Kiran Upadhyay

Sometimes I confuse the things I did in real life with things I did in video games. Like that one time I discovered a giant Duracell battery in my backyard and had to carry it all the way back to my ship… errr. Anyway, what would it be like if video game characters were real? And they were all up on that Facebook shiz? This might be what it would look like.

Email overload has finally met its match. Tomorrow, Gmail is rolling out a new feature called Priority Inbox that is going to be a Godsend for those of you who dread opening your email. In short, Google has built a system that figures out which of your messages are important, and presents them at the top of the screen so you don’t miss them. The rest of your messages are still there, but you don’t have to dig through dozens of newsletters and confirmations to find the diamonds in rough. The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity — it’s nearly as easy as Gmail’s one click spam filter. There’s almost no setup: once it’s activated on your account, you’ll see a prompt asking you if you want to enable Priority Inbox. You can choose from a few options (the order of your various inboxes and if there are any contacts you’d like to always mark ‘Important’) but don’t have to setup any rules or ‘teach’ Gmail what you want it to mark important. It just works, at least most of

Computer systems, like any other device, need maintenance . Computer maintenance is generally different from vehicles, appliances and others, mainly because you have to maintain not only the hardware but also the software that you use on your computer. Software can get outdated, you might have cruft and then there are chores related to the operating system itself – registry, virus cleaning and the likes. While you might have to shop around in the local market for hardware maintenance, for software PC maintenance we have some very good free utilities that you should check out. 1. Cleaning Tools As is obvious from the name, these help you keep your system clean. What they clean your system of, depends on what you are using. There are registry cleaners , file system cleaners , secure file erasers and general purpose all in one solutions. Most of these operate on the registry, optimizing it for performance. There are others which delete temporary files and dangling shortc

Call them whiteboards or collaborative drawing tools, a browser-based drawing canvas is a must have if you do any sort of work remotely in teams. We checked out the utility of an online whiteboard called Dabbleboard some time back.  The online collaboration app has gone from beta to final and from free to a mix of pro and free. In the meantime, Google Docs has been building up a presence in our web lives with a slew of improvements. Tim covered features like real time collaboration, online chat, and high quality imports, when he took a fresh talked about 4 New Features That Makes Google Docs Even Better . The Google Docs family has a member called Drawings and it too comes with these improved qualities. Plus the Google family of apps is one of our more visited web families anyway. Let’s test Google’s online drawing tool and see if it’s as hospitable as most of Google’s other members. Create Your First Drawing Open your canvas from Create new – Drawing . It’s definitely

As an old-fashioned self-proclaimed (amateur) musician , I was amazed when watching a video showing a local band of five performing a Coldplay song using “only” iPhones and iPod Touches. I was even more amazed watching a YouTube video of a young Korean girl who calls herself Applegirl doing solo Lady Gaga’s Poker Face cover using her iDevices. I feel that a revolution is happening in the music world, especially in the iDevices country. So, not wanting to be left behind, it’s only logical that a few of the first apps that I downloaded for my phone were apps to make music with an iPhone. If you also want to make music using your iDevices, here are some of the free ones that you can try. The Musical Instruments Let’s start our list with apps that imitate traditional musical instruments. They are trying to utilize iPhone features to produce the sound and feeling of the real instruments. 1. Touch Xylophone Xylophone is probably one of the most simple and universal musical i

The iPad has become a valuable tool for the mobile professional. It can be more valuable still, however, when swaddled in leather, partnered with a Mac mini and other Apple goodies and wrapped in a Mercedes-Benz S600, as Mercedes tuner BRABUS shows us with the  iBusiness . The iBusiness is most definitely “the business.” The German-engineered, four-seater luxury sedan is the type of car for people who have drivers, and that’s a very good thing, because there’s no chance you’ll be paying much attention to the road in one of these babies unless you’re being paid to. Each car comes packed to the gills with outstanding multimedia capabilities, including two iPads in the rear seats with matching Bluetooth keyboards for each. The iPads are capable of controlling every aspect of the S600′s COMAND system, including the radio, navigation system and telephone, in addition to BRABUS’ own custom multimedia functions. Don’t think you’ll be limited to offline or 3G use, either, because the car bo

Usually, when I need to focus in a distracting environment I just put on my earbuds and head over to SimplyNoise . But SimplyNoise is a bit  too  simple at times; it just generates a "wall" of white, brown, or pink noise. It can oscillate the volume a little bit, but that's just about it. That's not a flaw - it's how SimplyNoise was designed. But what if I want some  atmosphere  to go with my custom noise? What if I want it to have a certain "vibe," or I want it to inspire me? Plus, some people simply dislike the monotony of a noise generator. Introducing  Nature Sounds . This beautifully simple Flash tool provides you with four audio channels. You populate each channel with a looping sample that you can choose from a vast palette. You've got sounds of whales, the beach, fire crackling, crickets, a heartbeat, drums thumping in the distance, etc. The palette is extensive. You populate each of the channels with the sample of your choice, and then