Recently Twitter has redesigned its Micro Blogging Platform site. Along with that, the guy at the Next Web has created TwitterKeys. It is a browser bookmarklet that pulls up expressive characters for easy copy & paste of all those crazy Unicode symbols that people love to include in their emails and blog posts. The TwitterKeys are divided into 3 Pages. See the link below to add TwitterKeys to you Twitter.

TwitterKeys | Part 1

TwitterKeys | Part 2

TwitterKeys | Part 3

Company hopes that Apple's customers will voice their frustrations and demand Flash

Adobe's Flash supports a large portion of the internet's rich content. And it will soon be coming to almost all smart phones, opening a world of internet possibilities. All the smart phones, that is, except one of the most popular smart phones on the market -- Apple's iPhone.

Apple remains cold and aloof about the topic of Flash. While the iPhone could easily support hardware-accelerated Flash, CEO Steve Jobs has stated in interviews that Flash is irrelevant and not something that iPhone customers have demanded. He insists the iPhone is the perfect internet phone -- even if it can't run Flash.

Adobe seems to be hoping to push Apple's customers to demand the feature with a new humorously passive aggressive browser failure message.

On the iPhone customers trying to use Flash now get a message stating:

Apple restricts the use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Before the message merely read:

To view this content upgrade your browser and flash plug-in.

Will the new message inspire users to complain to Apple, or will it merely annoy iPhone users, making Adobe look bad? It should be interesting to see how Apple's customers react to the new, more pointed error message.

Just few days after Google Chrome was released, Paul Douglas from TechRader has provided 30 Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts for Google Chrome.

1. Create desktop and Start menu shortcuts to web apps such as Gmail – go to Gmail.com and then select Create application shortcuts… from the Page Control menu (in the top-right corner of your browser – it looks like a page with the corner folded over). Now choose where you want to place your shortcut. This works for other Google apps such as Calendar and Documents, and other services such as Windows Live Hotmail.

2. Control + Shift + N open an ‘incognito’ window – sites you view in this window won’t appear in your history and cookies served by sites in this window will be deleted when the window is closed.

3. You can open a link in an incognito window by right-clicking the link and selecting Open link in incognito window.

4. Alt + Home loads your Google Chrome home page, with thumbnails of your most visited sites shown in the active tabbed window.

5. Control + T opens a new tab. You can drag tabs around to change their order or drag a tab out of the window into its own window.

6. Control + Shift + T opens your most recently closed tab. Press the key combination again to open the tab closed before that one. Google Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you’ve closed.

7. Jump to different open tabs using Control + 1, Control + 2, Control + 3, etc. Control + 9 takes you to the last tab.

8. Control + Tab lets you cycle through your open tabs in order.

9. Control + Shift + Tab cycles through your tabs in the opposite order.

10. As with Firefox 3, you can drag a link onto a tab to open it in that tab, or drop it between two tabs to open a new tab in that position.

11. To bookmark a site click the star on the left of the address bar and then select a folder to add it to.

12. Control +B hides the Google Chrome bookmarks bar. Press Control + B to bring it back again.

13. Right-click or hold down the back button and you’ll get a drop-down list of sites to go back through. Show Full History, at the bottom of the list, opens a new tab with your full browser history.

14. Control + H is a faster way to bring up the History page.

15. You can delete history for chosen days by scrolling to the day you want to delete and clicking Delete history for this day on the right-hand side of the window.

16. Control + J brings up your Downloads page.

17. To clear an item from your Downloads page, right-click an entry and select Remove.

18. Press Control + K or Control + E to search from the address bar. Once pressed, you’ll see a ? Symbol appear in the address bar and you can simply enter your search query and hit Return.

19. Right-click the top of the browser window and select Task manager to see how much memory different tabs and plug-ins are using. Highlight one and click End process to stop it running.

20. Shift + Escape is a quicker way to bring up the Google Chrome Task manager.

21. To see what plug-ins are installed, type about:plugins into the address window.

22. You can also type the following commands into the Google Chrome address window: about:stats, about:network, about:histograms, about:memory, about:cache, about:dns.

23. Type about:crash to see what a crashed tab looks like.

24. A three-second diversion: type about:internets. (Only works in Windows XP.)

25. Edit any web page – right-click a page and select Inspect element. Now edit the HTML source code and hit Return to view the changes.

26. To make Google Chrome your default browser, click the Tools button (in the right-hand corner of the browser window – a spanner icon). Select Options, click the Basics tab and then click the Make Google Chrome my default browser button.

27. To delete cookies, go to Tools > Options > Under the Hood. Scroll down to the Security section, and click Show cookies. Now you can click Remove all or remove individual cookies.

