Where to Buy Original Windows Really Cheap?

If you were to buy the Home Basic edition of Windows in North America, it would cost your ~$200. The price for the same software is $250 in Canada, $200 in India, $350 in UK and Europe but in China, Microsoft is selling Windows Vista Home Basic DVDs for $66 only.

The price cut in China is introduced to lure buyers away from pirated versions of the software.

But will this latest move to cut prices help Microsoft China win new customers? Probably not because even at $66, the Vista DVD from Microsoft costs $65 more than the prevailing Vista rate in Chinese software market which is a mere $1.00 (cost of media).

And this Microsoft tactic to slash prices is sure to attract strong reactions from customers in other countries where piracy is virtually non-existent and Vista sales are good but the prices are high.

This follows previous reports that Bill Gates was not too worried about the widespread software piracy in China since that ensured the customers won't more to other alternatives like Linux.

Create Desktop Wallpapers from Google Maps Satellite Images

Bored with your existing desktop wallpaper? How about creating a wallpaper on your own using picture tiles from Google Maps.

With some free software, you can turn the interesting aerial photographs available on Google Maps website into a beautiful wallpaper backgrounds for your desktop screen. They look all the more stunning if you have wide or dual monitor setup.

Here's a step-by-step illustrated guide to walk you through the process of creating wallpapers from Google Maps imagery data.

Before we get going, we need to know the exact resolution of our desktop screen. Right click anywhere on the Desktop and choose Properties. Open the Settings tab and take a note of your screen resolution. If you have an extended dual screen, you need to multiply that width by a factor of 2. I use a dual monitor so the desktop wallpaper dimensions would be 1680*2 by 1050 pixels in my case.

Now let's get to the actual process of making a desktop wallpaper background from the satellite images available in Google Maps (or any other mapping services like Yahoo! Maps or Windows Live)

Step 1. Search the location on Google Maps by typing the city name, state or country. You then right click any area of the Google Map and select "Center Map here". This will be your starting point. (we use Statue of Liberty, New York) for our example.

Step 2. Maximize the view area of Google Maps - Press F11 to open your browser in Full Screen mode.

Step 3. Capture screenshots - You save a snapshot of the Google Map as an image using Print Screen or any screen capture program. Then pan right (or left) a couple of times so as to slide the map in that direction but make sure the new image has some overlapping area with the previous screenshot. [The panning arrows are in the extreme top left corner pointing to four different directions]

Capture the Google Map again and save it to a different file. Repeat the process until you saved some five different images.

Step 4. Stitch all the Google Maps' images saved in the previous step. You may use GIMP, Photoshop, MS Paint, AutoStitch or any Panorama software to stitch the various Google Maps photographs into one composite wallpaper. If you have SnagIt, the SnagIt Editor allows you to insert any number of images that you can drag around to fit the layout.

Crop the stitched image to match your desktop screen resolution that we noted in the very first step. That's it.
If you have time, you can extend the desktop wallpaper idea to create very large wall posters from Google Images for your room.

Also see: Find Date when Google Maps Images were Taken

Legal Issues: Google Maps Terms of Use

You may not delete or in any manner alter the copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices appearing in map information, including photographic imagery. You may not use the imagery in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.

I hope this is agreement with Google Maps TOS as long as we preserve the copyright information on the map and don't use it for commercial purpose (like you cannot sell Google Maps wallpaper).

Also see: Create Time-Lapse with Google Street View

Prevent Visitors from Downloading your Website Images

Technically it is impossible to protect web pictures from leeching since most browsers will first download a copy of the entire image from the internet to the local cache before rendering.

Some webmasters try to disable right click on their webpages so that visitors cannot access the "Save Image As.." command in the menu but that trick can be easily defeated by disabling Javascript or using Firefox. Image Maps are another option but the sliced images can be saved as a whole using any screen capture program.

So what's a good alternative if you are very eager to protect you images on the internet ? One option is is convert your images to SWF Flash objects before uploading them to the web but if that sounds too impractical, try swfIR (SWF Image Replacement tool).

swfIR is a very simple technique to prevent image download from your website - instead of adding the standard <img> tag for embedding pictures, you define the image location in Javascript and the image will then wrap inside a Flash movie on your webpage.

What's so nice about swfIR is that it lets apply nice visual effects to your images including borders, rounded corners, small rotations and shadows without actually modifying the original image.

Tech savvy users can easily download the image by looking at the HTML source code of your web page but for the not-so-geeky crowd and image leech software, all they'll see is a blank Flash movie.

Update: The service mentioned in this article in no longer available but here's an updated technique - Protect your Online Images from Copying

Google Custom Search with Adsense for Blogger or WordPress Blogs

How to implement Google Custom Search with Adsense in Blogger or Wordpress Blogs? [I have seen Adsense Search performing much better (in terms of CTR and revenue) after switching from the standand Adsense for Search to the more customizable Google Custom Search.]

