WebScient - Web Design and SEO

Let's celebrate google's 13th birthday

2011-09-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

World's #1 search engine Google is celebrating its 13th birthday today on 27 September, 2011.

As we know Google is providing very good services to us so wish Google a happy birthday.

Wikipedia says:

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California
While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.

Top 10 Most Trusted US Brands

2009-12-27T00:59:00.000-08:00

Tech brands have earned consumer trust for privacy, rubbing shoulders with some of the most established brands in America says a new study released by The Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe.

Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe conducted a two-stage survey to gauge the privacy policies and practices of leading consumer brands. First, the companies were rated as “most trusted” in an unaided survey of 6,486 adult-aged U.S. consumers. Second, an expert review panel at the Ponemon Institute judged the companies based on rigorous criteria, including the clarity and readability of privacy statements, notice, access to account information, cookie management, in- and out-of-network data sharing practices, as well as the availability of customer service staff.

According to the 2009 survey results, eBay is the Most Trusted Company for Privacy, proving that the e-commerce site can protect consumer privacy, while handling massive volumes of sensitive data. For the first time a telecommunications company made the top 10. Verizon earned the ranking as the second most trusted company. Despite negative press coverage on Facebook’s privacy problem, the 300 million user social networking company broke into the top 10, indicating Facebook’s new privacy practices re approved by both their user community and privacy experts.

Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute said, “Year in and year out our Most Trusted Companies for Privacy study is a fascinating snapshot of public sentiment toward business.With the banking industry at the center of a national financial crisis, it’s no surprise to see a loss of trust reflected in the rankings of even those top performers on this list. Meanwhile, the continued strong showing of e-businesses such as eBay, WebMD, Yahoo!, and Facebookseems to demonstrate consumers’ growing comfort with doing business online.”

2009 Award Winners

eBay
Verizon
US Postal Service
WebMD
IBM
Procter & Gamble
Nationwide
Intuit
Yahoo!
Facebook

The Ponemon Institute is a privacy-focused research center. TRUSTe is a privacy services and seal provider. The #1 ranked auction site eBay, the #2 ranked cell phone provider Verizon and #10 ranked Facebook are Gold Award Winners in their respective categories on TopTenREVIEWS.

Best Games All Weekend

2009-12-27T00:56:00.000-08:00

Weekend Shopping: New Low Prices on Wii, Palm Pre and Xbox 360

This is the weekend to pick up newly reduced must-have electronics, assuming you can fit in a quick shopping trip between football games. Count on us at TopTenREVIEWS to make it as easy as possible. We’ve got a rundown on the big games scheduled for the weekend and all the information you need on these new lower priced products.

First up: The Products

Nintendo Wii: This week saw a $50 price drop for the ever popular Nintendo Wii. This is a full package including the motion-sensing Wii Remote™ controller, Nunchuk™ controller and Wii Sports™ software. The Wii remains the best selling game console http://video-game-consoles-review.toptenreviews.com/ of the big three: Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Watch all the college ball you want on Saturday because this deal doesn’t start until doors open on Sunday.

Price: $199
Where to buy: Try Wal-mart, Target, Best Buy and Toys ‘R Us (in that order)
If you go to Wal-mart, you can pick up some used Wii games as well.

Xbox 360: At the end of last month, Microsoft cut $100 off the Xbox Elite, that’s the 120GB version with built-in DVD player and Netflix support.

Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for the Xbox 360, summed up the Xbox price cuts,
"With the Pro console we are dropping the price down $50 to $249 while supplies last. Moving forward we will have two, the $199 Arcade and the Elite console for $299."

The only difference with the $299 Elite versus the pre-price cut models, is the $299 does not include an HDMI cable.

Price: $299
Where to buy: Gamestop, Best Buy, Target, Wal-mart (in that order)

Palm Pre
Amazon announced today it would sell the Palm Pre for $99 with two year contract. It’s a great phone, often compared to the iPhone sans all the apps. This deal is only available through Amazon right now, so don’t go down to your neighborhood Sprint store and expect to pay less than $150 for it. Hey, that just means more time for watching football.

On to Saturday’s games:

Illinois vs #13 Ohio State
This game will be worth watching with lots of fun elements in it. We’ve got mobile quarterback versus mobile quarterback , Illinois’ Juice Williams up against Ohio State’s Terrelle Pryor, both teams coming off of wins and Illinois hoping to upset Ohio State to vault them back into the top 25. Illinois came into this season with high hopes , but were quickly disappointed a 37 – 9 humbling at home to Missouri. Hopefully Illinois will live up to its potential and pull off an upset. Ohio State is still vulnerable after almost losing to perennial whipping boy Navy in week one. Tune in at 3:30 ET.

#6 Cal (3-0) vs. Oregon (2-1)
As the Cal Bears and the up and coming Heisman candidate, Jahvid Best look to extend their good fortune against the Ducks, they just may do so. However, Oregon is coming off of a big win at home against 16 games-in-a-row winner, Utah. They’ll be looking to ruin the season of Cal as well in this big Pac-10 matchup. Catch it at 12:30 p.m. PST.

#3 Alabama (3-0) vs. Arkansas (1-1)
The top five teams this year have definitely been in danger more than once. We’ve already seen some big ones fall, most recently Ole Miss, and Oklahoma to BYU at the start of the season, so if Alabama thinks this’ll be a dance through the daisies, they’ve got another thing coming. The Razorbacks aren’t coming to mess around. Look for this one to be close, but we’ll see if Alabama learned their lesson from last year’s Sugar Bowl and puts ‘em away early. Tune into CBS at 3:30 p.m. EST.

Now if you’re aiming for the Wii on Sunday, work your shopping around these NFL games. TopTenREVIEWS resident football expert, Scott Wimmer, says these are the ones to watch. And this guy knows his football: he’s currently ranked in the top 100 of the hhgregg Pro Football Expert Club. Top prize: 55” LED TV from Samsung and additional weekly prizes.

Sunday’s Must-See Games:

New England Patriots (1-1) vs. Atlanta Falcons (2-0) 1:00 p.m. EST
New England coming the biggest upset thus far this year look to rebound, this will be a tough rebound as the once run heavy Falcons have come out of nowhere and started throwing on everyone. This one is intriguing for the quarterback matchup, Tom Brady v Matt Ryan, old dog vs the young up-and-comer. Even though I’m pretty sure the pats will most likely come out on top it’s still fun to watch.

Buffalo Bills (1-1) vs. New Orleans Saints (2-0) 4:05 p.m. EST
Who doesn’t like to watch T.O. (Terrell Owens)? And, who doesn’t like to see lots of throwing and a dynamic offense with the league’s most accurate passer, Drew Brees? This game should be a shootout, at least New Orleans should do plenty of scoring, let’s hope Buffalo can keep up.

Minnesota sVikings (2-0) vs. San Francisco 49ers (2-0) 12:00 p.m. CST
Power Running vs. Power Running, this is a game for people who like to see football the way it was played back in the day: running the football and running some more. All eyes will be on the matchup between league MVP, Adrian Peterson, and last week’s big surprise Frank Gore. Sorry Frank, don’t think you’ll be running for 200+ this week, although I hope so.

