Technical Bank

 Battery-powered e-cigarettes can do further injury than good, as they in fact contain injurious chemicals, experts claim. Two most important Greek researchers have advised consumers to discontinue using the devices until ongoing protection studies are reported back. The recognition of e-cigarettes has improved as consumers can inhale nicotine without tar, tobacco or carbon monoxide. Nevertheless, the US Food and Drug Administration have expressed anxiety after learning different brands delivered noticeably diverse amounts of nicotine vapor with every puff. They have detected traces of dominant cancer-causing chemicals as well. In addition, private enterprise Health New Zealand has found cancer-causing chemicals in the product. “The sparse facts indicate the existence of different toxic and carcinogenic compounds in e-cigarettes, although in possibly much lesser concentrations than in usual cigarettes,” the BBC News quoted the researchers as saying. In the meantime, a D...

Power users are the oft-adored geeks that everyone else looks up to; they do things that are seemingly complicated, they know what a proxy is, and they may or may not tweak with their neighbors unprotected wifi. Many desire to enter the Fraternity of Power Users, but few know where to start. If you’re a power user coming from a different operating system and want to get a foothold in Ubuntu, or if you’re an accomplished Ubuntu user looking to streamline your efficiency and workflow, these five tricks will take you to the next level. Save App Instance Let’s say that you have a dozen documents and spreadsheets open, as well as chat, a calculator, and a few other handy apps, when suddenly you need to leave your workstation. You’re left with two options: log out and have all of your programs close, or leave the station up and risk having your work messed with. The solution? Set Ubuntu to automatically restart any open applications from their last instance when you log back in. ...

            Posted via web from Madhav Joshi

Google’s strategy of empowering site developers and owners with free and valuable tools has proven to be effective in garnering a fair bit of geek love for the company. But this affinity to Google by technology enthusiasts is not without warrant—they really do make excellent products that can be instrumental in building, maintaining, and improving websites. What’s more, they’re all usually free.   Check out some of the best Google products for developing, analyzing, maintaining and tinkering with websites . 1. Google Chrome Developer Tools Most developers know the advantages and convenience of testing and debugging in a web browser. It’s this fact that has led to the popularity of browser add-ons such as Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar . Google Chrome, the latest major entry in the web browser market, has a robust, capable, intuitive, and downright helpful suite of tools geared for developers comparable to—and some might even argue, better than— web development tools ...

MacBooks have great battery life for a few reasons, including, but not limited to, GPU switching. However, as Ubergizmo discovered, when you run Windows 7 in Bootcamp the GPU stays on all the time, essentially sucking down battery like a fiend. The 2009 MBP also had issues – the screen was too bright and the keyboard backlight was always on – but otherwise there wasn’t much of a problem. However, with the GPU always on you move most rendering from the power-sipping processor to the power-sucking NVIDIA GeForce 330M. Sad, but true. But what are you running Windows 7 for anyway? Quicken? Posted via web from Madhav Joshi

Verizon officially adds the HTC Droid Incredible Android device to its Droid lineup . The Incredible is HTC’s latest Android device, which runs the Android 2.1 OS with HTC Sense UI , Friend Stream for unified Flickr, Facebook and Twitter updates and “Leap” view for quick access to all seven home screen panels. Powered by Qualcomm SnapDragon 1GHz processor with 512MB RAM and 512MB ROM, the HTC Droid Incredible gets a 3.6-inch razor-shape 480×800 AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, a 8 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash, an optical joystick for navigation, and dedicated touch-sensitive Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons. The phone features also integrated GPS, WiFi 802.11b/g connectivity, 3.5mm headset jack, proximity sensor, light sensor and digital compass. Verizon Wireless will release HTC Droid Incredible on 29 April 2010 and the price will be $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Posted via web from Madhav Joshi

I find it interesting to think of how products we interact with everyday could be improved if they were able to wirelessly exchange data with other such products. Members of the Bluetooth SIG doing similar thought exercises results in many of the great products you currently use and ones which will be available in the near future. The other interesting wireless enhancement which has seemed out of reach is power. There have been advancements in power mat type products that typically use inductive charging. This type of setup which would allow one to charge their mobile phone, headset, etc by placing it on the mat without having to "plug" the device in to the power adapter. I thought this was about as wireless as power was going to get until I visited the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Tokyo. There, I was told of a project they are working on dubbed "Wall outlet-free houses" to deliver power throughout the house. If such a vision is realiza...

