Uhuru Lifetime Free Hosting Competition

Uhuru Software has announced a competition for websites. Winning 5 websites will get a Lifetime Free Premium Hosting from Uhuru. Winners will be decided by community voting.

According to Uhuru:

Further information regarding the contest, and where to vote, will be announced on the Uhuru e-mail community discussion list. 

RULES OF THE CONTEST:

- The nominated web sites with the most votes from the community will win lifetime free premium hosting on the Uhuru service.
- The owners of winning web sites will be invited to be guests on the Uhuru podcast show.
- Nominated web sites must be hosted on the Uhuru service.
- There is no restriction on the type of web site eligible for the contest. Just some examples are:

• A mobile Android app that just uses the Uhuru service as a back-end database.
• A customer resource management web site for managing sales engagements for your own products.
• An application for managing students and grades at a college.
• A blog about cuddly dogs.

- Nominations for web sites engaged in illegal or immoral activities will be rejected and cannot participate in the contest. Read the Uhuru service terms of use for details about which activities violate our hosting policies.
- The voting tool will require that voting participants register to vote. Only one vote per registered account is allowed.
- You are allowed to nominate any web site running on the Uhuru service whether it is your own or someone else's.
- You can nominate as many of your own web sites as you choose.
- Nominations which leave incomplete information on the registration form will be rejected.
- Lifetime hosting is defined as the period of time that Uhuru continues to offer a hosting service for web applications. As long as Uhuru is operating a hosting service a site with lifetime hosting will continue to get free service.
- Premium hosting is defined as 1GB RAM, 512MB shared file storage and 512MB shared database storage.
- If a web site which exceeds the free resources offered in the lifetime premium hosting offer should win the web the contest the free hosting prize will be extended to whichever site the owner of the winning web site chooses. In other words, there is no obligation for the winning site itself to be the site which recieves the lifetime free hosting. The free hosting prize can be transfered to whichever web site the winner chooses.
- The URL submitted for the nominated web site does not have to be in the uhurucloud.com format. It can be a private domain that has been redirected to uhurucloud.com.
- Uhuru reserves the right to extend the voting period.
- A web site must receive at least 10 unique votes to win the contest.

Important dates to remember.

Voting starts: Monday, February 20th, 2013.
Last date to submit nominations: March 23rd.
Competition ends at 12:00pm Pacific Time on March 29th, 2013.

Good luck.

Google Health Is Dead!

 If you have ever signed up for Google Health, you probably know that Google is shutting down it's Google Health service. So, you are left with a very few days to back up any data you may have in your Google Health account. I recently got an email from The Google Health Team and followed the instruction to download all my data and deleted my account. In this blog post I'll walk you through this process.

Here's the email I got.

This is an important Google Health service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active Google Health account.

As we announced in June, 2011, the Google Health service will be discontinued as of January 1, 2013. After that date, any remaining data in your Google Health account will be permanently deleted, and you will no longer be able to access or download any data from Google Health.

If you want to keep using the data you have stored in Google Health, you will need to take action before December 31st, 2012 to download it or transfer it to another online health service. We've made this easy for you. All you have to do is:
 - go to the Google Health site at https://health.google.com
 - log in with your Google account
 - follow the on-screen instructions to download your information and close your Google Health account.
For more information, see our help center article at http://www.google.com/support/health/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347989

Note that, if you log in to Google Health, and are not given an option to download your data, it means that you do not have any data stored in Google Health and you do not need to do anything more.

If you have not retrieved your Google Health data by January 1, 2013, it will be removed from Google's systems and permanently and irrevocably deleted. Google will be unable to recover any Google Health data for any user after this date.

For more details on the discontinuation of Google Health, see our blog post at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html, and see answers to frequently-asked questions at http://www.google.com/intl/en/health/faq.html.

Note: you will continue to receive periodic service announcements as long as you have an active Google Health account. If you do not wish to receive further announcements, simply go to https://health.google.com and follow the process to download your data (if desired) and delete your Health account.

Thank you for your support and use of Google Health.

The Google Health Team

1. Go to https://health.google.com and login with you Google account.
   
2. Now you'll see a 'Download as ZIP' button.
   
3. Click on the 'Yes, download' button. Open the downloaded file and verify the contents before continuing.
   
4.  Now that you have safely backed up your health data, it's time to close the account. Click on "Close my Google Health account" button
   
5. Select the check box and click on "Remove Google Health" button.
   
6. That's all! Make sure you keep the downloaded health records in a safe place!

Cheers!

Facebook Year In Review

Facebook just introduced a new feature that showcases 20 important stories from your timeline. This personalized custom story is called Year In Review.

When I logged in to my Facebook account this morning, I saw this new box:

Facebook Year In Review

The box has a link that says "See Your 2012 Year in Review" Look back at your 20 biggest moments from the past year.

Clicking on the link took me to a customized page, that looked like this:

Facebook 2012 Year In Review

The page shows 20 selected stories from your timeline. A big popup shows a familiar Share button that lets you share your Year In Review on your timeline. I noticed the URL of this page. It's
http://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/<my-user-name>

I did some experiment and figured out that

• You can see your friends Year In Review by using their facebook id in above URL
• If you are logged in, http://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/ will take you to your Year In Review(there's no need to append your facebook id.

