Today, Samsung Electronics, announced that it has developed the world's first four gigabit (Gb) DDR3 DRAM chip, using 50 nanometer (nm) process technology.

With more and more data centers seeking a reduction in the number of servers they use, the development of low-power 4Gb DDR3 has become critical in reducing data center costs, improving server time management and increasing overall efficiency.

Using just 50 nanometer process technology, the 4Gb DDR3 DRAM chip runs at 1.6Gbps and is highly efficient consuming 40% less power, gulping only 1.35 volts to operate, in contrast to 1.5 volts consumed by the other DRAM chips. The 4Gb can be used in servers, desktop PCs, workstations and notebooks, given that it can be produced in chips in 16GB RDIMM, 8GB UDIMM and SODIMM modules.

DDR3 is 8 times faster than DDR2 memory and uses 30% less power. The new 50nm 4GB chip comes 5 months after Samsung introduced the first 2GB chips built using the 50nm process.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research and analysis firm, the worldwide DDR3 DRAM market will account for 29 percent of the total DRAM market in 2009 and 75 percent in 2011. In addition, IDC estimates that 2Gb-or-higher DDR3 DRAM will make up three percent of the total DRAM market in 2009 and 33 percent in 2011 (units in bits).

If Samsung goes on to use its dual-die package technology, then its hoping for a breakthrough that will allow for 32GB DDR3 memory modules, giving a double boost to the chip capacity presently.

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Google Earth has proved its use many a times and now its been really interesting that it helped the Swiss police finding out massive fields of weed. Swiss authorities announced today that they had found a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth.

The discovery was part of an ongoing investigation that has so far led to the arrest of 16 people and the seizure of 1.2 tons of marijuana with a street value of $2.5 million USD. Cash and other valuables were seized as well with a value of over $800,000 USD.

The head of Zurich police's specialist narcotics unit, Norbert Klossner, said the field was in the northeastern canton (state) of Thurgau. The plantation is about 7500 square meters and was hidden inside a larger field of corn. "It was an interesting chance discovery," said Klossner.

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Ma.gnolia is a free, public service for saving links to websites. Most users rely on it as a bookmarking storage service, or a place to save links that they may want to revisit later. Links can be saved privately or shared publicly, so that they can be browsed by other users looking for new destinations.

Unfortunately, there was a meltdown at the website Ma.gnolia on Friday morning. The service lost both its primary store of user data, as well as its backup. The site has been taken offline while the team tries to reconstruct its databases, though some users may never see their stored bookmarks again.

The failure appears to be catastrophic. The company can't say to what extent it will be able to restore any of its users' data. It also says the data failure was so extensive, repairing the loss will take "days, not hours."

On Friday morning, company founder Larry Halff issued an apology on the homepage along with the following note:

"Ma.gnolia experienced every web service's worst nightmare: data corruption and loss. For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members' bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can't provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours."

In light of today's outage, many are questioning the reliability of web apps and web-based storage in general.

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Most of us assume that a deleted or lost email can never be recovered back. But there are ways to recover the deleted email back. There are two different types of email and fortunately, both types are recoverable. Overall email recovery is fairly simple process. First we must ascertain what type of email we are using. It should be either web based or client based. Free email addresses such as those provided by Yahoo or Gmail are web based. This means the place where your emails are stored in on the huge server for these companies. The other prevalent form of email is a locally based email client. These systems send, receive and store emails right on your computer.

Each of these email types requires a different approach for email recovery. Browser based emails use a general data recovery program for email recovery. All one need to do is have the program scan for damaged files in the temporary internet files folder and the software will bring up any files marked placed in marked as available space allocations.

Client based email systems like Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express require email recovery programs built specifically to recognize their files and retrieve them.

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The UK Film Council, has set a website to which will vastly speed-up and simplify movie searches. Movie buffs can now get information as to which film is being shown at which cinema hall on a new website. Internet users can search for movies as well as where and how they can be watched on this site.

