Mobitel (071) from your Google Mail (GMail) account. The GMail-to-SMS service allows to send and receive text messages from the Gmail interface for free! SMS in Gmail Chat will bring a new level of flexibility and mobility to Gmail users in Sri Lanka. Gmail users can send a text from the desktop interface directly to a mobile phone via SMS. The process is similar to sending as instant message. The recipient of the SMS can respond to the text message and the response will appear in the sender’s desktop Gmail interface. The message can be stored and archived like any other chat or IM messages.
In order to use this feature you have to enable the SMS (text messaging) in Chat lab. You can send Free SMS messages to your contacts’ mobile phones using Gmail Chat. Here’s how to Send Free SMS from Gmail:
01. Enter your contact’s name in the ‘Search or invite friends’ box in Chat, and select Send SMS from the box of options that Enter your contact’s name in the ‘Search or invite friends’ box in Chat, and select Send SMS from the box of options that appears to the right of your contact’s name. Or, if you already have a Chat window open for this contact, just click Options, and select Send SMS.
02. In the dialog box, enter a phone number in the ‘Send SMS messages to this number’ field. For now, this feature works only on United States phone numbers. If you’re outside the US, you can still use it, but you won’t see the SMS option in Chat until you enable it manually in the Chat settings page.
03. Click Save.
04. A Chat window appears. Just type your message as you would normally. When you hit Enter, the message will be sent to the phone number you entered.
If your contact replies, the text message response will appear as a reply in Chat. These conversations are stored in your Chat history just like regular chats (but keep in mind that you can’t go off the record while communicating via SMS).
When replying with an SMS from phone to Gmail, you will be charged a regular SMS rate by your mobile provider. However, sending SMS from the Gmail Chat to a phone is FREE. As of this moment, every user can initially send up to 50 messages continuously. Every reply back from a mobile phone refreshes the counter by five messages, up to a maximum of 50. Even if you go down to zero, however, you will not be locked out of the system. The counter will increase back up to one 24 hours later.
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Windows 8 Developer Preview available as free download

Microsoft has released its Windows 8 Developer Preview operating system, for PCs and tablets, to the public as a free download.
This is the same software which Microsoft gave to developers on prototype Samsung tablets this week at the company’s Build conference in Anaheim.

Skype emoticons came with Skype 5.5

Skype announced a new emoticons came with the latest version of Skype 5.5,There are seven new emoticons for Skype

Faster Boot Times in Windows 8

The software giant Microsoft has been busy updating the Building Windows 8 Blog, through which we found a demonstration of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8’s fast boot time. In the demonstration, Windows 8 boots up in less than 2 seconds. One of the updates posted are to do with the bootup process for the Windows 8 operating system. Microsoft focused on three key goals for improving the boot time. First, there has to be effectively zero watt power used when off, there needs to be a fresh session after boot, and there needs to be very fast times between pressing the power button and being able to use the PC. Data collected by Microsoft shows that a lot of users prefer to shut down Windows completely over putting their PCs into sleep mode and even hibernation. It might have something to do with people’s preference of totally shutting down their PCs, so that no power is consumed. Resuming session from a hibernate takes a little longer, too. Microsoft chose to add the features of hibernate and cold booting to get the best of both worlds into Windows 8. “Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested),” Sinofsky states.

Facebook Launches Subscribe Button

Facebook today is rolling out a key new feature: a one-way follow model called Subscriptions.
Users will be able to decide if they want to see all updates from their friends, most updates, or just important updates, such as a friend announcing an engagement or a new job. It also gives users the option to block posts about games, which should be welcome news to thouse who complain about Facebook spam.
The subscribe function also incorporates even more features that seem to be influenced by Google’s new social network,that it was making it simpler to put friends into groups. Now, as on Google+ or on Twitter, users can follow other’s profiles without needing to become friends with them. Anyone who enables the Subscribe button will give others the option to view tweets they’ve marked as “Public.”
Facebook says the feature will appeal to anyone looking to reach a broader audience, like journalists, artists, and political figures. To start sharing your own posts publicly, head to the new tab beneath your profile photo that says Subscriptions. Click it, and you’ll have the option to broadcast your public updates to anyone who has subscribed to you. Note that you’ll only syndicate updates that are marked Public; updates shared with Friend Lists won’t be seen by your subscribers.

Windows 7 security

01. AppLocker

It Specify what software is allowed to run on a user’s PCs through centrally managed but flexible Group Policies. AppLocker is very similar to Software Restriction Policies (SRP). In fact, you may ask yourselves what the difference is. Well, AppLocker has a friendlier user interface, the ability to set restrictions based on application version number or publisher, and is easier to work with for less knowledgeable users.

