CHROME OS FASTER, SIMPLER,SAFER

The biggest disappointment of the much-awaited new operating system from Google, unveiled last week, is that it will not work on regular hard disks. This dampener aside, the Chrome OS promises to change the way we work on computers

The wait is not over yet, not at least for another year. But after Google lifted the veil from Chrome, its next-generation desktop operating system (OS), last week, the first glimpse was enough to announce the arrival of a game changer in the way we use our computers. In a demonstration at its headquarters at Mountain View, California, Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, mentioned a few things that are worth noting.

First, the OS is, as expected, a glorified version of the Google Chrome browser itself. The look and feel are pretty much the same, with just more eye candy and features in the Chrome OS.

Second, Google has made the source code for the OS available for download to anyone interested. So basically, both Google and external coders can now work on the underlying operating system at the same time.
Third, and the most important news for consumers, is that this OS will not work on regular hard disks. Google will tie up with hardware manufacturers to offer the new Chrome OS on selected devices—netbooks, tablets, laptops or anything else.

An open-source OS on a closed line-up of devices? Irony, thy name is Google. Pichai stressed that the goals of Chrome OS are the same as that of the browser—speed, simplicity and security.

Need for speed

The new OS is designed to work like a TV—instant on and instant off—and this requires more than just OS optimization to pull off. A Google Chrome OS-based computer will discard most of the bloat in the boot process today, cutting a system down to its essentials.

A computer today wastes precious time looking for hardware—such as floppy drives—which are no longer present. Thanks to the custom hardware, Chrome OS devices will feature custom firmware and a new boot process that ensures a boot-up time of mere seconds.

Pichai and his colleague demonstrated this by booting up an Asus EEE netbook PC which was switched off. Chrome OS was at the login screen in 7 seconds. Pichai says it will take only 3 seconds more to be on the Web and browsing.

Also, the new OS will work only on Solid State Drives (SSD), which are notably faster than normal hard-disk drives, says Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Google Chrome OS. That’s right, no hard disks with moving parts will be supported. So if you planned to run this on your computer with a dual-boot system, think again.

Simplicity is its forte

To make simplicity a strong factor, the Chrome OS will rely completely on the cloud, with almost no support whatsoever for offline usage. There will be no desktop applications. Not even one. It’s all in the cloud with this one, and aimed primarily at portability with devices such as netbooks.

Applications running on Google Chrome OS will all run off the Web directly, although the OS features something it calls “panels”, which are essentially small widget-like applications that minimize to the status bar area from where they can be recalled. Pichai demonstrated a notepad widget that automatically saves to Google Docs. He also demonstrated Google Talk and an MP3 player widget from its new music search engine.

On the more technical side, HTML5 is a huge centre point for Chrome OS with its advanced video, audio, offline store technologies, and so on. And not surprisingly, the operating system will have full Flash support.

The OS browser also supports multiple open windows. The window switching mechanism is somewhat similar to what you see with Windows 7 with task-bar previews. The windows are thumbnailed, and hovering on one further pops up the tabs opened in it.

In a demonstration of working on documents from external devices, Google showcased how one could open documents from a pen drive. The pen drive contained Excel documents which opened straight in the Excel Live Web app. Did Microsoft just help make Chrome OS work better?

High on security

With the speed and simplicity already accounted for—speed due to the revamped hardware, and simplicity since the entire OS is essentially a browser—we now come to security. Chrome OS touts the security paradigm of a Web application compared with a native application. Unlike native applications, a Web application cannot interact directly with the hardware on a computer, or even do anything outside of the sandboxed environment of the browser.

Furthermore, the OS and the firmware are signed, which means that tampering and malware will be detected during the boot process itself and will trigger an update of the system, bringing it back to normal. Additionally, the entire OS will be auto-updated, ensuring that users have the latest security updates; and since all applications are on the cloud, they will already be the latest versions available.

Finally, all data in Chrome OS is encrypted, so even if you were to lose your computer, your data could not be stolen off it. And since everything is synced to the cloud, you won’t lose your data in case of a theft or disk crash either!

