Computers

THE NOTEBOOK

2011-10-27T01:22:00.000-07:00

We call laptop as notebook but no it is not the notebook. Notebook is shown here. Have a look.

U all can get this notebook from the given link:
http://www.indiaplaza.com/notebook-stationery-stat04102011hbc01-10.htm

It costs only Rs. 249. So cheap it is.

TWITTER UNVEILS REVAMPED, USER-FRIENDLY WEBSITE

2010-09-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

Boston: Micro-blogging site Twitter has unveiled a revamped website that will make it easier for users to check images and videos, besides helping the company to attract more advertisers.

The "re-engineered" Twitter.com, aimed at providing an "easier, faster and richer experience" is expected to roll out around the world in the next few days.

The website is now split into two panes. One is devoted to messages or "tweets" posted on Twitter each day, and the other will feature photos, videos, replies and other information related to a Tweet's author or subject.

"This is really a complete revamp...It is going to increase the value that people are getting out of Twitter, so in less time you can get more information and value," Twitter's co-founder and chief executive Evan Williams said.

Users will now be able to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, unlike previously when such multi-media was displayed on other websites or browser tabs.

The company has reached agreements to display content from more than a dozen online photo and video sites, including Google-owned YouTube, Yahoo's Flickr, GoJustin.TV, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, Ustream, Vimeo, and yfrog.

The redesigned site also makes it simpler to see information about authors of Twitter posts and conversations among Twitter users.

"This is really a complete revamp," Williams said, adding, "Once you start using it, what you are going to see is that everything is very responsive... The entire front end is re-engineered to be more agile, more responsive."

The new features are aimed at attracting more advertisers to Twitter.com that faces stiff competition from social networking site Facebook.

The four-year-old San Francisco company is developing a platform for advertisers who want to promote products and services. Twitter has more than 160 million customers, while Facebook has over 500 million users.

While it's easy for Facebook users to upload photos and compose messages to be shared with friends, most Twitter customers don't post many messages or share links, Williams said. They mainly read what others post about events, disasters and their own lives.

The changes would roll out as a preview over the next several weeks. During the preview, users would be able to switch back and forth between the old and new format giving them time to grow accustomed to the new look.

"Eventually, everyone will have the updated version of Twitter.com," Williams said.

Twitter.com, which had about 24 million unique visitors last month, has been a simple website with few features. More than 90 million messages or tweets are posted daily on Twitter.

Increasingly, government agencies, news organisations and celebrities around the world are using Twitter to share information or links with followers on the site.

The company had said majority of its users are outside the US in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

WE HAVE GOT NEW INTERNET EXPLORER 9 BETA

2010-09-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

Get it now from this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/home?os=winvista&arch=a&browser=other

MAKE YOUR PC RUN AS FAST AS NEW

2010-07-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

There could be several hardware-related reasons for a slow computer. For example, the processor, the brain of your computer, may be too slow to run today’s demanding software. It may drag along if you have several programs running simultaneously. Then, there is RAM - the temporary memory the computer uses to do its calculations. If you do not have enough RAM, your programs will run slowly.

For better speed, you can upgrade the processor or RAM. A tune-up may also do the job. All you need to do is tweaking some settings to breathe new life into your PC.

STEP 1

For those who believe their computer lags at start up, a quick look at the MSConfig would be the place to start. MSConfig can be accessed by hitting the Windows button on keyboard along with R key. This will bring up the ‘Run’ dialog. Type "MSConfig" and you will get the "Start Up" tab with a list of programs and executables that are launched when the computer starts up.

Starting up of too many programs when the computer boots could be a reason why the boot time is so long. The remedy would be to go through the entire list and uncheck the unnecessary items. If there are entries you are not sure about, check them on the internet, as unchecking the wrong entries could potentially mess up the functionality of some of your programs.

STEP 2

Defragment the hard drive once a month. It’s like changing your car’s oil — it should be the one thing on your list even if you don’t do anything else. Windows stores information about your programs in the Registry. This can get cluttered and affect performance. The solution is to download free registry cleaners from the internet (eg CCleaner) to remove redundant program entries.

STEP 3

Indexing Services is a nifty little program that uses a large amount of RAM. This processes indexes and updates lists of files on your computer. This is done so that when you search for something, it can search faster by scanning the index lists.

So, if you don’t search your computer often, turn it off would better performance. Simply go to ‘Start’ button on taskbar, click on ‘Control Panel’ and select ‘Add/Remove Programs’. Find the tab ‘Add/Remove Window Components’ and uncheck ‘Indexing Services’. Click Next.

Also, if there is a delay every time you open ‘My Computer’ to browse folders, try this. Open ‘My Computer,’ click on ‘Tools’, select ‘Folder Options,’ click on the ‘View’ tab to uncheck the ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers’ box. Click ‘Apply’ and then reboot your computer for changes to apply.

STEP 4

Hard drive performance plummets as you near the drive’s maximum capacity. Assuming you don’t have an additional drive to move the content to, your choices are slim. But before you take a machete to your files, you may want to compress them.

Use the built-in compression tool in Windows, which makes accessing the files no different from it currently is. Go to ‘Disk Cleanup’ and make sure ‘Compress Old Files’ is checked. Click ‘Options’ and specify the age of the files you want Windows to compress — Windows will compress only the files you haven’t accessed in more than six months (or as specified).

STEP 5

An important feature of Windows is its ability to return system files to the state they were in earlier. Before tweaking, users can create a new "Restore Point." Go to Control Panel>Performance and Maintenance>System Restore or Start-All Programs > Accessories > System Tools>System Restore and select "Create a restore point."

If it is left alone, this can consume a good portion of your disk space with unnecessary restore points. By default, it uses up to 12 per cent of each of your drives and, even if you have a big hard drive, many extra restore points can slow down processes like virus checking, disk-defragmenting, etc. Typically, how much space you should allot to system restore depends on your system (200 MB - the minimum allowed - will hold 5 or 6 restore points) and should suffice for average users.

STEP 6

Also, the Windows XP (and Windows Vista) computers have features like smooth animated menus and transparent windows.

These use processor resources, too, which means they can cause slowdown. Right-click the ‘My Computer’ icon and click ‘Properties’. Click the ‘Advanced’ tab and under ‘Performance’, click ‘Settings.’ Choose to switch off some of these effects and see the improvement in your PC’s performance.

STEP 7

Accumulated dust in computer cases a reason for over-heated PCs. Dust gets into the ball bearings in the fan and cause the fan to stop working. This may lead to overheating of processor and permanent hardware failure. It is less common, but static charges from dust can also be a threat. A layer of dust on a memory chip can cause static electricity to build up. This can amount to electric charge, which discharges on to your motherboard or memory chip. The best way to stop dust from building up is to open the case on your PC and vacuum it.

(We recommend never tweak without knowing how to return where you began)

GET MORE OUT OF YOUR FREE GOOGLE ACCOUNT

2010-07-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

So you have a Google account? While the search engine and the free Gmail account by now are common, the Internet giant also offers picture sharing through Picasa, blogging through Blogger, videos through YouTube and social networking through Orkut. But that is not what I want to focus on today.

The company has been either acquiring or building Web-based software so fast that many nice little features that you can use get overlooked. I illustrate a few here.

In search, a small link on the side of the Google search box talks of “advanced search” that needs to be leveraged better. Rather than a random search, this can help you define the exact terms or phrases that you are looking for, and more important, you can even specify domains, file format or language. For instance, if it is news you are looking for, you can just list news sites like CNN or hindustantimes.com and hope to get a refined reply.

While Google offers its Microsoft Office-like productivity software for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets at its documents site (http://docs.google.com) the site also offers you software under which you can create survey forms and even do a drawing. These can be additional to the usual applications.

My real favourite is the Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com). Though you can now set you calendar and diary items on your commonplace mobile phones, where Google Calendar scores is that it is integrated with telecom service providers.

Typing a calendar entry is much easier on a desktop. You can fill in your appointments, and choose your own options in getting reminders by email and/or on your mobile phone.

I have used it so that I get the full address of my appointment venue (which I simply cut and paste from email to calendar) messaged to me on my mobile phone on the morning of a meeting.

Such little features can dramatically enhance the comfort of a Web-based lifestyle.

NEW FACEBOOK FAD: QUITTING IT

2010-05-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

New Delhi, May 14 -- The tech world is buzzing with the new facebook fad. No, it does not involve hanging out on facebook or a new application which has caught everyone's fancy; instead many users are deleting their facebook account citing privacy concern.

Several high profile technology pundits and celebs are kicking the world's number one social networking site to the curb. Meanwhile, Facebook is making it difficult for users to delete their accounts.

Most users feel uncomfortable that their personal information is being sashayed on the internet and complain that adjusting their privacy setting is far too complex. Recently a glitch in the chat functionality gave access to people to view the user's conversations.

Interestingly, a back up plan may already be in place for ex-Facebookers- 'Diaspora'. A group of programmers have already raised $100,000 for their Diaspora project which they call "an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data."

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FIVE HIDDEN DANGERS OF FACEBOOKING

2010-05-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

An expert in online privacy has drawn attention to the five dangers of sharing information on social networking site Facebook.

Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online, claims marketing efforts by the company often results in a compromise on account holders' privacy, reports CBS News.

Goodchild noted five risks of using Facebook on 'The Early Show on Saturday Morning.' They are:

1.Your information is being shared with third parties

2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign

3. Facebook ads may contain malware

4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable

5. Scammers are creating fake profiles

Earlier this week, 15 privacy and consumer protection organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the site manipulates privacy settings to make users' personal information available for commercial use.

SHAKESPEARE'S "ROMEO AND JULIET" IN TWITTER TWIST

2010-04-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

LONDON – One of Shakespeare's most famous plays gets a 21st century makeover in a new version of "Romeo and Juliet" which will unfold through Twitter messages and on the Youtube video website.

Entitled "Such Tweet Sorrow," the experiment is a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Mudlark, which produces entertainment on mobile telephones.

The production will take place over five weeks and allows for the characters to interact not only among themselves but also with members of the "audience."
Each character writes their own tweets, guided by an existing storyline and diary which outlines where they are at any moment in the adventure.

And so two families named after the original adversaries the Montagues and Capulets have loathed each other for years after a fatal car crash in an unnamed English market town in 2000.

Juliet, played by actress Charlotte Wakefield, is just turning 16 and wonders whether she should have a birthday party to celebrate. She posts a video on Youtube showing viewers a typical teenager's bedroom.
Her Twitter name is @julietcap16 while Romeo's entry into the messaging world comes later as "he is too busy on his Xbox."

"We have no real idea of what the next five weeks will bring, but we are holding onto our seatbelts," said Charles Hunter from Mudlark.

Michael Boyd, artistic director of the RSC, added: "Our ambition is always to connect people with Shakespeare and bring actors and audiences closer together.

"Mobile phones don't need to be the antichrist for theater. This digital experiment ... allows our actors to use mobiles to tell their stories in real time and reach people wherever they are in a global theater."

OPERA BROWSER GETS ACCEPTED FOR APPLE iPHONE

2010-04-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

HELSINKI – Apple Inc has accepted distribution of Opera Software's Internet browser for its iPhone after a long review, opening a new and potentially lucrative market so far closely guarded by Apple.

There are numerous versions of Apple's own browser on App Store, but Norway-based Opera is the first rival to get access to iPhone.

Opera applied on March 23 for its mobile browser to be distributed on iPhone, and it was available for downloading to consumers early Tuesday, three weeks later. Usually the review process takes up to one week, developers say.

Analysts have said the decision was difficult for Apple -- whose application store is the only way to distribute software for iPhone users -- as its Internet browsing function is key behind the success of the iPhone.
Opera's browser promises up to six times faster download speeds than Apple's own browser and to cut data traffic by up to 90 percent.

Massive data traffic from iPhone mobile phones has caused problems for many operators' networks.

APPLE iPHONE TO SOON GET LONG-SOUGHT MULTITASKING

2010-04-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad devices will soon be able to run more than one program at a time, an ability that phones from Apple's rivals already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.

The changes, coming this summer to iPhones and this fall to iPads, mean that users might be able to listen to music through the Pandora program and check a bank account online simultaneously. Currently, users must return to Apple's home screen, effectively quitting the open program, before starting a new task.

"We weren't the first to this party, but we're going to be the best," Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared Thursday, as bloggers, software developers and others in the audience greeted the news of such "multitasking" with applause.

The iPhone already permits some multitasking, but that's largely limited to Apple's own programs. Apple had not given users ways to seamlessly switch among all the software "apps" available from outside software companies, the way phones from rivals Palm Inc. and Google Inc. already do.

That will change with the updates known as iPhone OS 4. Apple generally makes such updates available for free, and often automatically, as a software download.

"It really changes the way you use the iPhone," Jobs said. "You're bouncing around the apps with tremendous fluidity."

Jobs said the company waited so long because it wanted to offer multitasking in a way that didn't drain the iPhone's battery or reduce the phone's performance.

In demonstrating the feature, Jobs double-tapped on the iPhone's main button while playing a game to reveal a row of icons for other programs that were quietly running in the background and accessible with a finger tap.

Multitasking could enhance the functionality of Internet phone services such as Skype. Currently, a call automatically ends if you exit the Skype app. With multitasking, that call could continue while you look up directions, or you could receive incoming Skype calls even if you're reading the news or a "Gossip Girl" blog instead.

Full multitasking had been high on many people's wish lists. Because Apple's new iPad runs the same software as the iPhone, changes would apply to that larger gadget as well. Some people have held off buying one because of its inability to run more than one program at once.

Other updates include the ability to have messages from multiple e-mail accounts land in a single inbox and a way to connect an iPhone with a regular keyboard using Bluetooth wireless technology.

But Apple still won't support Flash technology, even though many Web sites require it for displaying video. Flash was alongside multitasking at the top of many wish lists.

Although Apple is making the updates available to all iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad models, some features will only work with newer versions. The multitasking function, for example, won't work with the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G — only the 3GS versions that came out last summer. For the iPod Touch, you'd need the models that came out late last year.

Jobs also announced an advertising platform called iAd in which Apple will sell and host ads to run on apps made by outside developers; those developers will get 60 percent of the ad revenue. Jobs said users shouldn't find the ads annoying because Apple will make it easy for people to navigate back to what they were doing before clicking.

He admitted that Apple is still "babes in woods" when it comes to advertising, though the company is learning fast through Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company that Apple bought in January for an undisclosed amount. Jobs said the company had wanted to buy mobile advertising service AdMob, but lost out to Google. That deal is undergoing regulatory review.

Jobs also said the company has sold 450,000 iPads since its launch Saturday. The company earlier said it delivered more than 300,000 iPads on the first day, though that included pre-orders and units shipped to retail stores such as Best Buy but not necessarily purchased right away.

NEW NETFLIX DEALS MEAN MORE STREAMING MOVIES BUT LONGER WAIT FOR 'AVATAR', OTHER DVDs

2010-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Can't wait to rent "Avatar" on DVD or Blu-ray? Well, if you're a Blockbuster subscriber, the day you've been waiting for arrives in just a couple of weeks. If you're a Netflix user, though, don't expect to find "Avatar" in your mailbox until mid-May.

Mirroring a deal that Netflix signed with Warner Bros. earlier this year, the freshly inked agreements between Netflix and two other big Hollywood studios — Twentieth Century Fox and Universal — call for a 28-day delay between the time that new DVD and Blu-ray releases from the studios go on sale and when they become available for rent in your Netflix queue, PC World reports.

In the case of Fox, that means "Avatar," which has a retail release date of April 22, won't be available for rent through Netflix until May 20, according to PC World. Meanwhile, "It's Complicated" from Universal won't bow on Netflix until May 25, nearly a month after the movie's April 27 retail debut.

The 28-day delay gives the studios a little more time — or at least, they hope so — to rack up sales on their latest DVDs and Blu-rays and get more on-demand exposure (both via cable and iTunes) before Netflix renters get their hands on the discs. In return, Netflix will get more instant streaming titles from the two studios. From Fox, expect "Aliens," "The Thin Red Line," and Patton," plus full seasons of "Lie to Me," "24," "King of the Hill," and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; Universal, meanwhile will offer up such titles as "Gosford Park," "Billy Elliot," "The Pianist," and "Do the Right Thing," according to TechCrunch.

Meanwhile, Blockbuster will get a leg up on Netflix thanks to its new deal with Fox, which (as the L.A. Times reports) allows the retail chain to rent Fox's DVDs and Blu-rays — both in stores and by mail — on the same day they go on sale. (Blockbuster signed a similar deal with Warner last month. That effectively gives Blockbuster an advantage in terms of offering, say, "Avatar" for rent nearly a full month before Netflix does. (Oh, and in case you're wondering, no: The "Avatar" Blu-ray that's coming out this month won't be in 3-D.)

On the other hand, as the L.A. Times points out, financially strapped Blockbuster had to pay a heavy price for the privilege: Both Fox and Sony Pictures (with which Blockbuster also cut a deal) now have a first lien on Blockbuster's Canadian stores. Ouch.

I'd also expect the other shoe to drop soon with Redbox, which (like Netflix) recently signed a distribution deal with Warner Bros. that calls for — you guessed it — a 28-day window before it can start renting the studio's latest DVDs.

Redbox had initially opposed the idea of a DVD retail window and filed suit against Warner, Fox and Universal, all of whom had instructed their distributors to hold back their DVDs from the buck-a-night kiosk company until a month or so (depending on the studio) after their discs had arrived in stores. Redbox dropped its suit against Warner once it signed the new distribution deal, and I'm guessing we'll see the same thing happen with Fox and Universal in the near future.

HP LAUNCHES STORAGE WORKS LTO-5 ULTRIUM TAPE SOLUTIONS

2010-04-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: HP is expanding its Linear Tape Open (LTO) technology portfolio with the upgraded HP StorageWorks LTO-5 Ultrium tape drives, which deliver improved data transfer speeds and management capabilities. Available with the HP StorageWorks MSL tape libraries, these new archive solutions enable businesses to better manage information through enhanced data protection, disaster recovery as well as long-term data retention operations.

HP StorageWorks LTO-5 tape solutions improve backup performance and reduce data loss with built-in encryption. This prevents unlawful access in the event of theft or malicious use by encoding data to ensure it is unreadable to unauthorized users. With nearly double the capacity of LTO-4 tape drives and encryption support, HP LTO-5 drives can store more data at a lower cost while meeting data security requirements.

HP LTO-5 tape solutions offer easy-to-use management tools that automate maintenance tasks, providing clients with improved operational efficiency through the new HP TapeAssure software that proactively monitors the status, performance, utilization and health of drives as well as backup media. Simplified data backup and recovery with HP StorageWorks MSL tape libraries that automatically backup and consolidate drives through an easy-to-manage network.

Lowered operational costs as the tape drives' increased capacity reduces the amount of media, time and human intervention required for daily tape backup. HP StorageWorks Enterprise LTO-5 tape library will be available mid 2010.

MICROSOFT UNVEILS VISUAL STUDIO 2010,.NET FRAMEWORK 4

2010-04-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: Microsoft unveils its Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 today. "In the new versions of Visual Studio, .NET, and Silverlight we've packed hundreds of new features, new functionalities and benefits that improve the development lifecycle from design to deployment. This is the biggest tools release we have put up so far. When we have a phenomenal product everything else flows from that. Using the Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4 tools, developers have a way to where they want to be and they also have a powerful tool to easily create compelling user experiences both on and off the Web," says S Somasegar, Senior Vice President - Developer Division at Microsoft.