As you can see in the above screenshot, the pop up has one more link See Facebook Trends from 2012. That will take you to page listing Facebook Trends for 2012. Check it out. It reveals some special and interesting stories about how people use Facebook in extraordinary ways.

I liked this feature. Click here to see YOUR 2012 Year In Review. Kudos to Facebook for this.

Updates To Facebook Data Use Policy & SRR

Facebook today announced some proposed updates to their Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).

A new document on their Facebook Site Governance Page announces the proposed change and also gives us links to the new documents.

Excerpt from the document:

Today we are proposing some updates to two documents which govern our site: our Data Use Policy, which explains how we collect and use data when people use Facebook, and our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which explains the terms governing the use of our services. These updates provide more detailed information about our practices, reflect changes to our products, and improve how we conduct our site governance process.

          ..................
          .................

• Ask the Chief Privacy Officer. We’ll be launching a new feature on our Facebook and Privacy Page to let you submit questions about privacy to our Chief Privacy Officer of Policy, Erin Egan.

• Facebook Live Events. Erin Egan will host webcasts on a regular basis to address your comments and questions about privacy, safety and security.

As you can see from the document they are adding a new feature to address questions about the changes. The document highlights the following changes:

• New tools for managing your Facebook Messages – replacing the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
• Changes to how we refer to certain products, like instant personalization.
• Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in search results.
• Tips on managing your timeline. For example, you can use tools on your timeline or activity log to delete your own posts, or you can ask someone else to delete a post in which you’re tagged.

However to know what all has changed wrt Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), we have to read the new documents.

Use the following links to see the proposed changes. You can leave your comments on those pages. 

• Proposed Statement of Rights and Responsibilities 
• Proposed SRR Redline(PDF)
• Proposed Data Use Policy
• Proposed Data Use Policy Redline(PDF)

Click here to comment. Remember that these documents are open for comment till 9:00 AM PST on November 28, 2012. Make sure you read and understand new documents.

Happy and safe Facebooking!

How To Take Screenshot In Sony Ericsson Xperia

How to take screenshot in Sony Ericsson Xperia phone(and may be with other Sony Ericsson phones)?

Sounds trivial? Turns out it's not much so. I remember taking screenshot with this phone earlier. All I had to do is just press and hold the power button and I'd get option for screenshot.

Problem started  after I updated my phone to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The old method stopped working and it took quite a bit of Googling before I found out the new method.

The new method to capture screenshot is little tricky.

Simultaneously hold 'Power' and 'Volume Low' button for ~2 seconds. 

I'll show how to do that in this video.

Bye Bye Meebo Messenger

Meebo Messenger is going away.

If you are a meebo user you would have got an email by now to let you know the same.
I got the following email couple of days ago:

You may have heard the news recently that Google has acquired Meebo. 

The Meebo Bar for site publishers will continue to be available and will see continued improvements and new features in the weeks and months ahead. 

However, as part of this transition, Meebo Messenger will be retired on July 11, 2012. 

As a past Messenger user, we wanted you to know that until July 11 you can download your archived Messenger chat logs. Log into your account on Meebo Messenger for a download link. Please act soon — after July 11, chat archives will be deleted. 

If you don't want to retrieve your chat logs, no action needs to be taken. 

This is a one-time courtesy email to let you know about the upcoming changes and the availability of your chat logs for download; there is no need to unsubscribe. 

Thank you for being a part of the Meebo community. The team here has loved every minute of the past seven years, and we're honored that you chose to trust Meebo as a place to have conversations with friends, family and colleagues. As we turn our attention to a new chapter, joining forces with the Google+ team, we look back with great appreciation to everyone who used and loved Meebo Messenger along the way. 

Sincerely,
Sandy, Seth, and the Meebo Team

As noted in the email, if you want to retrieve your chat logs, you have to do so before July 11, 2012. You can start by downloading the Meebo Messenger from https://www.meebo.com/messenger.

How To Change LinkedIn Password

A hacker has claimed to have hacked LinkedIn to get access to account details of ~6.5 million LinkedIn users. You can read more about the news here, here and here.

Vicente Silveira, Director at LinkedIn confirmed the password leak in his blog post.

So, if you are on LinkedIn change your password immediately!


If you are wondering how, here are the steps:

1. Login to your LinkedIn account.
2. Hover your mouse pointer over your name on the right top corner of the website, and click on the "Settings".
   
   
3. In the "Settings" page, Click on "Account" in the left vertical Menu, then click on "Change password" as shown in the following image.
   
   
4. Enter your old password and new password(twice)
   
   
5. Make sure your new password is strong enough. Include uppercase letters, numbers and special characters. Click on the "Change password" button.
6. That's all! Your password is changed!.

Important note: If you are using the same password for any other accounts, change them all ASAP.

Links:

• Millions of LinkedIn passwords reportedly leaked online
• LinkedIn confirms passwords were 'compromised' 
• An Update on LinkedIn Member Passwords Compromised