JitNik's Tech World

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dnsadvantage

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vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net

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Indian politician Brinda Karat has demanded that the Google website be banned in India for showing ads of clinics that help parents determine the sex of their baby during the pregnancy stage. The law of the land says:

The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act prohibits determination and disclosure of the sex of foetus. It also prohibits any advertisements relating to pre-natal determination of sex and prescribes punishment for its contravention. The person who contravenes the provisions of this Act is punishable with imprisonment and fine.

Since this looks like a punishable offence, Brinda has made an additional demand – the chief of Google India website be "arrested and prosecuted immediately" for the violation.

Google on their part have denied posting such ads on their website – "In India, we do not allow ads for the promotion of prenatal gender determination or preconception sex selection."


The interesting part is that Brinda’s claim isn’t entirely incorrect.

The moment I published this story, a Google AdSense Ad for "no-risk prenatal test" appeared in the sidebar of the blog as shown in the screenshot below. As I am seeing this page from India, Google algorithms should have ideally blocked that ad.

Muslims generally use the term "Halal" to designate food items that they are allowed to eat under the Islamic law (like fish). The opposite of "halal" is ‘haraam’, another Arabic term which is used for food products that Muslims are forbidden from eating (like pork).

This page describes in detail how stuff is classified as Halal or Haram according to Islam. And its not just about food, the term Halal can refer to any action that is permitted under the Quran while prohibited actions are known as "Haram".

A Search Engine for Muslims (and your Kids)

Extending the Halal and Haram concept to the Internet, Ramadan Kareem has created a search engine called I am Halal that might just prevent you (Muslims and Non-Muslims alike) from "accidentally" bumping into any explicit (or "Haram") content on the Internet.

Unlike Safe Search in Google which simply removes all adult sites from search results, I-Am-Halal, which uses search results from Yahoo, employs a double-layered filter.



When you type a search query (e.g. sex) that can potentially retrieve "haram" search results, the search engine would require you to confirm whether you really want to see those search results. When you say yes, it will fetch the relevant pages but will still filter out content that is not deemed as family-safe.

The search results page will also contain thumbnail images of web pages alongside the site links and description. And in addition to websites, you may also use IAmHalal.com to search for images and news stories on the web.

I am actually quite impressed with "I Am Halal" and, other than the religious side of things, this is something good for your kids as well. For instance, if they type a query that is bound to return explicit results, the search engine would simply refuse to work for that query.

http://www.imhalal.com/

If you took the first steps in a radical new technology only to be superseded by someone on the lines of mere reach and power, you’d want to win back that power. Way back when we were playing Pacman in our school labs Marc Andreesen saw a similar story written for him. He made his first browser ever – Mosaic, before heading to build the then famous Netscape Navigator only to see it get piped by Microsoft’s IE.

However, tech streams are now abuzz with reports of Andreesen, now an investor and startup adviser among many other things getting his hands behind a new browser. Andreessen is backing a startup called RockMelt, staffed with some of his close associates, that is building a new Internet browser. There are plenty of options availabe really if you want to go beyond the big four among browsers actually, but when the father of web browsing renews his interest in the field that he essentially created, you’d be interested very much.

The premise of this new adventure is the fact that browsers these days are essentially better versions of an existing skin, means they have not kept up with the changing web. And therefore, if one is creating a browser from scratch,t here would be a lot many things that would be done differently from what is conventional. In many ways Andreesen thinks Rockmelt is doing these different things.

According to Andreesen browsers don’t quite match up to the need of changing web habits influenced by sites like Twitter, Facebook, et al. He should know, he is after all ont he board of Facebook. Which brings us to the other aspect of the Rockmelt.

Readwriteweb claims it is the Facebook browser and offers a number of tidbits on that front. Though there has been no official word on it, it can very well be true and put the limelight squarely on Facebook. And that’s a huge move for a web publisher.




The implications on both counts are really high, on one hand there is a brilliant team developing what can perhaps change the way browsing happens and on the other Facebook can perhaps have towering presence among those fighting for extending their ubiquity on the web and beyond. A lot of questions then begin to find ground, and hopefully they will get answered when Rockmelt comes out of its stealth state.

SMS GupShup has been winning accolades for its superior messaging infrastructure and the capability shown by it in attracting user generated content. The site claims to have some 20+ million users and has earned respect for its business model despite bleeding severely in short-term by repeated interest shown by VC’s.

In a recent development SMS GupShup has announced its current tie-up to power the messaging platform on Facebook India, which would enable the use of its seamless infrastructure in messaging arena. This would certainly help Facebook users in India to truly experience mobility in interaction with the social network.

To Enable Facebook on their Mobile:

User can Visit www.facebook.com/mobile to activate mobile text features to receive and send updates.
Users can then update their status by sending a message to 92-FACEBOOK (9232232665).
Users can also reply to their friend’s messages by simply replying to the incoming SMS.


The availability of SMS feature was first launched for Tata Indicom users and now allows Non-Indicom users too. It would certainly proliferate the use of Facebook in India and it is also rumored that Facebook would soon be launching Indian office to derive separate focus on growth markets like India.

Microsoft recently launched online tools for Small and Medium Sized Businesses. The sales pitch - Online E-mail, Calendar, Collaboration, Productivity Software can Reduce IT-related Costs by Upto 10% to 50%. In a press release, Microsoft stated that all customers can log on to www.microsoft.com/india/onlineservices and experience the online service. The commercial launch is set to be on October 20009. Microsoft Online Services is a part of Microsoft software plus services strategy which provides flexibility and choice of accessing and using software on premise and on Internet as a service.

