Stopping email from being sent with blank subject..

Forgot to mention subject, while writing an official mail and feel bad later ???????

Yes…. It’s a concern for all…. A mail without a subject brings a bad impression on us.

Don't worry......... just follow the simple steps mentioned below and see the result.

Here below are the steps

1. Open your outlook

2. Press Alt+F11. This opens the Visual Basic editor

3. On the Left Pane, one can see "Microsoft Outlook Objects" or "Project1", expand this. Now one can see the "ThisOutLookSession".

4. Double click on "ThisOutLookSession". It will open up a code pane.

5. Copy and Paste the following code in the right pane.(Code Pane)

'============================================================================

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)

Dim strSubject As String

strSubject = Item.Subject

If Len(Trim(strSubject)) = 0 Then

Prompt$ = "Subject is Empty. Are you sure you want to send the Mail?"

If MsgBox(Prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbMsgBoxSetForeground, "Check for Subject") = vbNo Then

Cancel = True

End If

End If

End Sub

'============================================================================

6. Save this and now close the VB Code editor and take a breath. From now on, this macro will make sure you do not make the mistake of sending a mail without a subject.

Internet encyclopedia to list all 1.8 mln species

From apples to zebras, all 1.8 million known plant and animal species will be listed in an Internet-based "Encyclopedia of Life" under a $100 million project, scientists said on Tuesday.

The 10-year scheme, launched with initial grants of $12.5 million from two U.S.-based foundations, could aid everyone from children with biology homework to governments planning how to protect endangered species.

"The Encyclopedia of Life plans to create an entry for every named species," James Edwards, executive director of the project which is backed by many leading research institutions, told Reuters. "At the moment that's 1.8 million."

The free Encyclopedia would focus mainly on animals, plants and fungi with microbes to follow, blending text, photographs, maps and videos in a common format for each. Expansion of the Internet in recent years made the multi-media project possible.

Demonstration pages at http://www.eol.org include entries about polar bears, rice, death cap mushrooms and a "yeti crab" with hairy claws recently found in the South Pacific.

"This is about giving access to information to everyone," Jesse Ausubel, chairman of the project who works at the Rockefeller University in New York City, told Reuters.

The Encyclopedia would draw on existing databases such as for mammals, fishes, birds, amphibians and plants. English would be used at the start with translations to other languages.

Comcast shows off super quick modem

Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.

The cost of modems that would support the technology, called "channel bonding," is "not that dissimilar to modems today," he told The Associated Press after a demonstration at The Cable Show. It could be available "within less than a couple years," he said.

The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.

The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity. The laboratory said last month it expected manufacturers to begin submitting modems for certification under the standard by the end of the year.

Intel to update Centrino laptop hardware

Intel Corp. is set to launch new hardware for laptop computers that the world's biggest chipmaker hopes will keep it at the top of the fastest-growing segment of the personal computer market.

Intel's new product is not a processor but is instead a platform -- a whole package of components including the main processor as well as all the secondary chips that add features such as the ability to connect to a wireless network.

Platforms rarely grab attention outside of technical circles, but Intel is generating wider interest this time because its new products are the first to use flash memory chips, which should translate into faster performance and longer battery life.

"Santa Rosa" is the code-name for the latest big overhaul of Centrino, Intel's hugely successful laptop platform brand that helped popularize the Wi-Fi wireless technology now standard in the industry.

"Intel has done a lot of things to save power here and there and the overall message of Santa Rosa is more features, more performance with little or no impact on battery life," said Nathan Brookwood, head of consultancy Insight 64.

Intel, which has about 80 percent of the overall PC market, has traditionally been even more dominant in the laptop segment and updates Centrino about once a year to try to maintain its lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Laptop computers are the hottest part of the PC business. Last year, worldwide PC shipments rose just over 7 percent, but sales of laptops jumped 26 percent, compared to just 2 percent for desktops, according to market research firm IDC.

The new hardware will boost performance and battery life by storing some data on flash memory like that found in digital media players and digital cameras. Flash chips can be accessed more quickly than a hard drive and also use less power.

