Samsung announces Galaxy S III Mini smartphone

The Samsung Galaxy S III Mini

Samsung has announced its latest handset at a press event in Frankfurt, Germany. The four-inch Galaxy S III Mini is an Android-powered smartphone designed to provide a premium alternative to the company's larger Galaxy S III device.

The handset is aesthetically identical to the original Galaxy S III, albeit with a significantly reduced footprint (four inches compared to the original device's 4.8-inch effort). The internals, on the other hand, aren't quite on par with the flagship handset, featuring a dual-core CPU, 1GB RAM, up to 16 GB storage and a WVGA AMOLED (800 x 480) display. The Mini is also slightly thicker than its namesake, coming in at 9.85 mm.

 The handset is 9.85 mm thick

Despite the slightly disappointing specs, the Mini does boast some compelling features. The device will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, complete with the company's TouchWiz UI overlay which provides access to premium features such as the Siri-like S Voice. The handset also features NFC connectivity and a 5MP rear camera capable of recording 720p video. The Galaxy S III Mini will not have 4G LTE connectivity.

Aesthetically, the device is a miniaturized version of the popular Galaxy S III handset

Although the reduced screen size of the device may be appealing to many users, the performance premium here may make it difficult for it to compete with the iPhone 5, which features a similar (though much higher resolution) four-inch display. We're also not convinced that the device is deserving of the premium Galaxy S name, and there is potential that it may lead to a dilution of the premium perception of the brand.

There is currently no word on a release date or pricing for the device, but it's likely that it will hit a significantly lower price point than both the original Galaxy S III and the iPhone 5.

Source: Samsung

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 compact camera launched for Rs 34,990

ony has recently launched its flagship compact camera, the Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 camera in India. This model comes equipped with imaging features from Sony’s Alpha range of A-mount and E-mount cameras.

“This camera is ideal for travel, portraits or street photography, delivering impressive results in a variety of lighting conditions with an intuitive, customizable control interface,” said Yosuke Tomoda, director of the Cyber-shot business at Sony Electronics.  “It’s a perfect step-up model for point and shoot users not interested in larger DSLR or compact system cameras, and also an outstanding choice for enthusiasts who may already own a large DSLR and are looking for a high-quality, pocket-sized ‘all-in-one’ second camera.”

The Sony Cyber-shot RX100 features a 1.0-inch type Exmor CMOS sensor with a resolution of 20.2 megapixels. The sensor has an area that is approximately four times larger than the 1/2.3-type sensors in traditional point-and-shoot cameras. The sensor’s larger area helps in taking in a greater amount of light while capturing content. This can help in taking better images as well as videos that feature less image noise.

The larger sensor is partnered with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T fixed lens with 3.6x optical zoom range. The camera features a wide F1.8 maximum aperture to let in additional light and complement the larger sensor.

The lens features a seven-bladed circular aperture. This makes it easy to produce images with subjects in focus against a smoothly-blurred, defocused background. The lens also features an Advanced Aspherical (AA) lens element that contributes to the camera’s compact dimensions without compromising an optical zoom performance or resolution.

The camera’s powerful BIONZ image processor maximises shooting response times while helping attain clean, natural images. It also extends sensitivity right up to ISO 25600 (using Multi Frame Noise Reduction), which allows for clear handheld images in low light conditions. To capture fast-moving subjects, the RX100 camera can also shoot at up to 10 frames per second (in full resolution) and has high-speed autofocus that locks onto a subject in as quickly as 0.13 seconds but this feature depends on scene and lighting conditions.

The new RX100 camera features a high-resolution 3-inch 1,229k dot Xtra Fine LCD display and also adds a new feature called WhiteMagic technology. This uses additional white pixels to boost screen brightness, allowing users to see subtle details and tones on the screen in all types of shooting environments, including outdoors in bright sunlight.

For making manual adjustments while shooting both still images and movies, the camera has a control ring around the lens body, which can be used to alter exposure, zoom, creative picture effects and a variety of other customizable functions. Additionally, frequently used functions can be assigned to the Fn button for instant access, and the Memory Recall feature can store up to three groups of customized shooting settings based on a user’s preference. 