This website also gives cinema listings, DVD sale and rental options, and suggests legal download sites. More than 30,000 films-including action movies, thrillers, classics, and Bollywood hits-are said to be part of the catalogue. The website not only searches the film, but also brings up all the formats it is available in. It even provides information on proximity, price, and popularity.

Movie buffs can read a synopsis of the film, watch the trailer, and even click through to book tickets or buy or rent the DVD. Just in case a film being looked for is unavailable in the UK, the user can sign up to receive an email alert when it finally reaches these shores.

"This new site is going to transform how consumers find the films they want to watch - we will soon wonder how we ever coped without it," Sky News quoted Peter Buckingham, the head of distribution and exhibition at the council, as saying. "We have turned what was often an incredibly time-consuming, frustrating process into one that makes it much easier for film fans to see films in the UK," he added.

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There are times when you need some help on keeping track of the emails that you send by way of delivery notifications or read receipts but currently, none of the web-based emails, including Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail and many others, offer any kind of delivery notifications or read receipts except rediffmail.com.

Even when you send a message using Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or Lotus Notes (that allow you to request read receipts), the Internet email service would simply ignore the request and you may never get to know if the message was read by the recipients or delivered at all.

There are three ways by which you can know whether your mail has been read by the recipient.

First one is by using a service called SpyPig. It is a simple and freeware online email tracking system that sends you a notification email as soon as the recipient opens and reads your message. The notification email will have details about the IP address and the number of times your email has been read.

Using SpyPig is very simple. Open the SpyPig website and type your email address where you wish to receive the notification and the message title in the notice form. Then choose the tracking image which you want to embed in the email and select the number of times you want to receive notifications.

Next, click the button to create and activate the SpyPig tracking image. Now, just drag and drop the tracking image in your outgoing email message. For SpyPig to work you and the recipient must use HTML-formatted email rather than just a plain-text or rich-text formatted email.

The second option is by using Statcounter. Create a free account in it and go to the install code options, choose invisible tracking button and HTML only counter. Statcounter will now provide you an HTML image snippet that you have to insert inside the body of your HTML email message.

This will be a white GIF image which will be invisible to the human eye and as soon as your friend opens up your email, your statcounter logs will be updated. You will know the details like IP address of his computer and the date time when the email was opened.

The above option won't work if the recipient has configured his email client to block downloading of images from the internet automatically.

The third and the final option is by using Google Analytics. It involves embedding a tracking code as an external link in your email message. Whenever the recipient clicks on that link, Google Analytics will record that the link has been clicked thus indicating that the email has been read.

The advantage of this method is that no image is downloaded on the client's side but it could fail if the recipient doesn't click the hyperlink.

Do leave comments telling which trick helped you better.

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Intel has scheduled to give its first public look at an 8-core Xeon processor in less than two weeks at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. We knew when Intel launched its quad-core Nehalem line-up that it had plans to pack even more cores into a single die. Intel will be taking the opportunity to show off Octo-Core Xeon processors.

The unnamed chip will double the core count of existing Xeons and is based on the same 45 nanometer manufacturing process and Nehalem architecture that underpins the Core i7. The shift adds Hyperthreading and will let even a single-socket Xeon processor theoretically address as many as 16 simultaneous program threads at once by putting two threads on each core.

Intel isn't expected to release the 8-core processor at the event, which often touches on roadmaps rather than production hardware. However, quad-core Nehalem Xeons are expected to arrive in the early part of the year and will be fundamentally similar outside of their reduced multi-processing.

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If you had used the Google Toolbar on Firefox, then you might be pretty familiar with many features of Toolbar 5 (beta) has to offer. Now a couple more features to the Firefox Toolbar are added and the same is available for download. You can download this "second beta" to get all the latest and greatest Google Toolbar features.

The most specialized featured about the beta 2 version is that now you can get a personalized page showing thumbnails of your most visited websites in Firefox just like Google Chrome. This feature is included, so that you can access your most visited websites quickly without having to type a word.

