How to Make Your Wired Printer Wireless

Your laptop and desktop computers are connected over a Wi-Fi network but you still need a physical USB cable to connect your wired printer to one of these computers.

If you find your existing setup a bit inconvenient and are looking for ways that will help you print documents from the same printer but wirelessly, here are some choices.

Turn any Wired Printer into a Wireless Network Printer

More new printers these days are network enabled so you can just attach them to your home network using the Ethernet port (or over Wi-Fi) and print from any other computer in the home network. However, if you are using an old USB based printer, you can use a wireless print server to turn that wired printer into a wireless one.

Wireless print servers are small devices (they look like mini routers) that have a USB port. You just have to connect the printer to this wireless print server using a regular USB cable and the printer will then become available to all other computers in your wireless network.

netgear WGPS606 – This is both a wireless print server and a wired router. It has two USB ports so you may use the device for sharing up to two printers over the wireless network. The same print server can also help you connect four different computers to the network even if they are not fitted with wireless network adapters. Costs around $60.

Linksys Print Server – This wireless print server from Cisco makes it easy to access all the functions of your all-in-one printer over the wireless network. The Print Server can connect most USB based multifunction printers to your network using an Ethernet cable or Wireless-G. The print function works like any other print server but for scanning or copying, a user can request exclusive use of that function until his task is complete. Costs around $80.

HP Wireless Kit – If you like to turn your wired HP printer into a wireless one, the HP Wireless Printing Kit could be a good choice as it integrates fully with all features of your printer, including print, scan, and fax. It comes with a USB transmitter that you need to insert into the computer for wireless printing. The advantage is that you can print wirelessly even if you don’t have a wireless network. Requires Windows and costs around $75.

If you don’t have a wireless network at your place, you can consider getting a Bluetooth adapter for your printer. You need to attach the Bluetooth dongle to your computer and print wirelessly though the range will obviously be limited. Check your printer manufacturer’s site if they provide a Bluetooth adapter for your printer model.

Should You Buy a Wireless Print Server?

Before you invest in a wireless print server for your printer, consider this.

Today, most multifunction printers include wireless capabilities and can therefore connect directly to your wireless network without any additional hardware. Some of these printers are available in the $100 range. With this in mind, does it make more sense to purchase a new printer instead of buying a wireless print server for your existing printer?

Here are some possible scenarios:

• If your current printer is relatively new and you paid more than $100 for it, then it may be more economical for you to simply purchase a wireless print server instead of purchasing an entirely new printer with the same features.
• If a wireless printer in not available in your area, you can buy a regular USB based wired printer and get someone to ship you a wireless print server. This would incur less shipping costs than ordering a wireless printer.
• Some wireless print servers can be used as wireless routers. If you do not have a wireless router at your place, you can opt for a wireless print server as it will not only turn your printer wireless but you also get to setup a wireless home network.

The Best Twitter Apps for your Mobile Phone

If you try accessing Twitter from the browser of a mobile phone, Twitter will automatically serve you the mobile-optimized version of their site. However, if in case Twitter fails to recognize your smartphone, you can manually type m.twitter.com to directly access the mobile site of Twitter from your phone.

The Best Mobile Applications for Twitter

Now that’s one way to use Twitter from your mobile phone. You also have a wide variety of mobile apps for Twitter that not only offer a much better experience than Twitter’s mobile site but they also integrate with some of your phone functions like the built-in camera. Have a look!

1. Twitter Apps for BlackBerry

1a. OpenBreak – Originally known as TwitterBerry, OpenBreak is one of the most popular Twitter apps for BlackBerry. You can take a picture with your BlackBerry camera and directly post it to Twitter via TwitPic or yfrog using TwitterBerry.

The app will automatically recognize #hashtags in the tweets and a notification icon will show you the number of new messages in your Twitter timeline just like your BlackBerry displays notifications for unread emails or missed calls.

1b. UberTwitter – Another popular Twitter client for BlackBerry, UberTwitter is location-aware so it can automatically update your location based on the cell tower information even if your BlackBerry phone doesn’t support GPS (like Google Latitude). The latest beta of UberTwitter also includes support for Twitter Lists.

1c. Seesmic – With Seesmic, you can track all your saved searches and Twitter lists inside your BlackBerry phone. Just like most other BlackBerry apps, Seesmic can run in the background and notify you of new direct messages and @replies via the famililar notification icons.

