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New Google +1 Buttons

2012-03-17T11:03:00.000+05:30

The ubiquitous +1 buttons will soon have a new look. The updated version is available when you subscribe to the Google+ Platform Preview, at least for now.

"Following in the footsteps of our new red and white Google+ icon, the +1 button is sporting a fresh coat of paint," informs Google.

Comparing Old v/s New Google+ 1 button

While the new buttons are more consistent and include the Google+ branding, the old buttons are more colorful and more descriptive. "+1" is bigger and more obvious in the old buttons and that made them more clickable.

Here's the tiny +1 button from Google+

... and here's the +1 button from Google Groups

The small +1 buttons are not legible and it's not obvious that you're supposed to click them. As Fernando Fonseca says, "I understand the need to have a button that looks like the new logo but the problem is that a white background with a thin red line is hardly eye catching and hardly says 'Click me'."

You can compare the different versions of the +1 (v1) and +1 (v2) using the corresponding sprites. I'd choose the old buttons.

What IE6's slow death says about us?

2012-01-04T11:34:00.002+05:30

Usage of Internet Explorer 6 has dropped below 1 percent. Microsoft and security pros everywhere are happy about IE6's demise.

A cake at the Hacker News Seattle Meet-up, where Microsoft announced IE dropping below 1 percent in the U.S.

Microsoft has some shtick about the whole IE6 death meme, but it's worth asking why this decrepit browser lasted as long as it did. In many respects, IE6's slow death--it was like watching paint dry--says a lot about the enterprise, which is one reason the browser stuck around as long as it did.

Here are some thoughts on the meaning behind IE6's end:

Corporations moved at a glacial pace. Yes Virginia, you still can get a laptop with a Windows XP image and an IE6 browser. What's it mean? A few companies still don't value modern Web standards and may never upgrade PCs again until employees walk out.
Enterprises boxed themselves in by programming applications to work with IE6. As Microsoft moved on, companies stayed in place. Tight budgets meant that IE6 stuck around way past its useful life.
People view change and then puke. You'd think a browser swap would be simple. It's odd that Microsoft had to mount a kill IE6 campaign. People--who happen to make up companies--frequently resist change. IE6 was like an old blanket that wore thin after being carried around for a decade.

Chrome Overtakes Firefox Globally for First Time

2011-12-12T14:50:00.001+05:30

Free web analytics company reports that Internet Explorer still leads despite falling market share

Google's browser Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time globally on a monthly basis in November, according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm's research arm reports that Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox's 25.23%. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%.

In the US Internet Explorer continues to perform strongly and is maintaining market share at 50.66%, up slightly from 50.24% year on year. Firefox retains second place on 20.09%, down from 26.75%. Chrome is up to 17.3% from 10.89%. Safari is on 10.76% from 10.71%.

In the UK, Internet Explorer also leads the market with 42.82%. Chrome is on 24.82%, having overtaken Firefox (20.56%) in July. (For other individual country or regional analysis see StatCounter Global Stats).

Firefox's Android reboot begins!

2011-11-22T13:43:00.001+05:30

A new version of Firefox for Android uses the operating system's own user interface technology

It was a tough decision for Firefox on Android: improve the browser's performance or keep its compatibility with add-ons and other technology?

But after creating a prototype, Mozilla settled on the winning answer quickly: performance. And tomorrow, a month after making the decision, Mozilla plans to release an early version of the overhauled Firefox for Android.

The organization will introduce the new version on the "nightly" channel, where Mozilla tests raw new technology. With the organization's rapid-release cycle, the nightly version graduates to the Aurora, beta, and final-release channels, maturing for six weeks in each phase.

The new version is strategically important for Mozilla for multiple reasons. First, smartphones and tablets are at the center of a mobile-first transformation of the computing industry, and Firefox isn't preinstalled anywhere right now. Second, with Firefox shut out on Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone, Android is effectively the only route for Mozilla to bring its browser to the mobile market.

Last, Mozilla's objective--to ensure an open Web--relies on Firefox. Right now, Apple and Google browsers based on the open-source WebKit project dominate mobile browsing.

Release manager Christian Legnitto announced the move Friday. Initially the new version was geared just for phones, but Mozilla expanded it to tablets, too, after concluding it couldn't offer separate versions.

Firefox for personal computers, and many of the add-ons that helped make the browser popular by making it more customizable, use an interface called XUL (XML User Interface Language). But because the XUL-based version of Firefox took so long to start up on Android and isn't as responsive, Mozilla instead embraced Andoid's built-in technology.

Among the native interface advantages, according to programmer Mark Finkle:

Startup--A native UI can be presented much faster than a XUL based UI, since it can happen in parallel with Gecko startup. This means startup times in fractions of a second, versus several seconds for a XUL UI on some phones.
Memory Use--We believe a native UI will use significantly less memory.
Responsiveness--A native UI has the potential for beautiful panning and zooming performance.

It comes at a cost, though. XUL-based add-ons are one issue.
"Native UI builds are considered a new application and are not add-on compatible with the XUL versions," Finkle said

Mozilla is working on a new approach for add-ons on Android, though, through an interface called NativeWindow, Finkle said. And in a comment, Finkle added that it could be possible to build Firefox's newer Jetpack interface for add-ons atop the NativeWindow foundation.

There are other challenges, too, with the new version. The current Firefox Sync, for example, no longer works as a way to share bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs across multiple versions of the browser. A native version of Sync for Android is under construction, though, and due to arrive in December. Also being addressed is the fact that the current upgrade path drops saved passwords and browsing history.

Another list of objections came from Robert Kaiser, a Firefox project contributor, who listed his misgivings in a mailing list message: "The awesomebar algorithm [which suggests full links based on what people type in the adress bar] will be removed. The privacy of bookmarks and history will be removed. Open video might get undermined," he said. "A lot of Add-on awesomeness will be removed... Somehow I don't believe you fully there."

All these are potential problems, to be sure. But not as big as people not using the browser at all because it's too slow.

Samsung Smart TV

2011-10-23T22:16:00.000+05:30

Just like mobile apps, TV apps come in a variety of categories and features, offering information, entertainment and social media networking through the living room screen. Your selection of apps expands the functionality of your TV set in the same way mobile apps define what you can do with a smartphone.

The key difference, though, is that the TV is often at the center of home and you’ll likely share the app experience with your family and friends. It is no surprise that the list of popular Samsung TV apps includes video sharing, games for family and education apps.

Just last week, Samsung Apps, our TV app store launched in February 2010, celebrated the milestones of 1,000 registered applications and 10 million downloads. With help from our Samsung Apps colleagues, Samsung Village took a look into different types and features of the most-sought Samsung TV apps.

As you can imagine, online video apps are at the top of the download list, both globally and regionally. These apps connect your TV set to a sea of video content on the Web and let you appreciate them on a bigger screen! YouTube ranked atop the chart, while Vimeo (video sharing) and vTuner (Internet streamed media) made it among the top five.
On-demand news applications are also high up on the list. The mobile Internet gave us unlimited access to news and information anytime and anywhere, so why should we wait for regular news on TV? On Samsung Smart TVs, BBC News and WSJ Live offer top news in video and text throughout the day. CNBC Real-Time app and TIME TV are popular too.
As family entertainment makes an important part of the Smart TV experience, games, sports and education apps are steady sellers on Samsung Apps. A variety of games are available from classic ones such as Pac-Man and Tetris to sports genre like Let’s Golf and Homerun Battle 3D, and to educational games for kids.
Locally specialized apps are playing a big role in the success of Smart TV apps, thanks to local insights and contributions from our diverse app developer community. “Lovefilm” in the UK, “Berliner Philharmoniker” in Germany, and “Telstra’s NRL Game Analyser” in Australia are the examples of such Smart TV apps.

By number, the game category accounts for a quarter of all the apps listed on Samsung Apps, followed by information, education and lifestyle.

As televisions become smarter and our app developing ecosystem grows, Samsung is excited to provide more apps and content that will help you enjoy the smart life!

Randi Zuckerberg quits Facebook; to float her own business RtoZ Media

2011-10-22T10:23:00.001+05:30

"Who wants a tequila shot?" Randi Zuckerberg shouted over the thump of "Baby One More Time," Britney Spears' breakup anthem. It was nearly midnight on a rainy Wednesday in September, and more than a dozen friends gathered by Randi, the older sister of Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, were crowding a private room at the Midtown karaoke club Japas 38. "Yay!" cheered the crowd as their host hoisted a carafe of tequila in the air and circled the tables, pouring shots. The air smelled of stale beer and soy sauce.