Mr. Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business Division said “Over 80 percent of the businesses in India are SMBs that are increasingly looking to use world class IT for better business productivity. With tools such as email and collaboration becoming increasingly a must-have in this segment, the pay-as-you-go affordability and freedom from IT administration, Microsoft Online Services offers the much needed respite from financial and logistical hurdles. We encourage businesses to make the best of the free trial opportunity we are launching – and experience the powerful impact of Microsoft Online Services.” The list of products is here.

Through this, Microsoft’s strategy is seen as embracing cloud and promoting its Azure platform. Microsoft seems to be going cloud in a big way, with it also launching Office Live (possible competition to Google Docs). However, Office Live, as commented in this article holds little promise for Medium and Large based customer services and contains several hidden costs.

Right from its multi million dollar launch advertising budget to its controversial/edgy name, Bing has been making quite a bit of noise on the web. In fact it is really pushing the envelope on a lot of aspects of web search, including monetization. Therefore, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that Bing in its own small way is beginning to have an impact on online search and access. Enough anyway to question whether it will have an impact on webmaster and SEO best practices.

The first and foremost reason why we need to consider this question is obviously traffic. Since its launch Bing has been gaining traction as a source of traffic for a variety of websites. Especially in the niches that it promotes its decision engine e.g. shopping, travel, health etc.

Once this obvious point is done with the real reasons of why it might have a bearing on site optimization comes through. It’s different approach to presenting content in the search result through categorization. Bing’s selling point at least the one that they blow their trumpet time and again is that it is a decision engine. Which makes the contextual relevance required in a search result far higher than say a Google’s SERP.

For instance, it is far important for an e-commerce site to be on the top searches in the shopping category than the all results one.

The whitepaper that MSN has for Webmasters clearing things out for SEO though doesn’t touch up on this aspect. It simply suggests that the bot and crawling it did as MSN search has not been changed much, and most SEO best practices remain the same for better indexing in Bing. However, like many in the field of optimization point out, this is just a list of on site or on page work while the impact of optimizing for Bing might probably lie outside of it.

I don’t know how important this news is really to a lot of people, but personally this can be a godsend and so this post goes out to the few people who want better control over their to do lists. So what’s the dope? GMail has taken a lab product and made it better and more accessible for all users with the new Tasks feature.

From today whenever we log on to our Gmail we will see a small feature lying in between Labels and Chat Box. Welcome Tasks to your inbox.

According to Google, one doesn’t need to turn it on through labs anymore and can be accessed straightaway. And they haven’t spared a lot of features while doing this, this is what the Gmail blog had to say,

We’ve been continually improving Tasks since it first launched in Labs. We believe simple and fast is best, so we’ve been working to make Tasks more responsive and get basic interactions working better: we’ve added mobile and gadget views, made improvements to task editing and management, launched in more languages, and integrated with Google Calendar. We’ve also added a printable view for those people compelled to do things away from their computers or mobile devices.

Personally, mobile and gadget views, and Calender integration to go with the email integration when Tasks were first introduced in labs last year are the most killer features. Check the video Google has put up to know more about tasks.

Companies looking to reduce their IT costs and complexities are tapping into cloud computing. Ask any five IT specialists what cloud computing is, and you’re likely to get five different answers. So it is pretty evident that Cloud Computing Services means different to everyone. Patni Computers are one of them who are planning to set up labs in India and the US to place its applications and data on the internet. According to Patni’s CEO Jeya Kumar cloud computing will change the way people ‘use, apply and adopt technology’. Patni calls it the ‘Incubation of Technology’. They promise to offer consulting, architecture, development and deployment services to enable customers to exploit Cloud Computing and derive business advantages.



Wipro is also building what it calls the “enterprise cloud” Its nothing but a capability it plans to offer to clients who plan to outsource their hosting or infrastructure management activities with the company. HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar states that cloud-based enterprise services provide an opportunity to create new business models. Its not just another technology as it is a shift in the way IT delivers business capabilities by both corporations and service providers. Microsoft has sketched out a similar vision, in which it would provide extensions to Office for document sharing and collaboration, but that effort remains in very early stages.

What is Cloud Computing?

It basically refers to a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service” over the internet. Thus, Cloud Computing should be capable of providing the end-user, services that have some or all of its characteristics. Cloud computing is still in the “innovation stage” according to IT experts. Hence its vendors will have to be as capable of withstanding IT audits as outsourcers are.





Besides being available over the internet, which apparently is a major advantage other than
Using pay-as-you-go payment model,
Highly flexible for user-specific requirements,
Highly scalable to adjust rise or fall in user’s demand of resources, without having any huge IT infrastructure.

What is Cloud computing usually confused with?

According to me the primary benefit of Cloud Computing is to making IT-enabled services economical in terms of time, resources and money. It’s been around for a while abroad, but now Indian IT companies are catching up fast on cloud computing and are betting big on it. One of its demerits includes that cloud computing does not allow users to physically possess the storage of their data. The exception being the possibility that data can be backed up to a user-owned storage device, such as a USB flash drive or hard disk. It does leave responsibility of data storage and control in the hands of the provider. While the concept of Grid Computing has grown in mindshare and relevance in the industry. Cloud Computing is very often compared to Grid Computing, Utility Computing and Automatic Computing, which doesn’t make any sense because they all differ from each other and they’re nowhere close to what cloud computing means. To perform large tasks from a composition of a cluster of networks is the major function of Grid Computing. While Utility Computing comprises computing resources packaged together as a service which includes computation and storage. And autonomic computing is nothing but systems created to be self-manageable.