How to Prevent BlackBerry Outage

2009-12-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

North American Blackberry users suffered their second outage in a week early Tuesday evening. For about eight hours, messaging, email and some Internet service were out, but users could still send and receive phone calls and texts.

During the outage, Twitter lit up with BlackBerry users asking if anyone else was having problems with their phone email. Within five hours of the outage, BlackBerry was the top search query on Google and a trending topic on the Twitter homepage.

In a statement issued to the Canadian press, Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturer of BlackBerry phones, wrote:

"Based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure," the spokesperson wrote. "RIM has taken corrective action to restore service."

BlackBerry Messenger is RIM's proprietary instant messaging system that offers messaging from one BlackBerry user to another. It can be used worldwide without additional international charges. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the BB Messaging Service was one of the only open communication channels available to emergency responders. It's a valuable system, but one potential weakness is that it must be updated by users on a routine basis.

The fix

Surprisingly, the fix that RIM issued has no obvious connection to the most common problems resulting from the "flaw" — email failure.

RIM recommends "anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since Dec. 14 should upgrade to version 5.0.0.57, which resolves the issue. The update is available now through BlackBerry browsers at blackberry.com/messenger or BlackBerry App World.

Even users who do not use BlackBerry Messenger should install the update as it apparently affects them as well. Enterprise clients using BlackBerry Enterprise Server software were not affected.

Damage control is a real problem for RIM. Yes, the technical issue seems to have been repaired, but communicating the news and its solution to BlackBerry users fell short this time. And RIM has repeatedly broken its promise that such outages will not happen again. After an outage in 2007, RIM CEO Jim Balsillie said, "It was a process error that we had that's been fixed. It shouldn't have happened, and it won't happen again."

But subsequent widespread outages occurred on Feb. 11, 2008, Dec. 17, 2009 and — the most recent one — Dec. 22, 2009. According to a comScore report issued in Oct., 14 million Americans use a BlackBerry compared to 8.9 million iPhone users.

Users deserve better communication

If millions of users turn to Twitter, RIM could do the same. On July 3, 2009, Authorize.net, the Internet's largest online transaction provider, went down due to a fire in a Seattle data center. Within an hour, Authorize.net launched a Twitter page that reported the problem, updated the status of the service, and responded in real time to customer questions.

In addition to a Twitter page, RIM could also put news front and center on its webpage. A visit to the site revealed the last Troubleshooting Tip for Top Issues was dated Sept. 9, 2009.

Old-school communication is not sufficient for alerting millions of users to a problem with their phone service. Advanced devices deserve advanced news distribution..

PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010

2009-12-26T04:08:00.000-08:00

Websites: Homepage
Category: Security
Manufacturer: PC Tools
Platform:

Overview

PC Tools Internet Security 2010 is a complete suite of protection utilities against malware and hackers fpr your Windows PC. It includes Spyware Doctor which is an award wining anti-malware protection utility. Also included is ThreatFire which is behavioral intelligence that protects you from Zero-Day threats. PC Tools Internet Security is advanced technology designed especially for people, not just experts. It is automatically configured out of the box to give optimal protection with limited interaction, so all you need to do is install it for immediate and proven ongoing protection.

Installation

Installation is straight forward following the install wizard. You are recommended to uninstall any other security applications before proceeding with installation as they may conflict with operation.

If you don’t want the Thunderbird Toolbar make sure to uncheck that option before proceeding.

After you enter in your license key, you’re offered to get the latest updates right away.

A reboot is required to complete the installation.

Features

This is a complete computer security solution and contains different features that help protect your machine. From the main screen you can control the malware protection and the Firewall protections.

The most notable feature to point out is incorporation of Behavior Guard which is powered by the ThreatFire engine. ThreatFire is also available as an individual download and works along side your Antivirus app and provides protection against Zero-Day attacks.

Since it includes Spyware Doctor you will be familiar with the IntelliGuard Protection that allows you to control different features of your security protections.

Browser Defender is added to Internet Explorer and acts as phishing protection and points out other shady sites.

It is installed automatically for IE but if you want it for Firefox, you will need to install it from a separate download.

When you do a search on Google, there is a small icon next to each result that tells you if a site is safe or not.

You can get more information on a site if it is determined to be unsafe.

For unsafe sites, a complete safety analysis is performed and you can check the results of potentially infected downloads.

A new Anti-Spam engine incorporates spam filtering with clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.

Control the applications that are allowed access to your network through the Firewall.

You can also use the slider to set the level of protection of the firewall.

Smart update provides the latest malware database and product updates.

You can schedule full and Intelli-Scans to take place daily, weekly, and monthly at times you specify.

Ease of Use

After installation is complete an update and scan kicks off right away which allows for up to date detection and removal of malware out of the box.

After the scan you get detailed results of what was found. You can go through and decide which detections you want to remove.

It allows you to do an Intelli-Scan, Full System Scan, or Custom Scans.

For a manual scan simply kick off a scan from the main interface.

You can monitor the progress while the scan takes place.

It allows you to scan individual files from the context menu as well.

Right-click on the tray icon to access a menu of different functions and features such as enabling Game Mode.

Performance

We ran our tests on a Windows 7 system with a dual core AMD processor and 2 GB of RAM and there was no slow down while doing day to day mutli-tasking. Intelli-scans are quick but full system scans are time consuming.

Product Support

As with all of their products, PC Tools provides several ways to get quick support for Internet Security 2010. On their site they provide FAQ, a Knowledgebase, User Manuals and Live Chat for support. They also include Email and Telephone support for users who have purchased a license.

Conclusion

PC Tools Internet Security 2010 is a comprehensive package of security protections for your PC. What really makes all of PC Tools new 2010 security apps great is the inclusion of the ThreatFire Behavior engine that protects you against Zero-day threats which we have covered previously. The one thing you may find annoying at first is the Firewall that needs to be trained to allow or deny applications…but it will remember your selections. It is relatively light on system resources and isn’t overbearing like some security suites can be. If you’re a gamer, you’ll love the easy Game Mode option that will turn off components of the suite that can hinder game performance simply by starting the game in full screen mode. All of the utilities can be downloaded as stand a lone apps, but having them all in one suite is very convenient. They offer a free limited trial and is $49.95 for a license to protect up to three computers.

Works with XP (SP2), Vista (32 & 64-bit), and Windows 7 (32 &64-bit)

Download PC Tools Internet Security 2010

Disable "Your computer might be at risk" Popup in Windows XP SP2

2009-12-26T04:03:00.000-08:00

Since upgrading to XP SP2 a long time ago, I constantly get nagged by a popup message that tells me my computer might be at risk because I don’t have an antivirus software installed. Here’s how to turn off that annoying message.

Note: You should probably have antivirus software installed.

You will want to open up your control panel, and then open the Security Center icon.

On the left hand side of the security center window, you will see a resources section. Click the bottom link, “Change the way Security Center alerts me”

You can choose which alert to disable here. Since I don’t have antivirus software, I unchecked the bottom checkbox.

No more annoying popups!