After salt was licked, plastic cups drained and limes squeezed, she grabbed a microphone and belted out a rousing version of "I Will Survive." In August, Randi Zuckerberg, 29, quit her job at Facebook, where she had been among the first two dozen people hired. Most recently, she was the director of marketing. In its early days, Zuckerberg was a buoyant presence, representing her reticent brother to an eager press. Later, she earned attention (not always favorable ) singing at company functions with a band composed of colleagues.

And she came up with the idea for Facebook Live, the social network's video channel, which has featured interviews conducted by Facebook executives with Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama. Now Zuckerberg has started her own business, RtoZ Media, to help companies take advantage of social media. "This is the launch party of Randi Zuckerberg!" she said at the club, beaming.

Zuckerberg, who lives in a rented house in Palo Alto, has ambitions beyond the internet. "I want a talk show," she said two days earlier over drinks at the Mercer Hotel. She also wants to sing on Broadway. And she is interested in philanthropy: while in New York, she conducted live online interviews with participants of the Clinton Global Initiative and worked the red carpet at a UN gala.

Older women who are mentors, Zuckerberg said, have warned her that she must tone down her flamboyant persona, but she refuses to take heed. "This is a new world we live in, and it should be possible for a woman to be taken seriously and still do what she loves," she said. Three weeks after the karaoke night, she spoke at a conference sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange. She then traveled to Warsaw to talk to 2,000 telecom and media executives about social media. And the estate of Michael Jackson hired her to be the host of an online show on the pop star's Facebook page. "Every article written about me now refers to me as Randi Zuckerberg, Mark's sister," she said. "Maybe one day that won't be what people say about me."

Zuckerberg was born in 1982 and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY, a Hudson Valley town about 40 minutes from Manhattan. She is older than Mark by two years and has two younger sisters. Early on, her parents signed her up for piano lessons, but she longed to sing. She enrolled at Harvard in 1999 and studied psychology after being turned down by the music department, she said, because her piano skills were lacking. She continued to sing, using the stage name Randi Jayne. In 2002 her brother joined her at college.

Galaxy Nexus by Google

2011-10-20T10:50:00.000+05:30

Google's new Galaxy Nexus is made by Samsung and will launch in November

Google has announced its much-awaited new phone, the Galaxy Nexus, and also released a new version of its Android phone software. Codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 will be available to existing Android users soon and is available to software developers now. The Galaxy Nexus will launch in November.

Take a look at our backstory video for more on the vision behind this product and to understand why we think “a thousand heads are better than one”:

Among the Galaxy Nexus’s new feature are face recognition, allowing users to unlock their phones simply by looking at the phone’s front camera, a redesigned interface, an improved keyboard and a new application using Near-Field Communications (NFC) that lets two Android handsets share content directly.

The phone also replaces all physical buttons with software-based, moveable equivalents. The change allows a larger, 4.65” screen, which like the previous Nexus S model is slightly curved.

Running a 1.2Ghz processor, the Galaxy Nexus will be made by Samsung and also offers a high-definition display. It had been rumoured that it would be called the Nexus Prime, but instead the Korean manufacturer and Google have explicitly linked the device to Samsung's best-selling Galaxy range.

Writing on the Google Blog, the company’s Senior Vice President of Mobile, Andy Rubin, wrote that “Ice Cream Sandwich makes Android simple and beautiful, and takes the smartphone to beyond smart”.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the first version of Android to run on both tablets and phones, and Google has even created a new, optimised font for the purpose. Google claims that widgets have been improved dramatically, and also said that it would provide the “best mobile Gmail experience to date”, including some offline search options.

Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.

Here’s a glimpse of the “magic” of Google on Nexus S:

Web bookmarks now synchronise with Google Chrome, and zooming out of the calendar now allows users to move to different views, going from daily to monthly, for instance.
Although many phones, such as the newly announced Motorola Razr and the Samsung Galaxy SII offer 8 megapixel cameras, the Galaxy Nexus uses a 5mp version.

Rubin said that more than half a million Android devices are now being activated every day.

Announced in Hong Kong at an event originally planned for San Diego but postponed after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, reactions to the new Galaxy Nexus were broadly positive. Writing on technology blog This is My Next, Vlad Savov said that the interface, set-up and synchronising were all improved. He added, however, that on the pre-production models shown in Hong Kong “Android isn’t as swift and responsive as iOS or Windows Phone”.

Google's Android Market is undergoing renovation

2011-09-29T10:41:00.000+05:30

The Android app store will soon launch several new updates in its upcoming 1.6 version, according to an Android Developers blog post from Google's Eric Chu on Thursday.

Developers will be able to provide screenshots, icons, and descriptions to better promote and highlight their applications.

Four new app subcategories--sports, health, themes, and comics--are being added, Chu said. Developers can target any of those subcategories for both new and existing applications.

For reasons Chu did not explain, Android app developers in Italy are getting some special attention. Italian developers will be able to call up the publisher's site to upload their applications and specifically target any country where paid apps are currently available to customers.

In a video accompanying Chu's blog, the updated interface--as rumored--also reveals new buttons for Top Paid, Top Free, and Just In, as well as a search button in the upper right corner of the screen.

Google unveiled Android Market a year ago as the Android equivalent to Apple's iTunes Store. Since its debut, Google has tried to attract developers to publish their apps to the store. Initially, only free apps were available. But in January, Google opened the market to paid software in an effort to lure more developers.

Google has offered other carrot sticks to attract developers, such as its annual Android Developer Challenge, which offers prizes to programmers with the best apps.

However, a recent survey from AdMob found that less than half of Android phone owners have purchased an application, citing the lack of hot apps and limited payment options.

Ten Intriguing Things We Should Know About Google TV

2011-08-24T16:15:00.000+05:30

Internet giant Google is all set to enter your living room. The Silicon Valley company is launching a service that includes Google Search and merges applications and a Web browser with television programming.

Google TV will serve as an `entertainment hub' that lets viewers search channels, recorded shows and websites.

Here's looking into Google TV, the innovation that has been called `the biggest improvement to television since colour'.

1. What it is?

Google TV aims to turn the TV into a regular internet terminal, allowing people to access services like Facebook, Twitter or any internet site while they are watching programmes on a split screen.

In a demonstration, Google showed a TV screen with an Internet search box. A search for a particular TV programme got both the programme playing on a traditional channel, and related episodes along with other content available online.

2. Who will make hardware?

Google will provide the software, while Sony will make the TVs with Intel chips, and Logitech will supply a special remote control and wireless keyboard.

The service will be incorporated into televisions and Blu-ray players made by Sony and set-top boxes from Logitech.

3. Software engine?

Google service will run on the company's mobile platform, Android operating system that is increasingly gaining traction in smartphone market. It also will use the Chrome browser.

Based on Android platform, Google TV will turn Android phones into controls that can be used in the same room as the television or remotely across the Web.

4. Ads on GoogleTV?

Google did not talk about its advertising strategy for Google TV. The company isn't currently selling ads specifically designed for the new platform, said Rishi Chandra, a product manager at Google. Users could see Google's ads as they browse Web sites when accessing the Internet on the new TV service.

"We want to get the product experience right first," Chandra said. "Over time, there will be opportunities to really rethink how ads can actually work better on this TV experience."
5. Search on TV?

According to Google, Google TV will be using search to give users an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. For example, if a user already knows the channel or programme he wants to watch, all he needs to do is type in the name and he will be there.

6. Open source platform?

Since Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, third-party developers will be able to build applications for it. In its announcement at Google I/O, the company challenged Web developers to start coming up with the Web and Android apps designed specifically for the TV experience.

Soon after launch, the company will release Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV so that developers can build applications and distribute them through Android Market.

7. Use Your Smartphone As A Remote?

Remote control apps will be available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. These free apps will allow you to use your smartphone like a regular remote and will also accept voice commands. You can use multiple phones to control the same TV.

8. Add-ons?

Google TV service will include video-on-demand products from Amazon.com, Netflix and Hulu, a video site partly owned by Walt Disney, Google said at the conference.

9. Threats?

The effort is likely to face formidable challenges. One, Google will need to persuade TV manufacturers other than Sony to use its software, as well as retailers to sell the devices.

Also, in the past too several companies have already tried to bridge the gap between the TV and the Web with little success. Microsoft for example, has for years sought to make technology that can blend Internet and TV content. Apple too has offered its Apple TV device for transmitting Internet content to TV.

Google executives said that previous efforts failed because they dumbed down the Web for television, were closed to participation by others, and made people choose between using the Web or television.