SaaS is a type of cloud computing that delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a complex architecture. SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Salesforce.com. Today, for the most part, IT must plug into cloud-based services individually, but cloud computing aggregators and integrators are already emerging. Computer World reports about Cloud computing not being ready for critical apps. Hence there are feelings of insecurities swirling all around. The cloud storage is a very broad term that incorporates a variety of technologies and business models.May be that’s when it comes to cloud computing, the experts fundamentally offer the same advice. This can be summarized by two very famous quotations, one an old Russian proverb that President Reagan liked to use - “Trust, but verify” - and the other by Intel’s famous former CEO, Andy Grove - “Only the paranoid survive.”

Tata Teleservices strengthened their alliance with Japanese telecom major NTT DoCoMo by launching their GSM Service in Karnataka. Prior to this Tata DoCoMo launched their GSM services in Tamilnadu, Orissa and Kerala. Their much awaited GSM Mobile service has been now rolled out in Karnataka and AndhraPradesh as well. The Prepaid Starter Pack comes for Rs.49 in both circle with Life time validity. They have also introduced their post-paid plans in detail so that users can choose according to their usage. So apparently they are entering the competitive market full of biggies in GSM services like Vodafone, Airtel and others. The Japanese telecom major had acquired 26 per cent in TTSL, Tata group’s unlisted telecom company, for around $2.7 billion in November last year.

The name for new brand will incorporate brand names of both Tata and NTT DoCoMo. Tata DoCoMo announced the introduction of the pay-as-you-use advantage for many of its Value-added Services, including all its voice portals, 24-hour music, cricket commentary and voice chat. The company is offering per second billing to prepaid customers at a rate of 1 paisa per second for all phone calls across India. Other commercial operations have now begun in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The GSM service in Karnataka will have and extensive coverage of 472 towns and 2,642 villages apart from the highways, railway lines, airports and places of tourist interests. The joint venture plans to conquer more circles and become a pan-India player in a battlefield-like GSM arena. They had made a promise that this would bring to the country products and services that will redefine the telecom experience. In a market that is cluttered with many operators that throw up confusing options, they will try to offer simplicity to consumers by being the country’s most transparent, innovative and liberating telecom brand. They target have targetted the South Indian Circles going live first. This will be followed by areas in East, West and Northern region.

For those who don’t know or have never used Rapidshare - Its a file hosting and sharing service that is popular around the globe. As per alexa India figures as the second largest traffic provider to rapidshare after China. Have a look at the traffic share below:

Now Rapidshare COO Mr. Bobby Chang is in India to promote Rapidhshare’s services. He sees great potential in the Indian market and feels that the Internet penetration in India is only going to grow thereby leading to need for services like rapidshare which can host data online for free.

On the current traffic from India he stated
“Currently, we see about 2-3 million users from India every day using RapidShare everyday. We expect to see a 10-20 per cent increase in activity this year as we launch more services”

Bobby Chang was also in India for the RapidShare Lottery which was won by a 19 year old girl named Srishti A. from New Delhi. She was presented a cheque of Euros 50,000. Over 500,000 people took part in the prize draw by exchanging RapidPoints for raffle tickets.

The Dark Side Of Rapishare

Well for those who know rapidshare will also know that its notorious for hosting all kinds of files (pirated movies, music, software, adult mms clips etc). Ofcourse all of this is user uploaded and shared and if one does complain to rapidshare they do take down a particular file but when 1000’s of such files are uploaded its very difficult for a authentic content owner or even girls whose mms clips might be on the platform to report all of them. Hence rapidshare enjoys the traffic as not all illegal content is reported. One may argue that the same is the case with an UGC platform be it orkut, youtube or even facebook. While this might be true file sharing takes it to a different level as the file itself is downloaded by the user and now can be shared. Unlike youtube videos which cannot be downloaded that easily (Yes there are services for that too but not everyone knows about them).

So Rapidshare may be looking to increase its presence in India but before it does that it may want to relook at its services as many Indian publishers would not be happy with their content being shared for free and rapidshare making money out of the same. Rapidshare could be termed as the napster of the modern world only that its not P2P sharing but file hosting.

Google is developing an open-source operating system targeted at Internet-centric computers such as netbooks and will release it later this year, the company said Wednesday.

The OS, which will carry the same "Chrome" name as the company's browser, is expected to begin appearing on netbook computers in the second half of 2010, Google said in a blog post.

It is already talking to "multiple" companies about the project, it added.



The Chrome OS will be available for computers based on the x86 architecture, which is used by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and the Arm architecture.

Prototypes of Arm-based netbooks began appearing last month at the Computex show in Taiwan and Google's support for the architecture could give it a significant boost. Microsoft's mainstream Windows operating system doesn't run on Arm chips so many manufacturers were talking about using Linux or a version of Google's Android operating system. It's not immediately clear how much the two operating systems share in common code but Google said they are aimed at very different devices.

"Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android," it said. "Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web."

While Google is initially looking at the netbook segment of the market it might compete with Microsoft and Apple on larger, Internet-centric machines.

Chrome OS is "being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems," said Google.

Beijing (China) – Intel used the first day of the Spring IDF in Beijing to show off its Moorestown integrated processor, which is expected to replace the current Atom CPU and chipset later this year or early 2010. The company also introduced two new Z-series Atom processors.

It was the first time that a Moorestown chip was shown live to the public. What makes this processor special is the fact that it integrates graphics and all other chipset components on-die, which will make it substantially smaller and apparently less power hungry than today’s Atom generation.

