With some estimates suggesting that Facebook might hit a billion users by 2012, Thomas Power has an interesting thought – if Facebook becomes a bank, it could become the world’s large peer-to-peer lending network that could wipe out the existing banks.

The Facebook Bank

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

A press release from Facebook says that more than 8 million people in India actively use Facebook. The Hyderabad office of Facebook will offer support to Facebook advertisers.

Facebook’s new operations center in Hyderabad will supplement operations supported out of Palo Alto, California, Dublin, Ireland and a recently announced location in Austin, Texas. 

The Hyderabad office, like the others, will also house online advertising and developer support teams.  Having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones provides Facebook users and advertisers around the world with round-the-clock, multi-lingual support.

Facebook Opening Office in Hyderabad

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Dropped the mobile phone in water?

The video above has some tips on things you can do to save your wet cell phone from damage due to water.

First remove the phone’s battery and the SIM card that may have your contacts data and the call logs (the good news is that SIM cards can often survive water damage).

Dry the phone with an hair dryer and then put the phone in an air tight container with some silica gel and let it dry. It might work as the silica crystal will absorb the water moisture.

How to Fix your Water Damaged Cell Phone

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Another cool accessory for Twitter addicts – a pair of Twitter branded shoes. [via]

Twitter Shoes

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

For example, the URL goo.gl/mattcutts will take you straight to Matt Cutts’ blog.

Some people have managed to reverse-engineer the goo.gl API by reading the Google Toolbar’s request ( like this bookmarklet) but that doesn’t support the custom alias yet.

Google’s URL Shortener Supports Custom Aliases

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Often bloggers will hint (meaning to or not) that they’d be open to accepting a guest post. If your favorite blogger mentions they’re about to go on vacation, offer to fill in while they’re away. If you’ve noticed they’ve slowed down posting a bit, offer to help out. Did they tweet about just having a baby, buying a new house or how they’ll be going offline for a bit? This may be a great opportunity for you to hop in. Don’t wait for the personalized invite that may never come. link.

How To Find Blogs Who Need Guest Bloggers

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

How a USB Flash Drive is Manufactured

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

A college professor wasn’t too pleased with his students using laptop computers in the classroom so he took a non-functional laptop and smashed it to the ground to get his point across.

College Professor Breaks Laptop

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

If you plan to use your iPad principally at home, getting the Wi-Fi version is a no-brainer. With a stable, constant source of Internet connectivity, you can use all of the iPad’s features as much as you want without the additional cost of 3G. When you don’t have a connection, you’ll still be able to use some embedded applications like e-mail, photos, video, contacts, calendar and the iBook reader in offline mode.

If you plan to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, you might want to go with 32 GB or 64 GB to ensure enough storage for music, photos and movies. But if you’re only going to surf the Net, watch the odd movie while traveling and read e-books, the 16 GB model will suffice. link.

The downside is that an iPad has no USB ports so any data transfer has to happen over the Wi-Fi network. The iPad Wi-Fi model won’t have GPS capabilities so any location aware apps won’t work on that model.

Apple iPad as a Replacement for your Laptop

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Love this picture of Steve Jobs at the Oscars ceremony captured by Epic Fu girl Zadi Diaz using a Canon EOS 7D.

Apple also aired an iPad commercial during the Oscars.

Steve Jobs at the Oscars

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Some apps won’t make the iPad cut at all because the iPad lacks some features the iPhone boasts. Only the more expensive, 3G mobile broadband versions of the iPad will have global positioning system (GPS) functionality, for instance. The iPad is also missing a camera; an omission that could render some iPhone applications, like barcode scanners, useless.

To distinguish apps that will work on the different kinds of iPads, Apple has created software "flags," including a general "iPad Wi-Fi" flag and a more specific "iPad 3G" flag for apps that will only operate on the 3G-equipped units, says Kastelein. link.

All Your iPhone Apps Won’t Work on the iPad

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Engadget has published some new screenshots of the JooJoo or the CrunchPad tablet that is expected to ship around the same time as the Apple iPad. JooJoo has ditched the black color for “Champagne” and the screen layout looks more impress now.

Flash is now fully working, and YouTube videos can either be played back using Flash or the custom H.264 HD breakout player we’ve already seen; that player supports a range of codecs and can also be used to play videos stored on a USB thumb drive.

JooJoo features a capacitive touchscreen and it has no hard-drive though you now attach a USB drive to watch videos that are stored locally.

The JooJoo Tablet Can Play Offline Videos

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Recently Lifehacker and other Gawker media websites switched to partial feeds (they still provide full feeds but the default is now the truncated version). The official reason for making this switch was:

Gawker Media is an ad-supported company. RSS ads have never realized their potential. At the same time we sell plenty of ads on our website. So, yes, it is in our interest for people to click through if enticed by an excerpt.

Felix Salmon of Reuters however says that Nick Denton’s decision to truncate his RSS feeds may not be “a commercial decision” at all:

That move was largely an attempt to move Gawker away from being a big blog and towards competing directly with the likes of nytimes.com for serious online traffic. And while it’s pretty standard for blogs of all sizes to have full RSS feeds, it’s also very uncommon for big news sites to have full RSS feeds.

There might be a reason for that fact, although if there is I don’t really understand it. But I do see this move as a signal that Denton is exiting the blogosphere and that he has his sights set on higher ambitions.

 

Gawker Blogs Now Serving Partial RSS Feeds

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

@slhice shares some very interesting photo manipulation techniques that would let you change the colors and backgrounds of photos right inside PowerPoint without requireing Photoshop.

How to Edit Photos in PowerPoint

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

How to Become a Microsoft MVP?

The Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is given by Microsoft to “thank individuals for their exceptional contributions to technical communities worldwide.” The MVP status is valid for one year and there are currently around 4000 MVPs in over 90 countries.

Want to be an MVP yourself? Watch the video to learn about the various benefits of being an MVP, what is the criteria for getting selected as an MVP and how does one apply to Microsoft for the award.

The video is done by Abhishek Kant who leads the MVP program at Microsoft India and South Asia.

How to Get into the Microsoft MVP Award Program

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

..Bill skipped the small talk, and went straight to the point, “Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.. We’re happy to get you under license.” That was code for “We’ll go away if you pay us a royalty for every download” – the digital version of a protection racket.

Microsoft is no stranger to imitating successful products.. when they created their web application platform, .NET, it was obvious their designers had been staring at Java – which was exactly my retort. “We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?” link.

Microsoft vs Sun – The War on Office Patents

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal” -- found via Jonathan Schwartz of Sun.

Steve Jobs made this comment while talking about ideas that inspire the design Apple products.

Steve Jobs on Design Inspiration

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

This time-lapse video captures how a designer created a complete book cover in less than two minutes using tools like Adobe Indesign, Photoshop and Microsoft Word.

Related: Designing a Magazine Cover Page

Designing Book Covers in Photoshop

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Much of this “wait for the price drop” sentiment stems from the original iPhone 4 GB and 8GB models, which debuted in late June of 2007 for $499 and $599, respectively. By September of that same year, the 4 GB model was scrapped and the 8 GB unit dropped $200 to $399..

The entire event tarnished Apple’s luster in the eyes of consumers and this isn’t a company that repeats mistakes often… Apple won’t tread this path again with the iPad. link.

Why Apple Won’t Reduce the Price of iPad

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Swapnil Shinde, who is attending Campfire One at the Googleplex, just shared that Google has given all Campfire One attendees a nice campfire chair, a warm shawl and a Google Apps T-Shirt.

Google Gifts a Chair at Campfire One

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.