Mozilla have released Firefox 10 – the newest version of Firefox- available for download on PC , Mac and Android. Its newest features include a Forward button that remains hidden until you actually need it, support for full-screen APIs, and better extensions management.

As a tweeter noted with sarcasm, perhaps the best feature of Firefox 10 will be that “Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default”

Changes  in Firefox 10

• Forward button now only shows when there is something to ‘forward’ to
• Anti-Aliasing for WebGL
• Support for CSS3 3D-Transforms
• UI Tweaks

For a full list of changes, see the Firefox 10 release notes.

Now that Mozilla has fully embraced its rapid-release cycle, an update from version 9 to 10 of its popular Firefox browser isn’t really an event anymore. It was less than a year back when I blogged about the release of Firefox 4. Thats a long road we have traveled quickly!

Download Firefox 10

• Firefox 10 for PC
• Firefox 10 for Mac
• Firefox 10 for Android

Let us know in the comments section your views about the latest version of Firefox, including any feedback after using it.

The top 10 Harry Potter Gifts for Christmas 2011:

1. Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Replica

The Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Replica is the most amazing Harry Potter gift manufactured in recent times. It  includes a wooden base that measures 11 x 12 inches in width and 2.5 inches in height. The castle, which is made of cold cast porcelain, measures 12-inches in height from wooden base to top of castle. Weighs approximately 16 pounds.

2. Harry Potter: The Complete 1-8 Film Collection – Limited Numbered Edition

This limited edition numbered box set contains 19 discs–each film comes on both Blu-ray and DVD and there are three additional Blu-ray discs containing over 5 hours of extra content. Also, included is a collectible retrospective photo album. Available from Amazon UK but can be ordered worldwide!

Please note that only the Blu-ray discs in this box set are region free. The DVDs are encoded region 2. The box itself is a piece of art!

3. Harry Potter Page to Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey

Harry Potter: Page to Screen opens the doors to Hogwarts castle and the wizarding world of Harry Potter to reveal the complete behind-the-scenes secrets, techniques, and over-the-top artistry that brought J.K. Rowling’s acclaimed novels to cinematic life. Developed in collaboration with the creative team behind the celebrated movie series, this deluxe, 500-plus page compendium features exclusive stories from the cast and crew, hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and concept illustrations sourced from the closed film sets, and rare memorabilia. As the definitive look at the magic that made cinematic history, Page to Screen is the ultimate collectible, perfect for Muggles everywhere.

 4. Deathly Hallows Part 2 Blu-ray combo pack with Exclusive 48 page Photo Album

A Warner Bros shop exclusive! This limited edition, numbered gift set includes the Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Download plus a commemorative 48-page photo book featuring images from all eight movies. Knowing Harry Potter did not have any pictures of his parents, Hagrid gave Harry a photo album that was full of pictures of James and Lily Potter, Ron and Hermione, and more.

5. Dumbledore’s Wand with Ollivanders Box

Noble Collection have manufactured some exquisite Harry Potter merchandise and Dumbledore’s Wand is no exception! A truly marvelous piece, remember this wand plays an important role in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

7. LEGO Harry Potter Freeing Dobby

With the help of Harry Potter, free Dobby from his master Lucius Malfoy/Trick Lucius Malfoy into freeing Dobby, the house elf! Then use Dobby to protect Harry Potter and send Lucius flying down the hall with a magic blast as he tries to get revenge in this Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets scene.

Includes 3 minifigures Harry Potter, Lucius Malfoy and Dobby Blast Lucius Malfoy with magic using the push function!

8. The Marauders Map by Noble Collection

10. LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 videogame

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is an Action-Adventure game that combines fun, familiar and family-friendly LEGO video game play mechanics with the storyline and characters of the latter half of the Harry Potter universe.

The game is built on the events from the movie series ranging from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Features include: 24 story events, and 16 lessons, new charms, spells and dueling skills, new characters and drop-in/drop-out co-op support.

Some of the ideas for items on this list have been taken from HarryPotterFan.Me/Gifts

Have you noticed how expensive eating out has become all of a sudden? Are Indian restaurants ripping off customers, or is it the general price rise all around that has started to pinch us?

I am not quite sure if this eating out inflation has been felt in the rest of India, but in Delhi whoever I have talked to has felt the difference.

It seems to have happened during the past one or two years; not only have the prices on the menu of most restaurants skyrocketed but so have the amount of taxes you pay on the bill. Yes, taxes, and not tax; because while earlier you would only pay a VAT (value added tax) on your bill, you now pay VAT, service charge and a service tax. During a recent visit to a restaurant when I got a highly inflated bill, I realized that almost one-third of the amount component was made up of these taxes and charges. Let me post it here to put things in perspective:

1 MUSHROOM ON TOAST ………………… 140.00
1 HASHED BROWN POTATO………………. 70.00
1 SPICY CHEESE TOAST…………………… 155.00
1 FRESH FRUIT JUICE………………………  90.00
1 GARLIC BREAD……………………………… 70.00
_________________________________________
Sub total ………………………………………. 525.00
SERVICE CHARGE 10%………………………  52.50 
10.3% SERVICE TAX + SC…………………..  59.48
12.5% VAT……………………………………….  65.63
_________________________________________
Net Total (rounded) …………………………. 702.60