Moorestown is promised to run at ten times less idle power than the current Atom platform. Intel declined to reveal how much power the chip will actually consume and, at least for us, it is difficult to estimate that number. Today’s Atom relies on a 45 nm processor as well as an older chipset design, based on an updated i915 version, which is called System Controller Hub (SCH) as part of the Atom platform. The SCH is manufactured in 130 nm and simply too power hungry and too large to be used in small mobile devices such as smartphones.

Moorestown is expected to become Intel’s second serious attempt to make an impact in the cellphone market – the first was the Xscale processor, a technology which was acquired by Marvell in 2006. However, this time, the CPU seems to be much more focused and could turn into an interesting competitor to ARM processors.

Intel also launched two new Atom processors with Silverthorne core. The Z550 is positioned on the very high-end with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz and support for a virtual second core. Intel said that the chip consumes a maximum of less than 3 watts and about 220 mWatts on average. There was no information on how expensive the chip will be, but we would expect this model to be a low-volume device that will replace the 1.86 GHz Z540 as the flagship of the Silverthorne family. We haven’t seen the $160 (including SCH) Z540 in any significant devices so far and do not expect that this will change with the Z550. The use of a $160 CPU+Chipset does not make a lot of sense in products consumers expect to cost less than $500 and system vendors have largely passed on it.

The second new processor is the Z515, which includes the company’s new “Burst Performance Technology” and allows the processor to run at 1.2 GHz, instead of just 1.1 GHz. Don’t expect these new Atom processors to become available anytime soon in netbooks, as they are exclusive targeted at (more expensive) MID’s where less power consumption is more important than more performance.

Intel briefly touched the topic of upcoming mobile Nehalem processors, which are scheduled for a H2 2009 launch. The company said that these CPUs “will be more powerful than their predecessors by including such technologies as Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel Turbo Boost Technology.”

Nokia N97 comes equipped with 434 MHz processor and 128 MB Ram while Apple iPhone 3G S comes with 600MHz processor and 256MB RAM. While comparing this hardware configuration, Apple iPhone 3G S stands ahead.

But main advantage of N97 comes when we take the operating system. N97 comes preloaded with Symbian 5th edition S60 while iphone 3G S comes with latest iPhone OS 3.0. But main advantage of N97 is that almost all applications for all purpose ia available for Symbian OS. Though the N97 has some touch gestures and the accelerometer, we have to admit that touch features on the iPhone remain iconic despite all efforts by Nokia and Windows Mobile.

Other noticable thing is battery life Nokia N97 provides more battery life than iPhone 3G S with its 1,500 mAh Li-Ion battery.

Also while we consider the storage part N97 has 32GB inbuilt memory and has a microSD card slot to expand ths storage capacity while iPhone 3G S, which has 16GB internal memory.

While coming to design part, nokia N97 has a 3.5 inch touch display and QWERTY keyboard while iPhone 3G S has touch screen display only.



In multimedia features also , N97 makes a step ahead of Apple iPhone 3G S. The main features is camera- N97 comes equipped with a 5 megapixel camera while iPhone 3G S has a 3.2 megapixel camera.

N97 also comes with the best speakers than the Apple iPhone 3G S and while on ear phones also Nokia n97 is able to compete with Apple iPhone 3G S.

Features such as handwriting recognition, Bluetooth file transfers, FM radio and video recording on the N97 clearly makes it a head over iPhone 3G S.



The Nokia N97 is expected to available at a price of Rs 36,119 in India while the 8GB iPhone 3G S is expected for about Rs 29,000. As per all the features are considered, the Nokia N97 is better than Apple iPhone 3G S .

iPhone fever was hot in May, at least based on the number of people who frequented Apple's Web site.
The Mac maker's Apple.com last month hosted 55.7 million unique visitors, more than the site of any other computer hardware manufacturer, according to a report released on Monday by Nielsen Online. The number of visitors was more than double that of second-ranked Hewlett-Packard, which drew in 21.9 million people.



May visitors to Apple's Web site spent an average of an hour and 14 minutes on it, perhaps in anticipation of the pending release of the new iPhone 3GS, Nielsen said.

Traffic to Dell's site came in third place, with 16.8 million unique visits in May. Overall, Web site visits to hardware manufacturers followed by Nielsen grew 22 percent year over year, from 57.3 million in May 2008 to 70.1 million last month.
Buzz about Apple was also in full swing among bloggers in May. Blog mentions of the iPhone 3GS shot up 1,226 percent on June 8, the day the new phone was announced, from the prior week. Blog talk dipped after that but then doubled on June 19, when the 3GS hit the shelves.

Mozilla's much awaited Firefox 3.5 is slated for release on Tuesday, a company representative has said. The updated version is being touted as a browser that will feature high speed.

Other key features include TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which boosts performance and stability, as well as a Private Browsing Model for control of private data. The Private Browsing Model does not retain visited pages, form and search bar entries, passwords, cookies, temporary or cached Internet files and so forth. Firefox 3.5 has similar features as that of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).

Around a week back we blogged that HTC will soon launch Google Android based phones in India and here they are, HTC is launching HTC magic in India today in strategic partnership with Airtel. HTC magic will be priced between 26,000 and 28,000 and will not be locked to any operator unlike Apple Iphone thus making it a go-go for users with any operator.

HTC Magic have a huge list of features making it a compelling buy for the users opting for a smart phones, giving stiff competition to Nokia N97, Blackberry and Iphones.

All Google services like Gmail, Google Search, Street view etc comes inbuilt with G2.
Smart Dialer with on screen touch keyboard making it easy to type.
Microsoft exchange server integration making it lucrative even for business users.
Wifi Connectivity so that one can use WiFi connection while in office,home. G2 also provides easy network switching capability, so that users can switch from Operator provided network to office/home WIFI in a click of a button giving them better speed and saving some pennies .