2. Twitter Apps for Nokia Phones

2a. Tweets60 – As the name suggests, Tweets60 is a native Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones that is available in both free and pro versions. This application is primarily for users who just want to quickly update their own status on Twitter as well as follow what their other friends are saying on Twitter.

The pro version supports additional features like the ability to post images to TwitPic and follow search terms on Twitter.

2b. Gravity – Gravity is a hugely popular and powerful Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones. With Gravity, you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, save links from tweets to your delicious account, post pictures to any of the Twitter-friendly photo sharing site like TwitPic of YFrog and it obviously supports all the other Twitter functions like retweets, direct messages, favorites, etc.

You can download a 10-day trial version of Gravity from the Ovi Store.

2c. Snaptu – Snaptu is an all-in-one application that lets you manage your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and even your Google Picasa account from the mobile phone. Snaptu’s Twitter application provides all the basic Twitter functionality – status updates, direct messages, @replies – while their Facebook component lets you update statuses and you can also read and write messages using Facebook email.

Snaptu works with any Java-enabled mobile phone including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola models.

3. Twitter Apps for Windows Mobile

3a. Tiny Twitter – This is a free Twitter application for Windows Mobile that provides all the basic Twitter functionality. One of the unique features in Tiny Twitter is that you can temporarily suspend a Twitter user so that his tweets won’t appear in your timeline though he would still remain in your follow list.

3b. PockeTwit – This is another popular Twitter client for Windows Mobile with support for multiple accounts. You can take a picture from your camera and post it directly to Twitter via PockeTwit. The application features a nice sliding interface so you can drag the tweets to the left to see all the actions that you can take on that tweet. PockeTwit is free and open-source.

3c. Twikini – The app integrates with Windows Media Player so you can tweet the name of the song that you are currently listening to. Twikini can shrink URLs using Bit.ly or TinyURL so you have more space for text and it also displays Twitpic images inline. If you have a GPS enabled mobile phone, you can also add your location to the tweet with Twikini. The app costs $4.95 though a 14-day trial is available for free.

4. Twitter Apps for Android Phones

4a. Twidroid – This is probably the most popular Twitter app for Android phones – the basic version is free but you’ll have to get the PRO version in case you want to manage multiple Twitter accounts from the same application.

Twidroid supports all features of Twitter including Twitter lists. You can shake your Android phone to fetch the latest tweets but this again requires the pro edition.

4b. Seesmic – With Seesmic for Android, you can capture photos or record videos and share them on directly Twitter via yFrog. The app will also let you share you current location on Twitter. You can configure Seemic to notify you with a custom ringtone (or a blinking light) when there’s a new @reply or direct message for you on Twitter.

5. Twitter Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch

5a. Tweetdeck – TweetDeck is a brilliant application that you may use to manage both Facebook and your multiple Twitter accounts from the iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app will automatically sync with TweetDeck Desktop so if you have created any custom search columns on the desktop, they’ll also become available inside the mobile app (and vice-versa). Just shake your iPhone to check if there are any new updates.

5b. Tweetie – This $3 app is one of the most popular Twitter client for iPhone with a very impressive UI. There’s an offline mode so you can do things like reading past tweets, following new people, replying to tweets, etc. even without a data connection. You also get a bookmarklet that lets you post links from Safari directly to Twitter via the Tweetie app.

5c. Twittelator – One of the unique features of Twittelator is that it lets you record and tweet both audio and video clips from your iPhone. You can even tweet the name of the song that’s currently playing on your iPhone. The basic version of Twittelator is available for free on the iTunes store.

5d. Echofon – This is light-weight Twitter client for the iPhone that is free and supports nearly all the basic function of Twitter. The $5 pro version of Echofon supports push notifications so you’ll get an alert when another Twitter user sends you a direct message or mentions you in his or her tweet.

More ways to use Twitter on mobile phones

If you can’t find a decent Twitter application for your mobile phone, you should check out Dabr. This is like an improved version of Twitter’s mobile site.

Dabr will display a more detailed profile of Twitter users so you can quickly decide whether or not to follow a particular user. It will auto-convert Twitpic and other picture URLs into thumbnails so you can view images directly in your Twitter timeline without having to click the click. And since Dabr is a mobile website, you can use it from just about any mobile phone, not just a smartphone.

