Business Track

Google Sitemap Generator Software for Windows

2009-05-15T06:55:00.003+07:00

Google, the Internet′s most popular search engine, has launched Google Sitemaps (Beta). This is a new inclusion service designed for webmasters and website owners. Google Sitemaps enables you to proactively and automatically submit information about your website to Google to notify and direct their crawlers.

It is meant to create a more accurate index and deliver better search results of your website. To participate in Google Sitemaps service you need to place a XML formatted file on your webserver. This file contains a list of all URLs (sitemap) of your website along with other information such as when content has been modified, the update frequency and the priority of a particular page.

How to create XML formatted sitemaps of my website automatically and notify Google?

Google provides a Python-based script for basic use and suggests "We hope others will develop and share tools that generate sitemaps for various scenarios". VIGOS has met the challenge and here is the much-demanded tool, just one week after the unveiling of Google Sitemaps:

VIGOS Gsitemap is a 100% FREE, easy-to-use but versatile Windows sitemap generator tool to help webmasters and website owners to create, edit and submit sitemap information in adherence to the Google Sitemaps protocol.

Download VIGOS Gsitemap for free and start optimizing your website by improving its coverage and freshness in the Google search index!

Over 96,000 users have downloaded Gsitemap so far.
Give it a try, it's free!

Why Content is King In Web Design

2009-05-15T06:47:00.003+07:00

Would it interest you to know that most web users don't come to your site to appreciate the attractiveness of the design? That's not to say that an attractive web design isn't important.
However, the majority of site visitation happens because the consumer was motivated to look at your site to see if you could give them a reason to purchase from your ecommerce business.

The web is based on small resolution sizes. The words read online aren't even as clear as newsprint. The pictures are often low resolution and a computer screen can tax the best of vision.

One of the most cost effective applications this information can produce is that you may not need a website filled with all the toys such as Java Script or Flash design. These tools add spice to your website, but can often detract or even annoy visitors who are simply looking for information they expect to find on your website.

A well ordered website can reap incredible rewards for ecommerce business. Effective bullet points, keywords or phrases accented in bold type and an easy to navigate page may have a greater impact on your ecommerce web design than anything.

What this may also mean is that the web design options you can chose from may expand.

You see, if you know what will help make your site better you can self-direct the development of the site through template rich designs that allow you total control over the text in an easy to use environment that does not require the use of complicated code or extended training seminars to use.

Obviously many web design experts would rather have you seek an alternative using their personalized service, but in the end you have a stronger interest in the success of your website than a hired web developer.

If you can utilize the tools available to make your site user friendly and highly scannable you will likely find you can achieve your own success in web design.
Content writing for web pages is not the same as writing for any other type of content. Thoughts must be compact and content must be scannable.

This means when you write for the web you must help your reader find the subject they are most interested in using a sub-heading or indexing system that allows a quick scan to determine if your web page contains the information they need.

Even if your website does not contain the exact information your visitor wants they may be pleased to know it didn't require extended reading to make that determination. In turn the visitor may venture to other pages of online content to determine if you have the information they need elsewhere on your site.

Time Warner's Talk of AOL Spin-Off Stirs Hope for Internet Unit's Future

2009-05-01T07:12:00.002+07:00

Analysts said the two companies were ill-suited from the beginning. AOL's role had never been clearly defined. And Time Warner's recent move to replace AOL's top two executives had been widely seen as indication that major changes were coming for the struggling Web portal.

A quarterly report filed yesterday contained the first explicit acknowledgment that Time Warner's relationship with AOL, once the powerhouse of the Northern Virginia tech community, is nearing its end.

"Although the Company's Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner's stockholders, in one or a series of transactions," Time Warner wrote in its report to investors.

Tech industry pundits saw the potential move in relatively positive terms for the former dial-up Web access giant, which trails competitors like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in Web search traffic and advertising.

"At least this gives AOL some independence from a bad situation," said independent industry analyst Rob Enderle. "Where they are right now is purgatory; right now they're stuck. With Time Warner putting them on their own, there's a chance that they'll be able to rebuild a business."

Tuna Amobi, an analyst at Standard & Poor's, agreed and said that a split from Time Warner could free up AOL to strike a wider range of strategic partnerships. "On balance it's a good thing because it allows AOL to be valued as a stand-alone entity," he said. "There is no benefit for them to be part of Time Warner."

Still, both analysts pointed out, the problems at AOL are deep. The company's revenue fell 20 percent last year to $4.2 billion, a drop AOL blamed on a decline in Web advertising. Time Warner said it was AOL's poor performance that led to the media conglomerate's 14 percent drop in revenue during the most recent quarter, down from the year-ago period.

The company also laid off thousands of workers over the years in an effort to reduce expenses. This year, AOL reduced its headcount by 700 workers, or 10 percent.

When the two companies merged in 2001, the idea was that the then-giant AOL, boasting 22 million paying subscribers, would benefit from owning rights to Time Warner's vast portfolio of content, ranging from CNN to People magazine. At the same time, Time Warner, whose attempts to enter the Web era had resulted only in failure, was expected to lend stability to a fast-growing Internet company. Few benefits ever arose from the pairing, and even AOL founder Steve Case, once a champion and driver of the merger, has been saying for years that he believes the two companies should be separated.

"The worst place to be is in the middle of the road, and that's where AOL has been the last few years," said Case, who left the company in 2005.

With its "buddy lists" and "community sites," AOL invented some of the concepts of online social networking that are at the core of the Web's hottest companies right now, he said recently. But the company failed to adequately capitalize on those ideas, as sites such as Facebook have signed up hundreds of millions of new users in the span of a few years.

Former Google executive Tim Armstrong was named to the top leadership of the AOL unit in March. At an all-hands meeting that month with AOL staff he exhorted the company to "get America back online" and said that AOL's Dulles office, the company's original headquarters, would be at the heart of a new wave of innovation.

"There are some real, incredible things happening under the surface that people don't realize about AOL and I think those are the things we are going to build on," he said at the meeting. "I think the road to putting America back online starts right here in Dulles, Virginia."

Yesterday afternoon, an AOL employee at a nearby Ashburn bar expressed hope that the company would find its direction again under the new leader and sounded unfazed by the latest news of Time Warner's intentions. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.

Google Unveils New Tool To Dig for Public Data

2009-04-30T09:22:00.003+07:00

Google launched a new search tool yesterday designed to help Web users find public data that is often buried in hard-to-navigate government Web sites.

The tool, called Google Public Data, is the latest in the company's efforts to make information from federal, state and local governments accessible to citizens. It's a goal that many Washington public interest groups and government watchdogs share with President Obama, whose technology advisers are pushing to open up federal data to the public.

Google is one of a number of Internet properties, including Wikipedia and Amazon, that has been trying to make it easier to find government information on the Web.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has urged agencies to write their own "wikis," or self-edited entries, that can make government information and processes more accessible to the public. Amazon created an open data repository so developers and researchers can share data and collaborate on sifting through it. Google's Washington employees have spent the past two years visiting government agencies to urge them to make their Web sites, records and databases more searchable.