For the first time, Microsoft has taken a novel approach to launch its product globally. "In the past, we would first do the U.S. launch and then go to other locations. This time, we decided we will launch on April 12th in all locations. We will follow the Sun," notes Somasegar. The first launch is in China, second launch in Malaysia, third launch in India, fourth launch is in Malaysia, fifth launch in the U.S. These five locations have been chosen understanding the strategic importance of countries where there is huge developer population and is growing at a very healthy rate. Apart from these strategic launches, Microsoft has planned 150 other launches in other parts of the word starting tomorrow. "The goal is to physically touch a million developers or more through the launch event," he notes.

India is the second largest developer population in the world. Currently in India there are approximately 1.5 million developers and in the U.S. it is 3.2 million developers. In India, developer growth rate is in the range of 14 to 16 percent range and 3-4 percent in the U.S. Majority of these developers use Microsoft technologies (tools and platform). "The rate at which the developer community in India is growing should soon see it on the top. In the next 5-7 years, the number ofdevelopers in India will exceed that in the U.S.," says Somasegar, while speaking exclusively for SiliconIndia.

The Visual Studio launch is happening in the backdrop of Microsoft TechEd India, a three days conference that promises to enrich developers, IT professionals, architects and CXOs with knowledge and expertise by introducing them to the world of today's cutting-edge trends which make life easier for them at work. At this year's Microsoft TechEd there are 105 technical sessions, 21 technical tracks and several keynotes. "This is a larger than life event for developers and Microsoft. Developers, IT professionals, architects and CXOs can take a look at what is coming down the pipe in terms of new technologies, platform and exciting innovation. This is also an opportunity for us in Microsoft to interact with them. It is technology all around," says Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Developer Partner Evangelism, Microsoft India. While over 3000 are attending the sessions on-location in Bangalore, Uppaluri is expecting to touch 50,000 IT professionals through three hundred event hosting centers across India via live broadcast of the event. "This is indeed a Diwali for developers in India," he says.

"Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4 is powerful tool for any developer in today's world. Visual Studio 2010 is designed keeping in mind today's developer. Indian developers create software for everybody in the world. In a way our developers are core of innovation for the world. India is where the future is. Keeping this in mind we are launching this product that is relevant to them," says Uppaluri.

GOOGLE CEO SAYS APPLE HELPED AD MOB DEAL

2010-04-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - Apple's plunge into the advertising market announced this past week gave Google a big boost in arguing for regulators to approve its acquisition of mobile advertising leader AdMob, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Sunday.

U.S. antitrust enforcers are apparently concerned the AdMob purchase could hurt applications developers, who often sell their apps for very little and make their money by selling advertising space on them.

But Schmidt, speaking after a speech at the American Society of News Editors, said Apple's plan to make a foray into the advertising market with iAd, was "evidence of a highly competitive market."

"It just seems obvious to me," said Schmidt. "I hope it (Google's purchase of AdMob) gets approved."

Apple's new advertising platform for the iPhone and iPad -- dubbed iAd -- marks Apple's first move into a small but growing market.

With iAd, applications developers will pocket 60 percent of the revenue. Apple will sell and host the ads.

Apple's entry into the mobile ad arena had been widely expected. It paid $270 million for Quattro Wireless, an advertising network that spans both mobile websites and smartphone applications.

Google, the online search leader, announced a $750 million deal in November to buy AdMob, which controls about one-third of the market for putting ads on mobile applications and web pages.

FTC staff have been canvassing app developers to try to line up support to fight the deal, said one developer, who asked to remain unidentified because he had been interviewed by FTC attorneys.

"It's been really interesting talking to them because they are so dead set against this," said the developer. "They have been clearly positioning to try to stop this."

Google, which generated 97 percent of its $23.7 billion in 2009 revenue from advertising, has faced growing antitrust scrutiny.

The company walked away from a search deal with Yahoo in 2008 when the Justice Department said it would challenge the tie-up. And Schmidt was forced to step down from Apple's board last year after his dual roles came under FTC review.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been sharply critical of Google's settlement with book publishers and authors' groups that would allow the search giant to create an online digital library.

HP PAVILION DV6-1240US LAPTOP

2010-04-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

View the video here of HP PAVILION DV6-1240US LAPTOP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrLBoO8Qn3Q&feature=player_embedded

ANTI VIRUS SHIELD GUARD LAUNCHED FOR iPAD

2010-04-12T02:39:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: Intego, company which provide security solution for Mac, has come up with first antivirus scanner capable of inspecting Apple's iPad. But security experts around the world doubt the need of an antivirus for iPad.

The operating system used on iPad is same as on iPhone and so far only few security issues has been reported on jailbroken iPhones and even then only by a handful of high-profile worms, such as the Rickrolling worm in Australia and the D'oh bank credential stealing worm in the Netherlands, which both spread last November, according to The Register.

Whether either of these worms might be capable of infecting an iPad is unclear. Intego acknowledges there is no iPad malware to defend against as yet but argues it will be ready if and when the threat materialises. "We're not saying there is malware in the wild," Peter James, an Intego spokesman explained. "But there are exploits that can take advantage of vulnerabilities."

James explained that the malware risk on the iPad, such as it is, mainly applies to devices that have been jailbroken to run apps not approved by Apple. Users of these devices can download cracked software that might pose a malware risk, or they could be exposed to future potential iPad-specific drive-by-download attacks while surfing online.

"Jailbreaking takes advantages of vulnerabilities," James told The Register. "Those users who don't jailbreak their devices have fewer security risks because they are protected by sandboxing. Jailbroken devices are not protected in same way.

"If and when iPad malware arrives we have the engine ready". But there are certain problems that the company has to solve as well. "The software doesn't run on an iPad or iPhone itself. We're looking forward to multi-tasking that will make this possible and in the mean time offering the best we can," James said. "We can't detect things live but its the best compromise we can offer for now."

APPLE UNVEILS iAD PLATFORM;iPAD SALES LOOK STRONG

2010-04-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off a new smartphone operating system on Thursday that features an advertising platform to compete with Google's, and revealed stronger-than-expected sales of 450,000 units for the iPad.

The iPhone 4.0 software will be available on Apple's hugely popular smartphone this summer, complete with a number of upgrades, including a long-awaited multi-tasking capability that allows the use of several applications at once.

A version of the iPhone's operating system is also used on the iPad, and the latest generation of software will come to Apple's new tablet computer this fall.

The new advertising platform for the iPhone and iPad -- dubbed iAd -- marks Apple's first foray into a small but growing market, and is sure to please the thousands of application developers who make their living off those devices, providing them with a new revenue stream.

The iPad's early sales impressed analysts, many of whom expect 1 million units to be sold in the quarter ending June, and roughly 5 million in 2010, though estimates vary widely.

"We're making them as fast as we can. Our ramp is going well, but evidently we can't quite make enough of them yet so we're going to have to try harder," Jobs said, noting iPad sellouts at Best Buy stores.

The electronics giant has staked its reputation on the 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet, essentially a cross between a smartphone and a laptop. It is helping foster a market for tablet computers that is expected to grow to as many as 50 million units by 2014, according to analysts.

"I think it's pretty impressive, five days almost half a million units, and it shows there's still pretty good momentum behind the first day," said Gartner analyst Van Baker.

Despite critics who question whether a true need exists for such a gadget, analysts expect Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others to trot out their own competing devices this year.

Since the iPad went on sale on April 3, users have downloaded 600,000 digital books and 3.5 million applications for the device, Jobs said. There are already 3,500 apps available for the iPad.

"It was above my expectations, frankly," said Joe Clark, managing partner of Financial Enhancement Group, referring to iPad sales. "The day the original Apps Store launched it was a game change for the iPhone and it will do the same eventually for the iPad."

At a media event at the company's Cupertino, California, headquarters, Jobs said Apple had so far sold more than 50 million iPhones, the smartphone that competes with Research in Motion's Blackberry and Motorola's Droid.

That implies that the company sold 7 million or more devices in the March quarter, which would be above many analysts' forecasts.

MICROSOFT TO BRING SILVER LIGHT PLATFORM TO SET-TOP BOXES

2010-04-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

Washington: Software giant Microsoft announced that it will launch new products and initiatives at the 2010 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show next week in Las Vegas.

The company said it is working with System-on-Chip (SOC) partners Intel and Broadcom to deliver support for reference designs that will provide complete Silverlight platform to set-top boxes, connected TVs, Blu-ray Disc players and other devices.

Microsoft also unveiled details about Internet Information Services (IIS) Media Services 4 and announced the upcoming release of Silverlight Media Framework 2.0. The latest version allows providers and broadcasters to encode content once and deliver it to Silverlight- and non-Silverlight-enabled devices. Version 4 also supports smooth multicast streaming, along with third-party encoding products and Microsoft Expression Encoder.

Silverlight Media Framework 2.0 is claimed to allow users to distribute media content with almost no coding. The framework is essentially an open-source version of the player used by NBC, NRK and CTV for the recent Olympics coverage.

"Our vision is to bring Silverlight to every screen, and as we continue to expand the capabilities and resources for Silverlight and IIS Media Services," said Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft.

iProf LAUNCHES INDIA'S FIRST EDUCATION TABLET

2010-04-10T06:32:00.000-07:00

Delhi: iProf Learning Solutions India has launched iProf, India's first personal education tablet, and iStudy Zones, the first chain of e-learning centres in India that will spread to 30 cities in April 2010. A 7 inch touch screen tablet, it comes bundled with content from premier education institutes and has been launched at a price of Rs. 14,900.

Initially, iProf is set to cater to the test-preparation education segment, the market of which is estimated at about Rs. 10,000 crores. iProf is starting with IIT-JEE preparation and has tied-up with Brilliant Tutorials. iProf would foray into MBA test preparation by end of May 2010, followed by PMT, CPT, CA among others.

On bringing the novel concept to India, Sanjay Purohit, Founder and CEO, iProf Learning Solutions India said, "Through innovative technology and platform, we aim to revolutionize the education delivery mechanism. iProf will provide a safe, secure and affordable way to access high quality education content from India's best faculty. We address three major problems that plague e-learning from spreading far and wide -low computer penetration, piracy and broadband connectivity. Also, there is an acute shortage of good quality professors, especially in tier II and tier Iii cities. We have created an infrastructural solution enabling access to high quality education which solves all the issues."

E-learning is highly effective, as proven by extensive research. It not only increases retention but also gives complete flexibility to the student of reading e-books, revising video lectures, animations, taking tests and setting their schedules on their own pace IProf is positioned as a self-study tool, that would mitigate pressure on students, enabling them to perform much better.

iStudy Zones are enablers of the e-learning delivery mechanism, for its students. High performance servers are being deployed in iStudy zones with high speed broadband and Wi-Fi capabilities, so that content can be downloaded on iProf in a secure environment. Besides, the iStudy Zones can hold video conference for doubt clearing sessions between faculty and students, to make sure that the learning circle is complete.

The company expects to mobilise investments of over Rs. 100 crores via iProf eco-system in the next 18 months.

iProf has built in high quality operating system Android (from Google) and a Learning Management System installed on it, that provides students with a highly interactive form of education for preparation (practise and revision) for competitive exams in a walled environment.

YOU TUBE'S NEW LOOK DRAWS MOSTLY CHEERS

2010-04-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

YouTube's streamlined new design has ruffled a few feathers, particularly among users who prefer the old five-star rating system to the new thumbs-up or thumbs-down options. Still, early impressions seem generally favorable. Playbacks are up, and more people are engaging by supplying comments and ratings.

After months of planning and testing, the Internet's No. 1 video-sharing site, YouTube, launched a new look and received mixed reviews.

The redesign eliminates one of the chief irritants to tubesters: clutter.

"We heard from users that there are a lot of unnecessary features and clutter that could be cleaned up," YouTube spokesperson Chris Dale told TechNewsWorld.

"Video is the center of our universe, and it's the center of the user's universe, and that is much clearer in this redesign than it has been in the past," he maintained. "We're bringing everything back to centering on the video experience and how the users are engaging in that video."

To avert clutter, the redesign groups all the information about a video in one place, and its detail can be obtained in a consistent way.

The action bar on a video's page has also been cleaned up, and the presentation of controls for sharing, flagging and embedding videos streamlined.
Smarter Discovery

In addition to curbing clutter, the redesign seeks to improve a videophile's ability to find clips of interest. The service's suggestions on what to watch next is "smarter" and based on how a video currently being watched was discovered in the first place.

"I think the redesign is an improvement," Coree Silvera, a YouTube user and founder of Market Like a Chick, told TechNewsWorld.

"I especially like the hover features," she continued. "It's such a pain when you want to look at a video, and you're not sure if it's exactly the right one, and you switch to the page, and it's not the right one, and you have to go back to your search results and do it all over again."

"Now you can hover over it, and it shows you everything right there -- you can see if it's popular or not before you look at it," she added.

Hidden Channels

The way YouTube handles "channels" -- groups of videos uploaded by a user -- has also been tweaked. Both the channel name and subscribe button are on top of the video. What's more, there's a button showing how many videos are in the channel. Clicking that button displays a bar of thumbnails for the videos in the channel that can be scrolled through horizontally.

"You can continue to watch your video while scrolling through all the videos in your channel," YouTube's Dale explained. "That heavily favors partners of ours or users who have channels and uploaded lots of videos to them."

Not all YouTube partners agree with Dale's assessment of the channel redesign, however.

"My goal is to get people to watch more of my videos," Jeff Martin, associate director of search marketing Learn how SugarCRM will improve your business. Free Trial. Click here. for TouchStorm, told TechNewsWorld. "By putting my videos at the top and closing it by default, the user has to take action just to be exposed to any of my content. Essentially, my content is hidden."

Another redesign issue that's stirred up some controversy among users is the new ratings system adopted by the service.

Trading Stars for Thumbs

Rather than using a star system, similar to the one favored by Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), YouTube has gone to a simple thumbs-up-thumbs-down scheme, similar to Facebook's.

Much of the hoopla over the ratings change has more to do with an emotional attachment to the old system than its actual value in rating videos, YouTube's Dale argued.

"When we did research, the vast majority of ratings [were] five stars or more," he noted.

"So even though people thought that was a really good indicator of the value of a video, it actually wasn't," Dale continued.

The new rating system is more flexible than the old star system, he asserted. When a user clicks on the "like" button, a drop down menu will appear showing the percentage of people who liked the video compared to those who didn't like it.

"That's a really good indicator of a video's popularity," maintained Dale, "and, frankly, a much better indicator than what five stars was."

Advertising Flap Red Herring

How video eyeballers comment on YouTube content is also being changed in the redesign. Comments are rated with the "thumb" system and the highest-rated comments are prominently displayed on the page. In addition, comments by the creator of a video are given priority over other commenters.

"Comments were a big user pain point," Dale disclosed. With the new system, more useful comments migrate to the top of the stack. "A video might have 100 people writing 'LOL,'" he observed. "That's great, but it doesn't necessarily tell you much."

How the new redesign integrates advertising into the site has also caused a stir among users and pundits, though Dale discounted much of that criticism.

"I think that's a red herring. At the end of the day, the redesign is based on user experience and user feedback," he declared.

"Without the user, without the community, YouTube has no legs to stand on," he continued. "If we alienate the user, if we do things too much in favor of one constituency or another, the users will leave and the advertisers will leave and the content providers will leave, and the whole site won't do well."

Doing well appears to be what the redesign is doing for the site. Early returns show overall playbacks up by 6 percent and "engagement" -- comments, ratings, etc. -- up 7 percent.

MAJORITY OF PC FOR TEENS TO BE TOUCHSCREEN BY 2015

2010-04-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

Delhi: The immediate productivity gains promised by the flood of touch-enabled devices coming to market in 2010 will be slow to materialize in the enterprise, according to Gartner.

"What we're going to see is the younger generation beginning to use touchscreen computers ahead of enterprises," said Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner. "By 2015, we expect more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens, up from fewer than 2 percent in 2009. On the other hand, we are predicting that fewer than 10 percent of PCs sold to enterprises in 2015 for mainstream knowledge workers will have touchscreens."

Ms. Fiering said that although touch and pen input are not new to the PC industry - both have been available, largely as niche products for vertical industry applications, for over 20 years - there is renewed interest in touch input today. Multitouch on smartphones and the Apple iPhone phenomenon have shown users how useful touch can be with the right implementation, and Apple's introduction of the larger iPad has set off a wave of speculation about changing the industry.

The earliest adopters of touch-enabled devices will be consumers who rarely deal with legacy issues. They will be looking for entertainment and casual gaming applications. Gartner predicts that iPhone and touch-enabled smartphone users will want to extend the multitouch experience to their PC computing. iPad and the overwhelming majority of slate, tablet and touch-enabled convertible devices planned for 2010 will have a consumer focus.

Touch-enabled devices will have slow adoption in the enterprise, due to heavy requirements for typing and text input, Gartner analysts said. The "muscle memory" of mouse users and the potential problems of moving a user's hands from the keyboard to the mouse will create particular adoption barriers for knowledge workers. Instead, consumers and education will be the earliest adopters of touch-enabled PCs and notebooks.

One of the key target usages for the next wave of tablets will be media content consumption (movies, newspapers and e-books), and the real success driver for entertainment devices will be the content delivery ecosystem. If this category succeeds, it will create greater market awareness of and demand for touch in other PC applications.

As prices drop, education will become a major market for touch and pen-enabled devices. Younger children just entering school find direct manipulation on the screen a natural way to interact with their computers. Older students are already using pen input to annotate class material or capture formulae and graphics that can't be recorded with keyboards (for math, chemistry and physics classes, among others). However, most school districts do not want to support two separate devices - one for touch and another for pen. To deal with the differing requirements of the different grades, most districts are looking for dual-input screens that support both touch and pen in a single device.

"Consensus among the Gartner client U.S. school districts is that over half, and possibly as many as 75 percent, will be specifying touch and/or pen input within the next five years," said Ms. Fiering. "Consider this as the precursor to a major upcoming generational shift in how users relate to their computing devices."

Conversely, enterprises will be slow to adopt touch input for mainstream knowledge workers. The long tail of legacy enterprise applications that don't leverage touch, and the large contingent of mouse-trained employees, will make many enterprises doubt the business case for adding touch - and any additional costs - to PC hardware standards. However, employees are increasingly bringing their own PCs and technologies to work, whether sanctioned or not, and as with other consumer technologies, enterprises will eventually be forced to acknowledge the use of touch for their mainstream knowledge users.

LENOVO LAUNCHES C200 AND IDEA PAD S10

2010-04-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

North Carolina: Lenovo has unveiled two new consumer PCs, C200 with optional NVIDIA ION graphics, and the IdeaPad S10-3s. "Our new S-series netbook and C-series all-in-one PCs are stylish in design but offer a relaxing computing experience that all consumers can appreciate," said Dion Weisler, Vice President, Business Operations, Lenovo. "Whether you are looking for a family PC for your living room or one for your travels, Lenovo PCs are designed to make computing more fun and intuitive."

Lenovo C200 has an 18.5 inch HD 16:9 widescreen display, up to NVIDIA ION 256MB graphics processor for high definition video support and an optional single-touch touchscreen panel. This all-in-one computer, available with up to Intel Atom Dual Core processor D510, and complete with an integrated DVD reader/writer, is the ideal PC for any room in the home. For improved video chat communications, the C200 features integrated stereo speakers and the Lenovo High-Sense Webcam, which boasts a larger lens and finer color and shading sensitivity to create clearer images and greater contrast, especially in low-light environments.