That’s exactly the bill I got when I went for breakfast with a friend at The All American Diner restaurant in India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. On a more recent trip to a restro-bar in Connaught place, a bill for two came out to Rs 1700 – for two drinks and two starters!  In any case, I lost that one so I have put up for analysis the one above. Let us rip into it:

Out of the total bill of Rs 702.60, about Rs 177 was taxes and charges. Now two questions arise:

1. Since when did restaurants start adding a service tax to the bill?
   This seems to have been a recent phenomenon, because at least till a year back it used to be either just VAT or VAT + service charge. Probably it was a recent government directive to fleece more money from the common man. In any case, the service charge bit leads us to the second question…
2. Is forcing a service charge on customers legal?
   This article in Economic Times makes it quite clear that service charge in restaurants is illegal. Its understandable that a restaurant has to pay taxes to the government…but why have a percentage based service charge on an already over-priced menu? This is what the ET article says in brief:

Please be clear that a service charge is not equal to or equivalent to service tax. The service tax is a government levied cess and you are obliged to pay the same if you are a citizen of India or an alien visiting this country.

But there is no such cess called the service charge. This is a fabrication of the hospitality industry. You are not supposed to pay for the service of carrying the food to your table. That cost is included in the cost of the food that is indicated on the menu.

If you think Indian restaurants are copying the west in levying a service charge, think again. Top restaurants in London have already scrapped the service charge, even as more are following suit. However, in India, the tribe of service charge levying restaurants is on the rise, and in a massive way. As the article in ET says: “If India and Indians are rising as a nation, we should also step up our awareness of consumer rights. Currently, eating lunch and gladly contributing to the fund for the proprietor’s new car is nothing sort of foolhardiness.”

We need to protest both the service charge and the service tax in restaurants, its like triple taxation. While the former has to be put up to the restaurants, the latter will be have to pushed to the Government of India. If you have any ideas how we can implement this, please share them in the comments section.

WhatsApp allows communication between different devices

For those still unfamiliar with WhatsApp, its a mobile messenger that automatically scans your phonebook for people who are already on it and lists them when you open it. I was surprised to see at least 20% of my contacts already using WhatsApp when I installed and ran it for the first time. WhatsApp requires you to be on the internet for it to work…you can not only sent messages on WhatsApp but also send files attachments. I have shared quite a few pictures seamlessly through it.

The best part of WhatsApp is that its available for every mobile platform – Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows mobile etc. The downside? Its free only for the first year.

In comes Facebook Messenger

In a blog post yesterday, Facebook announced new features and improvements to its mobile application Facebook Messenger. The new update allows users to see who is online, who’s on mobile and when the other person is typing.

New support has been added for 22 new languages on Android, and 12 new languages on iOS. Facebook Messenger is already available on iPhone (including iOS5) and Android, and now it’s available on BlackBerry. Beluga, the system behind Facebook Messenger, was supposed to be the BlackBerry Messenger for non-BlackBerries. In an ironic twist of fate, that system has made its way to BlackBerry through Facebook.

The Kindle Fire was announced today by Amazon at an event in New York, sending shivers in rival tablet camps with its price tag. Amazon’s tablet has a 7-inch color display, runs the Android operating system and is on sale for $199, which is significantly lower than the price of the Apple iPad ($499).

The Kindle Fire has Wi-Fi connectivity, but does not offer 3G, and comes with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime. The device has 8GB of onboard storage and a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, and the display runs at 1024 x 600. Battery life is expected to be around seven hours of WiFi use from a full charge. It might remind some of the Blackberry Playbook as it looks very similar.

Kindle Fire will enable users to access 100,000 movies and TV shows, a million songs, apps from the Appstore, magazines and books. Unlike some of the competing tablets, it doesn’t have an embedded camera or a microphone. A comparison chart follows later in this blog post.

Amazon Silk

Kindle Fire Vs iPad Vs Nook

Amazon’s value proposition for the Fire comes from its vast, deep ecosystem and a highly customized build of Android that CEO Jeff Bezos suggests will rock our world, so you don’t want to read too deeply into these numbers — particularly when the iPad starts at $300 more — but it’s something to keep in mind.

The release date for Kindle Fire is November 15, 2011. You can pre-order it from Amazon here.

We might be in for a kick and a shake as the world’s largest social network, aka Facebook is set to make waves with what could be its very own Music Service.

Facebook has told media executives in recent days that it will begin letting online music services such as Spotify AB and Rdio Inc. publish user activity on Facebook pages, much like actions such as adding friends or “liking” websites. The move is part of a larger effort at Facebook to improve the discovery of all types of media content on the site. If finalized, the changes could be announced at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in late September.

Facebook spokesman Larry Yu would not comment directly on those reports or what’s coming for f8, but said in a statement that “many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.”

The Facebook initiative is designed to integrate the social-media giant more closely with services that let users stream free music or an unlimited amount of music for a monthly fee. By contrast, Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. recently started “cloud” music services that let users upload their personal music collections to remote servers and listen to them remotely, and Apple Inc. is preparing to start a similar offering.