10. Pricing & availability?

Google and its partners said the service would be free and prices for Sony's TV and Logitech's box would be announced at a later date.

While Google TV will be launched around Christmas in the US, international launch is expected in 2011.

Google India

2011-08-17T12:17:00.010+05:30

Bangalore

Google India Pvt Ltd
No. 3, RMZ Infinity - Tower E
3rd, 4th, and 5th Floors
Old Madras Road
Bangalore, 560 016
India
Phone: +91-80-6721-8000

Gurgaon

Google India Pvt Ltd
8th and 9th Floors
Tower C Building No.8
DLF Cyber City
Gurgaon India
Phone: +91 124 451 2000
Fax: +91 124 451 2100

Hyderabad

Google India Pvt Ltd
Block 1, DivyaSree Omega
Survey No. 13, Kondapur Village,
Hyderabad 500 032
Andhra Pradesh, India
Phone +91-40-6619-5000
Fax +91-40-6619-5101

Mumbai

Google India Pvt Ltd
264-265 Vasvani Chambers
1st Floor
Dr Annie Besant Road
Mumbai, 400 025
India
Phone: +91-22-6611-7200

Google amazingly goes mobile for Alexander Calder's 113th birthday

2011-07-22T11:45:00.005+05:30

A piece of kinetic art took the place of the usual Google logo to celebrate the 113th birthday of American artist and sculptor Alexander Calder.

Friday's Google doodle shows a mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture that was invented by Alexander Calder. Mobiles take advantage of the principle of equilibrium and have objects hanging from rods. Kinetic art uses motion for an artistic effect.

Mobiles are usually brightly coloured free-moving creations in abstract shapes made from sheet metal. The mobile Google doodle sways on its own and can also be controlled by mouse gestures.

Source : Alexander Calder

Calder was born on July 22, 1898 in Lawnton, US to a family of artists. While his father and grandfather were both sculptors, his mother was a painter.

He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1919. He then took art lessons. After a brief career in commercial art, Calder moved to Paris and put up an exhibition of a miniature circus with toy-like animals made of wood and wire. In Paris he formed associations with renowned artists and their influence helped him shape his art.

Calder was also a jewellery designer, an interest that developed when he was fashioning a wedding ring for his marriage with Louisa Cushing James. Besides his sculptures, Calder also illustrated a number of books. Besides mobiles, he also earned a name with stabiles, a type of stationary abstract sculptures.

With the years Calder also scaled up the size of his mobile and stabile installations. Calder died at the age of 78 on November 11, 1976. Two months after his death, Calder was honoured with United States' highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Interactive and animated Google doodles have now become a regular feature on the Google home page. The last such doodle was during the total lunar eclipse of June 15-16 when Google put up its first live doodle that refreshed itself every two minutes to reflect the stage of the moon.

For a dozen years, Google has been occasionally swapping its everyday logo for a doodle, a sketch celebrating holidays, inventions, artists and sporting events, and showcasing designs from contest-winning students.

UNESCO declares Indian National Anthem is best!

2011-07-19T13:00:00.000+05:30

A month ago an sms was received stating, “News to be proud for every Indian! Our national anthem has been declared best anthem in the world by UNESCO! Pass this sms to all Indians. Jai Hind!" The point is, who is UNESCO to decide which nation’s national anthem is the best? Every citizen of every nation is proud of their national anthem. And do we need some foreign body / organization to declare that our national anthem is the best and only then we are going to feel proud about being an Indian? It's high time that we all Indians should be patriotic about our country without any third party / organization / nation's recommendation! And it's a sincere request to all, not to fall prey to such sms campaigns! Be always a proud Indian!

How to Install Tally 9

2011-07-18T12:44:00.003+05:30

Method 1:

Click INSTALL.EXE from the CD

Method 2:

Click START from Windows
Select RUN
TYPE <CD drive>:\INSTALL
Press ENTER

The Tally 9 Setup Wizard is displayed.

Follow the instructions that appear on your screen to install Tally.

1. Click Next to continue

2. The Installation wizard displays the License Agreement

3. Read the license agreement before you proceed. Click I Agree to continue. Click I Decline to stop the set-up or click Back to go to the previous screen

4. In the Installation screen, you may accept the suggested directories. Else, click Change Application Directory or Change Data Directory or Change Configuration Directory or Change Language Directory to change the respective directory paths. Use Tab or the mouse to change the path in any of the directories

Application Directory

The Tally program files reside in this directory.

Data Directory

The Tally data resides in this directory.

The default directory where data is stored is C:\Tally\Data. To change click on Change Data Directory button and enter the new directory.

When Tally is installed in a directory with an earlier version, it detects and retains the data configuration path of the previous installation.

Configuration Directory

Tally configuration files reside in this directory.

You can specify the path of the directory where the configuration files should be saved. It is usually the same path as the Application Directory.

Language Directory

Tally Language files (.dct) reside in this directory.

You can specify the path of the directory where the Language files will be maintained. It is usually the same path as that of the Application Directory.

Note: If you are a Multi-License User, select the Run Tally License Server at Windows Startup check box

5. Click Install Operating System Language Support to enable Language Support

6. Select your Country name in Country Selection

7. Select the Initial Startup Language from the list. When you start Tally for the first time, Tally will appear in the language selected as the Initial Startup Language

8. Click Install

The installation progress status is displayed as shown below.

9. Insert Windows CD to install language or Browse for the i386 folder in your system

Note: You will be prompted to install the i386 language support folder only if it is not available in your system

10. Click OK to install Language Support

11. Click Finish to complete Setup

You are now ready to use Tally. You can click the Tally program icon on the desktop.

Enjoy the Power!

Firefox 5.0 versus Chrome 12.0 – which is better ?

2011-07-15T12:16:00.002+05:30

#1 Features :

Firefox 5 has arrived with lot of changes and features such as ‘Do not track’, which allows users to control – how their behavior and data are being tracked or used on the internet. Firefox 5.0 has focused on adding social and useful features (such as PDF Viewer, Sync etc,) related to common desktop users that was already available in its competitor web browsers such as Chrome. Features can be easily added by means of plugins – and Firefox has a number of useful plugins available free to use.

Important features of Firefox 5.0

Do not Track
Social sharing options
PDF Viewer
MP3 Player
Small home icon
Colored search (engine) bars
Improved sync feature
Multiple account login

On the other hand Google chrome has also added a lot of new and exciting features in vs 12.0. It has already most of the features implemented, what Firefox got now, Google has continuously trying to add cutting edge – innovative features to chrome. eg HTML 5 performance/support, hardware accelerated 3D CSS (which allow developers to create better animation effects in the browser, e.g in browser based games) etc. Plugins are available but the number is very less and it’s not so useful as compare to Firefox, despite of having better plugin architecture than Firefox. Firefox Wins in this case.

Some important features include -

Malicious file download protection
Hardware accelerated 3D CSS support
Improved screen reader support

#2 Performance :

Firefox performs well in Windows and Mac based OS but it sucks when it comes to Linux based operating system, After the major release of Firefox (I mean after version 4.0), we expected better performance on Linux distros such as Ubuntu or Fedora, but things got bad, surely it’s not better than before. If you will use any plugin, then the performance is extremely bad.

On the other hand, Google Chrome rocks on Linux based OS as well as on Windows and Mac. The performance is quite well as compared to Firefox, on Ubuntu or other Linux based operating system. Chrome Wins!

#3 Stability :

Firefox often hangs if a number of tabs is open (specially on GNU/Linux) wile Chrome is stable. So Google Chrome is far stable than Firefox. Chrome wins in this case.

#4 Security :

Both are secure but chrome had added some special features to protect users from downloading malwares or other infected files. Firefox seems better!

#5 Speed :

Firefox has improved speed a lot, because speed is the most dominant factor while choosing the browser for common purposes. Firefox supports HTTP pipelining which can improve the browsers speed a lot but it may cause instability, while chrome doesn’t support this. Google Chrome is fast from the beginning! Google chrome has added some advanced functionality such as Pre DNS fetching (The links pointed (from the current page) to other domain names are resolved before the user clicks on that link), Loading pages before the completion of URL in address bar etc, to improve the surfing speed. Chrome Wins!

Mark Zuckerburg is the most popular user on Google+

2011-07-14T14:30:00.000+05:30

Just days after the launch of Google+ it has become clear who is the king of social networking: none other than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the most popular Google plus user. He bested Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin by a long shot. As noted on TechCrunch, Zuckerberg already has the “most friends in the world” and they did make a movie about him. Never-the-less, I doubt the Googlers never anticipated his rise to the top of their soon-to-be social networking empire.