"The Lenovo C200 with NVIDIA ION is an ideal way to meet the 'info-tainment' needs of today's digital family. Its snappy graphics and big screen are perfect for accessing the Internet, sharing family photos, playing casual games together or enjoying the latest online videos in high definition," said David Ragones, Director of ION and GeForce product marketing, NVIDIA. The C200 is equipped with the Lenovo Rescue System - a quick and easy solution to back up and restore important data files.

The IdeaPad S10-3s has Intel Atom N470 or N450 processor and is available in black, white or a "spring flowers" cover pattern. The S10-3s offers a familiar typing experience similar to a full size laptop with its 98 percent full-size chiclet keyboard, with individually-spaced and rounded keys that make typing comfortable and easy. The S10-3s comes with Dolby Headphone audio, while DirectShare allows users to instantly sync their files wirelessly with any other type and brand of computer, without even connecting to the web.

The S10-3s also features Active Protection System (APS) - a feature previously found only on Lenovo's premium ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops, but now fitted as standard across the S10-3 netbook range. And with VeriFace face recognition technology and OneKey Rescue System data recovery and anti-virus tools, the S10-3s is packed with features that make computing more fun and convenient. Users can choose from a suite of wireless options like 802.11b/g/n, WWAN, 3G and Bluetooth.

The Lenovo C200 is available at around Rs. 18,350 ($399), while the IdeaPad S10-3s is available at around Rs. 17,450 ($379).

HOW TO BACKUP CONTENT ON A GMAIL ACCOUNT

2010-04-10T02:56:00.000-07:00

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HOW TO BACKUP YOUR GMAIL

2010-04-10T02:53:00.000-07:00

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Toshiba TubeTop - World's First Inflatable Laptop

2010-04-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

View the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Btn3zKB2I&feature=player_embedded

BROADCOM SAYS PHONE COMPANIES WILL OFFER FREE TABLET COMPUTERS

2010-04-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

Broadcom Corp., the biggest supplier of chips for television set-top boxes, said phone companies around the world will soon offer free or subsidized tablet-style computers to retain customers.

Broadcom's Persona Tablet design and chips are the basis for the Hikari iFrame, a tablet distributed by Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Broadcom Vice President Martyn Humphries said in an interview. NTT's counterparts in Europe will follow later this year and in the U.S. next year, he said.

Apple Inc.'s iPad, which researchers say contains some Broadcom chips, has fired up interest in tablet computers among consumers. Phone and Internet service providers may try to tap into that demand with free or cheap tablets that improve access to entertainment and communications offerings as a way of stopping their customers from looking elsewhere.

'Apple's created the big buzz today, but some of the carrier developments have also been going on in parallel,' Humphries said. 'The biggest value to the carrier is he starts to maintain more customer loyalty.'

Wireless carriers typically offer free or subsidized mobile phones to customers who sign contracts to pay monthly service fees over a long-term period, often two years.

Humphries, speaking at a product demonstration in San Francisco, declined to name potential U.S. and European phone companies that might offer free tablets with Broadcom chips, citing confidentiality agreements.

Controlling TVs

The tablets will be able to play music and video and send content wirelessly to other devices in the home, controlling and feeding multiple televisions. Service providers will be able to boost revenue by offering advertising, home automation and home- security services through such devices, Humphries said.

Broadcom fell 23 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $34.40 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have gained 9.3 percent this year.

Apple uses Broadcom chips in the iPhone and new iPad tablet, according to researcher ISuppli Corp. and technology analysis firm Chipworks Inc. Irvine, California-based Broadcom, whose revenue fell 3.6 percent to $4.49 billion last year, has been trying to broaden the market for its products by promoting devices to carriers that use either Google's Android operating system or Linux variants.

Broadcom is one of several chip companies hoping to capitalize on tablet computers. Market analyst IMS Research predicts that, by 2012, more than half of all tablets sold each year will be distributed by mobile and fixed-line broadband providers.

INDIA SAW 71 MILLION NET USERS IN 2009

2010-04-09T02:38:00.000-07:00

The increasing broadband penetration in the country has led to an exponential rise in the number of Internet users, said a combined study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and marketing research firm IMRB. The joint report titled Internet in India said the number of people who 'claimed' to have used the Internet in 2009 stood at 71 million, the study added.

According to the study, 'claimed users' (those who said they had used the Internet in some form, such as for checking results online during the year) is an important category for understanding the future trends in active user base. However, the number of active Internet users rose to 52 million in September 2009 from 42 million in September 2008, registering a year on year- on- year growth of 23.8 per cent.

Active users are those who access the Internet at least once in a month. This surge in number has been primarily due to the increased number of users in the remote urban pockets (small metros and towns) and among lower socio-economic classes, it said. Internet usage has also gone up from 9.3 hours per week to 15.7 hours per week, a steep 68.8 per cent rise, the report said.

This can be attributed to innovative content delivery, better applications and its increased use for the purposes of entertainment, comprising downloading music or videos, socialising through social networking sites and expressing one's own opinions and views through micro-blogging and user-generated content sites, it added.

"We are happy to note that while people in the smaller towns are taking to Internet seriously, for a deeper engagement we need to provide them the best innovations in the language of their choice, at an access cost that does not pinch and through a device that they have. Only then this engagement is going to be sustainable," IAMAI noted.

NEW SOFTWARE TO DEMYSTIFY PLANNING PROCESS

2010-04-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: A new software has been developed to "demystify and strengthen" the planning process at the panchayat level.

The Panchayati Raj ministry Tuesday said the software has been developed in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

In a statement here, the ministry said the software known as 'Plan Plus' is generic and open to customisation by states, line department and local governance agencies.

"It is a decentralised planning tool, which aids the various participants through the planning process, so that informed decisions can be taken by the participants in preparing, vetting and approving the plan," it said.

The software will be employed to make the planning processes interactive from "need assessment, identification of project, work, preparation of draft annual plans, approval by technical appraisal committee and final approval by district planning committee".

According to the ministry, the software will also provide "a holistic view of how funds from different central and state-sponsored schemes could be converged to carry out works approved in a plan."

"The software is a web-based software and captures the entire planning work flow...it is highly generic and can be extended to capture the plans prepared by line departments at the state and central level to generate the national plan," the statement said.

"The software brings about total transparency in the plan approval process and provides role-based authentication and authorisation," the statement said.

However, school and college students are the largest group of web users, young males too have a sizable chunk. Whereas women have a tiny presence. Cyber cafes are the favorite place to log in from, with free office internet coming a close second. While a quarter of all users log in from home, about two million Indians surf the web on their phones.

Checking e-mail is India's favourite web activity. Downloading and social networking comes a close second. Finally, just 16 percent of users get the news updates from the web.

"Factors like an increased popularity of smart phones and the imminent arrival of 3G networks means more people will access the web on their mobiles. By next year we expect the figures to double, "said Ray.

37 PERCENT OF INTERNET USERS ARE FROM RURAL INDIA

2010-04-08T11:26:00.001-07:00

New Delhi: According to a survey conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), 20 million Indians use Internet everyday. The survey also shows that 36 percent of all web users are from small towns like Kolhapur, Thrissur and Panipat, reports Jaimon Joseph from CNN-IBN.

"We did the survey across 31 cities in the country, among 19,000 households, 68,000 individuals," said President, Internet and Mobile Association of India Dr. Subho Ray. "While we are happy to note that people in the smaller towns are taking to internet seriously, for a deeper engagement we need to provide them the best innovations in the language of their choice, at an access cost that does not pinch and through a device that they have. Only then this engagement is going to be sustainable." However, the figure is comparatively more than metros. In a nation of a billion plus population, just 71 million people claimed to have used internet in 2009.

WHY WE SHOULD NOT USE FACEBOOK

2010-04-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

London: Social networking site Facebook has been blamed for many social ills, the latest allegation being: it has led to a resurgence of the sexually transmitted disease syphilis.ow, Telegraph has come up with a list of problems the site has been linked to:

1. Facebook leads 'children to suicide'

Archbishop Vincent Nichols from the Catholic Church in England and Wales, claimed that Facebook reduced friendship to just a "commodity". Because of the "transient nature" of it, teenagers become more prone to suicide when their networks collapse.

2. Facebook 'killing off traditional sayings'

The site has been blamed for the slow death of British sayings such as "a little birdie told me" and "hold your horses". In a survey on communication trend researchers found phrases commonly used by parents and grandparents were disappearing.

3. Facebook blamed for 'rickets surge'

Facebook has been linked to the rise in the number of children suffering from rickets. Researchers wrote in the British Medical Journal that the social networking site, and computer games had led to the disease, caused by chronic vitamin D deficiencies. It occurs because of sitting for long periods out of natural sunlight and a poor diet.

4. Facebook 'turning Britons into introverts'

A study from Mintel, the market research company, found more than half of adults who use sites such as Facebook admitted they spent more time chatting online than they did actually speaking to friends and family.

5. Facebook 'makes partners jealous'

University of Guelph researchers found Facebook use led to increased jealousy in relationships, amid greater social exchanges with friends and previous partners. Lovers often get suspicious when their partners get hooked to the site.

6. More middle-aged people 'learning to love' Facebook

Ofcom, the communications regulator, found more middle-aged people are logging on to social networking sites such as Facebook in ever larger numbers. The number of 35 to 54-year-olds, using social networking sites, have increased by 25 per cent in just one year.

7. Facebook makes users 'feel unattractive'

Some Facebook users avoid uploading photos because they think they are too fat, old or ugly. A survey found almost one in two people admitted to leaving out pictures from their "fat days" when uploading pictures to their online profile.

ORKUT TRUMPS FACEBOOK IN INDIA:SURVEY

2010-04-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

Facebook might have overtaken Orkut globally in terms of the number of users, but Google's social networking offering still remains the favourite in India, according to the England-based online traffic tracking firm comScore.

In its latest report on social networking activity in the Asia-Pacific region, comScore says the Google-owned Orkut is ranked as the top social networking site in India, with 46.8 per cent of the nation's web population using the website.

Facebook, on the other hand, ranks numero uno in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

The study covered all Internet users aged above 15 in these countries, who accessed social networking sites from home and work locations.

However, it excluded those visiting the sites through Internet cafes, mobile phones or personal digital assistants. It also did not include China in the study.

The study has found that 50.8 per cent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, translating into a total of 240.3 million visitors during the month.

"While social networking continues to be one of the most popular and fastest growing web activities in the world, its dynamics in the APAC region exhibit significantly more individual market differentiation than in other global regions," comScore executive vice-president Will Hodgman said.

"In some markets, such as the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia, social networking is one of the most popular web activities, reaching nearly 90 per cent of the entire online population, while other markets report less PC-based social networking penetration, which can often be attributed to the high propensity to engage in social networking via mobile devices in these markets," he added.

About 68.5 per cent of India's web population accessed social networking sites in February, visiting these sites on an average of 13 times.

An average user spent about 2 hours 10 minutes on these sites.

In contrast, Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region spent an average of 2.5 hours on social networking sites during the month and visited the category on an average of 15 times.

COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS MAY ATTRACT MORE READERS WITH iPAD

2010-04-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: Not only to newspapers or magazines publishers, the launch of Apple's iPad in the market may also help Comic book makers to breathe life into characters like Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk by beaming them on to Apple's new tablet computer.

Three day ago, Disney's (DIS) Marvel comics unit released an iPad comic book application, which is free to download from Apple's App Store. The software lets readers buy digital versions of more than 500 Marvel comic books for $1.99 each. "Our app is for comic book lovers as well as lapsed readers' people who might be in their thirties or forties who stopped buying comic books after college," said Ira Rubenstein, Executive Vice President of Marvel's Global Digital Media Group.

Similarly, startup Graphic.ly, which is part of Microsoft's BizSpark program for fledgling companies, is also developing an iPad application that will let fans trade comments within the pages of digital comics. "The publisher that really ends up making the biggest splash on the iPad is the one that's not going to look to replicate print," says Micah Baldwin, CEO, Graphic.ly

According to Marymount Manhattan College professor Kent Worcester, who teaches classes on comics and animation and who co-edited A Comic Studies Reader, there are about 3,000 comic book stores in the U.S, down from about 10,000 in the 90's. "There are plenty of towns which have no comic book stores," said he.

Comic book publishers expect that new digital versions of their titles can turn comics into mass-market entertainment, not just artifacts for collectors. "Hollywood and television have begun to give people what they used to get out of comics," said Marymount's Worcester to Business Week.

APPLE'S iPAD DEBUTS STRONGLY, BUT KEY TESTS REMAIN

2010-04-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc sold more than 300,000 iPads on the tablet computer's first day in stores, a strong showing that roughly matched Wall Street forecasts and mirrored the iPhone's debut in 2007.

Despite a solid opening weekend, which prompted several investment banks to raise their earnings and revenue forecasts, the bigger test will come later this year, as consumers outside the company's core fan base size up the iPad.

Questions remain about whether consumers will shell out $500 or more for a device that fits between a smartphone and a laptop, and which Apple hopes pioneers a new class of device.

It hopes the sleek iPad, which hit Apple stores on Saturday, joins the iPod and the iPhone in its stable of successful consumer products, providing the next driver of growth as sales of its multimedia player and smartphone begin to moderate.

Should it take off, the iPad would not only provide a new market for component makers, but another platform for which software developers and content companies would hawk their wares.

Time will tell whether Apple has another bona fide hit on its hands, but media companies like New York Times Co and News Corp are betting the iPad will erect a profitable bridge from print to digital content.

"The launch went pretty much as expected; it was well received," said Shannon Cross of Cross Research. "There is widespread enthusiasm for the product, but it's a new category, and it will take time for people to understand it."

Apple has staked its formidable reputation on a 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet with no clear-cut case for use other than pure media consumption. Rivals including Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc are preparing tablets of their own later this year, so consumers will have a range of choices, particularly in the crucial holiday period.

"From a bigger strategic picture, the iPad is a content gatherer for Apple; that's what separates it from the others," said Broadpoint Amtech analyst Brian Marshall. "This has been a successful strategy for Apple in the past with iTunes," the company's online music store.

MARKET HOOPLA

Many analysts believe the company likely sold 350,000 to 400,000 iPads for the weekend. A number of Apple stores in the United States were closed for the Easter holiday on Sunday.

At least four brokerages lifted their full-year earnings estimates and price targets for Apple following the iPad launch.

JPMorgan raised its price target on Apple stock to $305 from $240; Kaufman Brothers increased it to $295 from $253; and Thomas Weisel Partners lifted its target to $280 from $270. Susquehanna raised its target to $275 from $260, while Barclays kept its target unchanged at $285.

Shares of Apple closed up 1.1 percent at $238.49 on Nasdaq, close to its all-time high of $238.73. The stock ran up last week in anticipation of the debut of the tablet computer on Saturday.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman called the first-day sales figure "reasonable, but not a blowout number."

He said the iPhone, which was launched in 2007, sold at a similar pace to the iPad in the beginning. Sales passed the 1 million mark after 74 days.

Apple's first-day iPad sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers -- which may have helped depress opening day crowds at some locations -- as well as shipments to sales partners and sales at Apple retail stores.

Analysts expect the company to sell 1 million or more iPads in the current quarter ending in June. Wall Street expects about 5 million to be sold in 2010, although estimates vary widely.

Only the Wi-Fi version of the iPad went on sale on Saturday, and only in the United States. Apple will expand to nine international markets, and roll out a 3G-compatible iPad, later this month, with wireless service from AT&T.

FESTIVE MOOD

Media companies are not the only ones counting on the success of the iPad. Companies found to have supplied some of the key components to the iPad received a boost in trade on Monday.

These include Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, up 1.5 percent; LG Display Co Ltd, up 2.2 percent; Broadcom Corp, up 4.5 percent; and Texas Instruments Inc, up 3.1 percent.

An analysis by research firm Chipworks also identified chips in the iPad from suppliers such as Cirrus Logic Inc, which jumped 8.3 percent on Monday, Atmel, Linear Technology, Intersil and STMicroelectronics.

Others may be quaking. Susquehanna Financial analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro said the iPad was likely to take share from Amazon.com Inc's Kindle because of its robust e-reader capabilities. Amazon shares were off 0.2 percent.

There did not appear to be any supply issues on the iPad's opening weekend, as some had feared, with only a few reports of stores selling out, as was the case during the iPhone's launch.

Long lines and boisterous crowds emerged at Apple stores in big cities such as New York and San Francisco, but some stores in suburban areas were not as crowded.

Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner said in a research note that the launch day performance was "a measure of brand loyalty among Apple devotees, who would buy virtually anything bearing that magical fruity logo. For others, it will take time to recognize a compelling use case for the device."

Apple said iPad users downloaded more than 1 million applications from the company's App Store and more than 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day.

APPLE iPAD WILL TAKE TIME TO HIT INDIAN MARKET

2010-04-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: Craving to get your hands on the Apple iPad? Wait for a while as it will be still some time before it becomes available in the Indian market.

Experts also believe that the tablet will create a new user segment in India.

Unveiled in January, the iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read e-books and much more. The 9.7 inch touchscreen tablet is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds-thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook-and delivers battery life of up to 10 hours.

The product, touted as a device between smartphone and a laptop, was officially launched in the US market Saturday. Prices in the US start at $499 and the most advanced model costs $829. But Indians customers who are eagerly waiting to try the 'game changing product', as it is often called, will have to wait for some more time.

"iPad will be available in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. International pricing will be announced in April. iPad will ship in additional countries later this year," said an official release.

Industry observers in the U.S. believe the iPad could well outsell the Apple's iPhone, launched in 2007, of which one million had been sold after 74 days on shop shelves.

However, considering price sensitive Indian market where consumers always look for a package product seeking maximum features in lowest possible amount, iPad may remain limited to the upper middle class segment only.

According to technology experts, besides the great features iPad has constraints too like it cannot multi-task, doesn't have a external keyboard, disk drive or a USB drive.

The experts believe it would create a niche market for itself and emerge as a lifestyle product and not a mass product in India.

"This product will create a new class. But given the Indian market scenario, iPad it is not going to have a mass market. It will be a niche product ... it will be a lifestyle product ...," said Akhilesh Tuteja, executive director KPMG, a consulting firm.

"To start with, it will have buyers who would like to experience it. It will create a class of its own. For a complete experience, one needs to have peripherals. But iPad doesn't have an external keyboard, no USB drive and disk drive," Tuteja told IANS.

INTEL MEETS ITS MATCH IN IBM

2010-04-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

There are few, if any, microprocessor manufacturers equal to Intel. IBM, however, is a very large exception.

By the time Intel had introduced its latest processor for servers, the Itanium 9300,IBM had already stolen Intel's thunder with its new Power7 chip technology, announced earlier in the morning.

And rightfully so: the Power7 is impressive. It has eight cores, while Intel's Itanium 9300 (PDF) has four. And each of the Power7's cores is capable of four threads, or tasks, compared to Itanium's two per core.

Although both companies are touting dozens of other features--for example, better thread performance and improved scaling of workloads--IBM is taking a lead in marquee features for the lucrative high-end server market.

"While Intel is talking about a 2x [two-times] performance boost per chip, IBM is talking about almost an 8x [eight-times]," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64. "IBM has gone from two cores to eight cores per (chip). And each of the cores is roughly twice as fast as the [prior-generation] Power6," according to Brookwood, adding that IBM was already ahead of Intel to begin with.

