Coming up SED Televisions

If you are bothered by term SED that means 'Surface Conduction Electron Displays'. Yes Toshiba and Canon are working on SED televisions. Which is claimed to give better picture quality than LCD and Plasma TVs, and Toshiba claims they have cut down the manufacturing costs to bring it in price league of LCD and Plasmas.

Although projected to hit market in 2005 from the beginning in 1999, with series of delays, it is supposed to come out in late 2007. Toshiba says first SED TV will be 55 inch display.

The delays apparently because of a law suite over technology (SED) used in these televisions, is patented by Nano-Proprietary Inc. Which is based on subset of Electron Field Emission Display (FED) technology.

True Digital Money - PayPal's Virtual Debit Card

PayPal launched Virtual Debit Card Beta. One can use this Virtual Debit Card for online purchases without fear of loosing the personal financial information. It helps in filling in the details about shipping address in checkout forms and protects from fake eBay and PayPal sites.

You can use PayPal virtual debit card on any site where MasterCard is accepted. Each time you make a transaction PayPal generates a virtual card number for it, and you don't need to use your Credit or Debit card for the purpose.

You can set backup funding source for the situation where you don't have any money left in your PayPal account. And of course you can set daily spending limits on your PayPal virtual debit cards.

Opera releases version 9.10

Opera Software today introduced real-time Fraud Protection in its award-winning Web browser. Fraud Protection includes technology from GeoTrust, the leading digital certificate provider, and PhishTank, a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. Fraud Protection is available in Opera 9.1, the newest version of Opera's Web browser. Opera is available completely free at www.opera.com.

"The key to an effective phishing defense is speed and responsiveness," said security expert Bruce Schneier, CTO of BT Counterpane and an Opera user. "Opera's Fraud Protection delivers both by providing the user with real-time anti-phishing detection, augmented with nearly immediate identification of suspected phishing sites."

Phishing is a form of online fraud in which a malicious party convinces users to visit a forged Web site. That site is designed to mimic a trusted site in order to trick users into divulging personal information, credit card numbers, or bank account details. According to PhishTank, the month of November alone saw more than 9,628 unique phishing attacks. Since most phishing sites are taken down quickly, only real-time protection holds the key to consistent safety.

"We are thrilled that Opera chose PhishTank among all of the available sources of phishing data," said David Ulevitch, Founder of PhishTank and respected member of the online security community. "Opera has long been a leader in innovation and usability and we hope Opera users find the addition of Fraud Protection from PhishTank in Opera to be of value."

PhishTank, operated by OpenDNS and community members, enables anyone to submit, verify, track and openly share phishing data. The open access of PhishTank, and the use of PhishTank data in Opera, is intended to encourage the sharing of information and increase the chance of eliminating phishing all together.

"Cyber-criminals are very active during the holiday season as more people venture online to shop or connect with friends and family," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "At Opera, we work very hard to protect the users of our products. We commit a lot of resources to ensure that our users are as safe as possible when they are online. Opera's Fraud Protection tool is something we have created with our partners to help users protect themselves."

Fraud Protection extends the original anti-phishing capability in Opera. Opera 8 introduced the security information field to help determine if a phishing site was masquerading as a trusted and verified site. Fraud Protection adds a new level of online safety by working in real-time to protect Opera users from the latest phishing attacks. To learn more about Opera's Fraud Protection and our ongoing commitment to security, please visit www.opera.com/products/desktop/security.
About PhishTank

Launched Oct. 2, 2006 to coincide with National Cyber Security Awareness Month, PhishTank, operated by OpenDNS, employs a sophisticated voting system that requires the community to vote "phish" or "not phish," reducing the possibility of false positives and improving the overall breadth and coverage of the phishing data. PhishTank makes all phishing data it accumulates public and available via programmable APIs, which allow other software developers to incorporate the anti-phishing data into their tools. The open access is intended to encourage the sharing of information and increase the chance of eliminating phishing all together. For more information about PhishTank, please visit www.phishtank.com.
About Opera Software ASA

Opera Software ASA has redefined Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices. Opera's cross- platform Web browser technology is renowned for its small size, performance and standards-compliance, while giving users a faster, safer and more dynamic online experience. Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA.

source www.opera.com.

Alternative Energy Source for Google

Headquarters of "Google Inc. will soon become one of the largest solar powered corporate office complexes in the U.S. by building a solar-powered electricity system at its Silicon Valley..." campus. This comes as no surprise to our regular readers. Reportedly, Google bought its new "Googleplex" campus for $319 million, where it is installing solar panels with a generation capacity of 1.6 megawatts, enough to supply about 30% of projected use at the administrative complex. C02 emissions reduction from the project is projected to be 3.6 million pounds/year (equivalent to 4.28 million car miles/year). "Pasadena-based EI Solutions, that forms a part of a high-tech incubator headed by entrepreneur Bill Gross, is handling the project". If anyone wants to keep track of the project, all they have to do is perform a google satellite map search...unless, of course, a security Dalek declares it off limits.



