Nokia Maps with Free Navigation for Smartphones - How to install and navigate Guide

Recently, Nokia made its navigation service free to all GPS-enabled Nokia devices so it can better compete in the smartphones market against Apple and Google. Now Nokia users will be able to download a client that enables GPS phones to get Ovi Maps and Navigation for free, as well as, various city guides on their phones. Previously, customers could only access the basic maps for free. Turn-by-turn navigation with voice guidance and city guides was costing extra bucks.

Here are the official words directly from Nokia

Until today, Navigation has been kept in the hands of the few. Today that changes. We realised that billions of people around the world already have mobile phones that are perfectly suited to delivering Navigation. So we’re going to let them do that. From this day on, Navigation on your Nokia, with Ovi Maps, will be free for everyone, everywhere, to get people to the places they love. Now, and forever.

Initially, the free service will be available for 10 of Nokia's phones, including the Nokia X6, N97 mini (Note: Not the standard N97 just yet), E72, E55, E52, 6730 classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 Xpressmusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, or 5230.

Update: A support note from Nokia was just released saying that the new Ovi Maps will be released for the N97 on January 28th 2010

Eventually, the software client will be available for all Nokia GPS-enabled phones. And starting in March, the company will begin shipping new GPS Nokia phones with the software and maps for the service pre-installed.

Some of the Basic features of the New & Free Nokia Ovi Maps with Navigation:

• Maps are stored locally on your phone or memory card, and no continuous data connection like GPRS is needed
• Faster zoom and unzoom with clear map, as it wont download anything, unlike google maps navigation which uses data connection to download maps in real time.
• Traffic Information in 10 countries
• Lane assistance, speed trap warnings for safe driving.
• Pedestrian mode, including shortcuts only possible on foot
• Free Lonely Planet/Michelin travel guides

For the people which are new in Technology world let me explain

What is GPS Navigation

A GPS navigation device is any device that receives Global Positioning System (GPS) signals for the purpose of determining the present location. These devices are used in military, aviation, marine and consumer product applications. But now almost every new smart phones are GPS enabled, So can say that in near future you will find GPS device in every hand. Navigation software is available for most 21st century smartphones as well as some Java-enabled phones that allows them to use an internal or external GPS receiver (external means, connecting via cable or Bluetooth). Some phones with GPS capability work by assisted GPS (A-GPS) only, and do not function when out of range of their carrier's cell towers. Others can navigate worldwide with satellite GPS signals as a dedicated portable GPS receiver does

How to check if your phone has GPS in it

Free navigation by Nokia Ovi Maps works only with Nokia Smart phones. If you are not sure that your phone has GPS in it or not, check this link. See if your phone is listed there or not, if not then you have to buy some external GPS device for the job.

How to Install Free Nokia Ovi Maps Navigation in Mobile Phone

Here is the step by step guide to install Nokia Ovi Maps navigation system in your smart phone for free.

1. Go to this link http://maps.nokia.com/explore-services/ovi-maps/downloads

2. Select your device (Model number of your phone), If your phone is not listed there, see step 3.

Unfortunately during my test Nokia’s downloading link was very slow, i suppose it was due to too much load. The link mentioned on site (www.nokia.mobi/maps/download) is different from the one i got in SMS (www.nokia.mobi/maps/dl) by nokia, although the contents are same.

3. If your phone is not listed in above link, Pls visit this link http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/product-support/maps-support/compatibility-and-download and select your device.

4. Once you select your device, it will provide you download link of Nokia Maps Updater, Download and install Nokia Maps Updater in your computer.

5. Connect your mobile to your computer via USB or Bluetooth, in PC Suite mode, and open Maps Updater. To use Maps Updater, you need Nokia PC Suite installed on your compatible computer. You can Download Nokia PC Suite from here. Additional you can download extra tools like Ovi Suite from the same link.