When you open up a new tab, instead of the blank white page you see by default in Firefox, you can instead see small thumbnails of your favorite sites (up to 9), as well as recently-closed and bookmarked pages based on your browser history. If for whatever reason you don't like this updated new tab page, you can always change it back to a blank page or to the website of your choice through either your Toolbar or Firefox settings. Another cool feature is that you have the option to choose which thumbnails are displayed, just click on Edit thumbnails link at the bottom.

This personalized new tab page will surely save few seconds that you used to type in few words at address bar. Apart from this more features are added to the beta 2 release which can checked in the official Google Blog.

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Google Maps has always provided us with countless hours of entertainment and informative images. But this time it is a sad thing to notice that the Google Maps van hit a young deer. This whole incident went instantly to Street View. In New York, a street view car hit a baby deer on Five Points Road and then recorded the whole thing on Google Maps. Nobody noticed until, a person prompting a blog noticed that and then a sequence of five street-level pictures was been removed from the site.

Google replied: "The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived. The police explained to our driver that, sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence in the region - the New York State Department of Transportation estimates that 60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone -- and no police report needed to be filed."

Generally spotting the street view car was not that very easy. Back in July, the street view car was spotted by many eagle-eyes techies, but Google seemed to want to preserve the mystique of the street view project by staying mum on its tour dates.

For more details visit here.

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A new mobile Gurbani Search engine for the Apple iPhone and  iTouch devices was released. This is considered to be one of the first Sikh related apps for the iPhone. There is MS Pocket PC version of SikhiToTheMax, but this is the only other mobile search software which is released so far.

The Gurbani database on iSikhi is the same as the one from SikhiToTheMax so it includes Bhai Gurdaas Vaars and parts of Sri Dasam Granth. You can download the iSikhi (Version 1) application on your computer from ishiki, or directly from your device by going to the "App Store" icon on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Do a search for "iSikhi" and it will show up.

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Many of you might already know that Google acquired Feedburner in 2007 but couple of months ago, Google announced that they would start migrating the feeds hosted on Feedburner to Google’s servers.

Initially, the publishers interested in using the new services like AdSense for feeds migrated but lately, there’s been news spreading about Google forcing Feedburner members to migrate their Feedburner account to their Google Account until February 28th.

If someone fails to make the transition by February 28th, Google mentioned that Feedburner feeds will start reporting a 404!

The following new features will be available after transition

• You will be able to opt-in for AdSense for Feeds via your AdSense account.
• Several enhancements have been made to the feed delivery for email. You must check out these settings!
• Visitor tracking will be retired from Feedburner and you’ll have to use Google Analytics, which doesn’t offer real-time tracking.
• Feedburner networks are no longer supported.

Steps to Migrate Feedburner Account to Your Google Account

1. If you know which Google Account you’d like to migrate your feed(s) to, go ahead and log into that account first. It’ll make your options for the migration more convenient for you.
1) Log in to your Feedburner account.
2) On your homepage, click on “Move your account now.” present between the yellow bar at the top as shown in the image below.

3) Choose your Google Account where you would like to move your feed to and click ‘Next"’.
4) In the next screen, you will see all of the feeds assigned to the Feedburner account that you’ve signed into.
5) Now, you can now move those feeds. Depending on the size of your RSS feeds, it might take a while though. The good thing is that you can close your browser window and keep working normally while Google’s servers do the work.

If you haven't transferred your feeds till now, then you still have time. In case, if you have already transferred, do let know whether they are working normally.

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If you are a Microsoft Windows XP user and looking for few Registry Hacks, then you have arrived at the right place. I have listed few Windows XP registry hacks.

Remove shared documents folder from My Computer

Open Registry Editor by navigating to Start -> Run and type regedit and hit enter. Then navigate to the following registry entry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\My Computer\NameSpace\DelegateFolders

Look for sub-key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee} and delete it. This will remove the shared documents folder.