28. To clear more data such as the Google Chrome browsing history and cache, click the Tools icon and select Clear browsing data…

29. To clear the most visited web sites that appear on your Google Chrome start page, you must clear your browsing history using the method above.

30. Clearing your Google Chrome browser history will also stop matches from previously browsed sites appearing as suggestions in your address bar.

Worm is first known iPhone worm, originated in Australia, may be spreading overseas

Rick Astley, an English singer-songwriter and musician, first became famous for his 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". The music industry in the 1990s gave up on Astley, but Astley didn't give up on it. He managed to recapture attention in 2007 thanks to one of the most infamous viral video crazes. Links popped up all around the internet to Astley's hit and the term "rickrolling", originally referring to tricking people into watching the video, became a common colloquialism.

Now an internet worm is achieving what Apple has been unable to do -- punish those with jailbroken iPhones (phones freed of Apple's app restrictions). Sophos, a leading security firm, appears to be the first to have investigated the amusing virus. The virus, which "rickrolls" users, changing their wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley. It appears to do little else other than spreading to other jailbroken iPhones in the user's contact list.

The worm can infect any jailbroken iPhone with SSH installed and an unchanged default password. The password on jailbroken iPhones defaults to "alpine". Users can change this by installing the MobileTerminal app, available from the Cydia undergound app store, and typing the command passwd.

Apple's hardware team can't seem to keep their close platform closed

Apple has a big headache. That headache is iPhone unlockers and jailbreakers. With iPhone jailbreaking, the powerful handsets are no longer constrained to only run the apps that Apple allows. And with unlocking, users can jump onto other networks, leaving Apple's partner AT&T and its patchy 3G network behind.

Apple has long and unsuccessfully waged war with the unlockers. It has tried to brick their iPhones. It has tried to release new firmware versions to try to lock them out. But ultimately, time and time again, Apple's best hardware and software engineers are finding themselves outwitted and befuddled by the persistent hackers.

Leading the crew is George Hotz, a 20-year-old New Jersey native who goes by the aliases geohot, million75, or mil online. When he was just a teen, he became the first to develop a procedure to jailbreak the iPhone allowing its use on other networks. The move netted him a hot car, extra iPhones, money, and fame. Now slightly older and a month out of his teenage years, Hotz continues to be among the most prolific iPhone unlockers, consistently outsmarting Apple.

Now Hotz has released his latest masterpiece, blacksn0w, a free unlocking utility that works with the latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS hardware (the latest 05.11.07 baseband, which locked out previous hacks). The unlock works with a new version of Hotz's popular purplera1n jailbreak hack, dubbed blackra1n. Together the hacks can both free the phone from the AT&T network and Apple's app restrictions.

According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application.

The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales figure ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many. Who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store last year?

According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices.

Most likely, these are the high-profile exceptions to the rule and most people use the app to buy books, clothing and electronics much like regular eBay shoppers do. In total, approximately 4.6 million iPhone owners have downloaded and installed the app to date.

According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application.

The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales figure ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many. Who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store last year?

According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices.

Most likely, these are the high-profile exceptions to the rule and most people use the app to buy books, clothing and electronics much like regular eBay shoppers do. In total, approximately 4.6 million iPhone owners have downloaded and installed the app to date.

If you are running your blog from your own hosted website, most likely you will be using WordPress Platform. WordPress is great by itself, the majority of WordPress’ usefulness comes from its plugins and themes. Some of the best and most creative features come from plugins, and because plugins are so easy to create and install, there are literally thousands of WordPress plugins.

If you’re new to WordPress Platform, you will have difficulties in finding the appropriate plugin . Sometimes there are ten plugins doing the same thing, which makes it difficult to find the plugin which works the best. Or, you just simply don’t know that a plugin exists. That’s why I’m here to help. Here is the list of Top 10 Popular Wordpress Plugins for your site.

• All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
• cformsII – contact form – cforms II is the most customizable, flexible & powerful ajax supporting contact form plugin (& comment form).
• WordPress.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WordPress.com’s stat system.
• Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.
• Wordpress Automatic upgrade – Wordpress automatic upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one.
• WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog.
• WP Ajax Edit Comments – Allows users and admin’s to edit comments on a post. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admin’s can edit all comments.
• WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

t is probably a safe bet to assume anyone with a car and an iPhone has said, “man, I wish this thing could start my car.” Maybe you’ve been walking to your car on a frigid night or a scorching day, but you’ve wondered about it, haven’t you? Maybe you remember this early post from your favorite remote control blog. Viper, a leader in car security and remote starters, must have been paying attention — because they just turned that spoof into reality with Viper SmartStart for the iPhone.