Now, if you’re still wondering what AppLocker is, it’s a tool that allows you to restrict the execution of programs, installers and scripts on a machine with Windows 7 installed. Rather than using third-party security tools, Windows 7 has a built-in mechanism that allows tight, per-application execution control. The tool can be used to allow or deny certain programs or files to run, which can be used to make your system very secure against damage, accidents, misuse, or attacks.

Accessing AppLocker is not straightforward, which is why I’ve kept this software for the second article. You will need to invoke the Group Policy Editor, by running:

cmd > gpedit.msc

This is no different than Group Policies on Windows XP. and also it explains how to use Software Restriction Policies. AppLocker is a natural extension of this strategy, so if you’ve used the former, you’ll be instantly very comfortable with the new feature in Windows 7.

AppLocker can be found in the Computer Configuration tree, under Security Settings, Application Control Policies.

Your first step would be to configure rule enforcement. You can either have the rules in place or just audit for changes in the system without actually preventing or allowing them.

Then, you should create rules. In the right pane, right-click anywhere. Beginners or less experienced users should start with auto-generated rules. Manual rules can be created later, if needed.

Creating rules is very simple. You just follow a wizard. You create rules based on software groups. For example, you can have a rule for Program Files, a rule for Windows directory, a rule for Users directories, etc.

You can decide how to catalog your files, by digital signature (publisher), hash or path. It is recommended not to use path rules for Users directories, because the location of files can easily change, circumventing your security.

Once your directories are scanned, you’ll get the list of rules. You will be able to review the list and individually remove select items, if needed.

Once this is done, you will be asked to create a default set of rules. If you’re not really sure how AppLocker works, you should do this, to prevent potentially crippling the functionality of your system.

And this is what the Group Policy Editor shows now:

Manual rules

As said before, you can also fine-tune your security and create manual rules. Again, right-click and choose Create New Rule. In my case, I will create some rules for downloaded installed files that sit in the Downloads folder. These will include benign items like CuteWriter, Foxit Reader and IrfanView, just for the sake of the demonstration.

Working with AppLocker is not easy, but it’s definitely worth the investment. Combined with the proper use of the firewall and User Account Control (UAC), you can make your operating system well secured without bleeding the resources one bit.

02. BitLocker

BitLocker is an encryption software, which lets you encrypt your drive and your files, thus preventing the compromise of data integrity in case your computers get stolen. A similar feature did exist in Windows XP, but it is now easier to use and implement.

You can find BitLocker in the Control Panel:

I will merely inform you that this option exists and that you should explore it, if you like. That said, I do not recommend it, and here’s why:

Proprietary format

Encryption should never be closed-source. Always use open-source, proven, well tested solutions, like TrueCrypt, which offers the same capabilities, and then some, including cross-platform compatibility.

Hardware requirements

BitLocker has some rather curious requirements. One is that you have installed Windows 7 on a computer that supports Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which allows BitLocker to store its keys in a special microchip. Failing that, you will need an external USB key on to which you will store the encryption keys.

Moreover, BitLocker requires that you have at least two partitions on the system, both formatted with NTFS.

Personally, I find the requirements to be too much, especially considering the fact free, open-source alternatives like PGP and TrueCrypt require no such thing. Furthermore, both these solutions are proven workhorses of the encryption world, whereas BitLocker is a closed-source tool that you cannot use with other operating systems.

While encryption can potentially add to your security, which is why it’s listed as an item in this article, BitLocker itself does not have merits that warrant using. In this particular case, knowing which security features not to use is the part of the overall security scheme that I’m trying to teach.

03. Parental Control

In Windows 7 you can set limits on your kids’ computer use—and help them be safer online—without constantly peeking over their shoulders.

Parental Controls helps you limit how much computer time children have, as well as which programs and games they can use (and perhaps more importantly, when). With the Parental Controls in Windows Media Center, you can also block access to objectionable TV shows and movies.

To help keep your children safer online, download Windows Live Family Safety. This free program helps you manage which websites your children see and who they can talk to online. It also provides helpful, easy-to-read reports of their online activity.

What can I control with Parental Controls?

• Set specific time limits on your children’s computer use. You can set time limits to control when children are allowed to log on to the computer. Time limits prevent children from logging on during specified hours. You can set different logon hours for every day of the week. If they’re logged on when their allotted time ends, they’ll be automatically logged off.Prevent your children from playing games you don’t want them to play. Control access to games, choose an age-rating level, choose the types of content you want to block, and decide whether you want to allow or block specific games.Keep your children from running specific programs. Prevent children from running programs that you don’t want them to run.

To turn on parental control you should have standard user rights.

Open Parental Controls by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, and then, under User Accounts and Family Safety, clicking Set up parental controls for any user.‌ ‌ If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.