Another option is email. Just associate your Twitter account with Posterous and then you’ll be able to post updates on Twitter by sending emails to twitter@posterous.com. Whatever you put in the email subject will be converted into your Twitter status.

This email to twitter option will be quite handy if your phone plan allows unlimited email but you need to pay for every extra byte that you download on the phone (lot of BlackBerry plans are like this).

PowerOne: This iPhone App Builds iPhone Apps

Elia Freedman used to have it made. He was a mobile app developer in the days of the Palm Pilot and he scored bundling deals that got his sophisticated calculator software into the hands of more than 15 million people. Differentiating his product from competitors "wasn't something we had to deal with for years," he says, because of the favored position his app got in pre-loaded bundles.

Now those days are gone. Today Freedman's PowerOne Professional Calculator ($5.99 in iTunes) was accepted into the very crowded iTunes App Store, where competition for visibility is fierce. Freedman's strategy: PowerOne now focuses on being a tool-building app. Template creation for complex custom calculators in sales, medical, real estate and other markets is what the app is all about. He says he wants to solve the "there's not an App for that" problem that many professionals experience when they try to use their iPhones at work.

Calculators: Not Just For Nerds Anymore

Our phones are becoming increasingly capable of finding meaning from and adding value to more types of data than most of us could have imagined just a few years ago. Our physical location, the direction we're facing, our proximity to other peoples' phones and soon the temperature our phone finds itself in are all fields of data that have become platforms for developers to build usable tools on top of.

Now imagine training your phone to perform the complex calculations that you need while out in the field for your unique occupation, just by entering new spreadsheet-style functions into a program and saving them as a template.

Freedman says he's talked with a crash-test engineer who finds the custom calculator he's built with PowerOne far more useful than carrying a clip board. Commercial real-estate agents in the field with clients have standard operations they can perform, but often have to pull out and enter printed formulae that slow them down and introduce a risk of error. There are millions of equations used in the medical industry, and miscalculation by nurses, doctors and pharmacists cost a shocking number of people their lives. Put the particular equations they need into their hands along with the ability to easily run equations on the fly in the field, and it could be a changed experience for all kinds of people. A phone you can train to perform the specific calculations you need in the field is a smart phone. A calculator app that helps you build calculator apps is very meta.

Possible Next Steps

Freedman says he's working on developing a more robust Web-based back end where users can share the templates. (Right now he's making-do with a GetSatisfaction page for sharing.)

He's hoping to enable a feature where organizations can push out formulae and updates to multiple users. These kinds of social features and network effects could increase the value of the service substantially, but remain a separate challenge to implement effectively. A marketplace for reselling custom-developed equation templates? Freedman says he's been contacted by multiple people inquiring about just that.

Could PowerOne function like a social, mobile, customizable version of Wolfram|Alpha? That seems like one possibility as well.

The app comes today with more than 50 pre-built templates, some quite sophisticated. Calculation results can easily be emailed to yourself or a client.

A customizable, mobile, computation application is a great example of the kind of lightweight platform that will come in handy in an increasingly data-centric future. That's the kind of development that makes this era of mobile applications so much more exciting than the old days of bundled incumbents, no matter how good that period was for Elia Freedman. You've got to hand it to him, though - his new iPhone app is thought provoking relative to the challenges of the day.

Google Hackers Targeted Source Code of More Than 30 Companies

A hack attack that targeted Google in December also hit 33 other companies, including financial institutions and defense contractors, and was aimed at stealing source code from the companies, say security researchers at iDefense.

The hackers used a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader to deliver malware to many of the companies and were in some cases successful at siphoning the source code they sought, according to a statement distributed Tuesday by iDefense, a division of VeriSign. The attack was similar to one that targeted other companies last July, the company said.

A spokeswoman for iDefense wouldn’t name any of the other companies that were targeted in the recent attack, except Adobe.

Adobe acknowledged Tuesday in a blog post that it discovered Jan. 2 that it had been the target of a “sophisticated, coordinated attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe and other companies.”

The company didn’t say whether it was a victim of the same attack that struck Google. But Adobe’s announcement came just minutes after Google revealed that it had been the target of a “highly sophisticated” hack attack originating in China in December.

Neither Google nor Adobe provided details about how the hacks occurred. Google said only that the hackers were able to steal unspecified intellectual property from it, and that they had focused their attack on obtaining access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists who were involved in China rights issues.