A distant dream

The biggest disappointment about the Chrome OS is that it won’t be available for anyone and everyone. When Google first announced the concept of an open-source OS, it seemed like Linux would finally get the push it needed from a technology giant, and the world would have an OS that could really compete with Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OSX. Unfortunately, that does not look like it will be the case.
Currently, it is possible to run Chrome OS in a virtual machine (a software container in the cloud that works as an independent OS and runs applications just like a physical machine). However, the lack of an official Google-made build means you will need to download the source and build it yourself—a solution best left to hard-core techies. However, the open source community should soon be coming out with enough solutions and guides to let the average tech enthusiast run Chrome OS on his computer.

CONNECT

ViewSonic’S new launch

ViewSonic has launched the VPC 100 (Rs31,999, plus taxes) and VPC 101 (Rs47,000, plus taxes)—all-in-one PCs which offer the entire computer in just its monitor. Both the VPC 100 and 101 come with an 18.5-inch screen, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 8x DVD writer, a 1.3MP webcam and four-in-one card reader, and both run Windows XP Home. Their main points of difference are that the 101 uses an Atom 230 instead of the Atom 270, and 2x2 watt speakers instead of 2.3 watt. The 101, however, offers a better screen, with a 170-degree horizontal viewing angle instead of the 100’s 160-degree.

Free download

It seems that the success of the Windows 7 Beta has led Microsoft to believe that this is the perfect way to go forward with all new major software releases. It has just rolled out a free download of the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional. It includes MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, InfoPath, Sharepoint Workspace, Communicator and Publisher. Microsoft recommends that users uninstall any previous version of Office they have been running, and not use this beta version as a office suite on their primary personal or office PCs. You will need a Windows Live account, and there’s a form to be filled out as well. Following that, you will be given a key to activate the software, and can choose between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The 684MB installer will start downloading in your browser itself through a special Microsoft download package.

New phone from LG


LG has launched the GD900 Crystal in India. The 13.5mm-thin phone, with a transparent, touch-sensitive keypad boasts a scratch-resistant design made from tempered glass and reinforced by a band of liquid metal. The 8MP shutter on the phone comes with autofocus and LED flash, and can also record video at 720x480 pixel resolution. The accelerometer on the 3-inch capacitive touch screen (16 million colours, 480x800 pixels) helps auto-rotate the screen when taking pictures, and even comes with a proximity sensor to turn it off when talking on the phone. The phone retails at Rs26,000.

Unite technology

Have you heard about the Opera’s upcoming Unite technology? It is a new feature in Opera 10.10 which embeds a Web server into your browser. With it, your Web browser becomes less of a consumer of online content, and more of a P2P (person to person) application which allows you to become a true member of the Internet. You can share your music and images, or set up your own website, run a messaging service, or allow people to leave notes on your computer while you are away—and these are just the “applications” bundled with Opera 10.10. The unite sidebar Opera also has a gallery of applications available online, which allow you to do anything, including running a music streaming service.

Do check the other pictures of Google Chrome from this link:
http://publication.samachar.com/pub_article.php?id=6679372&navname=Latest+News%26moreurl%3Dhttp://publication.samachar.com/mint/business/latestnews.php&homeurl=http://www.samachar.com/mostread.php&nextids=6674617|6674619|6680866|6680857|6679372&nextIndex=0

NEW TECHNOLOGY CAN 'COOL' LAPTOPS

Heating up of your laptop will soon be a thing of the past, for researchers have developed a new technology that could help keep it cool.

Jairo Sinova, physics professor at Texas A and M University, and his colleagues have explained that with laptops getting increasingly powerful and their sizes getting smaller, they are excessively heating up, which tends to become a headache.

"The crux of the problem is the way information is processed. Laptops and some other devices use flows of electric charge to process information, but they also produce heat," Nature quoted Sinova as saying.

"Theoretically, excessive heat may melt the laptop," he adds.

"This also wastes a considerable amount of energy," said Sinova.

And his research could find a new approach towards an alternative way to process information.

"Our research looks at the spin of electrons, tiny particles that naked eyes cannot detect. The directions they spin can be used to record and process information," he said.

He said that for processing information, it is necessary to create information, transmit the information and read the information, but it is not yet know how these are done.

"The device we designed injects the electrons with spin pointing in a particular direction according to the information we want to process, and then we transmit the electrons to another place in the device but with the spin still surviving, and finally we are able to measure the spin direction via a voltage that they produce," explained Sinova.

The biggest challenge to creating a spin-based device is the distance that the spins will survive in a particular direction.