Intel says it has also improved the integrated graphics of Centrino laptops, adding features and software that make video richer and more akin to what people would see on a television.

In addition, Intel is supporting the latest version of the Wi-Fi wireless technology that can deliver a maximum access speed of 300 megabits per second, about five times faster than the current popular version.

eBay Close to Acquiring StumbleUpon

First reported here at TechCrunch on April 18, eBay is now said to be close to finalizing its deal to acquire StumbleUpon for $75 million, according to a new online report from the Wall Street Journal.

The high flying startup has been rumored to be in acquisition talks since November .

The Wall Street Journal report quotes an insider saying that no final agreement has been reached and that talks could still fail.

The StumbleUpon had 2.1 million users as of April, up from 1.7 million in December 2006. 4+ million sites are “stumbled” daily.

The purchase price of $75 million will make a tidy profit for investors who include Ram Shriram and Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitch Kapor: StumbleUpon has only raised $1.5 million in a single round of seed financing previously.

The $75 million is on the high side of our initial range of $40-$75 million. Was there another bidder? Did Google and AOL stake a claim only to be trumped by eBay?

If the deal is finalized it’s an interesting move by eBay. Paypal was core to eBay’s Auction business. Skype could be justified as a tie into the Auction business as well. So where does StumleUpon sit? People “stumbling” from site to site with a business model the revolves around selling page views seems like an odd fit. A sign that eBay is looking to expand into new markets perhaps? Time will tell.

Stardoll.com: From Little Things Big Things Grow

Inspired by a childhood passion for paper dolls, Scandinavian born Liisa started drawing dolls and accompanying wardrobes, uploading them to Geocities. The personal page grew, evolving to Paperdoll Heaven in 2004.

Now calling itself Stardoll.com, the site took $4 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures in February 2006, and $6 million in a B Series round lead by none other than Sequoia in June the same year.

It’s a rags to riches success story that makes Stardoll worth taking a look at, and the space is seeing hyper growth. See our writeup of Zwinky last week.

Stardoll is all about dressing up dolls online.

Stardoll lets users create their own doll or choose from a large collection of celebrity dolls which can then be dressed up in virtual fashions. Every celebrity doll has a wardrobe full of unique clothes and outfits, with new celebrity dolls and outfits released weekly.

Each user is given a page from where they can share the dolls they have created, accompanied with a guest book, diary (blog), friend connections and album.

Most users are girls between the age of 10 to 17 and online safety immediately becomes a consideration. Stardoll adds a layer of anonymity to all accounts. Users can never reveal personal information such as their real name or city of origin on their pages.

Joining the site for the first time, you start with 25 star dollars that can be used to buy accessories for each virtual doll. Accessories range from 1 - 35 star dollars with users able to buy additional star dollars at the rate of 10 star dollars to $1.

They currently sell between 60,000 to 180,000 items per day.

In the background is a team that has grown to 40 people based in Stockholm, with a Los Angeles office on its way. Matt Palmer, former EVP of Marketing for Disney’s Kids Network has been hired to lead the North American push.

Stardoll has 7,144,735 members and is adding 20,000 new members a day, with 5.5 million unique visitors per month.

With its European heritage, languages supported include French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Polish, with a dedicated German .de version recently being launched. 30% of traffic comes from the United States vs. 50-52% from the European Union.

As a destination this won’t appeal to all readers, men in particular working in tech fields, however the numbers speak volumes for their growing success amongst their target demographic. With Sequoia amongst its investors it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that the site looks like a winner.

There’s a positive message as well.

Chasing funding and trying to be the next best thing in Web 2.0 can be hard at times, and even a little depressing. Stardoll shows us that from little things, big things can grow.

Wall Street 2.0

Gordon Gekko is back.

20th Century Fox has announced that it will be filming a sequel to 1987 cult classic Wall Street. The movie spawned lines that even today are quoted by stockbrokers and Investment Firms: lunch is for wimps and or course “Greed is Good”.