SmartStart is a free iPhone app that allows you to start your car from basically anywhere via your wireless service. Now hold your horses (or Vipers) — it’s not just going to magically start your car. There is the $300 Viper SmartStart Module that you are going to have to have professionally installed in your car, as well as an annual $30 subscription to get that gear on the cell network. The first year of the service is free, so I suppose that helps. Kind of reminds me of OnStar.

Pricing aside, the SmartStart system seems pretty cool. It’s certainly the most impressive remote start system I’ve seen. First, the app can be used to start any of your cars that have the module installed — which has to be pretty helpful for car collectors and large families. You can also unlock any of your cars — from anywhere — which would definitely come in handy if you were to, say, locking yourself out of the car when you are away from home.

Apple said Thursday that it will let iPhone application developers offer their users the option to buy additional content or features within a free app on its App Store.

App developers said they received an email notice from Apple informing them that the in-app purchase feature was now available for free apps and that it would “simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses in App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app.” A spokeswoman for Apple confirmed the news.

The in-app purchase feature, which was first introduced in March, allows developers to offer fresh content for purchase within an app such as new levels in a game, additional books in an e-book app, or expanded capability in productivity apps. The caveat, however, was that the feature was only available for paid apps, which meant that developers had to charge at least 99 cents.

Developers say that the latest announcement helps in two ways. First, it makes it much easier for them to make a business out of free apps. Until now, developers sold ads within their free apps or tried to convert users to a paid version with more content.

After rejections, one Apple executive is trying hard to win customers -- and developers -- back

Apple's app store practices have bordered on schizophrenia, with it frequently accepting applications only to later reject them and rejecting others only to later accept them. Worse yet, frequently rejections seem to follow no consistent pattern, with some apps being rejected for containing some sort of forbidden content, while others with that same content get accepted.

These inconsistencies have led to customers growing dissatisfied with the iPhone -- or in some cases even leaving it. They have also led to a growing discontent among developers, some of whom have also jumped ship. And it has even brought down a government investigation concerning Apple's role in rejecting the Google Voice app.

However, there is one man who hopes to fix the system. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller is trying to right the iPhone App Store and is personally taking a hand in trying to win back customers, developers, and placate government investigators.

Mozilla Firefox works great on its own browser, but it’s the thousands of extensions that make it shine. I have pulled together about 10 add-ons which provide a quick access to handy blogging tools.

• Wordpress.com Sidebar – Adds a quick access sidebar to get to your WordPress.com account.
  
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• Firefox Universal Uploader – Universal program for uploading to sites such as Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, and Facebook.
• FireFTP – It is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.
• Adsense Notifier – Displays your current earnings from Google Adsense in the status bar.
• ShrinkThisLink Link Shrinker – Use the ShrinkThisLink service without leaving the page.
• StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
• ScribeFire Blog Editor – ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
• SEOpen – Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more.
• PayPerPost Opps Hider – Doesn’t it annoy you that PayPerPost opportunities can’t be hidden? There are tons that you can’t post or don’t want to take. With this extension you can easily hide PayPerPost opportunities by clicking a small checkbox.
• coComment – This extension allows you to activate coComment! from the right-click context menu and reduces your onscreen movement time so that you don’t have to move all the way from the comment text box to the Bookmarks and then back to the Submit

Jailbroken iPhone users with SSH and a default password are the target

The iPhone is one of the most popular smartphones on the market. By most accounts, the iPhone is the most likely of all smartphones to be used on the internet to access files on the go. There are also a growing number of iPhone users who are jailbreaking the devices to use unauthorized Apple software or to use the devices on other carrier networks.

Over the last few weeks, a worm targeted specifically at iPhones which are jailbroken and have SSH installed with the default password was found. The original worm was nothing more than an irritation and would change the background image of the iPhone to a picture of washed up pop star Rick Astley. Embarrassing for sure, but hardly what most would consider malicious.

A similar worm targeting jailbroken iPhones with SSH and the default password -- alpine -- is making its rounds in the Netherlands. The new worm is different from the first in that the latest is clearly malicious and has a financial motive behind it for the worm maker. BBC News reports that security firm F-Secure discovered the worm and that it targets users of Dutch online bank ING. The worm infects the iPhone and redirects the user to a fake login page.

Mikko Hypponen from F-Secure told BBC News, "It's the second iPhone worm ever and the first that's clearly malicious - there's a clear financial motive behind it."

There are alot of social networking plugins for Wordpress CMS. But here are my top 5 favorite Social WordPress Plugins…

1. SimpleTwitter – It allows Wordpress blog owners to add Twitter messages to their templates. Once installed, the plug-in is used by adding the following call in a template.
2. ShareThis – This WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple to use, and unobtrusive way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.
3. Stumble Reviews – Add the reviews that appear on StumbleUpon for a given page to be displayed on that page.
4. Digg Digg – Integrate Digg Button into Wordpress Content, Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg button.
5. Social Bookmarking RELOADED – Add the social bookmarks service’s icons to your articles in your blogs in order to submit them easily. Plugin based on Apostolos Dountsis one.