Top 11 must-have Internet Explorer Addons

2009-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

In case you’re one of those folks using that other browser (aka Internet Explorer or IE),this post is for you. Here, you’ll find a bunch of cool browser extras (other then Google Toolbar) to make Internet Exlorer way more usable.

Update: IE7 Pro was moved to the front due to the fact that it incorporates several frequently used features in one addon.

(1) IE7Pro (only IE 7) – little overwhelming and takes some time to get used to, but totally worth it. Includes powerful tab manager, AD or Flash blocking utility, Crash recovery, Proxy switcher, Web accelerator, User Agent switcher, Webpage capturer, Greasemonkey scripts support, Firefox style inline search, spell checker and some more.

(2) LeechVideo – handy IE addon that lets you download favorite videos from popular video sharing websites (i.e. Youtube, Google Video, DailyMotion, etc.). Other alternatives: Viloader |Video Downloader

(3) Inline Search – integrates an in-page search feature to Internet Explorer. Use ‘CTR+F’ to launch it in the left-bottom corner of your browser window.

(4) ShareThis – lets you quickly (1) email webpages (or embedded pictures or videos) to friends or contacts (gmail, myspace, facebook…) and (2) post notes to your Facebook/Myspace profiles.

(5) Convert with Zamzar – browser addon from a comprehensive, web-based file conversion service, Zamzar. Lets you convert and download desired files from your favorite websites at the click of a button on your browser toolbar. It can be a Youtube video that you want to play in Windows Media Player, a Flickr image that you need in JPEG format, or a word file that you need in PDF.

(6) Browster – integrates link preview capabilities into your browser. For instance, each time you search on Google, Yahoo, MSN or visit some popular website Browster places a special icon next to each link, hovering your mouse cursor over it triggers a pop-up window displaying the contents of the destination page. Other alternative: Cooliris

(7) FeedsPlus (only IE 7) – in case you’re using your browser to follow-up on feeds, then this is for you. It adds couple of handy features, i.e. ability to read feeds in a combined view and receive pop-up notifications when there are new items to read.

(8) ieSpell – allows you to spell check text input boxes on any webpage (i.e. web mails, forum posts, blog comments, etc.)

(9) McAfee Site Advisor (only IE 5.5 – 6.0) – slim and easy-to-use security addon, features include:

protects you from adware, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams
advises you about the safety of websites using a colored button in your browser
places website safety ratings next to each search result

(10) IeSessions – lets you save the current state of all open windows/tabs, store it to a file and restore it anytime afterwards. Especially useful if you have to switch between multiple computers (i.e. office, home) during the day.

(11) Videoronk (only IE 7) – add ‘Videoronk’ to your search toolbar and you’ll be able to search on top 8 video sharing websites simultaneously (Youtube, Google Video, Vimeo, Metacafe, iFilm, Blip.tv, Revver, DailyMotion and Myspace Video).

BONUS: Internet Explorer Shortcuts

Here is another EXCELLENT find for Internet Explorer users. We put together a list of essential IE shortcuts for you. This will make you more productive and save you tons of time. You can download the printable shortcut sheet for Internet Explorer from here.

Intel pays AMD $1.25 billion to end all legal disputes

2009-12-25T08:23:00.000-08:00

Intel and AMD’s long-standing war about patent infringement has finally come to an end, with Intel settling the case outside court for a staggering sum of $1.25 billion. This settlement puts an end to all the legal squabbles between the two, including patent infringement cases, anti-trust litigations and any other charges that AMD had levied against the leading chip manufacturer.

In a joint statement the two companies commented, "While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development." Looks like the relationship isn’t going to be much less than difficult in the future either!

The settlement states that Intel will cough up the $1.25 billion within 30 days, agree to adhere to business practice provisions, and give up any patent claims against AMD. The patent rights will be given to both companies in a cross-licensing pact.

AMD, in turn, will drop all charges against Intel in the US and Japan, where there are several cases pending. AMD’s spin-off company, Globalfoundries, will now be allowed to act as an independent company and not need to be registered as a subsidiary.

However, this would not affect the anti-trust charges filed against Intel by the New York General Attorney and the European Union. Intel CEO Paul Otellini was adamant in denying that the company has acted illegally, saying: “Throughout this process we have not wavered in our convictions that Intel has operated within the law. We strongly disagree with the New York Attorney General’s case and believe the case is entirely without merit… it is unfortunate that the New York Attorney General intentionally distorted the facts.”

AMD’s legal, corporate and public affairs EVP Tom McCoy distanced their pact from the same. ZDNET quoted him in a media conference call as saying: “For us, this has never been about money. It’s about the marketplace. There’s no correlation between the settlement amount and anything in the EU.”

All corporate squabbling aside, we just hope AMD puts the huge cash dividends to good use in their research centers, sparking off another processor war. Because after all, it’s the consumers who stand to gain when two companies get competitive..

Computer graveyards: A walk through the ‘e-slums’ of Mumbai

2009-12-25T08:20:00.000-08:00

I had to pass a few horrid bylanes and blind alleys with no clear markers, using word-of-mouth guidance before I got to meet Harshit Patel, who had agreed to show me to an informal e-waste operation in the slums of Mumbai.

Photo Credits: Tushar Goyal

The city generates one sixth of India’s GDP, and its slums function like some kind of informal special economic zone, churning out everything from export quality leather goods, clothes, and pottery using cheap labour. According to a 2007 Guardian article, the recycling industry employs around 2,50,000 people. Stuart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog considers squatter cities like Mumbai to be hubs of opportunity, full of informal enterprises that engage in unlicensed and untaxed businesses. They’re the “dark energy of economic theory,” says a slide. And on a positive note, rapid urbanization as a continuing trend will defuse the population bomb, as statistically, people in cities have lesser children.
The talk has been tagged as “unconvincing” by TED users, and I would like to load the argument a bit further. It has to do with a particular social malaise that to a large degree afflicts us as a species – we take serious counter-measures and have strong convictions against direct risk (terrorism, theft, rape or violence), but turn a blind eye towards issues when the penalty is distributed. This, to a large extent explains why Mumbai city has filthy, claustrophobic hubs like Kurla, where people spit and litter without compunction, why people tolerate the burning of plastic and garbage right next to its railway stations. (rants go here)

Back to the e-slum for now. The whole area was caked with red stains and plastic gutkha packets. Graveyard workers who burn bodies traditionally eat paan to anesthetize themselves, and this computer graveyard was no different. Cell phone in hand, I wandered around, walking past a guy who was brazenly burning plastic off a bunch of wires to get at the copper. Around this time, Harshit called and asked me to turn around. He was going to give me a guided tour.

People here didn’t seem friendly, some were worried. My long haired photographer friend was drawing a crowd with an SLR camera in his hand. One guy came up to me and asked me if we were going to get them arrested. I don't know if he was joking, I assured him that I had other designs. In these shacks, I saw workers extract copper out of wires using hammers and blades. There was quite a bit of hardware memorabilia in the form of decades-old chipsets and components - I saw hard drives the size of bricks, a Cyrix processor and motherboard, and a sea of glass, plastic and metal strewn around.