The E-Government Act of 2002 required government agencies to make information more accessible electronically, but users have complained that many agencies do not organize their Web sites so they can be easily indexed by search engines. And some agencies, Google has said, embed codes in their sites that make certain pages invisible to search engines.

"Information from government sources has been one of the thornier areas," said David Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, which includes the federal team. The new tool "is taking data, reformatting it so it's immediately consumable . . . so people don't have to go through rows and rows of data."

With Google's new tool, a Web user can search for a specific piece of data -- unemployment rates in Maryland, for example -- and a box appears at the top of the search results displaying the available relevant public data.

Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, a project within the Sunlight Foundation that uses technology to improve government transparency, said he's encouraged by Google's new tool, although he has not yet used it.

He cautioned, however, that there is no guarantee that government data is free of typographical and other errors.

He added that specific pieces of data could be misleading without a full understanding of how it fits with other information that may not be visible. For example, a Google searcher may not know enough about campaign contribution laws to spot inaccurate data entries or statistics.

Data tools should allow user feedback, Johnson said, to alert agencies to flawed data. Sunlight Labs is urging Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to implement a feedback loop on Data.gov, a site he has proposed that would catalog public data.

"There's a lot to be wary about," Johnson said. "We don't live in a world free of typos."

Gmail Emoticon Help to Convey Emotional Content

2008-11-09T06:37:00.006+07:00

Google has again improved its Gmail service by providing a bevy of new emoticons for users to insert in their emails. Gmail users now can click on to the emoticon button that sits along the same row with other text editing buttons to insert some funny and related symbols. Just click on this, and users will find a huge drop-down selection of emoticons, icons, and other animations for them to choose from to convey their emotional content in the emails.

Literally, a picture tells a thousand words. An emoticon is always one of the efficacy ways to express the senders’ feelings and emotions. Unlike Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL, etc, Gmail is a bit behind to make this “smiley faces” a key feature. Before this emoticon feature was added into Gmail, users who wanted to add emoticons to their emails need to find their own way, e.g. add and install scripts to Gmail.

This huge selection of emoticons has enhanced Gmail users’ experience tremendously. This colorful and funny emoticon feature currently only works in the latest version of Gmail, and it is available for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 browsers. Users can upgrade their browser to take advantage of this new feature in the event they want to enjoy it.

How to Hide Data in Notepad

2008-11-09T06:27:00.002+07:00

When you create a new file and type some data, one unnamed default stream is created to store all data written to the file. Since NTFS file system in Windows 2000 or above has supported Alternate Data Streams, so you are allowed to create additional streams for text file. All data stored in the addition streams will be hidden and none of us will be able to read the data when opening the file. This may be useful when you would like to hide some sensitive info from being read by others when sharing the file to public.

To create hidden data in the text file, follow below steps:

Open command prompt, you may change to any directory as you like to create the text file.
Type notepad MyFile.txt:StoreHiddenData then press enter. MyFile.txt is the text file you are going to create whereas StoreHiddenData is the alternate stream name.
A message will be pop up “Cannot find the C:\MyFile.txt:StoreHiddenData.txt file”. Do you want to create a new file?”, click OK button to proceed create the new file.
A notepad will be pop up. Type any data that you want to be hidden from others. Save the file and you are now successfully creating hidden data for this file.

The hidden data you have created will not contribute to the total file size. Just open Explorer and look for this file, you will observe that the file size is still zero. Now you can go ahead to type some data and saved it as usual. Good thing is, it will not affect the hidden data that you have saved earlier. On top of that, you can display or delete all the hidden data you have saved previously. However, you must download and install Streams application before you can do so. To delete hidden data, go to command prompt and type more

Google Scuttles Ad Deal with Yahoo

2008-11-08T06:27:00.003+07:00

Google pulled out of a proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo yesterday after the Justice Department signaled it would oppose the deal because it could help the dominant Web company become a monopoly.

The forced abandonment of the deal represents an embarrassing setback for Google. It also damages the comeback hopes of Yahoo, which saw the deal as a way to boost revenue after rejecting Microsoft's takeover bid this year.

The Justice Department said an agreement between Google and Yahoo would probably harm competition for Internet search advertising.

Under the deal proposed in June, Google would have provided advertising for some Yahoo searches in the United States and Canada. The companies would have shared the advertising revenue, with Yahoo estimated to receive as much as $800 million annually from the agreement.

Google runs the dominant search engine, while Yahoo's and Microsoft's search efforts run a distant second and third. Microsoft, as well as some advertisers and consumer advocates, protested the partnership, saying it would let Google control a majority of online advertising and could lead to higher prices for advertisers.

"It's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said on a company blog.

"Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement."
The decision represents a stark turnaround for Google, whose executives dismissed any possible antitrust problems.

But in July, the Justice Department issued "civil investigative demands" for information from the companies involved, a sign that a formal investigation had opened.

At the same time, several states announced that they were reviewing the deal.

"The arrangement likely would have denied consumers the benefits of competition -- lower prices, better service and greater innovation," said Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the department's antitrust division.

Google had argued that while it dominates search advertising, it does not dominate all online advertising.
But the Justice Department concluded that Google is the largest provider of both Internet search advertising and Internet search syndication, with shares of more than 70 percent in both markets.

"Yahoo! is by far Google's most significant competitor in both markets, with combined market shares of 90 percent and 95 percent in the search advertising and search syndication markets, respectively," the department said in a statement.

Microsoft, which has said it is no longer interested in acquiring Yahoo, fought hard to prevent the partnership between its two top competitors.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said the decision is "significant for advertisers, publishers and consumers, who voiced overwhelming concern about this illegal deal to law enforcement and policymakers."

Bob Liodice, chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, said the partnership would have given Google too much influence over the online advertising market.

"It was truly a negative for the marketing community, and it represented a concentration of power that we found unacceptable," he said.

In an effort to address concerns, Yahoo had proposed an amended agreement that would have limited the length of the deal and the number of search ads Yahoo could outsource to Google.

The last-minute changes did not save the deal, and Yahoo played down the effect of Google's withdrawal on its strategy.

In an e-mail to employees yesterday, Yahoo President Susan Decker said she was "disappointed" that Google ended the agreement instead of defending it in court.
Still, she said the deal was "just one of many efforts that we have underway to accelerate our strategy."

Google's Phone Operator

2008-10-18T07:04:00.002+07:00

In the past 10 years, Google has evolved from a simple Web site into an e-mail program, a map and even a verb. Now it can be a phone, too. About a year after the Mountain View, Calif., company revealed that it was developing software for mobile phones, the first device with Google's Android operating system is set to go on sale next week. The T-Mobile G1 shows that Android's promise is real -- but it doesn't deliver on Android's full potential.