"Buyers who are sitting on the fence and have an application that could go either way (Itanium or Power7), may find that the Power7 offers a more attractive platform," Brookwood said, acknowledging that Itanium or Intel's upcoming eight-core Nehalem-EX processor would be a good choice for those seeking to use popular applications such as SQL Server that run on Windows and are not supported on the Power7.

IBM Blue Waters supercomputer

Power7 has another leg up on Itanium: it is already being used to construct what may be the fastest supercomputer in the world at the renowned National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, a credible claim, considering the center's history--and IBM's, whose chips in the past have powered the world's fastest supercomputers.

The Blue Waters project supercomputer, housed in a special building on the Urbana-Champaign campus, will theoretically be capable of achieving up to 10 petaflops, about 10 times as fast as the fastest supercomputer today. (A petaflop is 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second, a key indicator of supercomputer performance.)

One of the novel ways the University of Illinois is able to cram together the thousands of Power7 chips used in the Blue Waters supercomputer is by tapping a novel memory technology called eDRAM, or embedded dynamic access memory, for the level-3 cache memory.

Widely-used "static" RAM memory, or SRAM, is used as the on-chip memory in almost all processors today and can add as much as a billion transistors to high-end processors. IBM wanted to avoid these ballooning--and costly--chip counts, electing to use eDRAM, keeping the total number of transistors to 1.2 billion per processor. (Power7 uses SRAM in the smaller-capacity 32KB level-1 and 256KB level-2 cache; eDRAM is used in the large-capacity 32MB level-3 cache.)

The equivalent number of transistors using traditional SRAM would be well in excess of 2 billion, Bradley McCredie, an IBM fellow in the Systems and Technology Group, said in a CNET interview last year. (Two billion, in fact, is the chip count Intel is citing for the Itanium 9300.)

IBM has stated that the chip's speed--between 3.5GHz and 4GHz--actually has a lower rating than the previous Power6 chip, which ran at 5GHz. "We have gotten performance from other spots, such as the dense eDRAM. We had to back off from the gigahertz in order to get eight of these cores onto the chip and not have it melt," according to McCredie.

Intel, of course, is not standing still. The next-generation Itanium will be made on a cutting-edge 32-nanometer production process, and its upcoming Nehalem-EX server chip may go a long way toward leveling the playing field. But IBM has shown that it has the technological and manufacturing wherewithal to keep Intel on its toes, if not racing to keep up.

MONSTER TO BUY YAHOO' S JOBSITE

2010-04-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

New York: Online career and recruiting firm Monster Worldwide has announced that it will acquire Yahoo's jobsite HotJobs for $225 million, which will be paid in cash.

Both the firms have also entered into a three-year 'commercial traffic agreement' in which Monster would become provider of career content on Yahoo's home page in the U.S. and Canada, reports PTI. The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2010. Yahoo! has been cutting cost and closing its underperforming businesses like the GeoCities Web-hosting site.

The company also sold its e-mail technology unit Zimbra to VMware for an undisclosed amount. Yahoo said it "remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers." Yahoo had acquired HotJobs in 2002 for $436 million.

FINALLY, MICROSOFT AND YAHOO TOGETHER TO BEAT GOOGLE

2010-04-03T03:40:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: In one of the major steps towards replacing Google from top, Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, and Yahoo, owner of the second most-used Internet search engine, are together to develop Internet search and advertising programs.

"In the first seven months of Bing, we witnessed 90 million in unique users in U.S, which 11.5 percent of U.S. search market. We believe that partnership with Yahoo will help us to put our footprint globally," said Satya Nadella, Senior Vice-President, R&D, Online Services Division (OSD), Microsoft.

According to ComScore, this partnership will take Microsoft's share in U.S. search market to approximately 39 percent. Currently Google holds near to 49 percent share in the U.S. search market. This partnership also reflects that in the current situation, it's not possible for Microsoft or Yahoo alone to catch up with Google.

In simple term, the deal means that Bing will be the search engine for Microsoft and Yahoo sites, while Yahoo will focus on attracting advertisers. Microsoft will be handling the automated auction of search ads for use on both sites, and give Yahoo a portion of search ad sales generated on Yahoo pages.

Microsoft also plans to take support of Yahoo's software professionals, who are working search technology, to boost Microsoft as well as Yahoo. Speaking on this issue, Nadella said, "We are planning to have the support 400 Yahoo's software professionals. Half of them will be working Bangalore R&D, while other 200 will be working in Silicon Valley R&D centre." The company believes that by September 2010, majority of transition will be done.

79,924 PANCHAYATS HAVE BROADBAND CONNECTIONS

2010-04-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: As many as 79,924 panchayats (village councils) in India had broadband connectivity by February this year, says the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Data on the DoT website shows the numbers have been achieved against the target of providing all 242,279 panchayats with broadband connectivity by May 2012.

With 182.88 million rural subscribers in January, the rural tele-density stood at 22.18 percent.

As many as 564,225 villages had public telephones by January and the number for rural broadband connections stood at 462,168 in February.

India had 601.02 million telecom subscribers in February and the tele-density for the month stood at 51.08 percent, according to the DoT.

GOOGLE INDIA ADDS SHOPPING TOOL

2010-04-02T02:50:00.001-07:00

Google announced the launch of a new tool to find product information online in India. Google's new shopping tool - erstwhile available in U.S. and European countries now finds its way into India. Like Google shopping in the US, this tool indexes thousands of websites that have price and images of various products. As of now, the Indian avatar of Google Shopping throws data available from over 30,000 Indian websites.

Users can now try and look for product details and latest prices of goods and items across a wide spectrum. The tool also features a price comparison tool. This can help you look for the cheapest price available for the product of your choice. It also helps users choose products that are within their budgets. For example, you can search for all the phones that are priced from Rs.10,000 to Rs. 15,000.

One thing that Google could have made easier was getting into the shopping tool for India. This is the way Google suggests you need to adopt to use the shopping tool in India as of now. "To use Google's shopping tool, simply enter the product name into the search box at http://www.google.co.in. Then, on the results page, click on the "Show Options ..." link located above the search results and select "Shopping". Once you start seeing shopping results, you can customize your filtering options as required.

THE NEWEST PRODUCT IN APPLE TECHNOLOGY THE iPAD

2010-03-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Watch this video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHncCyJoEoc&feature=player_embedded

ASUS LAUNCHES 3D GAMING NOTEBOOK IN INDIA

2010-03-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: After almost four months of its release, Asus G51J 3D has arrived in India, bundled with specially designed 3D glasses and equipped with NVIDIA 3D Vision. ASUS G51J 3D has NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB DDR3 video memory.

EAX and CMSS audio technology further enhances in-game immersion, delivering crystal clear sound and compelling environment audio effects through bespoke Altec Lansing speakers. ASUS G51J 3D is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor and 64-bit Windows 7 operating system. A pair of 3D Vision active-shutter glasses coupled with a wide-range infra-red emitter delivers stereoscopic images with clarity, brightness and depth-of-field (DOP) at full resolution without any viewing angle restrictions. The GPU driver and a 120Hz 3D panel render each scene twice, delivering up to 60 images evenly to each eye, amounting to a total of up to 120 images at any given time. Gamers can experience total immersion into their games from what were previously flat 2D worlds, to true-to-life 3D.

"NVIDIA is excited about the world's first 3D Vision notebook coming from ASUS," said Phil Eisler, General Manager of 3D Vision business unit at NVIDIA. "The ASUS G51J 3D notebook will set the standard by which gaming and 3D notebooks will be judged. Congratulations to ASUS for achieving this monumental milestone!"

Complementing the immersive visual effects is EAX Advanced HD 4.0 3D audio technology and CMSS surround sound. EAX Advanced HD 4.0 audio technology enhances in-game environments and scenarios by providing corresponding three dimensional sound effects. It can provide up to 64 additional sound effects from its sound library, and produces ultra-realistic spatial effects for more than 300 supported games. Together with high fidelity Altec Lansing speakers, the ASUS G51J 3D delivers a gaming and multimedia audio experience that no other notebook can match.

The ASUS G51J 3D features four dedicated physical cores working in tandem with the operating system and applications for additional performance. It allows users to utilize and launch multiple applications, and to enjoy high definition multimedia and processor-intensive games effortlessly. It also has a built-in 2 megapixel camera and has 15".6 HD LED backlight screen.

The ASUS G51J 3D will be available at around Rs. 99,000 with a two years warranty.

COMBINED PCs BEAT 2nd FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER

2010-03-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Washington: Legions of personal computers (PCs), engaged in a project to map the Milky Way, beat the world's second fastest supercomputer in sheer performance.

At this very moment, tens of thousands of PCs worldwide are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

Enthusiastic volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map our Milky Way.

Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer.

Since the project began, more than 45,000 individual users from 169 countries have donated computational power to the effort. Currently, approximately 17,000 users are active in the system.

The project, MilkyWay@Home, uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, which is widely known for the SETI@home project, used to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Today, MilkyWay@Home has outgrown even this famous project, in terms of speed, making it the fastest computing project on the BOINC platform and perhaps the second fastest public distributed computing programme ever in operation (just behind Folding@home).

The interdisciplinary team behind MilkyWay@Home, which ranges from professors to undergraduates, began the formal development under the BOINC platform in July 2006 and worked tirelessly to build a volunteer base from the ground up to build its computational power.

Each user participating in the project signs up their computer and offers up a percentage of the machine's operating power that will be dedicated to calculations related to the project.

For the MilkyWay@Home project, this means that each personal computer is using data gathered about a very small section of the galaxy to map its shape, density, and movement.

In particular, computers donating processing power to MilkyWay@Home are looking at how the different dwarf galaxies that make up the larger Milky Way galaxy, have been moved and stretched following their merger with the larger galaxy millions of years ago.

This is done by studying each dwarf's stellar stream. Their calculations are providing new details on the overall shape and density of dark matter in the Milky Way galaxy, which is widely unknown.

The galactic computing project had very humble beginnings, according to Heidi Newberg, associate professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy at Rensselaer.

Her personal research to map the 3-D distribution of stars and matter in the Milky Way using data from the extensive Sloan Digital Sky Survey could not find the best model to map even a small section of a single galactic star stream in any reasonable amount of time.

"I was a researcher sitting in my office with a very big computational problem to solve and very little personal computational power or time at my fingertips," Newberg said.

"Working with the MilkyWay@Home platform, I now have the opportunity to use a massive computational resource that I simply could not have as a single faculty researcher, working on a single research problem."

Before taking the research to BOINC, Newberg worked with Malik Magdon-Ismail, associate professor of computer science, to create a stronger and faster algorithm for her project, says a Rensselaer Polytechnic release.

Together they greatly increased the computational efficiency and set the groundwork for what would become the much larger MilkyWay@Home project.

500 MILLION WI-FI ENABLED HANDSETS TO SHIP IN 2014

2010-03-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Austin: The ubiquity of both Wi-Fi technology and advanced mobile phones are ushering in a new age for people who want a high-performance multimedia experience at their fingertips. Carriers, handset makers, and end users are embracing Wi-Fi on the handset for its coverage benefits, bandwidth boost, and wide availability. New data from ABI Research indicates that out of approximately 580 million Wi-Fi devices shipped in 2009, 141 million were handsets.

The momentum of Wi-Fi enabled handsets reflects the recognition of the rigorous Wi-Fi CERTIFIED testing program from the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi handset certification volume grew 142 percent in 2009 from 2008 levels. To date, more than 500 different handset models are now Wi-Fi CERTIFIED, giving consumers more choices than ever before.

"The phenomenal growth of handsets offering Wi-Fi is no surprise. Carriers and manufacturers have come to know Wi-Fi as a reliable, high-performance technology that's been independently validated in our renowned certification program. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED program helps ensure a seamless user experience when using Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

ABI Research expects this growth trend to continue, forecasting that half a billion Wi-Fi enabled handsets will ship in 2014, with 90 percent of smartphones incorporating Wi-Fi. "In the age of data-centric multimedia phones, carriers have embraced Wi-Fi technology as a way to offload traffic from licensed spectrum and improve the consumer experience. We are seeing handset users starting to demand Wi-Fi because of its higher data rate and indoor reception benefits," said Michael Morgan, Industry Analyst, ABI Research.

The next major technology advancement for handsets is on the horizon -- advanced Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n technology is beginning to appear in mobile phones, offering consumers increased coverage. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n program incorporates a broad range of performance features required to meet market needs in a wide range of applications.

The first ten Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n handsets have been announced, and given the benefits of this next-generation Wi-Fi technology compared to older generations, the migration toward 802.11n is expected to continue. ABI Research predicts that by 2012, 802.11n will be the predominant Wi-Fi technology in handsets.

Initial handset implementations of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n technology will offer consumers greater effective ranges and improved coverage. Since data transmissions are more efficient with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n, there is a lower impact to battery life compared to older forms of Wi-Fi technology. Enterprise IT managers will appreciate that Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n networks have greater capacity than legacy networks, allowing more users to be supported on a single network node.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n devices also incorporate WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia) Quality of Service. WMM prioritizes network resources for voice and video applications to improve the performance of real-time applications. All Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices are also tested to ensure that they support advanced WPA2 security capabilities.

Recognizing the need for handsets to be aligned with Wi-Fi industry standards for interoperability, security, easy installation, and reliability, the Wi-Fi Alliance began including mobile phones in its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED program in 2003.

THE GREEN ARMY'S SOCIAL NETWORK MARCH

2010-03-24T04:50:00.000-07:00

When it comes to high-profile green coverage, though, Deanna Duke of The Crunchy Chicken has perhaps the broadest reach. Her "Freeze Yer Buns Off Challenge," encouraging people to turn down their thermostats for the winter, garnered press this year in The New York Times and USA Today, among many other outlets. She's a sustainability force to be reckoned with as she publishes clips on YouTube about shopping at farmers markets and posts to Facebook about the health implications of toothpaste with fluoride.

Is anybody besides the tree-huggers listening? You bet they are. Duke gets e-mails every day from the manufacturers of products, she told TechNewsWorld, and those companies are eager to reach the growing market of consumers seeking green approaches to even the most mundane aspects of their everyday lives.

To Review or Not to Review

"Companies are definitely targeting bloggers to spread the word about their products, particularly if they can get a review," Duke said. While she will indeed review products sent to her if she thinks the topic is relevant to her readers, it may not necessarily be a positive appraisal. "My readers expects my honest assessment about a product," she stressed. Interestingly, she's observed that more often than not, the products she publishes the best reviews about are ones she's found on her own.

Still, as green bloggers have moved from daily or weekly blog posts to more frequent, shorter updates through tools such as Twitter, the companies seeking to garner their much-coveted approval have done the same. "There definitely is a push for companies who do provide review copies or giveaways through blogs to require that as part of your entry you have to Facebook or Tweet about the product," Duke explained. "I don't support those types of giveaways as it seems somehow predatory."

Walking the Line

In fact, sustainability activists and companies are doing a delicate dance as they learn more about the benefits and pitfalls of using social networking to advocate for their cause -- which is, in the case of corporations, the bottom line. One community garden organizer thought long and hard about where the boundaries might be as she set up a group on a local food social networking site in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I had to decide whether or not to retain authority to approve group members or posts," Samantha Provencio, coordinator of two community gardens in the Cleveland area, told TechNewsWorld. The gardens are associated with a range of government and state organizations, such as The Ohio State University. However, no one group has the gardens entirely under its purview.

With no official online home for her group members, Provencio decided to use Local Food Cleveland, a site built with social networking platform Ning, to provide space for community gardeners in her own and surrounding counties. In the end, said Provencio, she left membership open, and one big aspect of that decision is the possibility that corporations will indeed come bearing gifts. "If Home Depot (NYSE: HD) wants to offer garden tools to local community gardeners, I want them to have a way to reach us," she said.

It's Not Easy Being Facebook

With Facebook's rapid rise in popularity among activists of all stripes, one obvious question is why the site isn't the de facto standard gathering place for all sustainability communities. For Provencio, the issue was one of usability. "Facebook has changed its format so often recently," she noted, "I was concerned that people would have a hard time using it." Recent changes in the site's terms of service also gave her cause for concern, she added.

For some groups, though, Facebook's enormous reach simply is too important to ignore when time and resources are very tight. Such is the case for a grass-roots citizen action group that came together quickly when the 144-acre Oakwood Country Club and golf course, which sits on the border of two eastern suburbs of Cleveland, went up for sale. Within just a couple of weeks, the group's Facebook page had tallied over 1,000 fans, steering committee member Wendy Donkin told TechNewsWorld. For some time, the page was used simply to gather ideas and build a network around the goal of keeping the acreage as green space rather than let it fall into the hands of a commercial developer.

Right now, the fate of the Oakwood land remains up in the air. However, Donkin thinks that the Facebook group will be crucial as a specific action plan comes into focus. "Once we have a series of concrete steps, we can ask all these people to help," she noted. What they have done already is to ask fans of the group's Facebook page to fill in a form that lists the skills and resources they have that might be useful as the movement gathers steam.

Who's Your Buddy?

A question both activists and corporations will have to tackle is when to use which social networking tool to achieve any given goal. In Deanna Duke's case, targeting her blog's readership has become easier over her three years of publication. "I know my audience fairly well and have a good feel for what they want to read about," she said. "I've learned from feedback over the years what is popular based on page hits or number of comments."

What's harder, explained Duke, is deciding what portions of content she wants to publish via Twitter or Facebook. Like all sustainability advocates, Duke has a life outside her activism as well, and she connects with those people via the same social networking tools she uses in her "green" life. "I have a lot more personal friends and colleagues that follow me on Facebook but don't necessarily read my blog posts," she noted. "Those that follow me on Facebook get the whole shebang -- links to my blog posts, plus personal and other environmentally related links and thoughts I have that I don't want to write a whole post about."

What those friends and colleagues will see if they browse Duke's recent Facebook status updates would interest any public relations person responsible for the online presence of a major corporation: kudos to the makers of LEGOs for making sure its toys are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a link to a buying guide for dog toys also made without PVC, and a re-post of a link originally distributed by organic dairy product maker Organic Valley about the dangers of overuse of antibiotics in industrial livestock operations.

BROWN PLEDGES SUPER-FAST BROADBAND FOR ALL BY 2020

2010-03-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

In a speech, Gordon Brown called super-fast broadband "the electricity of the digital age" which "must be for all - not just for some".

The Conservatives say they have made a similar pledge and have attacked a £6-a-year landline levy planned by Labour.

The PM also promised to create a single website bringing together all government and public sector services.

The "mygov" portal will allow people to manage pensions and benefits, pay council tax, apply for school places and jobs, and book doctor's appointments - all online.

He said it would end the "one size fits all" style of public services and would help the British government become "the most efficient, open and responsive" in the world.

Web institute

In his speech, Mr Brown argued that faster broadband speeds would allow for cheaper and better public services as well as ushering in more sophisticated entertainment options and making trade easier.

But leaving this to the market alone would lead to coverage "determined not by need or by social justice, but by profitability" and "a lasting, pervasive and damaging new digital divide".

Instead, he said it was up to government to create a fair digital future, adding: "The alternative is our vision: ensuring, not simply hoping for, universal coverage."

Mr Brown said greater use of the internet would also allow people to have more say over government policy, such as through e-petitions, and could result in big cost savings by making public services more efficient.

The PM also said Labour planned £30m of funding for a new Institute of Web Science, to be based in Britain and jointly headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web.

This, he said, would carry out pioneering research, in collaboration with universities and the private sector, to develop the next generation of the web.

Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, said the government had to intervene to ensure super-fast broadband reached remote areas of the country.

He told BBC Radio 5 live: "You offer incentives to the market to get to those areas that otherwise they're not going to be able to make a profit out of going to.

"By having universal access to this very high bandwidth which allows more streaming video, allows people to watch TV and listen to radio online, it means that we can also release the business and employment potential of this.

'Technology manifesto'

"If you just leave it up to the market it'll only go to into the cities, it won't get out into rural Cornwall for example without some form of public subsidy."

The government is planning a 50p-a-month levy on landlines to help ensure that rural areas do not miss out on a fast network.

The Conservatives have attacked the tax, saying they will force BT to open up its network to competition, and if necessary use cash from the BBC licence fee to fill in gaps in the fast broadband network.

In their "technology manifesto", the Tories have pledged to give Britain the fastest high-speed broadband network in Europe if they win the general election.

They have also pledged to put more government services online and to publish huge swathes of government data and contracts - and make Britain a world leader in the digital revolution.

Digital campaigners the Open Rights group said Mr Brown's plans were incompatible with provisions in the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, to cut off persistent illegal file-sharers.

Executive director Jim Killock said: "Online government is a great idea, but Labour cannot say people will depend on online government, and simultaneously plan to disconnect families after allegations of minor copyright offences."

MICROSOFT WINNING FANS EARLY WITH INTERNET EXPLORER 9 PREVIEW

2010-03-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week Microsoft unveiled a preview of the engine behind its next-generation Web browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Microsoft is still diligently working to convince many customers to make the switch from the archaic IE6 to the current IE8, but the march of development never stops so Microsoft is already hard at work on the next version as well.

post on the IEBlog "The Internet Explorer Platform Preview is a light-weight frame around the core IE platform which includes the rendering and layout, object model, parsing, and script engines. It's a way to try out the platform, and the experience improvements we're making to performance, standards support and interoperability, enabling "the same markup" to work."

Saint Clair clarified "We will update [the Platform Preview] approximately every 8 weeks on the road to Beta. Each update will provide a more complete look at the IE9 platform. The Platform Preview along with these updates and the reporting tools are designed to speed up the feedback loop between developers and the IE platform."

In other words, this is not a beta release of the IE9 browser. In fact, it's not even an alpha release. Microsoft is still (very) early in the development stage for Internet Explorer 9, but it is actively seeking to engage the Web developer community to test out the core functionality and provide feedback. It is also working to silence critics of IE and begin to build up some excitement and buzz around the eventual launch of the next-generation browser.

Toward that end, the IE9 Platform Preview seems to be quite successful thus far. Internet Explorer 8 is a fairly slick, and rather capable Web browser in its own right. My PCWorld peer Jared Newman notes "IE8 got creative with accelerators and Web slices. It also caught up with the competition on features like drag-and-drop tabs and private browsing."

Two areas where Microsoft has had consistent issues are compliance with Web standards, and speed. On the compliance front, Jennifer Yu, another Internet Explorer program manager at Microsoft, explained in a separate IEBlog post "As part of our commitment to standards and interoperability, we are excited to provide initial support for the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition) Specification in the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview."

As for speed, there are some initial reports that IE9 isn't just faster than IE8, but mind-numbingly so--depending on the tasks it is being asked to perform. Tests performed by one site report preliminary results that "IE9 tech preview performs 7.8 times better than IE8."

The post detailing the results of the preliminary IE9 tests goes on to add "Betanews estimates that the IE9 chassis on Windows 7 offers 9.32 times better raw computational performance than IE8 on Windows 7, on the same machine."

Not too shabby--especially compared with recent Web browser speed tests conducted by PCWorld. Those tests showed Chrome leading the race, with Firefox 3.5 in second, and IE8 coming in third. Granted, we're talking about milliseconds difference between page loading times, but those milliseconds add up.

I asked Microsoft for an ETA on a public beta of IE9, or even an estimated target for releasing the next generation Web browser. A Microsoft spokesperson replied with the predictably standard non-answer "We're excited to provide developers with access to updated builds of the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview every eight weeks leading up to beta. Internet Explorer 9's public availability will be dependent on when it reaches the quality bar for release."

Suffice it to say that the early speed tests, combined with Microsoft's efforts at cooperating to incorporate Web standards, and its commitment to engaging the developer community early and often all bode well for the next incarnation of Internet Explorer--whenever it finally arrives.

GOOGLE HATCHES PLOT TO BRING INTO TV

2010-03-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

Google, Intel, Sony and Logitech have reportedly come together to create a new device platform built for bringing the Web closer to the TV. Google TV would apparently use the Android OS to streamline the act of surfing Web content, including Web-based videos as well as social networking sites, through the television.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Sony (NYSE: SNE) have teamed up to develop a platform called "Google TV" that will bring about a new way to surf the Internet via televisions, according to The New York Times.

Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI), which makes remote controls and computer devices, will reportedly develop peripherals for the platform. These will apparently include a remote with a tiny keyboard.

This follows earlier reports in The Wall Street Journal that Google is testing a TV program search function with Dish Network.

If the reports are correct, the Google platform could further open up online advertising opportunities and bring in more revenue.

The New Google Platform

This new platform is reportedly based on Android, Google's operating system that's so far appeared mostly in smartphones. It will run on Intel's Atom chip, and it's believed Sony will bring out the first devices running the platform.

It's possible the platform will use Google's Chrome browser, which may have to be modified in order to work in an Android environment.

The partners in the project reportedly want to make it easier for television watchers to navigate Web applications such as social networks, as well as streamline the act of getting programming such as Web TV shows and videos from YouTube onto users' television sets.

"A lot of large companies are trying to conquer your living room," Itzik Cohen, CEO of ClipSync, told TechNewsWorld. "There will be more Web-enabled devices connected to your TV in the future." ClipSync's software platform lets people interact with each other while watching television

Google declined to discuss the issue. "We don't comment on rumor or speculation," spokesperson Eitan Bencuya told TechNewsWorld.

That's Entertainment

The consumer electronics industry, which has been bringing out network-enabled devices for the living room over the past several years, is likely to benefit from Google's platform, said Greg Ireland, a research manager at IDC.

"The industry has been looking for something like this platform," Ireland pointed out. "We have a proliferation of network-enabled devices such as connected televisions, connected Blu-ray players and the like, and there isn't a common software platform for these devices, so companies are forced to develop their own software programs," he told TechNewsWorld. "The issue is not just to connect up to Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), but to create a platform that can link your TV to your smartphone and your Blu-ray player, for example."

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Widgets can tie together various media devices. Several television makers built Yahoo Widgets in their TV lines in the past couple of years, but it has had limited success. "Initially some people signed up with Yahoo Widgets," Ireland said. "Now, we've heard Samsung has moved away from Yahoo and will do something on its own. Panasonic is also coming up with something on its own."

Google's Set Top Box

Earlier this month, Google reportedly began a beta trial of TV search with Dish Network. This uses a set-top box running Android that can search through TV network programming as well as Web videos. Apparently, only a handful of Google employees are involved in the trial.

Dish Network wouldn't discuss the issue. "We don't have a comment on this," spokesperson Robin Zimmermann told TechNewsWorld.

In launching the set-top box trials, Google may aim to support its common platform. "It's not so much that Google's looking to create a box of its own as it is to offer a connected device that's part of the broader developer ecosystem," Ireland pointed out.

Once a common platform is created, it can be monetized because it will provide a set of standards developers can work to.

"You can integrate Pandora and Netflix and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), but how can you innovate unless there's a common platform developers can work on?" Ireland said. "That's where Google comes in."

Google could deliver a toolkit to appdevs in the next couple of months; products based on the platform will be out around summer.

"Having the Google platform will increase the market for everyone," ClipSync's Cohen said. "And if Google's involved, ads will become part of the mix, which means everyone will be able to monetize."

MICROSOFT CHOICE SCREEN BOOSTS OPERA BROWSER

2010-03-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

Web browser Opera says that downloads of its software have doubled since Microsoft introduced browser choice to Windows users on 1 March.

Microsoft now offers customers a choice of 12 browsers rather than installing its own Internet Explorer browser as a default.

A screen offering users the chance to switch browser is rolling out across Europe as part of a Windows update.

Opera says that in Poland 77% of downloads have come from the screen.

The number of copies downloaded in Poland were up by 328% on normal levels in the three days Opera analysed, between 12 and 14 March.

The screen has also made a big impact on Opera downloads in Spain, Italy and Denmark where downloads have doubled and over 60% of traffic is coming from the screen.

"This confirms that when users are given a real choice on how they choose the browser, they will try out alternatives," said Hakon Wium Lie of Opera Software.

While the Norway-based company has focused on the European market, according to StatCounter GlobalStats in March 2010 Opera was the biggest browser in Russia with a market share of 32.76%, beating Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Microsoft agreed to offer users browser choice in Europe as part of a settlement following a 10 year dispute with the European Commission over competition regulation.

TWITTER FLIES THE COOP

2010-03-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

The new service will let Twitter users send and receive messages while they are on a partner site. It will also allow users to follow a string of related tweets without leaving the site. The idea behind the service is to allow partners to better integrate their own conversations and product positioning with Twitter.

The @anywhere functionality can be implemented with a few lines of Javascript code.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced the @anywhere platform during his keynote address at the South by Southwest interactive conference under way in Austin this week.

'Our Open Technology Platform'

The company elaborated on it in a blog post, although it didn't provide a timeframe for rollout.

The post provided examples of how @anywhere could be used: following a New York Times journalist via her byline, tweeting about a video without leaving YouTube, or discovering new Twitter accounts on the Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) homepage.

Besides Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg and eBay, initial participating sites include AdAge, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times (NYSE: NYT), Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), Yahoo and YouTube.

The Facebook Connect Model

Twitter's new feature is being likened to Facebook Connect -- a set of APIs that allow Facebook members to log onto third-party Web sites, applications, mobile devices and gaming systems with their Facebook identity.

Like Facebook Connect, @anywhere will break down communication barriers across the various social media sites and portals people frequent, Rob Ungar, an account executive at Widmeyer Communications, told TechNewsWorld.

"It's going to make it easier to keep the conversation going rather than having to manage so many different identities to engage around a piece of content," Ungar said. "Right now, people can make comments on one site, of course, but they have to repost on Twitter. This will make it easier for people to share content and promote a dialogue, which is something that Twitter is very good at."

If it's integrated with blogging sites like WordPress or Blogger, @anywhere will ratchet up the "intra-site" dialogue that much more, he added.

Plus for Marketing

The new service will also assist marketers in building a brand or promoting a product, Nichole Goodyear, CEO of Brickfish, told TechNewsWorld. "It will have the ability to bring people into a conversation about something they might otherwise not be aware of."

Consider a product review posted on Amazon, for example.

"Studies have shown people tend to buy products that are recommended by friends or people they know," said Goodyear. "Reading tweets about a product review that links to the actual page would facilitate sales of the product."

MICROSOFT GIVES DEVS A GLIMPSE OF HTML 5-FRIENDLY IE9

2010-03-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

The newest version of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer will feature full hardware acceleration and a new Javascript engine that engages multiple processor cores for faster rendering, the company has announced. The new version aso reverses the software giant's reluctance to adapt to HTML 5.

The company released a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 at the MIX10 developer conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Rough Draft

The preview is not a fully functioning browser, lacking crucial tidbits such as an address bar, for instance.

It's designed to give developers a feel for the core capabilities of what will eventually be released.

Microsoft isn't saying when it will come out. In a statement Wednesday, the company said it expects to release new preview versions every eight weeks until the release goes to beta, but it did not say when that might occur.

The new version will feature full hardware acceleration of graphics and text, support for HTML 5, CSS3 and a new Javascript engine that takes advantage of multicore processors.

The advances are meant to reduce limitations on Web design and development imposed by current implementations, Microsoft said. Consequently, the new browser will not work on Windows XP.

Early Praise

The advances are being well received by developers, Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish told TechNewsWorld.

"They're looking to regain a leadership role here and to really dazzle developers by really showing their commitment to HTML 5 and its potential," she said.

By moving to hardware acceleration, IE9 will enable faster rendering of animations and video, allowing developers to create beefier Web sites that software-based rendering schemes just couldn't handle, she noted.

Why It's Important

Creating a great next version of Explorer is critical for Microsoft as it attempts to build on the early success of Windows 7.

In all its incarnations, Explorer is still the most widely used browser, with a 61.6 percent market share in February, according to Net Applications. That's down from a recent peak of about 68 percent in May 2009, shortly after the current version was released. In that time, the fastest-growing browser has been Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome, which now has about 5.6 percent of the market, according to Net Applications.

Maintaining or extending market share is important to Microsoft and Google, particularly, because it allows them to cross-promote other products, such as Bing for Microsoft or productivity apps for Google, McLeish said.

She said she does not anticipate the lack of XP support to have much of a detrimental effect on IE9 adoption, or Microsoft's market share.

Many enterprise customers running XP are expected to upgrade to Windows 7 as Microsoft phases out support for the older operating system, helping spur adoption of the new browser while simultaneously helping kill off IE6, which both Microsoft and many in the developer community would like to see disappear.

INDIA NEEDS 100 MILLION BROADBAND CONNECTIONS:PITRODA

2010-03-20T01:13:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: National Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda Wednesday said India needs around 100 million broadband connections and the government is focused on connecting 250,000 panchayats across the country through broadband.

"We have today about 10 million broadband connections for a country of a billion people, which is no good. Ideally this country needs 100 million broadband connections. If I say 100, even 80 or 70 million is good enough," Pitroda, who is also known as father of India's telecom revolution, said,

Interacting with women journalists at their club here, Pitroda said he hopes that the number of broadband connections will reach 100 million in five years' time.

"We don't have concrete timetable right now. We all are working on it. But we are first focused on connecting 250,00 panchayats through broadband now. Because that is the nerve centre of our decentralised governance," Pitroda added.

He is also an advisor to the prime minister on public information, infrastructure and innovations.

Asked if rural India is ready for technological change, he said: "If Bangalore is the back office of America, rural India should be the back office of urban India."

Giving an example, he said why should 20,000 clerks work in Delhi or other cities to file insurance claims, why can't that be done online by people in rural India.

"There are lot of young kids in rural India who are equally smart. Don't underestimate their talent. I think rural India is ready, we have not given them connectivity. You give them connectivity, you move a lot of back offices to rural India. It will happen," he added.

He added: "Next decade is going to be the most important decade in putting institutions and infrastructures related to information systems in place to be able to take advantage of a connected billion people."

GOOGLE UPGRADES CHROME ACROSS THE BOARD

2010-03-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Google has updated the Chrome browser for most of its multiple versions on all platforms in the past few days, although most of the updates have been minor. However, high-priority security fixes have been made to the stable version of Chrome.

Five security fixes labeled "high" have been applied to the stable Windows version of Chrome, including a fix for a bug that was discovered by Sergey Glazunov. He has received the first $1,337 Chromium Security Reward for the discovery. The security fixes include plugging holes in tab sandboxing, memory errors occurring with malformed SVG images, integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects, and an cross-origin bypass error. One security fix applied to the Chrome beta plugged a hole created by memory errors in empty SVG elements.

One new feature in the stable version since the upgrade to v4 has been disabled. The experimental anti-reflected-XSS feature XSS Auditor was disabled because of rare but "serious performance issues," according to the release notes.

The Windows beta version now includes the translate infobar, for automatic page translation using Google's translate function when you visit a Web site with a different language than your system default.

The Chrome dev channel has been updated for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Google says that users on all three platforms should see significant improvements in the performance of the autofill feature. Mac OS X dev channel users have also received many fixes to the bookmark bar, but that users will still experience significant problems with their bookmark folders for now. A fix is coming, say Google's release notes.

Google's Internet Explorer booster add-on, Chrome Frame, has also several repairs. Chrome Frame now uses IE's default pop-up blocker, and clicking one link with both mouse buttons will no longer crash the browser. Note that Chrome Frame is still considered experimental, and isn't recommended for casual use.

SCIENTIESTS TO MAKE MULTI-PROCESSOR COMPUTERS SMARTER

2010-03-18T01:23:00.000-07:00

Washington: Luis Ceze, a Washington University computer scientist is trying to bring discipline in the modern multiprocessor computers, as he believes that they perform in an unpredictable way even after giving certain sets of commands. "With older, single-processor systems, computers behave exactly the same way as long as you give the same commands. Today's computers are non-deterministic. Even if you give the same set of commands, you might get a different result," he says, according to ANI.

Ceze and UW associate professors of computer science and engineering Mark Oskin and Dan Grossman and UW graduate students Owen Anderson, Tom Bergan, Joseph Devietti, Brandon Lucia and Nick Hunt have now come up with a way to get modern, multiple-processor computers to behave in predictable ways, by automatically parceling sets of commands and assigning them to specific places. Sets of commands get calculated simultaneously, so the well-behaved program still runs faster than it would on a single processor.

Ceze says: "With multi-core systems the trend is to have more bugs because it's harder to write code for them. And these concurrency bugs are much harder to get a handle on. We've developed a basic technique that could be used in a range of systems, from cell phones to data centers. Ultimately, I want to make it really easy for people to design high-performing, low-energy and secure systems."

Ceze says this will help many people and simplify the process. "We can compress the effect of thousands of people using a program into a few minutes during the software's development. We want to allow people to write code for multi-core systems without going insane. If this erratic behavior irritates us, as software users, imagine how it is for banks or other mission-critical applications."

FBI GOING UNDERCOVER ON FACEBOOK

2010-03-18T01:17:00.000-07:00

San Francisco: U.S. law-enforcement agents are being trained to use social-networking sites like Facebook to befriend suspects and collect evidence, according to documents released by advocacy group The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The Justice Department internal training document, called Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites, revealed that undercover agents for the FBI and other agencies set up false profiles on sites like My Space and Facebook to try to nab suspects by getting access to their social networks.

The training manual said that such operations can be useful to communicate with suspects or targets, reveal their personal communications, gain access to non-public information and map social relationships and networks. Information gleaned can also be used to verify alibis and establish locations, the 33-page document revealed.

Social networks are also a good source of information on defence witnesses, the Justice Department's slide presentation said.

"Knowledge is power," the document said. "Research all witnesses on social-networking sites."

The document notes the potential problems with such covert operations with the words: "If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity?'" referring to site policies against establishing accounts with a false identity.

While the Justice Department document left the question open, a document released to EFF by the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service noted that that IRS employees are prohibited from using deception or fake online accounts to obtain information about taxpayers.

"In civil matters, employees cannot misrepresent their identities, even on the Internet," the document states. "You cannot obtain information from websites by registering using fictitious identities."

The EFF, which advocates for online privacy rights, withheld comment on the Justice Department documents but did praise the IRS policy.

"The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information," the group said Tuesday.

'GOOGLE TO OBEY RULES EVEN IF IT PULLS OUT'

2010-03-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

A Chinese Google user poses for a picture with his eyes covered in front of...

Google should obey Chinese government rules even if it decides to retreat from the country over hacking and censorship complaints, a Chinese government spokesman said on Tuesday.

Investors sold off Google Inc shares a day earlier after signs the company could soon shut its Web search site in China, Google.cn, two months after saying it would not abide by Beijing’s censorship rules and was alarmed by hacking from inside China.

Shares of Google fell nearly 3 per cent in regular trading on Monday to close at $563.18. Shares of Baidu, the No1 search engine in China, rose 4.8 per cent to $576.84.