Google doodle marks the 450th anniversary of Saint Basil's Cathedral

2011-07-12T10:56:00.001+05:30

Google marks the 450th anniversary of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral with a commemorative doodle on its home page. Known by various names, including the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, Saint Basil the Blessed, Pokrovsky Cathedral, Russian Svyatoy Vasily Blazhenny and Pokrovsky Sobo, it was built by Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) to commemorate Russia's victories over Kazan and Astrakhan.

The construction of the Russian Orthodox church began in 1554 and was completed in 1561. Originally named the Holy Trinity Cathedral, over the centuries it became known as the place where St. Basil is buried. The church is located at Red Square, the centre of the city of Moscow.

Russia will celebrate the 450th anniversary of St. Basil's Cathedral by opening an exhibition dedicated to the so-called "holy fool" who gave his name to the soaring structure of bright-hued onion domes that is a quintessential image of Russia.

The eccentrically devout St. Basil wore no clothes even during the harsh Russian winters and was one of the very few Muscovites who dared to lambast tyrannical Czar Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan, whose gory purges claimed tens of thousands of lives, feared St. Basil as "a seer of people's hearts and minds," according to one chronicle. He personally carried St. Basil's coffin to a grave right outside the Kremlin. The cathedral, constructed to commemorate Ivan's victory over Mongol rulers, was built on the burial site.

The structure was designed by two Russian architects, Posnik and Barma. Some sources, though, attribute it to an Italian architect who was blinded after the completion so that he could never build anything as majestic again. The structure got its vivid colours, in which we can see it today, in several stages from the 1680s to 1840s.

The building was severely shelled during the 1917 Bolshevik takeover of the Kremlin and was patched up during the subsequent civil war and famine.

Early Communist leaders - who persecuted countless clerics of all faiths and destroyed tens of thousands of religious buildings - wanted St. Basil's dynamited as it blocked the way to military parades, and only the cathedral's conversion into a museum saved it.

A century earlier, Napoleon Bonaparte also ordered St. Basil's blown up during his army's hasty retreat from Moscow in 1812, but a heavy rain put down the burning fuses.

The design of its nine onion-shaped, multicoloured domes combine the traditions of Russian wooden architecture with Byzantine and Islamic influences into a unique structure.

Batalov said the restoration focused on recreating the way the building looked by the late 17th century, when the nine domes were united by a wraparound floor.

By that time, St. Basil's became a symbolic New Jerusalem and the center of Palm Sunday walks, when the Moscow Patriarch approached it sitting on a donkey to recreate Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem.

Google occasionally swaps its logo for an artistic doodle These Google doodles have gained immense popularity over the past few years and the Google doodle team has put out commemorative doodles on numerous events of international or national importance, ranging from news events, civic milestones, birthdays, death anniversaries and important dates in history.

Apart from the static image doodles Google also puts up animated and interactive doodles. The last interactive doodle was to celebrate the 96th birthday of the country and jazz guitarist, songwriter and inventor, Les Paul.

Source

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg 'invades' Google Plus

2011-07-01T18:06:00.001+05:30

Barely has Google+ —the search giant's answer to Facebook— gotten off the ground, that it received a most unexpected 'visit' from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Tech site CNET reported that at least three profiles bearing Zuckerberg's name had appeared on Google+, one labeled as "Fake Zuckerberg," and two as "Mark Zuckerberg."

As of Friday, it said that the "fake" Zuckerberg and one of the two "Mark Zuckerberg" profiles appeared to have been short-lived.

However, the "remaining" Zuckerberg profile appeared to be still up, with no posts.

"The second Mark Zuckerberg profile, put up shortly after the first was taken down, is harder to dismiss. The non-smiling profile picture--an apparent cell phone or a Webcam shot--is not easily found elsewhere. A TinEye search turned up only the Zuckerberg Google+ profile image," CNET reported.

CNET also quoted a Google spokesperson as saying that Google does not authenticate users at this time.

"As with many of our products, we rely on our users and the community to report any impersonations. We then review these reports and act accordingly. You can try to determine if someone is who they claim to be by viewing their profile, posts, etc. Or if you know them, you can contact them directly," it quoted the spokesperson as saying.

CNET also said that Facebook has not responded to its requests to verify the second Zuckerberg Google+ profile.

Upgrade to Joomla 1.6 or stick with J1.5?

2011-07-01T12:58:00.001+05:30

There has been a lot of confusion around Joomla 1.6 recently. After 3 years of heavy coding this major upgrade has been finally released in early 2011. Right now many users are wondering what 3rd party support for J1.6 will look like in the next months. Does it make any sense to start a website in J1.6 at the moment? How long should I wait until making any movements for my clients?

This is how the development plan for coming Joomla core versions look like. Based on that it might be easier for you to make judgements whether and when to upgrade or build new sites in J1.6 for your clients.

Andrew Eddie, Joomla co-founder and core developer stated following on Joomla's people portal:

Finally, the developer portal outlines the new development strategy that is now in process: http://developer.joomla.org/strategy.html
In summary what this means is:

Release

Date

Maintenance Till

Joomla 1.5

Jan 2008

Apr 2012

Joomla 1.6

Jan 2011

Aug 2011

Joomla 1.7 (Bowerbird)

Jul 2011

Feb 2012

Joomla 1.8 (Cool Name?)

Jan 2012

Long Term Support

Joomla will release a new version of the CMS every 6 months, starting from Jan 2011 (the 1.6 release).

We are actually in the Joomla 1.7 (Bowerbird) development phase.

Development contributions for 1.7 are currently being accepted and should be made via the JFT, either by patch or referring to a branch.

Nobody can say what will be in Joomla 1.7 until the JFT is analysed and contributions are accepted.

Developers have the option of working on features that may take longer than six months to develop and target a future version (eg, skip contributions for a major feature in 1.7 because there simply isn't enough time and aim for 1.8).

Developers who are concerned about the magnitude of change should monitor the JFT closely to ensure there are no surprises that affect them. Given there is less than 3 months left to accept contributions for 1.7 (and these must be in fully working condition), it is likely that 1.7 will be a very "light" upgrade from 1.6.

Release	Date	Maintenance Till
Joomla 1.5	Jan 2008	Apr 2012
Joomla 1.6	Jan 2011	Aug 2011
Joomla 1.7 (Bowerbird)	Jul 2011	Feb 2012
Joomla 1.8 (Cool Name?)	Jan 2012	Long Term Support

Google & Microsoft: A curious case of trust deficit

2011-06-30T21:45:00.001+05:30

The antitrust probe into Google invites comparisons to the case against Microsoft.

But however easy the links are to make, many are also facile. The most significant resemblance between the two situations may be their outcomes.

Google is seen in some circles to be using its dominance in one area to muscle unfairly into others, as Microsoft did. There's even some similar nerdish arrogance. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was famously testy about being deposed by the powers that be. Google's Eric Schmidt and Larry Page recently declined a request by a US Senate subcommittee to testify.

Yet the prosecution's case against Microsoft was relatively simple. Windows held about 95 percent of the market for PC operating systems in the late 1990s. Microsoft forced computer makers to use its Internet browser if they wanted to sell machines running Windows. Customers were constrained. Downloading a rival browser wasn't easy and switching to a machine not running Windows was painful.

Add it all up and Microsoft had a monopoly, abused its position and government intervention was the only immediate cure.

Google's situation is more complex. The firm claims only about two-thirds of the US search market, and its share is increasing slowly. Rivals also accuse Google of putting its services first. For example, its own maps might turn up in search results. But customers can easily use other search engines or type in a website address directly, and search doesn't appear to be a utility in need of regulation.

Smartphones could make a more compelling study. More than a third are now powered by Google's Android, according to comScore, and the figure is growing quickly.

Apps are a potential way to lock in consumers. Withholding the system's latest version from handset makers that favor a rival's services could be a potent stick for Google to wield. Yet its current market share should preclude any immediate challenge.

Though the Microsoft case was simpler, it still took over a decade to resolve. And the most important result was the company pledging to restrain itself.

The Google probe could uncover most anything, but for now the tortuous path and the end result are starting to look like they might be the real kinship to Microsoft.

WordPress versus Joomla! CMS - the purpose matters

2011-06-30T21:22:00.000+05:30

When you are looking to create a website, you will probably try some of the content management systems or commonly called CMS. Two of the most popular among them are Wordpress and Joomla. In this article I will try to explain some of the major advantages and disadvantages of those systems.