Though the price tag may look little bit on the heavier side but it may be able to pick up cashing on the Googlemania . Users will be happier with their Gmail, Calendar, contacts all syncing up regularly.
SPECIFICATIONS:-
Processor:Qualcomm® MSM7200A™, 528 MHz
Operating System:Android
Memory ROM:512 MB
RAM:288 MB
Display:3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 320x480 HVGA resolution
Network:HSDPA/WCDMA:900/2100 MHz
Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
850/900/1800/1900 MHz
Device Control Trackball with Enter button
GPS:Internal GPS antenna
Connectivity:Bluetooth® 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSB™:(11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
Camera:3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
Talk time:
Up to 400 minutes for WCDMA
Up to 450 minutes for GSM
Standby time:
Up to 660 hours for WCDMA
Up to 420 hours for GSM
Expansion Slot microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
AC Adapter:Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 47/63 Hz
DC output: 5V and 1A
Special Features:
G-sensor
Digital Compass

Before getting into the actual process, let’s look at a couple of real-world situations that explain why you may want to turn your home computer into a web server.

Situation #1. Say you have music MP3s, documents and other important files on the hard drive of your home computer. If you turn this home computer into a web server, you will be able to access all these files from office or any other Internet connected machine including your mobile phone.

Situation #2. You have some personal photographs that you want to share with other family members. You can either upload these pictures online to a site like Flickr or better still, just convert the computer into a web server. Now you can connect the camera to the computer, transfer the digital pictures to some designated folder and they’ll instantly become available to your friends and family anywhere in the world.

Situation #3. You want to host a website on the internet but the web hosting jargon like FTP, DNS, etc. is way too complex for you. The workaround therefore is that you setup a web server on your home computer (it’s easy) and then host a website in seconds without spending a single penny on external web hosting services.

Now if any of the above reasons look convincing enough, here’s how you can convert your Windows, Mac or Linux PC into a web server in less than two minutes - no technical knowledge required.

Go to labs.opera.com, download the Opera Unite software and install it. Congratulations, you are now running a web server on your machine and just need another minute to configure local file folders that you want to share with others over the internet.

Here’s an illustrated screenshot of the configuration panel - nothing technical here again.

Start the Opera Web browser (yes, that’s also you web server now) and enable the Opera Unite service from the lower left corner. Now double click the File Sharing link and select the folder whose content you want to share on the web. Any file or folder inside this folder can now be accessed over the internet - you can either use a public URL or specify a password for private sharing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-omonwFkkrY

The following screencast video has more detailed instructions on how to get started with Opera Unite or you may refer to the User Guide if you get stuck somewhere.
Opera Unite looks pretty useful but there are other services around that can also do pretty similar stuff. For instance, both PurpleNova and Dekoh Dekstop enable users share content on the Internet directly from the hard drive without having to upload it anywhere.

Update: It’s important to note that your computer must be in running state and also connected to the Internet for others to download files and web pages since Opera Unite streams content directly from your machine - it doesn’t upload or caches anything to its own servers.

While there are dozens of online services and software tools out there that help you download videos from YouTube for offline watching, you don’t need their help anymore for downloading your own videos from YouTube.

That’s because Google now allows all video publishers to export their own video clips out of YouTube in MPEG-4 (MP4) format - you can directly play these downloaded in iPod or other video players without conversion.

To download any of your own videos from YouTube, go to My Videos -> Uploaded Videos and look for the "Download as MP4" button next to your video clips as shown in the above screenshot.

This is useful for offline backup of your video or even if you are planning to copy (or even move) videos from YouTube to another video hosting service but don’t have access to the source video files.

The only downside is that these video clips have a 480×270 resolution so they won’t match the quality of your original 720p HD videos.

Android is a mobile phone operating system developed by Google. Android is unique because Google is actively developing the platform but giving it away for free to hardware manufacturers and phone carriers who want to use Android on their devices.

Open Handset Alliance:

Google formed a group of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies called the Open Handset Alliance with the goal of contributing to Android development. Most members also have the goal of making money from Android, either by selling phones, phone service, or mobile applications.

Android Market Place:

Anyone can download the SDK (software development kit) and write applications for Android phones. Google doesn't screen developers or applications. Google doesn't even take part of the profits.
These apps can be downloaded from the Android Market Place.

Service Providers:

The iPhone has been very popular for AT&T, but unless you void your warranty to unlock it, you can only use an iPhone with AT&T. Android is an open platform, so many carriers can potentially offer Android-powered phones. That doesn't mean individual carriers won't lock the specific phone they sell you to their service, but even that may change as more companies offer Android phones.

Data Plan:

To use Android, you need a data plan on top of your voice plan. You can't even activate an Android phone without a data plan enabled.

Google Services:

Because Google developed Android, it comes with a lot of Google services installed right out of the box. Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Web search are all pre-installed, and Google is also the default Web page for the Web browser.

Touchscreen:

Android supports a touch screen. However, it does not include "multi-touch," which is an Apple patented technology for iPhones. This means you can use a single finger to move items around or select them, but you cannot re-size by pinching or spreading gestures with two fingers.

Keyboard:

The initial release of Android requires a separate keyboard. However, the next major release, code named "Cupcake," will feature an on-screen keyboard. Dialing numbers and using non-text portions of applications can all be done without the keyboard.