There is a choice of auto and manual focus modes on the Cyber-shot RX100 camera for enhanced image control. For those that prefer focusing manually, MF Assist magnifies images to simplify fine adjustments.

The RX100 camera offers a range of choice of artistic options to expand creative shooting possibilities. It includes the option for six different creative styles and a variety of popular picture effects including Toy Camera, Partial Color, HDR Painting and several others.

The new Cyber-shot features Auto Portrait Framing – a feature found on Sony’s latest α range of A-mount and E-mount cameras, this makes it easier to create sharp, perfectly framed portraits. This feature automatically detects faces in a scene, crops the picture accordingly, and creates a composition at full resolution. Both the original and cropped photos are saved for review.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 is available in the market for Rs 34,990.

Top10 Firefox plugins - Firefox

These are the top 10 Firefox plugins

1. Adblock Plus:
If you have ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on a site that often take longer to download than everything else on the page, install Adblock Plus and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu, and the banner won't be downloaded again.

2. Colorful Tabs:
This simple add-on makes a strong colorful appeal. It sets each tab to a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. After a long day of research when you have lots of browser windows open, this makes online page viewing easier on the eyes.

3. ColorZilla:
ColorZilla puts an eyedropper icon in your status bar. Click it and you'll get a crosshair cursor. As you run this over a Web page, the RGB values of the pixel under the crosshair will display in the status bar, both as three separate values and as a hex value (e.g., R:255, G:255, B:255 | #FFFFFF). I use this all the time if I'm trying to match colors; i.e. a font color to an the primary background on an image, for example.

4. GMail Manager:
This Gmail notifier is great if you have multiple Gmail accounts. It allows you to receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

5. MeasureIt:
After installing this extension, you'll have a small ruler icon on the left side of your status bar. When you click on it, your browser window will fade out a little, and you'll have a crosshair cursor. Drag the cursor over a section of the screen that you want to measure. Next to the box is its height and width, measured in pixels. I use this all the time when trying to measure the size of images. When you're finished, just hit the Escape key to turn it off and return to normal viewing of the page.


6. Quirk Search Status:
Search Status allows you to see how any web site you visit is performing. When you land on a page, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google and Linkscape), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa and Compete), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy. I use this all the time to determine whether a site has enough traffic to warrant accepting a joint venture proposal.

7. Scrapbook:
ScrapBook helps you to save Web pages and easily manage your saved collections. Major features are: saving web pages or snippets of a page, saving a web site, organizing the collection in the same way you do bookmarks, full text search and quick filtering search of the collection, and editing of your collected pages.
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8. Session Manager:
Session Manager helps you manage your Firefox tabs. If you visit the same sites every day, all you need do is open all the sites in separate tabs and/or windows, and then use Session Manager to save the session with a distinct name. Then, you simply go to Tools > Session Manager, pick your session, and all the windows and tabs open up just as you saved them. And, Session Manager tracks your sessions as you surf, and if Firefox (or your system) crashes, you can recover the selection of tabs you had open when it crashed.

9. Tabs Open Relative:
Tabs Open Relative makes all new tabs open to the right of the current tab, rather than at the far right of the tab bar. This reduced a huge annoyance I had with how the Firefox browser worked.

10. XMarks:
XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via their synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on their servers and is available online, as well. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync across all of your computers. Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature.

Code to display the load time of your website

You need to know how long your site takes to load. Use this script to find out if your site is taking too long, and if it is, fix it.

