There can be several reasons why you may want to switch email service providers.
Reason #1. Your existing email address gets too much spam so you plan to dump the old account and switch to a new email address (a form of email bankruptcy).
Reason #2. You are leaving your existing job for higher studies and need to transfer all personal emails from the Microsoft Exchange server to your new university email account.
Reason #3. Your ISP’s email service isn’t reliable and you therefore plan to move to a free web based email service like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc.
Reason #4. You think the new email service from XYZ Inc. offers more features than your existing mail provider and hence want to make the move.

Moving Emails from One Account to Another

This illustration will help you visualize how to transfer email messages across the three most popular web email services. The transfer will happen online and you just need to specify the credentials (user name & password) of your old email account (from where you want to move message out) and your new email address (where you want to move messages in).

Moving to Windows Live Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail is integrated with TrueSwitch so you can easily transfer emails from Yahoo Mail, AOL, Gmail, Live.com, .Mac, etc. to your shiny new Hotmail address. The same service may also be used for copying old email from an existing Hotmail account to a new Hotmail address.
Moving to Yahoo Mail
Like Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail too provides integration with TrueSwitch so you can easy copy mails from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Juno, Rocket Mail, etc. into your Yahoo! account. With TrueSwitch, you can also copy mails from one Yahoo! inbox to another without upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus.
Moving to Gmail / Google Apps
Gmail (or Google Apps for Email) has a built-in Mail Fetcher feature that lets you download email messages from 5 different email accounts that support POP access. You may therefore use this feature to move your old Hotmail or AOL messages into Gmail as both these service provide free POP3 access.
The migration from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail is slightly tricky but possible. Keep reading.
Trick: Move emails from Yahoo Mail to Gmail or Outlook without POP
The free account of Yahoo Mail doesn’t provide IMAP or POP3 access so you can’t move these emails into Gmail or a desktop client like Microsoft Outlook.
The Yahoo! Mail Plus upgrade will add POP3 access to you account at $20 per year but if you want to save some money, here’s an alternate but simple trick:

1. Create a new account at Windows Live Hotmail and fetch all your Yahoo! mails into this account using the free TrueSwitch Service.
2. Now that your mails are inside Hotmail, you can setup POP3 configuration to fetch those Yahoo messages into Gmail via Hotmail.
Migrating Emails Away from your ISP Account
TrueSwitch mentioned above supports all popular ISPs including Comcast, Verizon, CableVision, AT&T, etc. but if your ISP is not in the list and you don’t have the time to configure your email client for POP3 or IMAP access, check out Yippie Move.
It’s a online email transfer service similar to TrueSwitch but supports an even larger number of email service providers including the .edu addresses of certain colleges and universities in US. With YippieMove, you can choose folders (or labels in Gmail) that you want to copy to the new location without having to move the entire mailbox. The service is quick and easy but costs around $15 per email account.
Copying emails from Microsoft Exchange / Outlook
Every organization has a different policy with respect to corporate email so check with the administration if your Exchange service offers POP3 or IMAP access – if yes, you can easily transfer messages into any of the free web mail accounts directly as listed above. Also see these guides:

• Export Outlook email to your Gmail Account
• Copy Outlook Mail to Google Apps
• Transfer Mail to Hotmail via Outlook Connector

Email Transfer Complete? The Next Step
Now that all your message have moved to your new email address, you can set up a vacation responder in your old email account to auto-inform contacts about your new email address. Also check this guide on how to manage multiple email addresses.
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Whether you need help with an error message or just want to show off your new desktop wallpaper, Twitter can be a good place to share all those screenshot images with the world.
Now capturing screenshots of anything on your desktop screen is easy but let’s explore a couple of ways that will enable you publish these screenshot images on to your Twitter account as a tweet quickly and effortlessly.