It’s sad they didn’t make the sequel in the late 90s. Gordon Gekko would have made a killing in Web 1.0 stocks. Fast forward a decade and the age of the IPO and inflated share price has passed, replaced in favor of the corporate buyout.

Reports state that in the movie, Gekko, having been released from jail, is now working in the hedge fund business.

Hedge funds do many things and not all of them are evil: hedge funds can be found in the background of funded companies throughout Web 2.0, but I couldn’t help but immediately think of Patent Trolling. Will Gordon Gekko buy a raft of patents, bringing his control over a range of Web 2.0 technologies to bare on a helpless Silicon Valley?

If Gordon Gekko in the Wall Street sequel was to focus on tech stocks and Valley startups, what could you see him doing aside from the obvious: abolishing free lunches and Segways at Google?

Hot or Not Tears Itself Apart, Reinvents

When James Hong and Jim Young founded HotorNot in October, 2000, they had no real plans for the service to be anything other than a fun site for a few friends. They turned a free low end computer they received for setting up an etrade account into a web server, launched the site from their house in Mountain View, California, and emailed 40 friends. By the end of the day, 40,000 people had visited the site, which now had 30 second load times.

It wasn’t too long before the service was hosted at RackSpace and the users were flooding in to rate user-uploaded pictures of themselves on a scale of 1-10. In January 2001 they added a dead simple dating site. Instead of reading endless profiles and trying to find a connection, users just say yes or no to a given picture. If it’s a yes, the other person is shown your picture the next time they look through profiles. If they like you as well, a connection is made. The Money Rolls In

Until last month, HotorNot was free until that last crucial stage when two people wanted to meet each other. At that point, one of the members (usually the man, Hong tells me) must have been a paid subscriber, which costs $6/month. Hong says their conversion rate was extremely high - 15% of active users eventually upgraded to premium accounts.

The premium revenue, plus advertising and fees for virtual flowers, soon topped $600,000 per month. Nearly all of that was profit for the two founders, who reportedly pocketed $20 million or so between them over the years. The company has never raised any outside funding.

In the last year though a few competitors have popped up (see yesnomayb, a copy of the business model) and a number of free dating sites also started to eat away at traffic. Traffic started to drift sideways, and the developers were getting bored at doing little more than site maintenance. Going To A Free Model

That’s when Hong and Young decided to rip apart their business model and remove the requirement for members to have premium accounts to talk to each other. A month ago, the requirement was turned off, and about $500k/month in revenue disappeared overnight. The founders also turned the company into a proper “C” corporation and issued stock options for the first time to all employees.

(I can’t help thinking that if HotorNot took venture financing somewhere along the way, they would not have been able to get their board of directors to agree to this.)

Hong says this lit a fire under the company, which is now running on reserve cash of a few million dollars. So far things look good. Traffic jumped over 60% - 10 million people visited the site in the last month, up from 6 million the month before. Advertising and virtual gift revenue spiked, and the site is now break even even though they killed their largest revenue stream.

Hong and Young aren’t stopping there. They have plans to expand the site greatly and say they will launch new products in the coming weeks.

Whether this works in the long run is yet to be seen. But the company wanted to try something new, and the founders took enough money off the table to be comfortable for life. Entrepreneurs tend to have a screwed up way of measuring risk - the more the better - and these guys are no exception.

RSS Feeds for Tags at Amazon.com

Amazon’s Customer Communities team has rolled out broader support for tag-based RSS feeds, according to a post from Amazon’s Ian McAllister.

The new functionality has been soft-launched and isn’t currently available on all Amazon pages. Support will become available across the board in the coming weeks.

The option allows subscription to feeds specific to the user’s interests and subsequently would also allow for the creation of widgets and mashups using the data created.

For those using the Amazon Associates Program, tag based feeds also support Affiliate Links.

Examples on the new feeds can be found here.

ThinkFree to Add Flickr Style Community Features

Online office suite ThinkFree joins the community sharing crowd Tuesday, with the launch of a number of new features.

The new (beta) version of ThinkFree Docs will allow users to search, share, tag and publish Microsoft Office and ThinkFree documents in an online social community, much in the same way that Flickr allows photographers to publish and share photos.