Customize Internet Explorer Title bar

Open Registry Editor by navigating to Start -> Run and type regedit and hit enter. Then navigate to the following registry entry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

In right hand panel, look for string “Window Title” and change its value to whatever custom text you want to see.

How to remove recycle bin from your desktop

Open Registry Editor by navigating to Start -> Run and type regedit and hit enter. Then navigate to the following registry entry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Desktop\NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

Delete it. This will remove recycle bin from your desktop.

Speedup boot time by defragmenting all key boot files

Open Registry Editor by navigating to Start -> Run and type regedit and hit enter. Then navigate to the following registry entry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction

In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set the value as ‘Y’ for enable. After doing this, you will see considerable decrease in boot time.

Improving shutdown time by closing apps quickly

Open Registry Editor by navigating to Start -> Run and type regedit and hit enter. Then navigate to the following registry entry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\Desktop

Look for AutoEndTasks and change the default value 0 to 1.

That's it. You can further reduce the time it takes for Windows to issue kill all active/hung applications by changing the value of WaitToKillAppTimeout to say 3500. Make sure the HungAppTimeout is greater than WaitToKillAppTimeout since the default value for HungAppTimeout 5000 and for WaitToKillAppTimeout its 20000.

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You have anti virus software installed on your system but don't know whether its working properly? Then here's a trick which will help you to find out whether your anti virus software is working.

Open notepad application and paste the below

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Save the file as eicar.com.

If the anti virus software stopped you, then it means its working.

Don't worry, the European Institute for Computer Anti-virus Research (EICAR) have asked anti virus researchers to program the software to recognize this as a threat even tough it's completely harmless.

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A new competitor is planning to enter into the Mobile industry. Dell, the world’s second largest PC maker (after HP), may be edging much closer to its emergence into the smartphone market, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sources says that Dell could make this announcement at 3GSM or the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in mid-February 2009.

Dell who wants to compete with apple's iPhone, has been working on a smartphone for more than a year, and that prototypes have been constructed, running Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile. According to sources, one model has been built with a touchscreen (like the iPhone), and another with a slide-out keyboard (like the Palm Pre). It is currently unknown which model will be used, or whether Windows Mobile or Android will be the main OS for the smartphone.

"We haven't committed to anything," a Dell spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, meaning that the plans for a Dell-branded smartphone could still be scrapped yet, and nothing is finalized.

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Indian scientists has developed a $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, which would be on display in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology is launched.

This $10 laptop project will be India’s answer to the $100 laptop of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Nicholas Negroponte, who was trying to hard sell the project to India. The $10 laptop has been developed by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and IIT Madras, with public sector undertakings like the Semiconductor Complex.

“At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down,” R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said. Apart from questioning the technology of $100 laptops, the main reason for HRD ministry's resistance to Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was the high and the hidden cost that worked out to be $200.

It is hard to imagine anything like a laptop, or even a PDA, being made to sell at the equivalent of $10. But the main aim of this is for the Higher Education for all in India. There is no source as whether this will be available outside of India.

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We know that it took 38 years for radio to get 50 million users, 13 years for TV to get to that number and 4 years for the Internet to get to 50 million users.

But today Adobe proudly has announced that they have recorded 100 million successful installations of Adobe AIR, the company’s cross-platform runtime environment for Rich Internet Applications (RIA), at the same time boasting that the newest version of Adobe Flash Player (10) was installed on over half of computers(55 percent) worldwide in just the first two months of its release.

This means it will surpass 80 percent by the second quarter of 2009, far outpacing the installation rate of past versions of the software. The numbers associated include only the successful installations, which means that the actual digits can be well over the given figure.

Adobe has reached another milestone by achieving this. The company made this announcement at the Adobe MAX Japan event. For even more details visit Adobe AIR blog.

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Have you ever thought of accessing your mails without internet connection? Yes, you can. If you're a Gmail user, Google has just announced that you can use Gmail while offline by installing Google Gears, which is a Google plug-in for Firefox and IE that allows storage of certain information so it can be accessed offline.

