The latest service packs for Windows XP (Service Pack 3) & Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) have now started showing up on Windows Update.

Go update your Windows now !

Almost everyone working in some MNC, has to use Microsoft Office Outlook to access their mails which reside in a Microsoft exchange server.

Microsoft Outlook has a feature which lets you request for read receipts from the people you are sending the mail to. A read receipt gets fired when the recipient opens the mail you have sent.

Some of the Microsoft Office Outlook users like to turn on Read Receipts for all their e-mail. This way, any time their e-mail is read by another Outlook user, they will be notified that their e-mail reached its destination. While some find this feature useful, others may not like getting deluged with these requests. To increase privacy, you can choose to ignore these requests altogether so people will not know at what time you read your e-mail.

1. From Microsoft Outlook, click “Tools” then “Options”.
2. When the “Options” multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the “Preferences” tab.
3. Click the button “E-Mail Options”.
4. When the “E-Mail Options” dialog box appears, click the “Tracking Options” button.
5. Click the radio button “Never send a response”.
6. Click “OK” on the three dialog boxes to close them.

Now the next time you will never see a Outlook dialog asking you to send read receipts.

With the search engine market getting crowded with new search engines making an appearance everyday, Spock is a search engine which aims to be different. Spock is different because it does not index webpages. It indexes people on the web.

Just like you search Google using keywords, you enter a person’s name in Spock. And Spock displays all people with that name it has indexed with the most relevant name at the top. For example if you search for Sachin Tendulkar, it displays all people with “Sachin Tendulkar” as the name. The most relevant result at the top is that of the Sachin Tendulkar the batsman himself.

Where Spock really excels is after search, when you click on a result. When you click “Sachin Tendulkar” you get to see his photos, about him, where he was mentioned in news etc…

People can add tags, add photos and vote on existing metadata also. You can also sign up with Spock and add your own data also.

So where does Spock get this people data from ? Simple. It indexes social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook and also Wikipedia to get people data.

Looks interesting…..

Spock.com - A Great Place for Search

No more does advertising on a blog mean using Google Adsense only. Clickbooth CPA Network is yet another CPA ad network which helps you earn money from your blog or website and in the process keeps a cut of the money the advertiser pays to advertise.

Signing Up

As with any new ad network, you need to first sign up with Clickbooth as a publisher. It’s a very simple process where you need to enter the usual stuff like name, address, etc. One thing I liked about the registration system at Clickbooth is the verification tool. You select your country & enter your phone number, and the system calls you and gives you a verification PIN code which you must then enter on the site. No e-mail verification needed !

The next step was to enter the websites. There is something weird here. You can enter as many sites as you want but choose only a single category for all the sites. That is a bit of a problem because not all of your sites will belong to the same category.

Sign-up is over. Next comes the waiting. After the sign up process, I got a message that one of their reviewers will get back to me. Only after that I will be able to view the options available.

Till then….

Remember Measure Map ? The Google Analytics for blogs. Measure Map gave you some interesting stats about your blog based on your posts and your visitors.

Google had acquired the service back in February 2006. And like most other third party services acquired by Google, it faded into oblivion. But Techcrunch is now reporting that Measure Map is staging a comeback.

Google Analytics will now add support for blog tracking using Measure Map. The same friendly interface but now on the reliable Google Analytics engine. The earliest users of the Measure Map service have received an e-mail to try out the new service.

Sigh. Why do all new Google services have to be invitation only.

Waiting for my chance to see the new Measure Map !