Being the regular user of Mac OS X, I just want to have a way of converting the file formats of the screen shots I take very often, since the default image file format that is being saved on the desktop for each screen shot I take using the Mac short keys (Shift+Cmd+[3 or 4]) will be PNG. So instead of changing the file format of the screen shots every time manually, I found a better way of converting the file formats as we desire automatically by just typing the following command in the Mac terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format Here replace the 'image_format' with the desired file format. I have tried with JPEG, TIFF and PDF and all the worked fine for me) You'll then have to logout/login to make the change take effect.

Finally its a good news for the Mac Users, since Google has officially released the Beta version of their popular photo management application Picasa for Macs in the recent held Macworld, 2009 offering a free download for OS X. It is a long awaiting release for the Mac users, since Picasa was only released for Windows and Linux platforms. Picasa for Mac does not have any major feature wise difference, compared to its windows counterpart.

Both the versions has free web album uploads after editing the images as desired with the tools comes with Picasa by default. Now Picasa for Mac has become a direct competitor to Macs iPhoto Some of the major features incorporated with picasa are:

Photo Management: Picasa scans your entire computer for new photos and keeps them neatly organized, with great timeline features, tagging, and folder organization.                        Image Editing: The Mac version of Picasa has some impressive editing capabilities, including non-destructive editing of photos. Users can edit the images with the tools that comes with Picasa by default.                       Upload to Web Albums: Picasa for Mac offers seamless integration with Picasa Web Albums, Google's online photo sharing site. Once after the editing of images as desired the user can upload the images direct to the online Picasa web album with a single click So Why to wait !... Hurry up and download a FREE Beta release of Picasa  for Mac for OS X. So Why to wait !... Hurry up and download a FREE Beta release of Picasa  for Mac for OS X.

Dear CATV subscribers, The great news for Dakshin Kannada and Udupi CATV subscribers are  already out ! Its again a great achievement from UCN (United  Communication Network) who always care on quality and the service of  huge range of entertainment channels they are providing since from  15 years.

Yes its all DIGITAL now! An yet another milestone from UCN, Udupi a  leader in costal Cable TV service provider. Now forget about the old  analog signal because most of UCN subscribers might have experienced  the problem with clarity of most of the channels that tunes at the  end. Now its all gone, the subscriber can experience the DVD quality  pictures & clear sound by installing a setup box which gives a  theatre-like experience, high quality & international standard  services without having to buy expensive equipment. The viewing  experience will be completely different from the one at present  (Analog Cable broadcast medium)DEN, a Digital Entertainment Network MNC has already had a tie up  with UCN and now its DEN-UCN. DEN is a leading digital broadband  service provider who can approach people with their great digital  clarity signals through the local CATV network. Now people don't  have to go for the costly Dish TV's,since the the present cable only  provides a huge range of channels with all digital clarity  (presently 160+ channels)

Subscribing to Digitally: Subscribing to Digitelly is easy! Just get in touch with us or call  your local cable operator to experience the ultimate in digital  entertainment. Ask him for a demo and then definitely you start  loving it because its completely digital and different from the  present analog signal.

Say bye to Dish TV now ! BENIFITS of Setup Box over Dish TV: Enhanced Quality of Transmission and great digital surround sound: You get DVD quality pictures &  crystal clear sound offering you a theatre-like experience. You can  also enjoy high quality and international standard services without  having to buy expensive equipment. Enjoy the most advanced digital  technologies such as electronic program guide, program  reservations and reminders, parental control and lots more.     Wider Choice: Get more variety, more choice, more entertainment from  Digitelly packages with an exciting mix of all popular channels  ranging from general entertainment, sports and news to movies and  music. Offering includes city specific channels and local channels. Programme Reservations & Reminders: This feature empowers the you to  reserve a program for future viewing. As the program's start  time approaches, you will receive a reminder message, or the box can  also be set to automatically switch to the selected program. Radio channels direct to home: This is an value added service provided by DEN. This is  a amazing offer to all the music lover and can listen to any kind of music from home

Electronic Program Guide: Our always-available Electronic  Program Guide enables you to view program, information and  other options of interest without disrupting the program you are  currently viewing. The Guide displays the name, start time, and date  of all programs and also upcoming program of all channels  including their synopses.

Information Banners: The on-screen information banner allows you to  browse through the schedule listing for the channel you want to  watch. It also provides short program descriptions without  disturbing your viewing.

Parental Control: This feature empowers you to block certain  channels from being viewed based upon their rating values. This can  be best applied to prevent children from watching channels  unsuitable for them.

Internet: user can make user of a heavy bandwidth broadband interment service and grab the world in their hands

Please contact Digitelly care at digitellycare@denonline.in or your  local cable operator for packages best suited to you. Great work UCN! Hats off

It's that time of the year again when you need to tell the Tax Man about the taxes you have paid! The last date for filing your IT returns being July - I thought it'll be useful if I listed out the simple steps on how you can file your tax returns online very easily.

You can submit your Income Tax Return on-line by following process - without submitting your Form 16. 1. Go to http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/index.jsp 2. Register and create user (username will need to be your Pan Number) 3. Go to https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/individual_huf.do 4. Download the ITR-1 form 5. Fill the form 6. Cross Check the form for correctness. 7. Generate barcode 8. Next generate .xls(the excel file) and save on your system 9. Then go to https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/login.do and login again 10. Click on submit return. 11. Upload xls file. 12. Click on upload. Once you have submitted your return, you're done. The best thing is that you can also check your refund status if any.

