Yesterday while browsing through my RSS Subscriptions I chanced upon TeuxDeux thanks to John Gruber(Daring Fireball) who described it as Clever, simple, date-based online to-do app. I immediately signed up and I’ve been hooked to it ever since.

As you can see from the Screenshot the interface of TeuxDeux is very clean, minimal and simple. Its the kind of UI that most of us normal users need, rather than the complex UI’s of other GTD apps.

The best thing that I like about TeuxDeux is the fact that it kinda resembles your personal diary, in which you jot down stuff you need to do.

How Does it Work?

To add a task, you just need to type into the textbox. It’ll be automatically be added to the todo list. To remove a task hover over the task and click the cross button. And the best thing, if you don’t complete a task today it will automatically be added to tomorrow’s tasks. Tasks can be drag dropped from different days, which makes it flexible.

The Days that are already past are in light faded Gray, while Today is in Red, and the future dates in the deep black. A simple but clever presentation idea.

Here’s a demo video that shows how TeuxDeux works :

So if you are finding it difficult to keep your life in order, and need to remember things to do, you must try out TeuxDeux.

TeuxDeux (A Swissmiss and FictiveKin Product) | Photo Credit : tracitodd

With today’s Beta launch Boxee aims to enter newer territories with the launch of a dedicated Boxee Box in partnership with D-Link. What’s more important is a totally revamped and redesigned interface for Boxee, that makes using it even more fun. The UI changes aren’t the only changes though, Boxee beta brings about many major under the hood changes that will allow for less resource intensive playback of your media.

Boxee for Windows will shift from using the OpenGL graphics engine to DirectX runtime, along with support for Nvidia’s cheaper but faster Graphics chips. I believe these are major steps for Boxee, because for so long it has remained in the confines of Mac and AppleTV users, with Windows/Linux Adoption being almost negligible.

Before I tell you about the Dedicated Boxee box, lets have a sneak peak into the new Beta interface. And I have to say the new UI is a marked improvement over the old one, and I can’t wait for the nice people at Boxee HQ to give me access to the beta

This is the new Home screen. The most visible change is the shifting of the navigation from Left to top center. Along with it comes a new centralized hub for all your content. You can now see recommendations from friends on Boxee, Facebook or Twitter (via RSS feeds), recommendations from Boxee’s staff and partners (Featured) and the latest episodes from your favorite shows or things you’ve saved for later (Queue).

The new global menu, makes Navigation even more easier than it was before. This menu makes it easy to access helpful resources (TOP – Logout, Settings, Now Playing, Queue, Feed, History), the main menu (MIDDLE – Photos, Music, Movies, Home, TV Shows, Apps, Files) and shortcuts (BOTTOM) to your favorite Apps, TV Shows, Movies, or folders. This has to be my favorite new feature of the Boxee Beta. Makes me feel that the old navigation was boring and slow!

The screenshots above show the new TV Shows Library and Photos in action. The new sidebar on the left, makes searching/sorting etc. even more easier than it was before.

The New Boxee makes sharing even more fun and easier. After all the entire Boxee experience is a social experience. So now you’re gonna have an endless amount of media to consume thanks to your friends.

At the heart of the new Boxee is the Queue that runs thorough out the software. As you browse your library, you can continuously queue up items. So the next time you don’t have to remind yourself that you wanted to catch up with the latest episode of “How I Met Your Mother”!

There’s a lot more that’s changed in Boxee beta, which I can’t talk about, because I don’t have direct access to the Beta. But looking from the screenshots already posted on the internet, I’m already in love with the new Boxee.

Now coming to the Boxee Box from D-Link, here’s what Senior Marketing Executive Daniel Kelley at D-Link had to say :

“By pairing Boxee’s innovative social entertainment platform with D-Link’s technology we’re able to create a solution that introduces people to what TV should be. Additionally we’re bringing a new level of social interaction to the living room.”

The Boxee Box will have HDMI, SPDIF and RCA Audio connections, Plus two USB ports and it will work on both 802.11N. The price isn’t known yet, nor are the other technical details. What we all know is that Boxee will debut it during at the CES 2010. However rumors point to sub $200 price point which I believe will be very attractive to many home users.