According to Harshit, the next chain of recycling takes these components out of Mumbai, (it mostly goes to Delhi, he said). Nevertheless, when the rains come, in all likelihood the e-waste pollutants seep into the soil, flow through the gutters and nallahs and into the sea. Dead computers and their galaxy of components have in them a number of rare earths and precious metals (gold, palladium, neodymium, etc.) worth recycling, but also contain a number of toxic substances that can spill into the ecosystem. The laundry list of toxic chemicals include: arsenic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), mercury, phthalates, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

Older, bulkier computers have a lot more precious metals apparently, which also explains, perhaps, why they were so expensive back then. It is fraught with health and environmental risks, which is by recycling them is best left to industries with ISO certification standards. Another reason to not try this at home: In all likelihood, a motherboard that sells for $100 will have less than a dollar’s worth of metals worth recycling.
Most of the e-waste ends up in the third world, some, in the land of the jugaad. According to SVTC, only 10 % of e-waste is recycled responsibly. “The rest are openly burned, soaked in acid baths, and dumped into rivers or piled into mountains of e-waste for scrap recovery.”

Harshit runs Techshop, an e-commerce website that sells computer hardware. The company has an e-cycle program that gives incentives to users while disposing e-waste in an eco-friendly manner. He was familiar with the problem at hand here, quoting a 2007 report by Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), which says that e-waste from discarded computers, TVs and mobile phones is projected to grow at a rate of 15 per cent, and touch 4.7 lakh tonnes by 2011. Even though the zone here doesn’t exactly meet environmental standards; there is one good thing about this place, said Harshit. “The people here help reduce e-waste by working and identifying which parts are working. They take it and reassemble it into a working computer and sell it.”

The source of the e-waste and what’s being done about it
The Earth from Above exhibition quotes a 2004 UNU report which states that it takes 1.8 tonnes of materials to make a desktop computer and a monitor. This includes 240 kg of fossil fuels, and 22 kg of chemicals. Pound for pound, it is a lot more energy intensive than the automobile industry. The same report gives readers a good reason to support durable products with a good servicing ethic, and platforms with a lesser number of upgrade lifecycles: “The energy savings potential of reselling or upgrading is some 5-20 times greater than recycling.” says Eric Williams, author of the paper.

Nokia has put up 1300 recycling bins across its dealers and centres in India this year, and Sony Ericsson claims to have cut the carbon footprint of its phones by 15% by using recycled plastics and smaller packaging.

According to Apple, hardware recycling amounts to just 1% of their product’s environmental impact, but we weren’t able to ascertain how this had been calculated. They further claim to have reduced energy consumption by using a combination of evenly matched power supplies, components, and power management software. According to their calculations, product use - the amount of electricity a computer consumes counts for 53% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.

The gigahertz race pushed the power consumption of desktop processors to outrageous levels, but lately, power efficiency has been given the emphasis it deserves. To a fair extent, computer manufacturers have begun to close in on the gap between power and power efficiency by making their desktops more energy efficient when idle. Intel recently unveiled a ‘Single Chip Cloud Computer’, the IA32, which has 48 cores running at a maximum of just 125 watts. It’s also another reason why we look forward to nVidia’s Tegra chipset, which promises to run a netbook for a week, and apparently only consumes 300 milliwatts of power in the Zune HD.

Energy consumption is coming down across the board and is not just relegated to the CPU powering your system: Apple’s page boasts that the Mac Mini consumes 14 watts of power at idle. Other manufacturers have also begun to follow suit. NEC came out with a monitor recently that consumes 20% less power than other LCDs of the same size.

Google.org, a philanthropic branch of Google is developing PowerMeter, which taps into smart meters and helps track energy consumption through PCs and smartphones. The service will eventually be rolled out in India through Reliance who have partnered with them this year. According to Google’s Ed Lu, they aim to save a “socially relevant amount of energy” through this software. According to Wikipedia, there are currently 40 million smart meters in the developed world.

How can you help? Reuse and refurbish
Older computers can be refurbished to boot on Linux, or they can be repurposed. An artist from New Zealand has turned circuit boards into lamps. Another artist, Benjamin Gualon, who has founded the movement of recyclism, has made a totally unique object of beauty and joy - a custom rock band kit out of 8-bit Nintendo consoles and a bunch of gamepads. Each gamepad handles one particular sound: bass, drums, synthesizer, percussions, etc. Surely our country of out of work electronics engineers can make things like these for cheap!

Another book with the same sensibilities will come out this month – it’s called 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer.

Harshit and I plan to start a website with instructions and design ideas to refurbish e-waste. It will be an open source hub for design ideas. We will try and repurpose hardware and e-waste into objects of utility and art. We already have a few ideas implemented, and there are plenty more ideas in the information ether. We welcome your thoughts and contributions.

Sources and Additional Reading:
Manufactured Landscapes
TV Recycling Report Card
The Chemistry of Computing
Apple’s Life Cycle Impact Page:
Take it Apart

Cisco spends US$135 million on XML firm

2009-12-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

Cisco Systems said Wednesday it will spend US$135 million in cash and options to buy Reactivity, a small company that makes equipment to help route XML Internet traffic.

Reactivity's equipment is designed to help companies more easily and quickly deploy XML (Extensible Markup Language), a standard for Web documents. The company, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., was founded in 1998 and has 56 employees. Cisco said it expects the deal to close in its fiscal third quarter, which ends April 28.

Cisco is the No. 1 provider of infrastructure equipment to companies large and small. The company's bread and butter has been the sale of Ethernet switches and IP routers, which are used to shuttle Internet traffic throughout corporate networks and across the open Internet.

But in recent years, Cisco has been expanding its product portfolio in several different areas. It bought Scientific-Atlanta last year to beef up sales to large services providers by offering them video and cable infrastructure gear. It purchased Linksys in 2003 to enter the home networking market. And now the company is beefing up its Web services business to sell more "intelligent" equipment to its corporate customer accounts.

The technology and products Cisco gets with the purchase of Reactivity apparently fit well into its existing Application-Oriented Networking (AON) business unit. AON was created almost two years ago to develop products that offer more sophistication to Cisco's current networking hardware line. The AON products are "application aware," which means that they can inspect information that's being transmitted and route messages based on predefined policies.

The Reactivity product is a specialized piece of hardware that combines software to help companies deploy, control and increase the amount of XML traffic they have throughout their network. The Reactivity XML Gateway software helps companies support and provision new XML-based Web services, and the Reactivity XML Manager software provides real-time visibility and analysis for companies using XML services, according to Reactivity's Web site.

Cisco isn't the only company buying up XML appliance start-ups. A year and a half ago, IBM, a longtime Cisco partner, bought a small company called DataPower, which also makes appliances to help companies deploy and manage XML Web services. Computer chipmaker Intel is also in this business with a company it bought in 2005 called Servaga.

One of the reasons that specialized XML network appliances have emerged is because of the growing use of XML and XML-based Web services protocols. These standards are designed to allow for better interoperability between systems, but they also bring about performance problems from processing XML documents. Dedicated appliances can help alleviate those issues.

Microsoft loses patent appeal against i4i

2009-12-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has been in legal trouble from quite some time as it was found the some technology used by Office products for parsing XML content in its Office Open XML files (docx, xlsx, pptx etc.) infringed on i4i's copyrights.

