Color your Google Home

Google is offering new themes for the personalized Home page, there are six in total. Simple yet colorful. Far better then what Yahoo! and Live are offering.

The good thing is that the outdoor colors/graphics/characters of the themes dynamically change as per the local time and weather conditions.

For example, themes will show a sunrise or sunset as per the local times and the characters will hold umbrellas if it's raining.

So, what are you waiting for? Go get a theme for your page...

Some pics:

SWITCH on! Google trying to say Hello! (?)

The news is in the air that Google is making a device similar to Blackberry.

The probable features will be:-

1. Running C++ at the core
2. Operating system Bootstrap
3. Java
4. Proposes VoIP!

And the phone will be called SWITCH.

It is said that the programs running the operations are stored on the network. It sounds too advanced. Perhaps a new network protocol comes up with this. Wow!

One of the Google Heads in Europe - Isabel Aguilera, confirmed on March 15 2007, that Google is developing a mobile phone.

While Google USA spokeswoman didn’t clear the picture with her ambiguous statement. “Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide. However, we have nothing further to announce.”

Preparations

Google is partnering with Samsung and Orange to build this phone. It was evident in January when Google and Samsung entered into a partnership to pack the mobile versions of Google Maps, Search and G-Mail on some Samsung phones.

They have already made three acquisitions to obtain the technology and expertise and the skill to produce and strategize their product.

Google acquired a mobile software maker company called Andriod in 2005, and afterwards in 2006, Google acquired Reqwireless, a mobile application company. Skia was the third acquisition by Google. This Company produced Portable Graphics Engine that helps rendering 2D graphics on handheld devices.

Now collaborating with Samsung and Orange they are perhaps making a ground to SWITCH it on.

As of now the phone model is not known but here are a few guesses:




According to the present situation we can only speculate. The actual picture will take form in a few months.

Bang - A - Lore

Yesterday I received a forward from my friend which tells some good points about the Silicon Valley - Bangalore. Good things to know about the city, but I have stroked the words where I am not in agreement with, see what it says...

1. Bangalore has the impeccable record of highest growth within a span of 20 Years.
   
   
2. Bangalore has highest number of pubs in Asia.
   
   
3. Bangalore has highest number of cigarette smokers in India.
   
   
4. Bangalore has the highest number of software companies in India, around 212, followed by Hyderabad - 108, Pune - 97. Hence called the Silicon Valley of India.
   
   
5. Bangalore has 21 engineering colleges, which is highest in the world in a given city. Bangalore University has 57 Engineering colleges affiliated to it, which is highest in the world.
   
   
6. Bangalore is the only city in the world to have commercial and defense Airport operating from the same strip.
   
   
7. Bangalore has highest number of public sectors and government Organizations in India.
   
   
8. Bangalore University has highest number of students going abroad for higher studies taking the first place from IIT-Kanpur.
   
   
9. Bangalore has only 48% of local population (i.e.Kannadigas) .Hence a true cosmopolitan with around 25% Tamilians, 14% Telugites, 10% Keralites, 8% Europeans, and 6% a mixture of all races.
   
   
10. Bangalore police has the reputation of being second best in India after Delhi.
    
    
11. Bangalore has the highest density of traffic in India.
    
    
12. Bangalore has the highest number of 2-wheelers in the world.
    
    
13. Bangalore is considered the fashion capital of east comparable to Paris.
    
    
14. Bangalore has produced the maximum international sportsmen in India for all sports ahead of even Mumbai & Delhi.
    
    
15. Bangalore has produced the maximum number of scientists considered for Nobel Prize nominations.
    
    
16. Bangalore has produced the highest number of professionals in USA almost 60% of the Indian population abroad is from Bangalore (except Gulf).
    
    
17. Bangalore is famous for THREE: Software Professionals, Girls and Dogs.
    
    
18. Bangalore is famous for its dog bites, an average of 12 people are bitten by stray dogs per MINUTE somewhere in Bangalore!!!

Also, do remember, The Bangalore is now Bangaluru.

Adobe Kuler: Explore, Create & Share Colors

Sharing text and fotos are old stories, now you can share colors.

Here comes the first of its kind application from Adobe. Small, Light, Sweet and Flashy – The Adobe Kuler (say it Color) built in Flash and Actionscript 3.0 is a web based application which helps you create color themes for your websites and applications (or your DTP job, or just for fun, or your favorite color combos, or any thing else you can think of).

You can create and save them (If you have Adobe ID), share with other people, or keep them personal. Get inspire from themes of other users, or do something different.

A variety of color models are available to chose colors from, these include the RGB, CMYK and LAB, you can also find the HEX values of colors, so if you are in hurry to find a good color for you web you can get if from here.

Five modes have been provided to produce color themes - Analogous, Monochromatic, Triad, Complementary, Compound, Shades and Custom mode

All the modes have one base color.

In analogous mode, the base color is the center of the other four colors. On the color wheel you define positions of all five colors using their respective pointers, finally drag the base color point to get the color variations.

In Monochromatic mode, all the colors belong to the same hue, what can vary is the intensity.

Use Triad mode to produce themes of contrasting colors.

Top create a theme of opposite colors that complement each other being opposites, use Complementary theme.

In Compound mode, you can select colors from multiple hues.

Create nice shades of a single color using Shades mode.

All of the above modes can be customized using the Custom mode.

You can have 1 to 5 colors in a theme.

The color themes can also be downloaded as .ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) files that can be deployed in various Adobe products (up to CS versions but doesn’t work with CS2 products, this may be fixed in the later versions).

I am expecting to see a much more robust application in the upcoming versions.

Thank you Adobe!

System requirements for Kuler:
+ Adobe Flash Player 9.0.28.0+ (Win/Mac), 9.0.21.55+ (Lin)
+ Web browser
+ High speed internet recommended

Try it here:
http://kuler.adobe.com/

Kuler pics:

New skin for Microsoft website

Soon we will see the all new look Microsoft homepage that was awaited since a long time.

• Launched for testers at http://preview.microsoft.com


• As before it’s sprayed with Blue, but a nicer one this time.


• The background image looks like diluted ink flowing on the glass...


• With content images in opposite colours


• Navigation on top and the footer in black background gives a good control over the page


• Left navigation is already implemented as a trial in the current version…perhaps to test and to make people handy with this kind of “hovereading”. Needs less clicks and fit more content


• Will be finally launched probably in November, 06 or early January, 07


• And yes, the page is centralised this time


• The home page is 400Kb(11 Javascript files alone are contributing 30% of this)


• Lack of whiteness disturbs long readings…as it is one of the most visited websites, it should reserve some whiteness, especially behind the reading content...

But most likely, Microsoft will launch the final skin with some new inputs that were not present in the preview. Let’s see.

Here are a few snapshots: