Frequent Firefox Updates.. (Solution Use Firefox ESR)

Are you bugged with Firefox update just happening too frequent. I am one of the people who actually uses the option that notify me for updates and I update software when I am not really not working up on something.. I believe in minimalistic things as far Operating systems and Application are concerned. Operating Systems and Applications are there to help you do the work - be it booking a movie ticket/Paying a bill or a full fledged coding work. I belong in second category.

Things important to me:
1. All security patches updated for browser.
2. A Working fast browser

Not important to me. (or things that don't work for me) :
1.  Bloating of software with new features - none of them i would use.
(I actually cant remember any major feature given by Firefox that adds to my productivity - its same browser capabilities that i need)
2. Continuous bloating of the software when running in memory. as of now firefox when used with 1 new tab still uses 150mb of active paged memory.


Other day i found solution to this.
Firefox ESR. [Extended Support Release]

Firefox maintains multiple release channels - Beta update, Release channel and this is one another channel ESR. This channel receives security updates and nothing else for 9 iterations of Firefox release channel updates.

eg. Firefox 17.0 will continue with series 17.0.1(includes security updates in Firefox 18) and .2(includes security updates in Firefox 19) and so on with finally upgrading to Firefox 24.0.2(which would be equivalent to Firefox 26 security updates). Now this numbering can change if there are out of turn important fixes but still these won't be botheration as you can choose when to install and these security updates i have seen to be in Kilobytes at max.

Link to download Firefox ESR in your language/platform here.

You would be surprised to see that this is part of Firefox charter to not offer this release channel directly from there home pages. see last point in here :)


Let me know if this helps or you have found other solutions to this.

Laptop - evolution - Asus Taichi - Windows 8

Always there is time in technology arena that something so good comes-in that it has potential to change the way things work and that time is now. Laptop Generation is continuously being bombarded with innovations and design and recently the Tablet market creating its own space. But I ended up seeing the grand offering Asus Taichi showcased at Computex 2012. Innovative dual display sleek design of Asus Taichi is a sign enough to see what could be expected in Laptop arena in coming days.


Asus Chairman Launching Asus Taichi at Computex 2012:
(see the demo though I found it little hard to follow to slowly speaking Asus Premier, No Offence. ;-))

One of the important things that i think for laptop are the displays - I read a lot on laptop. And Asus Taichi pack HD IPS display with resolution 1920x1080. Primary display which lets you use it as a laptop and When the lid of laptop is closed metro UI is available on the secondary screen and its just a touch thin device. Running Windows 8 this is available in 11.6 and 13.3 inch models. This also packs in the Ivy-Bridge Corei7 processor with 4GB RAMs, so performance isn't something that should be doubted about these laptops.  It just looks polished - I am one of the few folks who doesn't like android interfaces on Tablets. (The reasons there of I will put in another post). I doubt that this would be available in India anytime soon.

Let's hope Asus decides to launch it here too.

Reviving the blog.

2012 has come back with lots of things that I want to get back to, and that includes reviving this blog. My focus on technology is to make things simpler and easier -  to reduce time it takes to do something - to do something innovatively - or maybe to just do the normal chores more peacefully with ease.

Examples of me keeping things simple.

1. Used Nokia N70 high tech phone of its time for last 4 years until recently when I changed to an Android.

2. I still have a AMD Sempron 2500+(1.4Ghz only, muhhahah) k8 architecture Desktop which my mom uses at home. We decided not to upgrade as it is still faster than many PC;s and works as breeze. Just keeping pace with my Macbook Pro.

3. Look at my old post why we don't need faster more power wattage CPU here.

Coming back on reviving this blog.

I will keep myself on themes:

1. Doing faster - easier 

2. On Applications that enable us doing so..

3. Mac - what keeps or helps getting my work done - which can be of use.

4. My experiments and optimization for android for keeping it simple and quick to do things.

Chow for now!

The Best Quality Minimum size codec is here. AAC (mp4).

MPEG4 standard is the forthcoming thing for Audio and Video. For audio it is variation of AAC(Advanced audio codec). Apple iTunes already sells .m4a which is nothing just another implementation of MPEG-4 AAC.

This codec helps saving space with small handheld devices/mobile phones. A normal 4 minute song might just take little over than 1MB with very-very good quality, and no much apparent lose in quality, unless you are an audiophile you will love it.

Below are the different versions of AAC.

• AAC -> Normal AAC, all iTunes store files in this format.
• SBR-AAC(Spectral band replication) or AAC+ or HE-AAC -> good sound quality even at 45kbps
• PS-SBR-AAC(Parametric Stereo w/ SBR) or eAAC+ or HE-AACv2 -> smallest size, good at as low as 28kbps.(effectively only 700kb for a 4 min song.)

I have been using this codec for all songs to be copied on phone for quite some time, finally penning it down here.
you will need two utilities.