6. Follow the instructions on Maps Updater and your mobile screen to install Ovi Maps to your mobile.

7. Now Nokia Ovi Maps are installed on your phone, now its time to get Latest Maps of your city. Download and install Map Loader to your compatible computer. To use Map Loader you need Nokia PC Suite installed. Here is the direct link to download Nokia Map Loader

8. Open and than exit Ovi Maps on your mobile, if you have not used Maps before, Once you open Ovi Maps in your Mobile Phone, it will create required folder list to your memory card that will be used to store maps.

9. Connect your Mobile Phone to computer via USB cable or Bluetooth and Open Map Loader in your computer. Once you open Nokia Map Loader, it will take some time to update your phone information. Then Select Continent or Country in list, and click +(plus) sign at right hand side, Then select Voices Tab at upper left corner and select voices of your own language and again click + to add it in download list.

10. Once you selected all the required things, simply click Download and go for a coffee, as it will take little bit time to download and install Latest Maps on your phone (depends on your internet connection speed too). You are done, Enjoy Free Navigation and find your way.

Also Read Google Maps Free GPS Navigation for Android 2,  Blackberry Free Dictionary with Audio, How to Hide or Lock SMS/MMS in Nokia Phone, How to Boost Mobile Wi-Fi Signal in Nokia N-Series, Driver Generated Live Maps & Navigation and many more articles here.

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Check if Important Portion of your Site/Blog is Visible to most of Visitors – Google Browser Size Tool

Weather your website’s important portions/regions are visible to user without scrolling !!
Not sure !! read on…..

Google launched a new tool in Google labs called Browser Size, by using this tool you can check how visitors view your website. Browser Size tool is based on a sample of data to Google site from visitors. This special too uses a special code which collects data of height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For the particular portion of your site, the tool guide you what percentage of users can see it without scrolling. For example, if an important button like DONATE US is in the 20% region, it means that 80% of users/site visitors must have to scroll in order to see it.

There is no need to check this tool, if your site have some extraordinary content like the one you see in left side image. Nobody wants to miss such things, They do scrolling, coz 70% of visitors are not able to see what there were expecting. But Not everyone is lucky enough to have such content at their site !

So lets see the importance of your own content. Upper portion or the front portion of a site is really very important and is very first impression of your site, if important buttons or gadgets are clearly visible without scrolling, there are better chances to have bright attention of your site/blog visitors.

As far as i can guess, 70% of my home page visitors are not able to see 4th post in their browser without scrolling. You can simply put your site URL and check if important sections of your site is visible to 80% of visitors by visiting Google Labs Browser Size tool.

Related : Google Related Posts widget for Blogger or Wordpress Blogs
& Web Speed will be Optimized up to 10 Times Faster in 2010

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How to Backup or Restore Mozilla Firefox Profiles/Saved Passwords/Bookmarks/Addons

Mozilla has a noticeable market share in browser world, One of my favourite browser. Almost every user wish to add several useful addons/plugins, but it can be a pain if you are ready to format your PC, or shifting your PC from one to another. There is no  default option in Mozilla Firefox (at least yet, while am writing this post) to backup your passwords or profiles, that you can restore after a fresh install of your new Operating System. If the concern is only Bookmarks than You can always backup your bookmarks with Mozilla Firefox Default bookmarks backup utility. Its simple

Go to Bookmarks Menu in Mozilla Firefox – Click Organize Bookmarks 
– Click Dropdown menu Import and Backup (for mozilla firefox version 3.5 or above, for eariler version Go to File Menu for Backup and restore option) 
– You can backup your bookmarks in 2 formats (json & HTML). Save it somewhere safely and you will be able to restore it after a fresh install of your OS.

What about Mozilla Firefox Saved Passwords ?

Well if you only want to backup Saved Passwords in Mozilla Firefox, here is the guide. For full Full Mozilla Firefox  backup including Profiles, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks etc. scroll down for full backup guide.