What’s the first thing that you do when you are back from a vacation or from a family wedding? You probably connect the digital camera to your computer and transfer the photographs (a better word would be "memories") from the camera to your hard-drive.

You’ve following this routine for quite some time and, as a result, a few hundred thousand photographs reside on your computer now neatly tagged and arranged in folders. But wait, do you have a backup plan for these "priceless" digital photos?

How to Backup your Digital Photos

There are basically four ways by which you can backup your photos at home:

1. Backup your photos on CDs and DVDs – This is a cheap and easy option but please remember that disks have a finite shelf life so pictures that you burn today on to a DVD disk may not be accessible after few years.

2. Use an external hard drive – You can get a portable 500 GB drive for less than $100, they connect to your computer via USB (or Firewire) ports but again, you can’t expect an external hard drive to last forever.

3. Use Network Storage – If you have pictures across multiple computers, you can use a network attached storage (NAS) device like HP’s MediaSmart Home Server* or Apple’s Time Capsule to automatically backup all your digital content in one place.

The HP device can transfer files to Amazon S3 so you have an added layer of protection.

4. Use an online backup services – You can use photo-sharing websites (like Flickr) or an online backup service (like Mozy) to put your photos on to the "cloud" and access them from any other computer.

For most users, the best option for preserving digital photographs is often "online backup" because it doesn’t require you to burn DVDs (which are unreliable anyway), you don’t have to invest in any new hardware and your photos are likely to last forever as long as you pay the yearly bills.

Online Backup for your Digital Photos

There are again four different routes for online backup:

# 1. Online backup services like Mozy that offer unlimited storage and allow not just photographs but files of all types.

# 2. Photo-sharing services like Flickr or Picasa Web Albums that allow you to store both photographs and video clips online.

# 3. File-synchronization services like Dropbox, SugarSync or Windows Live Mesh.

# 4. Online storage services like Amazon S3 or Windows Live SkyDrive.

What should you use?

Well, photo-sharing sites allow you to visually browse pictures in the web browser itself while a backup service like Mozy will first require you to download the photos on to the computer before you can show them to your visiting grand-parents.

File-synchronization services like Live Mesh not only provide online backup but they also save a copy of your digital files (pictures in this case) on to your other computers so even if your main hard-drive suffers a crash, you can quickly retrieve files from the other computers.

The Cost of Online Storage for Digital Photos

If you only have a few hundred photos on your computer that occupy anywhere between 1-2 GB of storage space, you can enjoy any of above backup services for free but if your storage requirements are slightly more, you probably need to for a paid version.

Now here’s a visual graph that compares the storage cost of various online backup services where you can safely store your priceless photos.

Flickr Pro costs around $25 an year and you can store unlimited number of pictures here though the maximum size of individual pictures should not exceed 20 MB (bad for professional photographs who shoot in RAW – see comments).
Picasa Web Albums on the other hand lets you purchase storage on-demand so you only pay $5 per year for 20 GB of online storage but end-up paying $100 for 400 GB of storage. Like Flickr, images uploaded to Picasa Web Albums can be no larger than 20MB and are restricted to 50 megapixels or less.
Live Skydrive is the best online storage service – it offers 25 GB of free space (50 MB limit for individual files) and that should be enough for most home users. You can upload picture libraries from your desktop to Windows Live SkyDrive using the free Windows Live Photo Gallery client though it’s only available for Windows.
Online backup services like Mozy cost around $60 per year respectively but here you get unlimited storage, your files are automatically backed up (in the background) and there are no restrictions on file-size.
SmugMug, another popular photo-sharing site, offers a service called SmugVault that uses Amazon S3 to backup your photos, videos and all other file-types that you can imagine. They have a relaxed 600 MB per file limit and you pay the normal Amazon S3 rent for files that are not photos.
Amazon S3, where you pay only for what you use, is very reliable (their SLA promises 99.9% uptime) turns out to be very expensive if your yearly storage requirement exceeds 10 GB.

Here’s another representation of the same graph – Yearly costs (in $) vs. storage offered (in GB).
Windows Live SkyDrive offers 25 GB of online storage space for your pictures for free though there’s no option to purchase extra storage. In paid services, Google’s Picasa offers the best value for money if your photo collection can fit in 20 GB else a Flickr Pro account probably makes more sense.

Picasa desktop software makes it easy for you to upload and download photos from Picasa Web Albums. Flickr provides an uploading utility but you need to rely on a third-party hacks to download the original (full-resolution) albums from Flickr.