"Transmission is no problem. You can think for comparison that if the old devices could only transmit the information to several hundred feet away, with our device, information can be easily transmitted to hundreds of miles away. It is very efficient," he said.

"This new device, as the only all-semiconductor spin-based device for possible information processing, has a lot of real practical potential," he says. "One huge thing is that it is operational at room temperature, which nobody has been able to achieve until now. It may bring in a new and much more efficient way to process information," he added.

GOOGLE UNVEILS NEW ORKUT

New Delhi: Social networking site Orkut has revamped its look and added a host of new features as it tries to regain ground from one of its toughest competitor Facebook.

Google, which owns Orkut, said the new look has a user interface, or homepage, which is faster and easier to use.

'With the new user interface (UI), the user does not have to visit each page for viewing videos, or say posting scraps.

'He gets to see all updates and respond to his friends from the homepage itself,' Google India Head (Products) Vinay Goel said.

It also allows faster uploading of photos and has features like video chat, automatic face detection and a scroll down menu for viewing all friends on the same page.

'We have about 80-100 million users globally and India is the second leading market for Orkut after Brazil,' Vinay Goel added.

VANISHING E-MAIL ADDRESS

Protect your e-mail ID

Our e-mail addresses are our identity, as it were, and we would like to keep them away from spammers' eyes.

But sometimes, if you want to download data or graphics from a Web site, you are required to fill out a sign-up form, go for Web site subscriptions, which may open the door to unsolicited spam.

Temporary e-mails

How can we avoid such risks and protect our main e-mail IDs?

www.10minutemail.com could be the answer - this will give you a temporary e-mail address valid for just 10 minutes.

10 mins e-mail

More importantly, there is no registration or verification here. Any e-mails sent to that address would show up automatically on the Web page. Keep the Web page open for 10 minutes.

You can read and forward the messages sent to your e-mail address and even reply to the messages. The e-mail address will self-destruct after 10 minutes.

Spam-free

If you want to retain the e-mail address (given by the Web site) for some more time, you can also reset the timer by clicking on ''Give me 10 more minutes.''

For safer surfing, use this (temporary) e-mail address for any forum sign-ups and keep your inbox spam-free.



Click over to the site. You will instantly be given a temporary e-mail address that vanishes after 10 minutes.

'EMAIL COULD BE EXTINCT WITHIN A DECADE'

With more and more teenagers switching to instant messaging and social networking sites for speedy communication, email could be extinct within a decade, says a new report.

The electronic form of contact is losing its charm as millions of teenagers ditch it as their main form of communication, said the study by social anthropologist from the University of Kent.

Although inboxes are still filling up daily all over the world, experts believe emails are dying out because they are too slow, too inconvenient and simply not fashionable any more.

The study commissioned by broadband provider TalkTalk found only 51 per cent of Britons in their teens or early twenties say email is their first choice of communication, The Daily Mail reported.

Email took 20 years to develop into the phenomenon it is now, but could take just half as long to die out again, said report author Professor David Zeitlyn.

Experts reckons people prefer the 'one and done' style of message, which is where a short message like those on Twitter, can be sent to all contacts at the same time.

Other email alternatives, such as instant messaging, texting and social networks like Facebook, are quick and easy and can be done anywhere with modern technology.

The researchers found email has already become 'grey mail' with the most devoted users being pensioners, followed by middle-aged Britons.

It does not mean email is completely abandoned as 86 per cent of 15-24 year-olds do send out messages this way, it's just they use other methods more often, they say.

One of the reasons was that alternatives, like Facebook and Twitter, allow them to send out one message which goes to all their friends at once, saving them time on mailing or texting.

Older generations are however more reliant on email, with 98 per cent of those aged 65 or over using it regularly and 96 per cent of those aged 45-64, said the TalkTalk research.

As users get younger, email becomes less popular with 87 per cent of 25-34-year-olds using it.

'Email has been the dominant mode of communication over the internet for the past 20 years, but that doesn't mean it always will be,' Mark Schmid from TalkTalk said.

'Increasingly people want to send quick, short messages reaching many people in one go, and there are now better ways of doing that than via email.

'Based on the trends we're seeing now, email could well be on its last legs by the end of the next decade.'

