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Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is an award-winning technology blog on all things related to computer software, web applications, Internet and personal productivity.

Get your Office 2010 Upgrade Even if you are LateYesterday

The upcoming Office 2010 software will be available as a free upgrade to all users who have purchased a copy of Office 2007 on or after March 5, 2010.

However, if you are feeling a bit unlucky because you got yourself a copy of Office 2007 just days before the upgrade offer was announced and are therefore ineligible for the free upgrade, here’s something that you should try.

The Microsoft web store has a refund policy of 30 calendar days for all downloadable software. If you have bought the software in a box, it is also eligible for return within 30 days of the purchase date as long as you have the original packaging, including installer media and the product key.

So here’s the deal. Return the copy of Microsoft Office 2007 to the store and buy it again from the same store. This time however you’ll automatically become eligible for a free upgrade to Office 2010 when it comes out in June.

All software retailers have different return policies but ff you have bought Office 2007 from Amazon in the last few days, you are covered too as they also have a 30 day

Are Web Pages Not Opening in Google Chrome?Yesterday

Oops! This link appears to be broken in Google Chrome

You are trying to open a web page in Chrome and all it gives you is this error message – “DNS Error – cannot find server.”

You hit F5 to refresh a page but the error persists. You then open an alternate browser, like Firefox or IE, and the website loads up without any problem. So its a Chrome specific issue and has nothing to do with DNS Servers or your Internet connection.

The support page on the Chrome website suggests that you clear your browser cache, delete the cookies and scan your computer for malicious software to fix the issue.

Well, that may not fix your problem because the issue is not “malware” but a built-in Chrome setting that’s possibly preventing certain websites from opening up in Chrome.

When you visit a webpage (like a search results page), Google Chrome will pre-fetch the IP addresses of all websites that are listed on that page. Since the browser has the IP addresses of all the links in advance, DNS pre-fetching

The Internet ClassroomYesterday

If the Internet were a classroom and all the different social websites were students, this is how a group photo of that class might have looked like.

You can also download a landscape version of this graphic directly from Buzz. See some more infographics.

The Internet Classroom

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Taxi Driver in India Uses YouTube to Find CustomersYesterday

It is always inspiring to read stories of people who may never have had an Internet connection but are still using the power of Internet to find clients from across the globe.

Meet Samson – he drives an auto-rickshaw in the Souther Indian city of Chennai and has a proper website where his prospective clients can read more about his services and where they find him.

Samson checks his email every week and says the best way to reach him is text:

I can usually be found outside of the Taj Comorandel Hotel, please just walk down the ramp to the street and ask for Samson! I can also be contacted by phone or text message at any time. If you would like to arrange a time for me to meet you before you travel to Chennai then why not send me a text?

Maybe a web-savvy friend is maintaining Samson’s site but now meet Devesh Mishra, a taxi driver from the North Indian city of Varanasi who gets hundreds of emails every week just because of a video that he uploaded on to YouTube.

The story of Devesh is quite interesting. He wanted to advertise his taxi service on the Internet but didn’t have the funds and know-how. One of his clients from Switzerland recorded a video of him and uploaded it on to YouTube.

The video has received more than 25k views and, because of Universal search, it also appears on the first page of Google for queries like “Indian Taxi Driver.”

There are probably more such inspirational stories. Sean Blagsvedt, who was earlier part of the Microsoft India Research group, started an online jobs portal -- BabaJob.com – for drivers, maids, cooks and other low-income jobs in India.

Of the 66,000+ people who are currently registered as job-seekers at BabaJobs.com, lot of them may have never touched a computer in their life or they may not even know how to read and write but they will still find work through the Internet. Amazing!

YouTube’s IPL Show Fails to Live up to the HypeYesterday

Have been trying to watch the IPL telecast on YouTube for some time and all I get is this “blue screen” saying they are “experiencing technical difficulties.”

The video stream does appear intermittently but its extremely slow and flaky. The audio from the telecast has a very low volume and feels completely out-of-sync with video. The video quality of the live webcast isn’t any great either.

On the plus side, the YouTube video player for the live-stream is beautiful – you can switch camera angles on-demand and there’s PIP (picture in picture) so you can watch two videos from different cameras simultaneously.

That said, there’s little reason to cheer about IPL’s live telecast on YouTube.

If you don’t have cable in your home, watching IPL on YouTube probably makes sense – because you’ve no other option – but everyone else may please turn on their television sets. You may of course come later for watching the match highlights on YouTube.

YouTube’s IPL Show Fails to Live up to the Hype