Are you bored of your current Facebook Design and are looking to customize your Facebook profile page? Now you can customize your Facebook Profile with PageRage. You can simply change the background layout/design on your Facebook Profile.

First of all you need to add the PageRage Super Profile (Facebook Application) and you can choose your preferred Layout/Design. There is a lot of skin to dress your Facebook Profile. The problem of this application is your friends need Yontoo Layers (Firefox Extension/IE Add-ons) to view your layout/design.

So this means your friends are only able to view your layout/design on Browser which they installed Yontoo Layer. Yontoo Layers currently works with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.x on Windows XP and Vista, as well as Firefox 2.x on Mac OS X. If your friend doesn’t have Yontoo Layers, then they will be viewing the default Facebook design

A hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive or hard disk, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, “drive” refers to a device distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk drive and its floppy disk. Early HDDs had removable media; however, an HDD today is typically a sealed unit with fixed media…

The famous Micro Blogging Platform has finally transformed to a brand new design. It looks more in line with current web applications and retains its characteristic simplicity it does not include new features, but if it significantly improves the aesthetics and a little accessibility.

According to the official blog, a lot of these changes are with a view of the future gttt ttwhere if you can add new features. Perhaps the section for more changes has been to design, where you can customize the background and the color of the subject in a more insightful.

I think the change you feel good service, because by now it seemed that it was not working to improve it or to a very slow. Now we have to wait for new features.

Looking to save money on books (and college textbooks) ? Here are some useful resources and tips that can help you grab the best deals on any book that you want to read.

1. Online Bookstores That Offer Books for Less

Amazon.com – The largest bookstore on the Internet has been around for 15 years but they still excel at their original mission. Amazon.com often has the best prices to offer on most books, and they carry a wider range of books than most other online bookstores as well. Amazon.com offers free shipping for most items inside the US on orders over $25, but the best part is that they ship books worldwide (including India).

Half.com – If you’re looking to buy used books, eBay owned Half.com usually has the best prices. Books can be shipped anywhere inside the United States, though expedited shipping is not available on all books. Unlike Amazon, Half.com won’t ship books to international locations. Anyone can resell their used or new books on Half.com, and these are listed in order of their condition.

eBay Books – An auction may not seem like the most typical way to purchase books online but it may sometimes be the cheapest. Also, if you are looking for an out of print or rare book, eBay may be the only place where you can find it.

eBay has a special page set up for finding books, and you can always search for a book by title, author, or ISBN. However, since all listings are entirely written by the sellers, it is often hard to find the exact title you are looking for. Some eBay sellers ship internationally, while others won’t; if you need a book shipped outside the US, you may directly ask the seller to know if they would be willing to do so.

Barnes And Noble – One of the oldest, largest, and best known bookstores in America, Barnes and Noble also has a sizable online bookstore. Although their prices are often higher than Amazon.com, they do offer a $25/year membership that will take between 10% and 40% off of the price of most items. Barnes and Noble offers free shipping on orders of $25 or more, and will also ship internationally.

Biblio.com – Biblio specializes in used books as well as rare and out-of-print books. It can also be a great resource buy older editions of books (as they cost less) as well as international editions of textbooks that are produced for overseas markets and are therefore sold at a much lesser price. From their site:

Most international editions may bear a label that says something to the effect of “Not for sale in the U.S. or Canada”. This is because the publisher has printed the books to be sold overseas. There is nothing illegal, however, in purchasing international edition books from sellers overseas.

AbeBooks – Another online bookstore that carries many older and out-of-print collectible books is AbeBooks. They offer new and used books in most categories. Like Biblio, AbeBooks also sells international and review editions of textbooks, which are often much cheaper than the standard textbooks.

Book Depository – The reason why you may want to buy books from The Book Depository is because they offer “free worldwide delivery” (though their definition of “world” doesn’t include all countries).

2. Comparison Shopping for Books

To find the best deal on a book, or any item for that matter, it is often a good idea to compare prices across multiple stores. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this manually as there are some good comparison shopping engines that can fetch prices of books from multiple stores in a go.

Bing Shopping – Microsoft’s newly revamped Bing search engine is great for comparison shopping. You can simply search for the ISBN or title of a book, and it will search across numerous online stores for the cheapest price. Bing will show you if the shipping if free or not, and even offers Cashback discounts on purchases from select retailers.

Google Books – If a book you wish to purchase is listed on Google Books, you can easily compare the price of the print version of that book across multiple stores using Google Books. If the service is unable to fetch the price a title, it will at least display a list of online stores (and libraries) from where you can buy that book.