TechSmith Jing (Mac & Windows)

With TechSmith Jing, you can quickly grab a screenshot, add some text notes or annotate your image with arrows and basic shapes. Once you are done editing, the image gets uploaded to your free screencast.com account and the URL is automatically copied to the clipboard so you can easily paste that in your tweets.
That’s one way of doing things but let me share another Jing trick here.
Other than Screencast.com, Jing can also upload screenshot images to your Flickr account. Open Twittergram and associate your Flickr account with Twitter using the tag TechSmithJing. Now anything you upload on Flickr through Jing will automatically get pushed to your Twitter stream without you having to tweet about it. How cool.

Kwout (Web Based)

If you need to screen capture a web page for publishing on to Twitter, check out Kwout. You can either copy-paste the web page address that you want to screen capture or use a bookmarklet.
Kwout will help you capture as well host the screenshot image and you can post the link on Twitter directly from Kwout’s site. The very interesting part is that all hyperlinks in the screenshot remain clickable (see example) because Kwout uses an imagemap for screenshots.

ScreenTweetr (Mac, Windows, Linux)

ScreenTweetr is another interesting Adobe AIR app developed by James Ford.
The app stays minimized in the system tray but automatically wakes up as soon you do a screen capture on Mac (Shift-Control-Command-3) or a Windows PC (Print Screen) . It will upload the screenshot image (or the contents of your clipboard) on to Twitpic from where you can tweet it.

Skitch (Email to Twitter)

Like Jing, Skitch is both a screen capture software and a screenshot hosting service. If you have a Mac, you can capture and upload screenshots to Skitch from the desktop itself but Windows users will have to send their screenshots to a secret email address for posting them on to Skitch (see example).
Skitch also provides an "email to twitter" option so you can send in screenshots from iPhone, BlackBerry or your mobile phone to Skitch and the images will then auto-appear in your Twitter timeline.

It should be a simple choice – you either take the plunge and upgrade your computer to Windows 7 or continue with your existing operating system. And yet, as is often the case, the choice is not as easy as it sounds because once you decide to upgrade to Windows 7, you will also have to choose the right edition of Windows 7 that will fit your needs.

Windows 7 comes in six different flavors – Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Now picking the right edition from these six variation may seem like a daunting task but in reality, you’ll have only three Windows 7 editions to choose from. Here’s why:
Which Windows 7 edition is not for me?
The Windows 7 Starter edition is meant for basic computing tasks (like checking email, web surfing, etc.) and is optimized for less powerful machines like your Atom powered netbook. You won’t find Windows 7 Starter at the retail stores as it will only ship (pre-installed) with new notebook computers worldwide.
Windows 7 Home Basic is not as limited as the starter edition but it will be only sold in developing countries like India, China, Philippines, etc with new computers. Then you have the Windows 7 Enterprise edition which is just like Windows 7 Ultimate but for businesses who go for volume licensing.
None of the above mentioned editions of Windows 7 will be available for general retail in boxed offerings. Your choice is therefore simplified to the remaining three editions – Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate.
Compare Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate editions
The various editions of Windows 7 are designed such that each version has all the features of the previous editions plus something extra that makes that edition unique. Also, you can use the Anytime Upgrade feature to purchase a serial key online and upgrade your existing Windows 7 license to a more advanced edition. For instance, if you decide to buy Windows 7 Home Premium today, you can use Anytime Upgrade and shift to Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate edition anytime.
To help you decide which edition of Windows 7 to buy, here’s a quick rundown of features that are available in each of the Win 7 editions.

Windows 7 Home Premium

Windows 7 Home Premium, like XP Home and Vista Home Premium, is for home consumers worldwide with a very pleasing Aero glass user interface. Home Premium edition includes Windows Media Center to help you play a wide variety of multimedia formats (including DVD) and there’s a built-in DVD maker to create DVD movies or for burning files and disk images to CD, DVD, and Blu-ray disks directly from Explorer.