I’m told the thinking from the ThinkFree team was to get these features out to users now, with aesthetics to follow. And yet from what I’ve seen of the new service, I can’t fault the look. The new community tools build on an already pleasant interface, having nearly a YouTube feel to them (minus the videos).

The addition of tagging is immediately evident. Documents viewable by the community now come complete with ratings, embedding code, comment fields, downloading options and the obligatory post this to Digg/ Furl/ del.icio.us buttons. In many ways it’s moving into the territory previously claimed by Scribd, the new features at ThinkFree share a lot of similarity with Scribd, and yet they are not exclusive unto themselves, building upon an already very smart online Microsoft Office alternative.

Thinkfree currently has 275,000 users. Previous TechCrunch coverage here and here.

Useful Alt+Tab Replacement Power Toy

For those of you who use the Alt+Tab key combination to switch between open windows on your desktop, I am sure you have encountered times when you cannot distinguish one window from the other due to having more than one instance of the same program open.

Microsoft became aware of this draw-back after releasing the XP operating system and subsequently released a "Power Toy" to resolve this issue. The Power Toy resolves this issue by replacing the program icons with actual screenshots of your open windows. This way you can locate exactly which window you wish to switch to, which is immensely useful when navigating between several SAP windows at one time. Here are pictures of using the Alt+Tab key combination both pre- and post- installation of the Power Toy:

As you can see in the first example above, it is impossible to differentiate between the IE instances and the SAP instances by looking at the icons. In the subsequent example, the screenshot clearly differentiates the windows.

Here are the instructions to install:

-Copy URL to browser: http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/TaskswitchPowertoySetup.exe

-Choose "Run" from pop-up dialog box

-Choose "Run" a second time, this will kick-off the installation of the Power Toy

-Once you get the "Installation Complete" dialog, the toy is successfully installed. No need to reboot your PC.

SlideAware to Add New Features to Presentation Management Platform

Presentation management platform provider SlideAware will be launching new features Monday that build on what is already a useful tool.

SlideAware launched in March with a feature set that included the ability to create a flash version of a PowerPoint presentation, host it on SlideAware and then share a link to the presentation. Whilst far from being alone in offering this functionality, SlideAware offers additional services that make it a better candidate for business use; fine grain access control, including the ability to make presentation private and password controlled, detailed analytics on viewing of the presentation and support for key PowerPoint features including builds.

On Monday SlideAware adds a number of new features:

1. The ability to add notes to specific areas of slides, similar to comments in ConceptShare 2. Rich presence management (picture in picture like preview of slides that other users are viewing and the ability to sync with a single click) & chat 3. The ability to retrieve all notes directly in PowerPoint so that updates can be made

The new feature set will not go astray in strengthening SlideAware’s pitch as a collaborative tool.

The company offers a free version for basic personal use, and paid versions for professional and workgroup use.

Exclusive screen shots of the new features in action as follows:

Attack of the Advertising Widgets

Widgets are being turned into advertising delivery systems. Their nature - rich media applicatons that are easy to build, customize and add to a site - also make them an attractive way to add advertising to small sites. Google is now testing gadget ads, and we’ve written about services like boobox and AuctionAds (a sponsor) that easily ad affiliate advertising to a site via widgets. Last week eBay also launched “to go” widgets that let publishers embed ebay listings into websites, although for now there are no affiliate payments tied to those widgets.

Two more are coming this week. Tonight Silicon Valley-based Tumri is announcing a new product called Tumri Publisher, and Seattle’s Mpire will announce an advertising widget later this week.

Tumri Publisher, which is described here, allows users to create highly customizable widgets that promote specific products on their websites, in exchange for an affiliate or other fee. Tumri has twenty or so direct relationships with ecommerce sites like Overstock, Walmart, Shop.com and others to promote their products. Most advertising pay on a purchase, although at least one partner pays a on each click to their website.

Tumri splits revenue from the advertising 50/50 with advertising, and they say they’ll pay up to 70% of proceeds to larger publishers.

