Why there is a need to go mobile ??

Did you know that a small, purposeful workflow change can make your life significantly better? Yep, that change is having a mobile office, and there are 10 reasons why a mobile office can improve your design work and life. So what’s a mobile office?

It’s what it sounds like – your design-work office on the go. All of your essential tools in a bag, ready to take with you. Whether on a commute, a flight to somewhere far, sitting outside and overlooking gorgeous nature, or simply popping into your local library or cafe, a mobile office is a trimmed down, simplified version of only the most important tools to get your design, web, and any other creative work done.  

Usually, a mobile office involves: A laptop A mobile phone Chargers Music player and headphones Any needed accessories And for mobile working, you have: Mobile internet – via a wi-fi hub or tethering File syncing – via Dropbox or something similar Location-independent business/freelancing documents – like online invoicing via Freshbooks Other tech goodies that let you untether yourself from a stationary office And now,

Here are 10 reasons why you need a mobile office: 

1. Have Easier Mobility This is the forehead-slapping obvious reason: the smaller and lighter stuff you have, the more mobile you can be. For those moments when you had to commute, take stuff with you to a client or on a flight, move to a new place, and so forth – you know just how beneficial having easier mobility is. You don’t dread packing all your stuff up and having to move with it – you simply throw the few things you need into a bag and head out. So for those situations where mobility can be really helpful, a mobile office will obviously benefit you.

2. Be Less Distracted This is two benefits wrapped up in one. The first is that you’ll have less stuff around you because of your mobile office. Only the essential tools will be at your disposal. After all, you’re not lugging around your entire office. So no throwing darts at the dart board, flipping through magazines, playing with widgets on your desk, or any other distractions to get in the way of your design, web, and other creative work. The second is how you can avoid distraction with your mobile office. And that is: go to a place with less distractions. That’s what your mobile office is for. Too many distractions at your work office, or your home office, or at the cafe? Pack up and go to your local library or shared workspace. A private booth at the library will provide you with a distraction-free environment with which to finish up that latest task or project.

3. Increase Focus Really, this is an extension of #2. By being less distracted, you’ll naturally increase your focus on the important task or project at hand. This is actually why being less distracted is so important: you increase focus. And having a mobile office is one of the easiest ways to do this. As mentioned in #2 just a bit ago, you can pack up and leave a distracting environment for a more distraction-free one. Less distractions = increased focus. And increased focus lets you…

4. Get More Done A big reason why you need a mobile office. Who doesn’t want to get more done? Now, before the simplicity-focused side of you says, “it’s about quality, not quantity”, here’s the preface: this article assumes that you’re already focusing on quality work. In other words, being effective–getting results that matter–rather than just productive. So, assuming that you’re getting mostly important stuff done, then very few people will want to purposefully get less of it done. And a mobile office allows you to get more done. How? You get more opportunities to do work. Instead of killing time during a train commute, or reading magazines while waiting for your appointments, or whatever else, you can pull out your laptop and have a laser-focused work session. Having mobile internet means you can even take care of emails or internet-specific tasks. Sure, it could only be for a half-hour or so, but that’s a half-hour more work you’ve done that you don’t need to do later.

5. Improve Your Work-Life Balance When you have an office, your work and non-work life are separated. While that might be good for those who don’t like their jobs, if you’re actually passionate about what you do to pay the bills, your work is part of your life. And a mobile office lets you better balance your work and non-work time. With a mobile office, you can work on the couch in the morning, or during downtime (as detailed in #5 just before), or while traveling. Instead of having an all-or-nothing approach with your work, you have the option to integrate work time into your daily schedule. You don’t have to sacrifice going to your office to work if there were other things you wanted to do that day. Or vice versa, you don’t have to go to your office and sacrifice any other activities that day. Your office can always be there with you. Again, assuming you’re passionate about your design, web, and other creative work you do, it’s a desirable activity to have integrated in your life.

6. Get Constant Fresh Inspiration When you have a mobile office, you can work from anywhere. Well, not literally anywhere (underwater, while snowboarding, at the top of a weather tower – all not very feasible). But you have many options as to where you can plop down and get some creative work done. And with new surroundings comes fresh inspiration. It’s a human thing: oftentimes lack of creativity and inspiration is due to boredom. And each of us inevitably gets bored with repetitiveness, including environments. When you have a mobile office, you can take your design, web, and any other type of work with you anywhere you go. That means you can constantly find new places to work, or at the very least rotate between a handful of places. And since new surroundings will jolt you out of repetition and creatively inspire you, you can get a constant supply of fresh inspiration by having a mobile office.