Google has not unveiled any plans, leaving users to guess whether the company may seek to unilaterally do away with the Chinese-mandated filters that censor content on google.cn or announce it is shutting down the site.

In what appeared to be a reminder that China would not welcome any abrupt steps, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said Google should follow rules even if it decides not to stay in the country.

"On entering the Chinese market in 2007, it clearly stated that it would respect Chinese law," the spokesman, Yao Jian, told reporters in answer to a question about Google.

Google opened its Chinese search portal in 2006.

"We hope that whether Google Inc continues operating in China or makes other choices, it will respect Chinese legal regulations," Yao told a regular news conference.

"Even if it pulls out, it should handle things according to the rules and appropriately handle remaining issues," he said.

Yao said those rules included one that a foreign company report to the Commerce Ministry about plans to pull out.

If Google does decide to leave China, it could unnerve other foreign investors in the country. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang downplayed the significance of such an action.

"I think this would just be the individual act of one company, and will not affect China’s investment environment," Qin told a regular news briefing. "It will not change the fact that most foreign companies, US ones included, have a good business in China and generate large profits."

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said last week he hoped to have an outcome soon from talks with Chinese officials on offering an uncensored search engine in that country of 384 million Internet users.

Many experts doubt China’s ruling Communist Party would compromise on censorship. The Financial Times reported at the weekend the talks had reached an impasse and Google was "99.9 per cent" certain to shut Google.cn.

A Google spokesperson said on Monday that talks with Chinese authorities had not ended, but added that the company was adamant about not accepting self-censorship.

China requires Internet operators to block words and images the ruling Communist Party deems unacceptable.

Internationally popular websites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are entirely blocked in China, which uses a filtering "firewall" to block Internet users from other overseas website content banned by authorities.

FACEBOOK OVERTAKES GOOGLE

2010-03-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed.

Facebook's homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The 'important milestone,' as described by Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 per cent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.Com increased only nine per cent in the same time -- although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

Taken together, Facebook.Com and Google.Com amounted to 14 per cent of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said.

Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail's format.

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.

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http://sify.com/finance/facebook-overtakes-google-imagegallery-corporate+stuff-kdrrq0eefbb.html

PASSWORD-STEALING VIRUS TARGETS FACEBOOK USERS

2010-03-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

Boston: Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook's estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a programme that steals passwords, McAfee said.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company's own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

A Facebook spokesman said the company could not comment on the specific case, but pointed to a status update the company posted on its website earlier warning users about the spoofed email and advising users to delete the email and to warn their friends.

McAfee estimates that hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the campaign began on Tuesday.

Dave Marcus, McAfee's director of malware research and communications, said that he expects the hackers will succeed in infecting millions of computers.

"With Facebook as your lure, you potentially have 400 million people that can click on the attachment. If you get 10 per cent success, that's 40 million," he said.

The email's subject line says "Facebook password reset confirmation customer support," according to Marcus.

FACEBOOK TO OPEN OFFICE IN HYDERABAD

2010-03-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Popular social-networking site Facebook will open an office in India, joining a long list of international firms that have looked to tap a skilled workforce that provides support services at relatively cheap wages.

Facebook's office in Hyderabad will support users, advertisers and developers in India and around the world, the company said in a statement on Monday.Hyderabad also houses other foreign firms, including Internet powerhouse Google and software giant Microsoft, whose Indian employees work on everything from writing software codes to providing customer services at cheaper salaries than in developed nations such as the United States.Facebook, which lets users connect and share information with friends online, has emerged as one of the Internet's most popular destinations, challenging established players like Yahoo Inc and Google.

Facebook counts around 400 million users and has had large investments from Microsoft and from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.More than 8 million of Facebook's total users are in India, the company's director of global online operations, Don Faul, said in a post on the Facebook blog.Seventy percent of the people using Facebook are outside the United States and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages, he said.Facebook's office in Hyderabad will supplement operations supported out of Palo Alto, California, Dublin, Ireland and a recently announced location in Austin, Texas."By having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones, we can provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support," Faul said.

QUALCOMM FILES PATENT FOR A FOLDABLE TOUCHSCREEN

2010-03-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: Qualcomm filed a patent that directs toward a type of tablet device, which makes use of up to three touchscreens or in the patent application's exact words, 'a multi-fold mobile device with a configurable interface'.

The language of the patent indicates that the inspiration behind the design of this tablet-like device is an emphasis on smaller form factor devices, which are 'limited' to having smaller display screens. The proposed device's ability to be 'folded' will allow it to retain the key points of being compact and portable while providing the user with a larger display, reports PC World.

The concept user interface in the patent application changes depending on its physical orientation. This is because the screens will be able to detect their orientation in relation to each other through the use of one or more 'accelerometers, inclinometers, or any combination."

Beyond the automatic detection of physical orientation, the language of the patent suggests that the screens could be orientated in just about any direction. The patent also says that a device may be configured to have a larger screen size or may be configured to have a small form factor for convenience and portability." That is, you could probably pick between how many screens you want to use at a time.

Unfortunately there is no particular, announced product at this time, so it simply remains a concept at best. It is unclear where exactly Qualcomm expects to take this patent but we can probably take a wild guess that it will catch people's eyes in whatever form it ends up taking.

'MAKE NO MISTAKE: GOOGLE WANTS TO KILL THE iPHONE.WE WON'T LET THEM'

2010-03-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

IT looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Three years ago, Eric E Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, jogged onto a San Francisco stage to shake hands with Steven P Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to help him unveil the iPhone at the annual MacWorld Expo.

Google and Apple had worked together to bring Google’s search and mapping services to the iPhone, the executives told the audience, and Schmidt joked that the collaboration was so close that the two men should simply merge their companies and call them “AppleGoo.”

Today, such warmth is in short supply. Jobs, Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a gritty battle over the future and shape of mobile computing.

In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. This month, Apple sued HTC, the Taiwanese maker of mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system, for violating iPhone patents. The move was widely seen as the beginning of a legal assault by Apple on Google itself, as well as an attempt to slow Google’s plans to extend its dominion to mobile devices.

Google fears that Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizon could block access to its services on devices like smartphones.

Google’s promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world.

At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Jobs believes Google violated their alliance by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone.

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Jobs told Apple employees shortly after the public introduction of the iPad, according to a Google insider. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

Apple declined to comment for this article. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, have openly expressed admiration for Jobs. In a statement, Schmidt concurred. “I continue to believe, as many do, that Steve Jobs is the best CEO in the world today, and I admire Apple and Steve enormously,” he wrote. But business is different.

The ads run by service provider Verizon for the Droid put the rivalry in perspective: “Everything iDon’t ... Droid Does.”

TWITTER LAUNCHES LINK-SCREENING SERVICE

2010-03-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: Aiming to prevent phishing and other malicious attacks against users of the popular microblogging service, Twitter has launched a new link-screening service. Twitter will shorten URLs, so users will see some links in e-mail notifications and direct messages from other users written as twt.tl, Twitter said in a blog post, as reported by Owen Fletcher from PCWorld.

Phishing attacks ballooned on Twitter last year as the service grew in popularity. Twitter's new link-screening service comes after it last year started using Google's Safe Browsing API to check for malicious content in links posted by users.

SONY UNVEILS NEW MOTION-CONTROLLED GAMING SYSTEM

2010-03-13T23:53:00.001-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO - Sony Corp has unveiled its new motion-controlled video game system, pitching it to both casual and hard-core gamers alike, as the company looks to ride one of the hottest trends in gaming.

The new system will help Sony keep pace with rivals Nintendo Co Ltd, which pioneered gesture-based gaming, and Microsoft Corp, which is launching its system later this year.

Sony's new PlayStation "Move" controller is used with its Eye gaming webcam, translating users' motions into actions within games on the PlaySation 3 (PS3) console.

Move, which resembles a TV remote with a colorful ball stuck on the end, will be available as part of a package this fall for less than $100, Sony said at a media event on Wednesday.

The company said 36 third-party developers and publishers are supporting the Move platform. In fiscal 2010, Sony will release more than 20 games that are dedicated to or supported by the system.

Nintendo's Wii kicked off the craze for motion-controlled gaming, making the console and active games such as "Wii Fit" and "Wii Sports Resort" into huge hits with casual gamers.

Microsoft has already unveiled the Natal body-gesturing gaming system for its Xbox 360 console, which the company plans to have in stores for the holidays.

Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said in an interview that motion control expands the market opportunity for the PS3 to new consumers, and said the company hopes to siphon off some Wii users.

"We clearly want to speak to the 34 million people who already own a Playstation 3, then I think we offer a great opportunity to graduate from the Wii to the Playstation 3," Trettton said.

Sony said Move is especially precise, with every twitch and punch registering accurately in games ranging from casual titles for kids to fighting and swashbuckling swordplay games.

Sony said the accuracy of its motion-based gaming means it will also appeal to more hard-core gamers, generally younger men, who are the backbone of the $50 billion gaming industry.

CLOUD COMPUTING CHANCE FOR CHINESE SOFTWARE MARKET

2010-03-13T23:48:00.000-08:00

ABU DHABI- Cloud computing, a fast-growing way of selling services via the Web without physical software, offers a chance for China finally to develop a software market, according to a Chinese industry veteran.

Kai-Fu Lee, who recently resigned as head of Google China, said the kind of piracy that has hobbled Chinese IT was near-impossible in a cloud-computing model, in which companies or individuals pay to access services that are hosted elsewhere.

"China has been plagued by piracy for the last 20 years and that unfortunately has caused China not to have a software industry," Lee told Reuters in an interview at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

"But it's irrelevant now, because software distribution is shifting from packaged software, from end user licence, to cloud Internet distribution. and when you're on the cloud you gotta pay," he said.

Lee resigned from Google last year, a few months before the company reported a large-scale hacking incident that caused it to threaten to withdraw from China. Google is in talks with the Chinese government and expects an outcome soon.

Lee, who also previously headed Microsoft's Chinese operations, has now started a $115 million venture-capital fund, Innovation Works, that aims to foster Chinese entrepreneurs in the areas of mobile Internet, e-commerce and cloud computing.

China's business software industry will make revenues of $6.2 billion this year, analysts at IT research firm Gartner estimate, dwarfed by the United States' $99.2 billion and less than 3 percent of the world's total.

Microsoft's chief operating officer said last week the company would be cautious about investing in China until it improved intellectual property rights, and said China would not achieve its potential until that happened.

Cloud computing, or software as a service, is still a young industry and was pioneered by Salesforce.com, which centres around offering Web-hosted customer relationship-management (CRM) software for sales people.

Lee said cloud computing had already revived China's online gaming industry, which seemed moribund 10 years ago but is now thriving, thanks to micropayments that gamers make for virtual weapons or other props that improve their performance or status.

"If you don't pay, you can't log in. If you log in, we're gonna charge you. If you don't give me your credit card, you can't use our product," he said.

"That's going to enable the next Salesforce.com, the next CRM, the next whatever company, because now the software companies can charge."

Lee estimated it would take about five years before China would produce a company of the scale of Salesforce, which made sales of $1.3 billion last year and has a market capitalisation of $9.4 billion.

OPERA RELEASES MINI BROWSER BETA FOR ANDROID

2010-03-13T00:27:00.000-08:00

In a move to expand its franchise to a higher-end frontier of the mobile phone market, Opera Software has released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Android.

Opera's Mini and more feature-rich Mobile browsers are widely used in the mobile phone market, but the company faces a challenge in new smartphones using Apple's iPhone OS, Google's Android operating system, and Palm's WebOS. Those come with their own browser installed already, in those cases based on the WebKit browser project.

Mini is designed to work on less-capable phones with smaller screens, slower network connections, and less-sophisticated user interface abilities. Version 5 offers support for features including Speed Dial, which is a grid of favorite Web pages, compression through Opera's servers to speed download of Web pages that aren't tailored for mobile phones, and tabbed browsing.

The Norwegian company had released an earlier version of Mini for Android, starting with a technical preview in April 2008 and culminating in Opera Mini 4.2 for Android in January. It's also working on a version of Opera Mobile for Android.

GOOGLE MAKES ITS LOCAL SHOPPING MOVE

2010-03-13T00:21:00.000-08:00

It took a while, but Google has made its big move as a local shopping inventory gatekeeper. The company said Thursday that it will offer mobile device users inventory checks on local stores, allowing them to see if products are available.

The program has already enlisted some key retailers including Sears, Best buy, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Rest assured that local merchants, which increasingly rely on Google to send business their way, will follow suit.

These local inventory checks have been talked about for years. In 2006, Google, Intuit, and the Kelsey Group outlined retailing's future and it sounded a lot like what the search giant is rolling out today. Four years later, we're almost to the point where local inventory searches are part of your average Web experience.

In a blog post, Google outlined how it works. You do a search, click on a blue dot to see if a product is near by and then you can check inventory. The search works on the iPhone, Palm WebOS and Android devices.

WEB-CONNECTED TV: APP MAKERS FEEL DAUNTED

2010-03-10T23:52:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: By the end of this year, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs, which let users access online services such as Pandora with the same remote control they use to switch channels. Yet while developers have managed to create a wide range of apps for mobile phones, they are worried by the prospect of building software tools for TVs, reports Douglas MacMillan of BusinessWeek.

There is no easy way to create an app that can run on the wide range of sets, says Forrester Research Analyst James McQuivey. "Nobody wants to get in the business of developing separate widgets for Samsung, LG and Sony," he says. In addition to all those TVs, there's a growing range of set-top boxes, each with its own software. There is Roku and its Channel Store, which offers movie-streaming services from Netflix and others with handy tools, like a Facebook photo viewer.

To companies such as Internet music provider Pandora, each new outlet for TV applications presents a further opportunity to reach a fresh audience. The Oakland based company makes its free program available on almost every TV set and box on the market and says its TV business currently adds up to about 500,000 users. "The foundation is there for those numbers to start growing exponentially," says Tim Westergren, Pandora's Founder and Chief Strategy Officer.

Internet giant Yahoo! proposed a solution in early 2009, when it announced that new TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio would come equipped with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. So far the multidevice service is getting into homes - Yahoo says more than two million sets have sold with Connected TV - but the apps are slow to come. Only about 35 full-feature apps are available on the service, according to Russ Schafer, Yahoo's senior director of product marketing. TV makers are now unveiling their own app stores. In January, Samsung introduced Samsung Apps; during a Super Bowl commercial, Vizio pitched Vizio Apps. Both systems are generally compatible with Yahoo, but not all apps made by third-party developers will work on all TVs.

GOOGLE TO REDESIGN NEXUS ONE FOR INDIAN MARKET

2010-03-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: To take on Nokia, which has a market share of 55.9 percent in the handset market in India; Google plans to redesign its Nexus One mobile handset for the Indian consumers. Also, the handset is likely to be a simplified cousin of the one that was launched in U.S. in January and will be priced more economically.

Experts wonder that if this stripping down of features is strictly necessary. They say there is a market for high end smartphones in India too. Google might want to appeal to the majority of the 500 million mobile users in India who use low end handsets, but it need not have to adopt such an either-or strategy.

Currently, Nexus One has a five megapixel camera with LED flash, which can be trimmed. Since Google believes that India is still not a smartphone friendly country, they might do away with Wi-Fi and HSDPA, HSUPA. So power requirements come down drastically, and battery type might change.

The company plans to launch new designed mobile in India sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES TOOL FOR SEARCHING PUBLIC DATA

2010-03-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

Google's Public Data Explorer can generate charts based on a list of popular queries, backed by official data.

Google is building on its partnership with the World Bank and other statistics gatherers to present an array of data in visual form within Google Labs.

Google Public Data Explorer went live Monday, accompanied by the requisite blog post. The site takes public data regarding schools, population, crime, and even names to construct charts and graphs that help illustrate trends.

Google is also releasing a list of the top search terms that can be answered with public data, based on the analysis of anonymized search data. School comparisons and unemployment topped the list of the most frequent queries, followed by population, sales tax, and salaries.

The list gives searches an idea of the data available to them that can also be manipulated into moving charts and graphs over a time period. In addition to former partners the World Bank, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau, Google has added the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to its list of data providers.

GOOGLE TO INSERT AUTOMATED CAPTIONS ON YOUTUBE

2010-03-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

San Francisco: Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said.

The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said.

Google has been experimenting with the automated captions for several months with a handful of high profile partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic. All other captions on YouTube videos were provided by the videos' producers.

Google has been working on speech recognition technology for some five years, and uses the technology to transcribe audio voice mails through its Google Voice service, and to provide spoken Web searches from smart phones.

However, engineers warned that the technology is far from perfect and that the machine translations are sure to contain mistakes.

"We know it's not perfect, and sometimes it will be funny," said Google engineer Ken Harrenstien, who is deaf. "But it's better than nothing."

MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH SOCIAL NETWORKING PHONE IN US

2010-03-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

San Francisco: Software giant Microsoft is to launch its own mobile phones in the U.S. later this year as it aims to challenge the growing smartphone dominance of its main rivals Apple and Google.

The phones will be made available in July exclusively on Verizon, the largest cellphone carrier in the US, and will be aimed at heavy users of social networks, said the report, which featured what it said were leaked images from the phones' marketing campaign. The two phones are codenamed "Pink" and "Pure", and will be manufactured for the software giant by Sharp, the report said.

The report came after Microsoft last month unveiled a new mobile operating system that was widely praised by technology pundits.

Microsoft used to enjoy a leading position in the smartphone arena but has seen its position severely eroded by Apple's iPhone, by the Blackberry and by numerous devices running Google's Android operating system.

GOOGLE GRANTS $1 MILLION TO SCIENTISTS FOR DATACENTER RESEARCH

2010-03-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: A team of scientists from several U.S. universities has proposed to redesign a server CPU to give a separate power feed to the chip's memory controller, for which Google is giving them $1 million, reports Datacenter Dynamics.

This would enable the rest of the chip to be powered down when idle, while only the controller stays on to make the unit quickly accessible if needed. The idea is one of several proposals for a new Google funded research project aiming to develop new low-power modes in servers, whereby the maximum possible amount of server components gets powered down when the machine is idling.

Earlier this week, the search giant awarded $1 million to the project, a collaboration of computer scientists from University of California Santa Barbara, Rutgers University, University of Michigan and University of Virginia, according to a Rutgers statement. The two-year grant may be extended by one more year and an additional $500,000.

The team of researchers will work with UCSB's Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing. "Greenscale will provide critical infrastructure to the project with the planned construction of the Greenscale Experimental Datacenter, a state-of-the-art miniature datacenter where systems researchers can conduct radical experiments not possible in production datacenters," said Fred Chong, Professor of computer science at UCSB and the center's director.

While Google has been giving out research grants in the past, at a rate of about 150 grants per year, the grants it awarded this week were much larger than the ones issued previously. This week's awards, representing the first round of the company's new Google Focused Research Awards, totaled $5.7 million. Grants were awarded to scientists working in one of four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.

AFTER TOUCH SCREEN TABLET, NOW TOUCH SCREEN TABLE

2010-03-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Washington: Researchers have designed Pictionaire, a 1.8 meter long table, which is placed directly beneath a ceiling-mounted camera and projector, which can "read" and respond to items placed on the table. This is developed by Microsoft researchers Andy Wilson along with colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, according to ANI.

When a user places a sketchbook on the table, the ceiling mounted equipment recognises it by its size and shape, and projects virtual "drag-off" handle onto the corner of the page. If the user swipes over the handle, the camera takes a digital snapshot of the sketchbook page and sends the information to the touchscreen so that a digital version of the page appears on the table.

