Technology Tips, Technology Learning, Future Technology, Technical Security Tips

Obama to have his White House Blog

2009-01-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama was sworn into office this week as our nation’s 44th president. Despite running into a few technical challenges in the first few days at the White House, the Obama Administration will embrace technology in unprecedented ways. Led by forward thinking, web savvy technologists, President Obama’s new media team looks poised and ready to fulfill President Obama’s vision of open-source democracy.

Coincident with Mr. Obama being sworn in, the Obama Administration’s new media team assumed control of WhiteHouse.gov at 12:01 PM EST on Tuesday. This is the official website of the sitting administration. The new media team has identified three top priorities of the new administration – communication, transparency and participation. Let’s examine how the new administration has been leveraging web technologies to meet these priorities.

Communication. This administration’s use of Google’s YouTube during both the campaign and after winning the election leverages Internet video to reach a generation of Americans and global citizens who no longer tune in to AM radio on a regular basis. President Obama has vowed to continue video recording his fireside chats and publishing them via YouTube and other video sites. With the transition of WhiteHouse.gov to the new administration, for the first time ever an official White House blog came online. You can sign up for email updates from the president. Through the blog, Mr. Obama is the first U.S. president to have an RSS feed!

During the campaign President Obama relied heavily on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to build support, communicate with constituents and develop a core audience. By far, Mr. Obama has more followers on Twitter than anyone else (168,000). His fan page on Facebook has more than 4 million fans.

Transparency. Mr. Obama promises to run the most open, honest and transparent administration to date. Through the Your Seat at The Table section on the CHANGE.GOV transition site, the Obama transition team posted the minutes of hundreds of private meetings with then President-Elect Obama.

Even all of the content on the CHANGE.GOV site, unless otherwise noted, is licensed to the public at large via a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

The Obama-Biden Transition Team used my company, blist, to disclose the names of all donors to the transition project. Two key points of note are that the disclosure was entirely voluntary and the tool they chose to use made the data itself much more consumable by the mainstream public. Compared to a plain HTML table, which is bulky, cumbersome and hard to work with, by publishing the data via a blist widget the data can easily be sorted, searched, filtered, downloaded, printed, emailed and even republished – all capabilities not previously enjoyed by most consumers of public data sets.

Participation. The Obama Administration has been conducting bold experiments in interactive government. The Citizen’s Briefing Book, powered by Salesforce.com, has allowed citizens to suggest topics Mr. Obama should consider upon taking office. Once a topic was submitted, other visitors to the Citizen’s Briefing Book could vote the topic up or down and comment on it. Voting, ranking and commenting are hallmark features of web-based, social media applications.

The new Administration has brought forth a new era of honest, open, participatory and transparent government by creatively employing web-based software from innovative companies like Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com and blist. We’re eager to see the use of these technologies extended to WhiteHouse.gov initially and from there we’d love to see more government agencies quickly embrace web technologies to promote communication, transparency and participation.

Lenovo S10 with six-cell battery gets pictured, priced

2008-11-26T21:24:00.000-08:00

Lenovo's S10 netbook has been relatively well received since its introduction earlier this year, but the battery life has always been a bit of a sticking point, with the included 3-cell battery simply not meeting some folks' netbook demands. It looks like that situation has now been rectified, in Germany, where a new model equipped with a six-cell battery has just gone on sale for the fairly reasonable price of €329 (or roughly $425). Unfortunately, there's no indication of a release 'round these parts just yet, but you can check out some more pics of the somewhat bulky addition by hitting up the link below

Spice up your inbox with colors and themes @ Gmail

2008-11-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred. We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

As you can see from these photos taken around our office in Zurich, Switzerland, themes have made their way into more than our inboxes -- that's a character from the ninja theme made out of pixel blocks, customized laptop decals, and a giant Zoozimps character on a beam next to my desk:

To customize your inbox, go to the Themes tab under Settings. We'll be rolling out themes to everyone over the next couple of days, so if you don't see them yet, check back soon. As for which theme to choose, don't ask us. We're neutral ;)

Official Gmail Blog: Spice up your inbox with colors and themes

Avoiding unwanted Facebook Friends

2008-11-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Connecting with your past can bring up those old, uncomfortable feelings

Duane Hoffmann / msnbc.com

Facebook and other social networking sites can be great for getting back in touch ... unless you'd rather your past stay in the past, that is.

By Joy Jernigan

msnbc.com contributor

updated 7:39 p.m. ET Nov. 18, 2008

Andrea Smith recently received a Facebook friend invitation from someone she went to junior high school with — 23 years ago.

“I found it kind of baffling,” said Smith, 38, of Ypsilanti, Mich. “I knew who she was, but I don’t recall that we were ever friends. I don’t recall that we ever had a conversation.”

Social networking sites such as Facebook have experienced phenomenal growth in the past year, according to market researcher comScore. Facebook is now the No. 1 social networking site, with more than 120 million active users, and its fastest growing demographic is those 25 and older.

But with so many opportunities these days to connect with people online, some are confronting a question they thought they had left behind during their awkward adolescent years: What if I don’t want to be your friend?

“It’s really odd when suddenly your past comes out and finds you,” said Troy Sandal, 38, of San Francisco, who says he’s been contacted recently by former high school classmates. His 20-year high school reunion was held over the summer, although he did not attend. “To be honest, I had two friends in high school and I kept in touch with one.”

Sandal, who’s been on Facebook for about two years, says he’s not interested in collecting a large number of online friends. “You don’t want to add them as friends, you want to add them as ‘Hey, I knew yous,’ ” he said.

OK to ignore an invitation
It’s perfectly OK to ignore an invitation, especially one the sender has made no effort to tailor specifically to you, said Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com and co-author of “I’m on Facebook — Now What???”

"You don’t have to respond to every single thing that comes at you," he writes.

Some users of social networking sites prefer to “friend” people who are colleagues or friends in real life. Some send invitations to friends of friends in an effort to expand their network, while others attempt to friend someone who has an interesting profile. Those new to Facebook are prompted to send a friend request to everyone in their address book (although they have the option to skip this step).

That’s what happened to Laura Hesse, 36, of Orange, Calif. When she signed up for Facebook in August, she had a friend talk her through the initial setup. In the process, she sent a mass invitation of friendship to everyone in her address book — including a family member she had cut all ties with.

“I had no idea what I was doing!” Hesse said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, no, she’s going to get it!’ ”

Sure enough, the woman accepted Hesse’s unintended invitation of friendship.

“She was able to catch up on the past three or four months of my life,” said Hesse, including photos of her kids and a recent kitchen remodel. “I kind of felt like she got a whole glimpse of it within a few hours. There’s a reason they’re not in my life, and there’s a reason I didn’t want them to see this stuff.”

As soon as Hesse realized she could “unfriend” her family member — by clicking on the X to the right of her name — she did. Hesse then disappeared from her relative’s Facebook page, although she later heard the woman was devastated when she found out.

Social awkwardness
Such examples of social networking faux pas are nothing new to teenagers, who were first forced to figure out the boundaries of acceptable social behavior on MySpace a couple of years ago, said Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

“You go through a period of absolute social awkwardness,” she said, as every new wave of people to get connected works out social norms within the technology.

It’s all about dealing with expectations, said Ariel Waldman, community manager for Pownce, a social networking and microblogging site. “In Web 2.0, people have developed expectations of what friending or not friending means. They get put off if their expectations are not met.”

One person might want to follow only 200 people on Twitter, for example. Another might prefer to friend only those in the same geographic location.

“Everyone has different communication protocols,” Waldman said. “The important thing is defining what your own protocols are.”

Then there’s the issue of real friends versus online friends. Take Hal Niedzviecki of Toronto, who wrote about his experience throwing a “Facebook party” for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He invited his nearly 700 online friends to meet him at the neighborhood bar. One showed up.

However, there are benefits to maintaining a large network of friends, said Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University.

Technology News : Google launches Video Chat into GTalk.

2008-11-13T03:07:00.000-08:00

Technology News :

I'm a big user of Gmail chat. Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity. But people can only type so fast, and even with our new emoticons, there are still some things that just can't be expressed in a chat message.

That's why today we're launching voice and video chat -- right inside Gmail. We've tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video -- all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

Once you install the plugin, to start a video chat, just click on the "Video & more" menu at the bottom of your Gmail chat window, and choose "Start video chat." You'll have a few seconds to make sure you look presentable while it's ringing, and then you'll see and hear your friend live, right from within Gmail. You can click the "pop-out" iconto make the video larger, or click the fullscreen iconin the upper left-hand corner for a fully immersive experience. See this all in action in the video below:

Our team is spread between Google offices in the US and Sweden, and video has really changed the way we work. Collaborating across continents and timezones is a fact of life for us, and it sure is easier (and greener) to click "Start video chat" than to get on a plane! And when I do have to visit another Google office, I can use Gmail voice and video chat to check in with my family.

We've just started to roll out Gmail voice and video chat for both PCs and Macs, so if you don't see it right away, don't worry -- it could take a day or so for this feature to be available in all Gmail and Google Apps accounts. If you want to download the plugin right away, visit http://gmail.com/videochat. And if you need a webcam, there are a few models with special discounts through November 30th (I use the QuickCam Pro 9000 myself).

Official Gmail Blog: Say hello to Gmail voice and video chat

iPod creator says goodbye to Apple

2008-11-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Technology News : The man behind one of the world's most popular digital music players is bidding farewell...

Tony Fadell, referred to as 'father of the iPod', is leaving Apple. One of the world's fastest selling digital music players, the iPod turned around the company's fortunes.

Seven years ago, it was Tony Fadell who led a team of designers and engineers to introduce the iPod. It was his idea to club a Napster-like music store with a hard drive-based MP3 player. Sleek and stylish, the product soon became one of the most hottest selling products from Apple. For the ambitious Fadell, it has been an incredible journey.

He has now chosen to spend more time with his family.

Apple has announced that the iPod division vice president Tony Fadell and his wife, Danielle Lambert, who is vice president of the company's human resources department, are leaving to spend more with their family.

Fadell, will however remain as an adviser to CEO Steve Jobs.

Mark Papermaster will now head the iPod and iPhone engineering teams. Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience. He was working as vice president at IBM.

Papermaster has a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Texas, and Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont in 1988. He is a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Council, at the University of Texas.

"Mark is a seasoned leader and is going to be an excellent addition to our senior management team," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

"Tony and Dani have each made important contributions to Apple over the past eight years. We're sorry to see Dani go, and are looking forward to working with Tony in his new capacity."

It has been a successful stint for Fadell at Apple...

Fadell toyed with the idea of inventing a new MP3 player. However, he had to struggle before his idea was finally accepted. He was turned down by RealNetworks and Phillips. It was Apple, which showed interest in the project.

Tony Fadell started working for Apple in 2001 as an independent contractor with a team of thirty engineers and designer to develop the new MP3 player.

Fadell was promoted as vice president of iPod engineering in 2004. Before joining Apple, Fadell worked at Philips Electronics.

He has also worked as a hardware and software architect at General Magic. He graduated with a BS degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1991.

A winner in the digital media revolution, Apple's iPod has clocked sales of over 160 million units. But revenues from iPod sales have fallen.

In January 2008, Apple reported the best quarter revenue of $9.6 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion and 42% of Apple's revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2008 came from iPod sales.

However, in October 2008, Apple reported that only 14.21% of total revenue for the quarter came from iPod sales. This certainly is not good news for Apple.

With competition hotting up, Apple is gearing up for a tough battle with the launch of newer models. Apple aims to capture a larger marketshare with these new models and competitive prices.

Apple has now introduced the iPod shuffle in four new colours starting at $49. The iPod classic in one slimline model with 50 percent more capacity(120GB storage) is now priced at $249.

Besides this, the company has unveiled the fourth generation iPod nano featuring a curved aluminum and curved glass enclosure, in nine colours starting at $149.

Micro-blogging takes the virtual world by storm

2008-10-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Munich, Oct 20 (DPA) Micro-blogging or posting the details of one's doings on the Internet for the world to see is all the rage right now. It allows other people to have permanent access to the details of one's daily life.

As with traditional web-based diaries or blogs, micro-bloggers create a profile with a blog service and use it to post short entries. These posts are not normally more than 140 keystrokes long - shorter than a standard text message.

One need not call up the profile page with a browser to compose and read the micro-blog messages. They are instead sent and received via Instant Messenger, SMS, e-mail or other special micro-blogging software for the computer, depending on which distribution channel the respective service uses.

The best known service of this type is called Twitter. Launched roughly two years ago, it provides a solution for family members, friends, and colleagues who are curious to find out 'What are you doing right now?' The sender decides whether only specific recipients should receive the messages - 'tweets', in the site's lingo - or whether any and all Twitter users are welcome to read along.