Download and install this utility foobar.
http://filehippo.com/download_foobar2000/ - 2.53Mb

Download Nero Codec
http://www.nero.com/ena/downloads-nerodigital-nero-aac-codec.php - 1.7 Mb
That’s a mpeg-4 audio implementation by Nero, a deutsch company.
Unzip this to folder C:\Program Files\Foobar2000


1. (Optional) – performance thing only.
Go to foobar2000 program directory and delete neroAacEnc.exe and rename neroAacEnc_SSE.exe to neroAacEnc.exe. Normally all the PC have SSE instruction, unless you have some old 486 or 386 which nowadays nobody keeps :). this will enhance the speed of encoding a file


2. Open foobar, Drop the media file onto foobar, it will start playing immediately.
Stop the file if you don’t want to listen at the moment.
Select convert to same folder in context menu of file.

(click on image to view image full size)



3. Select mp4 in next window.



4. Click on ellipses button in after selecting mp4 from dropdown.
Below screen will come up.



Keep the target quality as “VBR” but change the quality to 33 kbps (this will encode file to e-AAC with Parametric Stereo).
Press “OK”.

5. Select ok in next window this message will pop up, say yes.




6. Foobar will ask to locate the neroAacEnc.exe so you can browse the place where you have unzipped it.



I have unzipped my codec to Nero_e-AAC and will select from there.

And you are done;) foobar will save your compressed media file in the same folder where original file resides.

You can try various other bitrate to suit your needs. But normally selecting a VBR 48kbps is good for listening on computer and Mobile.(the output mp4 will be in HE-AAC) But want more compression with very less loss to quality, choose VBR 28 or VBR 33 which will give use HE-AACv2(Parametric Stereo).


Just one thing more here if you want to play these files, they won’t work out of the box in windows media player. But Foobar itself, and Winamp, along with media player classic can easily play such files.

cheers/ Anurag

Intel Quad Core Processor, do we need it...?

Intel has started shipping its Quad Core processors for the Desktops, And Recently I came across an Advertisement from Intel saying Quad Core PC's start from Rs 25990/- Price Range. But My Idea is :

Do we really need it....?

For all the requirement for ppl at home, is just a decent Machine which can perform all the task of Word Processor, email, Browsing, and all those similar things.
See the spec for the Intel's newest Desktop Processor, here, And see that the Processor Consumes 95W power Which is much more than many of the existing processors.
I am not against Technology, But the idea to market the term Quad core CPU for Consumer Market like home is all crap. For Enterprises Intel can plan moves as they want it, But Its bad to even think of a quad core processor based Machine for home use.
Unnecessary wastage of electricity with effective additional output that's what are intel newer CPU's are.

Call Filter : Block unwanted calls

Pushed marketing has become such a huge business for various companies that they take it as for granted to disturb customer over his mobile every now and then. And Bangalore is one the cities where you can find to its utmost limit.
I had issues with vodafone (back in october) as they told me that DND will be active not before than 45 days time, so i decided to figure other way, and it is this.

All symbian Mobile phone users can install a free application 'Call Filter' and block numbers from which they don't want to receive calls. download here

here is some description from the site.

» CallFilter Description

Call Filter is a utility application realised under the concept "Simple Yet Efficient" for your Symbian devices. It allows you to hang-up any incoming calls from contacts selected as a filter rule in main application screen. Gives you a very convenient and quick access to block/unblock some phone number at runtime. The logs screen maintains a list of rejected calls and allows placing a quick call or an sms to the rejected phone number. So this is what we call "Simple Yet Efficient".

- Blocks unwanted calls
- Allows block/unblock calls on the go ..
- Maintains a log of rejected calls .. and allows to send an sms or make a call to the rejected caller immidiately !
- The best of all .... its Freeware

cheers,
Anurag

Fed up of web Advertisements! Block them all.

Really fed up of Advertisements, go to any forums, or news site and you will find whole lot of ads, even the Yahoo mail has an irritating flash ads all the time coming, and similar is the case with Hotmail and aol. Google itself has adsense service and other sites like Zedo, yahoo and doubleclick do provide web advertising services.... which actually pay the owner of site too... I don't say that its bad that site owners are getting money, But many a times it becomes irritating to read the real stuff. I have seen sites which had over 13 ads on a single page. Moreover these ads can eat up bandwidth who have limited broadband bandwidth connection( ie 1GB per month etc.)

Mozilla Firefox provides with a very good solution for it. Adblock plugin which can be downloaded here can block a whole lot of ad service pulled ads. After installation it shows up in bottom-right corner in firefox. Though initially there are no settings and you have to build your own filters over time, But here is the filter file that has been updated as I browse over Internet. right click the bottom right corner adblock icon and open preferences, and then adblock options -> import filter upload the filter file and you are done.

Disclaimer: this will block the google adsense and you won't see them, if you like them, you can remove that from preferences :).

Finally your eyes are spared from seeing all the crappy ads.