I would like to start with Wordpress, which is one of the easiest for use systems available today in the internet. Although, many people think that the Wordpress can be used for blogging only, you can easily configure it to work in many other ways. Furthermore, to install that CMS on a server is really easy. That way you will allow people, who do not have any knowledge in web development to create their website for just a couple of hours. Furthermore, you will not have to develop additional scripts to get the comments of other visitors for example, because they are already built in it. On the other hand, Wordpress do not provide suitable workspace for developers, because when you try to make some modifications in it, for example to create a shopping cart, the whole system is likely to crash. Furthermore, you will not find proper advice from the Wordpress community, because they mainly complain about the features of that system. Finally, when you try to upgrade your existing system, you will usually end up having a lot more bugs than you used to.

Joomla on the other hand is one of the best content management systems for designers, web developers and administrators. That system allows all its users to create great looking websites and also it is really easy for use, by beginners. Furthermore, there are many developers, who create tools, which rapidly improve the performance of Joomla. If you are a developer, you can choose that system, because it offers large capacity for customization and development. Joomla’s features are constantly improving in the past 3 years and so you will enjoy many more features. However, when you take a look at the user interface of that system, you will find that actually is not so easy for use by people, who do not have any idea of web development and also it is far from user friendly. Furthermore, after the recent update of that system to version 1.5.x, there are still many users, who stick to the old one.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the choice between those systems depends on the purpose of your website and also on your knowledge of web development and design. In addition, when you compare the simplicity of both those systems, you will notice that working with Wordpress is a lot easier, so there are many beginners, who choose it instead of Joomla. When you take a particular project, you should check exactly what are the requirements of your client, before you choose any of these content management systems.

Facebook moves from app to platform (live blog)

2011-06-26T10:21:00.000+05:30

Transcript of live blog starts here:

10:32 a.m. PDT: All right folks, we're in. The room is in a very interesting setup today, with a bunch of tables instead of the usual "auditorium" style. It's like a lunchroom...of computers.

Members of the press settle in before Wednesday's event.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

10:37 a.m.: Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg just walked in, though he's in the back of the room. Not up front just yet.

10:40 a.m.: Zuckerberg says we're not going to talk about what you all think we're going to talk about.

10:41 a.m.: Zuckerberg: You may have heard we've been in lock-down mode. We've had a lot of product teams working on something, and we wanted to double down. So we had a 60-day waiting period where we worked on products.

Mark Zuckerberg

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

10:42 a.m.: Now he's going over product launches so far this summer:
-relaunch of photos tool
-made improvements to chat to make it more stable
-focus on cleaning up quality
-changed games policy to keep spam at bay
-added Places
-added real identity to names

10:44 a.m.: Zuckerberg says the company will be bringing Places to other mobile platforms, now available only on Facebook's iPhone app.

Also mentions the recently introduced Questions product, which he says has been well-received.

10:45 a.m.: Zuckerberg says more releases are coming in the next month. But first, what's happening today:

"What we're trying to do is build a social platform. That's very different from building a social application."

Zuckerberg says the difference is that applications are for one use case. With a platform you can create a set of connections, and bring those between apps.

10:47 a.m.: Zuckerberg: It's challenging to build a platform and a system that helps you use your connections across all these different things. The key is giving people good controls that are simple, but powerful across multiple contexts.

The key to that is building a system where people have control of their information across all these different contexts.

Zuckerberg says we're going to learn about three different things today.

10:48 a.m.: 1. Make it so people can take their information over to another service and do it in a safe way. "People should be able to take it wherever they want, set who can see it."

Over a million sites are using Facebook Connect, Zuckerberg says.

10:49 a.m.: Zuckerberg says there is a new product, called Download Your Information.

Zuckerberg introduces Download Your Information.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

10:50 a.m.: It's built off Facebook's Graph API. Pulls down your photos, videos, posts, and puts it in a Zip file.

10:51 a.m.: Another new product: An apps dashboard where you can see all the applications that have permissions, and change/revoke those permissions.

10:52 a.m.: Now up, David Recordon, who's been the product manager for "download your information."

David Recordon

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

10:53 a.m.: Recordon now explaining how it works. Says all that information gets put together in a Zip file. Your identity gets verified first though.

10:54 a.m.: Includes your profile information, events, wall posts. The feature is rolling out later today, Recordon says.

10:57 a.m.: Now up, Carl Sjogreen, a product manager at Facebook who is explaining this new dashboard and how it shows you an access log of what apps have looked at parts of your profile, and when that happened. "We think for individuals this is a pretty big win," he said.

10:59 a.m.: Now Zuckerberg is back to talk about the third new item, which is that staying connected with different social circles can be difficult--especially online. Talking about how they've been from different parts of your life: work, school, friends.

Mark Zuckerberg

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

11:01 a.m.: Zuckerberg: Sometimes you don't want to post something to all of your friends. Do I want to bug my friends with some status update about a great jog to the people who don't care about my morning jog.

So far the answer has been map out who your friends are, but people haven't been doing it with all their friends.

Zuckerberg: If we can do this, we can unlock a huge amount of sharing that people haven't done because there aren't privacy settings to do this on such a huge scale.

11:02 a.m.: The naive solution, Zuckerberg says, is to do it with friend lists, or to map out who those people are with every wall post or event. You can do that work each time, but it's pretty brutal to do this every time, but not have sets of people defined for you.

11:03 a.m.: Zuckerberg says that another answer is just friend lists. People want to cut them into subgroups--that sounds good in theory, but almost no one wants to make lists. The most we've gotten is around 5 percent of people make a list, and even fewer of those people make more than one list.

11:06 a.m.: The next solution, Zuckerberg says, is to build an algorithmic solution. Something that can figure out those groups for you. Says they've already done this with news feeds and friend suggestions.

Within the company they have something called the coefficient. It's an index for each relationship, and can track all the interactions you've had with people, and can then filter who you should talk to based on those connections.

11:07 a.m.: Zuckerberg: But there are limits with algorithms. If they go wrong, they can really go wrong. It's almost worse when it goes right--you never want to get a list of exactly the people you're interacting with. Especially if a friend sees that list over your shoulder. "It's too close."

11:08 a.m.: Zuckerberg: There is no exact, precise definition of what someone is to you as a friend. Even if it were possible to figure that out with a perfect algorithmic solution, it would still not be what you want, because you wouldn't think of those people as friends unless you made those friend requests yourself.

11:11 a.m.: A third solution, Zuckerberg explains, is social solutions. Build a good interface so people can tag each other like what the company did with photos. This is what works.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

11:13 a.m.: Zuckerberg: 95 percent of users have a photo of themselves that they let friends tag. And that's useful because the friends did the heavy lifting. So what we're trying to do to make that work with Groups.

Just like photos, groups have the property that not everyone has to set it up themselves. People will create a group and add people to it without the others having to do that work. So we think this is going to work well with all our users working together.

11:13 a.m.: Zuckerberg: Shared space, group chat, and e-mail lists--all in one product.

11:14 a.m.: Product manager Justin Shaffer, formerly of Hot Potato, is up now. He is the PM for this new Groups product.

Justin Shaffer

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

11:15 a.m.: Shaffer: Each group can have any number of members. Works just like a user mailing list. Same thing with chat, you can just hop on that chat room and only those users will see it.

11:18 a.m.: Shared spaces show up in your left-hand navigation. Group chat lives alongside normal user chat. Includes a wiki too.

m.facebook.com getting Groups today.

Facebook Groups has its own API so third-party developers can create Group applications that live outside of Facebook.

11:21 a.m.: Facebook's VP of product, Chris Cox, is now up. Talking about how when the Web first started out, most designers came from the print world, which made some of the early Web pages have some of the same limitations as books. Cox says some of the same problems have cropped up with managing people's relationships online.

Chris Cox

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

11:23 a.m.: Now talking about localizing Facebook, and how every time the site changes, those localized versions of Facebook get updated immediately because it's people doing the heavy lifting instead of machine translation.

11:24 a.m.: Cox says these new groups are like a space in the real world. Like a dinner table, locker room, or a bar. And like those places, each one has a particular group of people and level of discourse.

11:26 a.m.: Above: the team that made these new features.

Now getting into questions and answers.

11:27 a.m.: Q: Are groups replacing friends lists then?
A: Zuckerberg: No, there are still friends lists. We just felt like there was some work involved for those 5 percent of people who used it. But going forward, Groups is going to be the biggest way this is going to be used.

