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.

Oracle has more flaws than SQL Server

Microsoft Corp may be taking the most heat among software vendors for security problems, but it's not always the one with the worst record.

A comparison of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's SQL Server database with Oracle Corp.'s relational database management products by Next Generation Security Software Ltd. (NGSS) shows that the latter vendor's products to have far more vulnerabilities than do products from Microsoft.

Between December 2000 and November 2006, external researchers discovered 233 vulnerabilities in Oracle's products compared with 59 in Microsoft's SQL Server technology, according to NGSS, which has worked for Microsoft in the past to make its software products more secure. The study looked at vulnerabilities that were reported and fixed in SQL Server 7, 2000 and 2005 and Oracle's database Versions 8, 9 and 10g.

The results show that the reputation that Microsoft SQL Server had back in 2002 for relatively poor security is no longer deserved, said David Litchfield, founder of Surrey, England-based NGSS. And neither is the beating that Microsoft has gotten for security issues, he said.

"I think it's time people got past this, especially security researchers," Litchfield said. "We should be about closing holes and improving a vendor's outlook on security and -- largely -- that battle has been won with Microsoft," he said. The results show that Microsoft's software development life-cycle processes appear to be working, he said.

"There are other battles needing to be fought and won -- Oracle being one of them," Litchfield said.

In an e-mailed comment, an Oracle spokeswoman said the number of reported vulnerabilities in a product alone is not a measure of the overall security of that software.

"Products vary significantly in terms of richness of features and capabilities as well as number of versions and supported platforms," she said. "Measuring security is a very complex process, and customers must take a number of factors into consideration -- including use-case scenarios, default configurations as well as vulnerability remediation and disclosure policies and practices."

Basing a product's security just on the number of vulnerabilities discovered and fixed may not be the best approach, said Pete Lindstrom, an analyst at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group. "Oracle apparently won an ugly contest," he said. But "there's got to be other criteria other than known vulnerabilities" for measuring software security, Lindstrom said.

Until then, Lindstrom said, "the jury should still be out on what's more or less secure."

The NGSS report comes at a time when security researchers, irked by what they consider to be Oracle's glacial pace of fixing bugs, are increasingly turning their attention to its products. In October, the company announced fixes for over 100 flaws as part of its scheduled quarterly security updates. Many of the flaws were reported to the company by outside researchers.

Just this week, Argeniss Information Security in Buenos Aires announced plans to disclose one zero-day bug every day for a week in December.

In a note posted on the company's site, founder Cesar Cerrudo said the idea is to highlight the current state of Oracle software security. "We want to demonstrate that Oracle isn't getting any better at securing its products" and continues to take a very long time to address bugs, the note said. "We could do the Year of Oracle Database Bugs, but we think a week is enough to show how flawed Oracle software is," the note read.

Source : computerworld.com

Digital Camera Vs. Film - Pros And Cons

Consumers have been pretty receptive to the lower priced “point and shoot” models , but there are still some holdouts.

Great strides have been made in digital technology over the past few years, but more sophisticated digital cameras have only recently come down in price enough to attract the “serious amateur” market. In the past, the price of high-end digital camera equipment was more suited to the professional who could turn that investment into an income source.

Even traditional film buffs are slowly coming around to the benefits of digital photography. Among the holdouts, the chief problem seems to be confusion. There are so many choices, with a broad range of options, and just as many price ranges.

It’s cheaper not to make a decision, than to make a mistake.

They get lost in the terminology, and have reservations about the quality of digital photos and about the reliability of the digital cameras. With the whirlwind of innovation flooding our lives everyday, it’s become really difficult to keep up.

Technology advances, prices come down, and a deal today may be obsolete tomorrow. At least that’s what worries many potential digital camera owners.

So let’s look at five of the most common questions about digital camera photography to shed some light on the matter, for those who are hesitant about this new technology, or who have dismissed it as a mere fad.

1. Do digital cameras produce quality photos?

Digital photos can be displayed at very high resolutions, and could easily surpass conventional photographs, but many have seen poorer quality images. Early color printers could be used to print color photos from digital cameras, but the quality just wasn’t there. Blurry images on low-grade computer monitors or on the small LCD screens of the cameras themselves, do nothing to increase your confidence.

But view the high resolution images available from today’s digital cameras on a capable monitor or after being printed on one of the newer photo quality printers (using photo quality paper) and you’ll see the crystal clear quality of what is available today.

2. How durable are digital camera photos?

Digital camera photos are not stored on film. They’re stored on electronic memory devices that actually require much less care than negative film.