How to Backup Saved Passwords in Mozilla Firefox

Well its really simple, you just have to download a new Add On Called Password Exporter. Download Password Exporter Mozilla Add-on

Once add-on installed, restart firefox and go to Tools Menu and Click Add-ons. Add Ons screen will pop up, Find Password Exporter in the list. Click on Options button
Clicking on Option button will pop up Import/Export Passwords Dialog Box. Here you can either Import or Export and even you can encrypt passwords for safer side.
You can export paswords in CSV or XML formats. A spreadsheet with all your IDs and Passwords would be in CSV format. Save it somewhere in safe place that you can restore with same way by selecting Import Passwords option, as you see in above screenshot.

What if you wants full Backup of Mozilla Firefox Profiles?

Well here is the guide to make a full Mozilla Firefox backup including Profiles, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks etc. everything.

How to Make Full Backup of Mozilla Firefox Profiles

You can do it automatically via a FREE software or can do it manually.

Manual way is real simple but involves risk of identifying the real location.

For Windows 2000/XP machines the locations for your Firefox profiles are at

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\

For Windows 9x/Me PCs the location for your Firefox profiles are at:

C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\

As far as i can see from my PC, its at

C:\Documents and Settings\I\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5h3a12iy.default

Just copy the profiles folder to somewhere safe place, but it may gives problem to automatically show up in the list after a fresh installation of OS. So i would prefer the 2nd way, thats mentioned below.

Automatic

Download a Free Application MozBackup and install it. It supports Firefox version from 1 to 3.6 and several other applications like Thunderbird, Netscape etc.

After you install the application, launch it. Its really simple as you have to either select Backup or Restore the profile option. If you have several profiles you can choose which profile to backup.
Restoring is same and simple as above, Just launch the application and select restore option and select the file you saved before.

You can use several other utilities/Add ons to backup Mozilla firefox profiles and passwords like

Mozilla’s Official Profile Backup Support shows you a way to backup profiles manually.
Another firefox extension FEBE for the same purpose.

Related Post : Select Multiple Lines of Text non-consecutive way in Firefox

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Google Related Links / Related Posts widget for Blogger or Wordpress Blogs

Wordpress has inbuilt pluggins for Related posts widget, What about Blogger ? We previously tried several coding and hacks for blogger related posts widget. But that was restricted for only category wise related posts. Once there was a time when linkwithin got popular because of blogger restrictions. Now we have new Google Related Links widget.

Google Related links is a new (currently in invite only mode) service from Google which can display related links and searches into your blog posts. Here are official words

“Related Links is a tool to help webmasters increase page views on their sites.Given a page on your site, Related Links can choose the most related pages from your site and show them in a gadget. You can embed this gadget in your page to help your users reach other pages easily. Related Links also suggests searches that users can run within your site to find even more related pages.”

Can you apply for this widget ?  Yes

To request an invite you just have to send an email to relatedlinks@google.com mentioning your Gmail address, Website Domains (www.ialwayscapital.com) and approximate pageviews you have per day.

They are fast enough to reply the emails, i sent them an email requesting for invite and got the reply in 1 or 2 hours.

You can customize the widget as per your needs, You can edit width, fonts, colors, you can select a option if you want to display searches or just related links or posts. You can also select the number of related links/posts. You can exclude some text from titles like I exluded “I always Capital” for better results.

The best part of this widget is you can see Statistics like number of time the widget has been displayed and clicks done.

Still confused ? Try out DEMO or Google Related Links.

How to add Google Related links Widget in Blogger Blog !

Well its too simple, Simply copy the code and paste it in new HTML/Javascript widget of your blogger blog. You can place it anywhere you like.

Few Doubts : As the widget is new and under testing, it has some bugs like sometimes unknown or bad characters in post titles, links only opens in new window. etc.. Hope to see fixes in near future.