11:28 a.m.: Q: So to share with those people you're going to need to go to groups?
Zuckerberg: No, you can still share through the usual methods. This is going to be part of the normal Graph API and visit a site and see activity broken down by friends and groups now, too.

11:29 a.m.: Q: What happens when someone who is not authorized gets into a group?
A: Zuckerberg: When someone gets added to a group, everyone in a group sees that action. If someone's been added and nobody wants them there--you can see who added them to the group.

11:31 a.m.: Q: One way people have dealt with the lack of friends lists has been creating multiple FB accounts. Do you have anything set up to let people merge accounts?
A: Zuckerberg: Maybe in the future. This is really just an early step in that direction. This is a great groups product, and a way to add friends in different contexts. Like everything we do, this is just the first iteration.

We are keeping all the old groups around, we're not getting rid of friends lists, old accounts. In the future we'll begin to take more steps to help people share more.

11:32 a.m.: Q: There are companies, big brands--will they be able to make groups too?
A: Zuckerberg: For brands we have pages. This is meant for small groups of friends. Maybe 250 in size is kind of the max we see.

Groups tend to be small--families, classmates, friends.

11:34 a.m.: Q: Can you approve being added to a group? What if you're added to a group you don't want to be in?
Shaffer says: You can leave a group, and then nobody can re-add you unless you explicitly join.

11:37 a.m.: Q: How big can groups get?
A: As groups grow larger, we take away some of the functionality. With more than 250 users we reduce the notifications in the newsfeed and the group chat.

Q: What's going to happen with conversations between profiles?
Shaffer: One of the things we've done is limit the distribution of stories that show up in the feed. If a story is going on that looks like a directed message between two members, I'd see the message being posted. We have the ability to do with profile as well.

Zuckerberg: This is a big shift. There's a huge amount of stuff people want to share with all their friends--and that's what got Facebook to where it is today. Groups is a different approach by comparison.

11:38 a.m.: Q: People don't like to make lists. What if only 5 percent of people on the site create groups?
A: Zuckerberg: The math is simple. With 5-10 percent of people making groups, and the average group is 10-20 people, and people make a few groups. That's enough to get a massive amount of coverage on top of that. And there's some compounding on that too.

I could easily see this getting 80 percent coverage over time.

11:39 a.m.: Facebook's Andrew Bosworth says that people will want to make them just because they're fun.

11:41 a.m.: Q: Will there be information overload? And are these groups being made public?
A: Zuckerberg: We made it easy to turn off the flow of information. You can tweak the group notifications that show up in your news feed.

If you get added to 20-30 groups, but in reality only a couple you actually use, and those will be the ones that filter up to the top.

As for privacy: there are three settings--open, closed, and secret. The default is closed.

11:45 a.m.: Zuckerberg: For secret groups, content in the group and the membership of the group is secret. We think a lot of groups are simply going to be closed because that's how people want to use the product.

Q: On privacy, how many layers of security are needed to get that big information file?
A: Recordon says it first goes through an e-mail verification, then it requires your password, as well as checking to make sure you're using a machine you're typically on. There can also be a captcha on there.

Data you deleted from Facebook does not show up in this information bundle.

Zuckerberg adds: If you want to keep everything safe, you build up walls, but then there's no innovation. It's a balance we struggle with constantly. This is something we debated a lot internally. In practice, a lot of people may want to try to exploit this, and it's a question of how many people are going to want to download their information. It's more of a philosophical decision--people should be able to download their information.

11:45 a.m.: Q: Will you be able to invite a group to an event?
A: Yes.

11:46 a.m.: Shaffer: You can post an event to a group, and it adds everybody. There's also docs and a wiki.

11:47 a.m.: Q: Why add this on as an additional feature instead of making an older feature better?
Zuckerberg: This is an iteration. In a way we are building on top of it. Should we remove those old features? We just made it so we wouldn't need to delete 25 million people's work.

11:52 a.m.: Q: On exports--could another social network be able to access with your permission--your data?
A: Zuckerberg: At a high level we've built two different things. We have Connect, which makes you transfer information to that site. And a million sites are using that. That's our real effort to make that happen.

This product, on the other hand, is for you. Can you download that information and upload it to another site? Sure, but you could also just use Connect.

11:55 a.m.: Q: Is that information in an easy format?
A: Zuckerberg: We asked, should we include the actual videos, or just a link to Facebook? No, it should include the actual video, and it should have no connection to Facebook once you pull it down.

What's not included is your friends' information. We think this is a pretty good solution.

Q: What about landgrabs for group names?
Andrew Bosworth: I expect there to be a lot of groups named "family" and I don't expect that to be a problem. There's no technical limitation.

Zuckerberg: About e-mail namespace--there can be only one family@facebook.groups.com. For that, we're just doing first come, first served with a lot of protections to make sure nobody squats.

11:55 a.m.: So Groups is being rolled out throughout the day.

11:58 a.m.: And that's it, folks. To sum it up, there were three things announced today:

1. A new Groups product that lets you connect with other Facebook users and manage all that information in one space.
2. A way to download everything you've ever posted to Facebook (including photos and videos) in one big Zip file.
3. A dashboard where you can manage your connections with Facebook applications and see what data they're accessing, and when that happened. It will also come with controls to revoke access.

11:59 a.m.: All three are coming to you by the end of today (Pacific time). It's being rolled out to users in small groups over the next few hours.

11:59 a.m.: Thank you for joining us, and sorry we couldn't get to all your great comments and questions.

Facebook to surge by Yahoo as No. 1 in display ads

2011-06-21T22:36:00.001+05:30

Facebook is on the verge of becoming the largest display advertiser in the United States, displacing Yahoo.

The social-networking site, which held off on running ads in its early days in order to avoid alienating its users, will grow its net U.S. display revenues by 80.9 percent this year to $2.19 billion, according to a new study by Internet research firm eMarketer. That will give the social-networking giant a 17.7 percent share of the display ad market this year, blowing past Yahoo, which will hold a 13.1 percent share.

(Credit: eMarketer)

"Facebook's supreme popularity--both in terms of numbers of people and amount of time they spend there--creates a plethora of display ad impressions, mainly for its unique form of banners," said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst. "And that popularity is also boosting what advertisers will pay for its display ads."

Facebook is rapidly distancing itself from its major display ad rivals, according to the study. The second fastest growing ad-seller among the top five is Google, which should grow at a 34.4 percent clip this year, eMarketer says. Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL will all grow at less than 20 percent, all below the overall growth of the market, which the firm estimates will be 24.5 percent.

In 2012, eMarketer believes that Google will make up some of the lost ground. The firm says that Google's display ad revenue will climb 58.3 percent, while Facebook will grow a more modest 31.3 percent. eMarketer, though, cautions that the Facebook estimate for 2012 "is likely on the conservative side" and may be adjusted upward when the firm revises its social network ad revenue estimates in August.

(Credit: eMarketer)

Even with that slower growth, Facebook will extend its overall share of the display ad market in 2012 to 19.4 percent. Yahoo will slide to a 12.5 percent share while Google will account for 12.3 percent of total revenue, up from 9.3 percent this year, according to the study.

Facebook's leadership in display advertising comes just a year after the company took over managing the sale of the graphical ads on its site from Microsoft. The software giant took on the task when it invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007 and became the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook.

Zuckerberg calls Facebook contract a 'fraud'

2011-06-08T02:32:00.003+05:30

A New York man's alleged contract and e-mails that supposedly gave him 50 percent ownership in Facebook are forgeries, according to a court filing by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg said in a filing today in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, N.Y., that he declared under oath that he did not sign a contract with Paul Ceglia regarding Facebook or write the alleged e-mails regarding the social-networking giant's creation. (Text of the filing is available below.)

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg

(Credit: James Martin)

"Zuckerberg and Ceglia never discussed Facebook and they never signed a contract concerning Facebook," the filing said. "The contract is a cut-and-paste job, the e-mails are complete fabrications, and this entire lawsuit is a fraud."

Electronics forensics experts were unable to find alleged e-mails supporting Ceglia's claim in Zuckerberg's Harvard account, finding instead e-mails that "contradict Ceglia's made-up story," the filing said. Zuckerberg requests the original contract, e-mails in native form, and inspection of all computers in Ceglia's possession as well as those in his parents' house.

Zuckerberg acknowledged in today's filing that he signed a contract to write code for a Ceglia project called StreetFax but said the contract was "doctored" to make it appear to be about Facebook development.