GURGAON BOY DOODLES HIS WAY TO GOOGLE

Puru Pratap Singh, a Class 4 student from Gurgaon, won the Doodle for Google competition. Singh’s doodle was chosen from 4,000 entries across India. Log on to Google and you will see the logo

For once, Puru Pratap Singh’s (9) folks will allow him to surf the Net late at night. In fact, his whole family will be up till midnight.

Friday, to see his artwork displayed as an icon on the homepage of Google India.
Singh, a Class IV student of Amity International, Saket, won the GoogleDoodle contest in India, edging out 4,000 others. His will be the search engine’s first “made in India” doodle.

But having won the contest, and a laptop in prize, Singh has other plans for the future: “I want to be a scientist, not an artist as they aren’t very well paid.”

The Gurgaon boy had a little help. His art teacher mother, Arti Singh, pitched in with the artwork while his father, N.P. Singh, helped him think up the concept, ‘My India full of life’.

“The first ‘G’ is in the shape of a peacock; ‘O’ represents the wisdom of our country; the other ‘O’ shows the discovery of water on the moon by India, ‘G’ revolves around Kashmir; ‘L’ is designed as the rifle at Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate; and ‘E’ depicts Mahatma Gandhi,” said Singh.

To see Singh’s doodle, a Google India spokesman said, all you have to do is log on to www.google.co.in.

YAHOO PLANS TO EXPAND, HIRE PEOPLE IN INDIA: CEO

Yahoo! Inc plans to grow its business in India and hire additional people there, its chief executive Carol Bartz said on Tuesday.

Bartz, who was speaking at a luncheon in Singapore, said she was heading from the city-state to India where she would meet the country's prime minister and other senior officials.

She also said Yahoo! is "happy" with its investment in China's Alibaba, although it recently sold a small part of its shares in Alibaba.com, the Chinese firm's listed unit.

GOOGLE TO BUY ADMOB FOR $750 m

Google is to pay $750 million to buy AdMob, a provider of advertising on mobile phones, the internet search leader announced Monday.

The deal is the third largest ever undertaken by Google and underscores the company's strategy of extending its online advertising dominance to the mobile web, where its Android smartphone operating system is becoming increasingly popular. Google said it expected antitrust regulatory review in the US but not in Europe.

AdMob has a system that serves display ads on mobile phones and its purchase could give the still nascent market a powerful boost, analysts said.

'Google could have built this itself, but this gives them a head start,' says mobile analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. 'It will thrust Google into the forefront of mobile display ads.'

'AdMob is a great Silicon Valley story,' said Google in a blog posting to announce the deal. 'We are looking forward to having them join the Google team and work with us on the future of mobile advertising.'

DEADLINE IN GOOGLE BOOK DEAL EXTENDED TO FRIDAY 13th Nov.

A judge has given Google Inc. more time to revise a legal settlement that has drawn government scrutiny because it would give the Internet search leader the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

Under a change approved Monday, Google and groups representing U.S. authors and publishers now have until Friday to change an agreement reached more than a year ago. It marked the latest twist in a copyright lawsuit that the authors and publishers filed against Google's digital book project four years ago.

The revisions to the settlement were supposed to be filed by the end of Monday, but Google and its negotiating partners told U.S. District Judge Denny Chin they still needed to address objections raised in September by the U.S. Justice Department. Chin signed off on the extension without comment.

The Justice Department has warned it probably would try to block the current agreement from taking effect because antitrust regulators had concluded it threatened to thwart competition and drive up prices.

Some of the Justice Department's preliminary findings echoed concerns from a chorus of critics that include Google rivals Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., had insisted the settlement merited court approval until the Justice Department raised red flags.

In its current form, the settlement would entrust Google with a digital database containing millions of copyright-protected books, including volumes no longer being published. The Internet search leader would act as the sales agent for the authors and publishers, giving 63 percent of the revenue to the copyright holders.

The Justice Department believes the arrangement could lead to collusion that would raise the prices for digital books — a format that is expected to become increasingly popular with the advent of electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

Google contends its plan to make digital copies of so many hard-to-find books would benefit society by making more knowledge available to anyone with an Internet connection.

For that reason, the Justice Department has said it hopes an acceptable compromise can be worked out.

GOOGLE PROVIDING BETTER VIEW OF PERSONAL DATA

Google is offering a new privacy control that will make it easier for people to see some of the information being collected about them.