Remember that distinction; the G1 is only one of many Android phones to come, and a somewhat ugly example at that. This HTC-built, touch-screen camera phone ($179.99 with a new, two-year T-Mobile plan; $399 without a contract) is an unlovely box for Google's software, with an awkward kink at one end and a screen that slides out with a thunk to expose a thumb-typeable keyboard.

But what shows up on the G1's 3 1/4 -inch screen makes this phone worth a look. For all its version 1.0 issues, Android gets three core smartphone functions right: providing a window to the Internet, mapping your way and letting you add features with extra software.

Like the iPhone's Safari, Android's Web browser (which relies on the same WebKit open-source software) makes complex pages readable on a small screen, aside from Flash and Java interactivity. But without the iPhone's clever "multi-touch" controls, the G1 requires you to tap a zoom-in icon to get a closer look at a page.

Setting up a G1 requires saving a Google Account username and password so it automatically syncs with Gmail. You may then add other e-mail accounts; the Android mail software can check for messages as often as every five minutes or only at your request. It displayed the text of attached PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

The G1 includes an instant-messaging client that connects to AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo's networks, plus Google Talk.

The Maps program on the G1 outdoes the iPhone's Google-based map software by offering street-view perspectives (still mysteriously unavailable in the Washington area). Its "compass mode" rotates the street view to match what you should see from that spot. Still absent: Google's Web options for walking and transit directions.

Android's Maps program can compute your location from wireless network signals or GPS, although the second, battery-hogging option is shut off by default -- and the G1 sometimes didn't find itself from T-Mobile's signals alone.

The most impressive aspect of Android is the Android Market. This catalogue of add-on programs combines the tap-to-install convenience of the iPhone's App Store with the choice other smartphone systems provide -- unlike Apple, Google doesn't limit you to developers and titles that it approves.

The Market's shelves look a little empty today, but even its early selection reveals some clever work. For example, ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere employ the G1's camera to scan the bar code of a product, then look up its price at Web stores and some nearby shops.

Android's blanks -- glaring omissions like a memo pad and to-do list -- ought to be filled in quickly by Android Market add-ons.
And Android lets you run more than one of these programs at once, then switch among them by pulling the status bar atop the screen down like a window shade.
As a phone, though, the G1 seems merely competent. Its battery allowed 5 1/2 hours of calling, and you can easily call people -- from the contacts list, by tapping an onscreen keypad or by speaking contacts' names -- use its speaker phone and stage group calls. But the G1 lacks a "visual voicemail" list of messages. Its Bluetooth wireless worked with a Jawbone headset but not a Toyota Prius' hands-free kit.

Don't expect Android to retire an iPod, either. It played AAC and MP3 files (including one bought from Amazon's MP3 store with the G1) but sometimes didn't display their labels or album art. You also need to buy a Micro SD card to store any music.

Android's biggest weakness is its requirement that you upload your calendar and contacts list to Google's Web services to use them on the phone. Neither Google nor T-Mobile provide desktop synchronization tools, though other developers may do so later.

Android also suffers from Google's choice of wireless carriers. T-Mobile's broadband coverage makes AT&T's look good: It says it won't even have "3G" service in the D.C. area until the end of this year. Over a few days in Boston, one of 20 markets that T-Mobile has graced with broadband access, the G1 took longer to download sites than an iPhone 3G. A popular speed-test site, DSLreports.com, clocked the G1 at about 600 kilobits per second, roughly 100 kbps slower than the iPhone.

At least the G1 includes a WiFi receiver, too.

T-Mobile charges $25 a month for "unlimited" online access (subject to vague limits on "disproportionate" use), plus 400 text or multimedia messages, on top of a voice plan. A data option with unlimited messaging costs $35 a month.

Android, fortunately, is more than this one phone and this one carrier. There will be other devices and other services, hopefully accompanied by bug fixes and added features from Google. Soon enough, we could be looking at the iPhone for the rest of us.

Doctors Warn of Rash From Mobile Phone Use

2008-10-18T06:50:00.002+07:00

Doctors baffled by an unexplained rash on people's ears or cheeks should be on alert for a skin allergy caused by too much mobile phone use, the British Association of Dermatologists said on Thursday. Citing published studies, the group said a red or itchy rash, known as "mobile phone dermatitis," affects people who develop an allergic reaction to the nickel surface on mobile phones after spending long periods of time on the devices.
"It is worth doctors bearing this condition in mind if they see a patient with a rash on the cheek or ear that cannot otherwise be explained," it said. The British group said many doctors were unaware mobile phones could cause the condition.

Safety concerns over mobile phones has grown as more people rely on them for everyday communication, although the evidence to date has given the technology a clean bill of health when it comes to serious conditions like brain cancer.

"In mobile phone dermatitis, the rash would typically occur on the cheek or ear, depending on where the metal part of the phone comes into contact with the skin," the group said in a statement.

"In theory it could even occur on the fingers if you spend a lot of time texting on metal menu buttons."

Nickel is a metal found in products, ranging from mobile phones to jewelry to belt buckles and is one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis, according to the Mayo Clinic in the United States.

Earlier this year Lionel Bercovitch of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and colleagues tested 22 popular handsets from eight different manufacturers and found nickel in 10 of the devices.

Keep Track of The Internet Speed and Bandwidth Usage Via BitMeter

2008-10-17T05:35:00.004+07:00

Do you think the broadband service offered by your local service provider is value for money? Probably it is time to keep track of your internet connection and avoid paying extra charges to the service provider. Users who would like to monitor their internet bandwidth usage and the internet connection speed can get a copy of BitMeter to assist them.

BitMeter is a useful and free bandwidth meter that can perform real time monitoring on Internet speed and bandwidth usage. This bandwidth meter features an appealing and colorful interface. The upload and download speeds are represented via colorful graphs. Each colors represents different upload and download speed. The update of the information is in real time. Besides tracking your internet connection and bandwidth usage, BitMeter can also alert users via audio notice about the current upload or download speed at regular time intervals. It will also prompt users if the internet connection is disconnected.

Users who want to try can download it via the link here. A summary of the features of this application is as follows:

• Audio notification at regular (configurable) time intervals - different tones are played according to your current upload or download speed (tone boundaries are also configurable)
• Audio notification each time a certain amount of data is transferred (uploaded, downloaded or both)
• Animated System Tray icon shows upload and download speeds
• Check for new version (with auto-check option and proxy support)
• Select any combination of network cards to monitor or ignore
• Configurable graph scale - set to any value, or set to auto-adjust according to your speed
• Connection Speed Helper
• Option to display current graph maximum on screen
• Change units used in readout (Kb,KB,Mb,MB)
• Change graph type (bar or line graph)
• Interval bars with adjustable time period
• Adjustable scroll interval (anywhere between 1 and 60 seconds)
• Save favourite colour combinations for later use, or use one of the preconfigured colour-schemes.
• Configure System Tray tooltip information (including speeds and days totals)
• Show or hide readout area, or adjust its font-size.
• Auto-start option for current user, or all users
• Manual and automatic backup options of configuration and traffic history information.