The ceiling-mounted hardware then projects the image onto the pad and the user can trace key components onto their sketchbook page. "We're playing with the concept of moving back and forth between the virtual and the real," New Scientist magazine quoted Wilson as saying.

Furthermore, when the user places the keyboard onto the touchscreen, the overhead camera recognises it. As the user types, images or words conceptually related to those they type appear on the touchscreen around the keyboard to help in the brainstorming process.

IPAD TO HIT U.S. STORES APRIL 3,THEN 9 MORE MARKETS

2010-03-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK - Apple Inc said the first iPads will be in U.S. stores on April 3 and hit nine international markets later in the month, easing concerns that manufacturing constraints could delay launch.

The news sent shares of Apple surging as much as 4.3 percent to an all-time high of $219.70 on the Nasdaq, as analysts said the speedy international rollout could help build sales momentum.

The 9.7-inch touchscreen iPad, which is designed to surf the Web, play video and games, and read digital books, is the most anticipated product launch from Apple since the iPhone in 2007.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the tablet in late January, but the company did not announce any international markets until Friday, when it said the tablet will go on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

"I think it eases concerns that were circulating about supply. There's always so much speculation around a launch, and this alleviates those fears," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross, adding that the breadth of the international launch should reassure investors.

Cross expects the iPad to be a major growth driver for Apple eventually. She estimates the company will sell 4 million to 5 million units in the first year, which will add $1 to earnings per share.

The April 3 launch date means Apple won't likely book any iPad revenue in the current fiscal second quarter, which closes at the end of March. Nonetheless, Barclay's analyst Ben Reitzes said the launch plans added some "welcome clarity."

"Not only is the device available April 3 in the U.S., but we believe availability in nine other countries by the end of April is likely quicker than many thought, lending potential upside to consensus estimates into mid year," he wrote in a research note.

Analysts are currently forecasting Apple's fiscal 2010 earnings per share at $11.62, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, up from $9.08 last year.

There has been some debate on how successful the much-hyped iPad really will be. While most agree that the device is well-designed and appealing to consumers, some analysts are not convinced there is a big market for tablet computers.

The iPad will have to compete for consumer attention with a myriad of established devices, including smartphones, netbooks and dedicated e-readers like Amazon.com Inc's Kindle.

Apple said that an iBooks application for the iPad -- which will compete with the Kindle -- would be available as a free download on April 3.

A BIT LATER THAN EXPECTED

The U.S. launch date for the iPad model with short-range Wi-Fi wireless links, starting at a price tag of $499, is slightly later than the previously expected late March launch.

Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner said there were some supply constraints around the iPad, which was not unusual for a major product launch. But he said that would not be an issue in the long run.

"I think supply constraints can have some short-term impact in the first quarter, obfuscating the true demand around launch time, but the longer term is more important," he said.

Customers looking for versions of the iPad with third-generation (3G) high-speed cellular data links will have to wait until late April, said Apple.

AT&T Inc, the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, will provide wireless connections for the iPad. But AT&T's top executive said earlier this week that he expects consumers to mostly use Wi-Fi to connect the iPad.

Beginning March 12, U.S. consumers will be able to go to Apple's website to preorder both the Wi-Fi-only model and the version with 3G and Wi-Fi, or reserve a device to pick up at a store on April 3.

Research firm iSuppli estimated the total materials costs for each device is $219.35, with a $10 manufacturing cost.

contd from the last post

2010-03-07T06:46:00.001-08:00

"Companies can no longer afford to just think in terms of traditional PC form factors or architectures," Principal Analyst Ranjit Atwal argued. "With the rise of web-delivered applications, many users no longer need a traditional PC running a resident general-purpose operating system and fast x86 CPU, Apple's iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry."

The statements echo Apple's own beliefs about tablets. Company chief Steve Jobs has put the iPad's importance on par with that of the iPhone and Mac and considers it more a general computing device than just a media browser. Tablet PCs have existed for several years, but in the Microsoft-endorsed convertible notebook format have rarely sold well beyond the niche markets of doctors and other very specialized fields.

NOTEBOOK,iPAD-LIKE TABLETS TO BE 70 PERCENT OF PCs BY 2012

2010-03-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: Portable computers like notebooks and tablets should make up 70 percent of computers in just two years. The category was already more than 55 percent of the market last year but should keep growing through 2012 based on ultraportables and tablets like the iPad.

Apple's device, along with other tablets and conventional tablet PCs, should help push the number of tablets on the market to 10.5 million just this year. Desktops will gradually become a minority and are only likely to see any growth in the developing world, Gartner said. Cost is now increasingly the main driver behind desktops, not performance, and even notebooks or Intel-based processors aren't completely necessary depending on the task.

GOOGLE OPENS POWERMETER TO ENERGY MONITORS

2010-03-05T23:44:00.000-08:00

Google on Wednesday released the API for its PowerMeter energy-monitoring Web application, a move that could let people get detailed home energy data without the need for a smart meter.

The Web application gives people a real-time graph of electricity usage and historical data with the goal of providing clues on how to ratchet down power use.

So far, Google has partnered with a few utilities which are offering PowerMeter to consumers as part of smart-meter rollouts. One device maker, which makes The Energy Detective (TED) monitor, has an option to display electricity data on PowerMeter.

By making the PowerMeter application programming interface available to outsiders, Google hopes that device makers and software developers will build applications that make energy information available to consumers, wrote program manager Srikanth Rajagopalan on the Google Code blog, adding that the API follows privacy guidelines and give consumers access to their information.

Google started working with smart-meter manufacturers because those two-way meters can be used to track electricity use in detail within a home. For example, one early beta tester of PowerMeter discovered that a pool pump consumed a big chunk of his electricity bill and ran it less frequently to cut electric bills.

There are a number of companies developing home monitoring devices, or displays, which can use different methods for gathering detailed electricity data. For example, TED and Powerhouse Dynamics' eMonitor device are typically installed by electricians who put clamps onto the cables that go into circuit boards to monitor current going to each circuit. Other device manufacturers have proposed getting meter data with a gateway using the wireless protocol used for automated meter reading.

Although Google's goal is to encourage third-party developers to connect to PowerMeter, it's possible that not all device manufacturers will be enthusiastic about doing that because PowerMeter is free at this point. Some energy-monitoring companies are developing proprietary software and, in some cases, plan to charge a monthly fee to get detailed usage electricity information from the Web.

CHINA TRYING TO PATCH UP WITH GOOGLE

2010-03-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

China is in consultations with Google to resolve its dispute with the company, which has threatened to abandon the Chinese market over hacking and censorship concerns, said a Chinese official on Friday.

The comment came from Li Yizhong, minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), on the sidelines of China’s annual parliament.
A Google spokesman was not available for comment.

Google sent shockwaves across business and political circles when it declared on January 12 it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and said it was considering pulling out of the country. Google said that it had detected a cyber attack originating from China on its corporate infrastructure that resulted in the theft of its intellectual property.

D-LINK INTRODUCES SME STORAGE, SURVEILLANCE

2010-03-03T22:28:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: Networking firm D-Link is going to introduce a range of IP CCTV cameras and storage products in the second quarter of the year aimed at the small to medium enterprise (SME) market, reports Computing.co.uk. According to the company, many businesses are looking to improve their surveillance capabilities and boost the storage requirements needed to hold the captured data.

Chris Davies, General Manager, D-Link explained that the company will introduce around 16 new storage products and 30 new camera models by the end of May or early June.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has released a grant aimed to promote and help small and medium-sized exporters fully adopt green operations in their companies, states PhilStar. At least 450 SME exporters in Cebu, Philippines will benefit from the three-year Smart-Cebu (SMEs for Environment Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency) programme, which is aimed at mentoring exporters in pursuing legitimate green or environmentally-friendly operations.

MICROSOFT TO OFFER BROWSER CHOICE?

2010-03-03T22:22:00.000-08:00

Seattle: Microsoft has issued a new software download that will let European users of Windows operating system decide if they wish to keep Internet Explorer as their computer's default browser, the company said.

The move is designed to ease concerns of European regulators that the Microsoft browser was getting an unfair advantage over its competitors because it comes as the default browser on Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system.

The new software update installs a pop-up window on users' PCs that prompts them to pick which of 12 surfing tools they would like to set as their default browser. In addition to Internet Explorer the choices also include Firefox, Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome and the Norwegian browser Opera.

The move comes as a new survey by NetApplications revealed that Internet Explorer is still used by 61 percent of all web surfers last month, compared to 24 percent who used Firefox, five percent for Chrome, four percent for Safari and just two percent for Opera.

'GOOGLE ENERGY' SUBSIDIARY CONSIDERS CLEAN POWER

2010-03-02T00:38:00.000-08:00

Google took a step toward entering the energy business with the creation of a subsidiary called Google Energy and a request with a federal agency to buy and sell electricity on the wholesale market.

The search giant formed a Delaware-based company called Google Energy on December 16 of last year, according to Delaware state records. The Federal Register on Tuesday referenced Google Energy's request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency with oversight over the power grid.

Rather than represent a shift beyond Google's core search business, though, the moves are meant to give Google flexibility in pursuing its corporate goal of carbon neutrality, according to a Google representative.

"Right now, we can't buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets," said Google representative Niki Fenwick. "We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits."

Google already has a very large, 1.6-megawatt solar installation at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. But having the ability to buy and sell electricity the way utilities do gives Google the flexibility to use much larger amounts of renewable energy to offset the energy consumption of its operations.

"We don't have any concrete plans. We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio," Fenwick said.

Google is seeking to become a carbon-neutral company by improving the efficiency of its operations, including its energy-hungry data centers. It also has a program of purchasing "high-quality" carbon offsets and it has invested in a renewable energy companies through its philanthropic arm, Google.org.

Google.org has funded technology start-ups in solar, enhanced geothermal, and wind. It also developed PowerMeter, a Web-based home electricity monitoring application offered primarily through utilities.

Outside of those efforts, Google employees are active in exploring the intersection of IT and energy, such as ways to use a network of electric car batteries to stabilize grid frequency. Google also created a partnership with General Electric to lobby for policies to promote clean energy.

At an event to discuss U.S. energy policy last November, Google's director of energy and climate initiatives, Dan Reicher, also indicated that Google could get involved in financing large-scale renewable energy projects, according to reports.

Over the past two years, Google has been active in pushing clean energy and efficiency in a variety of ways without becoming directly involved in the business the way a utility is. Making a request with FERC to buy and sell energy for a company outside the utility business is a highly unusual move, experts told Energy & Environment Daily, which reported on Google Energy on Wednesday.

"It's interesting that they'd want to take on the burdens of being a FERC-regulated public utility," John Decker, a partner in the energy regulation practice at Washington, D.C.'s Vinson & Elkins, told Energy & Environment Daily. But, Decker said, "there's no substitute for actually being in the industry if you want to learn about it."

NEW OPERA 10.50 BETA AIMS TO SURPASS CHROME

2010-02-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

The Opera Browser made some serious headway in keeping itself relevant when it introduced a new JavaScript engine for its upcoming revision. The latest edition of Opera 10.50 beta 2 for Windows contains no new major features, some minor feature improvements, and is mostly a bug-fixing release that incorporates around 100 changes since the first beta.

Also, in an effort to prevent attention from drifting away from the Mac version of Opera 10.50, the publisher has also announced a new release candidate for the beta. While that milestone is unusual, it's not unheard of for browser publishers to do this. Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 beta 99 last summer, just prior to moving Firefox 3.5 beta 5 up to release candidate status.

Changes to the Windows version include what appears to be modest but detectable improvements to the new Carakan JavaScript engine. In tests limited because of time constraints, I scored the new Opera beta on the SunSpider JavaScript test. Over three runs, it averaged 386.4 milliseconds, compared to the 435.6 ms for the pre-alpha on the same computer. Opera 10.50 beta 1 scored just above 400 ms, albeit on a different computer. For comparison, today's update to the development version of Google Chrome averaged 416 ms over three runs on the SunSpider test on the same computer that Opera 10.50 beta 2 was tested on.

These tests are not absolutes, and even running the same test on the same browser will score differently depending on whether the browser is "warm" and in use or "cold" and freshly booted, but they do provide a snapshot that the new Opera engine is extremely competitive.

Other changes to Opera 10.50 beta 2 include a visual tweak for Windows XP users, moving the tabs on top for when the default Windows XP theme is used. Windows XP users who use "classic" mode won't see the change. An Opera Widgets panel has been added to the Opera user interface, and the RSS news reader and e-mail client have also received tweaks. The full changelog is available here.

While there are still minor bugs in ancillary features that prevent it from being a stable release, the core browsing features feel well-integrated and smooth.

The Mac release includes multiple bug-fixes from the previous pre-alpha version, including improvements to Carakan, typing speed tweaks, fixing the context menu in the Speed Dial feature, and crash fixes.

THE INTERNET WILL MAKE YOU SMARTER - EXPERTS

2010-02-24T19:28:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES - An online survey of 895 Web users and experts found more than three-quarters believe the Internet will make people smarter in the next 10 years, according to results released on Friday.

Most of the respondents also said the Internet would improve reading and writing by 2020, according to the study, conducted by the Imagining the Internet Centre at Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet and American Life project.

"Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge," said study co-author Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Centre.

But 21 percent said the Internet would have the opposite effect and could even lower the IQs of some who use it a lot.

"There are still many people ... who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools," she said.

The Web-based survey gathered opinions from scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers, along with Internet users screened by the authors. Of the 895 people surveyed, 371 were considered "experts."

It was prompted in part by an August 2008 cover story in the Atlantic Monthly by technology writer Nicholas Carr headlined: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Carr suggested in the article that heavy use of the Web was chipping away at users' capacity for concentration and deep thinking. Carr, who participated in the survey, told the authors he still agreed with the piece.

"What the 'Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence," Carr said in a release accompanying the study. "The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."

But Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said, "People are already using Google as an adjunct to their own memory.

"For example, I have a hunch about something, need facts to support and Google comes through for me," he said in the release.

The survey also found that 42 percent of experts believed that anonymous online activity would be "sharply curtailed" by 2020, thanks to tighter security and identification systems, while 55 percent thought it would still be relatively easy to browse the Internet anonymously in 10 years.

AMAZON AND MICROSOFT SIGN PATENT DEAL

2010-02-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: Microsoft and Amazon have entered into a patent cross-licensing deal, as part of which, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money, reports CNET news.

The deal covers both Amazon's Kindle product as well as the company's use of Linux-based servers. Microsoft has maintained that many implementations of Linux infringe on its patents and has signed numerous licensing deals that cover Linux with both companies that sell Linux based software and those that use the operating system in their hardware.

According to CNET, Microsoft, which started an intellectual property licensing push in late 2003, has deals with scores of companies ranging from Novell to Samsung and Fuji Xerox. "We are pleased to have entered into this patent license agreement with Amazon.com," said Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez. "Microsoft's patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the software industry, and this agreement demonstrates our mutual respect for intellectual property as well as our ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved."

YAHOO PARTNERS WITH TWITTER TO BOOST SOCIAL FEATURES

2010-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc plans to integrate Twitter into its collection of websites, as the company seeks to enhance the appeal of its online properties with popular social networking features.

The partnership will allow web surfers to view the short, 140-character messages created by Twitter users, dubbed Tweets, directly within Yahoo sites as well as to publish their own Twitter messages without leaving Yahoo.

The move, which Yahoo announced late on Tuesday, comes a couple of months after Yahoo announced a similar deal with Facebook, the world's No.1 social networking site.

Earlier this month, Google Inc unveiled a new service dubbed Google Buzz that replicated many of the social networking features that have made services like Twitter and Facebook Internet success stories.

Facebook and Twitter - which said on Monday that users of its service generate more than 50 million Tweets every day - pose an increasing threat to established Internet giants like Yahoo and Google whose businesses depend on selling online ads to large audiences.

In January, Facebook overtook Yahoo to become the second most visited website in the United States, according to a recent report by web analytics firm Compete. A separate study by comScore showed Yahoo maintaining its No.2 rank with roughly 164 million unique U.S. visitors, while Facebook was the No.4 site with 112 visitors, behind third-ranked Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo said that beginning on Tuesday its Internet search engine results will display up-to-the-second Tweets about various topics, matching the so-called "real time search" capabilities that Google and Microsoft announced in their own respective deals with Twitter last year.

Yahoo also plans to display a live stream of Tweets within other online properties including its email service and sites devoted to sports, entertainment and finance later this year.

Yahoo executives said that the company was looking at ways to make Twitter messages relevant to each property, such as by customizing the selection of messages that appear alongside an article about a particular sporting event, for example.

"We believe that the content and context side of things is very unique," Yahoo Vice President of Communities Jim Stoneham told Reuters in an interview.

Yahoo would not comment on any financial terms involved in the deal with Twitter.

According to some media reports, Microsoft and Google paid a combined $25 million for the right to include Twitter data in their search results.

NOW,AN iPAD FOR TODDLERS!

2010-02-23T18:46:00.001-08:00

Bangalore: Robert Eckert led Mattel has come up a Fisher-Price iXL Learning System, which has all too inevitably been hailed as the iPad for the fresh-out-of-diapers set.

It looks like a tiny computer and opens like a book. It has fat, colorful icons on the right side and buttons and a speaker on the other side. As per the expectation of today younger generation, there are apps for the new product: Story Book, Game Player, Note Book, Art Studio, Music Player and Photo Album software. Apart from all it has touch screen too. There's also scope for expansion for it as it has an SD card slot and a USB port. It is compatible with Mac and PC compatible.

The product is likely to go on sale in July and start at $79.99. Robert Eckert, CEO, Mattel said, "We have invested more research and development dollars into iXL than any other product in our 2010 Fisher-Price product line and it definitely shows."

oOFDM - A GREAT RELIEF FOR STRAINED BROADBAND NETWORKS

2010-02-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

Monash researchers have developed highly effective optical fibre technology to dramatically enhance the capacity of strained broadband networks. It’s also expected to improve the download times across the world.

The innovative technology called optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing, or oOFDM has been pioneered by the Monash researchers Professors Arthur Lowery and Jean Armstrong.

The ADSL principles employed by the technology enlarge the data transfer capacity over the traditional copper and wireless broadband to optical fibre cables. It increases their data capacity tenfold!

This is what Professor Lowery says about the technology, “More and more people are accessing broadband internet and using it for data-heavy activities, such as video. This poses a major challenge to the existing optical fibre infrastructure unless the capacity or bandwidth on existing fibres can be augmented.”

“The appeal of oOFDM is that it offers an inexpensive means of dramatically increasing long-haul capacity from the current transmission rate of 10 Gigabits per second to more than 100 Gigabits per second, over new and existing optical fibre.”

Professor Lowery is also of the opinion that the innovative technology would make it feasible for the telecommunications carriers to provide the consumers with faster download speeds at economical rates. He says, “Standard data transmission is equivalent to transmitting a series of single notes, but oOFDM is more like transmitting the notes grouped together in a chord. Since more data is packed into the chord, more information can be sent that is less prone to technical issues, as each signal travels down the optical fibre.”

Besides, Professor Cornish says, “Monash University is developing the research solutions to the key challenges facing our world. We are proudly supporting Ofidium and TTCF in taking this ground-breaking research to market,”

Monash Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Edwina Cornish expect the Ofidium technology to produce revolutionary changes in global telecommunications.