Subscribe to enough tweets, and a permanent flow of messages begins pouring in, letting the recipient truly dive into the lives of others. 'Micro-blogging is like an ongoing hallway discussion, where there's always something new to experience and where you can plug in or tune out whenever you want,' explains Benedikt Koehler, a sociologist at the University of the German Federal Army in Munich. He is an expert in sociological internet phenomena.

The user is also fed interesting new titbits, as opposed to actively surfing to them on traditional blogs. Once subscribed, recipients automatically receive their messages. That is precisely the joy of this new communications form, Koehler says.

'Because of the character count limit, it doesn't take long to compose a micro-blogging post - and, as with chat, you can answer immediately and communicate with several discussion partners at the same time,' says Henning Behme from the Hanover-based computer technology magazine iX.

Success breeds imitation, and a series of new micro-blogging sites have sprung up of late. Pownce, Jaiku, and Friendfeed are all among the English-based variants. Versions in other languages have also appeared, such as the German sites Frazr, Wamadu and Niimo. Each promises additional functions and some twist of their own. Even popular social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Xing have now started working with the principle, and provide their members with an infrastructure for creating status reports.

But the original remains the big name in the field.

'Twitter has assumed a vanguard role in the world of micro-blogging and really has the potential to become the new digital communication service for the coming years,' says Behme. 'It could well be that 'to twitter' will find its place alongside 'to google' in the dictionary,' he says.

In Koehler's estimation, twittering has to date gained a foothold only among the most enthusiastic adherents of the Internet generation. The popularity of the short messages may grow beyond the borders of that group, though. Koehler is not yet ready to speak of a new mass medium, however. Micro-blogging is more likely to remain a niche player and serve as a complement to other communication means.

ICANN And VeriSign Vie For Key Role In DNS Upgrade

2008-10-14T00:21:00.001-07:00

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration branch of the United States Department of Commerce began seeking comments last week on who should operate a new more secure version of the Internet's Domain Name System, a role both commercial domain registrar VeriSign and the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have expressed interest in playing.

ICANN is the Marina del Rey, California-based international nonprofit organization that coordinates the Internet's domain name system, or DNS, in order to ensure its stability and security. The organization reports to the U.S. Commerce Department. Mountain View, California-based VeriSign was founded in 1995, and operates two of the Internet's 13 so-called root nameservers.

The possibility that a key DNS management role in the next generation system, called DNSSEC for DNS Security Extensions, could be awarded to a commercial firm has sparked a backlash among a number of Internet luminaries, including search engine leader Google's company evangelist Vinton Cerf. Cerf, the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol that underlies the Internet, joined others in urging the Commerce Department to award the administration of signing new more secure root server files to ICANN. Comments on the matter will be open to submission until November 24.

- SearchEngineWorld.com

YouTube Viewers Now Get Full-Length CBS Television Shows

2008-10-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, California-based Internet giant Google has seen its YouTube property enter into a partnership with CBS Corp that has given users of the most popular video sharing Web site access to an archive of full-length television programming surrounded by advertisements. The partnership between YouTube and CBS was announced Friday, with CBS making streams of the archived full-length TV programs available to the video site's audience, which numbered more than 330 million in August according to Web traffic measurement company comScore.

Among the new YouTube content from CBS were entire episodes of the shows "Young and the Restless," "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Star Trek." Aside from a relatively small number of videos from test initiatives such as a "Screening Room" effort launched in June, YouTube has in the past limited its Web video programming to a 10 minute limit.

"You may see in-stream video ads (including pre-, mid- and post-rolls) embedded in some of these episodes; this advertising format will only appear on premium content where you are most comfortable seeing such ads," YouTube said in the Friday announcement.

Details of the revenue sharing agreement between CBS and YouTube were not disclosed. The ability to generate revenue through advertising has long been a goal at Google, which purchased YouTube, the world's largest video sharing Web site, for $1.65 billion in stock compensation in 2006.

- SearchEngineWorld.com

Yahoo Improves Site Analysis Services

2008-10-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

Sunnyvale, California-based Web pioneer Yahoo has begun rolling out a test version of its new Web traffic analysis utility, Yahoo Web Analytics, that offered Web site owners and advertisers methods for tracking visitor interaction with sites using the service. The new Yahoo service, which brought site owners a variety of customizable reports and graphs, was based on technology developed by Web analytics provider IndexTools which Yahoo purchased in April.

Yahoo began the first portion of a phased rollout for Yahoo Web Analytics that it said would extend into 2009 before completion, with the company's roughly 13,000 Yahoo Small Business customers being among the first to gain access to the service.

"We have already started to roll Yahoo Web Analytics out to advertisers who seek Yahoo’s help to build custom micro-sites, as well as to third-party application developers who build widgets and other mini-apps for Yahoo users via our developer network or our new Yahoo Open Strategy tools," Jitendra Kavathekar, vice president of Yahoo Web Analytics wrote Wednesday in a message on the Yahoo blog announcing the service.

When Yahoo purchased Budapest, Hungary-based Web traffic measurement company Tensa Kft, also known as IndexTools, it sought to boost its Web analytics offerings for online marketers. Self-funded IndexTools, which was founded in 2000, had seen revenue growth each year since 2002 and a high rate of customer retention before being acquired by Yahoo. The new Yahoo Web Analytics service announced Wednesday was built on IndexTools scalable and comprehensive platform for monitoring and analyzing sophisticated marketing campaigns.

- SearchEngineGenie.com

Latest Google News Labs: 3 experiments with labels

2008-09-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

Since launching our first batch of 13 Gmail Labs features, we've received a lot of suggestions for more experimental features you'd like to see -- plus, we've had some of our own ideas. Today, there's a new batch of labs features to play with. If you like using Labels, we hope you like these.Custom label colors, by Mark KIf the 24 standard color choices aren't your thing, enable this feature to create your own custom color combinations. Instead of choosing one of the standard colors from the label drop-down menu, click "Add custom colors," pick your palette, hit "Apply," and enjoy.Go to label keyboard shortcut, by Bruce DNever have to click on a label again. Instead, enable keyboard shortcuts and press "g" then "l" to display the "Go to label" pop-up. Start typing, and your labels will be filtered as you go. You can use the arrow keys to select a label and hit "Enter" to select one.Powertip: The pop-up searches each word in your labels for a match, so if you have multiple labels with the same prefix, simply add a space, dash or slash after the prefix and search for the second word. For example, typing "labs" will display labels named "gmail labs," "gmail-labs," or "gmail/labs" but won't display "gmaillabs."Navbar drag and drop, by Anatol PIf Labels are more important to you than your Contacts, you can switch them around with this Labs feature, which allows you to reorder the items in Gmail's lefthand navigation bar using drag and drop.To turn on these Labs features and more, just go to the Labs tab under Settings. Keep posting feedback on the forums because we're reading what you have to say!

Official Gmail Blog: New Gmail code base now for IE6 too

2008-09-08T05:39:00.000-07:00

Last October, we launched a rewritten code base for the Gmail user interface to Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 users. Since then, we've added support for Safari 3 and Firefox 3 and improved performance in other browsers. This new code base included major performance improvements and provided us with a solid foundation for launching new features such as colored labels, group chat and rich emoticons, invisible mode, AIM integration, Gmail Labs, an updated contact manager, and remote sign out.

The newest version of Gmail pushes modern browser technology to the limit, so initially we weren't able to make it available to those of you who use IE6. Because it was released way back in 2001, IE6 wasn't able to handle the complexity of the new code in a way that met our performance and stability goals. Over the last few months, we've been working with the IE engineers at Microsoft to address these issues: they released a critical update to their JavaScript implementation that fixed a performance problem with how the script engine allocates and frees memory. We also made small simplifications to the UI when it runs in IE6 to improve stability. For example, we removed the drop shadow from contact pop-ups and the rounded corners from chat moles, both of which tended to cause problems in IE6.

This week, we've started to roll out Gmail's new code base to IE6 users. If you use IE6 and have the latest IE6 updates from Microsoft installed (or the specific patch that's required), you'll start seeing the features listed above.

- Jon Perlow, Gmail engineer [gmailblog.blogspot.com]

Google Chrome - The Fastest & Latest Web Browser from Google

2008-09-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

This is what Google says about their latest web browser : Google Chrome

" At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

So today we're releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better . By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We've released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we'll continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself."

Download

Official Gmail Blog: Try Gmail in Google Chrome

Google Chrome - The latest web browser from Google

2008-09-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

Technology News : What's the number one followed by a hundred zeroes called? A Googol. That was the inspiration behind the word, Google. Now, everybody's favourite search engine is launching another blockbuster for the web.

When people say web browser, the first thing that pops in everyone's mind is the Internet explorer. However, this might change soon for Google has just released Chrome, their take on what a web browser should be.

And they have chosen a maverick way to announce it. A comic strip to explain the billion dollar product.

Google claims Chrome will be faster, less crash-prone and more secure than anything on the market yet.

Like Firefox and Opera, it will use tabs but they will be above the address bar, not below it. The address bar will be intuitive, completing addresses based on your previous searches or what's currently popular online.

A speed dial feature will display the most-visited pages and recent searches on a corner of the screen.

Finally, just like the latest Internet Explorer 8, Chrome's privacy mode prevents web activity from being recorded.

Chrome also has an open source which means one can add applications to it, if you know programming that is.

So will Chrome be the answer to your browsing woes? Well first, it has to work. The rest will be decided in the coming months.

Cars of the future: safer, cleaner, more comfortable

2008-07-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

Hamburg (Germany), July 24 (DPA) Within a decade, most new cars will be equipped with clean-drive technology and a host of easy to serve technical gadgets that will make driving much more comfortable and safer than today.

Engineers are currently working on several technologies that were still fiction in the 1980s American television series 'Knight Rider' in which David Hasselhoff is partnered by an autonomous car called KITT with artificial intelligence.

Like KITT, the car of the future recognises its owner with a mini iris-recognition camera.

The front-mounted 'scan bar' in KITT is similar to the mini cameras currently being tested that perceive the car surroundings, informing the driver of possible danger zones. It even brakes automatically if the driver does not react.

Some of the gadgets such as night vision and brake-assist are already available in premium cars such as the new BMW 7-Series but will become the norm in a few years time.

Once the driver sits into the car, the vehicle automatically adjusts the seat and steering wheel settings to the ideal position. The car entertainment system meanwhile plays his/her favourite music while the navigation system begins to choose the best route.

Like KITT, the car could theoretically drive itself, drop its driver outside the office and choose the next available parking space.

Cars will be in contact with other cars and traffic information centres picking up information on accidents, traffic jams or parking areas.

Many of the functions presently in use have complicated menu programmes, switches or buttons. In future you will be able to speak to your car like Hasselhoff to KITT, telling it what to do.

German automaker Volkswagen's head of future research and trend transfer, Wolfgang Mueller-Pietralla, says that the car of the future will be a 'lot more fun, evolving from purely a vehicle to a living space' where we can do most of the things we do at home or in the office like phoning, shopping, watching television or surfing the internet.

Car assistance systems will eliminate most of the risks we have on the road today. Camera-assisted fatigue recognition systems tell the driver when to rest.

The mini cameras with night vision monitor the vehicle surroundings by 180 degrees, picking up possible dangers from any angle, informing the vehicle information system on what action to take.

The car will not be able to fly or jump over objects with rocket boosters, but a lot of the fiction we saw in 'Knight Rider' will have merged into everyday reality.

- IANS

Facebook to go Web wide as 'Facebook Connect'

2008-07-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

Thu, Jul 24 10:50 AM

The leader of a youth movement that swept the world this past year by encouraging Web users to share bits of their lives with selected friends, spoke on Wednesday of spreading his service across the Web, even while apologizing for past excesses.

Mark Zuckerberg, 24, told an audience of 1,000 industry executives, software makers, media -- and his mother and father -- at Facebook's annual conference of how the company's features will run on affiliated sites outside its own.

"Facebook Connect" will transform the social network from a private site where activity occurs entirely within a "walled garden" to a Web-wide phenomenon where software makers, with user permission, can tap member data for use on their sites.

"Facebook Connect is our version of Facebook for the rest of the Web," Zuckerberg told the second annual F8 conference.

Facebook, begun in 2004 as a socializing site for students at Harvard University, has seen its growth zoom to 90 million members from 24 million a little over a year ago, overtaking rival MySpace to become the world's largest social network.

It has lured 400,000 developers to build programs for it since opening up its site in May 2007. Now Facebook is letting designers build software on affiliated sites, for mobile phones or as services that tap desktop applications like Microsoft's Outlook e-mail system. In coming months, it said it would let designers building software for Facebook simultaneously create versions for Apple Inc's iPhone.