But according to iDefense, whose customers include some of the 33 companies that were hacked, the attacks were well targeted and “unusually sophisticated” and aimed at grabbing source code from several hi-tech companies based in Silicon Valley as well as financial institutions and defense contractors.

The hackers gained access to the company networks by sending targeted e-mails to employees, some of which contained a malicious PDF attachment. The malicious code exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe’s Reader application.

Zero day vulnerabilities are security flaws in software for which there is currently no patch. Adobe announced in mid-December that a new zero-day vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat programs was being actively targeted by attackers. The company made the announcement after security researchers not affiliated with Adobe discovered attacks being conducted against the vulnerability. Adobe patched the critical vulnerability only on Tuesday this week.

In the recent attack on some of the companies, once a recipient clicked on the malicious PDF attachment, a backdoor Trojan program called Trojan.Hydraq was installed on their machine in the form of a Windows DLL, according to iDefense.

IDefense says that when Google discovered malware on its systems in December, it found that the code was communicating with a server set up to receive information stolen from the targeted companies.

“It was configured in such a way that it was able to receive a massive amount of data being exfiltrated to it,” says an iDefense spokeswoman who asked not to be named.

Google was able to determine, by examining the server, that the hackers had struck numerous other companies, she said. Google said in its Tuesday announcement that 20 other companies had been hacked. But iDefense found evidence that at least 33 were targeted.

The recent attacks bear a strong resemblance to another attack that occurred in July 2009, which targeted about 100 IT companies, iDefense says. In that earlier attack, the hackers also sent targeted e-mail to companies with a malicious PDF attachment, but it’s unclear how successful that attack was.

According to Ryan Olson, an analyst for iDefense, the attacks in July and December targeted different vulnerabilities. The one in July affected Adobe’s Reader, Acrobat and Flash applications, which it patched Jul. 30. The vulnerability the hackers are believed to have used in December also affected Reader and Acrobat.

iDefense obtained samples of the malicious codes used in the July attack and the more recent one and found that although the malware was different in the two attacks, the programs both communicated with similar command-and-control servers. The servers each used the HomeLinux DynamicDNS to change their IP address, and both currently point to IP addresses belonging to a subset of addresses owned by Linode, a U.S.-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting.

“The IP addresses in question are … six IP addresses apart from each other,” iDefense said in its statement. “Considering this proximity, it is possible that the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the [recent] Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July.”

Olson told Threat Level that the attackers are “incredibly good” at finding new exploits and infecting the right people but that nothing he’d seen in the malware indicated they were above average in writing malicious code.

“The sophistication here is all about the fact they were able to target the right people using a previously unknown vulnerability,” he says.

The iDefense spokeswoman told Threat Level that her company waited a week to disclose details about the attack until after Google went public with the news that it had been hacked. She said it’s her understanding that Google’s source code was targeted in the hack attack.

Google declined to publicly discuss the details of iDefense’s report.

Adobe’s announcement didn’t discuss specifically whether hackers had stolen its source code but said that it had “no evidence to indicate that any sensitive information — including customer, financial, employee or any other sensitive data — has been compromised” in the attack

WALLY - wallpaper randomizer for windows

Wally is a wallpaper randomizing tool for Windows. OK, that really is a fancy name for wallpaper changer. Wally can tap into several image libraries and automatically download pictures from them and display them on your desktop as wallpapers. Currently, Wally supports Picasa, Flickr, Bing, Yahoo, Buzznet, pike, Panoramio, and some more. When you add one of those services, you can only search for images. You can't really have Wally look for a specific group of images or your own account, or at least it is not evident that you can. So for example, I activated Photobucket and Yahoo and used a simple search: "iMac." So, when I started the application it showed a nice picture of an iMac as a wallpaper on my desktop. I also activated the feature to show information about images on the right of the screen, which tells me from what website the image is pulled and who is the owner of it, along with its title.

