While giving away my email address, I frequently get weird looks and comments like

“Euh, li marser meme sa?”

In some way, having a family email address makes you feel cooler (yeah!) and more geek that those who having the usual @gmail, @yahoo or @hotmail inbox. And believe me, some people use @orange.mu too!

My family email address runs on gmail, i.e. the same size, features (most of them), looks etc.

What does it cost?

Only around $12 (approximately Rs360) yearly per domain. I mean that if you got 2 sisters, 5 brothers, 10 cousins and 12 kids, you pay only about that much per year!

The steps

1. First of all, you need to buy the domain name. On Godaddy.com for example or you can do it directly from Step 2 in case you don’t have a domain. (btw, NO, I cannot buy it for you, don’t even think to mail me about that!)
2. Register for Google Apps (Click here)
   While writing this post, I noticed that Google gives you the possibility to do the setup pretty straightforward. The purchase and configuration is done directly from there itself.

   

3. If you choose to do the DNS settings manually, you can have a look at the various articles on the web, or just leave a comment here.
4. Once everything is set up, please give up to 24-48 hours for the DNS to propagate.

Just imagine how cool it might be: dad@family.com, mum@family.com, firstname@family.com, me@family.com…

You can even use it for your MSN Messenger and Google Talk too. Finally, don’t forget to change your email address everywhere : Facebook, twitter, newspaper subscriptions (and your porn sites[!!!])

The switch

Most probably, you won’t be able to change email address abruptly. You need to do it over certain weeks or months so that people actually start contacting you using your new email add. During that transition period, you can redirect or forward your old emails to your new inbox or vice versa. It is even possible to compose/reply to emails using different “from” email add :

Now, please update your address book.

After months of smooth transition, I made the final jump. My email is yashvin[@]awootar[dot].com and please keep your spam for yourselves or everything from you will go to the junk yard (Gmail handles this pretty good, you have been warned!).

Hope that this post was informative and interesting! Waiting to see more personalised email addresses while you comment here!

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It’s always great to capture all those memorable moments with your camera for every family outing, birthday party or any other events.  Unless you own unlimited disk storage, you will notice that you will run out of space sooner or later, especially if you take high resolution pictures. You might choose to regularly back up your pictures on DVDs but it is always nice to have a copy of them right onto your computer for quick viewing, isnt it?

I am sure that only a few of you probably need to keep the original high resolution pictures but we all like to have the best quality shots so that we can later edit them (and crop them). So, I needed a (free) software which could batch resize all the pics, looping through all of my folders. After a quick search, I found out that IrfanView was the best suited software to do my job.

Here are the steps, once you have installed the software :

With the above resizing, an image file of roughly 1 or 1.5MB can be compressed down to 100-200Kb. Just imagine how much space you will be saving

You have perhaps noticed that I have selected the option (6) to delete the original pictures and save the resized pictures in a different folder. At the end of the conversion, the original folder will contain only those files which could not be edited. Examples might be videos files.

I can now overwrite the original folder with the one containing the resized files. Since the resized folder contains exactly the same sub folders, the resized pictures will be moved (or copied) to the original location. Your videos files will still be there.

I highly advise you to do a test first or you might end screwed up if you find that you lost some of your files. You can also choose to do a back up first before launching the batch resize. A back up which you can delete after verifying the results.

If you liked this post, feel free to like and share it among your friends. And come back soon

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Hello and welcome to my Adobe Photoshop tutorial, today we are going to create a WebDesign or template or whatever you call. I don’t think this tutorial and creation will be too difficult for you because I’ve put everything in easy to follow steps and tried to explain the best I could.If you have basic knowledge about Photoshop you should be able to easily keep up and let me guide you through this tutorial!

However, before I will post this tutorial I will just tell you something. I have been playing with photoshop for less than 8 months and I have had a real grasp of it. So if you have difficulties starting, I highly suggest following tutorials which can be found on the net. I will give you some sources at the end of this article and of course, the link to my portfolio!

Let’s get our hands dirty!

Many Webmaster these days, are using custom forums script, DDL scripts, wordpress, joomla or any other custom CMS scripts.

Since this is going to be a basic tutorial, I will simply create a basic image hosting page today and if I have time, I will post a vbulletin tutorial before my exams

Tools

You will need:

1. Adobe Photoshop (CS3 or furthur but I personally prefer CS3 because its really easy to use)
2. Internet Access (You should have one if you are reading this =P )
3. Well, some real basic of the tools in photoshop. Don’t worry even if you don’t have basic skills, you will learn today

Step 0: Join the blog’s fan page

Step 1:

Let’s start by creating a layer of 1000 x 1100 and set background as black

Step 2:

Now, we are going to design the navbar. Go you make a new group by going To:
Layer > New > Group > You rename Group 1 to “Navbar” and you click Ok.