"As time goes on, less of this movement is going to be about Facebook and the platform we have created and more about the applications other people have built," Zuckerberg said. "This year, we are going to push for parity between applications on and off Facebook."

In doing so, the social network is positioning itself to play a role similar to what Microsoft Corp has long had for developers within its Windows operating system.

LET'S CHANGE THE WORLD

Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard to run Facebook, is a shy programmer turned billionaire with an anything-but-humble vision to make the world a more "transparent" place to live.

Facebook, which encourages members daily to share text and photos, videos, music or other personal information with others in their network, has been translated, largely by its own users, from English into 20 languages since the start of 2008.

Zuckerberg, who grew up in an affluent suburb north of New York City, described the epiphany he had last year while traveling in Istanbul. "A couple of bloggers called it my vision quest, but I called it a vacation," he joked.

Free of his Blackberry and daily management pressures, Zuckerberg said he got to define some ambitious new goals.

"I want to be able to build a product that allows you to be able to see a person and feel their presence, to have people have more open connections by helping them to share more," he told attendees at the event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

"Facebook's mission ... is to give people the power to share (information) in order to make the world more open and connected. By giving people the power to share, it makes it more transparent," Zuckerberg told the audience.

APOLOGIZING, THEN FORGING AHEAD

Driving the popularity of Facebook has been a wave of more than 24,000 applications from independent software makers that work within site. But the last year's rapid growth has come at the cost of frequent abuses by software developers of members' privacy. Company officials admitted that they shut down 1,000 applications for privacy violations in the past year.

Connect marks a new effort by Facebook to expand outside its own site after it retreated from an earlier effort called Beacon that was decried by privacy advocates and which connected member activities inside Facebook to sites outside.

"We took this approach of getting it (Facebook's open software development platform) out as quickly as possible ... We just iterated as fast as we could," Zuckerberg said. "I am also the first to admit we made a lot of mistakes."

Facebook said it is implementing a stringent verification process for developers to reassure users their private personal information will be securely handled outside Facebook.

In a move that drew complaints from developers left out, Facebook named 24 preferred partners it feels have set high standards for respecting users' privacy. Others can apply to participate in Connect in coming weeks, a spokesman said.

Among others, early partners include CBS, Citysearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Digg, Disney-ABC TV, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Six Apart, Socialthing, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni.

The push to expand software development efforts across the Web and onto multiple devices comes as Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, said its top Internet executive had resigned -- the latest blow to its strategy as it seeks to merge with Yahoo and take on Web leader Google Inc.

Microsoft took a small stake in Facebook last October that valued Facebook, a four-year-old start-up with a little over 500 employees, at $15 billion.

- The Financial Express

Power Consumption Tips for new Desktop PC

2008-06-26T02:05:00.000-07:00

Power consumption: Look at Energy Star

Technology News : We'd all like to cut our power bills, and Energy Star-qualified computers could be part of that process. If you're upgrading computers and your new machine uses more energy than your old one, you're increasing your so-called carbon footprint; but a system that meets Energy Star guidelines at least increases your power use less than does a comparable system that hasn't been designed to meet the marks of this Environmental Protection Agency program.

With a laptop -- or a refrigerator, for that matter -- a specific model with more or less the same features can be tested and its usage estimated. But when you can upgrade a processor to double the baseline model's speed and stick in four hard drives instead of two, the baseline numbers help only a little in calculating the final energy bill.

Still, because Energy Star's rules for desktops and workstations -- tightened in 2007 -- require an efficient power supply and intelligent power reductions in standby and idle modes, you're still moving in the right direction.

Our verdict: Energy Star shouldn't be the deciding factor, but it's worth crunching numbers with your local electrical rates against other models you'd be considering.

Warranties: Check out the differences

Warranties are complicated beasts, and it's not ideal to recommend spending several hundred dollars extra for "24-hour business day" service when that can actually be interpreted in different ways by different companies.

For on-site repair, you'll typically see a service technician wearing a company tag just for that visit; they work for firms that contract out the local work. If you have a problem that's beyond their ability to repair on the spot, they may lack spare parts, and you may still be out of commission for a day or two or over a weekend.

Visit the official support forums on a manufacturer's site -- Apple and Dell seem to delete few, if any, of the complaints that aren't abusive or obscene. (If they're removing the worst stuff, I'd be scared to see it.) Find out what each warranty option means in practice, and ask around in your area to see whether the local service techs who might appear for any maker's model you buy are up to the task.

Our verdict: You almost certainly will want to spend the few hundred dollars to get improved warranty over the included offer, but research to find out what level is worthwhile.

Pre-installed programs: Remove the bloatware

Every computer maker should offer the option to provide a computer with no co-marketed, pre-installed software packages that generally serve more to slow down your new system's performance than to enhance your computing experience. Yes, antivirus and firewall software trials can make sure you're safe out of the box, but this is also a lock-in strategy with marketing dollars involved, not something that has your interests directly at heart.

It's surprising that PC makers haven't embraced such an option, despite the potential revenue loss from business partners supplying the trial apps. After all, Sony recently endured a public embarrassment when it briefly attempted to charge for removing all the trial software and Sony applications not needed for a system's operation on one of its ultramobile PCs. (The Sony people quickly changed their minds, and you can now get the "Fresh Start" option -- shades of "1984" doublespeak -- on applicable laptops at no cost.)

None of the major makers, including Sony, offers this option for desktops except Apple, which doesn't install trial software from other firms, and has just one inducement for a service -- its .Mac subscription hosting option -- during the setup process.

Our verdict: Manufacturers should offer this software-free option, and removing bloatware should be one of your first tasks after buying a computer.

Hard Disks for your Desktop PC

2008-06-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

Hard drives: SATA vs. SAS

Technology News : Both SATA and SAS drives offer high performance, with transfer rates of 3 gigabits per second. But SAS is full duplex, providing this speed in both directions. That's why SAS drives have differentials of hundreds of dollars for higher capacities.

Some PC makers offer only SATA drives for most of their midrange business models, requiring the purchase of a higher-cost workstation to upgrade to SAS storage.

Our verdict: SATA is fast enough for most business purposes, but if you read and write massive amounts of data, only SAS will meet your needs.

Hard drives: Which flavor of RAID?

When the term RAID was originally coined, the phrase "redundant array of inexpensive disks" was a vision of the putative future. Now, with the price per megabyte in disks astoundingly low, RAID is a superb option for improving both speed and reliability in a desktop machine that has at least two hard-drive bays.

The idea behind RAID is that you pick two targets, one being some combination of redundancy, speed and reliability; the other being the total pool of storage you want to have available. Depending on the manufacturer, the drives you purchase may all have to be of the same capacity, although that's not a strict RAID requirement.

RAID 1, for instance, mirrors all data, writing the same data to each of two drives at the same time. If one drive goes south, the other is fully available. Your total storage capacity is half the total of drive space: two 500GB drives equals 500GB of storage.

RAID 0 stripes data, interleaving blocks to extract more speed out of the hard-drive data transfer system -- that is, you can use two 7,200-rpm drives, but effectively have a far higher speed. RAID 0 offers the full capacity of all drives: Two 500GB drives equals 1TB of capacity.

RAID 5 stripes data and error-correction information across three or more drives. If any one drive dies, the others can reconstruct the missing details, and you lose much less storage than with simple mirroring. With RAID 5 and drives of the same capacity, you lose just the equivalent of a single drive's worth of space in the set. With three 500GB drives, for instance, you have 1TB of storage; with four 500GB drives, you have 1.5TB.

You can combine RAID 0 and RAID 1 as 0+1, which provides both speed and backup, but RAID 5 is usually seen as a superior alternative, even though it can be more costly. It requires at least three drives, but can use many more, and you can expand sets later. If you think you'll want a larger set of storage drives down the road, you need to make sure that your desktop has enough drive bays.

Major desktop PC makers typically include hardware support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 even in their less-expensive systems, but for built-in RAID 5 support, you may need to select a higher-priced business workstation; this option typically also requires a hardware RAID card -- costing $650 to $800 -- as well.

That additional cost is partly offset for sets of four or more disks of large capacity compared to RAID 0+1, however, because you drop the cost of drives necessary for the same amount of total storage in RAID 5.

Our verdict: For best use, choosing either RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 makes sense, but RAID 5 clearly provides the best combination of speed and reliability, even at a higher cost.

What to Look For in a New Desktop

2008-06-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

Optical drive: Upgrade to Blu-ray later

As DVD burners have become increasingly faster, there are fewer differentiating factors among them. You're primarily deciding between CD/DVD burning and CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning. (You can purchase a Blu-ray drive that plays video disks and read-only Blu-ray disks, but that seems like half a loaf.)

The latest generation of Blu-ray drives can burn 25GB or 50GB to a single disk. But the upgrade is pricey: often $300 (HP) to $470 (Dell) to install a Blu-ray writer instead of a fast CD/DVD burner. Blank Blu-ray discs are ruinous: from $10 to $20 each for 25GB media and $35 to $50 each for 50GB media.

But with Blu-ray the winner in the high-definition video market, prices for both home players and PC drives will plummet this year, as will blank media, since users will buy such media in larger volumes. And most of us use hard drives for larger backups, anyway.

Our verdict: Wait for Blu-ray to become a $150 to $200 upgrade, and for 50GB media to drop to $20. Optical drives in desktops are often a simple upgrade.

Monitor: Big LCD displays = pricey video card

You can buy stunningly large LCD displays from several PC makers -- 30 inches at 2560 by 1600 pixels, say -- and video support for using a single one of these behemoths is typically an included cost for any business desktop. The PC will need a dual-link DVI connection for such a big display, because of the sheer number of pixels involved.

If you need to use two or more monitors, especially two 30-inch beauties, costs can mount for the video card upgrade. Typically, you can manage two monitors, at least one of them 30 inches in size, with the included card or a very cheap upgrade ($15 for one Lenovo model, for instance).

Driving two 30-inch LCDs, however, means that the dollars can start to add up. Apple builds the cost of two dual-link DVI connectors into all its Mac Pro models, which tend to start with options that bring their price higher than comparable PC makers' workstations.

Other manufacturers offer cards at an upgrade cost starting at $400 for such support, with prices that can reach into the thousands for the highest-performance cards.

Our verdict: If you consider two or more 30-inch LCDs vital to your work, you're simply choosing how much power under the hood -- from the video card -- you're going to buy.

What to Look For in a New Desktop

2008-06-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Fleishman, PC World

When buying your next PC, you should select -- and avoid -- certain key features.

Buying a desktop PC might seem to be a straightforward process, but choosing an ideal configuration requires some important decision making. Should you choose a SATA drive or an SAS drive? Should the PC include a Blu-ray drive? Many newer features are increasingly affordable and increasingly necessary, while others are things you can definitely wait on. To help you decide which options are must-haves, and which you can bypass, we've put together a checklist of options to consider. Read on for help in deciding how to configure your next desktop purchase.

Operating system: Go forward to go back

Let's face it: Microsoft Vista has suffered some black eyes from people and businesses that have had serious trouble getting it to operate consistently, reliably and quickly, as well as from those who simply prefer the XP interface.

That's why you may find the option for an XP downgrade on new PCs welcome, if rather odd. You're essentially buying Vista, but getting XP for free, and obtaining an upgrade disk for Vista when and if you want it. If you buy the Vista Business edition, models and makers that support this option will impose no additional charge; if you buy a cheaper Vista version, you may have to pay additional fees, or an XP downgrade may not be available.

Dell's arrangement is typical: By choosing its "bonus" edition of Vista Business or better, you can opt to have the factory install Windows XP and include an upgrade DVD for that flavor of Vista. Dell offers support through the computer's lifetime warranty for both XP and Vista. You can even downgrade back to XP if you choose.

Since most businesses haven't standardized on Vista, you're unlikely to have problems with co-workers or other companies you work with if you stick with XP; operating systems rarely affect compatibility, either, only tech support.

Our verdict: For your operating system, buy Vista Business with XP pre-installed for the greatest flexibility.

Bloggers highlight iPhone disappointments

2008-06-25T02:22:00.000-07:00

Washington: Even before the launch of Apple's new iPhone 3G, technology blogs have started to highlight factors that may make it a mere gadget.

Top among such factors is the device’s high cost, with The New York Times’ technology blog ‘Bits’ calling it "a step backwards for consumers".

Bloggers believe that it is not less expensive to own because US mobile carrier AT&T has a pricier data plan to subsidise the up-front cost.

In Australia, confirmed iPhone carriers Optus and Vodafone have not revealed the local pricing, but both will offer it on a no-contract prepaid plan.