By default images get changed every 2 minutes but you can change that to as low as 10 seconds or as high as hours. Wally can be told to launch along with the system and start automatically changing wallpapers. It also has a feature that I really like in such an application. It can download pictures that you use for your wallpapers onto your disk. So, it actually doubles as a Flickr downloader, for example. The application works on most platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS X, and many Linux distributions.
Download: http://www.becrux.com/pages/projects/wally/WallySetup-2.3.0.exe

TweakMASTER

TweakMASTER is a revolutionary Internet Optimizer, now available for free registration. TweakMASTER promotes faster Internet download speeds by carefully and intelligently tweaking numerous key Windows settings to provide a substantially faster Internet experience. It is easy to use and requires no special computer knowledge. No matter what speed you connect at or what other utilities you may have tried, nothing will provide a FASTER Internet connection for you than TweakMASTER... guaranteed!

TweakMASTER can substantially improve your download speeds for all types of connections from dialup to DSL, Cable, and Wireless. Even AOL users will be amazed at how much more responsive their system will be! Supports Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP plus AOL. No other utility can make that claim and deliver!

TweakMASTER was developed by the network engineers at Hagel Technologies utilizing the vast Windows experience of InfiniSource.com and Windows-Help.NET. More than merely adjusting registry settings, TweakMASTER also includes an innovative DNS Accelerator to help websites load faster, a handy PC clock synchronization utility, ISP Disconnect Prevention, Traceroute, Ping and Whois utilities, and a network connections viewer.

Using TweakMASTER's simple Wizard, even total computer novices can instantly improve their download speeds. Advanced users will appreciate the wide range of options & advanced features, making this the most configurable and effective Internet Optimizer available today. TweakMASTER can easily double your download speeds and make 'Surfing the Internet' a far more enjoyable experience.

Download: http://dl.hageltech.com/TweakMASTER-Install.exe

Sony unveils eco-friendly notebook, Vaio W series:

sony unveiled a mini notebook computer aimed at the heart of environmentalists.

vaio W series notebooks have chassis made of plastic consisting of about 20% recycled

compact disks and will be shipped in a "stylish reusable" carrying cases made from recycled plastic bottles.

"The W series is so green it doesn't have a printed manual", sony president Stan Glasgow said at the consumer

Electronics show in Las Vegas.

"Sony is out to lower the power consumption of products and greenhouse gas emissions at its facilities."

Vaio W series machines were billed by Sony as ideal "secondary" personal computers for light tasks, internet browsing, and online social networking. The notebooks have high-definition, 10.1-inch screens and hard drives with 250 GB. Vaio W notebooks come in 'sugar white' but the interiors are, naturally, green.

Google Chrome OS may be security hotspot in 2010

Google's Chrome OS will be "poked" by hackers in 2010, in large part because it will be the "new kid on the block," a security researcher predicted today.

Chrome OS will be targeted by attackers, probably even before it's officially released, said Sam Masiello, the director of threat management at antivirus vendor McAfee.

"It'll be the new kid on the block, that's one of the primary drivers why we think cybercriminals will target Chrome OS," said Masiello. "The same thing happened to Windows Vista and Windows 7, even before they were finished. Since Chrome OS is new, it's going to be of interest to security researchers, and it's going to be poked by cybercriminals as well."

Google's operating system wasannounced in July and released as open-source in November, but is not slated to be available on netbooks until late in 2010.

Another reason hackers will likely target Chrome OS is its reliance on HTML 5, the still-unfinished revision of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that aims to replace the current crop of rich media plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight, with advanced features developers can build right into sites.

HTML 5 also supports offline Web applications, where traditionally online services and software can be accessed when users are not connected to the Internet. "As we move toward the advent of rich Internet applications, the lines are blurring between online and offline," said Masiello. "Cybercriminals will be able to attack users when they're offline, as well as on."

Other Google software will make a name for itself -- and not in a good way -- during the coming year, said Masiello. Google Wave, the search giant's collaboration and communication software, may be the perfect tool for controlling a botnet, or collection of already-compromised computers.

"Google Wave uses XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), which provides application-to-application control for Web apps," Masiello said. "It could be used for truly decentralized command-and-control of a botnet, so a take-down of a single ISP or hosting company would have zero impact."

But although McAfee sounded the alarm about Chrome OS, HTML 5 and Google Wave, Masiello acknowledged that 2010 will probably be limited to proof-of-concept exploits or a low level of activity, seeing as how Chrome won't appear until later in the year and HTML 5 is still unfinished. "With HTML5 and Google, we still have some time," he said.

Sharing on Facebook vs. Sharing on Twitter

Facebook has a much larger user base than Twitter and therefore it is obvious that more content gets shared through Facebook than on Twitter.

