Kiran Upadhyay

Even the best of us have a grammatical issue from time to time. Where should we turn to to resolve those timeless questions about when to use “lay” and when to use “lie”? There are a ton of great free grammar resources on the web to answer these questions and just about any other grammatical question you have. If you’re already improving your writing quality and expanding your vocabulary , why not also get your grammar down pat? Know where to go when you have a bothersome grammar issue and need to do a quick online grammar check. College Guides Some of the best free grammar resources come from colleges that make their grammar guides available to the public online. Purdue University , the University of Illinois , and the University of Ottawa all offer great free grammar guides that can help you brush up on your grammar rules. If you try your best to not be bothered by the page layouts straight from the ’90s, the grammar guides offered by the College of DuPage and C...

The Gmail team has added a couple of long-overdue features today, and thankfully, they're not even in Labs: 1) Rich text signatures: Finally you can format the text in your signature, add a link, or even include an image (please don't to that, though). This is an image that should have been there from the get-go; well, finally it's here, and we no longer need to use "canned text" as a wonky workaround for adding well-formatted signatures. 2) Per-address signatures: I use Gmail as a communications hub, funneling all of my incoming email into its convenient interface. But this means I have several different "From" addresses, such as my Weblogs Inc. address, my personal email address, my day-job address, etc. Now I can have a separate signature for each such address. This is very handy, and it's also a great way to keep from replying using the incorrect "From" address (which has happened to me more than once). It's easie...

The next version of Flash, amidst growing competition from emerging 3D-in-the-browser technologies WebGL and O3D , will feature support for 3D graphics . But don't get too excited just yet -- we'll probably have to wait until October and the Adobe MAX 2010 conference before we find out more. There, on October 27th, a Flash player engineer will give a talk about "the next-generation 3D API coming in a future version of Flash Player." How exciting is that?! It's an interesting move, and I feel that it's just in time too. WebGL and O3D might be exciting propositions in themselves, but they don't enjoy almost-100% saturation -- not yet at least. Every existing Web game maker uses Flash -- and you can be guaranteed that they'd rather code 3D games and applications for a platform they already intimately know. It sure looks like Adobe isn't going to give up on Flash without a fight. First peer-to-peer transfers with 10.1, and now prop...

With our lives revolving more and more around the computer and mobile devices, our expenses with technology also seem to be increasing. One can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on software every year, even if you are only purchasing the bare minimum you need for certain tasks. So what is the solution? The good news is that there are thousands of software developed everyday that do most of what commercial software does, but for free! Some of the best places to download freeware programs can be found here. 1. CNET CNET has a huge selection of freeware programs for all platforms and almost 100,000 of them are free. The site also has an active community which comments on the software and editors that review and rate them. The users’ reviews are a major contribution, since you can see what other users’ experience has been with the software. 2. ZDNet downloads Cbs Interactive Websites: Last.fm, Gamefaqs, Gamespot, Metacritic, Mp3.com, Movietome, Gamerankings, Downlo...

You could almost mistake The Chromium Blog's opening paragraph as bittersweet reflection on Google's rumble in the jungle with China. It's actually a good post on the basics of vulnerability exploitation and malware installation, but basically it surmises that plug-ins are the weakest link in Internet security today. Firefox already checks your plug-ins at start-up, and Mozilla has a Plugin Checker for other browsers. Chrome, which already has a built-in sandboxed Flash plug-in (with a PDF reader coming soon ), now wants to go one step further: out-of-date plug-ins will simply be disabled . If you continue to browse with an out-of-date Java plug-in, Java applets will simply not load. Chrome will then remind you to update your plug-in. The next step, which is pretty neat but probably less useful for everyday non-poweruser Web users, is 'warnings before running infrequently used plug-ins.' Many plug-ins aren't used on a day to day basis, so when...

OK, maybe it's my inner explorer, scientist and photographer speaking when I say this, but: DESKTOP EARTH IS AWESOME. It's so simple, yet so damn beautiful. All the developer has done is grab a bunch of images from NASA and compiled them into a program that changes your wallpaper depending on the time of day and the season . Look at the picture above -- click it for a larger view if you like. But it gets better! It's configurable! You can vary the cloud coverage and which nighttime image to use (moonlit, city lights or simple shadow). You can also force the daytime image to show a specific month, or topographic (Earth's surface) and bathymetric (ocean floor) data. I'm never been one for desktop wallpapers -- I usually use a boring dark grey -- but... there's something about having the beautiful Blue Marble right there, right in front of your eyes. I can see myself using Desktop Earth for a long time to come. Mountain Wildflowers: Screen S...

You already know Chrome OS is a "cloud operating system," but until recently it really hasn't shown much in terms of integration with Web apps. Not in the open source Chromium Code at least -- Google's dogfood Chrome OS is likely a bit further along. However, while tinkering with Chromium OS on my netbook today (you know, the one I've been using for posting video demos ) I happened upon an interesting change to the file browser. Picasa for Seniors: Get Acquainted with Picasa: Free, Easy-to-Use Photo Editing Software (Computer Books for Seniors series) There's always been a small dropdown icon to the right of filenames -- in all honesty the only option I recall being there before was to delete the file. That menu has now been expanded from its original form to now include options for uploading to your Picasa Web albums, Flickr account, or to send via email (though only the Picasa option is active at this time). Uploading images to Picasa W...