The Bottom Line:

Android is an exciting platform for consumers and developers. It is the philosophical opposite of the iPhone in many ways. Where the iPhone tries to create the best user experience by restricting hardware and software standards, Android tries to insure it by opening up as much of the operating system as possible

The organization behind Wikipedia is close to launching an editable online video encyclopedia to enhance the current textual one. The hope is to revolutionize the popular reference site and goad content providers--from public broadcasters to the music industry--into allowing more video to enter the public domain.


Later,Wikipedia plans to offer ways for users to search the entire Web for importable videos, and plans to provide tools to edit, add to, and reorganize the clips within the Wikipedia website, just as is now done with text.

"To have people be able to go in and annotate your video, edit your video, and improve upon it--in the same way people have been doing to your text posts--is pretty outstanding, and will create an audio-visual representation of our world that will rapidly become as definitive and collaborative as Wikipedia is in the textual world," says Peter Kaufman, executive producer atIntelligent Television, a documentary production company in New York City that works with cultural and educational institutions, helping them bring their works online. "That may just be the holy grail."

Key to Wikipedia's video effort--funded partly by the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the open-source Firefox browser--is Wikipedia's insistence that any video passing into its pages be based on open-source formats. In the future, the offerings behind the "Add Media" button will include a search function for scouring the Web for video content. The hope is that this requirement will force content holders--motivated by the desire for exposure on Wikipedia--to put their material into the public domain. "Once people see how open-source video will get much more visibility on the open Web, it will motivate the content providers to jump on board--or miss the ship," says Michael Dale, a software engineer from Kaltura, a video startup based in New York City that is collaborating with Wikimedia on the effort.

Bad news seems to be flowing in for Yahoo users constantly. Yahoo recently shut down many services like Yahoo 360, Yahoo Geocities and Yahoo Jumpcut and now its time for Yahoo Gallery.

Yahoo Gallery is scheduled to be butchered on 14 July 2009. This service was used to showcase applications that were using Yahoo technologies like Yahoo OpenId service,Yahoo search,delicious etc. Yahoo Gallery was still in Beta stage and it never jumped into the market with the alpha version.



With the recent butchering of many services in beta stage, meaning of the term “beta” seems changing. Beta Software generally means that it is not a full production version and is still in development phase having some bugs. Beta stage is changing to somewhat like “The service provider may not have enough confidence on the service , they may also shut down the service without a decent notice as they are not sure how to monetize the service or don’t have enough funds to keep the service running”.

The recent closure of beta services brings another alarming question in mind “Most of Google services are in Beta, can they shut them down” . Google has already shut down many services which were in beta stage in early 2009. Can users live without Gmail,Google reader,Google docs is a big question as a downtime of only 18 minutes affected 5% of the internet how will discontinuation of services like Gmail, Google reader affect the world.

Why are providers like Yahoo, Google killing services:

Providers like Yahoo and Google are shutting down services one after another , How can one trust whether services which are now part and parcel of one’s life will survive long enough:

I can think of couple of reasons which led to shutdown of various services:

Recession - Everybody has to cut costs so they need to shut some things down.
Bad decision to start the service in the first place - Providers were not able to judge the market and requirements clearly and there was no clear path how the services will monetize hence they were killed as they never lead to any profits.
Whatever may be the reason of shutdown, one thing is clear providers need to think deeply before starting a service in the first place otherwise they will keep loosing confidence of the users denting their reputation in the long term.

Microsoft Corp in a quest to provide complete security to its OS users would soon be launching its own antivirus app Code named-‘Morro’. Microsoft also informed that the early version of the product is currently tested by its employees and would soon make a beta product available online before going for a launch at the end of 2009

Anti-virus app ‘Morro’ would provide full–time protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans .Although many are terming it as stripped down version of earlier shelved Live OneCare.



This news assumes significance as this antivirus would be completely free and would provide higher level of security due to close knit approach with Windows OS.Microsoft may be able to provide a great solution due to control over anonymous usage statistics of millions of PC’s.

This has sound alarms for commercial Anti-virus companies like Symantec,kaspersky and McAfee, earning majority of their revenues by protecting Windows PCs all these years. These companies also has significant presence in enterprise security market and attracts huge revenues from it.

Microsoft through this initiative is trying to ramp up confidence amongst its customers, at the same time opening up a new revenue stream in future.The move may be late timed but indeed serve great purpose for users craving about better anti-virus integration in windows OS.

The standard Google Translation service is pretty good for translating documents that exist on the web but if you ever need to translate Word files that reside on your local hard drive, the translator toolkit will come in handy.

It’s an online service where you can upload Word Documents or text files and translate them from one language to another instantly.
The document formatting is more or less preserved and you can download the translated files to your desktop in their original format like Word, OpenOffice or HTML. Unlike regular Google Translation which is read-only, here you also have the option to edit the translated version of the document in the browser itself.

The only condition is that the size of these individual documents, that you intend to upload for translation, should not exceed 1 MB.

http://translate.google.com/toolkit/docupload

Nokia's 8 MP N86 announced at the MWC at Barcelona earlier this year has started shipping globally.

"People demand mobile cameras that take excellent pictures in all light conditions," says Juha-Pekka Sipponen, Director, Nokia Nseries. "That's why the aperture of the Nokia N86 8MP is comparable to that of a high-quality, stand-alone digital camera. Whether it's running with the bulls in Pamplona or capturing the panoramic beauty of a sunrise over Sydney, the Nokia N86 8MP will take brilliantly clear, wide-angle images that are instantly geotagged to be uploaded onto sites like Ovi Share or Flickr."