Free Monitoring Network Bandwidth with NetWorx

2008-10-06T09:14:00.006+07:00

NetWorx is a simple and free network monitoring software that used to monitor incoming and outgoing bandwidth of the selected network adapters and connections. After monitoring the traffic, it can be shown in graphs or logged to a file for future analysis. The reports also can be generated by daily, weekly, monthly or certain duration and exported to variety format like HTML, MS Word or Excel.

It also able to provide notifications or alert when the network connection is down or some suspicious activity such as unusually heavy data flow occurs. Beside that, it also features with automated task like disconnect all dialup connections or shut down the systems.

The below is the key features of NetWorx:

Clear graphic and numeric displays.
Able to notify user or disconnect from the Internet automatically when suspicious activity occurs.
Able to generate to the reports that can be exported to variety types of file formats like Excel, MS Word and HTML.
Permits close supervision of uploads and downloads.
Includes network information & testing tools with advanced netstat that displays applications using your Internet connection.
Scalable to your own modem download capabilities.
Include speed meter to accurately time downloads and report the average transfer rates.
Absolutely free and does not contain any adware, spyware or malware.

Tech Stocks Drp 9 Percent

2008-10-01T11:57:00.002+07:00

Technology stocks took a nosedive yesterday, falling about 9 percent, as the Nasdaq had its worst drop since the Internet bubble imploded in 2000, a sign that no sector is immune to the current financial turmoil, analysts said.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 778 points -- its largest one-day point drop ever -- after the news that the plan to rescue the nation's financial markets failed on the House floor. Tech heavyweights Apple and Google took hits, signaling flagging investor confidence and a grim outlook for consumer spending during the holiday season and well into next year.

"Tech took it on the chin disproportionately," said Ross Sandler, senior Internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets. Panicked investors are moving out of higher-risk sectors, such as technology, that are not considered to be essential to daily life and putting their money into safer areas, such as health care and household goods, that are thought to be more resilient to market turbulence, he said.

There's a fear of serious consumer weakness into the third and fourth quarters, he said. "Couple that with investors leaving the tech sector and the stuff out of Congress, and you've got a perfect storm for panic selling."

The failure of the bailout package frightened investors that the economic downturn could worsen and last longer, which is bad news for premium-priced consumer products, said Andy Hargreaves, senior analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.

"The question is not whether we'll be in a consumer spending recession; the question is how bad it will be," he said.

Apple had a particularly jarring day, starting when several analysts downgraded its shares, causing a 9 percent drop. News of the failed bailout plan doubled its daily loss, and it closed down 18 percent, at $105.26, its lowest close in the past year.

Despite strong sales of Apple's iPhone, Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty said in a note to investors that consumers would shift to lower-priced products because of the uncertain economic conditions, causing Apple's premium-priced Mac computers to suffer.

"Downgrades were based on the assumption that our economy is going into a recession, possibly a severe recession, and it's clear consumers are going to be affected," said Charlie Wolf, security analyst at Needham.

Internet firms also experienced deep losses in anticipation that advertising budgets will be slashed and consumers will do less online shopping. Google shares lost 12 percent, to close at $381.00, dipping below $400 a share for the first time in two years. Amazon fell 10 percent, to close at $63.35; eBay fell 12 percent, to close at $19.95; and Yahoo fell 11 percent, to close at $16.88.

"For these stocks, the failure of Congress to pass the bailout plan further ensures that the macroeconomic weakness will linger and we're likely in a recession," said Clayton Moran, stock analyst at Stanford Group. "Companies that are dependent on consumer buying behavior and advertising budgets are going to be hurt."

Google dominates the Web-search market, making it less susceptible to a major recession than a company like Yahoo that relies heavily on brand advertising, he said. But as consumers search for fewer books, airline tickets, hotels and clothing deals, Google's results could also decline.

The high-flying tech stocks of the 1990s crashed hard in 2000 when investors stopped funding relatively young and untested firms. The technology sector started to recover in 2003 and rose on a fairly stable growth trajectory.

Technology companies are more likely to rebound more quickly than other sectors when conditions start to improve, Sanders said.

"Tech stocks rally harder and faster as an early cycle mover," he said.

Google Goes to Washington, Gearing Up to Put Its Stamp on Government

2008-10-01T11:44:00.003+07:00

The tall buildings in Reston bear the familiar names of big government contractors: Northrop Grumman, CACI, Raytheon and Accenture. Last month another name appeared, but not one that's typically associated with the federal market.

Google has come to town, though you'd hardly know it from its nondescript, newly constructed building in Reston Town Center. The only clue to the company's presence is a small listing on the building's tenant directory.

The company's 18-person federal sales team is still unpacking boxes, arranging bean bag chairs and testing the new massage chair. Over the past couple of years, Google has been trying to educate federal agencies -- as well as the companies that work with them -- on how its search, e-mail and mapping tools can be applied to government business.

It may be one of the best-known consumer Internet brands, but Google staffers still get some blank stares when they explain their mission.

"Sometimes they'll look at us and say, 'But what do you actually sell?' " said Mike Bradshaw, Google's head of federal sales, who has sold technology to the government for IBM and Microsoft.

Their answer is nothing. Well, nothing entirely new, anyway. Google wants agencies and the firms working with them to give "cloud-computing" a try. That means, for example, using Google Maps and Google Earth to visualize massive amounts of information, or using Google's search tool to organize internal data, and storing that information on Google's servers "in the cloud." The enterprise versions of the tools, which come with extra storage and security features, cost around $50 per user, per year.

Perhaps employees could use Google Docs, a word processor that lets multiple people collaborate on the same document or spreadsheet. Google-powered e-mail systems come with built-in spam filters and virus scanners, cutting down on server maintenance costs.

"Most people are used to this technology -- just not at work," Bradshaw said.

Plus, he said, think of the security risks that could be eliminated by storing an agency's sensitive data on Google's giant servers rather than on employee laptops, which are more easily lost or stolen.

Yet agencies have been wary of storing critical information on an outside server. IT managers have traditionally found it comforting to know all of an agency's data is resting on its own secure server somewhere nearby. And some systems integrators don't think Google's products are robust enough for defense or intelligence operations.

"They think that, because it's so easy to use, it must not be that sophisticated," Bradshaw said. "We take care of everything behind the scenes."

It doesn't help that Google doesn't operate like the typical Washington company.

Take its new space, a departure from the typical cubicle-filled offices of Northern Virginia. The conference rooms are named after famous Virginia natives, such as Patsy Cline and Lewis and Clark. The room named after Ella Fitzgerald contains a floor-to-ceiling photo of the singer. Nearby are big-screen TVs, supposedly reserved for videoconferencing. Meals are catered daily in the cafeteria. Vint Cerf, referred to as the "Father of the Internet" for his role in developing the network, has an office next to a cluster of Adirondack lawn chairs intended to promote discussion among employees.

Still, some state and federal agencies have become more receptive to Google's pitch, Bradshaw said, with 10 Cabinet agencies and several state and county governments using its tools.