The technology, which allows for manipulating the architecture and the presentation of a document separately is present in all Office application including Word, and Microsoft was supposed to stop sales of its products by January 11th. This technology has been present in Microsoft Word since it was introduced in Microsoft Office Word 2003.

Microsoft claims that the technology isn't present in the Office 2010 betas, and they will be moving fast to remove the offending features from their Office 2007 products to ensure that they can continue selling their products sans the custom-XML features after January 11th.

In any case the only person affected in this is Microsoft, as customers who have already own copy of Microsoft application with the infringing features can continue to use them. In return i4i will have to be remunerated with a sum of $290 million.

Get a CO.TV Free domain

2009-12-24T21:23:00.000-08:00

Get a CO.TV Free domain

Co.tv will register a domain name of your choice free of charge.
No catch, No hidden costs, providing you host your new domain with us for twelve months there are no charges for registering your new domain and there are no charges at the end of the twelve month period should you wish to transfer your domain away to another host, the domain remains your property.

Find available domain here!

Enjoy!!

How To Easily Compress Your Video Files in Vista

2009-12-21T07:20:00.000-08:00

When recording video with your digital cameras, they can leave you with pretty big files for just a few seconds of video. Windows has a program that allows you to shrink these files by almost 1/3 in just a few steps.

Windows Vista and XP has a program called Windows Movie Maker which can be used to slightly edit videos. For the purpose of this tutorial, I'll just show you how to use that program to compress your videos by almost a third to save storage space. I'll also make a tutorial for Windows XP shortly.

When recording video on a Digital Camera, you usually get a slightly compressed AVI. In my example of the 2004 NYE fireworks in Las Vegas, my 3 minute video with sound was about 48 MB, as shot from my Canon PowerShot G5. After compressing the video to a WMV, the file turned out to be just shy of 19 MB.

Open Windows Movie Maker by pressing the Start Button > All Programs > Windows Movie Maker

The program will open. Theres a few main parts to the program.

On the top of course is the menu bar.

On the left is the Tasks.

In the middle is basically your Movie Library where you can edit your videos.

On the right is where you can preview your videos

On the bottom is where you drag your videos incase you want to combine videos together (along with transitions if you like)

So, to compress a video, add the video you want to the Movie library by Importing the movie. You can do this in a few ways.

Just drag and drop the video file from the folder directly into the middle Library secion of the program; or

Click File > Import from Digital Video Camera or File > Import Media Items; or

Click the Import Media button just below the menu bar; or

Under the Import section in the Tasks menu (left side) click the corresponding button. In our case, select Videos

Once you have imported a video into the library, you can access them from the program now. Select the video you want to compress and drag it into the bottom Storyboard where it says "Drag Media Here".

Next we want to Publish the Video, which will also compress it. You can also do this in a number of ways.

Click File > Publish Movie; or

In the Task menu under Publish to select where you want to save the video to

Select where you want to save the file to. In my example I will choose This Computer.

Enter in a file name for your video, and select the destination. I will save my video to my Desktop so I can easily find my compressed video.

Next it will ask you how you would like to publish the movie. I selected Best Quality for playback on my computer (recommended) because it still shrinks the video by about 1/3 if you select the same settings I have. Of course you can play around with the video, to increase the quality of the video or decrease. It's all up to you. You can even set an exact file size that you want your video to be by selecting Compress To: and selecting a file size. You can also play around with More Settings and choose different file types and formats. All of this will affect the final size of your video. So play around if you wish.

Next, click Publish.

Your computer will do its thing and will save your file wherever you told it to.

How To Configure Windows Vista Search Indexing Option

2009-12-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

So you're wondering why the heck is my hard drive light constantly flashing when you aren't doing anything. The answer is simple.

Indexing Options is on by default and I did write a tutorial about how to turn the service off but I looked back why I wanted to turn the service off in the first place. Simple, it was destroying my hard drive by making it work 99% of the time. To cut the story short let's leave it on but lets optimize this feature and actually index the folders we would want to search.

Click on Windows Icon from the taskbar aka the start menu (bottom left corner by default)
Click on Control Panel
Double click Indexing Options
Click on Modify button
Select the drive(s), folders you want and it gives you the option to index your Microsoft Outlook.

How To Remove Windows Genuine Authentication

2009-12-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

Have you updated your copy of Windows and received the "This copy of Windows is not genuine" notification. Have you ever wondered how to get rid of it?

The Windows Genuine Advantage notification checks if you have a genuine copy of Windows registered to that computer. It allows you to update your computer with the Windows updates. If you have installed it, and you do not have a genuine copy of Windows XP installed, then you may notice an icon at the bottom of your window before you Login. It will make you wait three seconds before allowing you to login.

In your tray, you will also notice a WGA icon telling you that you may be a victim of software counterfeiting.

Here's how to get rid of it.

The Long Way:

The longer way is to restart your computer and go into Safe Mode. Once in safe mode, non-essential programs will not run, includingWgaTray.exe (the Windows Genuine Advantage program). Once in Safe Mode go toC:\Windows\System32\ and locate and delete WgaTray.exe

Cheat notes for computer savy users:

Restart your computer and boot into safe mode (press F8 while you restart your computer)

In Safe mode browse to C:\Windows\System32\

Search for WgaTray.exe and Delete it.

Reboot your computer and you are done.

The Quick but more difficult way (requires speed):

If you do not want to restart your computer and get into Safe Mode, you can do it in the following way. This requires a bit of speed with both the mouse and keyboard because every time you close the WgaTray.exe process, it will restart itself in less than a second.

Go to C:\Windows\System32\ and locate WgaTray.exe and highlight it. Trying to delete this right now will not work since WgaTray.exe is currently running. Next press ctrl+alt+del and select theprocess tab. Find WgaTray.exe in the list. To make it easier to find it, you can sort the list in alphabetical order by clicking the Process title at the top. Highlight WgaTray.exe.

Here's where your speed comes in. You have to end the WgaTray.exe process and then quickly go to the other window and delete WgaTray.exe.

Tip: Press end process then enter, then alt+tab, then delete, then enter. This is the sequence you should go through.

Note: If you do not delete WgaTray.exe before the program restarts itself, you will not be able to delete it. You will have to try again.

In both cases, continue with the following steps.

Next go to C:\Windows\System32\dllcache\ and delete WgaTray.exe here also.

Next you have to modify your registry.

Press the Start Button > Run and type regedit and then press enter.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify and delete the WGALOGON folder.

That's all you have to do, now you are WGA free. Just make sure you don't automatically install the WGA update again. Restart your computer to see if you did it correctly. The WGA logo should not appear on your login screen.

DISCLAIMER: We do not condone having pirated copies of Windows on your computer. You should have one CAL per computer. This is for educational purposes only.

You can simply use a little application to remove windows genuine authentication notification: RemoveWGA

Dot TK Brings Free Domain Names With DNS Support

2009-12-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

Dot TK – the free .tk domain name provider service has added a new and exciting feature: now you can use .tk domain names just like any other normal domain name (like .com, .org, .in etc.)
Till now, users could use .tk domain names only for masking/forwarding URLs, something similar to URL shortening services. Free users were not allowed to host their domains. With this recent announcement, now you can host your domain names to any web server by adding own name server records (NS records).