WeCompareBooks – Although it is primarily a textbook price comparison engine designed for college students, it can still help you find the cheapest price for most books in any category. “We Compare Books” will show prices for used and new books, and also the shipping costs from multiple book stores.

PriceGrabber Books – PriceGrabber, a popular comparison shopping site, has a dedicated section for comparing the price of books as well as print magazines. You can enter your zip code to calculate the tax and exact shipping charges right in the comparison search results.

Book Butler – With Book Butler, you can compare the price (and availability) of a book across 101 online bookstores but the best part is that you can limit your searches to stores that only ship to your country and also see the price in your local currency. Book Butler currently supports US, Canada, South Africa and most European nations.

3. Coupon Sites for Online Bookstores

Now that you decided the store from where you want to purchase that book, how about using a discount coupon code at the checkout stage to further reduce the price? Here are some of the best coupon sites that can help in your quest for cheaper books:

RetailMeNot – Simply enter the name of the store or website where you are shopping from, and try out the coupons listed. The ones listed the top of the page are most likely to work, so try them first.

FatWallet – Fatwallet.com, a great site for discovering online deals, not only provides coupons codes for most online stores but has its own cashback system as well.

Coupon Cabin – The majority of the coupons listed on Coupon Cabin are verified and guaranteed to work, but they do list user-submitted coupons and promo code that may or may not work.

Coupon Mountain – You can use Coupon Mountain to find coupons for specific stores or even for specific products. In addition to user-submitted promo-codes, Coupon Mountain also has list of special coupons that offer free shipping.

4. Read Books Online with Digital Libraries

Millions of books are now available for free or subscription-based reading online through many different services. These can often save you much off the standard purchase price of the book if you simply want to read the title once.

4.1 Sites with free books

Google Books – This can be useful even if you already own a book, as you can use the power of Google search to find specific text in the book provided the book is listed in Google Books.

Project Gutenberg – Over 30,000 out-of-copyright books are available here that you may read online for free or download them in EPUB and read them across devices. If you are looking for a book that was originally printed over 75 years ago, you may well find that title here.

Your local library – If you have a membership at your local public library, be sure to check their website as some of them do offer digital books for online reading.

4.2 Subscription based eBook Libraries

Questia – Questia can be a very useful online resource for readers and researchers. Over 70,000 books and millions of journals are available online for reading, and you can also print pages for free. All books /articles on Questia have been assigned categories and you can pay a $10 monthly subscription fee to read books in any one category, or go for a $19.95/month subscription for access to all books on the Questia site.

Safari Books – If you are looking for books related to computer and technology, Safari Books may be an ideal service for you. You can read thousands of books online from Microsoft Press, O’Reilly Media, Wiley, Peachpit, Adobe Press and most other publishers in the tech space. You also get 5 download tokens with your monthly subscription that will let you download individual chapters or whole books as PDFs for offline reading.

5. Rent Textbooks for College

College textbooks are expensive, and it can be difficult to resell them for a decent price as new editions often come out every year or two.

Renting textbooks for the length of the semester therefore enables you to spend less on the book without having to search multiple bookstores (for the best price) and you don’t have to worry about reselling your textbooks when the semester ends. Here are some great places from where you can rent textbooks:

Chegg.com – With Chegg, you can easily rent textbooks for a period of 60 days, a quarter, or a full semester. This saves you money as you only need to rent a book for for the length you need it. Shipping (both sides) is included in the rent though you will have to pay the original price of the book in case it gets lost or is damaged.

Chegg will ship textbooks only inside the United States. The good thing is that they’ll also plant a tree for every book you rent to showcase the environmental benefits of renting books, since less books are printed if more students use the same copy.

BookRenter.com – You can rent textbooks on BookRenter for periods ranging from 30 days to 125 days and the price also includes return shipping. If the book is majorly damaged or lost, you must pay the original purchase price for the book; if there is moderate damage, you must pay 35% of the list price of the book. Like Chegg, BookRenter will only ship inside the United States.

5.1 Tips for buying college textbooks

1. College textbooks are often updated annually, so older editions are usually available much cheaper than the current edition. Check with your university professor if an older edition of the book will work for your course.

2. Though you should always try online bookstores, some course materials including books and software may be cheaper at your college bookstore if your school has a special arrangement setup with the publisher.

3. When you are finished with a textbook, try selling it to recoup some of your costs. Other students in your college that will be taking the class may be interested in it, so advertise it around your school. Otherwise try to sell it online at Half.com or Amazon.com.

4. You should consider purchasing an international edition of a textbook as they can be much cheaper than the standard US price even after international shipping. You can find international editions of textbooks on sites like Biblio, AbeBooks and eBay but just make sure that you search for the title and author of the book instead of the ISBN number, as ISBN is often different for international editions.