7. Have More Fun When you have a mobile office, you can take your work with you. Anywhere you go, the opportunity to do some great creative work is right there. And that opens up more opportunities to have more fun. Finishing up a design while riding a train and looking out onto the mountains is more fun than sitting in an office. Or while sitting on a balcony and overlooking a sunset across the ocean. Or while sipping tea and sitting in your favorite cafe. The list goes on. Basically, a mobile office lets you have more fun with your work. It’s not like you need, or want, to always work in places like these. But the fact that you can means you’ll turn things like finishing that piece of code or final website tweak into lasting memories. You only live once, so you might as well have as much fun as you can in what you do. If a mobile office lets you do that, than why not take advantage of that.

8. Collaborate Easier If your work requires you to collaborate in a way that goes further than email, Basecamp, or whatnot, then a mobile office can make collaboration easier. Assuming you can meet up in person with your partners, then having all of you in front of the same screen beats the phone or Skype any day. And all that’s needed is your mobile office and a quick trip to meet up. Simply pull out your laptop and get to work with the people you collaborate with. In fact, you often see this at cafes and shared workspaces. Teams gather in places like these to work on projects. Why stay in their respective home offices and chat when they can easily meet up in person and get work done more effectively?

9. Simplify Your Life By trimming your tools down to only the essentials ones that fit into your mobile office bag, you’re simplifying your life. Instead of being surrounding by countless choices of which tools to play with or what computer to use, you’ve narrowed your options down to a select few. And each of your tools—a laptop, some accessory, headphones, and so forth—are indispensable. You have less possessions around you, yet every single item has some essential use. It’s similar to if you live in smaller house or room, it forces you to get rid of most the junk that doesn’t matter at the end of the day. A mobile office can force you to trim down your possessions and, by extension, simplify your life.

10. Have More Enjoyable Days All the previous 9 reasons lead up to this final one: a mobile office can help you to have more enjoyable days. Your life is meant to be enjoyed. If you can improve your days, then you should do it. And a mobile office can ultimately help do that. The previous 9 reasons are the ways in which it can. Whether it’s having more fun, simplifying your workflow, getting more quality work done in less time, and then being able to do other desirable activities more – an effective mobile office can help you do all of that. To help you have more enjoyable days. Sure, it probably seems too lofty and life-changing. We are only talking about a mobile office here, not some revolutionary idea. But it’s the small, purposeful things that create big life changes, and a mobile office is one of those small, purposeful things.  

Why You Need a Mobile Office ?? Hopefully the above 10 reasons have shown you why you need a mobile office. It’s a combination of practical time-saving reasons, simplifying and distraction-crushing reasons, and life-improving reasons. If you don’t have a mobile office already, consider arming yourself with a simple one and start enjoying the benefits that effective portable work allows you.  

To recap, here are the 10 reasons why you need a mobile office: Have easier mobility Be less distracted Increase focus Get more done Improve your work-life balance Get constant fresh inspiration Have more fun Collaborate easier Simplify your life Have more enjoyable days

How to Enable FaceBook TimeLine :)

FaceBook TimeLine :) , a crazy (and kind of creepy) omnibus look at everything that has ever happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your life — or at least the online, documented parts.

Facebook said that Timeline would be on the way for everyone sometime in the coming weeks… which is great and all, for everyone else. You’re the type of person who reads TechCrunch, and are thus likely the type of person who likes their new and shiny things right now.

That’s okay. We can make it happen.

Fortunately, enabling Timeline a bit early isn’t too difficult — but it’s not at all straight forward, either.

You see, Facebook is enabling Timeline early for open graph developers. You, too, can be an open graph developer — even if you’re just looking to dabble.