Now the next important question — what happens after you share a web page (or an image or a video) on these social sites. Who is more likely to check the link that you just shared – your Twitter friends or your Facebook contacts?

Twitter users click more..

According to ShareThis, while only 5% of the content-sharing activity happens on Twitter (compared to 33% on Facebook), Twitter users are more likely to click on shared links than Facebook users (see graph A).

This however doesn’t mean that Twitter users are more engaging – they have no other choice but to visit the shared page because the short URLs that they see inside the tweets rarely say anything about the destination. Facebook users, on the other hand, get to see image thumbnails and page excerpts in the share itself so they can better decide whether or not to visit the destination page.

..but Facebook users will spend more time

The other interesting part is that if a person lands on your site through Facebook, he will explore your site in greater detail than someone coming from Twitter. In numbers, a visitor from Twitter will check 1.66 pages on your site (average) while a Facebook user will spend more time checking out 2.76 pages.

Android, iPhone, BlackBerry: Which OS is best for app development?

Let's say that you're a software developer who has created a hot new application forsmartphones that you're certain is about to take the world by storm. Your work isn't quite done and here's the problem: not only will your brilliant and innovative application have to compete with several other applications that have similar ambitions, but it will have to compete with them over multiple platforms.

With so many different mobile operating systems on the market right now, it can be daunting for an upstart software developer to make a name for itself.

Not surprisingly, there's no one solution for software developers looking to thrive in the mobile application business. Every operating system has different strengths and weaknesses and something to offer developers. Take the iPhone's operating system, which has consistently received praise from users for its ease of use and for hosting an applications store that has well over 100,000 apps to choose from. While this operating systems sounds like a dream for many developers, some have said that the sheer number of apps they have to compete with has made the going tough.

"The iPhone is easier to develop for than other operating systems, but harder to make money on," says Paul Reddick, the CEO of software developer Handmark, which specializes in making mobile news applications. "Even though it's relatively easy to get your app onto the App Store, it's not easy when you have 100,000 people that you're rubbing shoulders with. So the key thing is to figure out how get yourself discovered."

Of course, the fact that so many developers want to make applications for the iPhone is more a sign of its success than of weakness. Additionally, some developers say that the device's uniform screen size makes creating applications for it a relative breeze. So while an application designed for BlackBerry or Android devices might have to be tweaked to fit different screen sizes, an app for the iPhone operating system will only have to fit into the iPhone's screen.

"The iPhone's biggest strength from a developer's standpoint is that it's one size fits all," says Keith Pichelman, CEO for Concrete Software, a company that specializes in developing popular games such as Sid Meier's Pirates for mobile platforms. "Those are the big challenges for all the other platforms that have wide variations in screen size."

However, Pichelman says that the operating system that his company has most enjoyed working with so far has been that of the BlackBerry. (See: Best BlackBerry apps of 2009.) The best part, he says, has been the helpfulness of Research in Motion, which he says gives Concrete specific guidelines for how to get their apps approved and up on BlackBerry App World.

"They have been extremely helpful with tech contacts and with public relations contacts and it's been that way for years now," he says. "I would love to see Apple take a similar approach. From the outside view they're doing really well but it's just tough from our point of view working with them sometimes where we don't know what they're going to approve and not approve."

Shari Hoffman, the sales and marketing spokesperson for developer DataViz, shares Pichelman's view that RIM is very helpful toward application developers and says that BlackBerry is the only operating system where DataViz's Documents to Go mobile office suite comes complimentarily on the devices.

"RIM is great to work with at the primary level, and while I can't comment on what it's like working with them on the technical and development side, we haven't heard any complaints about them," she says.

Reddick, however, says that while RIM does a good job of maintaining relationships with developers, BlackBerry's operating system itself can present challenges to developers. For one thing he says that it can be difficult to make a single application that is interoperable with the wide variety of BlackBerry devices.

"BlackBerry is not the easiest operating system to develop for since there are so many different versions of the OS," he says. "So writing things that will work on one device doesn't mean that they will work on others. Something that works on the Tour isn't guaranteed to work on the Bold."

The big wild card to hit the mobile operating system market this year, however, has been Android. Because Google's mobile operating system is open source, any developer can access its source code and create apps without getting a license from Google. Additionally, developers say that it's a breeze to get your application on the Android Market, as Google does not act as a gatekeeper for which applications it allows. Rather, Google allows all apps onto the store and only removes inappropriate apps after they are posted.