In some cases, music services could create a player that would sit within Facebook, letting users hear music without leaving the site. However, the music itself would still be delivered through the third-party service, which users would be required to log in to before listening. Such players wouldn’t be mandatory, these people said, so that if a user wanted to listen to a Facebook friend’s Spotify playlist, that person might need to switch applications to hear it.

Google has announced that it has joined hands with J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to distribute Harry Potter ebooks through its array of literary products.

The Inside Google Books blog said:

Pottermore and Google are teaming up to integrate Pottermore with a number of Google products and APIs. So when the series of Harry Potter ebooks launches on Pottermore.com in early October, these bestsellers will be available in the U.S. via the open Google eBooks platform. When you buy a Harry Potter ebook from Pottermore, you will be able to choose to keep it in your Google Books library in-the-cloud, as well as on other e-reading platforms.

As part of the distribution deal, Google also secured exclusive rights to be the payment platform for all Pottermore.com purchases. That means you will be paying for your ebooks and audiobooks via Google Checkout rather than PayPal or Amazon Payments.

Pottermore will be the exclusive place to buy Harry Potter ebooks and digital audiobooks. You’ll be able to buy ebooks from the Pottermore Shop, push them to your Google Books library and store them alongside your other Google eBooks. Your other Google eBooks may be purchased from any of more than 250 independent booksellers or from Google directly.

Pottermore, which launches this fall, is designed to be an interactive online reading experience. It will also be the exclusive place to purchase the ebook versions of Harry Potter. The site is rumored to have gaming elements, awards and achievements, and virtual items.

The Pottermore team also plans to use YouTube for global video broadcasts in the future, as they did for JK Rowling’s announcement of Pottermore in June.

The Facebook page for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows saw an average of 5000 new likes each day in the preceding week of the release. Before that, the average was around 800 likes per day. Currently the page has 380,000 members and the admins insist that the number will reach 50,000 b the end of next week. No doubt devoted fans of the series will ensure that.

The official twitter account for Harry Potter Films also got a boost in the number of followers. It currently stands at just short of 350,000. However the number is lower than the fan following of @Lord_Voldemort7, an account that poses as the Dark Lord from Harry Potter and posts sarcastic and caustic tweets! His account has more than 1.3 million followers! Isn’t it strange that Warner Bros with all the money and power could not get those many followers on the official Harry Potter twitter account?In any case both accounts saw a surge in interaction and followers during the past fortnight!

Harry Potter Fans have also been buying a lot of  merchandise for the nostalgia as the curtains are drawn on the movie series. This post on the top 10 Harry Potter gifts is absolutely wonderful and gives fans some brilliant choices including the Deathly Hallows symbol locket, the marauder’s map and Dumbledore’s wand!

Thankfully, unlike what the final movie posters claim “It all ends here” it actually doesn’t. with J.K. Rowling’s announcement of Pottermore, we certainly have more to look forward to in the wonderful world of Harry Potter!

Thankfully, there are some specialized websites that help us narrow down our search to find relevant and good content, using expert reviews and votes from the general public. For example, if you want to look for the best web hosting service, you would normally have to wade through thousands of search results on Google – both normal and sponsored. In such a scenario its easy to get confused.

Some creative webmasters have found a niche here, and have developed the specialized sites I mentioned above. One of these sites is Consumer Rankings. As you can gather from the name, the website publishes expert reviews of products and services in various categories and allows people to give their own ranking as well through their experience of the said product. This combination of reviews from the experts and the general public allows for a real and in-depth analysis and helps consumers make informed choices.

So if you are looking to buy something, you know where to look for the best  reviews!

Original post

Move over Google Nexus S. if a popular technology blog is to be believed, pictures of Google Nexus 3 – the next device from the search engine giant – has already been leaked.

Is this the Google Nexus 3?

Yes, this is the supposed picture of the Google nexus 3, which was first posted by Michael Blake on TechHog. However, Michael has recently revised his article and removed the picture saying:

Sorry everyone, I’ve been politely asked to remove the information from this page regarding the 3rd Nexus. I apologize for the inconvenience.

However I will not be removing the picture till I get that polite nudge. Now looking at the Nexus 3 pic, its apparent that  the device lacks the signature Android buttons like the Search, Menu, etc. Its a good decision because the buttons were never really needed, and they became particularly obsolete with Android Honeycomb. While the HTC is a strong contender to manufacture this Google phone (since it also mentioned about porting Unlocked HTC phones) we mustn’t forget LG and its keen interest in Android or Motorola as for the matter.

In all probability the Nexus 3 will be powered by the Ice Cream Sandwich OS – the latest version of Android OS for mobiles announced recently by Google.  You can also expect a dual camera as well as a dual core processor (Samsung Galaxy S II showed us the way this year). Given most of the device shipping by the end of this year will have dual core processors powering  them, this feature is a must. Also, an amoled screen would be an icing on the cake.

Update: Michael seems to think that the picture above is possibly a test model for the Nexus 3 by HTC.