Friends, as you know till now I have posted around 4 hacks to download songs from the eSnips songs database, but every time I tried to do so eSnips people always have some stuffs to block it. But after a nice weekend, today morning I came with yet another easy way to download songs.

This only works with Apple's Safari web browser . I hope all Mac users are already familiar about it. Windows users who don't have Safari browser can download it here. Downloading songs here is very easy and simple.  Please follow the below steps for download..

1. Open Safari and go to any eSnips song you would like to play 2. when the page loads, go to Activity menu item under Window menu  (or simply use Ctrl+Alt+A as short key)  3. In the Activity Window that puts up, go to the desired songs URL (look for file type as MP3 under Status tab) that you would like to download and simply double click on that that's it ... you are done ! Download will initiate in Safari's default Download dialog Keep Going friends ! have a nice time

Today I came across a very good and more  useful blog http://udupipolice.blogspot.com/ which I think is very useful for each and every citizen of Udupi district. Its a great achievement by Udupi District police as well as a tremondous contribution to each and every Udupia'n.

Udupi people can take more benefit from it since it has a regular updates involving all the crime, thefts that are happening in the district through online, so that people could much aware of such situations. Please do make better use out of it..

Apart from all the basic features it also has an online complaint booking system and a list of contact numbers of all the police stations, higher police officials so that the people can make much more use of it in the disastrous situations. Since I feel it as more useful but the same can be made much better apart from the present one by adding some crime awareness videos so that the younger generation will get better knowledge from it.

Sputtr is a thin online web application which integrates all the most popular search engines at one place. Just go and type anything you want to search in the search field provided and click on the desired search engine button you want to search. That's it !

The major advantage of this online tool is that the user can search anything from anywhere. It not only scans from the higher end Google Search, but it also search for the given stuff from various image and video sites like Flicker, Photobucket, You Tube etc. Some major online search engines supported are:  Google : News | Video | Images | Map | Groups | Scholar  Yahoo | MS Live | Ask |  Delicious | Digg | Technotati | Reddit | furl | Youtube | iFilm | Metacafe   | Flicker | Amazon | ebaY Apart from all these features it also allows the user to customize this online search tool by adding own search engines with customized buttons to the way he desires. Only thing needs to be done is to provide a proper search string and a customized button. Once you have registered and customized this online tool with own search buttons, then these buttons are also visible to every other online user using this tool. I am using this tool and customized this pretty cool tool as per my requirements and this really helps me in getting the things done in a easy way. Hope this may help you too ! Thanks to my friend Girish Kolari for the great info !

Now its a great time for all the cricket fans for the much awaiting IPL (Indian Premier League) which is suppose to start from 18 April 2008 which will continue till 1st June. This multi million dollar competition has already attract world media a lot because of some of the mega stars of world cricket and huge prize money offered from IPL authority and till now no other cricket tournament offered as much prize money as IPL offered in the history of cricket. This tournament is completely based and follow the rules as in Twenty20 tournament . There are eight teams based on different cities and provinces of India and each of the teams consists of several local and foreign players. Players were bought by the teams in an independent bidding auction. Each of the eight franchises of IPL are owned by several professionals from different fields like Business, showbiz etc

Enjoy the online live score and updates with the below list of web sites:

• Cricinfo
• Thetwenty20cup
• Cricketnext
• Cricket.sulekha
• indianpremierleagues
• stickcricket
• cricpoint
• indvsauslivescore
• cricbuzz
• squidoo
• Sify
• cricketworld
• rinkiss
• sports.yahoo
• cricketzone

Today I got an interesting and a more useful mail from one of my college friend regarding  an absolutely free of cost  heart treatment (including open heart surgery) for kids which will bring an everlasting smile on children needing heart treatment, at Sri Sathya Sai Institute Higher Medical Sciences, Bangalore.

The free service will enable the needy parents to have their kids treated without being worried about the cost since most of the children's who are having heart problems,their parents couldn't afford for their operation . The Sri Sathya Sai Institute Higher Medical Sciences is located in E.P.I.P. Area, White Field, Bangalore.

The responsible authorities can be contacted for any information regarding this free treatment with the below given address Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences EPIP Area, Whitefield, Bangalore 560 066, Karnataka, INDIA. Telephone: +91- 080- 28411500 Fax +91 - 080- 28411502 Email :adminblr@sssihms.org.in Click this for more info   Please show heart by passing this needful information on to all who are in need ! Thank You !

Income Tax Department has put on its own website the list of income tax refunds of all salary tax payers which could not be sent to the concerned persons for want of correct address.

Salary taxpayers who have not received refunds for assessment years 2003\04 to 2006\07 can click on the link below and query using the PAN number and assessment year whether any refund due to them has been returned undelivered from the salary refund management system'. If any refund has been returned undelivered due to change in address, then the taxpayer can enter the present address and the refund will be sent to the taxpayer at the new address.

The link to the website is as under: http://www.incometa xindia.gov. in/CCIT/refundse arch.asp Hope this could be of great help / use.

Today I found a good useful link ATMLocator  sent by one of my collogue. Its a free web based and a user friendly ATM searching console that lets you to instantly locate nearby ATM Cash Machines in almost any country worldwide. It's quite straightforward, just select the country from drop-down menu, then enter a city name, and a zip code (optional). ATMLocator will locate nearby ATM machines and list address details for each of them. Thought you might find it useful...