Three months ago, all 38,000 District government employees started using Google-powered e-mail service, watching training videos posted on YouTube and searching through an internal wiki, called DCpedia.

The government also plots the locations of construction projects and broken parking meters, among other things, on Google Maps, so residents can see how many potholes are scheduled to get filled on their street or how many computers a neighborhood school received this year.

And all the work is recorded in Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which can be edited by everyone involved. That way, Vivek Kundra, the District's chief technology officer, can monitor the work flow for every project and hold employees accountable.

Shortly after assuming his new role, Kundra visited a dozen Silicon Valley companies to study their technologies. Google's applications, he thought, would allow various parts of the District's government to talk to each other.

"What I use in my personal life is much more advanced than what I had at work," he said. "Why wouldn't we invest in what all the employees are using at home anyway?"

Google's foray into government business is not only a sign of the company's expansion into other industries, it's also a sign of the changes underway in Washington's technology landscape. New firms are moving in, branching out and making deals, perhaps beginning to blur the line between the robust government contracting world and the consumer-minded firms that continue to take chances and thrive.

Google Chrome Update

2008-09-25T06:06:00.003+07:00

Google Chrome, a new web browser released by Google recently has attracted more than 2 million of downloads, and this number is still increasing rapidly. In order to maintain the product quality and reliability, Google Chrome team has continuously enhanced the product to make it a world class browser competing against Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In view of the high demand, the latest beta version of Google Chrome, 0.2.149.30 was released on 17 September to fix several software bugs.

[r1927] - Eliminate https indexing in local history file
In older version of Google Chrome, it has indexed the content of searchable history pages include any sites using SSL security locally, such as online bank transaction and credit card information. This could be risky and create chance for people to steal your privacy data. With this latest version, it doesn’t index https content and any data from secure pages will not be kept in local history. In other word, nobody will able to find data from secure site that you have just visited.

[r1978] - Stop sending data to suggest service
Google Chrome stops sending data to suggest service from preventing user data being exposed if the URL matches the patterns as below:
• starts with http:// or https:// and includes username (example: http://myname@abc.com)
• starts with http:// or https:// and includes query (example: http://abc.com/?p=745)
• starts with https:// and includes path component (e.g. https://abc.com/path)

[r1859] - Fix flash video unable to play issue when user moves the slider to fast forward the video clip. Flash will throw an error to Google Chrome that it should stop the existing stream when user moves the slider. However, Google Chrome does not catch and handle this error that causes it to download the video clips multiple times from multiple offsets. The connection will be saturated when user moves the sliders 6 times since it only allows 6 connections per host.

[r2059] - Allow JavaScript to communicate with Java applets.
[r1299] - Ensure “contextmenu” events is dispatched after “mouseup”.
[r1692] - Fix 3dvia plugin crashes problem by initializing NPObject pointer to NULL and check for NPERR_NO_ERROR along with the error check.
[r1848], [r1943], [r2003] - The fixes to make Google Chrome more reliable

If you are worried about your privacy data has been indexed, please refer to the instruction for clearing the browser’s history. If you have previous version of Google Chrome installed in your PC, you should get an automatic update within the next few days when the news was announced.

Amazon MP3 Music Store Pre-Loaded On T-Mobile G1 Android Phone

2008-09-24T06:31:00.004+07:00

The well-known American e-commerce company, Amazon.com, Inc. has officially announced that its famous Amazon MP3 application will be pre-loaded on the world’s first Android-powered mobile phone in an exclusive partnership with Google - T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream), allowing the users to search, download, buy and play their favorite music from Amazon MP3 music store.

“Amazon wants to make it easy for customers to discover, buy, and play their music wherever they happen to be—whether sitting at their computer or on the go,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music and Video. “We look forward to the release of the T-Mobile G1, which will put Amazon MP3’s vast selection of low-priced DRM-free music at the fingertips of even more customers in more places.”

According to the press release, “The T-Mobile G1 combines full touch-screen functionality and a QWERTY keyboard with a mobile Web experience that includes the popular Google services that millions have enjoyed on the desktop, including Google Maps with StreetView, Gmail, YouTube and others. With a fun and intuitive user interface and one-touch access to Google Search, the T-Mobile G1 is also the first phone to provide access to Android Market, where customers can find and download unique applications to expand and personalize their phone to fit their lifestyle.”

Free Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Courses by Stanford Engineering Everywhere

2008-09-18T12:46:00.006+07:00

Stanford University, one of the world’s leading research and teaching institutions from California, United States, is now offering a series of 10 free online computer science (CS) and electrical engineering (EE) courses to students and even educators worldwide who are keen to improve themselves and learn more. This free CS and EE courses cover introduction to computer science, introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, etc. These free courses are offered by Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) and learners who join the programs will have access to handouts, assignments, tutorials, video lectures, assessments and transcripts online. However, these online students are not eligible to receive Stanford credits, unlike Stanford enrolled students. While they can communicate online with other SEE students, they have no direct communication either with Stanford’s professors or academic staff.

Why has Stanford chosen to make courses available for free? Stanford University spokesperson explained that the university and the School of Engineering want to live up to its mission of enabling technology transfer to reach a wide public. Research and teaching via SEE is one of the best approaches to achieve this mission. Users who are interested on this free courses offered by the prestigious university can read the detailed FAQ here. The course outlines are as follow:

Introduction to Computer Science:

Programming Methodology — CS106A
Programming Abstractions — CS106B
Programming Paradigms — CS107

Artificial Intelligence:

Introduction to Robotics — CS223A
Natural Language Processing — CS224N
Machine Learning — CS229

Linear Systems and Optimization:

The Fourier Transform and its Applications — EE261
Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems — EE263
Convex Optimization I — EE364A
Convex Optimization II — EE364B

Get more information from Stanford Engineering Everywhere.

Google Alert Tool to Keep You Notified with the Latest News with Customizable Query

2008-09-18T12:46:00.005+07:00

Have you ever wonder how to get an instant email notification to your mailbox whenever there is a new update either from webs, blogs or news? There could be multiple ways but here we would like to introduce a simple way that will help you to achieve this. Named as Google Alerts, it is a powerful tool that enables users to customize own query to match exactly as what you would like to monitor so that you wouldn’t receive too many emails which will make yourself loss focus and frustration of managing the unwanted incoming emails.

Google Alert currently offers 6 types of alerts, which are ‘News’, ‘Web’, ‘Blogs’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Video’ and ‘Groups’, and you can choose how frequent you would like Google to search and match against your query, ‘as-it-happens’, ‘once a day’ or ‘once a week’. In order to receive an accurate alert, the query plays a very important role as you must know the keyword and avoid any spelling error. If you are in doubt whether the query will return you the accurate result, you can use Advanced Search to refine your query. Once you are satisfied with the result, copy the query and paste it into Search terms at Google Alert. For instance, if you want to know anything related to windows vista news as soon as it is published at My Digital Life, you can write your Search terms: windows vista site:www.mydigitallife.info, Type: Web.