Windows 7 Home Premium also includes a backup utility that can create full system images (so you save a copy of everything that is currently on your computer). It also includes the “Previous Version” functionality that was earlier available with Vista Business edition only.  This feature is very useful for retrieving files that you may have just deleted or changed accidentally.
Windows Virtual PC now supports all editions of Windows 7, whereas Virtual PC 2007 only supported XP Professional and Vista Business or Ultimate editions. With Virtual PC, you can run another operating system (like Windows XP, Vista or even Linux) on top of Windows 7 if you wish to do so. Finally, Windows 7 Home Premium supports up to 2 physical processors with unlimited cores, and up to 16 gigabytes of RAM.

Windows 7 Professional

Windows 7 Professional includes all the features of Windows 7 Home Premium, and then adds some advanced networking features. For instance, the Location Aware Printing feature lets you choose different default printers for different networks and is useful for people who use the same laptop in multiple locations – for example, at work and at home.
The "offline files" feature of Windows 7 Professional caches the network files to your local drive so you can continue working even if the network connection get dropped. The built-in Windows Backup tool can backup your data to the network and you may use the encrypted file system to better protect files on the computer. Windows 7 Professional features Domain Join that lets you connect to company networks more securely and access can be managed through group policy from the Windows server as well.
Like Vista and XP Professional, Windows 7 Professional also includes remote desktop feature that enables others to connect to your Windows 7 computer across the Internet from virtually any computer.

That said, the most interesting feature in Windows 7 Professional is XP Mode. In simple English, if you buy Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate, you get a fully licensed version of Windows XP that will run inside Windows 7 through Virtual PC. The XP mode is primarily for business users who want to run legacy apps in Windows 7 that otherwise only work with Windows XP.
The amazing thing is that Windows Virtual PC + XP Mode enables you to run XP software programs inside your native Windows 7 desktop – that means you can run legacy XP programs just like any other Windows 7 compatible program.
XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Premium
If you are a Windows 7 Home Premium users but also own a licensed copy of XP, you can use Virtual PC to make your own XP mode. However, if you do not already own a copy of XP for this purpose, you will likely come out cheaper by simply buying Windows 7 Professional if you wish to use this feature.

Windows 7 Ultimate

Windows 7 Ultimate includes all the features of Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional, plus some extra enterprise and security related features. Ultimate also lets you use multiple languages on the same PC.
The enterprise-centric features include Federated Search (for searching across network drives), Direct Access (you can access corporate e-mail servers, shared folders, or intranet Web sites securely without connecting to a VPN), BranchCache (it caches local copies of content from Web and file servers to improve performance) and a system that lets you run UNIX applications on Windows.
With Windows 7 Ultimate, you get the ability to boot from a virtual hard drive and the new BitLocker-to-go feature lets you encrypt files on your computer as well as removable disks like that USB flash drive.

Windows 7 Prices

While choosing an edition, price will be also a deciding factor for many users. Home Premium is the cheapest retail version of Windows 7, but it will also come as a Family Pack allowing you to use the same license on up to 3 computers in one home. If you have multiple desktop and notebook computers to upgrade, you will see significant savings from the Family Pack offer.
Windows Home Premium

• Windows 7 Home Premium Full: $199.99
• Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade: $119.99
• Windows 7 Family Pack (Home Premium): $149.99
• Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium: $79.99

Windows 7 Professional

• Windows 7 Professional Full : $299.99
• Windows 7 Professional Upgrade: $199.99
• Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional: $89.99

Windows 7 Ultimate

• Windows 7 Ultimate Full: $319.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade: $219.99
• Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate: $139.99

Related: Host a party, get Windows 7 DVD for free
Wait! Is my computer eligible for the upgrade edition?
While most retail sites are mentioning that only XP and Vista users are eligible for the upgrade pricing on Windows 7, the official word from the Microsoft Store is:

You qualify for Windows 7 upgrade versions if you are running genuine Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Windows 2000 on your PC.