Another biggest iPhone disappointment is the fact that it still doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology, which means many multimedia-rich sites remain off limits.

Finally, a car that runs on water!

2008-06-25T02:20:00.000-07:00

Skyrocketting fuel prices, adulterated fuel, long queues at petrol stations, often unscrupulous attendants out to fleece you -- your cup of woes spills over everytime you need to fill the tank of of your car.

But all this could be history if Genepax -- a Japanese company -- is successful in commercialising its latest innovation: the 'water car.'

Genepax unveiled the car in Osaka, Japan on June 12, saying that a litre of any kind of water would get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 kmph, or 50 mph.

Genepax president Kiyoshi Hirasawa, in a mission statement published on the company's official web site, said, "Our mission is to develop technology and products for efficient production and use of energy. By 'efficient,' we mean ecologically and economically efficient. Ecological and economical energy is our business. Our goal is to create energy that is not taxing on our natural environment."

The water needed to run the car could be tap, rain or sea water, the company clarified.

Once the tank (which is at the rear) of the Genepax car is filled with water, a generator would extract hydrogen from the water using, what the comapny calls, its Water Energy System, or WES, to produce electricity that the car runs on. As opposed to the hybrid cars which emit water, Genepax's invention consumes water.

Whether the car is a commercial success or not remains to be seen, but Genepax said it had applied for a patent and is planning to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers.

"Energy made from water," as Hirasawa says, "is not a dream story anymore We hope many people will join us in our challenge to promote the use of our WES, for the better future of the earth," he added in a statement.

Photograph, courtesy: Genepax

Register.com investigating Photobucket DNS hijack

2008-06-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

When you think about , what do you think of first? Which aspects of are important, which are essential, and which ones can you take or leave? You be the judge.

Register.com is looking into the hijack of Photobucket's DNS records that redirected customers to an unrelated Web page this week.

"The Photobucket site was down for a very short time and was restored immediately when we became aware of the issue." Roni Jacobson, general counsel of Register.com, said in a statement on Thursday. "We are currently investigating the source of the problem."

On Tuesday afternoon, some Photobucket customers trying to access the site were temporarily redirected to a page that appeared to have been hacked by a Turkish group calling itself "NetDevilz."

If you find yourself confused by what you've read to this point, don't despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.

Photobucket discovered the problem within about an hour of when it started and soon thereafter began rolling out a fix. Some customers were able to access the site within a few hours, but for others it took as long as two days, according to the site.

The company is urging customers to do a DNS Flush on their computer, as well as reboot the modem and/or the router if they are still having trouble reaching the site.

"If this does not resolve the issue, please try again later, as the redirect may still be cached in your ISP's DNS files. Depending on the ISP, it may take up to 72 hours (or longer) for their DNS cache to be cleared (or for it to expire), so you should consider contacting them to see if anything can be expedited," the company said in a blog post.

In May, Comcast's DNS records and site were hijacked.

That's how things stand right now. Keep in mind that any subject can change over time, so be sure you keep up with the latest news.

Many customers of Photobucket were unable to reach the site for anywhere from hours to days this week after the site's DNS records were hijacked.

Google envy is alive and well in Redmond

2008-06-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

Google envy is alive and well in Redmond

Are you looking for some inside information on ? Here's an up-to-date report from experts who should know.

The weepy countdown to Bill Gates' last day on the job as a full-timer must be getting to Steve Ballmer. Always full of surprises, the big galoot is at it again.

In a revealing interview with The Financial Times, Ballmer distanced Microsoft from any criticism that it's lost a step over the years. In fact, he added, why not point fingers at some other software behemoth? (Any guesses who that might be?)

I haven't seen speed out of Google really. I mean, come on. They have one product. It's been the same for five years--and they have Gmail now, but they have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn't changed in five years.

Yes, but as his erstwhile comrade in arms is wont to say, doesn't that speak to the magic of software? Ballmer can try and call out Google for being a one-trick pony. Still that's one heckuva pony. Truth be told, if Microsoft enjoyed that sort of technology prowess in search, I very much doubt Ballmer would have wasted four months wooing a unenthusiastic Jerry Yang.

But what's with the nonstop trash talk from the CEO--especially in the countdown to Gates' upcoming "Going Away Day?" He ought to watch his words. Over the next week, Ballmer is going to be all over the media, reaffirming that Microsoft is finished with its Yahoo crush and as relevant as ever. Inevitably, reporters will pop the "What about Google?" question. And the more Ballmer insists on convincing interlocutors about chinks in Google's armor, the less people will believe him. In the same FT interview, for instance, Ballmer says the following:

The best time to learn about is before you're in the thick of things. Wise readers will keep reading to earn some valuable experience while it's still free.

I mean, (Google has) a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let's talk about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search. Oh, they have two products, AdWords and AdSense. They have two products, both search-based, that make all of their money, and it hasn't changed a lot in five years. I'm not giving them a hard time, but we've got to learn--if you say, what have you learned, we try to learn from people's successes, not from people's gestalt. The gestalt is yet to be proven.

Gestalt? If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to diagnose this as a severe case of Google envy (which may be the flip side of Microsoft's ongoing search for respect as a technology innovator.)

"We're trained in Silicon Valley to believe that Microsoft steals other peoples' innovations," says Microsoft's Stephen Elop, who replaced the retiring Jeff Raikes as president of the company's Business Division. "We just don't give Microsoft credit. I don't know whether that's because of arrogance or hubris."

I spoke with Elop a few weeks ago. As I reviewed my notes, his comments as a former outsider shed a different light on Ballmer's ongoing eruptions of "Google-itis."

"A lot probably has to do with the fact that Microsoft is in a different geography," said Elop, who did prior stints at Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems, and Macromedia, where he held down senior posts. "We've had a generation of leaders who have had to compete head to head with Microsoft over the years. What's happening now is that we're moving on. We've got 2,500 people in the Valley. Maybe I'm surprised that opinion hasn't evolved yet in the Valley, but it will. Too many things are going on."

Maybe so. I can't predict whether Microsoft will ever be received warmly by Silicon Valley. There's a long history and memories die hard. (Microsoft's emissary to the Valley, Dan'l Lewin, keeps plugging away.) Meanwhile, the best way to put the relationship on a more solid footing is to continue to open up and prove Microsoft can build great technology, not just because management is "persistent." (Note to the inner sanctum at Redmond: You can remain obsessed with Google. But try not to let on so much. It's just bad form.)

When word gets around about your command of facts, others who need to know about will start to actively seek you out.

AOL Announces Revenue Sharing for Open AIM

2008-06-11T05:08:00.001-07:00

Last month we called AOL's Open AIM developer platform an "often over-looked social networking platform," but with 80 million users and plans to integrate the AOL Instant Messenger platform into bebo, it might not be over-looked for long -- in fact, it now has 295,000 developers signed up. AOL has been pushing their chat platform hard this year, last month giving out $100,000 for the best AIM-powered applications, and today sweeting the pot further by announcing the availability of AIM Money, a new revenue sharing program.

The program was initially launched in March, and is now available to any Open AIM developer.

"Our goal is to facilitate the world's online, real-time conversations anytime and anywhere," said David Liu, Senior Vice President, AOL People Networks in a press release. "To that end, we're not only giving developers more opportunities and incentives to create meaningful instant messaging-based applications for our millions of users, but we're also bringing more requested features and innovation to the AIM platform to satisfy user needs."

Participating in AOL Money is free, and developers are required to include a display ad widget that runs alongside their web or software based AIM mashup. Payments are made monthly via PayPal. Ads are handled by AOL's "Platform A."

In addition to the wide release of AOL Money, the company is announcing a new version of the AIM software and a corresponding new release of the Open AIM API that takes advantage of the latest features of the client software. Perhaps the most compelling new feature for developers is the addition of "mini applications." Mini apps are widgets that run inside of the AIM client software and can be accessed by users from a bar at the base of their buddy list.

Google App Engine “Accidentally” Blocks PayPal

2008-06-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

Here’s one for the conspiracy theorists: It turns out that Google App Engine, their new platform for building and hosting third party web applications, is blocking applications from integrating with PayPal for payments.

Developers who are building apps that use PayPal to handle payments usually require the application to send a request to the PayPal service. The URL’s used in these requests are all on the paypal.com domain name, and there is a test environment setup on a URL at www.sandbox.paypal.com. In Google App Engine apps, requests to either of these URL’s returns a generic ‘download’ error with no specific details.

A number of developers complained in a Google App Engine forum discussing the issue (also on Hacker News), where they also found a way to bypass the restriction by using a third-party proxy (like TinyURL). Then, early this morning, a Google employee named Marzia Niccolai wrote a comment, saying that the error was caused by their anti-phishing protections:

Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem. There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain restrictions will be removed in the next few days.

Normally something like this wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. But there’s too much bad blood between Google and eBay not to question this, and Google’s anti-phishing blacklist does not, of course, list the paypal.com domain as a phishing site.

Most developers who have commented on this so far strongly believe that this was a deliberate block by Google. So far, we can only take Google at their word that blocking Paypal was an accident because of the way their anti-phishing rules work. But with so many phishing sites involving Paypal, you would think that when implementing their rules they would at least check that the real Paypal site still works. Besides, the Google.com phishing test shows that Paypal is considered a safe site.

Why would it be different for App Engine? To make things more suspicious, that phishing test tool was launched last month.

We have emailed Google for a comment and will be updating this post as news comes in.

Update: In the post we mentioned that some developers were using a third-party server and/or domain to proxy requests to PayPal. It turns out that even those proxy requests no longer work (they did at some point), leaving one of the developers on that thread to conclude ‘I guess they are blocking PayPal at their (Google’s) gateway..’.

Tech News - Mobile terahertz devices may soon be a reality

2008-04-09T04:10:00.001-07:00

Washington, April 9 (ANI): Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM in Freiburg say that terahertz waves may soon offer as a universal tool for search and security operations, medical diagnosis, and several other purposes.

The researchers envision that devices based on terahertz waves, which until now have barely found their way out of the laboratory due to cost factors, can help detect explosives or drugs without having to open a suitcase or search through items of clothing.

Such devices may even enable doctors to identify skin cancer without having to perform a biopsy, they say.

The researchers say that terahertz waves can be created with the help of a femtosecond laser that emits extremely short flashes of infrared light.

In one femtosecond, a ray of light moves forward by about the width of a hair. The pulsed light is directed at a semiconductor where it excites electrons, which then emit terahertz waves.

The Fraunhofer experts have already tested this approach on a glass fibre of a type similar to that used for transmitting data.

"Our fibre-based system is so robust that we can simply plug it into a standard 240-volt socket," says IPM expert Joachim Jonuscheit.

With the beam path inside a glass fibre, equipments using the technology may no longer require a shockproof base to avoid falsified measurements that may occur due to vibrations.

Since vibrations are no longer a problem, the device can even be deployed on the factory floor with forklift trucks driving around and heavy machinery vibrating. (ANI)

Technology News - The highest-powered laser in the world fires up

2008-04-09T04:09:00.000-07:00

Washington, April 8 (ANI): The Texas Petawatt laser in the US has managed to reach greater than one petawatt of laser power, making it the highest-powered laser in the world.

According to Todd Ditmire, a physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, when the Texas Petawatt laser is turned on, it has the power output of more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States.

The laser is even brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for an instant, a 10th of a trillionth of a second.

Ditmire and his colleagues at the Texas Center for High-Intensity Laser Science will now use the laser to create and study matter at some of the most extreme conditions in the universe, including gases at temperatures greater than those in the sun and solids at pressures of many billions of atmospheres.

This will allow them to explore many astronomical phenomena in miniature.

They will create mini-supernovas, tabletop stars and very high-density plasmas that mimic exotic stellar objects known as brown dwarfs.

"We can learn about these large astronomical objects from tiny reactions in the lab because of the similarity of the mathematical equations that describe the events," said Ditmire.

Such a powerful laser will also allow the scientists to study advanced ideas for creating energy by controlled fusion. (ANI)

Google defends user data policy after EU report

2008-04-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc on Monday defended a policy of retaining data on Web users for up to 18 months as necessary to improve search results, responding to an EU report that saw no need for search services to keep personal data beyond six months.

A group of data protection commissioners from across the European Union found that computer Web addresses and cookie monitoring are personal information that search services should do more to protect.

The long-anticipated set of recommendations for how European data protection laws should be applied to Web search services was published on Friday and can be found at http://tinyurl.com/5yukzm.

The report by the so-called Article 29 Working Party calls for increased user notification and warns Web search services that fail to do so may be unlawful.