A few things to note:
- You probably don’t want to do this unless you’re actually a developer. Expect bugs.
- Only you will see your timeline at first (unless you decide otherwise), but it will automatically go public after a few days. My timeline was automatically hard-set to go public on September 29th.
- It seems that if you login into Facebook on another machine, Timeline gets disabled automatically on all of your machines. With that said, it seems you can get back to your timeline (but ONLY after following the steps below) by navigating to http://www.facebook.com/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sk=timeline
- You’ll need to have a “verified” account for one of the steps, which means you need a credit card or phone number attached to the account.
Here’s how to do it:

1. Log into Facebook

2. Enable developer mode, if you haven’t already. To do this, type “developer” into the Facebook search box, click the first result (it should be an app made by Facebook with a few hundred thousand users), and add the app.

3. Jump into the developer app (if Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically, it should be in your left-hand tool bar)

4. Create a new app (don’t worry — you wont actually be submitting this for anyone else to see/use). Give your shiny new app any display name and namespace you see fit. Read through and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement. This is the step you need to be verified for.

5. Ensure you’re in your new app’s main settings screen. You should see your app’s name near the top of the page

6. Look for the “Open Graph” header, and click the “Get Started using open graph” link.

Create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”, or “eat” a “sandwich”

7. This should drop you into an action type configuration page. Change a few of the default settings (I changed the past tense of “read” to “redd” — again, only you can see this unless you try and submit your application to the public directory), and click through all three pages of settings

8. Wait 2-3 minutes

9. Go back to your Facebook homescreen. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page

And you’re done! We’ve seen this work quite a few times now, so it should work without a hitch for just about anyone.

Awww... Kids These Day's

A survey has found that around a third of UK children under the age of 10 have their own cell phone, with one in ten owning an iPhone.

There was a time when little kids used to talk into toy phones to imaginary friends. Now it seems that they have real phones with Internet access and pay-as-you-go payment plans.

According to the results of a survey released this week, 10 percent of UK children under the age of 10 have their own iPhone, while a third have a cell phone. Five percent even have their own iPad.

Of the parents questioned in the survey, 10 percent said they felt it was OK for children as young four-years-old to have their own cell phone.

The study was conducted by cloud security firm Westcoastcloud to coincide with the release of its new Netintelligence iPad app, an internet security product for schools.

The survey, which questioned 2,000 families with children aged 10 or below about technology ownership, also revealed that 16 percent of kids have their own laptop. A quarter of those aged under 10 had their own email address, while 8 percent were signed up to a social networking service – which is interesting as Facebook, for example, stipulates that users of its service must be aged 13 or older.

Regarding cell phone ownership, 68 percent of parents said they got their kids a device primarily so that they could keep in touch with them when they were out, though Westcoastcloud also said that “17 percent of parents bought their kids a phone after they succumbed to their child’s pestering.”

Westcoastcloud’s Bill Strain commented on the survey’s findings, saying: “It’s great that youngsters are interested and engaged with the latest technology, but children owning their own phones as young as four does seem unnecessary.”

On a cautionary note, he added: “Kids will always be able to gain access to their parents’ phones and laptops but when primary school age children gain access to the Internet on these devices, parents need to be aware. There’s the potential that they could access unsuitable or potentially harmful content.”

Over 5 percent of parents said they didn’t check what their child was looking at on their cell phone and estimated that their offspring spent around three hours a week online, using phones, computers or other devices. Surprisingly, half of those surveyed said they had no parental controls installed on their Internet-connected devices.

As part of a new Communications Act being planned by the UK government, broadband providers there may soon be forced to offer parents ways of protecting their children from harmful online content.

Revenues & Experiences on Mobile Devices

Since the release of the iPad and subsequent Google Android “tablets,” publishers have scrambled to figure out how to not only create mobile-worthy content but also monetize it by integrating advertising into these buzz-worthy platforms. All the while, advertisers are chomping at the bit to create and execute their campaigns across the gamut of outlets in order to maximize their reach among highly-desirable demographics.

Late last year, UM Global and Time Inc. conducted a study of iPad satisfaction, usage and response to advertising, and the results were promising for content producers and advertisers alike. The study found that more than 9 out of 10 iPad owners who read magazines were at least somewhat likely to subscribe to those publications on the device, and nearly as many would recommend doing so to their friends. The study also found that magazine readers’ response to advertising was also very positive; bright visuals, striking photos and interactive features were what most enticed the reader to engage with ads.

This is all great news, but with no best practices to date, pricing and implementation of ads is somewhat uncharted territory to be carefully navigated.