As long as reasonable care is taken of the particular storage device, there shouldn’t be any problems with protecting images caught on a digital camera, and you can easily make copies of the digital image files on your computer or even burn them to a CD - an option that isn’t available with film.

3. Are digital camera photos more expensive to process?

Not anymore. First, you can eliminate any poor images before printing and only pay for those that you print. With “easy share” technology and photo quality printers now available, it is both affordable and convenient to print digital camera photos.

You can even do the task yourself, in the comfort of your own home - without buying expensive development chemicals that are required for film processing! Or, you can send your images electronically to a professional processor, and receive professionally produced photos back in the mail in just a few days.

4. Can I get different effects with a digital camera?

That depends on the digital camera. High end models have built-in features that allow different kinds of effects. But even if your digital camera doesn’t have these advanced features, you can always manipulate the photographs on your desktop computer, using any image editing software.

5. Are zooming features comparable?

Here digital cameras actually have a distinct advantage over film cameras. While cheaper digital cameras may only have digital zoom (which is really just a form of in-camera enlargement that results in a lower resolution original image), high end models are available with both digital and optical zooming.

When shopping for your digital camera, give priority to the optical zoom capability and buy the highest power optical zoom that fits within your budget. Digital zoom is a nice extra, but the effects can easily be replicated during the “processing” of the image on your computer, prior to printing the images.

Firefox 2.0 beware of password fishing

"Today, Mozilla made public bug #360493, which exposes Firefox's Password Manager on many public sites. The flaw derives from Firefox's willingness to supply the username and password stored on one page on a domain to another page on a domain. For example, username/password input tags on a Myspace user's site will be unhelpfully propagated with the visitor's Myspace.com credentials. It was first discovered in the wild by Netcraft on Oct. 27. As this proof-of-concept illustrates, because the username/password fields need not be visible on the page, your password can be stolen in an almost completely transparent fashion. Stopgap solutions include avoiding using Password Manager and the Master Password Timeout Firefox extension, which will at least cause a prompt before the fields are filled. However, in the original case detailed in the bug report, the phish mimicked the login.myspace.com site almost perfectly, causing many users to believe they needed to log in. A description of this new type of attack, dubbed the Reverse Cross-Site Request (RCSR) vulnerability, is available from the bug's original author."

Newman Plum Multimedia Player

Newman will soon launch the "plume" will be 320.26 million color QVGA 240 × 2.4-inch high definition screen. AVI/ASF/WMV/MP4/MTV/3GP/MOV/MPG/DAT/VOB support a variety of video formats. Rate H.264 broadcast over other functions include text to read, browse photos, records management, current prices and more information has not been published.

Turning Microsoft Zune into a PDA

Microsoft's Zune was supposed to be the latest in a long line of would-be "iPod killers", however, like such stellar previous attempts like the Dell DJ, it hasn't been met with much enthusiasm. A column runs down the criticisms leveled at the Zune (poor hardware, poor usability, compatibility problems -- in other words, pretty much everything), and says that to make the Zune more desirable, Microsoft needs to make it "more like Windows". That conjures up all sorts of possibilities in the mind, but the writer somehow takes that to mean making the Zune more open to customization and modification, as opposed to "Apple's strict gadget lockdown". He says Microsoft should create a development environment for the Zune, giving out free developer tools and fostering the creation of new applications and uses for the Zune. Which sounds pretty much exactly like... the development environment Microsoft's created around Windows Mobile PDAs, and last time we checked, that ecosystem wasn't exactly helping Pocket PCs destroy the iPod. While it's inevitable that convergence will see music and other media playback features rolled into devices like mobile phones, standalone devices will continue to thrive until converged devices can offer a comparable user experience to players such as the iPod -- and that's where Zune falls down. And never mind that Microsoft's willingess to accede to record labels and favor their interests over those of users means the iPod's probably safe for a while yet. Microsoft's corporate culture makes it hard pressed to come up with something that can compete favorably against the iPod. Perhaps instead of trying to create an iPod killer of its own, its time would be better spent improving its software so that a hipper and more nimble company could build one instead.

Sony Playstation 3

Sony must be pleased with the responses so far as reports come in of people camping in long lines and even fighting for places in line for their chance to buy a PS3.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has to be pleased with the early reports of the response to the impending release of the Playstation 3. People are camping in long lines at Toys "R" Us and Best Buy in order to be the first on their block to own the high-end computer entertainment system.