Also Read, Change Blogger Post Title to increase your search engine rankings & Blogger hit/post counter for individual post

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Register or Buy Domain in any Language (Non-Latin Characters)

Now get your Domain names in your own or any language characters. We all know that domain names are written and approved internationally in English language only since the beginning of mankind on this earth. But now ICANN has taken a historic decision. Read on.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is finalizing the last set of rules that will allow Internet addresses to be written in characters not belonging to the Roman alphabet. So, soon we will see domains written in Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Cyrillic characters and probably in Hindi (Indian Language) too. And probably after that we will see something like screenshots.
The proposal was past last year, the final plans were approved this Friday, on the 30th of October and the first applications will be accepted from the 16th of November.

Domain written in Below screenshot is in Hindi (Indian Language), Try yours

Here is the official note

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters – A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

The chairman of ICANN explained that out of the 1.6 billion Internet users around the world, more than half uses language with characters not related to the Roman alphabet.
Few countries such as China and Thailand, had already introduced "schemes" that allow users to enter the web addresses into their own languages, but these manoeuvres have not been approved internationally and do not necessarily work on all computers. I wonder now what will be the future of Domain names !! I mean it will be more difficult to remember such domain names that are not in our language and not even in known text characters. Lets see.
Read more details at ICANN

Also Read How to Redirect/Forward Yahoo Domain without WWW to blogger

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Buy Microsoft Windows 7 in cheapest price & get wrist watch free

After a long waiting Windows 7 is now finally available in India Online Stores. This time they have the Promotional offer to Register your Windows 7 Pack and get  Reebok wrist watch worth Rs 2599 free with your Win7 Copy.

I really appreciate the new approach of Microsoft officials by giving such offers to end users while there are pirated copies are selling for Rs. 50 (less than USD$2). Windows 7 Ultimate is available at only Rs. 11,799 (USD$ 256), in which Microsoft offering a free wrist watch worth Rs.2599 (USD$ 56), so ultimately you are getting the whole new Genuine Operating System in just around Rs.9200 or USD$200. Thats a good deal.

If you are in india, feel lucky as are you are eligible for this offer. To buy a copy visit this Windows 7 India sales page and fill out the form. A Microsoft representative will contact you with the details on buying Windows 7. The only condition i found is you have to buy the product within 7 days of being contacted by the representative.

Here are the price details of the Windows 7 Copies:-

Windows 7 Home Basic Price Rs. 5,899/- (USD$ 129)

Windows 7 Home Premium Price Rs. 6,799/- (USD$ 148)

Windows 7 Professional Price Rs. 11,199/- (USD$ 244)

Windows 7 Ultimate Price Rs. 11,799/- (USD$ 256)

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Google Maps Free GPS Navigation for Android 2

We are familiar with GPS navigation tools from Nokia and various other sources which are not FREE, before we discussed about Driver Generated Live Maps with real time Traffic Updates, Now here is Google Maps GPS Navigation for Android based phones. If you weren’t sure about switching to an Android phone in the near future, this might put you over the edge. Google Maps Navigation is an absolutely killer app. And it is only available for Android 2.0 phones.

Google Maps already has 50 million active users across various mobile phones, says Google. But what users have today isn’t even close to the new Navigation product.

First off, it’s connected, which puts it ahead of all but a tiny percentage of in-car navigation systems which have no Internet connectivity (Dash is a notable exception).

The application is also completely free. So all those paid navigation apps (Navigon, TomTom, CoPilot, MapQuest, GoKivo and Sygic Mobile) are at an immediate disadvantage.

But even if Google charged for this app, it would still win hands down. The features include easy search (no need for address), voice search, traffic information (from data sources and crowd sourced from app), and street view close up pictures when you get near your destination. And the car dock mode gives bigger, simpler icons and auto-voice mode (see video):

Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.

Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.

Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.

Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.

Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.

Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.

Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

Here’s Navigation in the Droid dock, followed by an image gallery for the app:

Video Demo Of Google Maps Navigation

Official Google Navigation Video

Via [TechCrunch]

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