To make it more attractive, recently Google has slightly enhanced the alert which includes image next to the stories that are either gotten from Google News or YouTube Videos. You must subscribe to HTML format email in order to see this image thumbnails. To learn more about Google Alerts, visit Google Alerts FAQ.

One Market Where Lehman's, Merrill's, Value Is Up

2008-09-17T21:33:00.002+07:00

It's fast becoming a Wall Street tradition: First comes the demise of a major financial institution, then comes eBay.

Hundreds of pieces of Lehman Brothers merchandise have gone up for auction since the 158-year-old investment bank filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday. Disgruntled employees, as well as a few quick-thinking entrepreneurs, posted coffee mugs, T-shirts, duffel bags, pens, stuffed animals, along with other assorted memorabilia.

By late afternoon Tuesday, men's large T-shirts were selling for as much $73. Bids for a tie decorated in hundreds of tiny Lehman logos reached $102, more than doubling the initial asking price of $49.99. A plethora of Lehman-related domain names, including LehmanCasualty.com and LehmanPlunge.com, had gone without buyers.

Bids for a piece of toast with Lehman's and Bear Stearns's initials scratched onto either side climbed to $6.50.

And sales staff from CheapHumidors.com said that at about $66, bids for a humidor engraved with Lehman's name were $30 higher than the item's retail value.

A smaller, but still thriving, market for Merrill Lynch souvenirs has also sprung up. The brokerage agreed Monday to sell itself to Bank of America to avoid insolvency.

Overall, though, it appeared that Lehman gear was fetching a higher premium. By late afternoon yesterday, bids for some Lehman baseball caps surged past $65. Merrill caps topped out at $26.

A few Lehman employees used their ad space to vent their frustrations.

"I worked here for half of my career. Bought most of my stock at a weighted average price of $45," began one post, the text appearing in Lehman green and white, for a duffle bag. "I guess all you employed people could use this bag to carry important documents and do complex mortgage calculations on the notepad. The only important-ish docs I have now are my Lehman Stock Certificates which I plan on using to warm my apartment this winter when I can't afford the heating bill."

Others were more light-hearted, if still biting.

"Please bid to help me raise plan B financing for my rent check next month AND receive this lovely soon-to-be vintage tee," read one post for a white Fruit of the Loom T-shirt with a green Lehman logo.

The Lehman employees appeared to be taking their cues from their counterparts at Bear Stearns, who rushed onto eBay back in March after their firm was bought out by J.P. Morgan. Bear Stearns merchandise was enjoying a modest revival of interest, presumably because of this week's Wall Street turmoil. A men's large Bear Stearn's T-shirt was selling for $15.99.

Perhaps the single most successful item of the day was a stock certificate issued to Lehman for shares of White Star. After three hours and 28 bids it was commanding more than $300. White Star, of course, owned the Titanic.

Locate Local Business Via Google New "Search with My Location" Service

2008-09-13T06:13:00.003+07:00

When we are away in a new area or an unfamiliar neighborhood, we may have difficulties to locate the local businesses available in that area, e.g. restaurant, shopping mall, etc. As we are traveling or on the move, it is quite inconvenient to open our computers and search for the relevant places. This is quite a typical problem frequently faced by travelers, especially businessmen. Problems to locate your appointment venue probably might cause you to lose your million-dollar deal or make your clients upset. To cater for users’ need in this area, Google has announced a new service for Windows Mobile phone users called Search with My Location.

By using the Gears Geolocation API technology, Google’s “Search with My Location” service can locate and approximate users’ actual location using the same Cell ID technology applied in Google Maps mobile. The search result will revert to users the nearby businesses requested by users. For instance, if users are looking for Japanese restaurants in this neighbourhood, users could just type in “Japanese Restaurants” and Google will enlighten users with a list of Japanese restaurants in that area. This “Search with My Location” feature goes beyond identifying venues. Users can even use it to do, for example, weather forecast.

This search feature currently is available for Windows Mobile Phone users who are running Internet Explorer Mobile. Users can check out whether their phones are compatible with this service from the list here. If users’ phones are compatible, users can now surf Google.com and click the My Location Link to start enjoying the feature. At this point of time, this smart search service is only usable in US and UK. However, Google said that wider support will be available as it continues to enter into agreements with vendors.

Microsoft and Google Give The Browser a Rewrite

2008-09-12T09:43:00.003+07:00

Your Web browser is probably the most important program on your computer, and it's now getting the competition it deserves. Mozilla Firefox, the most successful challenger to Microsoft's incumbent Internet Explorer, is an outstanding piece of work and more than deserving of the raves it has won since its debut four years ago. (I made it my default browser in Windows even before its 1.0 version arrived.) But its developers don't have a monopoly on all the bright ideas in browsing; people looking for better ways to the Web have two new options.

One comes from Microsoft, which two weeks ago shipped an impressive, but unfinished, release of IE's next version. The other comes from Google, which last week offered a preview of its own browser.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 ( http://microsoft.com/ie) and Google Chrome ( http://google.com/chrome) each show thoughtful attention to the ways busy people who don't read manuals try to read the Web.

Both browsers are free downloads for Microsoft's Windows XP or Vista, though Google says it's working on Mac and Linux versions of Chrome.

IE 8 looks like the disappointing IE 7 Microsoft released in 2006, but it's considerably more useful. It catches up with two of Firefox's best conveniences -- the auto-complete function that takes you to recently visited pages whether you type their address or their title and the "find as you type" searching that jumps to matching text on a page as you type your query. It also adds useful tweaks of its own.

One deals with tabbed browsing, the feature that lets you flip among open Web pages in a single window as if they were tabbed folders in a drawer. Microsoft's developers noticed how Web readers will open a set of links from one page in new tabs, then not read these pages until later; to help you keep your place, IE 8 dyes the tabs of pages opened from one site in one color.

The blank page that loaded when you opened a new tab in IE now features links to pages you've viewed before and such options as "accelerators" -- shortcuts to Web services such as mapping and word-translation sites that you can invoke with a right-click. There's also "InPrivate browsing," an option that, like the "private browsing" in Apple's Safari, lets you visit sites without the browser keeping any record of your activity there.

IE 8 also adds sturdier defenses against hostile Web sites and some performance tune-ups, though it's still slower and it uses more memory than Firefox.

This browser has looked stable in a couple of weeks of testing. But some sites that tweaked for old versions of IE look off-kilter in this version -- a side effect of earlier IE editions' weaker support for Web standards.

Google's Chrome shares some features with IE 8 and Firefox, such as smart address auto-completion and find-as-you-type searching. But it's far simpler than either, tossing aside many browser traditions.

Chrome dispenses with the usual lineup of address bar and search bar; here, you type either a site's address or words to describe the site you want, and Chrome's smart enough to know the difference. The program then condenses the standard lineup of menus to two small drop-down items and retires the bookmarks menu in favor of a new-tab start page that presents your bookmarks and thumbnail images of recently visited pages.