The Nokia N86 8MP camera includes a wide-angle Carl Zeiss Tessar lens for panoramic pictures, shorter latencies and variable aperture for super sharp photos in challenging bright and low light conditions. A fast mechanical shutter will help ensure pictures with less motion blur. What could be construed as a disappointment would be the presence of a dual LED camera flash instead of a Xenon.

"When it comes to taking the best digital photos, it's the quality of the lens and the sensor that count, not just the quantity of pixels. The Nokia N86 8MP is the first mobile device with variable aperture, adding to the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens for excellent results. It has never been easier to capture special moments in such a great quality," says Helmut Heier of Carl Zeiss.

The handset features -

* 2.6 inch OLED, scratch resistant hardened glass display with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution
* Dual Slider
* 8GB of internal memory (microSD card support)
* HSDPA, Wi-Fi, EDGE
* Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0 (micro)
* GPS with A-GPS support (Nokia Maps)
* FM radio with RDS and FM transmitter feature
* 3.5mm AV socket
* Rear kickstand

The Nokia N86 8MP estimated retail price of Rs. 23, 331 (EUR 375), before taxes and subsidies.

Western Digital Corp. today(June 9),released its biggest consumer external hard-disk drive targeted at Mac users with a whopping 4TB of capacity.

The drive's $650 price tag may turn some off, but if you need space to fit 1,540 DVD movies, 800,000 digital photos or one million MP3 music files, then this may be the drive you.

The My Book Studio Edition II drive comes in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities and is designed with WD's GreenPower Technology, so the system uses about 30% less energy than standard WD drive systems and runs quietly because it doesn't need a fan.
The drive comes with a four ports, ultra-fast eSATA and FireWire 800, and FireWire 400 and USB 2.0, along with the accompanying cables.

It is compatible with Apple's Time Machine and includes software and instructions for reformatting to Windows operating systems. The system supports Mac OS X 10.4.10+, 10.5.2+ Windows 2000/XP/Vista: The 4TB version works with Windows Vista only because Windows XP does not support hard drives with capacities above 2TB.

The new My Book Studio Edition II two internal drives can be configured for RAID 0, which affords users the full 4 TB of capacity, or RAID 1, which mirrors the two drives to protect data in case of a drive failure but reduces storage capacity by half.

The new drive comes with a 5-year limited warranty.

Brilliant computer scientist who was crucial to the development of the Google search engine

Motwani was best known for mentoring Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their student days at Stanford University in California, where he was professor of computer science. As their search engine took shape, Motwani became their technical adviser and guided several other computer-based companies including PayPal, in which he was an early investor. A shrewd businessman as well as an acclaimed computer scientist, he also owned an undisclosed amount of stock in Google.

At Stanford University, where Motwani was one of the youngest professors, he started the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), a group that helped develop data-management concepts. The author of several papers in esoteric subjects like randomised algorithms and data streaming, his research spanned many areas in computer science, including databases and data privacy, web search and information retrieval, robotics, computational drug design, and theoretical computer science.

Asked to explain how Google's technology works, Motwani offered a typical illustration. "Let us say that you wanted information on 'bread yeast' and put those two words in Google. Then it not only sees which documents have these as words mentioned but also whether these documents are linked to other documents. An important page for 'bread yeast' must be having all other pages on the Web dealing in any way with 'bread yeast' also linking to it.
"In our example there may be a Bakers' Association of America, which is hyperlinked by most documents containing 'bread yeast', then it implies that most people involved with 'bread' and 'yeast' think that the Bakers Association's web site is an important source of information. So Google will rate that web site very high and put it on top of its list. Irrelevant documents which just mention 'bread' and 'yeast' will not be given any priority in the results.

In spite of his achievements, Motwani cheerfully conceded that the Google search engine did no more than a humble librarian – and was less intelligent. But he also pointed out that automatic software trumped the old technology in coping with the exponential rise in information.
Rajeev Motwani was born in New Delhi, India, on March 26 1962. His father was in the Indian Army and he spent a nomadic childhood following his father's postings to various parts of India. Young Rajeev wanted to be a mathematician, like his hero Carl Friedrich Gauss. "This was partly shaped by the books I had at home. My parents for some reason had a lot of these books – 10 great scientists or five famous mathematicians – their life story and so on. As a child, whatever heroes you read about you want to become."

He left St Columba's school in Delhi still hoping to be a mathematician, but his parents were sceptical about his prospects of making a living. Instead he joined Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which had just started an undergraduate programme in computer science. He obtained his bachelor's degree in computer science there in 1983 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988.
He wrote two books, Randomized Algorithms, published by Cambridge University Press in 1995, and an undergraduate textbook published in 2001. A kind, approachable man, Motwani was still active as a professor and was teaching a couple of classes as recently as last year, despite his financial success with his internet start-ups.
His awards include the Godel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in theoretical computer science, the Okawa Foundation Research Award and the Arthur Sloan Research Fellowship, the National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur, the Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and an IBM Faculty Award.


Rajeev Motwani, who was found dead in his swimming pool on June 5, was a non-swimmer and had been considering taking lessons. He had apparently drowned after a party to celebrate the end of the academic year.

Nokia today unveiled the N97 phone in Bangalore; the latest addition to Nokia’s popular N-series lineup. At the press conference today addressed by Regional General Manager-South, Nokia India, TS Sridhar and Head of Design, Nokia N-series, Axel Meyer, the focus was on the new Nokia’s ‘personalized home screen.’ This essentially means that users can choose from a number of widgets that will rest on the home screen and keep users updated thanks to constant online feeds.