Insert this code snippet inside the and tags of your document:

$starttime = microtime();
$startarray = explode(" ", $starttime);
$starttime = $startarray[1] + $startarray[0];

Insert this code snippet directly before the closing tag of your document:

$endtime = microtime();
$endarray = explode(" ", $endtime);
$endtime = $endarray[1] + $endarray[0];
$totaltime = $endtime - $starttime;
$totaltime = round($totaltime,10);
echo "Seconds To Load: ";
printf ("%f\n", $totaltime);

Select text Vertically in Word 2007 - MS Office

Almost everybody who writes their documents in Microsoft Word knows how to select the text horizontally. You have to select the text horizontally in order to delete, underline, italicize etc. But many times you face a situation in which you have to select the text vertically. For example you might have to delete the first few words in every line in a list in order to delete it. You need to do that as you reformat a Word document. Many people think that it is not possible to select text vertically in Word 2007 document. It is very easy to select text vertically in Word 2007. You just need to do this trick in order to make the vertical selection:

Point the mouse to the beginning of the text you want to select.

Hold down the Alt key.

Drag the mouse pointer downwards around the required area while still holding down the Alt key.

The text will be selected vertically.

After you select text vertically in Word 2007, you can make it bold, underline, italicize, delete, cut or copy it. You can also paste it anywhere else in the document if you want.

This feature which allows you to select text vertically in Word 2007 is very useful while working with lists. 

Some Tricks in Excel - MS Office

* Generate Random NumbersNeed to create random numbers? You can do it in Excel. 
To generate a number between 0 and 1, type =RAND() in a cell.
To generate a number between 1 and 100, type =RAND()*100.
After entering, use the fill handle to quickly populate as many cells with random numbers as needed. To use the fill handle, click the cell, move your pointer over the lower-right corner of the cell until it turns into a black plus sign, and drag it horizontally or vertically across the cells you wish to populate. The cells can then be formatted as desired.

* No Formula, PleaseWhen copying and pasting a cell that contains a formula, use the Paste Special feature. First, copy the cell (Edit...Copy). Next click in the desired location and click Edit...Paste Special. Choose Values to copy the number only and not the formula. 

* Insert Time/Date in ExcelTry these keyboard shortcuts to insert the time/date in an Excel spreadsheet:
Current date: Press CTRL+SEMICOLON
Current time: Press CTRL+SHIFT+ SEMICOLON
Current date and time: Press CTRL+ SEMICOLON then SPACE then CTRL+SHIFT+ SEMICOLON

* Hide Worksheets in Excel 2002To hide Excel worksheets to prevent unwanted changes, Select the worksheet, click Format...Sheet...Hide.

* Color-Coding Excel Sheet Tabs in Excel 2002In Excel 2002, color-code sheet tabs for easier identification or grouping. 
Select the sheet(s) by holding down the CTRL key and clicking the tabs.
Click Format...Sheet...Tab Color. You can also right-click the sheet tab and choose
click Tab Color.

* Pasting an Excel Table and Its Formatting into WordIn Excel, select the table and click Edit..Copy. Switch to Word, and click where the table will be located. Click Edit...Paste. Using the Paste Options smart tag, select one of the following options: To keep the formatting, select Keep Source Formatting. To automatically keep data updated as it is updated in Excel, select Keep Source Formatting and Link to Excel. To match the style of another table in the Word document, select Match Destination Table Style. To link the table instead of copying it, select Match Destination Table Style and Link to Excel.

* Go ToTo search for specific cells, such as ones that have formulas or ones that just contain values, use the Go To feature. Click Edit...Go to...and choose the desired feature.

* Shortcut KeysTo see a complete list of shortcut keys in Excel, press F1 on the keyboard and type shortcut keys in the search box. 

* Customizing ToolbarsRight-click on any toolbars and click the customize the toolbar. Click the Command tab, select the desired category, and click and drag new features from the right command box to the toolbar.

* Quick GraphsWant to create a quick graph? Click anyway in the Excel data on the spreadsheet, press F11 key and presto! Right-click in the graph border to change the type, location, or data.

* Basic Keyboard ShortcutsF1 Help
F2 Edit current Cell
F5 Goto
F7 Spell Check
F12 Save file as
CTRL + A Select entire worksheet.
CTRL + B Toggle Bold Text.
CTRL + C Copies the item or items selected to the Clipboard and can be pasted using CTRL + V.
CTRL + F Displays the Find dialog box.
CTRL + H Displays the Replace dialog box.