The "Dashboard" feature unveiled Thursday pulls together all the data that pour into Google's computers whenever Web surfers log in to one of the company' services.

That includes summaries of an individual's e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google's video site, YouTube. Before, a user would have to check multiple places for all that.

The snapshot doesn't include any activity that occurs when a person isn't logged into a Google service.

Dashboard represents Google Inc.'s latest step to give its users more control over their personal information and appease privacy watchdogs.

MICROSOFT INDIA SEEING GOOD RESPONSE TO WINDOWS 7

New Delhi: The Indian unit of Microsoft is seeing a good early response to Windows 7, its recently launched operating system, its chairman said on Monday.

The Indian unit, which employs 5,300 people, has "no significant plans of hiring" this year, Ravi Venkatesan told reporters at the World Economic Forum.

India and China contributed a very small portion of Microsoft's global revenues, but he said "we are seeing good double-digit growth".

MICROSOFT TO CUT JOBS WORLDWIDE

Global software major Microsoft will slash hundreds of jobs globally as part of its effort to realign business activities.

The layoffs are expected to be across different locations and businesses. Sources said the number of possible lay-offs could be close to 800.

When contacted, a Microsoft India spokesperson said the impact on the company's India headcount would be in single digits. The firm currently employs about 5,300 in the country.

"We continue to review our business needs and align our resources accordingly, be it our headcount or our spending.

The impact on India remains minimal and in single digit. At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas," the spokesperson said.

In January, the software major had announced plans to trim 5,000 jobs. At that time, Microsoft said it would cut up to 5,000 jobs in research and development, HR, marketing, sales, finance, legal, and IT.

Four months later, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had warned the company might axe more jobs depending on the impact of the economic downturn.

"As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure, including additional job eliminations," Ballmer had said in May.

MICROSOFT LAUNCHES ONLINE SERVICES IN INDIA

Software giant Microsoft today announced the commercial availability of its online services in India at prices starting from $2 (Rs 95) per user per month which will allow small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enterprise customers to access Microsoft’s e-mail, collaboration, conferencing and productivity capabilities online.

The services, that include Microsoft Online Services product family, offers Exchange Online (for e-mail) and Office SharePoint Online (portals and collaboration), Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services and Microsoft Office Communications Online (for instant messaging and presence), from Saturday.

"Customers can access a suite of products directly from the company website and pay a use-based monthly subscription fee and thus manage their IT needs efficiently and lower their IT spend 10-50 per cent," said Microsoft’s Business Group President Stephen Elop while launching the services here today.

Microsoft has partnered with HCL Infosystems, Infosys and Wipro to market and offer value-added services around the Microsoft Online Services.

MICROSOFT CEO EYES YAHOO PARTNERSHIP OUTSIDE US

Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday the company could look to extend its search engine partnership with Yahoo outside the United States, if it gets regulatory approval.

Earlier this year Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10-year Web search partnership to challenge Google Inc, a pact that US and European antitrust regulators are evaluating.

"It's possible that we will extend that partnership (with Yahoo) outside the US," Ballmer told reporters at a news conference. "We will have to wait and see if we can get approval and consummate that partnership inside the US first."

Microsoft has said it believes the deal will close in early 2010, and that they can make significant progress on integration in one or two major markets next year.

WINDOWS 7 SALES TOUCH 3.5 PERCENT

It’s been a fortnight since Windows 7 was officially launched worldwide. It now makes up more than 3.6 per cent of all PCs tracked by research firm Net Applications.

Net Applications tracks operating system (OS) usage statistics through information reported by internet browser software. On October 21, the day before the official launch, Windows 7 usage was at 1.89 per cent, according to Channel Register. By launch day, the number hit 1.99 per cent, rising to 3.67 percent it hit on November 1.

Throughout October, various versions of Windows made up 92.52 percent of the browsing market, with the Mac OS X taking 5.27 per cent, and Linux at 0.96 per cent. Despite the steadily growing Windows 7 share, Microsoft's OS as a whole have been falling as Windows had nearly 94 per cent of the market in December 2008. Share of Mac OS X and mobile browsers appears to have modestly risen in its place.