Cookies are small bits of text that mark the comings and goings of computer users to Web sites. They are widely used by commercial sites to make Web surfing more convenient and by advertisers to measure audiences. But they also raise privacy concerns due to their potential to track user behaviour.

"It is the opinion of the Working Party that search engines in their role as collectors of user data have so far insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their operations to the users of their services," the report states.

"The Working Party does not see a basis for a retention period beyond 6 months," the study concludes.

In a statement issued on Monday, Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said his company disagreed with key findings in the report and argued that privacy policies must be balanced against efforts to make Web services easier to use.

"We believe that data retention requirements have to take into account the need to provide quality products and services for users, like accurate search results, as well as system security and integrity concerns," Fleischer wrote.

IMPROVING SERVICES?

The EU report specifically challenges the defense by saying arguments about improving services may conceal other uses that go beyond the original reasons the data was collected.

The Google official also took issue with the Article 29 Working Party's finding that Internet Protocol addresses -- the unique addressees that identify a specific computer or device connected to the Internet -- should be treated as personal information, with the full weight of data protection laws.

His blog post can be read at http://tinyurl.com/3jkdy8/.

"Based on our own analysis, we believe that whether or not an IP address is personal data depends on how the data is being used," Fleischer said. Google has previously argued the issue is not black and white, in part because Internet Service Providers often allot the same IP address to many users.

Google Web services generate mountains of more or less anonymous user data that it stores securely in massive computer data centers it operates. The company's engineers regularly study this data to figure out how to improve its services.

While traditionally Internet companies have stored data on Web surfers for years, Google took the initiative a year ago to limit how long it stored such data to 18 months.

Rival search services followed suit to set their own limits, with Ask.com going a step further by offering a set of tools for users to scrub their data stored from Ask computers.

- Yahoo News

Online gamer 888 eyes 30 pct revenue growth

2008-04-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Online gaming firm 888 is optimistic of 30 percent revenue growth this year, helped by a better-than-expected start from its new sports betting and bingo sites.

"Current run rate indicates 20 percent (overall revenue growth), and we are bullish on pushing this. Do I think 30 percent is too much? No, I don't think 30 is too much," Chief Executive Gigi Levy told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Levy added that the firm's new bingo and sports betting Web sites were seeing strong growth.

"Bingo is doing dramatically above anything we expected. The run rate is currently where we expected to get to by the end of the year, it's that good."

"Sports was only launched a few weeks ago, and already last week we had hundreds of new sign-ups every day."

Online poker and casino firms have been gradually rebuilding their businesses after the U.S. closed off the world's biggest market in 2006 with a ban on gambling-related banking transactions.

The move wiped billions of dollars off the value of online gaming stocks virtually overnight and led to a number of founders and online executives being prosecuted for taking illegal bets.

888 and its rivals PartyGaming and Sportingbet are now locked in talks with U.S. lawmakers.

"I think it's getting clearer and clearer for everyone that this may take time, but this is heading one way, and that is towards a resolution," said Levy.

888 and PartyGaming have said they expect a deal, whatever it is, to be reached during the second half of the year.

Analysts expect the firms to be hit with hefty fines but predict a subsequent rush of consolidation as land-based casino operators and bookmakers decide it is finally safe to buy up fast-growing online firms.

Levy agreed but said it was unlikely 888 would resurrect previous failed deals with PartyGaming or UK bookmaker Ladbrokes.

"I'm not sure these particular two deals will ever come back, because every deal that goes away has some leftovers with it.

"I think you could see the likes of the big UK operators going out to enhance their problematic growth with a quick-growing online business and big European lotteries doing the same," he added.

888 said earlier on Tuesday that 2008 had started well as it posted 2007 profits of $46 million, in line with analysts' expectations of between $40.8 and $47.4 million.

The Pacific Poker operator has set itself a target of doubling revenues and tripling profits by 2010. On average analysts currently expect it report a 2008 pretax profit of $60 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

888's shares, which have risen by around 50 percent since the U.S. shutdown in Oct 2006 and 20 percent in the last two months, were up 3.6 percent at 152 pence at 1100 GMT.

"Everything is very much in line with a bullish outlook statement, but we are not upgrading at this point. The dividend (5 cents) is a bit better than we were expecting, but it's not blowing the lights out," said Arbuthnot analyst Paul Leyland.

Technology Tips - HP launches mini-laptop for students

2008-04-09T04:02:00.001-07:00

San Francisco, April 8 : (DPA) Hewlett Packard (HP), the world's largest seller of computers, unveiled a mini-laptop Tuesday that sells for $500 and is aimed at the education market.

The entry-level HP Mini-Note includes a Suse Linux operating system, a 1GB memory and a 3-cell battery, while a higher priced version has Windows Vista Business, 2GB memory and a larger 6-cell battery.

Both are based on a 1.2GHz VIA C7 processor with a 120GB hard drive, 8.9in WXGA (1280 x760) screen, 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi built-in and optional Bluetooth.

With a starting weight of 1.27 kg, the system is designed to survive classroom life with a sturdy yet lightweight anodised aluminium shell and HP's 3D DriveGuard to protect the hard disk against damage.

The device is expected to compete with the Intel Classmate and the One Laptop Per Child products, which have mainly been marketed to developing countries. However, HP also sees the Mini-Note as suiting business and mobile professionals who value the mobility and usability of the low cost machine.

The Mini-Note represents the beginning of a new segment in the laptop market, according to analyst Rob Enderle, who predicts that other companies will introduce similar laptops later this year.

Computer makers 'have now figured out how to make these things relatively inexpensive,' he said. 'There's a lot of creativity around making thin, light products.'

Soon, mobile phones could be used as 'surrogate debit cards'

2008-04-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

London, Apr 8 (ANI): Your mobile phone lets you stay connected to your loved ones, take snapshots wherever you want, listen to your favourite tunes and even surf the Internet. Now, the same wireless is going to offer you more by getting transformed into a debit card.

Hailed as a key development since the advent of the credit card, mobiles could soon be used as "surrogate debit cards" if a Dutch scheme is brought to the UK.

The Netherlands project allows customers to link their mobile phones directly to their bank accounts and use the phones at supermarket checkouts as if they were Switch or Maestro cards.

The system, developed by a supermarket, a bank, a phone network and the IT consultancy Logica, will go on display on April 9 at a Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) briefing in Edinburgh, held to discuss ways to roll out new technology to British banking customers.

Gavin Jones, delivery director in Logica's financial-services department in Edinburgh, said mobile phones could be linked directly to bank accounts or "topped-up" with money and used as pay-as-you-go smart cards.

"It's a revolution in terms of doing things with your mobile phone. I believe the customer demand exists in the UK for these kinds of services. The next step would be to find partners - such as shops and banks - to take this project forward," The Scotsman quoted him, as saying.

The device works with near-field communication - a technology that uses high- frequency radio waves to transfer information between electronic devices such as the phone and the card reader.

In the pilot, the mobile phone came with a built-in chip, containing the customer's bank details. The phones were adapted to incorporate a chip loaded with a debit card function that replicated the existing chip and Pin payment process.

But once the phones are available for sale, the consumer will need to download an application which links to a chip with encrypted bank details. (ANI)

Spy Shot of the 3G Apple iPhone?

2008-04-07T04:31:00.001-07:00

With just under 60 days to go until the rumored release of the 3G Apple iPhone, many people have wondered if this handset will look any different. Well here is a so called spy shot of the new 3G Apple iPhone. The upgraded handset looks as if it will be getting a new glossy black cover.

The back cover will no longer feature the satin nickel look and will also lose the black plastic end piece, which covers the antenna. It is thought that the new 3G iPhone will still come as an 8GB, however many are hoping that it will come with Photoshop pre-installed.

Microsoft gives Yahoo three week ultimatum: Accept our offer

2008-04-07T04:30:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has given Yahoo an ultimatum, either accept our offer within three weeks or we will lower our offer and then go direct to your shareholders. This big threat comes in the wake of the ongoing fight between two of the largest search engines.

Yahoo executives have rejected Microsoft’s $42 billion bid as they feel that the offer is too low. Steve Ballmer Microsoft’s chief exec has now deiced to play hardball, which is why they gave Yahoo the ultimatum.

Microsoft do not want this critically important opportunity to pass them by, it is thought that Yahoo will respond today.

Bill Gates says Windows 7 OS will launch next year?

2008-04-07T04:24:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview at the Inter-American Development Bank, Bill Gates has hinted that says Windows 7 OS could launch next year. Gates was asked about when this new operating system will be available, which he replied “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version.”

However it is not certain if it will be the full version of Window 7 or just a beta version. One thing is sure; it is a lot sooner than many thought. It shows that Windows Vista has not taken off as good as Microsoft had hoped.

As yet there are new details on what features Windows 7 will have, and Bill Gates was not giving anything away either. One thing is certain, they will learn from mistakes made from Vista.

Computers will merge ever closer with humans by 2020

2008-04-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

London, Apr 3 (ANI): With more and more technological advancements, the gap between man and computers is certainly shrinking and the day is not far when this divide would completely fade off and computers would understand human needs and work accordingly with devices embedded in objects, clothing or, in the case of medical monitoring, in human bodies, a Microsoft-backed report has predicted.

According to the report, there will be fundamental changes in the field of so-called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The report titled 'Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020', came out through discussions of 45 academics from the fields of computing, science, sociology and psychology.

The report indicated that by 2020, humans will increasingly question machines, while the computers would predict how they should serve the humans, and this would require new rules about our relationship with machines. Overall, the report specifically looks at how the development of technologies over the next decade can better reflect human values.

"It is about how we anticipate the uses of technology rather than being reactive. Currently the human is not considered part of the process," BBC quoted Bill Buxton, from Microsoft Research, as saying.

In fact, scientists have already taken steps towards getting nearer to machines, and at the launch of the report, many of them displayed the types of technologies that could bring the human back into the equation.

Professor Bill Gaver and his team at Goldsmiths College have developed a Drift table that may enable people to view aerial photography of their local neighbourhood and beyond.

"It isn't really designed for anything. People can use it for entertainment or learning. One of the people that was given the table used to check out houses in Southampton following a piece on the news about house prices going up in the area. Someone else used it to look at the towns they lived in as a child or to visit towns where friends lived," explained Prof Gaver.

Also displayed at the launch was the Whereabouts Clock, an interface designed at Microsoft's research labs in Cambridge, and would make it possible for family members to see where each other are at any point of time. Microsoft is working on many other communication devices for the home that include Epigraph, an interface that allows family members to 'post' pictures and messages to each other via their mobile phones.

Not only this, the keyboard, mouse and monitor may also be replaced by more advanced forms of interaction and display, including tablet computers, speech recognition systems and fingertip-operated surfaces.

With such advances, the Microsoft HCI report indicates that though, paper would exist in 2020, but there may be a possibility of having social network magazines made of digital paper, that update in real time. With digital storage of even more aspects of our lives, from mobile phone calls to CCTV footage, with an omnipresent network the HCI community will not compromise on privacy.

However, the report points out that this association might act as a double-edged sword. Not only this ever-present network will bring to us mass market information directly, but would also disseminate our own intimate information. And this might lead to an era of "techno-dependency".

"Without proper consideration and control it is possible that we - both individually and collectively - may no longer be in control of ourselves or the world around us," warned the report.

The report further said: "Not just teaching children about how computers and applications work, but about their wider impact." (ANI)

Tech News of the Day - Introducing Gmail Custom Time

2008-04-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Be on time. Every time.
Gmail Custom Time is the new feature that Google seems to offer to its visitors on March 31st.

This feature will let the user to "Set custom time" from the compose view of the gmail mailbox. Any mail you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up as read or unread by the selecting the appropriate option.
Dont you think its a great utility ??
Gmail plans to offer only 10 mails can be sent from one gmail account per year. so the user needs to use this feature wisely ;)
You will be able to send email back until April 1, 2004 the day when Gmail was launched. It gmail were to let you send and email from Gmail before Gmail every existed, well that would have been like hanging out with your parents before you were born --- crazy tech talk.
Njoy Google custom Time Mails

Security lapse exposes Facebook photos

2008-03-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO - A security lapse made it possible for unwelcome strangers to peruse personal photos posted on Facebook Inc.'s popular online hangout, circumventing a recent upgrade to the Web site's privacy controls.

The Associated Press verified the loophole Monday after receiving a tip from a Byron Ng, a Vancouver, Canada computer technician. Ng began looking for security weaknesses last week after Facebook unveiled more ways for 67 million members to restrict access to their personal profiles.

But the added protections weren't enough to prevent Ng from pulling up the most recent pictures posted by Facebook members and their friends, even if the privacy settings were set to restrict the audience to a select few.

After being alerted Monday afternoon, a Facebook spokeswoman said the Palo Alto-based company would look into the problem. By late Monday, Facebook appeared to have closed the security hole.