From the EI Solutions site: "To maximize energy output, the team assessed every available surface on the Google campus for its viability to hold solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. Eventually, more than 197,000 square feet on top of existing buildings and new parking lot shade structures (designed especially for the project) were fitted with cells using customized mounting hardware".

Firefox 3.0 Alpha available for Download

Firefox is a fast-moving application, and now you can take a quick gander at the first Alpha version of Firefox 3.0, the next iteration of the open-source browser for Windows, Mac and Linux nicknamed Gran Paradiso. On the surface, it doesn't look that different from the current version of Firefox (which we find to be unacceptably unstable, by the way).

Its innovations are under the hood, where it enhances compatibility with three tricked-out graphics standards that might soon be ubiquitous on the Web: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), the Canvas specification, and the cairo graphics library. Sounds great, but what does all this stuff do? They all have to do with making Web pages look the same on any platform, and scaling up graphics without loss of quality.

Scalable vector graphics have been around since 2001, and the idea here is to have a standard graphics format on the Web (the way jpeg and gif have become) that uses vectors, that is, descriptions of where lines will go rather than individual dots of each graphic that comprise bitmap images such as jpeg and gif. These graphics can be scaled up or down without any loss of resolution.

What about Canvas? It's another next-gen Web technology that's similar to Scalable Vector Graphics but adds the element of animation, where JavaScript code can access a defined area and dynamically draw on graphics such as graphs and animations.

The cairo graphics library is another vector-based graphics enabler that can use hardware acceleration that's already in Firefox and has been since version 1.5. Cairo can work with the Quartz graphics engine in Mac OS X, as well as OpenGL.

There's nothing quite like the speed of open-source development, but we wish version 2.0 of Firefox would be perfected before any grand adventures began on the next point release. But that's just us. – Charlie White

Download Firefox 3.0 Alpha Here

Customized IE7 from Google

Google Inc. has released a customized version of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) browser in which Google, not Windows Live Search, is the default search engine.

Google's customized version of IE 7 can be downloaded from this Web site.

In addition to using Google as the default search engine, Google's customized version of IE 7 also provides users with the Google Toolbar and a Google homepage they can personalize.

According to a posting by Microsoft Group Program manager Tony Chor on Microsoft's IEBlog, Google and other companies -- including Yahoo Inc. and USAToday.com -- were able to build customized versions of IE 7 by using the Internet Explorer Administration Kit.

Microsoft released the toolkit so developers could customize IE, as well as to provide companies with help to configure and deploy the browser through the enterprise, Chor wrote in his posting.

Microsoft released IE 7 for Windows XP on Oct. 18. IE 7 is also included in Windows Vista, which is currently available in full release only to business users. Windows Vista will be available to consumers on Jan. 30.

WiFi Router with 1.2M Square Foot Coverage

Canadian company AlphaShield has taken the wraps off its new AS-8800 wireless router, promising a mighty 1.2 million square feet of coverage (in ideal conditions, no doubt). Supposedly, the router's Power-G technology (not to be confused with Super-G, Xtreme-G, or Kenny G) gives it up to 20 times more power than traditional routers, allowing for the wireless signal to pass through concrete walls with ease and giving you speeds up to 108Mbps over a distance of 1,200 feet indoors and 3,900 feet outdoors. To round out the package, AlphaShield's also outfitted the router with no less than five Gigabet Ethernet ports, as well as a firewall, USB print server, and VPN support, among other standard router features. You'll have to wait a bit to put all that range to the test yourself, however, with the router set to launch in January for $250.

India's $10 (Rs.450) Laptop for students

What seems to be a catchup game, Indian Human Resource Development Ministry, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) met last week to devise a road map for a direct challenge to the One Laptop Per Child program (OLPC) - an Rs 450 ($10) laptop.

This apparently $128 dollars less than the One Laptop Per Child's 2B1 Children's Machine continuously revised price point of $100-$138 dollar per laptop. Regardless, the OLPC 2B1 is still the leading realistic low-cost option for at least it has a working prototype screen, developer boards, and software.

This announcement from India has none, and even less information about the features of such a cheap computer than Negroponte's string power generators. Outside The Times of India editorial endorsement this seems mainly to be a bureaucratic follow-up on a promise made by Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, to develop a cheaper but equally advanced computer for India's students.

Or to quote the original The Times of India story:

One official who attended the meeting said: " No one had any doubt about the feasibility of the project. Everyone is enthusiastic and wants a quick rollout. But we have given ourselves three years before the first $10 laptop comes out."

That would be three years of thinking and pontificating, while in three years, the OLPC laptop will be a real option with a price projected to be between the fabled $100 dollars per laptop and a price point promise of $50 in 2010.

By then, maybe the Indian government will have forgotten the OLPC rejection backstory and deemed the laptops pedagogically correct.

Source : www.olpcnews.com

Shuttle's Wii like PC

PC maker Shuttle has just released a rather Wii-looking ultra small PC, named XPC X100. The shape and size is a lot like the Nintendo Wii, and it even features the same type of CD/DVD drive. The PC is powered either by an Intel Celeron M or the more powerful Core Duo CPU, up to 2 GB RAM and a standard hard drive. The graphics are powered by a Radeon X1400, so all in all the X100 is far more powerful than the Wii, but it will set you back anywhere from $800 to $1000.