INTERNET COULD RUN OUT OF WEB ADDRESSES NEXT YEAR

The world could well run out of Internet addresses next year, unless urgent action is taken to switch to a new generation of net addresses, the European Commission has warned.

According to the commission, businesses urgently need to upgrade to Internet protocol version six or IPv6, a new version of the Internet's addressing protocol, which will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

The IPv6 system has been ready for over a decade and is providing 340 trillion, trillion, trillion web addresses. But, not many companies are actually ready to migrate to the new platform.

In fact, a survey, conducted by the Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

The IPv4 and IPv6 protocols refer to the way in which web addresses are created and assigned. Each website has a unique IP address, represented by a string of numbers, such as 192.168.1.1, which are then given a user-friendly web address to make them easier to remember.

The IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses while IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses.

The EC survey found that of the 610 government, educational and other industry organisations questioned across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, just 17 per cent have upgraded to IPv6.

The Commission has warned that the timely deployment of the protocol is vital to the growth and stability of the Internet.

Detlef Eckert, Director in Commission’s information society and media directorate-general, said: “In the last 10 years, the Internet has become hugely important worldwide...

“Only by ensuring that all devices connected to the internet are compatible with IPv6 can we stay connected and safeguard sustainable growth of the Internet and the global digital economy, now and in the years to come.”

PIRATED WINDOWS 7 GENERATES $ 100,000 IN INDIA

About 50,000 pirated DVDs of Microsoft Windows 7 are estimated to have been sold here since the official launch on Oct 22, generating unaccounted business of around Rs.50 lakh (nearly $100,000).

The reason for the allure of the pirated versions: These cost Rs.40-Rs.250 in Naza Market in Hazratganj here, drawing buyers from not only the rest of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand but also Nepal and Bangladesh.

'This is the biggest market in the region,' said a shopkeeper in Hazratganj, claiming at least 50,000 DVDs of the pirated Windows 7 have been sold since hitting the local markets within 24 hours of the official launch, fetching sellers about Rs.50 lakh so far.

The legal version of the new operating system launched by Microsoft Corp costs between $150-$300 (Rs.7,500-Rs.15,000) in the international markets. The company, however, tagged its prices 20 percent below international rates in India, where it is available in the Rs.6,000-Rs.11,000 range through official channels.

Despite the discounted company rates, buyers are opting for the pirated version.

'Why invest Rs.10,000 when it is available for Rs.250?' asked Pramod Yadav, a student pursuing a Master of Computer Applications (MCA) course.

Added Mohit Singh, who runs a computer hardware and software maintenance company: 'We pay for only the DVD as we are regular customers. A DVD hardly costs Rs.20-40.'

Most computer service providers or 'regular customers' in Lucknow and elsewhere in India use pirated software, contended Nishant Kumar, a software engineer with HCL Technologies in Greater Noida.

According to him, what makes the pirated operating systems more attractive is that cheap pirated anti-virus software is also freely available.

'A lot of anti-virus software, for example Awast, is available on the Internet,' Kumar said, adding that it was equally effective and has the same service life.

Those selling pirated Windows 7 deny doing anything illegal.

'There are over 200 shops in Naza Market. All have everything you want. We are not doing anything illegal as everything is available on the Internet,' said a shopkeeper not willing to be named.

'We are only transferring and supplying to buyers who include students, professionals and even big business houses.'

Those selling authentic software are unhappy.

'Be it software or encyclopaedia, everything is available in pirated form within 24 hours. We do not get the expected business,' Amit Mishra of Newgen Technologies, the authorised distributor of Compaq, HP, Microsoft and Lenovo in Hazratganj, told IANS.

The police express helplessness in combating piracy. 'We know what is going on for the past couple of decades. But we cannot act on our own. We need a formal complaint to act or else you (the media) will come down on us,' police spokesperson A.K. Pathak told IANS.

Besides software, the Naza Market and the Naka Market in the Naka area are also famous for producing CDs and DVDs of newly released Bollywood movies within 24 hours.

'You name the movie and you will have the CD, DVD the next day,' boasted Harnam Singh, a Naka shopowner.