Ilya Eliashevsky, the product manager for DataViz's Android product line, says that Android provides a lot of different advantages for smaller developers because it lets developers simply post their app on the store and wait for the money to roll in if it catches a lot of peoples' eyes.

"We created an account, uploaded our apps and then hit submit," he says. "Then the app just started showing up on devices and we saw sales immediately starting to roll in."

Looking more toward the future, Reddick thinks that these features will make Android a major player in attracting Web developers due to its open source structure and the fact that it's started to appear on a large range of devices over the past year.

"I can see Android having a lot of success in the future because it's an open operating system that's going to run across a lot larger range of devices from different manufacturers," he says. "It's beginning to get momentum from the developer community as well… Right now if I were developing an app with the goal of getting near-term cash I would make sure to get it out on BlackBerry and the iPhone, but if I'm going after long-term growth I'd go with Android."

Twitter: All Developers Will Get Access to the Firehose in Early 2010

At LeWeb today, Ryan Sarver, Twitter's Director of Platform, took the state during the morning session. He stressed that Twitter needs the developer ecosystem if it wants to continue to grow. Sarver also announced that Twitter will give all developers access to the full firehose feed in early 2010. In addition, Twitter will also soon launch a new developer site, increase the rate limit for services that use OAuth and launch a new API for browser-less apps.

Walking through the history of Twitter, Sarver noted that the core value of Twitter is openness. The first Twitter application was written in January 2007. There are now over 50,000 application in Twitter's ecosystem. This, Sarver notes, shows how developers can use simple APIs to create rich experiences.

Sarver also noted that 50% of the company's traffic now happens on partner sites and through applications. For Twitter, according to Sarver, it's all about growing the market and building out the ecosystem. Throughout the keynote, Sarver stressed that Twitter can only be as successful as long as its developers are successful.

Sarver pointed out 3 companies that have manged to monetize Twitter: CoTweet, OneRiotand TweetMeme.

Coming Up: More Transparency, Improved Communication and a Business Model

Going forward, Twitter wants to offer even better tools for third-party developers in its ecosystem. Twitter wants to be more transparent with its developers and improve its communication. In addition, the company wants to improve the utility of its API. Twitter also plans to announce a business model that allows it to share in the success of its partners.

Everybody Gets Access to the Firehose

Most importantly, Twitter is opening up the firehose of tweets to all developers. Sarver didn't announce any details, but this is obviously a very important move as it will give more developers the ability to build applications that need real-time access to every tweet without having to get Twitter's permission.

Soon, developers who use OAuth will be able to ping Twitter more often than services that still use Twitter's old authentication mechanism. Twitter will soon deprecate its old non-OAuth authentication mechanisms. In addition, Twitter will launch an API for browser-less apps.

Twitter also plans to launch a new developers site to educate its developers and will soon host its first developers conference.

How to Cross-Check Your Facebook Privacy Settings

If you log in to Facebook today, the site will prompt you to review and update your existing privacy settings.

Basically you need to tell Facebook what parts of your profile should be visible to your friends, friends of friends, to search engines and to stalkers or people who aren’t connected with you yet.

Double Check your Facebook Privacy Settings

Now that you have updated your Facebook privacy settings, you should try looking at your own profile from the eyes of your friends, strangers and search engines to make sure that none of the information you want to keep private on Facebook is visible to other people.

Privacy Check A: For people outside your friend circle

A person may not be your friend but if he is logged into Facebook, he can possibly see some bits of your Facebook profile even though you not connected with each other.

Log into your Facebook account and follow this link to instantly know how your profile might look to other people on Facebook who are not your friends.

Privacy Check B: For search engines

The best way to find out how search engines will see your Facebook profile is through their cache. Go to google.com and copy-paste the full vanity URL of your Facebook profile into the Google search box.

Unless your account is very new*, your Facebook page will likely be the first result on Google for such a query (see example). Just open the "Cached" page and you’ll get a pretty good idea about how other people see through search engines.

[*] The cached information is only as new as the last visit of Googlebot. Therefore, if you have recently changed any privacy setting, rather than waiting for Google to index your public page, you can simply log out of Facebook and open the vanity URL directly in your browser to know what’s visible in search results.