Penryn : New chip from Intel

Intel has finished design work on its next-generation processor, a key step in allowing the chip giant to meet a promise to get the product to market in the second half of next year. The processor will feature four processing cores and will be built on the Core microarchitecture, a blue print designed to boost performance while conserving power consumption.

Penryn, the code-name for the new chip, will be Intel's first using a process method that shrinks average chip features to 45 nanometers, or 45 billionths of a meter.

Just as a smaller font size allows more words to be printed on the same size piece of paper, smaller chip features mean more transistors can be crammed onto the same piece of silicon. That, in turn, allows chips to run faster and use fewer watts, a key selling point as the cost of powering large fleets of computers continues to soar. It will also enable additional features to be added, such as larger memory cache.

The timely advent of Penryn's is key to the wellbeing of Intel, which for much of the past three years has lagged behind Advanced Micro Devices. The introduction of Intel's Core 2 Duo has allowed Intel to regain the performance lead, and Penryn could mean that edge won't be short lived.

Intel marketers, who held meet and greets with reporters over the past two days, remained mum on most details, such as the frequency speed of the new chip or the number of transistors it will contain.

Rob Willoner, a technology analyst for Intel, did say Penryn will offer an expanded instruction set that will allow PCs to process audio, video and other media content more efficiently.

SurfAnonymous

SurfAnonymous is an internet utilities that hide your IP address, thereby saving you from the vulnerabilities concerned with it.

* Are you looking for a way to change your IP address ?
* Are you looking for Anonymous Web Surfing ?
* Are you suffering from Hackers ?
* Do you want to increase your Online Privacy ?
* Are your IP address blocked by websites ( chat, game servers, messageboard, forum ) ?
* Are you looking for FREE Proxy List ?
* Do you want to hide your OS & Browser Version ?
* Do you want to run Programs (MSN .etc) behind firewalls ?
* Do you want to hide your IP while chatting in MIRC, ICQ, MSN, Kazaa...etc ?

If yes, then SurfAnonymous is your way

SurfAnonymous offers you the solution from A to Z, it Includes:

1- Proxy Hunter - Search the net for proxies
2- Proxy Analyzer - Analyze Proxies speed,type,location ..etc
3- Proxy Capture - which force the applications to use proxies even if they do not support it by default.
4- Proxy Pool - where you can manage your proxies and eliminate bad proxies.

SurfAnonymous is fully automated. You don't need to have any knowledge of setting up proxy connections. Just "drag the mouse" over the application you want to change its IP and watch.



Proxy Hunter

Just add the url of the page which contain proxies and Proxy Hunter will bring all the proxies within it using advanced HTML parser.


Proxy Analyzer

Using Proxy Analyzer you are able to detect the type of the proxies ( Socks4, Socks5, Http, Https ) , Support smtp or not. detect the location of the IP and much more


Proxy Capture

Using Proxy Capture you can force any Application to access the net using proxies even if the application doesn't support using proxies !!


Proxy Pool

Here you can block some proxies from being used, as sometime the proxy may work incorrectly, so you may want adding it to the black list.
Hint: you can do this through the right click menu in proxy capture

Sony Developes enviro-friendly cards 'Felica'

In a world-first development, Sony has succeeded in creating a contactless IC card made from vegetable-based plastic (vegetable-based plastics are derived from biomass). Such cards are based on Sony’s contactless IC card technology “FeliCa” and can run applications like the Edy pre-paid e-money service, or function as ID access cards for companies and organizations. The convenience and security provided by such cards will fuel a rapid expansion of their use and this can now be allied to the environmentally conscious nature of vegetable-based plastic.
As a first step, Sony will issue 2000 such cards with the Edy application for distribution within the Sony Group. The cards will also be displayed in the Sony booth at the Eco Products 2006 exhibition taking place at the Tokyo Big Sight from December 14-16 (http://www.vcc.ne.jp/eco2006/english/index.html).

In addition, the Sony Health Insurance Union will issue 150,000 health insurance cards based on vegetable-based plastic (please note these are not IC cards).

Intel Low priced Notebook PC 'Classmate'

At the ongoing fall Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini introduced a sub-US$400 "Classmate PC" notebook model for the company's "Intel World Ahead Program" that targets emerging markets. The notebooks are scheduled for volume production starting from the first quarter of 2007, according to Otellini, adding that the first batch of orders have been placed by governments in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and India.

The Intel World Ahead Program was announced in May this year.

The low-cost Classmate PC series, codenamed Eduwise, feature Intel Celeron M CPUs paired with 915GMS chipsets and a seven-inch WVXGA (800×480) LCD display. The model features 256MB DDR2 SO-DIMM memory, 1GB NAND flash memory (no HDD) and a 6-cell standard Lithium Ion battery. The system will adopt the Windows XP embedded OS.

Production of Intel's Classmate PC models will initially be fulfilled by Taiwan's Uniwill Computer, which Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) is currently in the final stages of acquiring.

The IDF Fall event is held in San Francisco from September 26-28.