In some cases, fighting has even broken out for a place in the line. In West Bend WI, a 19-year-old man was taken to an area hospital after getting hurt while waiting to buy a Sony Playstation 3 video game system to go on sale at midnight. Sheriff's officials in Palmdale, CA say deputies shut down a Super Wal-Mart in Palmdale after a crowd of shoppers camped out for a chance to buy PlayStation 3 got rowdy.

Sony officials have even tried to minimize the problems by announcing that the PS3 would be in short supply and that quantities would be very limited all over the country but that seems to only have made things worse in some areas. Sony will be shipping only 1 million units at launch with only 400,000 of those earmarked for North America.

Some interesting facts about Google

1.Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

2.The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.

3.Google is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

4.Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 ears prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.

5. It consisted of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

6.The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.

7.Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of eight billions(2005) of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

8.Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes - such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. Some thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool's Day was a joke.

9.Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

10.Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth's orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

11.Google has a world-class staff of 9,378 full-time employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex located at Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway.

12.Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices.

13."I feel lucky" is nearly never used. It was a comfort button which actually takes to the first web page returned by the search results.

14.Google use the unique 20%/5% rules. That is ,if at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the 'Advanced Preferences'.

15.Employees in Google are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. That's why we have GMail,Google News and Orkut now.

16.Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world's largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

17.The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

18.Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company's chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

19. Google’s Orkut is very popular in Brazil and India. It was the brainchild of a Google engineer who was given free reign to run with it.

20.In a 2006 report of the world's richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a net worth of $12.8 billion

Ethernet at 100 GBPS

How fast can data travel over Ethernet? If you answered 10 Gigabit per second, then you would be off by about 90 gigabits per second. Infinera1, a San Jose, Calif.-based start-up, along with University of California, Santa Cruz, Internet2 and Level32 Communications, today demonstrated a3 100 gigabit/second Ethernet connection that could carry data over a 4000 kilometer fiber network. The trial took place at the Super Computing Show in Tampa, Florida.

The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at the University of California at Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.

A single Xilinx FPGA implements this packet numbering scheme and electrically transmits all ten signals to ten of Finisar’s 10 Gb/s XFP optical transceivers which in turn convert the signals to optics. These signals are then transmitted to an Infinera DTN DWDM system.

These packets which have a special sequence numbering are then reassembled by the receiver. In short, Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver. (Services that combine multiple wavelengths to offer a single service are referred to as super-lambda services.)

The trial shows that seriously high speed services can be offered over existing 10 Gb/s transport networks. “Gigabit Ethernet will be a critical technology to accommodate bandwidth growth, and this demonstration shows that we have the capability to implement this as a super-lambda service over today’s networks,” said Infinera co-founder and CTO Drew Perkins.

It was about 14 months ago we wrote about the 10 GB/s network4 that connected the University of California, San Diego and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center over a dedicated optical path. We chatted with Perkins earlier today and he said that the trial today shows that you can build scalable systems that can achieve higher speeds. “The way bandwidth demand is growing right now, we need 100 Gb/second now,” he says. “The network is going to keep growing.”

The IEEE has set up a Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) group and is looking for specifications for higher speed Ethernet. The 10 GbE took about five years to become a standard, but the working group might have to hurry this time around. Proliferation of higher speed consumer connections, and emergence of video over IP will make 100 GbE a must have for most carriers. While the 100 GbE technology is unlikely to show up in your neighborhood anytime soon, the trial is an important step in addressing the ever growing demand for bandwidth. The technologies like the one demonstrated by infinera and its partners will first show up in long haul networks. The largest IP backbones are currently using multiple 10 Gb/s links between core sites.

The online video explosion is going to tax the current fiber and network infrastructure, and will fill up the networks rather quickly, officials at Level 3 explained, when we met with them last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.


Source : GIGAOM.COM

Sun offers Java to open source

Computer giant Sun Microsystems says it will offer programming language Java to the open source community.

Java is used in more than 3.8 billion mobile phones, computers and other devices around the world.

The decision to release the code under an open licence means the world can now use, develop and share Java for free.

The same type of licence also covers the distribution of the core, or kernel, of the open source operating system Linux.

'More capability'

Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hoped to turn more developers into Java programmers.

"The open sourcing of this really means more: more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use," Mr Green said.

"The platform itself will become a place for innovation."

Open source software has become a major force in the digital world - with the majority of web servers globally using Apache, an open source operating system, many businesses using Linux on their machines and a growing library of open source projects available free to use.

All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Mr Green said.

The decision covers all Java technology, including software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers.

Analysts have said the decision would likely extend the life of Java, which was released more than a decade ago, and boost business for the company.

"Sun profits from the Java ecosystem thriving," Michael Cote, an analyst with RedMonk told the Associated Press.