And though you cannot do a direct in-place upgrade from Windows XP or 2000 to Windows 7 (where all of your existing software programs, files, and other settings are preserved), you can at least save some bucks from the upgrade pricing.

Windows 7 – 32 bit or 64 bit

Most new computers sold today have 64 bit processors.  These processors support much greater amounts of RAM than 32 bit processors, and can also process more information at one time than their predecessors. With a 32 bit system, you are capped at using 4 GB of ram but with a 64 bit system, you can use virtually limitless amounts of RAM.  To take advantage of these features, however, your Windows 7 operating system has to be 64 bit as well.
With previous versions of Windows, you had to decide at the time of purchase if you wanted the 32 bit or 64 bit version of the OS.  Windows 7 has thrown that to the wind, and now both 32 bit and 64 bit versions will be part of the same box. You still have to decide which one to install but you don’t have to answer this question at the time of buying Windows 7.
Buying Windows 7
The mirage of Windows 7 product editions is actually not as bad as it looked initially. Windows 7 has improved Home Premium’s feature lineup, and then added some truly unique features to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate.
The Home Premium edition should meet the requirements of most users but if you are a mobile professional who works from both office and home, Windows 7 Professional may be a better choice.

skype for backup As we amass more data daily on our computers, a quality backup plan becomes increasingly crucial. Backup programs have been in existence for years – some allow you to backup your computer files locally to an external hard disk or a portable drive, while others like Mozy and Carbonite are designed to help you save a backup of your important files and folders to an online web server.

The drawbacks associated with these methods are obvious. Hard disks and portable drives will not last forever and they also can get misplaced easily. If you are using an online backup service, the files will be inaccessible when your internet connection is down and the data would be lost permanently if the backup company goes out of business.

The other big problem is that not everyone feels very comfortable storing their private data online so they are vary of using any remote backup tool.
Turn Your Family Computers into a Personal Datacenter

Cucku is a new backup program cum web service that attempts to take the best parts of each form of backup. First, Cucku lets you easily backup your important files and folders to your own hard drive and to portable drives you own. Then, in a unique twist on traditional online backup services, Cucku lets you store an encrypted copy of your files on your friends’ and family member’s computers through the internet using Skype.

This gives you the best of both worlds – the accessibility of a backup on a local drive with the additional security of a remote backup, all the while letting you keep your data on computers of people you trust instead of a datacenter.

When you first run Cucku, you need to create a Cucku account and then select the file types (extensions) that you want to backup. You may also select specific folders, and then every file in the specified folders will be added to the backup queue.

cucku backup screen select files to backup

Cucku will then generate an initial backup of your computer, and will let you store this backup on to your hard drive or on a portable storage device such as a USB flash memory stick or you can burn a DVD with those files.
Uses Skype to Backup Files on other Computers

Finally, you can connect Cucku to Skype, and add a partner to store your backup. Every day, Cucku will back up your data to a local folder on then PC and then sends any new or changed files to your backup partner over Skype for offsite storage.

Since it can often take a long time to transfer your entire backup over the internet, Cucku allows you to dump the backup onto your friend’s computer through a portable drive if you wish. Later, only incremental updates will be transferred over the internet. You can also view individual files that have been backed up through Cucku, so if you accidently delete a file on your local PC, you can always restore it alone without having to restore the entire backup.
But Skype is shutting down extras?

Skype recently discontinued their Skype Extras program but Cucku service will continue to work as before since it only uses the Skype API to send files to a backup partner and the API will remain functional even after the Extras go out of service.

In the free version you can store backup files for one user and store you backup on one other computer running Skype. If you would like to store your backup on multiple computers or allow multiple people to store their backups on your computer, you can go for the Pro version.
Is it better than Dropbox or Windows Live Mesh?

Dropbox and Windows Live Mesh too provide online backup but these are primarily synchronization services also let you copy files across multiple computers so they are all in sync with each other (like your home and office computer).