After making the group, choose the Rounded Rectangle Tool with a radius of 10 Px

Now make a new layer and draw a Rounded Rectangle with your tool:

Call that layer “NAVBAR_BG”

Now We are going to put the effects on the navbar. So Right click on NAVBAR_BG and select Blending Options.

Now You need to apply the Following Effects (1-4 shown below):
1. Drop Shadow
2. Outer Glow
3. Inner GLow
4. Bevel and emboss
5. Gradient Overlay (default  Black and White)
6. Stroke Colour: #000000.

Click to enlarge

Don’t worry just follow the following pictures to get the same effects as mine

After following all the above steps, you should have something looking like that:

Next, you take you Line Tool and draw borders to separate texts you write with your Text Tool. Simple
Here is what i got:

Click to enlarge

Now Let me show you a little Photoshop trick. This can be very useful in web design especially when designing templates:
I will change the colour of the navbar without doing much work

So you click on NAVBAR_BG.
Next, you click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation

Press Ok. A new little window Will appear and you must Check Colourize.
Now You play with the slides till you get a colour which you like:

Great. Now that you get the colour you like just click OK and see your navbar.

That’s it ladies and gentlemen, you completed your navbar design. =P

In this design I preferred to make my navbar of dark colour to make it match the colour of the whole design

Note: please Group all your navbar files.
Otherwise your PSD design ( Photoshop Design) will be untidy and you will find yourself lost

Step 3:

I know you may have got a hard time on step 2 but don;t worry I’m trying my best to make it easy for the “beginnest” of photoshop xD.

Let’s move on to the Description Panel. I highly suggest you follow this step well because I am going to use the same effects and design for doing other parts.

Go You make a new group Called “Description”

Using Your Rounded Rectangle tool at 5PX, draw a box

Click to enlarge

Oh Don’t worry, its super ugly this box but now we will add these effects and Make it look good

Ok right click on the shape layer you just made and select blending options
Apply the following Effects:

Well below is the result :

Click to enlarge

Good, now take your Text tool and type whatever you want.

Lorem ipsum is the dummy text so i copied and pasted this, but you can type whatever you want eh!

Step 4:

Cool,now that you know how to make the description box, you can make the login box.
So grab your tools and create a smaller box for the login box and apply the same effects as previous step. Then grab your text tool and write what you see in the picture and use again the Rounded rectangle Tool to make the Text Boxes

Simple.

Below is my result:

That’s it let’s now proceed to step 5.

Step 5:

Now,we are going to make another group called “Upload Box”.

Again like step 3, We are going to make a box for the Upload box. So grab your tools again and Do it

You will notice the buttons in the design, to be honest i myself downloaded these buttons on the net and I wonder where lol xD. Don’t worry guys, just make the upload box, you will have a surprise at the end of this article

This is my upload box:

Click to enlarge

Step 6:

Nearly finished, lol.

Now create a new group called ” Recently added pics” and Same box as you did for steps 3-5 but size different of course.

Hehehe,now go on google images and find some pics. Copy and paste then to your photoshop design and resize them using CTRL+T or Edit > Free Transform

Now we make the pics align with the box and I will add two little buttons to make it look like a scrolling design.

See my design below:

Click to enlarge

Step 7:

This is an optional step. I did it just to make it to make my design more beautiful xD

Well, This will involve skills on using the Pen Tool and draw the bars.

So it’s up to you and your imagination.

I made mine look like the following:

Looking nice ?

Step 8:

Whoa, Finally… Add some text on the design and create The Logo. A site without a logo is not really a site imho.

So I decided to make a simple logo for this with my text tool and some effects.

The Final Preview:

Final result (Click to enlarge)

The last words…

Well, the tutorial is over guys and girls. I really hope you liked it and I hope you didn’t get bored lol. I know it is really a long tutorial but I tried my best to make it Noob-Friendly lol.

I would like to Thank Yashvin to give me a chance to post an article on webdesign here because I rarely see any mauritian doing web design although many exist.

Now, if you have read carefully, you may have seen that I mentioned of a surprise in Step 5. The surprise i’m gonna give you is the Fully layered design of this tutorial  You just open it with photoshop and you can see how i did all the things. You will get all the buttons included also.

Click here to download the FULL PSD file.

Thanks for reading the tutorial.
If you like it, just ask for more tutorials. I will post more during the holidays lol.

Note: The PSD i gave you is for personal use and not for resale or whatever. You can use it to learn not to resell it. This is a free stuff i gave so keep it free.

Finally, I would like to say that if you are interested in web design, web coding, I will open my site soon for webmasters. So webmasters can join me in 1 month’s time hehe.. Meanwhile, you can have a look at my portfolio here :http://sabtech.foliohd.com/

Thanks again,
C ya laterz,
Sabir.