The Monash University patent is commercialized by Ofidium Pty Ltd. The company has recently secured an investment of $250,000 from the Trans Tasman Commercialization Fund (TTCF). It’s a $30 million Fund based in Melbourne. TTCF has supported the University earlier also. However, it’s the first investment by TTCF into Victorian university research. Besides, Starfish Ventures has also backed the company.

GOOGLE OFFERS FREE ADVERTISING TO SMALL INDIAN BUSINESSES

2010-02-23T00:44:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: World's leading search engine Google would offer free advertising coupons for small and medium businesses (SMBs) across the country, the global firm's Indian subsidiary said.

"All SMBs with online presence will be able to avail our advertising coupons worth Rs.2,500 by calling toll free number 1860 266 6622 and registering their websites with our AdWords platform," Google India online sales head Sridhar Seshadri said in a statement here.

As part of this novel initiative, Google India also launched a new service JumpStart to offer free expert support to help SMBs build an online advertising campaign for attracting new customers.

"The AdWords programme provides marketers a cost-effective platform where-in they can measure RoI (return on investment), monitor and optimise their campaign. SMBs can start advertising online with a budget as low as Rs.200 a day and grow it as per their business demand, thus having control over their ad-spends and flexibility," Seshadri pointed out.

The new service will provide a quick-and-easy way to SMBs to get their advertising campaign off to a good start. Google India specialists will work with SMBs to set up their AdWords account and build a customised campaign suitable to their business and budget.

The initiative received a good response when it was launched as a pilot project in Chandigarh recently.

The SMBs sector, which constitutes 80 percent of the country's industrial enterprises faces an uphill task for advertising due to prohibitive costs involved.

"Recognising this roadblock and the huge potential for SMBs to grow, the company launched offline and online initiatives to partner with them and educate these businesses about the power of internet advertising," Seshadri noted.

Google AdWords enables SMBs to target precisely, pay only for results, and stay firmly in charge of costs.

"We foresee a vast opportunity in the small businesses sector and are committed to extend support to all SMB advertisers to help them gain from the internet medium," Seshadri added.

GOOGLE ATTACKS TRACED TO CHINESE SCHOOL

2010-02-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

A spate of Internet attacks that hit Google and other companies have been traced to two schools in China, according to reports, but Chinese sources have responded by denying knowledge of the strikes.

According to the New York Times, security experts investigating a string of hacking attacks on American companies have been linked back to their origins in mainland China.

The story, which quoted anonymous sources close to the investigation, said that the so-called Project Aurora attacks appeared to originate from Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong province.

Jiaotong is well regarded as a centre for computer studies, and has an extensive information security programme that boasts “high-level talent” and has links to military projects.

Lanxiang, around 250 miles south of Beijing, is a prominent school that has developed some reputation for developing computer skills. The report suggested that intelligence agents working on the case had linked the strikes to a specific class taught at Lanxiang.

While the Chinese authorities have not commented on the report, a female member of staff from Lanxiang told the Guardian that the school was not aware of the attacks on Google.

MICROSOFT STEPS UP SEARCH ASSAULT ON GOOGLE

2010-02-19T22:34:00.000-08:00

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp's assault on search engine leader Google Inc took a major step forward on Thursday as U.S. and European regulators cleared the software company's search partnership with Yahoo Inc.

The 10-year deal, struck last July, is the biggest effort yet by Microsoft to establish an online business to rival Google, an area where Microsoft has lost $5 billion over the last four years.

"Microsoft really has room to throw money at this," said Kim Caughey, senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group. "I think it can work. If they can make inroads in specific target areas, they could have something positive to report."

Microsoft has already made some progress with its search engine, Bing, picking up 3.3 points of market share since its launch last June. But Bing is not likely to "push Google off a very big pedestal any time soon," said Caughey.

The battle for online search ads is only one front on a sprawling war for revenue between Microsoft and Google, which also encompasses operating systems and mobile phones. But neither has yet managed to compete on equal terms in each other's core market.

"In terms of our modelling, we really don't see any impact from Microsoft-Yahoo on our Google numbers," said Clayton Moran, an analyst at The Benchmark Co.

"It doesn't change much in terms of the competitive dynamics of the industry right away," he warned. "From a Google perspective, looking out over the next couple of years, it's a nonevent ."

The deal, cleared unconditionally by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission on Thursday, is not expected to impact Microsoft's bottom line, but could lay the foundation of a profitable online business.

"Really now, the goal is about share gain. If we grow share, we will grow our way into profitability, and we have confidence we can do that," said Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi, who is charged with making Bing and the MSN portal a financial success, in an interview with Reuters earlier this month.

Microsoft shares rose 1.2 percent and Yahoo's rose 0.7 percent on Nasdaq, in a broadly higher tech market.

The Justice Department's Antitrust Division said the deal was unlikely to substantially lessen competition.

U.S. market participants had expressed support for the partnership as a way to create a more viable alternative to Google, the division said in a statement issued late Thursday.

Google, which did not oppose the partnership, did not comment specifically on the regulatory approval but said that there has always been "robust" competition in the search ad business. Its shares rose 1.1 percent.

HOW IT WORKS

The deal means Bing becomes the search engine for Microsoft and Yahoo sites, while Yahoo focuses on attracting big advertisers.

Microsoft will handle the automated auction of search ads for use on both companies' sites, and pay Yahoo a portion of search ad sales generated on Yahoo pages.

Microsoft is hoping that by making itself a single conduit for advertisers to access customers on both sites, it will become a credible alternative to Google.

Last month Yahoo handled 17 percent of U.S. Internet searches, while Microsoft took 11.3 percent, according to comScore. Theoretically, that would now give Microsoft over 28 percent of search traffic, against Google's 65.4 percent.

"At 30 points we are now a credible option, so that number matters," said Mehdi earlier this month.

Globally, Google is even more dominant, with 90 percent of the search market compared with 7.4 percent for a combined Yahoo and Bing, according to November data from Web research firm StatCounter.

FULLY COMPLETE EARLY 2012

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal was broadly expected to gain approval, but some had thought the companies might have to alter the deal's terms.

The partnership took months to hammer out last year. It followed Microsoft's aborted $47.5 billion Yahoo takeover attempt the year before. Google abandoned its own advertising deal with Yahoo in 2008, which Microsoft opposed, under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department.

Approval means Microsoft can begin the task of putting its Bing search engine into Yahoo sites. Neither company has laid out exactly how Yahoo's new search pages will look, but they will essentially be Bing searches with some customization of results by Yahoo.

The companies aim to get the partnership fully operational in the United States by the end of this year, with the transition of advertisers taking place before the holiday shopping season, if possible. The partnership should be globally complete by early 2012.

The deal had already been cleared by regulators in Australia, Brazil and Canada, but needed U.S. and European approval to take effect. The companies said they are still working with regulators in Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

MICROSOFT INCLUDES SOCIAL NETWORKS INTO OFFICE 2010

2010-02-19T00:59:00.000-08:00

San Francisco: Trying to make Outlook more users friendly, Microsoft plans to include social networking services into its latest generation Outlook email program, to be released with an Office 2010 set of applications later this year.

In a video posted at the U.S. software firm's website, Dev Balasubramanian, Outlook Office Group Product Manager said, "It really is about bringing friends, family, and colleagues into you inbox. As you communicate with them you can see their social activities; you can see all of the folks in your social network and it updates as you are reading your email."

Software that channels LinkedIn updates to Outlook inboxes was available online on Wednesday at linkedin.com/outlook for people dabbling with a test version of the popular email program. Now Microsoft is talking to Facebook and MySpace to do the same with content from those online communities. The LinkedIn connection to Outlook will allow people using the email program to stay in tune with any changes in job status, contact information, or affiliations being shared by friends at the career-focused online community. Elliot Shmukler, Product Management Director, LinkedIn said, "LinkedIn is all about your professional network. Outlook powers the professional inbox so the match is very clear."

Microsoft's announcement came shortly after Google fell into trouble with Electronic Privacy Information Center filing a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into whether the original Buzz wrongly disclosed too much information about people. Google Buzz was launched with a feature that automatically created public social networks based on the Gmail contacts people most frequently sent messages to. Electronic Privacy Information Center on Wednesday filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into whether the original Buzz wrongly disclosed too much information about people.

COMBINED PCs BEAT 2nd FATEST SUPERCOMPUTER

2010-02-18T01:14:00.000-08:00

NOTEBOOK SALES SOAR AT THE COST OF DESKTOP COMPUTERS

2010-02-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Notebook computers (or laptops) are getting more popular that too at the expense of desktop computers. Notebooks and netbooks taken together recorded a consumption of 11 lakh units for the first half (April-September) of financial year 2009-10, growing 43 per cent over the same period last year. However, sales of desktops stood at 26.1 lakh units, registering a decline of eleven per cent, according to MAIT, the apex body representing India's IT hardware, training and R&D services sectors.

The total PC sales between April and September 2009, with desktop computers, notebooks and netbooks taken together, were 37.1 lakh units, registering a growth of one per cent over the same period last fiscal. Given the current macro-economic conditions and conservative buying sentiment in the market, PC sales are expected to cross 73 lakh units in FY 2009-10, growing seven per cent, MAIT said.

Said MAIT executive director Vinnie Mehta: "Although the sales growth was subdued in the enterprises, the overall consumption in the PC market was led by telecom, banking and financial service sectors, education and households segment."

He said verticals such as BPO/IT-enabled services, retail and the government, which traditionally account for significant proportion of the IT market, were very conservative in their IT spends in H1/2009-10. The first-half of the current fiscal also witnessed deviations from the traditional downward trend in pricing for IT products as the dollar continued to be significantly strong compared to the rupee.

"This was mitigated, to an extent, by price drops due to technology reasons and also due to intense competition. Going forward, with signs of revival in the domestic economy, we expect positive growth for PCs and other IT products for the fiscal 2009-10," Mehta said. The proportion of notebooks in the overall PC sales is fast growing as these have rapidly become more affordable.

SOON, GMAIL TO ALLOW STATUS UPDATES LIKE TWITTER

2010-02-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: The rising popularity of status updates on Twitter and Facebook seems to have inspired Google. Google will soon allow users to share their status with other connections, just like on all popular Social Networking sites. Even though the news is not official, but the add-on is expected to be added as soon as this week, according to electronista.

Yahoo had done a similar revamp of its website to allow status updated. These updates also alerted users when their friends have uploaded photos to Flickr.

An unnamed informant says the new Google revisions will also allow users to share their YouTube and Picasa content. Gmail already lets contacts chat in the browser, set away messages and write short messages as their status.

BY 2012, HALF THE FIRMS TO TWEET: GARTNER

2010-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Bangalore: Gartner analysts have predicted that by 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use Twitter, and by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. According to Gartner, social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.

"The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities," said Matt Cain, Research Vice President at Gartner. "While e-mail is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises - and cloud-based social networking services."

By 2012, more than half of the enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than five percent penetration. The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organizations to look for an "enterprise Twitter," that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

"A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business," said Mark R. Gilbert, Research Vice President at Gartner and Co-chairman of the Portals, Content and Collaboration (PCC) Summit. "Success in social software and collaboration will be characterized by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business."

WINDOWS AZURE FINALLY READY FOR CUSTOMERS

2010-02-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing service became generally available on Monday with very little flourish. And that might be because this first wave of Azure offerings is frankly a bit odd.

I am sure Microsoft will eventually figure out how to give its users options that are more obviously appealing (perhaps using Amazon Web Services as the model?), but in the near-term the options are not as clear as they could be.

It's still a positive for cloud enthusiasts that Azure has finally reached a place where Microsoft is comfortable offering it commercially. And if you're part of the Azure team, you have to be glad to have any solidification of just what the offerings are.

In many ways, Microsoft is applying the same enterprise architecture principles to the cloud--with pricing variables for consumption, storage, and even integration with other applications. This may not actually be wrong over time, but it forces developers and users to think through the usage of the cloud components that they have no experience with.

I suspect this approach is due to the operating system-centric view that Microsoft takes of pretty much all technology. After all, they do call it a cloud operating system and it looks as though everything on top forms the stack, leaving users to not have to think about the OS. Again, not necessarily wrong, but the platform hasn't yet been explained or marketed well-enough to see the results.

That approach is in contrast to AWS EC2 or Rackspace, as Om Malik notes, suggesting that compared to "infrastructure-as-a-service providers such as Amazon with Ec2 or Rackspace with its CloudServers products, Azure attempts to handle more of the actual management and provisioning of virtual machines for a user."

I highly doubt that Azure will have much effect on Microsoft's near-term or even medium-term revenue (either positive or negative). What's important is that Azure has put a stake in the ground for Microsoft to be a part of enterprise cloud discussions as well as opening up Azure to the developer masses who provide invaluable testing and feedback.

Cloud computing in general needs Microsoft to be a part of the ecosystem. And while I am not convinced Azure is anywhere near right yet, Microsoft has plenty of resources to put toward the effort. Let's hope it does.

OFFICE 2010 HITS THE RELEASE CANDIDATE STAGE

2010-02-03T23:18:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has provided some early testers with a near-final "release candidate" version of Office 2010 as the software maker works to make the suite broadly available in June.

"Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the technology adoption program (TAP)," a Microsoft representative told CNET. "This is one of Microsoft's planned milestones in the engineering process; however (we) do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly."

A beta version of Office 2010 was released in November and had been downloaded 2 million times, as of last month.

The company officially started public testing of the product with a Technology Preview version that was released in July, although an earlier version of that code leaked out in May.

Office 2010 features a variety of improvements to each of the core programs, but maintains the XML file formats and ribbon interface introduced with Office 2007. Probably the biggest change is the addition of companion, browser-based versions of Excel, Word, OneNote and PowerPoint, known as Office Web Apps. Also, for the first time, Microsoft will offer both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the software.

Meanwhile, Windows enthusiasts have also spotted an update build of Windows 7--build 7700--making the rounds. According to Neowin, a Russian Web site has posted leaked screenshots of build 7700 of the operating system. However, it's not clear from the images just how much is new in that build.

GOOGLE SHOWS OFF CHROME OS TABLET IDEAS

2010-02-03T23:15:00.000-08:00

Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple's iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.

On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google's Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, "Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed."

The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.

"While its primary focus is Netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power," according to the Chromium form factors site. Chromium is the name of the open-source developer project that underlies the branded Chrome product.

It's possible that Chrome OS could be an easier sell on tablets than on Netbooks, the class of device on which Google said it plans to launch Chrome OS. Netbooks often are used as general-purpose PCs, so the browser-based philosophy of Chrome OS is a more jarring transition.

Today's tablets, in contrast, tend to focus more on a collection of specialized uses such as reading books, surfing the Net, and chores that only require light typing. With that approach, Chrome OS' break from the PC world could be less jarring. The tablet market isn't as big as the Netbook market, though.

The ideas are only mock-ups, but Google has established itself as a real if not dominant force in the computing industry. Its Android mobile-phone operating system is increasingly influential, and its Chrome browser continues to steadily grow in usage.

Contd. with the remaining topic

2010-02-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

While it's still too soon to tell if it can live up to the insane amount of hype that preceded its introduction, the iPad is, more than any other product the company has made, the quintessential Apple device.

From the almost entirely homegrown technology, to the addition of the books counterpart to its iTunes media hub, to taking a risk on the middle category between smartphones and laptops, the iPad completes the picture for Apple in a lot of ways.

Steve Jobs used "revolutionary" to describe his company's newest device Wednesday, and while that's more than a bit over-the-top, the iPad does epitomize Apple's evolution. Before he even introduced the tablet Wednesday, Jobs brought up Apple's three main sources of revenue: the iPod, iPhone, and Mac have made Apple a $50 billion company. By basically discounting the iMac and other desktops (which makes sense, desktops have been headed downhill for a while), he pressed the point about what Apple has become: It's "a mobile device company," he said. "That's what we do."

Though he didn't say it specifically, he meant it as opposed to a computer company--a name they dropped in 2007--and as opposed to just a hardware and software maker. With few exceptions, Apple makes portable media-centric devices, and of those, the iPad is the one that brings all of Apple's businesses together.

With the iPad, Apple has a device that rounds out the company's product line and also moves the company forward toward being the spoke in the wheel that is the world of media and technology. Making something that fits between a smartphone and a laptop has been a goal for the consumer technology industry for more than a decade. The most recent attempt has been the Netbook. The iPad easily makes Netbooks seem boring and staid, and too close to the same old form factor, the computer. The iPad is taking a different tack: taking tasks that were too big for an iPhone and puts them on a device that isn't pocket-sized, but is more convenient to carry around than a 13- or 15-inch laptop.

It's risky, of course, to try to jump start a category that has never been proven. But it's also part of Apple's M.O.: the company has a vision for the mobile computer and media industries, and a lot of confidence in its abilities.

One-stop shop
That extends to the company's manufacturing and design. Apple has positioned itself so that it has to rely on very few outside sources to create the device. Plus, any sort of content you want on the iPad has to be, with few exceptions, bought through Apple as the middleman.

Looking back now, we should have seen this coming over the past few years: Apple wanted a new way of building their MacBooks, so they came up with the manufacture process where it's cut from a single block of aluminum. They wanted to make their own chip, so they bought PA Semi and created the "A4," which notably cuts Intel out of the equation. They also have their own battery technology and are using IPS, or in-plane-switching LCD technology, for the screen that allows quicker response times for viewing video and wider viewing angles.

iPAD UNITES APPLE'S MEDIA AND MOBILE AMBITIONS

2010-02-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

MOZILLA RELEASES FIRST MOBILE FIREFOX BROWSER

2010-02-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

Mozilla has been steadily creeping toward its goal of releasing the first Firefox browser for mobile phones. On Friday, Firefox 1.0 for Nokia's Maemo--previously code-named Fennec--arrived.

Firefox for the Maemo 5 platform has a few interesting conceits that set it apart from other mobile browsers, like Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Mozilla is banking on the uniqueness of its claim to fame--third-party, customizable browser extensions--to help its browser win mobile market share. Add-ons, after all, helped make Firefox the top browser alternative to Internet Explorer in the desktop space. To punctuate the importance of add-ons for Firefox's mobile browser, Mozilla also pushed out on Friday the general release of its bookmark and history-syncing extension, Weave Sync 1.0, for both desktop and mobile.

Mozilla's accomplishment with a mobile version of Firefox is a mixed one, and not only because Maemo is a platform relatively few people have heard of. Nokia's open-source, Linux-based Maemo operating system supports mobile Firefox on just two devices--the N900 and the N810, an Internet tablet. To make matters more limited, just two days ago Mozilla unveiled a third release candidate with a last-minute decision to pull wholesale support for Adobe's Flash plug-in from the build, citing unhappiness with the overall standard of quality. As an aside, this is apparently a sore spot for Adobe, who became miffed with Apple for excluding Flash in its new iPad device about the same time that Mozilla made its comment about degraded performance when visiting Flash sites.

Yet what kind of mobile browser would Firefox be if users couldn't watch videos or adequately view Web sites that heavily rely on Flash? Not a browser anyone could take seriously.As a workaround, Mozilla has released an add-on called YouTube enabler, that early adopters can install to view YouTube videos. Mozilla is hoping to work out other solutions for those who are wary of optionally installing the Flash plug-in, but still want to see select Flash-based content.

Luckily for Mozilla, a relatively small sliver of the mobile phone-toting population actually has one of the two compatible devices, so there's time to smooth out Firefox before it matures on another mobile platform. Windows Mobile is slated to be next, with Android to follow. You can download Firefox 1.0 for Maemo here, and read more details in Mozilla's blog post.