This absence of clutter could make Chrome the perfect starter browser -- if only it came pre-installed on a new computer.
Chrome matches Safari's private browsing and IE 8's InPrivate option with a similar mode, "incognito." But it leaves out such common features as support for the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) updates offered by many sites and the add-ons and extensions you can use to customize IE and Firefox.

Chrome also showed its beta status in such glitches as text that briefly vanished as I typed it into an online form and Flash videos that randomly stopped playing after a couple of seconds.

But the biggest issue with this browser is the brand name. Google does some great work, but do you want it providing all of your Internet experiences? Would you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same restaurant?

In that light, the best feature of Chrome may not be its simplicity but its open-source code, free for anybody to inspect and, if they wish, improve. (Credit where it's due: A chunk of this code comes from the WebKit open-source core of Apple's Safari, which itself dates to an earlier project, KHTML.)

Both IE 8 and Chrome attempt to cure a common ailment of Web browsing by running separate pages in separate blocks of code so that when one page crashes, you can keep viewing any other pages you have up. That technique eats a fair amount of memory, but as memory gets cheaper, this tradeoff may not seem so bad.

I wouldn't dump Firefox for either of these just yet, but I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what the Firefox (and Safari and Opera) developers do to top these releases. The browser market can only get more interesting from here on out.

Google Promises Privacy Fixes in Its Chrome Browser

2008-09-10T09:52:00.006+07:00

Google, whose new, faster Web browser Chrome has raised privacy concerns on both sides of the Atlantic, said yesterday it was taking steps to mask the identities of people who use the tool.
The move comes as privacy advocates here and in Europe expressed concern that the browser had the potential to give Google a way to track even more of users' online behavior and create rich profiles of them.

Jane Horvath, Google's senior privacy counsel, said that the company would be anonymizing the Internet Protocol address and the cookies that track users when they type search terms or Web pages into Chrome's Omnibox, an all-in-one search and address bar.

She said Google also would anonymize the IP addresses associated with search queries typed in by users into Google's standard search bar nine months after they have been collected. "This really just illustrates how seriously we do take data anonymization," Horvath said.

But Google, which already dominates the Internet search and online advertising fields, still needs to be more forthcoming about its data collection practices, privacy advocates said.

"My main concern is the ability to collect users' Web addresses, and therefore your complete surfing on the Web could be tracked," Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, said of Chrome. "The Web is, in fact, a second life. A virtual mirror of one's real life, with information about one's interests, activities, perhaps sexual orientation."

Schaar said that yesterday his office began an inquiry into the browser to determine whether Google was collecting and correlating personal data in violation of German data protection law.

"We're pretty confident that what he'll find is it's a very well-designed product," Horvath said.

In Europe, unlike in the United States, IP addresses in most cases are considered personal data because they can be traced back to an individual through the Internet service provider, said Schaar, who until last spring chaired the Article 29 Working Party, the European data protection commission.

On Saturday, the German Federal Office for Information Security issued a warning against use of the browser, Schaar said. Horvath, however, said that no such warning had been issued.

Google's Chrome is set up by default to collect about 2 percent of all keystrokes typed into its Omnibox -- whether Web page addresses or search terms, Horvath said. One percent is comprised of all the keystrokes for 1 percent of computer users selected randomly, each day, she said. Google also collects 1 percent of all the keystrokes typed into the Omnibox each day.

She said that the data collected may be retained "forever" to help Google refine its ability to suggest Web pages the user is seeking. But, she said, the IP address and cookie -- a string of numbers that can be used to track a computer user online -- associated with the data will be anonymized so that "there will be no way to connect it back to the individual."

Christine Chen, a Google spokeswoman, said yesterday that the exact method of anonymization had not been settled upon yet.

Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said, "If all they're doing is removing a portion of the IP address, I don't think it really renders all of their logs anonymous. If you're truly anonymizing it so there is no IP address, no cookie, and no identifying information in the log itself, then there's significantly less privacy concern."

Export Products from Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo Store to Post Items into Google Base with Store Connector

2008-09-10T09:42:00.003+07:00

Google Base is a online database where users can submit all types of online and offline content for free, and tag or describe the item posted with attributes. The contents or items posted will then be searchable from Google Base, and may also appears in search results of Froogle, Google Maps and main Google web search, providing a free and easy method to enter into Google search index and reaching thousands of surfers.

As put up and publish your product items in Google does no harm but only good, and furthermore it’s free, so it’s good to maintain an existance in Google Base to increase exposure and reach. Google has provides several ways to create and post Google Base items, such as online posting by using Google Base web form, bulk upload lots of items and products with description by using spreadsheet or XML file, or by using Google Base API. And if you already have and own an established online store in Amazon, eBay or Yahoo! selling lots of products, you can use Google Base Store Connector to migrate the products directly to Google Base.

Google Base Store Connector is a free download for Windows XP or 2000 system and is a migration tool that exports and puts information from online store in eBay, Amazon and Yahoo into Google Base index. With entry in Google Base, the products and items can be found in search results when surfers search Google for the products you have to sell, with a link directly to site on eBay, Amazon or Yahoo.

The main feature of Google Base Store Connector is ease of use, where online store owners can effertlessly bulk upload the items from their online store without the need to manually neter the same items again on Google Base. Instead, Store Connector will automatically format the items in the proper Google Base format. To use Google Base Store Connector, just input your online stores from Amazon, Yahoo and eBay account information, and the smart tool will synchronize multiple sites by moving data from multiple sites into your Google Base account by just one click.

Visit Google Base or download Google Base Store Connector.

First Ladies and the Fabric of the Nation

2008-09-07T10:07:00.002+07:00

The season of political conventions ended Thursday in St. Paul, Minn., just as the spring 2009 fashion season was getting underway in New York. The convergence of politics and fashion brings together the substantive and the superficial, with neither industry having a monopoly on frivolousness and both relying on the power of appearances.

For fashion designers, the clothing styles of the two potential first ladies are of particular interest because they carry with them the possibility of launching trends or transforming once unknown brands into household names. Indeed, Michelle Obama has already given the Chicago-based designer Maria Pinto more of a national presence than her tasteful and minimal sheaths ever won on their own. And Obama helped New York's Donna Ricco sell out a black-and-white sundress just by wearing it on "The View.

As a country, we remain predisposed to assessing the attire of women with an eye toward meaning and revelation. Some might say it is sexist to do so. They are wrong.

There are plenty of occasions when men provide tantalizing fashion fodder. For instance, it was no coincidence that Barack Obama chose the Chicago-based Hart Schaffner Marx to create the custom suit he wore to accept the Democratic nomination for president. The company is one of the few boardroom-quality suitmakers that can still tout their products as made in America. A political point was being made with that suit, which also featured traditional pleated trousers instead of the more youthful and fashionable flat-front ones.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer delivered his speech at the Democratic National Convention wearing a bolo tie. No man goes on national television dressed like he just scraped a cow pie off his boots unless he's intent on underscoring his cattle country bona fides.