FACEBOOK GIVES PEACE A CHANCE

John Lennon, one of the world's most recognised names in the history of music, always imagined a world where people lived as "one". He also beseeched the world with his wife, Yoko Ono, to "give peace a chance". They sang, "Everybody's talking about/ Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism/ This-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism/ All we are saying is give peace a chance", in an earnest attempt to spread the message of peace through music and catchy rhymes. Today, emulating the same example of an imagined peaceful world, Facebook, one of the most frequented social networking sites, has joined the peace bandwagon by being part of the Peace Dot initiative, started by Stanford University.

What is the Peace Dot initiative?

'Peace Dot', the brainchild of Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, is an attempt to bring together technology and world peace, heralding a social change. The website says, Many are pessimistic about peace, but our Stanford team sees a different trend. Today, many good things are happening. To highlight work that increases peace, we organized "Peace Dot" and invited some partners to join us. Stanford will help track the progress and share data, which it hopes will be positive.

Where does Facebook come in?

Facebook is perhaps one of the first social media sites to join the Peace Dot campaign. "Facebook is proud to play a part in promoting peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other. By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term", says the website.

How does it work?

Everyday, more and more people across the world are logging in to Facebook to connect with long lost friends, relatives and acquaintances. This is where the Peace dot campaign comes in, its inherent message being, "You are not alone". Peace Dot aims to spread the message of peace through this thriving culture of social networking.

What does it track?

The Peace Dot movement tracks the number of people connected to others across ethnicities, religion and across the continents which have a record of disputes. For example, there are about 7231 India-Pakistan connections as of the last 24 hours, which is displayed on the site. Every day, claims the site, they ask people the question, "Is world peace possible?", the answers to which are tracked region-wise. Even though the statistics say that only 8.51% people in the US think it is possible, Facebook is confident that the numbers will increase as the campaign gains momentum.

Just a few days old, this campaign is all set to connect the online world and has succeeded in adding a whole new dimension to social networking - that of world peace, the online way.

Imagine that. And give peace a chance.

POPULAR GAMES ON FACEBOOK

Got time to spare after touching base with your friends and groups on Facebook? It is time to get addicted to online gaming, for social gaming is the latest most happening fad to hit cybertown. Here is a list of some of the most popular games on Facebook.

FarmVille:

Have you ever considered farming as a retirement option? Then check out FarmVille and get your farming basics right - minus the manure, of course. A management game, FarmVille, allows you to set up a farm your own way and tend to your animals like you would in a real farm. With more than 61,323,326 monthly active users, it is perhaps one of the most popular games on Facebook.

Word Challenge

This game is for people who love English. Juggle around words to form new ones, challenge your friends and even go on a discovery of new words and build your vocabulary. Word games are the most fun way to improve your language skills, as reflected in the thousands of followers that this game attracts.

Bubble Town

If arcade games are your cuppa happiness, you will just fall in love with this one. What makes Bubble Town way different from other similar games like Bejeweled is the simple fact that the Borbs in the town snooze off if you do not hit them! Borbs are the cute faces which populate Bubble Town. This also makes Bubble Town one of the most addictive arcade games on Facebook.

YoVille

YoVille is a virtual world in itself. You can customise your YoVille character to do almost anything you would do in your daily life. Make friends, play with them, have fights, go to work, earn wealth and even acquire a house, much like Sims, though with a lot more options.

Mafia Wars

Have you wanted to be a Mafia don and start your own kingdom of crime? Check out Mafia Wars. The goal of the game is to run three types of crime business, be the ultimate mafia don and rule over New York City. This is another hugely popular game with the addicted users also using their spoils of war as their status updates on Facebook.

Know-It-All Trivia

From spelling tests to History and Math, Know-It–All is a very entertaining and informative game in a quiz format. The questions have to be answered within a particular time limit, which just adds to the fun.

Biotronic

This is another arcade game. Play it to enjoy the exploding combos and colourful animations that fill your screen.

Cafe World

You do not need any inclination for cooking to play Cafe World, just a deep love for food will do. All you have to do is set up a virtual character and choose a dish to cook. The only drawback here is you can't taste the yummy looking dishes, but this minor hitch aside, this is a big hit with gastronomes in the virtual world.

Fish World

Do you love aquariums but do not want to get your hands dirty and clean fish tanks? Fish World on Facebook, gives you the chance to keep exotic and colourful fishes in aquariums you have to maintain. You can 'live' in an environment that will make even Nemo see green!