Privacy Check C: For existing Facebook friends

Follow the same link but this time, type the name of any of your existing Facebook friends and you’ll instantly know how your profile appears to that particular person.

After you run your Facebook profile through these three simple checks, you can at least be sure that you aren’t accidentally exposing any private information on Facebook that you don’t want to.

The Best Performing Banner Sizes for AdSense

Google AdSense can provide banners ads in eight standard sizes but if you are not too sure which of these sizes will perform best on your website, read this.

The graph below shows relative click rates (CTR) for all the standard banner ad sizes (relative to the classic "full banner") and as is obvious from the picture, the ad performance or click through rates are much better for larger ad units.

If you are using a medium 300x250 rectangle format on your site, it may be a good idea to do some split testing (for say a week) and then probably replace that unit with a large 336x280 rectangle. Similarly, try squeezing in a wide skyscraper in place of that 120x600 Skyscraper that you may be having on your site.

And while it is easy to include a 728x90 Leaderboard in almost every site design, make sure that it is not the first unit in your HTML source as it is not always the best performing unit.

Another interesting point here is that the 125x125 square ad format, which is now quite popular among the blogger community, seems to attract lower clicks than even the 468x60 banner of the "geocities era" so your advertisers may not be feeling very happy about this.

The AdSense support site also suggests something very similar:

The formats we’ve found to be the most effective are the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper.

Also, wider ad formats tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. The wider ad format also lessens the likelihood of readers leaving the ad unit altogether.

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Google turns on real-time search

Users will get the option to view up-to-the minute results from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

As it promised in October, Google has now started to add search results in real-time to its engine, giving end-users the option of seeing relevant links that have just been added to its index.

The move is an acknowledgement by Google of the increasing importance of providing literally up-to-the-minute results in its engine, as end-users have found value in searching through messages and status updates posted to microblogging and social-networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. In fact, these three companies have struck deals with Google for this initiative, feeding the search engine posts, status updates and other content that people and organizations have labeled as public.

"Google's real-time search is Google's relevance technology meeting the real-time Web," said Amit Singhal, Google fellow, at a press event the company held in San Francisco that was also webcast.

"Relevance is the foundation of this product. It's relevance, relevance, relevance. There's so much information being generated out there, that getting to you relevant information is the key to success of a product like this. That's where we as Google come in, because for 11 years that's what we have done," he added.

Bing, Microsoft's competing search engine, unveiled real-time search features in October, primarily focused on Twitter results, with plans to expand its scope. Yahoo is also making moves in this area.

Google's real-time results won't be limited to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. They will include results from other social networks, blogs and news outlets as well.

Google had to develop more than 12 new technologies to power real-time search, which requires monitoring more than 1 billion fast-changing pages and documents.

Google will roll out this real-time search functionality gradually to users over the coming days. For now, it will be available only for English-language results.

When real-time becomes available to them, users will see a section in the results labeled "latest results." This will open up a section right on the search results page with relevant items scrolling in as they become available.

There will also be a specific menu option to filter results down only to real-time ones by clicking on "latest." An option called "updates" will limit real-time results to those from microblogging services like Twitter.

Real-time search functionality will also be available to mobile users of iPhone and Android devices.

The real-time technology will also power a new option in the Google Trends service. Called "hot topics," this new option will contain the most popular topics online at any given time.

Google also announced new mobile search services designed to let users find out what local businesses are in their current vicinity, as well as search for information on an item by snapping a photo of it with their phone's camera.

The local business search feature is called "What's Nearby" and included in the latest version of Google Maps for Android devices, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president of engineering. In a few weeks, the same functionality will be available from Google's mobile home page via a new option called "Near me now."

Google Goggles, the photo-based search, is available as an early prototype from the company's Labs team for now, because it works well only for specific items in specific categories, he said. The service, which Gundotra called "a mouse pointer for the world," should eventually be able to identify virtually any item a user photographs.

Gundotra also demonstrated an early version of an upcoming feature that translates speech in real time, acting like a real-time interpreter for phone conversations.

He also announced that the mobile search engine's existing ability to field voice queries has been sharpened, as well as extended through the addition of Japanese. It already worked in English and Mandarin.

"This is just the beginning, but the possibilities ahead inspire us," he said about the new and improved mobile services.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, said that the mobile search advances offer a peek into how the search engine interface will evolve and change from its current format of a search box into which text queries are typed.