The widgets are javascript powered; the company says Flash versions are coming soon.

Tumri was founded in 2004 and has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round of financing from Shasta Ventures and Accel. They are currently closing a second round. They have 31 employees (16 in India, 15 in Silicon Valley).

Windows Live Hotmail Debuts

Hotmail, perhaps the first major success of Web 1.0, has evolved.

Microsoft has announced the launch of Windows Live Hotmail globally in 36 languages, complete with AJAX goodness.

The new service has been built to be a vast improvement over the previous Hotmail offering, incorporating input from more than 20 million beta testers. However todays offering is only the move from beta to roll out.

We’ve covered Windows Live Hotmail previously: back in February Michael Arrington took a look at the then beta service and the results weren’t positive, the new Hotmail ranking third behind Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

Windows Live Hotmail launches with an initial 30 million users, with over 250 million additional users to be bought across in the coming months.

The new Hotmail is built on completely new code and marks the continued consolidation around the Windows Live brand.

In the coming weeks, Microsoft will be releasing a new free mail client meant to replace Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live desktop. The new client is called Windows Live Mail and will be a desktop client that provides Hotmail’s feature set locally on a users desktop. It will also support management of non Hotmail accounts.

There is some added benefits of logging into the new Hotmail; support is built in to allow Instant Messaging of contacts, or VOIP call contacts, with one click, which will also tie in with the Microsofts desktop IM platform.

My only question is why didn’t Microsoft build on the wonderful foundation that is Silverlight. Instead of promoting a platform that has such wonderful potential, Microsoft has seemingly ignored it with Hotmail. I’m sure in the coming months that others will be more willing to utilize the potential of Silverlight than Microsoft is.

HubPages Debuts New Look, Ad Yield Technology

San Francisco based HubPages, a revenue sharing community content destination, debuts a new look and ad yield technology today, building on a portal that is now attracting 2.4 million unique visitors a month.

We’ve previously covered HubPages here and here: the company took $2 million in funding from Hummer Winblad in August 2006 and on its initial launch in February 06 Michael Arrington asked the question as to whether HubPages was a better Squidoo.

The team behind the service has a particularly strong heritage: CEO Paul Edmondson was previously the Group Product Manager for MSN Entertainment, Jay Reitz was the Development Manager, and Paul Deeds was a developer in Windows Media Internet Services.

The new look follows extensive community consultation with over 14,000 authors across 20,000 hubs. On top of the visible changes that will be evident to the casual visitor, HubPages has included support for slide shows and multiple pictures, forums, and hub grouping tools that allow for easier navigation.

On the advertising side, HubPages officially launches what it’s calling “Behavioral Formatting Yield Optimization” technology. In layman’s terms it works out where advertising works best on each hub and places the ad unit to suit.

I spoke to Paul Edmondson ahead of the announcement. He told me that they currently have a handful of publishers making in excess of $1000 a month from their hub pages, with the top publisher currently making $1800/ month. Although by no means full time incomes, for the average writer these are good figures, decent pocket money for those looking to make money online from writing as a part time pursuit.

The newly announced “Behavioral Formatting Yield Optimization” technology has already resulted in an increase in advertising returns of up to 43% averaged across the board in testing to date.

HubPages currently utilizes advertising from Google Adsense, Commission Junction, Amazon and the beta of eBay’s Contextual Advertising units, with plans to roll out direct sponsorships of hubs in the foreseeable future.

There’s a lot to like about this service. The revenue sharing model is generous compared to others; a straight 50/50 split compared to Squidoo’s 50% of profits only, and publishers are paid direct by the advertiser: advertisements are rotated 1:1 with each publisher’s code and HubPages’ code. The question of Intellectual Property Rights is straight forward: publishers own the content and can do with it as they please.

Having worked in the blogging industry, both as a blogger and blog network owner, I can’t help but think that this is a better model than many blog networks out there currently offer. The flexibility and open nature of content creation at HubPages is a solid idea, the need to deal with payments is gone, and the positive word of mouth from those users making money from the service is bound to drive future growth.