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It may sound fairly easy to add your watermark(logo or name) onto 1 or 2 pics but how will you achieve this if you have to share 100 or 200 pictures? You may have your own technique, but let me show you mine, just discovered this feature a week ago on Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Today, I will be using  the “Actions” of Photoshop CS2 to add a watermark and also resize the image before uploading it to Facebook for example.

Step 1

Open an image and click on the small icon to open the small window shown.

Step 2

Then type in the name of the action, here defined as “Resize-Watermark”.

Step 3

All actions performed on photoshop will now be recorded. Once done, these actions can be replayed on one or a set of pictures for executing the exact actions.

As you can see above, the “Record” button has been activated.

Step 4

Now, you can add a text layer onto your picture. Additionally, you can change its position or style it.

Step 5

Above, the picture is being resized to a width of 720pixels. All these actions will be recorded accordingly.

Step 6

After you are done with the modifications, you can now click on the stop icon. So, here ends the initial set up/recording of our action(s).

Applying the watermarks and resizing (Actions) to other images.

Now, your life is going to be so easy!

Let’s say for example, you have a folder full of pictures that need watermarking and resizing before the uploading process onto Facebook.

Step 7

Go to “FILE > SCRIPTS > IMAGE PROCESSOR”

Step 8

If you wish to process files from 1 specific folder or images that are currently opened in the Photoshop workspace, this is where you should select the right image source.

Step 9

Choose the action you recorded earlier

Step 10

Click “Run”.

That’s all

No more additional steps required.

You might now witness a matrix-like effect during which the pictures will be rapidly opened and processed. These pictures will be saved at the location specified in the previous window. After all the processing is done, you can have a look at them.

You want a preview of the results?

All the shots displayed on the Infotech blog post were watermarked and resized using the same technique. As you can see, all the watermarks are exactly positioned at the same location.

Whether you have 1 or 100 pics, it will now take a few seconds to get everything digitally signed

This technique has been tested on Adobe Photoshop CS2. I haven’t tested on other versions but it might work. Anybody, please confirm.

I am sure that some of you might have other techniques as well, do you? Please share how you do it and also, don’t hesitate to share this blog post with others

Thank you for your visit

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This is no spam lol, nor any msn fake adverts which ask you to click on a link to see who deleted you etc etc…

Do you want to get in touch with people you had on your msn some mins before you decided to clean your msn contact list?

I think that I have found a nice site to help you out!

In fact, I came across the site iloveim.com long ago, but its only yesterday that I noticed that, with iloveim.com, you can actually see all the contacts you deleted from your msn messenger!

It can be very useful indeed!

However, I dont think that you will be able to see people who blocked you lol, till now, I dont know any reliable method to find out who dared to block me

Try it out and let me know if it can turn useful to you too!

To all bloggers : Please vote for me on Island Crisis!

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Did you know that you can make Google SMS your reminders freely to your mobile?

I knew this since months ago, but I was surprised to learn that some of my colleagues did not know this feature, which works even in Mauritius!

How it works?

First of all, you should have a google account or simply a gmail login.

Next, navigate to Google Calendar, and set up a new reminder for some event…

There are several options available to notify you of the event which is coming up

1. Email (google sends you a mail)
2. Pop Up window (a pop up window appears at the bottom of your gmail inbox)
3. SMS

Today, I gonna show you how to set up the SMS Alert for your mobile, so that you can set up your reminders to be txted to you, lets say some 10mins before…

Step 1 : Navigate to Calendar

From your Gmail window, click on Calendar in the top left corner, or simply go to www.google.com/calendar

For those who don’t have a google or gmail account, don’t hesitate to contact me by adding a comment or chatting with me by clicking on the Chat with Yashvin in the right sidebar of this blog.

Step 2 : Set up your mobile

Click on the “Settings” link at the top right corner of your Google Calendar.

Then click on the “Mobile Setup” Tab

For the initial set up, you should follow the instructions on the screen.

At the end, you will end up with a screen like the one below.

Step 3 : Create an event

Now, to use this feature, navigate to your calendar screen and create a new event, for example “Go to Sleep!”

Step 4 : Set up the options

Click on the Options to be able to set up the reminder alerts.

Finally, save the changes and wait for your sms before going to sleep

So, did you know this SMS feature of Google???

How do you find it?

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Hi everyone!

I just wrote a page on “Blogging“…

Took me about 3hrs to cover different important points on blogging…

My main objective was to introduce blogging to newbies, in a simple way, with lots of pictures…

You can read it here, and perhaps mention any additional points I have missed out…

Lets see if we can make the number of mauritian bloggers increase…

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Well, my first tutorial for wordpress :

How to install wordpress on your computer, for Dummies

First of all, lets talk a bit about wordpress…

WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP. All data is stored in a MySQL database.