Looks like 2010 will be the year when Digital Media finally makes the transition into our Living rooms. Thanks to Boxee, this is a space that we are all excited going into 2010.

Image Credit : Phil Campbell | Screenshots via Boxee Blog

Say you type in the Wikipedia.org in your browser window. The DNS then converts the URL you typed into machine readable IP address and returns it to you. Only after the actual IP of the website is determined does the webpage begin loading for you.

OpenDNS has long since been considered the pioneer in the making the web faster by giving users a free, fast public DNS server with servers spread around the globe to reduce latency.

I’ve been using OpenDNS for the past two years for my needs, and needless to say the experience has been quite good. Not to forget the increase in speed while browsing the web. But today with the release of Google’s own DNS solution I was curious to see if it could beat the already fast service that OpenDNS provides.

So I ran my own tests sitting here in India, using this script by Manu over at TechSutra.

#!/bin/sh 
for i in "lifehacker.com" "facebook.com" "dailyapps.net"  "reddit.com" "google.com" "bbc.co.uk" "microsoft.com" "yahoo.com" "ebay.com"
do
  for j in "4.2.2.2" "8.8.4.4" "208.67.222.222"
  do
    echo $j $i `dig @$j $i | grep Query | awk -F ":" '{print $2}'`
  done
done

And here are my results :

As you can see Google DNS consistently was atleast two times faster than OpenDNS and even more faster than Level 3. Those of you in the U.S I believe shouldn’t see much performance difference between Google and Level 3.

For me personally, Google was always in the range 90-110ms while OpenDNS was in the 200-210ms range. A Significant performance boost I must say.

Is Performance a tradeoff for Privacy?

Hmm it depends on how you look at it. Surely Google has a lot of information about you, and a DNS server will only allow them to gather more data about you. They could in theory gather information about all the websites you visit. Sounds like Big Brother ain’t it, except that Google makes it explicitly clear that “Collected data includes IP address (up to 48 hours, to detect malicious behavior against the service), ISP information and geographic information (2 weeks each). The data is not correlated with your Google account in any way”

For more on what they log while using their DNS service, read the Google Public DNS Privacy Policy.

So as things stand at the moment you don’t have to worry about Privacy Issues. But OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch seems to have other concerns :

“Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet.
……
To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully. And of course, we always have protected user privacy and have never sold our DNS data.”

At the end of the day, its pure competition. Google has been entering a lot of verticals lately, in their quest to make the web a better place for everyone. They’ve a long way to go, before they can achieve their goals.

What does this mean for OpenDNS? Well guys, you’ve had the free run for the past three years, now you got to make OpenDNS even more faster. Competition is always a wake up call.

So are you willing to give Google DNS a shot? Google has a handy guide for you to get started.

Google Public DNS (via Google Code Blog) | Photo Credit : jpctalbot

But the one thing that I didn’t like about Connectify is its interface. It just doesn’t blend with the interface of Windows7. Have a look at the screenshot below that shows Connectify in action :

What Connectify does is create a Virtual WiFi connection that anyone can connect to, just as it were a access point. Today I came across another app called Virtual Router that does the same job, but albeit in a much more intuitive way.

To start just install the app and fire it up. Enter the name for the network, a password and choose the connection you want to share and just hit start Virtual Router. And moments later you should have an active Wireless network you can share.

Virtual Router is Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 only, because only they have the new built in Wireless Hosted Network(a.k.a Virtual WiFi) technology. It uses WPA2 Encryption for ensuring security and this encryption cannot be turned off.

How is Virtual WiFi different from Ad-Hoc? Ad-Hoc is best suitable if you are connecting two computers and can be used to share files, while tools such as Connectify and Virtual Router allow you to share the internet connection with multiple number of computers.

Sidenote : Mac OS.X has had this feature built in for many years now.

Download Virtual Router [Microsoft CodePlex] | Image Credit : Roger Bits

With Twitter working on its own implementation of ReTweet it is only going to more harder for us to keep track of our conversations in the coming future. Twitter has never really had any easy to manage your conversations and this is where Bettween comes into the scene. Replete with its own chat like interface it makes it a grandma’s play to follow interesting conversations on Twitter.

