I’ve been using Gmail for more than 3 years and I’m using more than 2400 MB. Today, Gmail increased my inbox size by 800 MB! so I don’t have to delete any email! I love Gmail.

Here’s a screenshot of my Gmail Quota:

I noticed something really weird while making a search on live.com! the fact is that Microsoft Live Search seems to be blocking Mozilla Firefox users. I was trying to check out my rank on live.com for some websites of mine and all the queries were returning “We did not find any results for keywords.” I was really shocked, I kept trying different keywords like “google” for example, but no luck! I event tried the keyword “microsoft”, and again, no luck. Note that I was using Mozilla Firefox! Try it yourself… Here’s a screenshot:

But, I decided to try that on Internet Explorer 7 and guess what? the results appeared!!!
Is that stupid or what? I tried to remove my cookie, and tunnel my request through a proxy and unfortunately it didn’t work on Firefox…

So! can we conclude that Microsoft is trying a new marketing plan for IE7?

I’m using Windows Vista! Live seems working with Firefox on Linux and Mac

EDIT

Live search is working again on Mozilla Firefox, so it was a temporary issue!

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft.NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports JavaScript, .NET, and other languages.

you can use in addition to silverlight project and .net framework some design tools like Expression blend and Microsoft Expression Media which all are interconnected with each other which helps creating user interaction for the application that you are working on:

- Expression Media which allows you to create and enhance videos ;
- Blend which is a design tool to create user interaction for Silverlight.

It is very useful for media project,GUI animations it simplifies the work to add animation in your application.

One of the projects done with Silverlight is the Top Banana which is a great media application that enables you to sort browse and edit video content.It is a rich interactive application deployed online and viewed in the Browsers(Firefox ,IE).More over you can drag the video player to transform the video frame into a sequence of images visually representing the entire video this is called film strip mode. All these edits that u make to these videos are finally stored as XML and with windows media you can publish the video in a blog ,website or broadcast the video.

Introducing the IM emoticon…

If someone is putting this emoticon

it means that this guy is making a difference and is contributing in some of these cases mentioned in this list:

• American Red Cross — ready to help, code = *red+u
• National AIDS Fund — fighting AIDS, code = *naf
• National MS Society — joining the MS movement, code = *mssoc
• ninemillion.org — helping 9 million refugee kids, code = *9mil
• Sierra Club — exploring and protecting the planet, code = *sierra
• StopGlobalWarming.org — stopping global warming, code = *help
• UNICEF — helping kids survive, code = *unicef

So in order to be considered as a donation to a specific cause just use the code listed up there in your display name in order to be counted in the donation.
The more you tell people about it the more you will be helping your cause so spread it out .

I don’t live in the United States. What can I do?

Currently the donation only applies to Windows Live Messenger users in the United States but there are still ways you can help out.If you are living outside the united states you can try these five steps.

1. Sign up here. You will be asked for your country information, this will help with future plans of expanding this to other countries.
2. Add the i’m emoticon to your display name anyways to show your contacts what cause you support
3. Encourage all your friends especially the ones in the US to put an i’m emoticon in their display name
4. Send a lot of IMs to your friends in the US
5. Send feedback here about what causes you would like to see added in your country.

Google is spreading all over the world and now they are doing a mobile where all the relevant things that you normally do on your PC will hopefully be soon accessible wherever you are . As you see in the Picture below it looks nice and i am sure that the price will be competitive.
The phone specs say that “it combines the traditional voice and SMS capabilities of phones with all the exciting Google services from the PC such as Search, Gmail, Maps, Blogger”.

More details on ZDNet and Dirson.

Well finally Adobe decided to publish a lite version of Photoshop.They are planning to profit from online advertising.Once published we will be able to compare two image editor software competing at the same time(Photoshop Lite online version (coming soon) and the famous freeware Google Picasa).

Windows Vista is out and every one is wondering if it is worth buying and if it has advantages over the XP and if not what are the disadvantages.The best way to get acquainted with Vista is to test it. So i decided to spend a day with my friend (Challita Youssef) who works as a part timer in the IT department of LAU (Lebanese American University) and they have already installed the Vista windows there on a PC in order to test its performance and see all its new features.

Here’s some feeds about how Vista works.

In order to install Vista first u need arround 12Gb space.Once installed u will feel and touch the difference between the XP and the VISTA especially in graphics. The AeroGlass interface gives you a great feeling and that is why you need arround 256 MB VGA card to run and enjoy the graphics on Vista.Moreover i have a tool that tells how much memory and CPU percentage you are using.After running and testing it on Vista when you are doing nothing (meaning that no program is running on ur PC)if you have a 1GB ram which is the average rams that can be found in all pcs 39% memory is used on this computer so the windows vista is always using 390 MB in our case wow Vista is a big product (39% is too much don’t you think).

Windows Vista Performance Enhancements

With SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, Windows Vista introduces two features to make use of today’s technology in order to improve the user experience.Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP–based PCs.This means that more application data should be actively cached into all available memory moreover SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they’ll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also enables you give priority to important programs that you use infrequently (SuperFetch), whether that is physical RAM or a USB Flash memory device (ReadyBoost).Microsoft’s goal was to create balanced performance by removing delays in everyday work.

Not mentioning also that they promised to improve the security in the Vista(automatic backup system especially when you are not using the PC) .But as we all know no product is made to be perfect.It is a well known strategy that Microsoft uses and has been using for marketing its own softwares so that it can profit from maintaining its products .I think the best thing to do is to wait a year before buying it ; just stick to the XP. If you guys have more than 1GB Ram memory and 256 MB VGA card why not try the free version at the beginning for 30 days and if you really liked it ; then later pay for it and get it but before you do ; ask your self this question: Is it worth paying this much on a product ?! Especially that the windows XP will satisfy you using any application from now until next year.

On the other hand we can find great Operating systems with great graphics and great interfaces. They are very secure and they are totally FREE ,such as UBUNTU.If i was to decide what to do in your place i will wait a year there is no rush to buy something new when you are satisfied with what you got. As long as softwares and games don’t demand new technologies( higher graphics cards,higher memories)i will keep on using my lovely XP.

The main purpose in using italics in the ads is to attract more people to click on ads in a site but the question is the following: is it good enough? especially that it s already in bold ,highlight and Color so why make it even more in Italic? will it make a difference.

Sometimes too much of makeup can be harmful and the readers unconsciously won’t like it. The point is that some people might find it attractive while others won’t.

For me as a blogger, the most important thing is not to lose any person that is interested in my blog so why don’t we have the freedom to design our own ads. We ll be satisfied with our own result and if there s lack of audience we won’t be blaming anyone but ourselves .

You have images to resize, fix, remove red eye… Adobe has released a tool for non designers to manipulate photos. In general, the concept is similar to Google Picasa’s, but It’s a shareware software. The price is $299!

I think Google Picasa does the job perfectly! Why buying a software where 90% of the features are available in a professional freeware.

For a limited time, Sun is offering a free DVD media kit which includes the Solaris 10 Operating System for both SPARC and x86 platforms as well as Sun Studio 11 software.

Take this opportunity to get familiar with the most advanced operating system on the planet and the tools which enable the highest optimizations and best runtime performance on the Solaris Operating System, bar-none.

Sun Studio software provides optimizing C, C++ and Fortan compilers, visual performance tools, and high performance libraries to enhance your Solaris development environment.

Click here to order your DVD now for free.

Thank you sun!