Surely, this is a big thing but I’m not sure if serious users would like it, as users don’t own the domain legally. Though, if you are looking for a 100% freedomain name for lifetime, and without any advertisement – Dot TK is the best service on the planet.

How to host a free .tk domain name?

To use this service, sign-up for an account with Dot TK. Now from the left navigation panel, select “My Domains” and register a free domain. During registration process, you will be asked for using DNS. Choose "Use my own DNS Services" and enter Name Server or IP address (see above screenshot). Hence, you can host a free .tkdomain name to a web server.
You can also opt for Dot TK’s free DNS service. This feature can be useful for you – if you are willing to create A, CNAME and MX records only. You may need to configure these records for hosting yourdomain name with many popular services like Blogger (Blogspot), Posterous, Google Apps, Tumblr etc.

Website : Dot TK

TeamViewer - Remote Desktop sharing

2009-12-21T06:16:00.000-08:00

TeamViewer 5.0.7572

TeamViewer is an excellent screen-sharing and file-transfer app that can be used to facilitate business collaborations as well as helping distraught relatives diagnose and cure computer problems. Along with being free for noncorporate use, it gives users precisely the tools they need to share screens securely, send files with a minimum of hassle, control access rights, and even flip which user has control.

The options available while you're in control work smoothly. You can maximize the pane that the other computer's screen is visible in, as well as utilize several smart options from a drop-down toolbar in the center of the window. A big X lets you close the connection, while the Actions button lets you switch whose in control, disable remote input, and reboot remotely. The View menu hides options to adjust the screen resolution, the optimization toward speed or quality, and control multiple-monitor displays.

When you log in, you're given an access code and a password. Sharing those allows your computer to be controlled by the level you set it to: remote support, presentation, file transfer, or VPN. The TeamViewer servers remember which computers you've connected to, so reconnecting to previously shared computers happens faster. TeamViewer also has a Web-based version, for remote connecting to home from public computer. Even the installation process is impressive. Users can toggle admin rights, can opt out of running at startup, and can opt into installing the TeamViewer VPN driver for more secure screensharing. Overall, TeamViewer makes screensharing and file-sharing as fluid and unobtrusive as it should be.

General:

PublisherTeamViewer

Publisher web sitehttp://www.teamviewer.com

Release dateDecember 19, 2009

Date addedDecember 18, 2009

Category:

CategoryNetworking Software

SubcategoryRemote Access

System requirements:

Operating systemsWindows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Me, Windows Server 2008, Windows NT, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98

Additional requirementsNot available

Download information:

File size2.5MB

File nameTeamViewer_Setup.exe

Popularity:

Total Downloads4,682,896

Downloads last week271,013

Pricing:

License modelFree

LimitationsNot available

PriceNot available

What's new in this version

The transfer speed has been improved in certain circumstances. The size of the partner list window can be resized in docked state.

Download Now (2.5MB)

Tested spyware free

Tips and tricks for deploying Google Apps

2009-12-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

Has your company, school or organization decided to "go Google" — but not yet fully "gone?" Perhaps you'd like more guidance on the technical, marketing or training details? Or maybe you could use some resources to help you deploy? Making the decision to go Google can be the easiest part, but we realize that it sometimes takes a little boost to finish the process, which is where we come in.

Our Google Apps Deployment team has assisted hundreds of organizations — large and small — make the switch to Google Apps. To ensure that your implementation is a success, we've developed step-by-step tools to guide you through the process, and best practices to make your transition as smooth and easy as possible. Here are some of the resources you can explore when going Google:

Sign up for a Deployment Training Webinar. In this live session, a deployment specialist will walk you through the deployment planning steps and use cases.

Take advantage of our deployment guides, which include creative examples and templates, to help with your technical and marketing rollout:

Recently, we also launched two learning sites to jump start your transition to Google Apps: the customizable Google Enterprise Launch Site for large enterprises and the Apps Learning Center for small businesses. You can find out more about these Google site templates in theEnterprise Deployment Site.

To find answers to your technical questions about Google Apps, visit the Administrator Help Center. We also provide overviews and videos for integration and migration tools, includingMicrosoft Outlook Sync, Google Blackberry Enterprise Server Connector and Lotus Notes Migration.

We hope these resources help with your move to Google Apps, and we can't wait to welcome you to the Google Apps family.

source: googleblog

Blogger is turning 10

2009-12-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

Google's about to have its second tenth birthday. In late August, Blogger will officially turn 10 years old. As our birthday draws near, we thought it would be interesting to share some fun facts about Blogger:

Every minute of every day, 270,000 words are written on Blogger
Millions of people worldwide use Blogger to publish to their blog each week
Almost two thirds of Blogger's traffic comes from outside North America (What's the #2 country after the U.S.? Brazil, followed by Turkey, Spain, Canada, and the U.K.)
The most popular sport for our bloggers? Soccer (that's football to the rest of the world), more than four times larger than the #2 sport, baseball

While we're really excited about this milestone, we want the focus to be on you and the remarkable stories that you and millions of people around the world document on Blogger. After all, blogs are one of the true building blocks of the web, constantly updated not only with news and personal stories, but any kind of information you can imagine. Just this week, there's an Iranian student documenting the minute-by-minute proceedings in Iran, while a British woman is uploading nightly blog posts from her satellite phone while rowing solo from Hawaii to Australia, while an American college student is running from Amsterdam to Athens with nothing but the pack on his back. There are literally millions more.

What's your story? Did your blog help you find a job? Learn a language? Interact with your fans? Master a new skill? Battle an illness? Turn a hobby into a career? We read as many blog posts as we can, and what we do read is often brilliant. But we want to know more — we want to hear from you about what Blogger has meant to you over the past decade.

Do what you do best: tell your story. Write a post, and then let us know about it by filling outthis form. Keep an eye on Blogger Buzz, where we'll be sharing some of our favorites over the coming weeks.

To the millions who have depended on Blogger to help you tell your story, thank you. To those of you who have yet to tell your story, creating a blog couldn't be easier: just visit blogger.comto get started. We can't wait to see what the next ten years bring — and stay tuned for details about the tenth birthday itself.

Blogger vs Wordpress Comparison Chart - 2009

2009-12-21T03:26:00.000-08:00

In the following chart features at Blogger (blogspot.com) andWordpress.com are compared. These are the two main contenders for free blog hosting. Features which are clearly better at either BlogSpot or Wordpress have been highlighted. Widgets are listed in another summary table after the features list. If you have your own website with PHP/MySQL support, you can download and use WordPress with no restrictions (get it here).

Updated September 2009.