Many publishers have taken a “roll-out” approach to advertising in iPad editions. In the first few issues there are no ads; the focus is on the content, the dramatic layouts and a layered Internet experience. Gradually, they can integrate simple sponsor sections with videos or custom interactive tools.

Simultaneously, iPad editions are taking a some-what similar approach to custom publications with regard to advertising. As opposed to a print publication, in which advertisers are represented in droves, there are a limited number of advertisers for most apps. This allows advertisers to showcase the richness and depth of their brands while offering a more personal, less intrusive, experience with the brand.

What it really comes down to, however, is dollars – on both the cost and benefit side! Consider the expense associated with engineering your content for iPad or tablet delivery. And balance that against the potential revenue benefit provided by reaching the growing audience of sophisticated, tech-savvy (and often more affluent) consumers who engage via mobile platforms.

Experimentation with fixed-price rate models, cost-per-click rate structures, and even cost-per-action strategies is still going on. But the overall selling point is this: the consumer base is there and, unlike many traditional publishing platforms, it’s growing!

With 1 in 5 Americans currently owning or planning to purchase a tablet in the next few years, the trend is clear: this platform as a content-delivery and emerging media channel will only continue to grow in big numbers. And while it is predicted that there will be more advertising standards by the end of the year, advertisers and publishers alike must weed through the uncharted territory of this brave new world and embrace this as a period of innovation, experimentation and, for those who are successful, monetization.

Microsoft warns: 900 M Internet Explorer users at risk

LONDON: Microsoft has warned that the 900 million users of its Internet Explorer Web browser are at risk of having their computers hijacked and their personal information stolen by hackers.

The software giant has issued a 'critical' security alert over a newly-discovered flaw that affects all versions of the company's Windows operating system, including Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 (R2), reports the Daily Mail.

However, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari browsers are unaffected by the threat because, unlike Internet Explorer, they don't support MHTML files, where the problem lies.

The loophole only seems to affect the way Internet Explorer handles some web pages.

Microsoft said that the bug is inside Windows, presumably because they don't want users to migrate to other browsers.

The company has so far been unable to remove the bug itself and has issued a 'fix it' security patch to block any attempts to use it.

All Windows users, particularly those who use Internet Explorer, are being urged to download the patch as the company's security team is working on a way to permanently fix the problem.

The company has described the flaw as a serious threat, although no hackers are thought to have yet exploited the vulnerability.

"An attacker could construct an HTML link designed to trigger a malicious script and somehow convince the targeted user to click it. When the user clicked that link, the malicious script would run on the user's computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session," said Microsoft spokeswoman Angela Gunn in a security advisory published online on Friday.

"Such a script might collect user information (e.g. email), spoof content displayed in the browser, or otherwise interfere with the user's experience," she added.

How to secure your facebook account ?

HTTPS security is being made available to Facebook users slowly, so though it might not be available to you now, it should appear soon. The option will exist as part of the advanced security features on Facebook.

Facebook announced that it is now offering users the ability to use encryption to protect their accounts from being compromised when they are interacting with the site, something security experts have been seeking for a while. The site currently uses HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) when users log in with their passwords, but now everything a user does on the site will be encrypted if he turns the feature on, the company said in a blog post.

Enabling full-session HTTPS eliminates the ability for attackers to use tools like the Firefox plug-in called Firesheep to snoop on communications between a person's computer and the site's server over Wi-Fi. "Starting today we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries, or schools," the post says. "The option will exist as part of our advanced security features, which you can find in the Account Security section of the Account Settings page."

Using HTTPS may mean that some pages will take a little bit longer to load, and some third-party applications aren't currently supported, the company said. The option is rolling out over the next few weeks. "We hope to offer HTTPS as a default whenever you are using Facebook sometime in the future," the post says.
"Every user's Facebook page is unique and it's been complex pulling together all the different parts," said Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan when asked what the time frame is to making HTTPS the default setting. "It's an interesting technical challenge for the company.

Here's how you can secure your Facebook account.
Log in to Facebook and click Account in the top right corner of the page.
• Select Account Settings and scroll down to Account Security.
• Click Change and check the box next to Secure Browsing.
• You can also view all account activity, so check back regularly to see if someone is accessing your account without your permission.

More Bloopers......

HD Videos for i phone 4

This is plain farce. The page talks about HD Videos feature in iPhone 4, while the image says iPod on top left!