Farm Pals

Farm Pals is a more basic game than FarmVille. But what makes it fun is the fact that you can steal produce from your friends' farm. No arguments about who owns the apples with angry neighbours in this!

These games are the most popular on Facebook, as evidenced by the number of addicts that run into thousands of thousands for each. So which game will you be playing the next time you are on Facebook? Tell us!

SIX RULES FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING

In recent days, I've spent time with a number of veterans of the social networking business. One of the surprising things I have learned is how much experience these people now have, and how much they agree with each other about some of the basics of the business.

Just a few years ago, when companies like Friendster were emerging and outfits like Twitter still did not exist, social networking was a little-understood phenomenon. Experience has taught us a lot, however, and practices are starting to standardize. That is not to say that something new will not pop up, or that no new business will be created; this is still capitalism, with plenty of room to surprise. Whatever does happen next, however, the emerging rules will likely play a role, either in system construction or creative destruction.

In Pictures: 20 Social Media Blunders

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Here are six points everyone seems to agree on, presented for easy memorization and with apologies to Johnnie "If it does not fit, you must acquit" Cochran.

1. When you have scale, it's good to fail.

Google knows this: When you have millions of users, you can, and should, experiment with some small percentage of them all the time. The field is so new that there are no set rules, and failure is tolerable for the sake of a decent feedback loop. "Things change so fast, you are best off just doing things by trial and error," says Gina Bianchini, founder and chief executive of Ning, a service that provides a template of design tools for people to build their own social networks. About 5,000 networks are created every day on Ning, and 80% of them are short-lived or fail. That still gives Ning 250,000 networks on which it can place ads, watch behavior or charge for premium services.

2. Seek the unique.

There are too many social networks, too many styles of discovery, commenting, sharing and all the other aspects of participation. People are fatigued by choice. All is made worthwhile by finding a group that is as passionate about some specific area of your life as you are. That may be work, a la LinkedIn, but don't expect most people to socialize there. That may be family, like with Facebook, but you tend not to see such a broad range of behaviors. The third aspect of most lives--hobbies and interests--is where you encounter the greatest variety. If there is room to grow a new social network, it will have to center on a passion, something people feel is particularly true of their own personalities.

Here are six points everyone seems to agree on, presented for easy memorization and with apologies to Johnnie "If it does not fit, you must acquit" Cochran.

3. The default position is rampant suspicion.

Trust is possibly the most valuable currency on a social network. At its best, people are giving up important parts of their identity. Doing so successfully, so that fans, friends, and like-minded strangers respect them, binds users closely to the network. That loyalty is perpetually at risk, however, and network designers say users' worries are manifest when they don't understand something about the social network.

"In the absence of information, there is an assumption of conspiracy," says Jay Adelson, one of the founders of Digg, a social news site. That may be simply because social networks are so new, or that the medium of computer networks lends itself to fears of anonymous control. The solution, from a provider's viewpoint, is to be as clear as possible about why you are doing something, even when it seems obvious to you.

4. Trust is at stake, so make things opaque.

Paradoxically, being open also involves refusing to disclose certain things, particularly things about how ranking and filtering systems work. "All algorithms get hacked by somebody," says Kevin Laws, a former executive with Epinions, a social rating site that was purchased by Shopping.com. "You have to remove the transparency around how your algorithms actually work." The audience can only trust the system if they know that the system cannot be gamed, and that means they can't know everything.

5. Esteem is how you gather value.

French playwright Moliere compared writing to prostitution: You start off doing it for love, then for a few friends and finally for money. The history of the social Web is basically the opposite. Sites like Epinions and Digg began by paying people money to comment on things, and found nothing but problems--some people gamed the system, while others did not trust the results. As in open source software, a lot of the positive motivation to participate comes from the recognition you receive from other participants for doing a good job. Money just confuses things.

6. Secret names were made for flames. To raise the bar, say who you are.

When Digg started, Adelson recalls, "anonymity was key; there was a sense people needed privacy. Now people are used to living in public." Part of that may be an effect of Facebook, a wildly successful site with very little anonymity. One-third of Digg's new users come from the Facebook Connect service, and these folks are used to being seen by others. They tend to behave more responsibly as a result, and may get better value in terms of how much others trust them. Down the road, they are also likely to be targeted with more personal ads--whether that is an intrusion or a value-add is a rule that has yet to be worked out.