Feature	Blogger.com	Wordpress.com
Themes and customization	You can edit template layouts, styles and colors, or install a third party theme.	No template editing. Style sheet editing is only available as a paid upgrade. Many of the 60+ themes let you upload a header image. Some have additional customization options.
Visitor stats	You can include third party tracker scripts — or any type of script.	No scripts allowed. The admin dashboard shows 2 days of statsand daily, weekly and monthly graphs.
Import	Only from another BlogSpot blog.	Import from Blogger, Yahoo! 360, Live·JournaI, Type·Pad, MovabIe·Type or another WordPress blog.
Image storage	1 Gigabyte. There is no interface to browse through the images unless you sign up forPicasa Web Albums.	3 Gigabytes. Paid upgrades are available to add more space. You can also upload.ppt, .doc, .odt and .pdffiles (more file types with an upgrade).
Galleries	You can use Picasa Web Albums.	Simply add the tag [gallery] to any post or page (more info).
Static pages	Not available.	Create posts or 'pages'. Static pages are listed in separate menus.
Categories	'Labels'.	'Categories'.
Optional excerpts	New: Expandable post summaries (more info).	Some WP themes allow unique text. Others depend on a "more" tag.
Post by email	Submit your posts by email. You can receive new posts by email too (helpful for team blogs).	Submit your posts by email. Images can be attached (more info).
Contact forms	Not available. You could add a third-party contact form, however.	Simply add the tag [contact-form] to any post or page.
Private blogs	You can restrict access to invited Google account holders.	You can restrict access to 35 invited Wordpress account holders (unlimited with a paid upgrade). Alternatively, individual posts can be password protected or Private.
Team blogs	Administrators and non-administrators only.	Administrator, Editors, Authors and Contributors.
Comments	Visual confirmation and moderation options, but no editing of comments.	Moderation, comment editing and Akismet spam protection.
Widgets	See the next table.

Blogger comments:
Visitors can preview comments. They can also choose to receive follow-up comments by email. However, the embedded Comment Form option is entirely dependent on JavaScript.
Wordpress comments:
Earlier in 2009 Wordpress.com added follow-ups by email and comment threading options. Wordpress has more comment options than Blogger, but there have been problems with Akismet spam protection. See this post on the WP user forum...
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=16584
Widgets compared:

BlogSpot Widgets
Add a Gadget	Software applications that do cool things. There's an extensive menu in the sidebar.
Followers	Displays a list of users who follow your blog.
Blog List	Show off what you read with a blogroll of your favourite blogs.
Subscription Links	Let your readers easily subscribe to your blog with popular feed readers.
Slideshow	Add a slideshow of your photos to your blog.
Newsreel	Automatically add current headlines from Google News to your blog. (see an example)
Video Bar	Display clips from YouTube and Google Video for your readers to watch without leaving the page.
List	Add a list of your favourite books, films or anything you like.
Link List	Add a collection of your favourite sites, blogs or web pages.
Picture [for the sidebar]	Add a picture from your computer or from somewhere else on the web.
Text	Add some words to your blog - like a welcome message - with our rich text editor.
HTML/JavaScript	Add third-party functionality or other code to your blog. [ i.e., any third-party widget]
AdSense	Earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on your blog.
Feed	Add content from a site feed to your blog.
Labels [categories]	Show all the labels of posts in your blog.
Logo	Choose from a variety of Blogger logos to add to your page.
Profile	Display information about yourself. [Wordpress blogs have an "About" page]
Page Header	Display your blog's title and description.
Blog Archive	Display links to older posts.
Poll	Survey your visitors by adding a poll to your blog. [Regular visitors can dictate the outcome by voting again and again!]
Wordpress.com Widgets
Akismet \| Archives \| Blog Stats \| Box.net file sharing \| Calendar \| Categories \| del.icio.us \| Flickr \| Links \| Meebo \| Meta \| Pages \| Platial MapKit \| Recent Comments \| Recent Posts \| Search \| Sonific Songspot \| Tag Cloud \| Text \| Top Clicks \| Top Posts \| Vod:Pod Videos \| Twitter \| Gravatar \| RSS Links

WordPress shortcodes are like widgets for individual posts. For example, you could add a PollDaddy.com poll.

Theme choices

Although the Wordpress.com collection of 60+ themes sounds like a lot, many of them are quite disappointing. Two of the themes are specifically for the Christmas season, and of the remainder, a significant proportion are gaudy or tacky (in my opinion). A few of the themes have bugs which would be obvious to anyone who had done cross-browser testing at different screen resolutions. And if you don't like small font sizes (smaller than on this page), the number of acceptable choices shrinks even further. Considering that there are many hundreds of excellent Wordpress themes out there, it's hard to fathom the criteria that inspired this particular collection. Check out these full-size screenshots of Wordpress.com themes before you sign up (not a complete list).
If you don't like any of the BlogSpot themes you can modify them or install third party themes. There's a template customization tutorial here.

Ongoing improvements

The WordPress team frequently add new features and sometimes new themes, and since the new BlogSpot publishing system was rolled out in 2006, the Blogger software team have added new features too. Visit the developer blogs to find out what's new:

Conclusion

I wanted to find out what was on offer in terms of free blog hosting. A year ago, Blogger was looking stale, and Wordpress.com didn't have nearly as many themes or features as it does now. On this occasion I chose Blogger, and this is my first post. If Wordpress.com allowed stylesheet editing without having to pay, and visitor statscomparable to the tracker scripts you can obtain for free, my choice would have been Wordpress.com for sure.

Who invented HTML

2009-12-21T03:21:00.000-08:00

Websites are becoming ever more sophisticated; utilising music, video and all manner of bells and whistles to create truly interactive experiences. The coding languages used to create these sites are becoming more complex and intuitive for programmers to use. Java, CSS and Ajax all evolved from a simple programming language born when the internet became available for public use.

The person who invented HTML (known as the 'father of the web') was not a computer programmer, but a physicist working at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. HTML's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, wanted to create a way for researchers to be able to use the internet to collaborate and share information.

Instead of data being stored on single computers, he wanted a system by which people could link all their data together and enable people to be able to search by following the links. Recently he commented that "the original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information."

Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML as a means for being able to convert any document on a simple word processor into a file viewable on the internet; thus becoming available to anybody with an internet connection.

In its first incarnation, HTML was easy to master with only a few simple tags to learn. Its initial simplicity meant that it was adopted by early web developers everywhere and helped the world-wide-web to flourish.
The web's early browsers were only designed to display text. It wasn't until 'Mosaic' was released, with its graphical interface, that developers started expanding the codes used in HTML to include images. Mosaic was the brainchild of Marc Andreessen, who would later move on to start Netscape – the main web browser until Microsoft joined the party with Internet Explorer, which remains the dominant browser today.

Over time, developers from all over the globe continued to add to HTML's tags to include backgrounds, frames, graphics etc. Programmers and web developers today now all specialize in a range of coding languages, but the basis for all of them still remains rooted in the conventions invented with HTML.

Tim Berners-Lee, forever immortalized as the person who invented HTML, is still heavily involved in the web today as Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is an association created to maintain the observance of the web's agreed best practices, and to continue promoting its development into the twenty-first century.

In December 2003, Tim Berners-Lee was awarded a knighthood by the British Queen for his services in creating a system for organising, linking and browsing net pages. Quite modestly, Tim has referred to his ground breaking HTML language as "just another program".