The lapse serves as another reminder of the perils of sharing sensitive photos and personal information online, even when Web sites pledge to shield the information from prying eyes.

Before the fix, Ng's computer-coding trick enabled him to find private pictures of Paris Hilton at the Emmy awards and of her brother Nicholas drinking a beer with friends and photos of many other people who hadn't granted access to Ng.

Using Ng's template, an AP reporter was able to look up random people on Facebook and see the most recent pictures posted on their personal profiles even if the photos were supposed to be invisible to strangers.

The revealed snapshots showed Italian vacations, office gatherings, holiday parties and college students on spring break. The AP also was able to click through a personal photo album that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg posted in November 2005.

Some members of social networks like Facebook post photos of themselves or others in potentially embarrassing or compromising situations that include illegal drug use or underage drinking that can cause trouble at school or work. None of the photos reviewed by the AP appeared to fall into this category.

- Associated Press

Technology News - China has world's largest number of internet users

2008-03-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

China has edged past the US in terms of the number of Internet users to reach the number one slot, a research firm said.

China had reported the number of Internet users at 210 million by the end of last year, very close to 216 million of the US.

But, "according to our calculations, China has already replaced the US as the country with most Internet users by the end of last month," Liu Bin, an analyst at the Beijing-based research firm BDA was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.

The US remained at the topmost position since the inception of the internet in 1969 as a network of computers under the auspices of the US Department of Defence. BDA Chairman Duncan Clark said Chinas Internet population was driven by buoyant economy, massive investments in broadband infrastructure and a strong consumer demand for online applications.

Government-backed research institution China Internet Network Information Centre said China moved to the second position by the end of 2002, when the number of its internet users exceeded 59.1 million.

However, CNNIC said Chinas Internet penetration was a mere 16 per cent last year, lower than the world average of 19.1 per cent.

Tech Tips - How to avoid e-mail threats

2008-03-14T04:10:00.002-07:00

Checking your e-mail has become a dangerous business. The number and types of e-mail borne threats that can cause harm to your computer or your privacy are growing.

Sometimes the actual danger imposed by these threats can be over hyped, but you still need to know what could constitute a dangerous e-mail message and how to respond to the threat.

Q: Can I get a virus just by reading an e-mail message?

A: When all e-mail was sent as plain text, it was impossible to contract a computer virus just by reading e-mail. That's because something - a programme, worm, or other active threat - actually has to run on your computer in order to infect it. When e-mail is sent in HTML format - the same format used to create Web pages, on which all sorts of programmes can run automatically - the possibility that you could receive a virus upon reading an e-mail message does exist.

Increasingly today, we all send and receive e-mail in HTML format, which means that we're all more vulnerable to contracting a potentially destructive computer virus just by reading our mail. There are, however, three ways to safeguard against this.

The first is to keep your e-mail programme up-to-date, downloading and applying the latest security patches and fixes. The second is to use a current-generation virus scanner with built-in e-mail scanning, and keep the virus signatures current. Most anti-virus programmes offer automatic scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail messages.

The third way involves setting up your e-mail programme to allow messages to be read only in plain text format. Most e-mail programmes provide this option. In Microsoft's Outlook programme, for instance, you would open the Tools menu, and select Options.

Then, from the Options dialog box, click E-mail Options, and select the check box labelled 'Read all standard mail in plain text.' When you do this, any mail that arrives in HTML format is converted into plain text, and any harmful code that might have run automatically is effectively neutralised.

Remember, though, that most e-mail viruses are contracted when you perform some action, such as opening an infected attachment or clicking a link that takes you to a site that downloads a virus on to your computer.

So the golden rule of reading e-mail is this: if it looks suspicious, don't open anything attached to it or click any links in it. These days, in fact, it makes sense not to click links in e-mail messages at all. Instead, if you think a legitimate source has sent you a message, open a web browser separately and visit the web site on your own.

Q: Colleagues of mine were talking about e-mail bombs at work. What is an e-mail bomb?

A: An e-mail 'bomb' refers to an immense number of e-mail messages sent to an account in an effort to bring the account down. When an e-mail server is flooded with e-mail messages, it is unable to devote cycles to other e-mail users and effectively becomes useless. An account that receives an e-mail bomb will also experience an interruption in the transfer and processing of legitimate mail, as well.

E-mail bombs are particularly problematic because even if an e-mail server is brought down in an attempt to stave off the problem, the e-mail server will resume where it left off when it is restarted, continuing to deliver the messages that constitute the bomb.

Hackers can send e-mail bombs using tools that are not too difficult to obtain. Another type of 'bombing' occurs when a user signs someone up to multiple newsletter services and other automatic e-mail generation services that can bring a person's inbox to its knees.

The good news is that most individual users rarely have trouble with e-mail bombs. The bad news is that the only way to recover from an e-mail bomb is probably to contact your Internet service provider to obtain help. It may be necessary for you to disable or change your e-mail address, at least temporarily.

Q: Over the past month, I have received more spam than ever before. I don't understand how these people are getting my e-mail address. Can you help?

A: Senders of spam and potentially harmful e-mail use a number of tactics to secure your e-mail address. If you have posted your e-mail address anywhere on the Internet, it can be 'harvested' by programmes designed to scour the Internet and retrieve freely available e-mail addresses.

To prevent this from happening, never post your e-mail address anywhere on the Internet - including message boards and personal web sites - in an unaltered form. If you must post your address somewhere online, write it in a form that is understandable by humans but not by a machine, such as 'yourname - at - hotmail.com.'

Also, take advantage of the multiple e-mail accounts provided by most Internet service providers today, and set yourself up at least two accounts: one that you hand out only to friends and colleagues, and another that you give to anyone else - including online stores. When you give out your e-mail address to anyone online, you simply never know whether that address may ultimately end up in the hands of mass marketers or spammers

Microsoft-Yahoo met to discuss merger: Media

2008-03-14T04:10:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc met on Monday to discuss Microsoft's takeover offer for the Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The meeting was said to be the first since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, worth nearly $42 billion, on Jan. 31. Yahoo rejected the offer as inadequate last month.

The Journal said the meeting wasn't a negotiation and that no bankers were present.

The session was intended to allow Microsoft to present its vision of a combined company, and Yahoo executives mostly listened, the Journal quoted one of the sources as saying.

Microsoft and Yahoo spokesmen declined to comment.

Neckband that allows 'voiceless' mobile chat without having to speak

2008-03-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

London, March 13 (ANI): A US company has demonstrated a "voiceless" phone call for the first time, using a neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals.

Ambient Corporation claims that any person can use the Audeo, as the new device is called, to send nerve signals to their vocal cords without having to speak.

Michael Callahan, one of the founders of the company, says that the signals picked up by the neckband are relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.

A user only needs to take a careful training on how to use the device, he says.

With the new system, the first public voiceless phone call was made on stage at a recent conference, held by microchip manufacturer Texas Instruments.

Callahan says that the Audeo's ability to voice people's inner thoughts need not worry them, as producing signals for the system to decipher requires "a level above thinking".

He says that a user has to think specifically about voicing words in order that they are picked up by the equipment.

Callahan also said that the Audeo is the same system that had previously been used to let people control wheelchairs using their thoughts.

"I can still talk verbally at the same time. We can differentiate between when you want to talk silently, and when you want to talk out loud," New Scientist quoted him as saying.

He said that the new system might be beneficial for those wishing not to be overheard while making a private call, and for those have lost the ability to speak due to neurological diseases like ALS, also known as motor neurone disease. (ANI)

Read this before you swipe! Debit-card dangers

2008-02-15T05:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, debit cards are convenient — but consider these points of caution

By Sloan Barnett

TODAY

updated 10:58 a.m. ET Feb. 13, 2008

First, some basics: A debit card looks just like your credit card, but works like an electronic check. The payment is deducted directly from your checking or savings account. When you use your debit card to purchase items, you or the cashier slides the card through a scanning machine that enables your bank to verify that the funds are available and then approve the transaction. Most debit cards can also be used to withdraw cash at ATMs, and can also look just like your ATM card (look at the face of the card to find the “debit” language).

Debit cards are handy — so handy, in fact, that two-thirds of American households have them. They are more convenient to carry than cash or a bulky checkbook, plus swiping the card is easier and faster than writing a check. In addition, there are no interest payments. The money is deducted out of your account right when the purchase is made. Finally, you can use your debit card’s cash-back feature to get cash when you make purchases at a store, avoiding a separate trip to the bank or the ATM.

Despite all these benefits, there are some cautions to keep in mind:

Credit-building
You are not building credit with a debit card like you do with a credit card. Your debit card purchases do not enable you to build up positive credit. That means your good habits go unnoticed. However, by using your debit card instead of your credit card, you can avoid running up a big bill and making late payments, harming your credit. So if you have trouble making payments on time, a debit card would be the way to go.

Fraud protection
Debit cards do not give you the same fraud protection as credit cards do. The federal regulations are very different for debit cards than for credit cards when it comes to financial liability. When using a credit card, you are generally responsible for the first $50 of fraudulent charges, whereas your liability on many debit cards can be as high as $500. In addition, unlike a credit card, if there is a problem with your purchase, you are not able to withhold payment until further investigation by the credit-card company. If your debit card is stolen or lost, report it to your bank immediately. In many cases, if you wait more than 60 days to report your card lost or stolen, you could be responsible for all of the damages. Of course. always check with your bank to understand its policies and applicable state laws. Don't take this lightly: A recent study in 2007 put fraud losses from debit-card purchases at $245 million.

Lost or stolen cards
A debit card is like a blank check, so you need to guard the card and the number on the card. If your card gets stolen, a thief can empty your bank account in minutes. Thieves don’t even need your card. As long as they have your name and card number, they can shop online or over the phone with your card information. If your debit card is lost or stolen, call your bank immediately! Follow the phone call with a letter.

Protect your debit card by holding on to your debit-card receipts and checking them against your bank statement each month.

Merchant disputes
If there is a dispute regarding a purchase you make, you are in a weaker position when you use a debit card instead of a credit card. The merchant already has your money when you pay with a debit card. So while the dispute is taking place, your money will remain with the merchant and you will only see that money again if you win the dispute.

Rewards
While some debit cards are beginning to offer rewards, they are still far fewer and less valuable than those offered by credit cards. Ask your bank if there is a rewards program you can enroll in to earn points toward travel or goods every time you use your debit card. Most likely the rewards will not be as valuable as the ones you get with your credit card.

Immediate deduction
When you use a debit card, the money is immediately taken out of your banking account. With a credit card, there is a float period between the time you make the purchase and the date the credit-card bill is due. This means that you earn a little bit of extra interest on your money sitting in your bank account when you use a credit card vs. a debit card.

No added services
Credit cards often come with added benefits, such as extended warranties on products purchased and insurance for rental cars and airline travel. Debit cards do not offer these services.

Tracking spending fees and overdrafts
When using a debit card, it can be difficult to keep track of what you purchased if you aren’t diligent in writing down everything or if you don’t go online constantly to check your account. Making a mistake on the balance can cause you to think you have more in the account than you really do, and can ultimately result in accidental overdrafts.

If you unintentionally let your balance get too low, each debit that comes through will bounce. With fees as high as $34 per bounce, this can add up to hundreds of dollars in a matter of seconds. So, for example, if you forgot to track a few debits and you have written a large check, many banks will honor the large check and then bounce all the debits, even debits as small as $2.

Even if you do keep track of your accounts, the bank's calculations may not be as accurate as you are. It takes time for deposits to become available and the funds may not be accessible as soon as you would like, leading you to believe you have more in your account than you really have access to. This can cause you to spend more than is in the account and rack up overdraft fees.

Debit-card overdraft loans are more expensive than overdraft loans from any other source, including overdrafts by check. Debit-card overdrafts cost people $2.17 in fees for every dollar borrowed, compared to check overdrafts, which cost $.86 per dollar borrowed.

Fees
Banks prefer the credit option when you use your debit card, because they make more money in fees. For a $200 transaction, for example, a bank could make $1.99 if the customer chooses the “credit” option and signs his or her name. This is more than three times the 60 cents they usually make from customers who choose “debit” and enter a PIN number.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Here are some ways to stop banks from stealing your hard-earned money.

Keep your balance up
Keep a cushion of money in your account to avoid bouncing checks or debits. Decide that you are not going to let your account fall below a certain amount, like $1,000; when you see it getting close, transfer money into it from another account. If you don’t have the money to replenish it, then you should cut back on spending.

Track your account
Sign up for your bank’s online banking program. This is an easy way to see what is going on with your checking account. Pay close attention to the available balance.