"Among other things, the column widths and margins are inconsistent, which indicates that the document has been altered and reproduced," the claim said. "Many words and sentences simply make no sense, and the document is riddled with internal inconsistencies and contradictions strongly indicative of fraud."

Ceglia's legal representatives in the matter said they were eager to make the contract and e-mails available to Zuckerberg and Facebook.

"Mr. Ceglia welcomes the opportunity to expedite discovery in this case and disagrees with the opinions within the filing, which have been made by those who have not examined the actual contract at issue in this case or any of the other relevant evidence," reads a statement from Ceglia's law firm, DLA Piper.

Ceglia, of Wellsville, N.Y., claimed in a lawsuit filed last year that he entered into a contract with Zuckerberg in 2003 to design and develop the Web site that would ultimately become Facebook--a company that now has an estimated value of $50 billion.

Ceglia said he hired Zuckerberg through a Craigslist ad to write code for a project called StreetFax and paid Zuckerberg $1,000 for coding work; he also allegedly invested $1,000 in Zuckerberg's The Face Book project, which gave him a 50 percent interest in the company as well as an additional 1 percent interest for every day after January 1, 2004, that The Face Book was delayed.

In a revised complaint filed in April, Ceglia cited more than a dozen e-mails purportedly between himself and Zuckerberg that detail discussions on design, development, business plans, and eventual contract disputes regarding The Face Book.

Last year, Ceglia produced a canceled check that he said proved he paid Zuckerberg $3,000 for some freelance software development work for a project called "The Face Book." Facebook initially said it believed the contract was a "likely" forgery. It has since become more forceful and said it considers it to be an outright fake.

CEO says hackers tried to extort data, money

2011-06-05T23:15:00.000+05:30

Menacing message. A threatening e-mail that Karim Hijazi, CEO of botnet-tracking firm Unveillance, says he received from the hacking group LulzSec.

(Credit: Screenshot by Karim Hijazi)

Karim Hijazi knew his nightmare was just beginning when he saw that a mysterious e-mail had arrived in his inbox at 3 a.m. on May 26 that included his e-mail password and the subject line "Let us talk."

That would mark the beginning of a weeklong saga of e-mail exchanges and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) discussions in which Hijazi says a group of hackers told him they wouldn't publicly divulge information they had gotten from snooping on his accounts if he revealed sensitive security information acquired by the botnet-tracking firm, Unveillance, that he launched last year. The hackers, who call themselves LulzSec, wanted to know the whereabouts of compromised computers on the Internet that when remotely controlled are used en masse to attack Web sites, he told CNET in an exclusive phone interview late last night.

Hacking victim Hijazi says LulzSec hackers tried to extort money and information out of him, as evidenced by this excerpt he provided of a chat log. Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Karim Hijazi)

When he refused, LulzSec went public with his data, Hijazi says, posting his personal contact information, e-mails, and chat logs for download online yesterday as part of a campaign to embarrass the FBI and its InfraGard partner. The group had hacked the Web site of InfraGard Atlanta and grabbed usernames and passwords for about 180 members, including Hijazi. Because Hijazi had used the same password on the InfraGard site that he used on his personal Gmail account and his corporate Google Apps account, the hackers were easily able to spy on his personal and business activities.

Hijazi contacted the FBI right after that first LulzSec e-mail and said he plans to prosecute if he can.

"They had me under the gun for a little over a week with threats and extortion," said Hijazi, chief executive of Unveillance. "The very nature of having to contend with someone who is holding something ransom is not pleasant."

Another excerpt from chat logs provided by Hijazi. Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Karim Hijazi)

"I don't believe it will impact our organization; it just sucks for my family and me," he said when asked whether his business would suffer as a result of the incident.

The first signs that something was amiss in Hijazi's world were suspicious activities related to Unveillance's corporate network that started about a week before he was contacted by the hackers. Someone kept repeatedly trying to sneak into the network using a VPN (virtual private network) tunneling tool called iPredator designed to let people traverse the Web anonymously.

And then there was what appeared to be a lurker on a company conference call when Hijazi heard the telltale beep sound of someone joining the call but no new participant was identified. In a chat log, one of the hackers threatens to play a recording of a conference call they listened in on.

However, Hijazi started to get a sense of real dread when he witnessed the group's snooping activities firsthand, though. The night of May 25 he was going through his mail when he noticed a message go from being marked as "unread" to "read" and back again to "unread" right before his eyes.

He immediately changed his password but considered that maybe a friend was playing a joke on him somehow. Hours later the first LulzSec e-mail arrived. "I think they were locked out then and they got frustrated," he said.

"I was not entirely shocked because we clearly were being watched and targeted," Hijazi recollected. "I thought 'I knew it!' First you think 'now it all makes sense.' And then you immediately think 'this is not good.'"

A final excerpt from the chat logs provided by Hijazi. Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Karim Hijazi)

He didn't know who his adversaries were until the InfraGard data was released. "They clearly wanted to teach a lesson," he says.

'Give us all the info you can get'
In chat logs released by both him and LulzSec, the hacker group appears to be pressuring him for money and information. But LulzSec denies that extortion was the motive, saying it was instead trying to see if a group of "blackhats"--industry parlance for underground or criminal hackers--could squeeze information out of a "whitehat" like Hijazi.

Hijazi released on his company's Web site an excerpt of a chat log in which one of the hackers allegedly said: "The point is a very crude word: extortion...Let's just simplify: you have lots of money, we want more money...Prepaid Visas, MoneyPaks, BitCoins, Liberty Reserve, WebMoney, the flavor of your choice. Naturally we'll avoid PayPal."

In Twitter messages and a statement, LulzSec insists it was pretending to extort Hijazi as a test and accused him of offering to pay them to destroy his competitors and help find "enemy" botnets.

The hackers appear to take a coercive, bullying approach with Hijazi in the IRC chat released by LulzSec and repeatedly ask him for information, including "government portal/info searches" and "inside FBI alerts."

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"Give us all the info you can get and we will do with it what we can. Which is usually a lot," one hacker says.

The hackers also disparage Hijazi's security work. "There's no so (sec) things as whitehats you guys are as corrupt as we are. The only difference is we admit it," one hacker says. "Whitehats are just blackhats that have board meetings with lengthy rhetoric," another says.

Later, the hackers complained about Hijazi providing information to a U.S. nonprofit that wrote a report for the government on cyber threats and opportunities in Libya, saying the data could be used to attack that country. Asked why he participated in the project, Hijazi said "I didn't know the intent and was in marketing mode. I am truly starving guys."

Although it's possible the group just happened to stumble upon Hijazi, the information his company gathers to help its customers stay safe from DoS attacks would certainly be useful to anyone who wants to cause a ruckus online or make a statement. Sony's recent security troubles started with a DoS campaign launched by the Anonymous hacker group.

While DoS attacks are useful for shutting down a site temporarily, LulzSec seems to prefer the smash-and-grab approach of using a SQL injection attack to break into a Web site and steal customer data. That was the method cited earlier this week to grab data from Sony Pictures, and last month against Sony Music Entertainment Japan. Company representatives confirmed the Sony Pictures breach last night and said they are working with federal authorities on the investigation and have hired their own forensics experts.

Last weekend LulzSec hacked into the site of PBS, snatched passwords and posted a fake news story that said deceased rapper Tupac Shakur was "alive and well" in New Zealand, Wired reported.

MBAs make their way in engineer-crazed tech world

2011-05-29T10:49:00.000+05:30

This is the second story in an ongoing series profiling college graduates throughout the United States as they hunt for technology jobs. Check out CNET's special report, "Wanted: A job in tech," for a story tomorrow on a grad student who landed a job at Google, where he'll apply his operations chops to cloud computing.

Will you find MBAs here? The quirky, relaxed office environments of most tech companies (pictured here is Twitter's) are a far cry from where most business school students imagine they'll end up.

(Credit: CC: Enrique Dans/Flickr)

Julia Davis doesn't quite fit the profile of a typical candidate for a business school degree. After graduating from Lewis and Clark College in hipster mecca Portland, Ore., with a degree in psychology and an art minor, she worked at an art foundry in New York before ultimately finding her way to a consulting firm in San Francisco--and then to Skolkovo, a business school near Moscow in Russia. She finished the 16-month program in December, (most master of business administration, or MBA, programs are two academic years) and has spent the spring on the hunt for a job.

"I wanted to take my career in a more international direction," Davis told CNET. "I looked at the options and one of them was the Skolkovo program, which is co-sponsored by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the U.S., so it has a brand name school associated with it. It was a new program, and it was focused on emerging markets, and the growth story in emerging markets was very compelling."