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Needs to Fly Like Chrome

2009-12-19T00:54:00.000-08:00

The speed at which Google and Mozilla swap major versions of Chrome and Firefox will undoubtedly contribute to the generalized perception that Microsoft is constantly playing catch-up with IE, rather than driving innovation. Fact is that with IE8, the Redmond company focused very little on driving JavaScript performance for the browser. The software giant had its reasons, supported by the argument that JS is only one aspect of a browser’s performance, in some scenarios down right insignificant, and by proof that IE was loading pages on par with Chrome and Firefox.

However, since the advent of IE8 Microsoft has apparently understood that user perception of browser speed is critically as important as the actual level of performance, albeit only one of the two is measurable, while the tests themselves are far from reflecting real-world scenarios users come across. At PDC 2009 last month, Microsoft demonstrated an early preview version of Internet Explorer 9, indicating that it almost matched Firefox 3.6, and was just two times as slow as Chrome 4.0 in the SunSpider test, from Apple’s Webkit team.

Microsoft notes that IE9 finished the SunSpider test in 986 ms, while Firefox 3.6 did it in 840 ms, and Chrome 4.0 went through up the test in 437 ms. It is clear that Microsoft needs to be aiming for the Chrome-level of performance when it comes down to the JavaScript engine. But at the same time, while taking in consideration that a few versions of Chrome will be offered across a single year, IE9 needs to outrun Google’s open source browser.

Min Li Chan, Google Chrome product marketing manager, published a series of videos designed to explain just what makes Chrome as fast as it is. Obviously, Chrome’s recipe for JavaScript performance is not limited to a single ingredient. The videos in question, embedded below, discuss DNS pre-resolution, the V8 JavaScript engine, and DOM bindings. At PDC 2009, Microsoft made public the first details about the next generation JavaScript engine in Internet Explorer 9 (the fourth video embedded below).

Internet Explorer 8 is available for download here.

Opera 10.20 Alpha is available for download here.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 for Linux is available for download here.

The latest releases of Google Chrome are available for download here.

Silverlight Virtual DVD Now Live

2009-12-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

Silverlight-powered Virtual DVDs were announced in the first half of September 2009, an initiative from Tesco, leveraging Microsoft’s alternative to Adobe Flash. At that time, Rob Salter, category director for Entertainment at Tesco, noted that Virtual DVDs were ushering in a new era of digital entertainment. The concept behind the offering is that UK customers buying movies on physical media (DVD or Blu-Ray) would subsequently be offered access to the content through Silverlight. Available exclusively in the United Kingdom, Tesco’s Virtual DVDs are designed to take advantage of the specific capabilities offered by Silverlight, including Digital Rights Management.

“In September, we announced that Microsoft and Tesco intended to collaborate and use Silverlight to deliver the next generation of Home Video entertainment to consumers. Dubbed “Virtual DVD,” Tesco customers who purchased physical DVDs or Blu-ray products would be able to download Silverlight versions of those movies providing the exact same experience as the physical disc,” a Silverlight team representativestated.

Microsoft indicates that Silverlight 3 is at the top of the game when it comes down to delivering advanced media and network-based interactivity, and that Tesco will kick its user experience up a notch by embracing the technology. The third major version of Silverlight works on both Windows and Mac OS X, and is capable of delivering 1080p high definition video playback. At the same time, with Silverlight 3, Microsoft introduced out-of-browser capabilities, allowing applications to be saved to the desktop, and ran even in offline scenarios.

“Now consumers can reap the benefits of that partnership, as two of the biggest movies of the year, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” and “The Hangover,” are now available on DVD. Tesco is offering an exclusive bonus Virtual DVD to its customers in the U.K. when they purchase the physical DVD either in-store or on Tesco.com. Using Silverlight 3, the Virtual DVD applications deliver a desktop-installed experience that exactly replicates the DVD experience, including chaptering, bonus features, multi-language support and subtitling,” revealed a member of the Silverlight team.

Silverlight 3 is available for download here.
Silverlight 4 Beta is available for download here.

Bing Eats Away at Google and Yahoo

2009-12-19T00:49:00.000-08:00

It appears that the evolution introduced by Microsoft with the move from Live Search to Bing is paying off. The Redmond company introduced Bing in a move designed to grab market share from Google and Yahoo, and according to the latest statistics made public by Internet metrics companies comScore and Nielsen, Microsoft is doing just that. According to both firms Bing is on an ascendant path and has crossed the 10% milestone. While the results posted differ slightly, the general trend of Bing is positive, with the search/decision engine convincing more and more users to leverage it for their queries.

“In November 2009, Americans conducted 14.4 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.6% search market share, up slightly from 65.4% in October. Microsoft Sites grabbed 10.3% market share, up 0.4 percentage points versus October,” revealed comScore. “Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in November with 65.6% of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (17.5%), and Microsoft Sites (10.3%). Ask Network captured 3.8% of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.8%.”

According to comScore Google all but stagnated between October and November 2009, while Yahoo managed to drop from 18.0% to 17.5%. In the same period, Bing’s share of the search engine market grew from 9.9% to 10.3%. On the US market, Google grabbed 9.5 billion searches in November, Yahoo just 2.5 billion and Bing 1.5 billion.

The Nielsen Company credits Bing with no less than 10.7% of the search engine market, just over 1 billion searches. According to the statistics provided by Nielsen, Bing jumped 1% from October, when it accounted for a share of just 9.7% of the market. Nielsen put Yahoo at 15.3% at the end of November, down from 15.4% the previous month, and Google at 65.4%, a consistent drop from 66.1% in October, which apparently went to Bing.

Microsoft Visual Simulation Platform Licensed by Flight1 Tech

2009-12-19T00:47:00.000-08:00

Companies around the world can take advantage of technology and innovation developed by Microsoft for their own products. The Redmond company offers a comprehensive intellectual property licensing program, and is little shy of touting a plethora of IP agreements already inked with partners across the globe. The latest company to leverage Microsoft’s IP licensing program is Flight1 Aviation Technologies (Flight1 Tech). Per the intellectual property (IP) license agreement signed by the two companies, Flight1 Tech now has access to Microsoft ESP’s visual simulation platform.

“This agreement with Flight1 Tech is an important example of how Microsoft’s programmatic IP licensing efforts fuel innovation across the industry,” noted David Kaefer, general manager of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft.

Specifically, Flight1 Tech has licensed Microsoft ESP v1.0 Object Code, and will use the technology to catalyze the evolution of its own training simulations. “This licensing agreement will provide our civil and military customers with a wide array of training and safety simulation technologies, within a flexible and affordable solution that meets their unique requirements,” noted Jim Rhoads, vice president at Flight1 Aviation Technologies.

Neither Microsoft nor Flight1 Tech have made the financial details of the agreement public. Rhoads only noted that the integration of the Microsoft ESP simulation platform was a step forward on the natural progression of Flight1 Tech’s portfolio of services. “Whether the field is aviation technology or digital photography, licensing IP is good for business because it helps our partners shorten development cycles in responding to the dynamic needs of their customers,” Kaefer added.

Recently, Microsoft’s popular series simulation engines was also licensed by Lockheed Martin, in an expansion of a previous agreement with the software giant. Lockheed Martin is looking to put together a suite of ESP-based solutions that will serve for warfighter training.

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