Like most other apps based on the Twitter API, Bettween is simple and straightforward to use. No complications and very neat way of tracking conversations I must say. And what’s more the service not only makes it easy for you to keep track of conversations, but also share them.

Each conversation comes with its own Dedicated URL à la http://bettween.com/coolkarthik88/froZENwell so it should be a breeze for you to share interesting conversations.

P.S. I love the messages that Bettween shows when it first indexes your tweets, and also the Hot Conversations feature.

Image Credit : Kris Hoet | Visit Bettween

Getting custom ringtones on the iPhone has always been a process that requires some amount of hardwork. Sure there are jailbreak and third party apps that will you help get custom ringtones on the iPhone for free rather than buying from iTunes.

But the catch is that these softwares either cost a bit or require a jailbreak which can be risky for your precious iPhone.

There has to be a easier way right? Thankfully there is a easy, fast and most importantly legal way to get custom ringtones on your iPhone in less than a minute.

Well am referring to a service called Audiko, that allows you to put ringtones on any mobile device and not only the iPhone.

Audiko is a simple service which helps you to make a ringtone of your favorite song! Audiko is an amazing service. It allows you to upload any song, cut up to 40 seconds of it, and put it right into your iTunes Ringtones folder for quick and easy syncing.

Best of all Audiko is a free service and doesn’t require any registration..

Let’s get started with the process..

• To start off visit Audiko.net and search for the song whose ringtone you are looking for.

• And choose an appropriate search result…
• Click "Download Ringtone for iPhone"

• Once you’ve saved the ringtone to a folder on your computer, double click the file to add the file to your iTunes Ringtones library.

• Now whenever you sync your iPhone next you will find the ringtone in your iPhone’s Settings >> Sounds >> Ringtones menu.

What’s more Audiko even allows you to upload a song and cut any part of it (up to 40 seconds).

You can also enter the URL for any YouTube video and Audiko automatically extracts the sound. Just like when uploading a song, you can cut any part of the audio.

Adding custom ringtones on your iPhone could’ve never been easier. No more SSH, no more jailbreaking, and no more useless utilities.

Its been a over six months since we last saw an update to everyone’s favorite BitTorrent client. The uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates.

Added the already pent up excitement about the new uTorrent there is also a word that a Mac version of uTorrent is on the way.. Good news for all Mac users out there.. But I feel that a stable Mac build is quite a few months away.

We’ve had to wait for quite a while for this release since the last stable build 1.7.7 was released way back in January. A lot of work has been done in these seven months though, and the list of changes and additions that were implemented is “absolutely massive”, to quote Firon from the release announcement..

One of the most significant updates in the latest version of uTorrent is that it comes with built in IPv6 support, which improves connectivity and thus performance. The only problem is that IPv6 is still not common, and we have to wait for it to take over IPv4. Other new features are better Windows Firewall registration on Vista and improved distribution of new connections across torrents.

According to uTorrent developer Greg Hazel since 1.8 is finally out, the uTorrent team is going to be more focused to get a Mac OSX version ready on which they have been working already for the past year. According to Greg a private Alpha of uTorrent  for the Mac should be out in a few weeks.

uTorrent 1.8 can be downloaded from the uTorrent website, and the list of changes, improvements and additions is available in the forum thread announcing the release.

Way to go uTorrent! Its time to upgrade one of my favorite pieces of software. What are your thoughts on the latest and greatest version of uTorrent? I guess the Mac users are waiting to get their hands on uTorrent for Mac as soon as possible.

Via Torrentfreak

The world of Internet is constantly changing every minute, and the tools that we use currently can not stand up to our requirements in the future. Which means this is the right time to make some drastic changes in the way we interact with the web and prepare ourselves for the future.

Mozilla labs has put forward a call to anyone in the world to share their vision of how they would like to see the browser or the web in general in the future. Called The Concept Series, the project will track down and share future web concepts submitted through a very simple process. What would you like the web to look like in the future?

