If Microsoft Switched to Google Apps..

Imagine the impossible. If Microsoft switched to Google Apps today, they could save around $277 million in costs per year, the employees at Microsoft will become 2.8 times more productive and they will have around 2.5 million extra hours per year to accomplish more productive tasks.

That’s according to a report card [PDF] from Google.

Gone Google!

Google has released an online calculator at gonegoogle.com that estimates how much businesses, big and small, could potentially save if they moved from a desktop environment to Google Apps and Gmail running on the cloud.

The calculator makes certain assumptions but you can always edit those values based on your actual numbers. Good fun!

If Microsoft Switched to Google Apps..

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Milk ATMs for Rs 1.25 lakh now (India)

 

Bank customers can soon withdraw up to Rs one lakh in a single day from ATM machines, and can shop for even an higher amount of Rs 1.25 lakh with their debit cards.

Also, as much as Rs three lakh can be transferred in a day to another account through ATMs as also over phone.

The enhanced limits for ATM withdrawals, debit card swiping and fund transfers would save the consumers from running to bank branches, that too within banking hours, for such large transactions. Currently, the maximum the customers of most of the banks can withdraw through ATMs is Rs 50,000 in a day.

While HDFC Bank is allowing these enhanced banking limits to its customers with effect from June 1, other banks might soon follow the suit.

How Much Electricity Does Your Computer Use?

If you are curious to know the exact electricity cost of running your laptop or desktop computer all day long, here’s a quick guide.

Step 1: You first need to calculate the total power (in kilowatt) that’s consumed by your monitor, CPU, graphic card and other components of the computer.

Don’t worry – you don’t have to do these calculations manually. Joulemeter is a free software from Microsoft that can quickly estimate the power consumption of your computer based on the screen’s brightness, the microprocessor, etc.

Step 2: Now find the retail cost of electricity (commonly known as price per unit or price per kWh) in your part of the world. You can know the electricity cost per unit either from your last month’s electricity bill or check the official website of your power distribution company (search for electricity tariffs).

Once you have the two numbers, just multiply them to get an approximate idea of your computer’s electricity bill. I say approximate here because we are ignoring the power consumed by the modem, router and so on.

The Total Electricity Cost of Running a Computer

Let’s take a practical example.

Assume that your computer monitor has a power rating of 50W. It will therefore consume 50×1/1000 or 0.05 kWh energy if you use the monitor for one hour. Now if the price of electricity in your region is 10¢ per unit, the total cost of running that monitor would be 8 x 10 x 0.05 or around 4¢ for an average eight-hour workday.

The monitor is just one component of the computer – you can use the above-mentioned Joulemeter software to calculate the total power consumed by all the various components of the computer and then multiply that number with the price of electricity to know the average running cost of the computer.

PS: The Joulementer application may upload certain anonymous information about your computer such as type of CPU and utilization; applications running; hard disk size and type; memory size and type; or the name of the Internet service provider and the IP address of your computer.

How Much Electricity Does Your Computer Use?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

GOD KEEPS TAKING PICTURES

A Little girl walked daily to and from school.

Though the weather that morning was questionable and clouds were forming, she made her daily trek to the elementary school. As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up, along with thunder and lightning.

The mother of the little girl felt concerned that her daughter would be frightened as she walked
home from school, and she herself feared that the electrical storm might harm her child.

Following the roar of thunder, lightning, like a flaming sword would cut through the sky. Full of concern, the mother quickly got into her car and drove along the route to her child's school. As she did so, she saw her little girl walking along, but at each flash of lightning, the child would stop, look and smile. Another and another were to follow quickly each with the little girl looking
at the streak of light and smiling.

When the mother's car drew up beside the child she lowered the window and called to her, "What are you doing?

Why do you keep stopping?

The child answered, "I am trying to look pretty, God keeps taking my picture!"

Android 2.2 Screenshots: Our Favorite Features in Froyo

Android 2.2 (code-named "Froyo," the next alphabetical installment of dessert-named releases after Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair) is now rolling out to Nexus One handsets. Whether or not you've received your update just yet, here's a quick look at our favorite new features.

If you're tired of tapping and re-tapping the System Update menu item and getting nothing, you can update your N1 to 2.2 manually. Lifehacker runs down how. This method worked perfectly on my T-Mobile Nexus One, but I hear reports it does not work for the AT&T Nexus One. The manual update method does NOT work for the Droid, EVO, or any other Android handset that I know of. (Correct me if I'm wrong in the comments.)

Android 2.2 has three marquee features: built-in tethering/portable hotspot capabilities, Flash support, and noticeably sped-up JavaScript performance in the web browser. (Update: Oh yeah, there's Microsoft Exchange support, too.) There are several more subtle interface improvements as well. Perhaps my favorite is the most simple: a revamped homescreen dock, which you can see at the bottom of the screenshot here. (Click to enlarge.) It gives you one-tap access to the three things you want to get to on your phone quickly: the dialer, your apps, and your web browser. Compare this screenshot to Android 2.1's homescreen.