If you are looking for new ways to maximize Adsense Income from your blog or website, it makes more sense to use Google Custom Search with Adsense on your site instead of the regular Adsense for Search program. Here are some reasons:

1. Adsense for Search allows minimal customization of the Google Search Box and you are limited to white, black or gray colored search boxes. In Custom Search, you have complete control over layout and branding provided the custom changes comply with the Adsense TOS.
2. For site specific search, visitors can either search the entire web or just the pages of your current site. In Google Custom Search engine you can completely remove the "web option" and let visitors search just the sites you want - there are no radio checkboxes.
3. Ads are always displayed at the top of search results in Adsense for Search which may not be the most optimized layout for all blog websites. In Adsense Custom Search, you can chose to have ads at the top and right, top and bottom or just in the right sidebar similar to what you see on Google.com.

To use Google Custom Search with Adsense in blogs hosted on Blogger or Wordpress, you have to use a workaround since these blog do not allow adding new pages which are essential for hosting the search results page.

First, create a Custom Search Engine. Type your blog URL(s) in the "Sites to Search" section and choose "Show Ads on Results pages". Then connect your Google Co-op account with Google AdSense through the "Make money" tab in your search engine's control panel.

Next click the "Code" tab and open "Search box and search results code for your website" - Specify where you want the Google Ads to appear and click Save changes.

Create a new HTML webpage in FrontPage or any WYSIWYG editor such that it look very similar to your blog homepage.  Now copy-paste the "Google Search Results Snippet" from Google CSE page to your local HTML page. Save the changes and upload your webpage to your Dropbox. Make the file public and get the link.

Copy the full URL of this HTML webpage and paste it in the URL box of your Google CSE Code panel. Next copy paste the Google CSE Search Box snippet in your blog template and Save.

For self-hosted Wordpress blogs, you can create a new page with post slug that says "search" and paste the Google Search Results snippet inside the page.
More AdSense - Custom Search Tips

1. If you have narrow site layout, use the Watermark style branding and it shows the Google Logo right inside the search box.
2. For best CTR, use the Top & Right Ads option.
3. Stretch the Google Search Results across your page width [like 800px].
4. Never link to your search results pages from blog posts - that's against the Adsense Rule.
5. Don't provide Google Toolbar buttons for your Adsense Search pages - that's also against the rule.
6. Do not modify the height of Adsense Resultset - that will break the layout in cases when just a couple of pages are available for certain search queries.

iTunes Trick: Stuff More Songs and Podcasts in Your iPod

If you have lower capacity iPod like the 1GB nano, this trick will help you stuff more music and podcasts into your MP3 player.

You have a large collection of MP3 music and audio-video podcasts on your hard-drive that you want to copy to the iPod or burn them onto a CD disk using iTunes.

But before you plugin the iPod to your computer and transfer the music collection, you may easily cut out all the long silences, crowd applause and all the other boring intros / outros from the songs that will otherwise occupy precious space on your iPod drive. Now what is the most effective way to do this?

Use iTunes to Trim Unwanted Portions from Songs and Podcasts

For editing songs, you can either use any of the MP3 cutter software or your favorite iTunes which employs non-destructive editing meaning the original song file will not be modified though the unwanted portions are still removed from the music file that will be copied to your iPod or CD.

Here's how you do it. Play the song in iTunes from beginning, pause where the boring intro ends and note the time. Now skip the playhead to the location where the unwanted outro begins and note this time as well. [see red arrows in the iTunes screenshot above]

Next, we'll instruct iTunes to copy just the music between the specific time period and skip the rest. Right click the song -> Get Info -> Options. Enter the Start Time and End Time that we noted above. Click OK.

When you transfer this to the iPod, iTunes will remember your preferences. If you want to permanently edit the song, right-click the song again in the iTunes playlist and select "Convert selection to AAC" - it will appear as a new song in the same playlist.

Related: iTunes Tricks for Podcasting Fans

Tucows Answers: Dummies Guide To Your Tech Problems

Tucows, which was once a major website for download freeware and shareware software, has changed gears. They have moved into the territory of Yahoo! Answers providing solutions to the most common "How To" tech problems.

The one big difference here is that unlike Yahoo! Answers where it's all user-generated stuff, the Q&A content on Tucows is written by staff though others can rate or add comments.

The software download directory still exists at Tucows but clearly the current focus is to popularize their new "solutions" section. When you do a search on new Tucows.com, you get mix results - they can either be pointing to answers to the problem or to the software itself.

You may however have problems recognizing content that is sponsored. For instance, the story on "How to Save YouTube Videos" suggests a commercial software and the article itself has been written by software vendor. The advertorial piece therefore misses those tons of free alternatives for recording YouTube videos.

Tucows.com | Screencast Demo |Thanks Joey deVilla

When Animals Invade the Google Homepage

When fishes, flies, worms and dogs invade the Google website, humans protest.

A high resolution video is available on blip.TV. YouTube version here.