UI is very Important

For any application the User Interface is of the utmost importance. A poorly designed software however powerful it is, will turn out to be unusable. With today’s standards, there is so much of untapped potential in User Interface design.

Interface is not all about being pretty and good to look at. Case in point is the iPhone Software design. While the iPhone uses dell and subtle colors in its designs and hardly is good to look at, but is tremendous ease of use and fast response is what sets it apart from the others. I wouldn’t put the HTC touch in the same category as the iPhone even though it has a very pretty interface.

First Round of Concepts

As you would expect, Mozilla began the Concept series on a high note. Three concepts have been submitted so far. All of the three videos are produced by Mozilla, but that shouldn’t stop you from submitting your own concepts, including mockups, prototypes or ideas expressed in any way you feel is best. If you want to submit your own concept follow the  instructions in the Concept Series announcement or just tag an image "mozconcept" on Flickr.

Here are the first round of concepts :

• Aurora Concept Video

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios. Here is the concept from Adaptive Path

• Bookmarking and History Concept Video

An investigation into a better way of visualizing and interacting with bookmarks, your history, and the browser in general. Here is the concept from Wei Zhou

• Firefox Mobile Concept Video

Firefox is coming to mobile. The innovation, usability, and extensibility that has propelled Firefox to 200 million users is set to do the same for Firefox in a mobile setting. Here is the concept from Aza Raskin

What Would You Like to See ?

Those were some really interesting concepts right? I am making something complex in my mind as I write this, meanwhile what are your thoughts on this initiative? What do you want to see in the Browser of tomorrow?

Feel free to link to your own mockups or ideas in the comments.

photo credit: jpctalbot

I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.

Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.

Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.

Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..

At the Start menu type command, but don’t launch the command prompt immediately. Instead, right-click it and choose Run As Administrator. Once the prompt is open enter the following command.

netsh interface tcp show global

If the line Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level does not say “disabled,” enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted

If this doesn’t help, substitute this command and see if it works

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

At this moment, you should notice considerable improvements in your browsing speeds, or rather you should be cruising now. If it works, you should notice the difference in browsing speeds immediately. If it doesn’t work for you, and you feel the need to put things back the way they were, you can type this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

Here are screenshots showing the whole process, incase you feel the need for it..

Good luck, hope this works for you.. Please let us know if this worked for you or not..

Pingdom is the best website uptime monitoring service you will ever find. With it you can have the status of your website checked in regular intervals and they can be as small as one minute. More importantly the checks are not from just one location, in fact they have seven servers in the United States, one in Singapore, one in Australia, one in India, two in England, one in Holland, and two in Sweden. All of them will be monitoring the uptime of your website every single minute.

Setting up your site in Pingdom is a simple 3 step process that offers variety of configuration options as you can see in the screenshots below..

As you can see from the screenshots you can be notified by EMail and/or SMS Text messages. In my experience so far, the email notifications work wonderfully and the basic plan comes with 20 SMS messages per month. Receiving text messages can be extremely useful when you don’t have immediate access to your email and this has proved to be quite beneficial to me in the past.

Once you have, had Pingdom running tests on your site for a while, you will see a plethora of useful and easy to read reports. Take for example the graph below which shows how fast DailyApps responds to you when you try to access it.

If you have a website or you are planning to have one soon, Pingdom is a must have for you. I’d say a must have tool for every webmaster.

The Giveaway

Well during the birthday celebrations of DailyApps we have 25 Basic Accounts for a year (Valued at 119.40$ each) of Pingdom to giveaway to you guys. All you have to do is follow the instructions below.

1. Go to our signup page: https://www.pingdom.com/signup/
2. Select service type Pingdom Basic.
3. Select payment type Yearly (which is worth $119.40)
4. Enter dailyapps1y into the promotional code field and press the “apply code” button. If there are any free accounts left on this code you will get a message that it is a valid code and you will see the price on the page change to $0.00.
5. Fill in your account information below. (The cell phone is just there for SMS alerts.)
6. Check the Pingdom ToS at the bottom.
7. Press the “sign up now” button.

Please note that the promotional codes will get used up on first come first serve basis. So better hurry up now..