Julia Davis, who recently obtained her MBA in Russia and then began the job search for gigs at Silicon Valley start-ups, is shown here at conference in Moscow.

(Credit: Skolkovo)

There's another reason why Davis isn't your typical MBA: She's planning to head to a tech start-up when she graduates. When she spoke to CNET, she said she was in talks with an early-stage start-up in a strategy role. You'll find lots of diverse characters in the tech world, but people straight out of business school with no prior experience in the industry are rare among them.

"I'd always been passionate about technology," Davis said. "I lived in San Francisco, so I was sort of in the thick of it, and then when I moved to Russia I saw not only everything that was happening internationally with technology but also innovation and entrepreneurship, and I just realized that it was an exciting space to be in."

Valley outsiders
For decades, college students and young professionals have dreamed of attending business school for a chance to be the ultimate insiders, with all that suggests: the best network, the best corporate acumen, the best access to the best jobs on graduation. But with the technology industry booming once again in pockets of innovation like the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, MBA candidates and recent graduates all too often find that they're the outsiders.

The Silicon Valley of 2011, flush with easy money and full of "hacker" energy, has an insatiable hunger for engineering talent, with colorful war stories emerging from the hiring process: bidding wars over young developers, exorbitantly high salaries just to keep a rival company from getting the goods. But young graduates who don't have technical expertise, even if they're armed with degrees from the most elite business schools in the country, have to fight a little harder to prove that employers want them.

"The engineers that I'm friends with are just like, 'Oh, my God, there's a waterfall of opportunity,'" Davis said. "They're inundated with offers. A lot of times when you hear about the war for talent that's happening in the Bay Area, it's definitely engineering-focused now."

"Entrepreneurship and venture capital are, like, two of the hardest things to break into" out of business school, said Christopher Muir, a Williams College graduate wrapping up his first year in the MBA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I know this just from trying to do it myself, and seeing friends."

Tech companies, from a behemoth like Google to a hyped start-up like Instagram, are in the business of making money, and they need financially savvy minds to avoid venture-fueled meltdowns like the ones that littered the landscape after the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s. So why can it be so tough for new MBAs to find their way in an industry that's hiring like mad?

One of the biggest problems is that the technology world is such a pack of insiders that, with the exception of companies like Google and Facebook that are in heavy hiring modes, most wouldn't think to look too far outside their existing networks to find new business talent.

"You have to build your own network. If you want to go from MBA into consulting, that's a fairly easy transition, whereas the MBA to technology, a lot of the tech companies--every tech company I speak with--they want to hire from inside their network," Davis said. "I usually have conversations with people because I've been introduced by a friend of a friend, or I know someone who works at that company."

The same has been true for Christopher Muir at Chapel Hill, who got lucky, at least for this summer. Earlier this year he was re-introduced to Jordan Cooper, one of his brother's college friends from Dartmouth, in a purely social context. Cooper is working on a start-up in New York called HyperPublic while he serves as a partner at Lerer Media Ventures, the investment firm co-founded by former AOL and Huffington Post exec Kenneth Lerer and his son Ben. Muir mentioned to Cooper that he was interviewing for a job with a large venture capital firm. Cooper told him he ought to work for a start-up instead, and so Muir scored a dual internship at HyperPublic and Lerer Ventures for the summer.

Different sense of timing
But Muir highlighted another problem: The hiring schedule that graduating MBAs are used to simply doesn't conform to the start-up world. A second-year MBA will anticipate interviewing for a job several months before graduating, or may expect to receive an offer from a company where he or she has interned before the second year of the MBA program has even begun. Start-ups don't hire like that. When they realize they need to fill a job, they fill it. Planning ahead often doesn't happen because a year-old company likely has no idea what'll be happening in six months.

"Internships, and especially full-time jobs can say, 'OK, we need help for three months this summer,'" said Christopher Muir, "but then you'll go back to school for your second year and at the end of the summer there's, like, a 5 percent chance that they'd say, 'We're going to need you in nine months when you graduate.'"

But the flip side of this is that the tech industry, in turn, might not realize that so many MBAs have caught the Silicon Valley fever. Business schools, particularly elite ones on the East Coast, are known for more or less shipping armies off to massive investment banks each year, rather than for producing talent with the creativity and flexibility a technology company needs.

"I consider myself a fairly unconventional business student because of the fact that I just don't like banking," said one soon-to-graduate MBA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, who asked to remain anonymous because he was currently in the interview process with both Google and Facebook. "I'm totally OK with it, and perhaps there are some people who think that it's strange to pursue tech or something other than a guaranteed-highest-paying potential job out of business school, and I guess I don't really care what they think. I know that what I'm doing is fulfilling for me, and I suspect that what they're doing is probably not fulfilling for them."

Jeremy Frank, a second-year MBA student at New York University's Stern School of Business who has been working part-time at mobile start-up Foodspotting, said that if you don't attend one of the business schools known for producing candidates likely to head to technology companies--Stanford, MIT--you aren't likely to have recruiters seeking you out.

"If you want to go from MBA into consulting, that's a fairly easy transition, whereas the MBA to technology, a lot of the tech companies--every tech company I speak with--they want to hire from inside their network."

--Julia Davis, business school graduate on the tech job hunt

"I wouldn't say there's a massive presence of either large or small tech companies that are recruiting here, at least not in the MBA program," Frank said. "Google and Yahoo definitely have a presence, Apple not so much. Obviously, a lot of them are based in California and they do some of their recruiting on a geographic basis, but we also are not traditionally a tech-heavy school."

Frank's part-time job at Foodspotting came around through a connection from a friend from NYU, a former co-worker of Foodspotting exec Soraya Darabi when they were both employed at magazine publisher Conde Nast.

"They say that at business school you don't learn anything, that it's all about the network, and I guess the network came through for me," Frank said.

But he's trying to make it easier for fellow Stern graduates to find jobs at tech companies, particularly those in New York, by making the business school more visible in the vibrant local start-up community. "I'm an officer in the technology club here, and one of our biggest priorities as a club is to increase NYU's presence in the New York technology community, because traditionally we are a little more of a finance-oriented school, but that's changing a lot," Frank said. "The membership in the technology club over the past three years has grown dramatically."

Entrepreneurial spirit
Some business schools are going a step further and creating entire programs and initiatives designed for the cultivation of future entrepreneurs. Stern has an "entrepreneurship exchange" with NYU's broader Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which can provide stipends for students who want summer internships at start-ups but may be dissuaded by the fact that these jobs can't pay anywhere near as much as an internship at Goldman Sachs or Accenture.

Both student- and school-wide initiatives are making things brighter, according to Andrew Chang, another second-year Stern student, who, after graduation, is headed to a job at Kantar Video, an online video research and analytics company where he interned last summer. "A lot of my friends are going into technology, and I'm pretty excited," Chang told CNET.

Chang also mentioned another strategy MBAs can use to break into the tech industry: Found a start-up yourself. "There are a fair amount who have actually been incubating their own start-ups, and a couple of them even, instead of doing the traditional summer internship between their first and second years, spent time developing their own start-up projects, which I think is more and more prevalent."

In business school, no matter whether you're hoping to work in a skyscraper on Wall Street, somewhere on Google's brightly colored campus, or in an anonymous loft full of MacBooks and big dreams, you're going to need to know how to hustle. For the tech industry, it's a particularly deft hustle: not just going to class but also to local technology meetups, learning what start-ups and venture capital firms are getting talked about, and browsing Facebook to see which high school and college friends might be working at tech companies where they could make a few intros. The strategy required in navigating the tech job world as an MBA, one could say, is not at all unlike the creative effort necessary in the day-to-day work at one of those companies.

There are some who say that this period of frustration, as MBAs find themselves second-class hires in an engineering-crazed tech industry, will be a temporary one.

Davis, the MBA candidate who sought new opportunities by obtaining her degree in Russia rather than in the U.S., said she thinks the market for business school graduates in the tech industry is about to go up as the current crop of start-ups matures. "I think in six to nine months there will be a lot of additional support needed for the product that's being developed now," she said. "A lot of the feedback that I got was that they were really interested in my skills and expertise, but that they wanted someone like me in six to nine months. What I've been hearing in general is that many companies are focused on building up engineering talent and they're focused on building the product right now. My part of it, which is like, marketing growth, product management, isn't going to come for a few months."

But some young MBAs are hungrier to start sooner rather than later.

"There are so many exciting start-ups going on. People want to be part of something on the ground floor," Chang said. "Why go work at an established company when I could help create what the digital media of the future looks like?"