Portable Hotspot and USB Tethering

Froyo obviates the need for an application like PdaNet or rooting Android to use your phone's data connection to get online with your laptop. You can get your laptop, iPod touch, or iPad online via Android 2.2 by turning your phone into a portable hotspot ala the MiFi. Enable your portable hotspot in the Wireless settings area. Name your access point, optionally assign a WPA2 PSK password, and any Wi-Fi enabled device in the area will be able to see and connect to it. I'm not sure what any provider-imposed limitations on this are, but up to 8 devices can connect to the Froyo access point.

USB tethering—that is, using your phone as a modem to get online—is available on Windows and Linux (not the Mac). Windows XP users have to download a driver; Windows 7, Vista, and Linux users are good to go by just enabling tethering on the phone and connecting it via the USB cable to your computer.

Select Text on Web Pages, in Email

While it's not as well-implemented as the iPhone OS's select text feature is, in Froyo you can now select text that's not in a text field and copy it to clipboard. Gmail and the browser are the only two apps I've seen this available in, but hopefully there will be more to come.

On either a web page or in email, to select text, hit the settings menu and tap "More." (Yes, already it's too many steps.) Choose "Select text" from the menu, as shown.

You'll notice a little mouse pointer on screen. Tap and drag your finger around the text you want to select, which will turn pink, as shown. When you're done, text gets copied to the clipboard automatically.

This process is too buried in the Settings menu and involves too many steps right now, but it's better than nothing.

Flash Support

A beta of the Flash 10 browser plug-in for Froyo is available in the Android Market; search for Flash there to download it. It works just the way you'd expect. With the plug-in enabled, you'll see Flash-based ads and embedded video and be able to play games. I played Google's homepage Pac-Man on my N1, and with the Flash plug-in enabled I could hear the game's music (which is the only part of it that involves Flash). I could play YouTube videos on-page. However, despite some tinkering, I couldn't get a Hulu or Vimeo video to play. On Hulu I got a "your device isn't supported" message, and Vimeo told me I needed to download Flash 10. So, Adobe's Flash 10 plug-in for Android 2.2 is indeed beta.

If you don't necessarily want to see every Flash bit of every web page, you can change your settings to enable Flash on demand. To do so, in the Browser's Settings panel, tap "Enable plug-ins." There, if you choose "On demand," when you visit a page with Flash content you have to tap it to activate the Flash plug-in. I haven't done much Flash testing yet to get a handle on battery usage and performance, but I imagine the "On demand" setting will be a battery-saver for Flash users.

Gmail Auto-Advance

In the native Gmail client, you can easily move to older or newer conversations using left and right arrow buttons at the bottom of an open message. You can also configure Gmail to auto-advance to older or newer conversations when you delete or archive a particular message. To do so, in Gmail's settings, tap on "Auto-advance."

Twitter Integration

Most of my friends are on Twitter, not Facebook, so I'm liking that my friends' latest tweet appears in his/her contact card automatically, as shown here under Anil's name. Android 2.1 started this type of social network integration with Facebook, and this is the same functionality. If a user has both a Facebook page and a Twitter stream, the status shown at the top of the contact card is the most recent status update from either network.

My wish: that Froyo had Flickr integration the way that the HTC Sense UI has it on my new EVO.

Drop-out Menus

The Android Google search box—which I use constantly—now has a menu that drops out from the G logo which lets you narrow down your search results by type. Android 2.1 introduced this visual style of menu on people inside Gmail and in the contacts list; nice to see it extend to other UI controls.

Improved Application Manager

Froyo's Application Manager (Settings>Manage Applications) has a nice new tabbed interface which lets you see apps by what's been downloaded, installed, what's running, and what lives on the SD card.

Better Camera Controls

The camera controls in Froyo are much easier to get to and they flip based on the phone's orientation. In 2.1 you had to slide out a panel to change camera settings. In Froyo small icons always line the side of the frame and give you one-tap access to zoom, focus, exposure, location, flash, and white balance settings. Zoom isn't available for the video camera, just the still camera.

JavaScript-Heavy Webapps Work Well

I was thrilled to discover that Google Wave actually works on Froyo—well! In Android 2.1, after warning you to use a better browser, Wave would invariably crash your browser 60 seconds into usage. On Froyo, you no longer get the "use a better browser" message, and long, involved waves load without crashing. Hallelujah! Most likely this is a happy result of Froyo's much-improved JavaScript performance.

Update: Froyo also offers Microsoft Exchange support but I don't have an Exchange setup to test it with, sorry!

The more I use Froyo the more new stuff I discover. What'd I miss? What's your favorite improvement? Let me know in the comments.