We focus on the women, however, because their clothes are so obviously interesting and because the fashion business is essentially a woman's world. If designers are to gain any advantage, most likely they will have a woman to thank. The men always play second fiddle.

It is not sexist to have noticed that Sen. Hillary Clinton delivered her convention speech dressed in head-to-toe mango. Only an obstinately unaware person would have ignored this question: Senator, why are you dressed like a tropical fruit? One assumes it was to ensure an eye-catching photo for the history books and to underscore her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" legacy.

The ensembles of the potential first ladies matter most of all because the position remains so stubbornly retro and so purely symbolic. It is a troublesome combination of hostess, national Madonna and champion of some wholly uncontroversial cause. (We had trouble dealing with a first lady who was a lawyer. Will we ever be able to stomach one, as in France, who is a pop singer?) The first lady serves as a reflection of her husband's administration and of womanhood, and one suspects that when there is a first gentleman, he will bear the burden of epitomizing an ideal of manhood and will be forced to wrestle with accusations that he is too much of a metrosexual, a dandy, a he-man or a wimp. Almost certainly, we will obsess about his ties.

When Cindy McCain made her first appearance at the Republican National Convention, she was wearing a buttercup-yellow shirt dress with a flipped-up collar by Seventh Avenue designer Oscar de la Renta. As is the current fashion, the dress looked as though the designer had found some inspiration in the early 1960s world of "Mad Men." It was feminine, reserved and lovely. Ballpark price for a de la Renta dress: $3,000.

De la Renta, who has been in business for more than 30 years, has become the unofficial couturier to first ladies, having designed inaugural gowns for both Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. When each first settled into the East Wing, both Clinton and Bush were loyal to their local designers. But eventually, they made the smart decision to turn to the expertise and experience of de la Renta. He's an extraordinary designer who knows how to make a woman -- no matter her age -- look, quite simply, pretty. Not a lot of designers seem terribly interested in doing that.

Who can blame McCain for playing it safe? With Laura Bush standing alongside her on the convention stage wearing a cream-colored, embroidered de la Renta suit, it was a snapshot of fashion continuity. And an illustration of Washington's fashion rut. If there was any hint of a message in McCain's choice, it was the suggestion that she would carry on the Laura Bush tradition of reassuring, fully vetted style.

If fashion is politics -- and these days, what isn't? -- McCain has endorsed the status quo.

Yet with such a strong generation of new designers swaggering forth in New York over the coming week, it's disheartening to see such a lack of imagination. Why not embrace some of the industry's fresher names such as Peter Som or Derek Lam? Even Michael Kors and Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa, who aren't exactly new on the scene, have yet to get much East Wing attention. De la Renta may be rare in his abilities, but he is not alone.

When Michelle Obama made her convention speech, she wore a turquoise sheath by Pinto with a wide V-neckline. More than the silhouette of the dress, it was her decision to stick with her hometown dressmaker that was notable, and so far Pinto has served her well. For most of her time onstage, Obama was standing behind a lectern. Mostly, what one saw was the dress's neckline and it was both striking and flattering.When her husband officially accepted the nomination, she embraced him onstage wearing a raspberry, lavender and black print silk dress by American designer Thakoon Panichgul, who has been in business only since 2004. The dress, with its slim bodice and A-line skirt, came from his 2009 resort collection. The designer is known for his sporty sensibility and his ability to combine unusual fabrics and sometimes jarring prints with relatively simple shapes. Ballpark price for one of his dresses: $1,500.

With a fashion risk, though, comes the possibility of failure. And the Thakoon dress -- as the label is formally called -- was too informal and failed to reflect the significance of the occasion. And with that fabric belt hanging down the back, it resembled a child's special-occasion frock rather than something suitable for a sophisticated 44-year-old. The flats reinforced the tea-party aesthetic.

Still, Obama has shown her willingness to embrace a new generation of designers, as well as industry veterans such as Isabel Toledo, who are not nestled in fashion's mainstream. She may offer them a chance to elbow their way into the national spotlight. And as they put their wares on the catwalk in the coming week, one hopes that some of them follow de la Renta's example and step up to the deceptively straightforward challenge of making a woman simply look pretty.

Get Instant Weather Forecast

2008-09-02T05:38:00.004+07:00

Weather might probably affect your decision on whether to go shopping, play outdoor sports or stay at home for an afternoon nap. Of course you can go to some weather forecast sites such as National Weather Service, Weather.com, etc to get the latest forecast results on weather conditions, air quality, temperature, sky condition, humidity, wind speeds, etc. However, if you are frequently checking the weather forecast and looking for quick access to the forecast result, you should probably get a copy of Weather Pulse to be installed in your computer.

Weather Pulse is a powerful weather monitoring tool that displays detailed weather forecast information for selected cities in US and some popular cities in the world. This application will indicate to users the current weather conditions. It shows the temperature, humidity, dew point, wind, UV index, visibility, pressure, sunrise and sunset time. Besides, Weather Pulse also features weather alert options, 10 day forecast, hourly forecast, detailed forecast and more. Users who are looking for some popular satellite weather images from around the globe can also get it from Weather Pulse. Users can save these weather images or email them to friends.

Weather Pulse is a completely free application. It is user friendly and it is an ads free application. This tiny application integrates all the weather information into an easy-to-read interface. A small tray icon which displays the current temperature for your selected city will be added in your Windows task tray. If you mouse point at the icon, it will display the current weather summary. Users can also add custom radar and weather images, view animated images and monitor multiple zip codes with this application.
Get the latest Weather Pulse 2.10 Build 7 via the link here.

Wake Me When You Need Me

2008-08-19T08:41:00.002+07:00

Intel has announced a new power-saving technology called Remote Wake that will let outfitted computers doze in a power-saving mode until an appropriate message is received over the Internet, either via a VoIP call or another messaging medium. While the Wake on LAN protocol has been around for some years, allowing computers with the right Ethernet card and software to monitor a network even while sleeping for a Sleeping Beauty like magic kiss, Remote Wake goes far beyond that.

Intel has only released sketchy details--there's not even a link on their Web site--but Remote Wake would have to maintain a persistent network connection with a central server to function as Intel intends, as most computers in homes are behind Network Address Translation (NAT) gateways that prevent direct access. It's possible that a combination of UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and Remote Wake are required to leave an external port on the Internet-facing side of the gateway active, that can be used to route traffic to the snoozing system.

Remote Wake could be used, Intel and its partners said, to let a computer sleep unless there's a download needed, a user wanted to access files (like media to stream) from a home computer, or a call was coming in via VoIP. Remaining in a standby instead of active state could reduce usage by hundreds of watts a day for a computer that's normally left on in a full-power mode with its monitor off.

Standby modes need to be made more efficient, too. The standby modes of all home electronics, including televisions, toaster ovens with electronic displays, and wall warts for DC conversion consumers hundreds of terawatt hours per year, the output of hundreds of power plants. Standby power can't be eliminated entirely, of course, but newer equipment and smarter enginering could drop standby power use by 90 percent or more.