Having your blog on the web is a bit more simpler, for example you can

• Create an account on wordpress.com and have your blog accessible at http://yourblogname.wordpress.com
   

  Registering your new blog is so simple!

  

• Create an account on blogspot.com and have your blog as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/

However, in this tutorial, i will explain how to create a blog on your own desktop computer/laptop, for any reason you have, perhaps to test how to use it, get used to it, whatever!

Step.01

Download WordPress installation

Head towards www.wordpress.org to download the latest version available

Step.02

Download a web server, here, EasyPHP available at http://www.easyphp.org/

This web server is one among the loads available on the net, and by installing any of these web servers on your personal computer, you will be able to simulate a server and have php applications run!

Once downloaded, run the installation.

Step.03

Now that you have your wordpress installation and easyphp installation done, extract the contents of the wordpress installation in the following directory : C:\Program Files\EasyPHP 2.0b1\www
[depending on your installation]

Step.04

Ensure than your web server is running by accessing it from your start menu

Step.05

Now, we are going to access your wordpress folder through your browser at the address : http://localhost/

You will get something like that in your browser:

Click on the [wordpress] folder to start the installation.
(Depending of course, if you have renamed the folder earlier)

Step.06

Now, follow the instructions on the screen…

Step.07

You will be asked for database setting, refer to the screenshot below…

You have to create a new database so that your wordpress blog can store the necessary info to run…

To create a new database, open your browser and hit the address : http://localhost/home/mysql/ or http://localhost/home/mysql/

Enter the name of your database (ensure that you enter the same name as in the installation page)

Note that your database username may be root and password left as blank….
This depends on your settings of course…

Step.08

Next, enter the details about your blog;

Step.09

Note down the username and password automatically generated for you and use the same to login the Admininstration Control Panel, as shown below…

Thats it!

Your blog is Ready!!!

Step.10

Now, lets access your blog!!!

You can view your blog by typing the address : http://www.yashvinblogs.com/

and your the admin panel, its http://www.yashvinblogs.com/wp-admin/

You can now start blogging!!!

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This is simply great !
You Use Messenger (msn, yahoo…) and you want to put a status indicator in either your hi5 profile, blog or web site?
think that am the first to explain properly how to do it !
Just follow the steps and in this example am putting it in my hi5 profile and also in my site, just like above in the banner space.
Let’s Start!!!

• Choose one of host sites
  There are several sites hosting this service but the site providing this service is http://www.onlinestatus.org
  Just Choose one of the sites from below from the following page ( http://www.onlinestatus.org/usage.php ) and continue the steps!

  

  For our example we will consider the host : http://technoserv.no-ip.org:8080/

• Enter your email
  Choose your messenger, add your email id etc…

  

• Copy your code, link
  Click “Get Your HTML Code“and then copy the code generated…
  The code can be used in web sites and the link is more conveniently used in hi5 pages or blogs.

  

• For hi5 profiles, web sites or blogs, you can now paste the html code as shown below
• hi5 PageYou must enter the following code where you want the status to appear.

  Technical Note:
  You can either enter it as a image and the source will be the address link as shown below
  

  Or you can simply paste the code where you want the status to appear as shown below
  

  When viewed, it appears like this
  

  To have a look at my profile and how it works,
  Visit http://yashvin.hi5.com

• Web SitePaste the code where you want the status to appear

  

  When viewed it appears as below
  

  Am sure that many of you will include this in your sites or hi5 profiles!

  Be thankful to me !!!

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Transferring pictures over the net can take lot of time if you have a slow connection or the picture/image is huge!

by compressing a picture, the size is reduced hence accelerates the transfer but at the cost of the quality.

This article is for Novice Users

You wont need any extra software, just your simple paint program!

Below are the Steps:

1. Print-Screen the Image/Picture
   Print Screen simply means taking a screenshot of the screen! lol
   How? Open the Picture/Image with your usual program and
   then Press the Print Screen key found at the top of your keyboard, just above your insert key(depends upon keyboard layout)
   By Pressing this key, a picture of the entire screen is taken. 

   

   If You want to focus only on the window or program in the front end, press the following combination ( alt + Print Screen )

   

2. Paste In Paintbrush
   Now, open your simple paint brush program and do >>Edit >> Paste
   You can now resize the picture or cut out (crop) those parts you dont want. 

   

3. Saving
   The final step, saving the new image file.
   Click File >> “Save as” and make sure to select “JPEG” from the drop down menu. 

   

   Once saved, you can now send this new file to your contacts…
   For example, the picture being dealt with in this example was 235Kb and after doing a print screen, it is now 60Kb !

   Simple but Efficient !

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