"Whether it's their hardware sales or their service sales, by open-sourcing Java they're hoping to ensure its longer life and ensure it's what the community wants it to be."

Source : BBC News

Sony's wireless headphones using body as transmission channel

Tired of the dangling headphone wires from your iPod or Walkman? Wires? Who need wires anymore? Sony says that we will be able to do without them soon. Instead we will use our own bodies to wirelessly transmit audio signal from the music player to the headphones.

At least that’s what their patent application for “Human body communication system and communication device” promises. Apparently Sony has been conducting research in this field and now has some results worth announcing. And it works like this:

Every human body has properties as a conductor and properties as a dielectric. Both of them can be used for data transmission. But the conductor properties are not really suitable for data transmission use - just try running even a a weak electric current through your body and you’ll know why. And a stronger version of this process is used in the electric chairs…

So the conductors are out. That leaves us with dielectric properties and electrostatic field generated by human body. And here Sony got some interesting results. Just like in any modern audio system they took analog audio signal, converted it into a digital signal of particular frequency, amplified it and used quasi-electrostatic field of human body to data-transmit the signal as a potential difference from a transmission electrode in the player device.

It turns out that the reception electrode installed in the vicinity of the human body (e.g. in the headphones) is able to read this change of potential. Add additional signal amplifier, demodulation and conversion of digital signal into audio output and Voila. You’ve got a sound in a headphone speaker.

There were problems with interference from external electromagnetic fields, loss of signal, insufficient bandwith in particular frequencies. But Sony researchers found that in a 500 kHz -3 MHz frequency bands have sufficient bandwith to transmit 48-kbps audio signal in ATRAC3plus format used in most Sony players today.

So, goodbye headphone wires, soon we will be using our bodies instead.

Source : Unwired View

Creative Zen Vision

Here is one more iPod killer after microsoft's zune, it sports a sleek and spacious 30GB model.

Select from an extensive line of accessories that make ZEN Vision the perfect companion - Wired and InfraRed remote controls, docking station, extended-life battery pack, chic leather case, LCD screen protector, and even a car adaptor kit.

Features list includes

Tens of thousands of photos View precious memories - tens of thousands of them - in 262,144 vivid colors and 640 x 480 resolution. Complete with a thumbnail gallery, ZEN Vision makes it easy to scroll through your entire photo collection.

An amazing 15,000 songs Perfect for taking with you on the road or around the house. And your music will sound as good as it looks, with the 8 preset EQ settings and 97dB signal-to-noise ratio ZEN Vision provides.

Movie and Photo Slideshows Connect the ZEN Vision to a projector or TV with the included AV cable, and delight friends with big screen movie magic.

Integrated Plug&View™ Compact Flash Slot Transferring pictures from your camera to ZEN Vision has never been easier. Simply slot in your camera's Compact Flash (CF) memory card, and let ZEN Vision do the rest. The optional Compact Flash card adaptor lets you use other popular memory card formats, such as SD, MMC, Memory Stick and more, with ZEN Vision.

SharpPix™ 3.7” high-resolution LCD screen 640 x 480 (VGA) resolution on a large, transflective screen. And up to 262,144 colors in your videos. What all this means is you see crisp, clear detail in every movie or photo, even under bright lighting.

Lightweight magnesium casing The elegant magnesium metallic casing protects your memories with pure sophistication. Now available in magnesium black and pearl white.

Rechargeable Li-ion battery Get more playback time with the included removable and rechargeable battery. Enjoy up to 13 hours of music5, or 4.5 hours of movies6. The optional extended-life battery pack lets you double playback time, which means you'll be entertained virtually forever.

FM radio If 15,000 songs aren't enough, listen to more with the integrated FM radio. 32 station presets let you switch stations whenever the mood strikes.

Personal Organizer Store and view all the information that's important to you - daily tasks, contact lists and even a calendar - that you sync with Microsoft Outlook, or edit with Creative Media Explorer.

Voice recorder Meetings, lectures, even voice memos to yourself - record them all with the integrated voice recorder, which stores hundreds of hours worth of recordings.

Microsoft Zune

Rumored to be potential iPod killer, Microsoft's Personal Media Player (PMP) will be available this holiday season in United States is named as Zune.

The Zune features wireless technology, a built-in FM tuner and a bright, 3-inch screen that allows users to not only show off music, pictures and video, but also to customize the experience with personal pictures or themes to truly make the device their own. Zune comes in three colors: black, brown and white. It's a 30 GB device.

Wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing lets consumers spontaneously share full-length sample tracks of select songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures with friends between Zune devices. Listen to the full track of any song you receive up to three times over three days. If you like a song you hear and want to buy it, you can flag it right on your device and easily purchase it from the Zune Marketplace. The Zune Marketplace music service and a foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music.

Zune makes it easy to find music you love — whether it’s songs in your existing library or new music from the Zune Marketplace. Easily import your existing music, pictures and videos in many popular formats and browse millions of songs on Zune Marketplace, where you can choose to purchase tracks individually or to buy a Zune Pass subscription to download as many songs as you want for a flat fee.

To get started with great music and videos out of the box, every Zune device is preloaded with content from record labels such as DTS, EMI Music’s Astralwerks Records and Virgin Records, Ninja Tune, Playlouderecordings, Quango Music Group, Sub Pop Records, and V2/Artemis Records.

Windows Vista launch dates

Wait is over, finally the much awaited Windows Vista launch dates are announced. Microsoft will launch Windows Vista for business customers on November, 30th and for consumers on January, 30th.

But if you can't wait for a new computer, be sure to ask your retailer about the Express Upgrade to Windows Vista, being offered by participating PC manufacturers. When you buy a qualifying Windows Vista Capable PC between October 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007, you may be eligible for an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista.

This offer is available for Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, or Windows XP Professional systems.

Hybrid Digital Camera with Optical Zoom

Pocket DV Z100 is the the first optical zoom hybrid digital camera is brought up by Aiptek corporation of Taiwan, a leading manufacturer of hybrid digital cameras. Which does decent still photos plus good quality video with built in image stabilizer. Its a 5-in-1 gadget capable of Digital Video Camcorder, 3 mega pixel still Camera, MP3 player, Voice recorder, SD card reader, USB Mass storage device. It has 3 times optical zoom lense a first in this range along with 8 times digital zoom capability.



Features are:

5-in-1 digital camcorder: Digital video camcorder, Digital still camera, MP3 player, Voice recorder, SD card reader Camera, Masstorage Device
3X optical auto focus zoom and 8X digital zoom
2.4” and 270°reversible TFT LCD display
Additional 16:9 mode for optimizing wide screen viewing
Built-in LED lights for recording video in lack of light
Capture up to 5cm close-up picture with macro mode
Easy power charge from PC/NB by USB cable or AC adapter

MS Config

Your windows machine is running slow, after analyzing you find out that there are many unnecessary startup programs and services running. You want to cleanup that stuff. You are not ready to touch up the registry directly. Here comes a handy utility / startup manager from Microsoft to your help.

MS Config is available for Windows 98, ME and XP but unfortunately it is not available for Windows 2000.

You can touch up WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, BOOT.INI also.

What's new with 'All new Yahoo Mail Beta'

Yes you get MS Outlook Express kind of user interface and much more like

• A smarter, more intuitive interface
• Advanced Search makes finding messages a breeze
• Award-winning spam and virus protection keeps you safer
• Automatic email checking (so you don’t have to)
• Integrated Calendar timeline makes it easier to stay on schedule

That's what Yahoo people claim, now go try your yahoo mail with this new client and know for yourselves.

Firefox 2.0

Firefox 2.0 Release Candidate 2 can be downloaded at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-rc.html for developers and testers, RC 3 Code Freeze is on Tuesday, Oct 10th, and Release Target Tuesday, Oct 17th.

Firefox 2.0 codenamed 'Bon Echo' offers user interface innovations that help the user in their common browsing tasks interacting with search, bookmarks and history, and improvements to tabbed browsing, RSS handling, managing extensions, security and performance.

Go get it folks, it is quite a stable version at RC2. Your browsing experience will definitely improve with this download. Get some extensions like IE Tab, and FoxyTunes to improve upon it.

Tabbed browsing get better with this version, so does the management of extensions.

JSP special characters in Form Submit

Filtering of special characters in FORM Submit is one more problem faced by a novice programmer in Java/JSP development. Best practice to avoid it and get the special characters filtered automatically is to use JDBC preparedStatements rather than Statements.

JSP Tomcat 5.5 Beginners : JSP pages not refreshing

So you have started JSP/J2EE development with installation of Tomcat. Everything looks fine your code runs well, but all of a sudden you find that your JSP pages doesn't get refreshed as you save them after editing. This is quite frustrating, you search out on GOOGLE and don't find any thing good to solve your problem. Then try thing things below :

For development environment of Tomcat 5.5 set following parameters in web.xml file.

Development = true
modificationTestInterval = 0

Things should work for you.