Having a camera built into your phone isn't a big deal anymore. But when you combine that camera with the rich software applications that run on devices like the iPhone and Android, you get lots of cool new ways to put your cameraphone to good use. Cameraphones are becoming a form of digital photographic memory, helping you remember what level you parked on or the label on that fantastic bottle of wine. Now, with the right apps, you can also use your phone to scan barcodes and store them, and even translate and recognize text. Google Goggles is a brand new application for Android phones that lets you search the web with an image. You just point your phone at an artwork, a book, DVD, or CD cover, a landmark, or a logo, and Goggles will return search results for that item. You can even point your phone at someone's business card, and Goggles can automatically add that person's name, address, phone number, email address and web site to your address book. Eventually, Gog...

This post is part of our ReadWriteCloud channel, which is dedicated to covering virtualization and cloud computing. The channel is sponsored by Intel and VMware . As you're planning your Cloud Architecture, check out this helpful resource from our sponsors: Using a Data Center Relocation To Create A Virtual Infrastructure . Cloud computing creates enough disruptions for small businesses that it seems almost folly when we hear some of the stories we do. We heard one story about an IT department that said that the company could not afford to have more people accessing the Internet. Yes, the Internet is too expensive for small business. Maybe it's time to scrap the dial up? Cloud computing is one of those classic disruptions to a business that over time becomes part of the fabric for a how a company operates. You can either get into it now and be a leader or wait and join with the rest of the masses. That's not to say going with the masses is a bad thing. Every...

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) relocates its data centers to North Carolina. Instead of relocating 250 servers, they leverage the opportunity to create a virtual infrastructure using Intel and VMware technology. Using the Opportunity of a Data Center Relocation To Create A Virtual Infrastructure                                                                     Posted via web from Madhav Joshi

Exactly 24 hours ago I received my iPad, from an anonymous courier, at Amsterdam Airport. I have been working with it non-stop ever since. And I love it.   I love it so much that I left my MacBook pro at home today and am only using my iPad to do work. Yes, I’m writing this post in the Wordpress iPad app on my iPad. But the iPad isn’t all roses and sunshine. There are some bugs, strange effects, missing features and annoyances. I’m not even taking about no Flash or USB ports. We already knew those were missing. This is all new and fresh shit.   For all ya haters out there here is my “top 10 things that suck on the iPad”. 1: You can’t hover Sounds obvious but is kinda annoying on a lot of websites. One example: on twitter.com the retweet and reply buttons aren’t visible unless you hover over the tweet, which isn’t possible with a touchscreen. 2: Lots of HTML rendering issues A lot of websites don’t render well. Not just small ones but big ones too. On the ri...

Running Windows 7? Want to get that first service pack before everyone else does? Good news, it just leaked. At least one early build of it called “6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053″ is out an about on your favorite torrent website for download. That is probably illegal, and The Next Web does not condone piracy, but it is there if you have no such legal qualms. The service pack was announced back in the middle of March, with no date for its release. Of course, this leak was not the intended release date, but it is nice to see the progress so far. So, just what  is on this service pack? According to Microsoft: For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 . Of course, once the real hackers get their hands into...

Lets loose from the Code Zoo elePHPants have been spotted all over world, roaming and looking for an Apache pasture to graze on. They were seen in November in Munich, Barcelona in October, in Rio de Janeiro in July and is supposedly due to be seen at the Business Design Centre in London on Friday 26th February 2010. If you spot an elePHPant near you then take a snap and post up on the net at the elePHPant Flickr group . Brazil: Belgium: Germany: USA: Psychedelic elePHPant: They're breeding! Now they are marching! Posted via web from Madhav Joshi

Google's toolbar PageRank has not been updated for nearly six months now. This in itself is not unique and we know that this year is to see significant changes to Google search (Caffeine update) which gives an explanation to the delay. However, there are now quotes circulating from Google employees stating that the public PageRank metric is dead. Susan Moskwa on Google’s webmaster forums said: We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on Pagerank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. I have opinionated on discussion forums in the past that Google would never close down their PageRank to webmasters and the SEO community as all that would happen is that another company would create their own metric syst...