Cucku is different. When you use Cucku to store your files on a friend’s computer over Skype, he or she won’t be able to read the contents of your files as they are in encrypted form. Another advantage with Cucku is that you can transfer unlimited amount to data to another computer while services like Dropbox have a certain limit for free accounts.

With Cucku, your friends and family members can help each other out with offsite backups without having to rely on an external backup service. The only condition for anyone to become part of this inner circle is that that they should be running Windows.

office 2010There’s some new information about Microsoft Office 2010, the next version of Microsoft Office that will also have a web component similar to Google Docs.

1. Microsoft will replace Microsoft Works with a trimmed down and ad-supported version of Microsoft Office called the Office 2010 starter edition.

2. The starter edition of Office 2010 will have Word and Excel programs and it will only be available with new PCs.

3. The public beta of Office 2010 will start later this year though you can try Office Web Apps now itself.

4. Office 2010 will be available in three editions – Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010 (looks like they killed the Ultimate edition).

5. Click-to-Run is a new feature that will make it easier for you to try Microsoft Office 2010 on an existing PC. It will automatically install software patches when connected to the Internet and, since it uses virtualization, you’ll be able install multiple versions of Microsoft Office on the same computer side-by-side.

Firefox 3.7 will not just have an awesome interface but it will also include support for multi-touch enabled devices.
In this video, Marcio Galli demonstrates how he could draw paint a logo of Firefox on a touch-screen laptop running the latest build of Firefox 3.7 using nothing but his fingers and a simple JavaScript based drawing application that utilizes the Canvas tag and the touch events API of Firefox 3.7.
You can view the HTML source of the page to understand how easy it is to write a multi-touch enabled application in Firefox 3.7. The drawing application showcased in the video utilizes less than 70 lines of code and it’s all very easy to understand.

function load() {
   initCanvas(1200,800);
   document.multitouchData=true;
  } 

  function listenTo(event) {
   canvasctx.fillStyle='rgba('+gColor+',.1)';
   canvasctx.beginPath();
   canvasctx.arc(event.clientX, event.clientY, 20, 0, Math.PI*2, 1);
   canvasctx.fill();
   canvasctx.closePath();
  }

  document.addEventListener("MozTouchMove", listenTo, false);

If you have a touch-screen computer like a tablet or the multi-touch enabled system like the HP TouchSmart, you can download the latest release of Firefox 3.7 from Mozilla’s FTP servers and play around with the application yourself. Firefox 3.7 is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
The upcoming Firefox 3.6 release will have basic support for touch-enabled devices like you will be able scroll & pan web pages, select text on the screen or use menus through the touch-screen. However, if you are looking to build touch applications that can capture user interactions or hand-gestures, you’ll have to wait until Firefox 3.7 that is expected sometime in 2010.

*This is about updating Firefox plug-ins, not extensions.

If you select Tools -> Add-ons from the Firefox menu bar, you’ll get a list of all extensions, themes and plug-ins that are currently installed in your copy of Firefox.

The same add-ons dialog has a “Find Updates” feature to help you figure out if you are running any out-dated extensions but that doesn’t work with your plug-ins. How do you then find out that you are running the latest versions of all plug-ins?

firefox plugins

It’s simple now. You can open the Firefox browser and visit the Plugins Check page hosted on mozilla.org. This will create a list of all plug-ins that are installed on your system and will match that data with its own list to determine if you are running an older version that has been marked out-of-date.

In case this online check fails for a particular plugin, you can click the “Research” button to perform a search on Google using the plug-in name as the search query. This is not always accurate but you’ll at least reach the vendor’s website that is officially hosting the plug-in.

It makes sense to visit the plug-ins checker page occasionally because older plug-ins not just make your browser insecure but they also make it more unstable. David Tenser of Mozilla says 30% of the reported crashes are caused by old plugins.