A lot of us think that once you deposit a check in the bank, it’s yours for the spending. Watch out, this is not the case! Most banks put holds on checks for several days, even up to a week. Until the money clears, you should not use your debit card. Debits go through right at the time of purchase, and if the bank is holding your deposit, you’ll get huge fees on the overdrawn debits. If you need the money right away, take the check to the bank and have it turned into cash, then deposit it. When you deposit cash it is available almost immediately.

Call your bank
When it comes to overdraft fees, banks hope you won’t fight back and request courtesy credits. Many banks will credit you back the fee or part of the fee if it’s your first offence.

Use cash
Cash can’t bounce and that’s the beauty of it. If you are not willing to use a credit card, then cash is the next best option. I’ve found spending actual cash makes you more aware of what you are spending. It seems when you swipe a debit card, you tend to spend more because it doesn’t seem like spending “actual” money. At the beginning of each week, take out what you think you’ll need and stick with that.

10 smarter ways to use your smart phone

2008-02-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

Mobile phones have come a long way since 1973 when Motorola's Martin Cooper made the world's first mobile phone call to an AT&T Bell Labs researcher walking on the streets of New York. The prototype Motorola DynaTac, from which the call was made, then weighed almost a kilogram. In the mid-1980s, the first generation mobiles that proliferated the markets were almost the size of a suitcase, were designed more for cars, and were too costly.

Today's cellphones are no longer just communication devices, but truly converged gadgets that come loaded with a long list of applications: from a high-resolution camera to an audio player, digital diary, and even a radio in the basic configuration. Very often you don't even know all the goodies that are loaded into your phone. If you have a smart phone and want to use it more smartly, read on.

1. Sync over the Internet

Are you one of those who is perpetually worried about losing your cellphone one day, and with it all the contact details in it? If so, you can use the PC Suite that comes with most phones these days to manage contacts on your PC. With in-built Bluetooth or infrared in the phone, you don't even need the cable for this. You can also manage your contact details online. Check out two such sites: www.mobical.net and www.zyb.com.

2. Internet phone calls

VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been around for a long time. In its simplest form, all you need to make calls either from a PC-to-PC for free, or even PC-to-landline or PC to mobile for nominal rates is a PC, Internet connection, a headset and a microphone. So what has all this got to do with your cellphone?

Many smart phones now come equipped with a SIP stack: these are built-in software to make PC-to-PC calls. Once configured, you just treat your cellphone as one PC and make your calls. The address book in many phone models also has an option called â€œInternet telephone"" So, adding your contacts is not difficult either. Now, to make PC-to-landline or PC-to-mobile calls, all you need to do is to subscribe to a service. Check out one of the SIP providers at www.voipbuster.com.

3. Mobilized content

A smart way to use your phone for reading content on the Internet is to use RSS feeds and widgets. Many sites today automatically detect the browser or the device type, and display content accordingly. You can also install a few widgets on your phone.

The good thing is that many cellphone manufacturers are waking up to the fact that they need to create specialized content for their phones and setting sites to cater to this requirement. Check out www.widgets.com and www.mosh.nokia.com.

4. SMS conversations

Power email users always want to see the entire message as a thread, and that too neatly displayed. A similar feature has made its way into cellphones. Normally, termed conversations, you can see the entire thread of what you send and receive. It is very neat and well organized.

5. Groups

One of the many gems on most smart phones today is the group feature. It's often ignored, but if put to use, it can be extremely useful and time saving. You need to create a group and a single SMS, with a unique ringtone, will go to all the team members. You can even initiate a conference call with the team by calling the group.

And finally, once the providers introduce the push-to-talk facility, you can define a group for that too.

6. Visual radio

The built-in FM Radio on cellphones has certainly revived radio in many ways. But when you add to it "visual" radio, it is a totally new experience. Visual radio essentially is a data stream supporting the radio channel. It has photos of the RJ, artists, quizzes and other interactive activities to enhance your listening experience. Visit www.visualradio.com for more information on how to set-up your handset.

7. Presentation remote

With the right software on your phone, you can now use it as a remote control for your presentations. No mouse or the laptop required to change the slides. All you need is to download the software and start using your phone as the remote. In fact, you can also use your phone as a universal remote for a host of other devices, including the home theatre system, air conditioner, music system, TV and much more. Log on to http://irremote.psiloc.com/ to download the remote software.

8. WorldMate

It is a must-have on your PDA. WorldMate has multiple clocks, a Weathercaster, a currency converter, flight schedules and even a suitcase packing list manager. Interestingly, the moment you are online, WorldMate automatically updates all of its offerings. WorldMate is now available on a number of phones and PDAs. Log on to http://mobimate.com/.

9. Don't get lost

The next time you are lost, use the GPS navigation in your phone to find your way back home. The GPS on cellphones sometimes requires you to get an additional Bluetooth GPS device. But in some new phones, even this is built-in. The phones now also make use of the cell towers to get a more accurate reading of its global positioning: It is almost as accurate as 2m. Add to that a simple application such as GoogleMaps and you wonâ€™t need to ask for directions again.

10. Voice butler

Normally, you talk into your phone and hear only what the caller has to say. But what if your phone decided to start talking to you? From reading out your messages, phone numbers, menus on the screen it can handle it all.

The voices are still a little robotic but for someone who would prefer to listen to an SMS than read it, the possibility already exists.

The next time you want to make that call, just pick up the phone, speak out the name of the person you want to talk to and your phone will take care of the rest.

Yahoo CEO hoping to thwart Microsoft (AP)

2008-02-07T01:44:00.003-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang told employees Wednesday that the struggling Internet pioneer is still examining ways to avoid a takeover by rival Microsoft Corp.

"Our board is thoughtfully evaluating a wide range of potential strategic alternatives in what is a complex and evolving landscape," Yang wrote in an e-mail. He emphasized no decision had been made on Microsoft's six-day-old bid, initially valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.

Yang, who helped conceive Yahoo in 1994, didn't set a timetable for the Sunnyvale-based company's response, writing that the board "is going to take the time it needs to do it right."

Most of Wednesday's e-mail, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, tried to cheer up Yahoo's employees, many of whom are likely to lose their jobs in the months ahead, one way or the other.

Yahoo already has drawn up plans to trim 1,000 jobs from a 14,300-employee payroll in an effort to boost its sagging profits. The layoffs are expected to be even more severe if Microsoft devours the company because about $1 billion in expenses would be cut in a takeover. And if Yahoo were to eschew Microsoft in favor of a debt-laden leveraged buyout, about 4,500 employees could be fired, estimated Stifel Nicolaus analyst George Askew.

"We have a lot to be excited about and there's more good news to come," Yang wrote in his e-mail. He cited a shake-up of Yahoo's online music service announced earlier this week and plans to unveil new products at a mobile conference in Barcelona next week.

If Yahoo rejects Microsoft, most analysts believe the company will have to line up another acquisition offer or make radical changes to satisfy disillusioned shareholders.

But most analysts doubt any other potential suitor will have the financial muscle — or desire — to try to outbid Microsoft, which has $21 billion in cash and a market value of nearly $265 billion.

Yahoo could boost its profits dramatically by turning over the responsibility of running its search engine and an adjoining advertising platform to rival Google Inc., the Internet's most prosperous company.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly has broached a potential partnership with Yang, but that alliance might be blocked by antitrust regulators worried about the competitive fallout if two of the Internet's biggest ad networks join forces. Antitrust laws almost certainly preclude Google from trumping Microsoft's bid in an attempt to buy Yahoo outright.

Former Yahoo employees who know Yang have no doubt he is exhausting all avenues that might allow his company to escape Microsoft's clutches.

"Jerry bleeds purple and gold (Yahoo's corporate colors)," said Rob Solomon, a former Yahoo executive who spent six years at the company before leaving in 2006. "He always envisioned building a company that would be around for 100 years, not just 14 years."

Google software makes it easier to share (AP)

2008-02-07T01:44:00.001-08:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc. is introducing an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organization to share documents and information.

The free "Team Edition" software, scheduled to debut Thursday, represents the Internet search leader's latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which poses a potential threat to rival Microsoft Corp.'s highly profitable word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendar programs.

The launch marks the second time Google has upgraded a business program this week — a week when Microsoft awaits a response to its bid to buy Yahoo Inc. in an attempt to undermine Google's dominance of Internet search and advertising.

Microsoft's unsolicited bid, initially valued at $44.6 billion, is backed largely by money the company has made selling software.

Google has been giving consumers, students and businesses free access to competing software hosted over the Web in a concept known as "cloud computing."

More than 500,000 businesses have signed up to use Google's applications, according to figures to be released Thursday by the Mountain View-based company. Some businesses pay $50 extra per user for a souped-up version of the applications, but the fees so far account for only a sliver of Google's $16.6 billion in annual revenue.

Google last year collected $181 million for software sales and other services besides online advertising

Modu to launch tiny phone 'module' (AP)

2008-02-07T01:42:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK - An Israeli startup has convinced wireless carriers in three countries to try a new concept: a tiny cell phone that pops into interchangeable "jackets" to become a bigger, smarter phone — or into other gadgets to connect them to the Internet.

The company, Modu, is set to announce Thursday that it will launch the phone, also called Modu, on Oct. 1 with Telecom Italia SpA in Italy, OAA Vimpel Communications in Russia and Cellcom Israel Ltd.

Telecom Italia Mobile and Cellcom are the largest carriers in their respective countries, while VimpelCom is the second-largest in Russia.

The Modu is slightly smaller than the current iPod Nano and weighs 1.5 ounces. It has a small color screen and a limited keypad, which allows it to work as a rudimentary cell phone on its own.

The jackets that will come with the Modu look like cell phones, with standard numeric keypads and other features like cameras. But they lack they lack the antenna and chips that communicate with a wireless network, and this is where the Modu comes in — it pops into a slot, turning the jacket into a fully functional phone.

Modu founder Dov Moran said in an interview that the Italian carrier is excited about the concept because it can make cell phones more like fashion, tempting consumer to update their looks every few months.

"This allows you to make a summer collection and a winter collection," Moran said.

"The carriers really are interested in having more and more customers coming through their stores, rather than signing up and coming every two years to sign a new contract and get a new phone," said Daniel Amir, a chip analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in San Francisco. He called the Modu a potential "game changer" in the cell-phone industry.

The jacket is cheap to make, has almost no electronics, and doesn't need to be tested by the carrier to see that it conforms to its network standards.

Moran estimates that carriers will be able to sell a Modu and two jackets as a bundle for about $280, a price that they can then subsidize down to free or almost free with a two-year contract.

The jackets that will be available at launch in the other countries reflect the differences between them. The Russian carrier wants an emphasis on kids, who are the big growth market for cell phones there, so Modu is making jackets with cartoon themes for them. The Israeli carrier wanted a cell phone for soldiers, so Modu is making a rugged, green jacket with a built-in flashlight.

Other jackets could focus on music, coming with pre-loaded tunes, or have full keyboards for texting. Universal Music Group said it is looking at making jackets that center on its artists.

Modu hasn't had the time to talk to U.S. carriers, Moran said. He expects them to be able to launch the phone in 2009 at the earliest.

A shortcoming of the initial model is that it will use General Packet Radio Service, or GPRS, for data transfer. It's a widely deployed but slow technology, roughly equivalent to dial-up in speed. That will limit the Modu's usefulness, but Moran said the company is working on upgrading it to use High-Speed Download Packet Access, a "third-generation" technology used by AT&T Inc., among others. An upgraded Modu would work with jackets and mates designed for the first-generation unit, Dov said.

Modu is also talking to consumer electronics companies like Magellan Navigation Inc., a California-based maker of Global Positioning System devices, and car-stereo maker Blaupunkt, a unit of Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany.

The idea is to have consumer electronics companies build slots for the Modu into their devices to give them network connectivity. That could allow a GPS device to receive updates on traffic or map changes. A picture frame with a Modu slot and loud speakers could act as a music-playing, picture-showing charging station.

Other cell-phone makers have been sniffing at the modular concept. Sony Ericsson has filed for a patent on a modular phone. But Modu appears to be furthest along in its plan, and has crucial support from large carriers.

Among consumer electronics companies, the quest to get connected to cellular networks has mainly centered on building wireless technologies into the gadgets, usually in the form of Bluetooth radios that connect to cell phones.

In a competing approach, some manufacturers are building full cellular modems into their devices. Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-book reader contains a cellular broadband modem, for instance, and France's Parrot SA has built a cell phone into a photo frame so it can receive picture messages.

Cell-phone manufacturers, on the other hand, have been encroaching on the consumer electronics space by building more and more features into their phones, like cameras and GPS locators.