There was a time when long-distance and international phone calls were a luxury but, thanks to VoIP or Internet based telephone services, this is no longer the case.
You can now call your friends and family members anywhere in the world at extremely low rates (sometimes even free) and some of these VoIP services don’t even require you to have an Internet connection at home.

VoIP Services for Making Phone Calls

Most people have heard of Skype, and it still is one of the best VoIP services around, but there are quite a few other good options as well that let you make phone calls over the Internet using your regular landline, mobile phone or your computer.

There are three kinds of Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions that let you enjoy crystal-clear* phone calls at a fraction of the price that your phone company charges:

1. Hardware based – You get a dedicated hardware router that sits between your Internet modem and your corded /cordless phone so you can make and receive phone calls just like before. The only difference is that calls are now routed through the Internet and not your phone company so you usually end up saving money.

2. Software based – You install a VoIP software on your computer or your web-enabled mobile phone and make phone calls via the Internet connection bypassing your phone company. It doesn’t matter if you mobile phone is connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, 3G or WiMAX.
3. Web based – Web based VoIP services neither require any hardware nor software. You open the VoIP service provider’s site, type the phone numbers and you’re instantly connected. Some services also offer special hotlines (or direct access numbers) that let you make Internet phone calls using your traditional phone even if you don’t have an internet connection.

Let’s look at popular VoIP services that fall in each of these categories:

1. Dedicated VoIP Hardware

This is usually the best option for people who want to make regular phone calls over the internet but while they are relaxing on the couch and not having to sit in front of the computer screen.

To use dedicated hardware-based VoIP solutions, you need a router, sign up for the appropriate service (listed below), and connect the box to your internet and the standard telephone. Here are some of the best hardware based VoIP products that also provide you a traditional phone number so you can both place and receive calls through VoIP. And none except magicJack would require a computer.

VoIP Service:	Costs Involved and Features:	Pros and Cons:
	Vonage – Vonage makes your VoIP experience very similar to a traditional telephone service. Simply plug the Vonage box into your internet connection, then connect your regular phone to the Vonage box and start making calls.	The hardware costs $79.99 and you pay $24.99/month for unlimited calling to US and 60 other countries. Vonage is available in the U.S., U.K. and Canada but you can ship the device to your family members in other countries (like India) and they’ll be able to call you at local rates.	Pros: Worldwide calling, flat rate, simple setup, works like a traditional phone service. You can carry the device while travelling and save on calling cards /hotel bills.Cons: Monthly service cost is high, long contract.
Ooma – You simply plug the Internet line into your Ooma device and then connect any corded / cordless phone into Ooma. That’s it – you can make unlimited phone calls inside the US for free.	The hardware costs $249.99. There are no monthly charges except $12/year for taxes and other fees. A $9.99/month premier plan is available that adds number porting, an additional line, and advance telephone services.	Pros: Unlimited free calls to any phone number in the US, low rates for dialing international numbers, no long-term commitment.Cons: Entry-cost is a bit high.
Skype Phones – Skype is best known for offering voice and video calls through the computer, but they also provide hardware to help you make calls over the internet without a computer. This gives you the convenience of a traditional phone with the value of Skype calls.	Standalone Skype phones start at $79.99 though you can go for USB phones that cost a little less but require a computer. With a Skype phone, you can make phone calls to all other Skype users for free or refer to this price chart for calling international numbers.	Pros: Powered by one of the most popular internet telephone services and no long-term commitment. Skype is available worldwide. Cons: The unlimited calling plans aren’t available in all countries.
magicJack – A cross between a software and a hardware offering, magicJack is a small USB device that connects to a Mac or PC. You then connect a traditional phone to the magicJack device and make free phone calls to any number in the US.	It costs $39.95 for the first year (device cost + yearly charges) and then all you pay is $19.95 per year. Calls from your magicJack from any country to the U.S. and Canada are free while calls to international phone numbers are charged based on their rate table.	Pros: Cheap hardware and low-yearly fees. Cons: Requires a computer.
PhoneGnome – It’s a simple box that you plug-in between your Internet modem and the landline phone and start talking. PhoneGnome is the oldest player in this segment.	The hardware costs $99.99 and there are no monthly bills. For $5/month, you can pick any 10 phone numbers in US, Canada and other countries and you’ll be able to make unlimited calls to those numbers for free.	Pros: With PhoneGnome, you can also make calls to GoogleTalk, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger using your regular phone. They also ship to international locations. Cons: Requires invitation.

2. VoIP Software for Desktop and Mobile Phones

Your first introduction to internet based telephone services was probably through services like Skype that allowed you to make voice and video calls through your computer. In order to make VoIP phone calls through your computer, all you need is a headset cum microphone and one of the following programs.