Another feature highlighted during the press conference was the N97’s integration with the Ovi Store, Nokia’s answer to Apple’s app store, and according to a press release, “a full catalog of applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, and web and location-based services.” Also, Nokia claims that the N97 will be optimized for social networking since Facebook, Twitter and MySpace widgets are also available.

Features of the phone include a 3.5-inch screen that supports 16:9 widescreen display, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, 32GB of in-built storage, expandable to 48GB. Nokia claims that the phone boasts of a battery life of 1.5 days during constant music playback. The imaging features include a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash. Plus the phone is 3G ready and supports HSDPA and Wi-Fi.

Although Nokia was unwilling to give us the exact pricing, we did manage to get a Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 35,000 estimate. Expect this new Nokia in stores within two weeks.

Apple has unveiled the Mac OS X Snow Leopard, a refined version of the Mac OS X Leopard, and will ship as an upgrade in September 2009 for $29.



"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."

To create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers refined 90 percent of the projects in Mac OS X - so users will now notice a more responsive Finder; Mail that loads messages 85 percent faster and conducts searches up to 90 percent faster; Time Machine with up to 50 percent faster initial backup; a Dock with Exposé integration; a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that boosts the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent and is resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins.

Snow Leopard also includes an all new QuickTime X, with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video to YouTube, MobileMe or iTunes. It is half the size of the previous version and frees up to 6GB of drive space once installed.

System applications including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard's support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications.

Snow Leopard builds support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 right into Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal. Exchange information works seamlessly within Snow Leopard so users can take advantage of OS X only features such as fast Spotlight searches and Quick Look previews.

It features Apple's Multi-Touch trackpad integrated with the VoiceOver screen reader so users can hear and navigate different parts of a window or the desktop by moving a single finger around the trackpad as if it were the screen. Snow Leopard also introduces built-in support for wireless bluetooth braille displays and the connection of multiple braille displays simultaneously to one Mac.

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard in September 2009 through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) and the Snow Leopard Family Pack, a single household, five-user license, will be available for a suggested price of $49 (US).

For Tiger users with an Intel-based Mac, the Mac Box Set includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09 and will be available for a suggested price of $169 (US) and a Family Pack is available for a suggested price of $229 (US).

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26, 2009, for a product plus shipping and handling fee of $9.95 (US).

Suppose you are sitting in a public place like a cafeteria or in the airport and working on your laptop. You feel like having a cup of coffee. What do you do? You will be away only for a few seconds so you don’t want to carry it along. But then, could you leave your laptop lying around and hope that it would still be there when you return back with your coffee? This is a very common but difficult situation.

However, there is one tool that could help you in situations like these. Laptop Alarm.



Laptop Alarm is a free software tool that monitors unusual behavior when you’re away, setting off an alarm whenever it detects a possible theft. Laptop Alarm sounds an alarm whenever your laptop’s power cable is unplugged, the mouse is moved, or the laptop is shut down. This can be enough to deter a thief from running off with your laptop

Download Here:-

http://www.syfer.nl

/

It seems that the worst international financial crisis in decades has not affected everyone. While many US companies struggle to survive, some technology companies have plenty of cash piles. Still, how are they planning to use them? Let us see some of these rich tech companies:

Cisco Systems Inc is the most cash-rich tech company with $29.5 billion in hand, putting it just behind Exxon Mobil Corp’s $31.4 billion, despite having a market value less than one-quarter of the oil giant’s. Bankers and analysts think it may make a move on virtualization software maker VMware Inc.



Another tech company with some of the largest cash piles includes Apple Inc with $25.6 billion. In spite of spending about $2bn a year on R&D and capital investment, Apple’s $26bn in cash has left it with the biggest cash pile in the technology world. The company’s stock price too has rebounded from its low of $78.20 in the week when Steve Jobs announced his leave. The fact that Apple’s cash can be a big strength during recession has quieted critics, who in the past have called on the company to buy back shares or offer a dividend.



Microsoft Corp too sits on a huge cash pile of $20.7 billion. The rich software giant, however, announced rather disappointing quarterly results recently, unlike IBM. Microsoft recently announced that its 2009 first quarter profit sank from $4.71bn a year ago to $4.17bn, a loss of 12 percent. Total revenue was $16.63bn, a 2 per cent rise from year before. This was only possible thanks to higher server, tools and entertainment sales.



The search giant Google Inc too sits very well with a cash reserve of $15.9 billion. The Mountain View, California-based company had almost $16 billion in cash at the end of the recent-announced fourth quarter. According to Google CFO, Patrick Pichette, the cash reserves provided Google with sufficient flexibility “for the right deal at the right price.”



International Business Machines Corp too has a huge cash pile. In January, the company disclosed its full-year financial results for 2008: record revenue of $103.6 billion; record pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion; record earnings per share of $8.93; and record free cash flow of $14.3 billion, up $1.9 billion, excluding global financing receivables. IBM also announced an earnings’ forecast for this year at $9.20 a share, well above Wall Street’s $8.75 call.



The enterprise software giant Oracle too sits on a $7.4 billion pile of cash. Little doubt that the Redwood Shores-based company is quietly going on a shopping spree. Recently, the company bought mValent Inc, a small software company that helps configure other software. The deals put Oracle in amongst the cash-rich companies. Oracle made sales of $22.4 billion in fiscal 2008.



Sun Microsystems might be a little bit affected by the recession. However, the high-end computer and software maker remains among the companies with a relatively large amount of cash, even if its stock has been faced considerable hammering in the past few months further accentuated by fears of weakening global tech spending. The company carries a cash balance of $2.6 billion and a market cap of $3.8 billion.