Moran, the founder of Modu, also founded M-Systems Ltd., which pioneered USB flash drives. The company was acquired by California-based SanDisk Corp. in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

___

http://www.modumobile.com

Ad Infuse Launches Ad-Serving For iPhone (TechWeb)

2008-02-07T01:41:00.000-08:00

Ad Infuse on Wednesday said it has expanded its online ad-serving platform to deliver content formatted for the Apple iPhone.

The privately held San Francisco company's new service can stream ads for insertion before, in the middle, or after video shown in the smart phone's Safari Web browser. Content publishers typically pay a company like Ad Infuse to handle the complexity of inserting advertising in online video without making it look as if the separate video content was "stitched together," Brian Cowley, chief executive of Ad Infuse, told InformationWeek.

Besides integration of the content, the Ad Infuse's platform handles the formatting to ensure optimum viewing of the ad content in the targeted device, whether it's an iPhone, mobile phone, or some other handheld gadget.

In the case of the iPhone, ads have to be formatted for the smart phone's 3.5-inch touch screen. The Ad Infuse server, which is connected to the content publisher's server, recognizes when an iPhone is requesting video and delivers the appropriate advertisement.

Content providers have two options in buying Ad Infuse's service. They can license the company's server and install it in-house, or they can subscribe to the service over the Internet. The latter software-as-a-service model is the typical way ads are served.

In addition, Ad Infuse can provide targeted advertising based on the information content providers share about viewers. The company will also provide reports on who's viewing the ads, how effective they are in attracting viewer attention, the number of clicks on ad links, and other information.

Ad Infuse's charge ranges from 25% to 50% of ad revenue, if the company handles ad sales, as well as the delivery service, Cowley said. The later service alone costs 10% of ad revenue. The company has about 50 customers in U.S. and Europe and has 30 employees.

In January, the company closed $12 million in funding from SoftBank Capital, ComVentures, and Storm Ventures. The investment brought the total amount of funding in the 2-year-old company to $18 million.

Advertiser interest in the iPhone is expected to increase, if sales of the devices continue to grow. Users of the smart phone tend to also be heavy users of data services, since the iPhone is built for surfing the Web and accessing services.

Released in late June, the iPhone accounted for 28% of the U.S. smart phone market in the fourth quarter of last year, behind only Research In Motion's BlackBerry, according to market researcher Canalysis. Worldwide, Apple was third with a 6.5% share, behind leader Nokia, 52.9%; and RIM, 11.4%.

See original article on InformationWeek.com

Optimizing Apache Server Performance

2008-02-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

Optimizing Apache Server Performance

Squeezing the most performance out of your Apache server can make difference in how your Web site functions and the impression it makes. Even fractions of a second matter, especially on dynamic sites. This article looks primarily at configuration and installation, two areas where you have the most control.

Measuring and Improving Performance

Apache was designed to be as fast as possible. It's easy, with a fairly low-powered machine, to completely saturate a low-end Internet link with little effort. However, as sites become more complex and the bandwidth needs of different connection types increase, getting the best performance out of an Apache installation and Web sites becomes more important.

Enhancing performance means nothing if the changes achieved are only minor gains. Spending hours or even days finely tuning a server for just a few percentage points is a waste of time. The first step, therefore, is to determine how fast the server is running and its general performance level so you can work out how to improve performance and measure the changes.

Host Hardware

The machine and operating system environment on which Apache is running have the most effect. Obviously, an old 386-based PC will not have the same performance as a new P4 or dual-processor model, but you can make other improvements. Avoiding, for the moment, hardware changes, the biggest thing you can do is ensure Apache is running on a dedicated server. Coexistence with other applications will affect Web server performance.

In most situations, but particularly with static sites, the amount of RAM is a critical factor because it will affect how much information Apache can cache. The more information that can be cached, the less Apache has to rely on the comparatively slow process of opening and reading from a file on disk. If the site relies mostly on static files, consider using the mod_cache; if plenty of RAM is available, consider mod_mem_cache.

The former caches information to disk, which makes a significant difference if the site relies on mod_include to build up a page as it caches the final version. With mod_mem_cache, the information is stored in the memory heap shared by all the Apache processes.

Using a fast disk or, better still, a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) solution in one of the striping modes (e.g.,RAID 0, 0+1, 5, 10, or 50) will improve the overall speed of access to files served.

Note, however, if you do go down any of these routes, a hardware, rather than software solution is the best option.

Finally, in terms of hardware, CPU power can have an impact on dynamic sites with the additional overhead of executing an application for each page accessed. Heavily dynamic pages have a higher CPU requirement.

Host Environment

Regardless of operating system, the following optimization principles apply:

Keep other background applications to a minimum. If you are really serious about performance, this should even include some background processes that some would consider vital. For example, in Unix, switch off NFS, any printing services, and even sendmail if it's not needed. Under Windows, use the System control panel to optimize the system for applications and system cache, and optimize the system for performance. Make sure, of course, any required applications or services, like MySQL are still running.

Avoid using the system. If you start compiling applications, editing files, or otherwise employing the machine, you'll reduce its Web serving performance. If you must edit components or install software, build or edit the components on another machine and copy them over.

Keep your system up to date. Although a good idea just from a security point of view, software patches and updates can make significant improvements to network and I/O performance.

The Apache Application

Then, of course, there is the Apache application itself.

First, ensure it is built correctly with only the modules and extensions required for your Web sites. This means, for example, you can ignore the rewriting module if it's not required. The main benefit of this is a reduction in memory overhead, but a very good side benefit is that you can't accidentally enable these options and therefore reduce server performance.

Static vs. Dynamic

Flexibility is the primary concern of most Apache administrators, but flexibility has a cost. Using Dynamically loaded modules within Apache is a convenience, but using them can result in a performance hit, as the code is loaded when the module is required. Dynamic modules also have the advantage of helping keep memory requirements down.

To build in static mode, use the configure script and specify the modules you want, but don't specify them as shared (e.g., use --enable-rewrite not --enable-rewrite=shared, or use the shared option --enable-so.

Module Configuration

If you are using a static configuration of Apache, choose the modules you wish to incorporate with care. Using static mode comes at a price — the more modules, the more memory you use. Thus, a forked multi-processing module can have a significant effect on the machine's memory requirements.

Note that some items are automatically included, so you'll need to explicitly enable and disable needed modules. Also remember to include any third-party modules (e.g., authentication, PHP, or mod_perl), the Web service requires. Use configure --help to get a list of the available options.

Server Configuration

Once your environment is set up and your Apache application optimized, it's time to start looking at the configuration file for further optimization tricks. A good way to start is by simply cleaning up the file so directives are limited to a few hundred, which is achieved by simply removing the comments. Beyond this, it becomes a case of removing unnecessary elements or those that fail to provide any appreciable benefit.

Simplifying the Configuration File

The first step to optimization should be the simplification of the configuration file. It will not have any direct improvement on performance, but it will make the configuration file easier to use and therefore make you less likely to miss a directive or component that needs modifying.

If you are doing any kind of optimization, start with one of the default-supplied configuration files. They are usually available in the Apache configuration directory as httpd.conf.orig or httpd-std.conf. Don't be tempted to use the high performance-std.conf file; in the long term it's not really as useful as you would think once you start adding vast quantities of additional configuration information. On the other hand, if a very fast static Web server is the goal, this is probably the easiest way to get things up and running.

If you know your Apache configuration directives, or are willing to look at the documentation, the quickest and most effective step is to remove all comments from the configuration file, as they often detract from the actual directives. You can also remove references to MPM systems not in use on the chosen platform.

Disabling Components and Systems

Now that we've got a trimmed-back and simplified configuration file, we can start removing the configuration elements for the systems not in use. In particular:

HostnameLookups add overhead to each request by requesting DNS lookup on the client, first reverse to find the name from the IP address, and then a forward look up to ensure information is not spoofed. In most cases, you can simply disable this. If you regularly process your logs, use post-processing to determine the information. To disable lookups, include the following directive HostnameLookups off.

Symbolic links, when enabled, will ensure Apache checks every request to see if a symbolic link is involved in the request. There will be one call to the lstat() system call for each directory to which the request relates. Unless you have a need for symbolic links, switch it off by using: Options -FollowSymLinks

Server status and info, although very useful when testing and monitoring your server, create additional overhead for the Web server. Disable it by looking for any SetHandler server-status directives, and, if possible, remove the module from Apache when you configure the application during build.

Wildcards and flexible options should generally be avoided if you can be more explicit. For example, the DirectoryIndex directive, explicitly specifies the list of files to be configured, always listing the most likely choice first.

CGI execution should take place unless you have good reason for not doing so. Put all CGI files into a single directory and configure it for CGI execution. This prevents Apache from trying to determine whether a request is actually for a CGI component or a static file.

Disable Logs

Writing log information is a time consuming process. Although Apache keeps the log files open so that it's just a case of writing the information, this can take up valuable time. If storing log information is not required, you can save a few processor cycles by disabling it. To do this, simply comment out the log lines in the configuration file.

If you do decide to keep your logs, disable HostnameLookups (see above) and make sure you copy the log information on to another machine to parse the file for analysis.

Simplify Directory-level Configurations

The .htaccess files are an incredibly useful way of extending the configurable parameters of your Apache server without having to edit the main configuration file each time you want to change something. The problem is that the use of .htaccess files also slows down the server.

First, it has to look to see if a .htaccess file exists, then it has to parse and process the elements before finally applying the configuration to the directory in question. Worse still, Apache must determine this information not only for the current directory, but also for any parent directories and it then must make the changes based on the contents of all these files.

If you want maximum performance however, you should disable the use of .htaccess files altogether. Any directory specific configuration can go in the main configuration file where it can be parsed once by Apache when the server starts.

To disable .htaccess add the directive AllowOverride None to any section.

MPM Configuration

The Multi-Processing Module (MPM) is what enables a specific platform to handle multiple concurrent connections. MPM modules are platform specific. Solutions are available to work specifically with Unix, Windows, BeOS, and NetWare. For some platforms more than one alternative is available. For most users, the default configuration for a particular environment works fine, especially when getting the exact parameters correct can be a time-consuming task in and of itself. By comparison, many of the techniques already described may yield better performance, but when you want to squeeze the maximum performance out of your server, you must adjust the configuration.

Under most platforms only MPM is available, under Unix there are two options, prefork and worker. The prefork MPM forks off a number of identical Apache processes, while the worker creates multiple threads. In general, prefork is better on systems with one or two processors where the operating systems is better geared toward time slicing between multiple processes. On a system with a higher number of CPUs the threading model will probably be more effective.

In nearly all cases, the MaxClients directive is the most effective for increasing server performance, as it controls that maximum number of simultaneous connections Apache can handle.

Optimizing Static Components

If your Web site uses a lot of static components, or if you've split the static and dynamic elements across two or more Web servers, then your main goal should be to improve the response time for Apache sending back the information that was requested. The easiest way to do this is to use the mod_cache module. You can use this with the mod_disk_cache and mod_mem_cache to provide disk-based and memory-based caches of the static files.

Check out the Apache documentation on the mod_cache module for more information.

Optimizing Dynamic Components

Dynamic components are probably the most time-sapping component of any Web server. Dynamic components, especially if you are using CGI, can add seconds to the response time just to load and execute a simple application. A more system options can be found at mod_perl, PHP, and Python, and the Jakarta interface for Java.

The main advantage of the script-based solutions is that they embed the interpreter into the Apache executable, which removes the initial loading problem with dynamic scripts. Some will even cache the parsed script so the next time it's requested it need only to be executed.

Configuration can be complex and getting the exact system correct can be time consuming. Some solutions also don't work quite as one would expect with virtual hosts, and you will need to change certain scripts to take full advantage of the speed enhancements on offer.

The improvements, however, can be significant, with as much as 70 percent of the execution time being knocked off of a Perl script simply by using mod_perl in place of CGI. With even more work, these solutions also allow you to keep persistent connections open to databases or to cache information between requests. This is great for e-commerce sites and also for reducing the overhead of otherwise loading information between requests.

Summary

Although Apache is highly configurable and a relatively complex application, it's interesting to note that standard installations of Apache actually achieve very high levels of performance. One area where you can easily and significantly improve performance is by tuning parameters. Unfortunately, often the components you have least control over within Apache — dynamic elements and CGI scripts, for example — are the ones that have the biggest impact on performance. Monitor a typical Apache server and you'll see that the time taken for Apache to answer a connection and send data back is in the range of milliseconds — but waiting for the source of that data can take seconds.

This is not to say the optimizations we've highlighted are pointless, however. During the course of a day these saved milliseconds add up. More significant though is that cleaning up and simplifying your Apache configuration will do more to reduce the administration overhead than any time you might save when serving information.

By Martin Brown