Service:	Price:
Skype – Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows Mobile and iPhone. Nokia, Sony and Samsung users can use Skype Lite for making calls from their mobile phones.	Free calls to another Skype user, rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.02/minute. Unlimited minutes to any one country cost $5.95/month, while unlimited minutes to over 40 countries worldwide cost $12.95/month.You may buy a personal phone number of any country for $60/year and your friends /family members in that country can call you from their regular phones by paying only local call rates.
Windows Live Call – Requires Windows Live Messenger which is available only on Windows.	Free calls to any Windows Live Messenger user, rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.015/minute. You can also send text messages to mobile phones for free but a limitation with Windows Live Call is that it is only available in select countries.
Yahoo! Voice – Requires Yahoo! Messenger which is available for Mac and Windows.	Free calls to any Yahoo! messenger user, rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.01/minute. For $2.49/month, you can get a dedicated phone number (of US, UK or France) for your computer so that friends can call you directly from their landline or mobile phones. All calls to 800 numbers are free with Yahoo! Voice.
wengoPhone – Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Windows Mobile, or via a Firefox extension.	Free calls to wengoPhone users, rates per minute start at 0.006€/minute (wengoPhone is a European-orientated service).
pfingo – Available for Windows PC, Nokia, Sony and Motorola mobile phones.	Free calls to other pfingo users, rates per minute to any phone number worldwide start at $0.04/minute. You can get an international phone number for Singapore, Australia, US, UK or China and your contacts in these countries can call you at their local rates.
Vopium – Available for all popular mobile phones including BlackBerry, HTC (Android), iPhone, etc.	With Vopium installed, you can use your mobile phone call to anywhere in the world with rates starting at 7¢/minute. If you are in a Wi-Fi zone, you don’t even have to pay the local charges to your phone company but a downside is that Vopium is not available in all countries.
Truphone – Another popular mobile VoIP application that is available for Nokia, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones.	You can call other Truphone anywhere in the world from your mobile phone for free while international calls to other landline and mobile numbers start at 5¢/minute.

3. Make VoIP Calls with (or without) Internet

Yes, you can make cheap international phone calls over VoIP without even having an internet connection as long as you a landline or mobile phone.

There are VoIP services that offer a local phone number which you can call using your normal phone, then dial the number of the person you wish to call, and your call will be routed over the internet by the VoIP service. Then there are services that let you enter your phone number and the number you are calling on a website; your phone will ring, and when you answer it, it will automatically dial the number you wish to call.

Service Name and Features	Costs involved
Jaxtr – Jaxtr offers local numbers for most countries – simply call that number and then input your friend’s number. Jaxtr will send an SMS message to your friend containing a local number. She can call that number and you’ll be connected. If you are located in a country with non-local Jaxtr numbers or if you want to skip that call-back option, you can make direct phone calls using the web dialer at jaxtr.com – enter your number and the number you wish to call, and the phones will simultaneously ring.	You can make unlimited free calls to landlines and mobile phones in countries where Jaxtr has a direct access number and when the other person is willing to call-back on the number that he receives by text. For direct dialing, the rates start at 13¢/minute.
Jajah – Like Jaxtr, Jajah also provides direct access numbers for many countries around the world. You call a local number from your phone followed by the number of your friend (it could be long-distance or an international call) and Jajah will connect the two parties. It will also assign a unique number for your friend so you call him or her directly without having to dial that local access number. Alternatively, you can type your own phone number and that of your friend on the jajah site and you’ll be connected. You may use this desktop browser or any internet enabled mobile phone to call friends via Jajah.	All calls between Jajah users are free while calls to any number worldwide start at around 5¢ per minute. If the friend you are trying to reach is on Twitter, you can use the @call service of Jajah to make a free phone call and talk upto 2 minutes without revealing your personal phone number.
Rebtel – You get a local phone number that will connect you directly with your friends and family abroad.It works like this. You type in your friend’s international number and Rebtel will provide you with a unique local number corresponding to that international number. You can then use your regular landline or mobile phone to call your friend’s international number through a simple local call. With Rebtel, you can call anywhere in the world but the person initiating the call (i.e., you) should be located in a country that is supported by Rebtel.	In case you calling the other person directly using the local number provided by Rebtel, the rates start at $0.01/minute. However, there’s a way by which you can make free international phone calls with Rebtel. Once your friend is assigned a unique local number, give him call on that number. When he picks up, ask him to hang up and call you back on the number displayed on his phone while you wait on the line. You’ll be instantly connected and will only have to pay local charges for an international phone call.

VoIP calls are generally cheaper than regular phone calls but make sure you have a decent broadband connection for better voice quality. Also, they are no replacements for your traditional phone as none of them offers access to emergency services like 911 in US.