Once you enable offline Gmail, Google Gears downloads a cache of your mail; then, when ever you have a limited or no connectivity, Gmail can switch to offline mode. You can send and receive messages (which will be saved in your outbox and then will be sent when Gmail detects a connection) and also use other Gmail features as if you're online.

Once this option is established throughout, then follow the below steps to activate this feature,

1) Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
2) Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
3) Click Save Changes.
4) After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline0.1" link in the upper right hand corner of your account, next to your user name. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Google Gears if you don't already have it.

This feature will be unveiled in couple of days in US or UK. For more details visit Gmail blog.

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The Windows 7 Build 7025 screen shots are said to be leaked by a Chinese website. Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta few weeks ago and the only version that was released during this beta was Windows 7 Ultimate. It is still unclear about the different Windows 7 versions that Microsoft is planning to release.

Here are some of the screen shots that are leaked.

 

But one of the sites claims that the screen shots that got leaked might be fake. The reason for this suspicion is because the original build number at extreme right corner is always covered with PCBETA logo. Is it for hiding the build number? Might be. So lets just wait and watch may be it is a rumor or reality.

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Certain ISPs are blocking content which should be visible to the user. Google is looking for ways to sniff out these Internet blockers in an attempt to help users determine if their ISP is inappropriately blocking content. Google is hunting to report them to FCC.

Google chief Internet guru, Vint Cerf posed the question: “When an Internet application doesn’t work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?” It’s not only to protect their search market but also advertising. If ISPs start blocking online advertising Google stands to lose revenue.

This is mainly done because the ISPs are struggling to manage their networks with the ever increasing amount of content flowing freely online. It seems a violation of our rights as net users to have somebody limiting our traffic and our access to important information. Lets see what conclusion does Google bring in.

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Nokia has announced its three new devices today, 2700 Classic, 6303 Classic and 6700 Classic. Despite the low cost of some of the models, Nokia said that they combine the functionality and user experience buyers are looking for with premium designs and materials. And also added that these phones will be available from the second quarter of 2009.

The Nokia 6700 Classic belongs to classic category, it also comes with pretty high-end camera, which boasts a resolution of 5 megapixel, and it also comes with assisted GPS navigation with Nokia Maps. This is the successor to the Nokia 6300 and features a slim and beautiful design with a full metal keymat. The Nokia 6700 classic is retailing at an estimated EUR 235.

The Nokia 6303 Classic at an estimated retail price of EUR 135, offers a 3.2-megapixel camera, 2.2-inch display and boasts excellent features and battery performance. It also ships with Nokia Maps, but needs an external GPS receiver for navigation. The major advantage of Nokia 6303 is that it weighs 20g lesser than Nokia 6300.

The most affordable, yet full featured handset, Nokia 2700 Classic which is designed with 2GB of storage via the memory card slot, integrated digital music player and a 2.0 megapixel camera. All these features at an estimated price of EUR 65.

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A New Zealand man Chris Ogle (29) has experienced the real-time meaning of the old saying  "Burn after reading". Broadcaster TVNZ reported that, Chris Ogle found 60 US military files in an MP3 player that he bought in a secondhand shop in Oklahoma, USA. These sensitive military files dating from 2005 were clearly marked as 'secret' and contained the phone numbers of numerous soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Chris came across this data when he connected the $18 (£12) device to his computer - hardly the rock tunes, snapshots and video one might expect to. Although the information is some four years old, some of the details were still relevant as the television station found after attempting to contact some of the uncovered phone numbers. As for Ogle, he told TV One News that he would hand the files to US officials if asked.The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be looking, Ogle said.

How such a major security breach could occur has not been explained by the U.S. Department of Defense, although similar instances have been reported in the past. Neither the U.S. embassy in New Zealand nor the U.S. Army has ventured any comment on the breach.

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Kaspersky Lab, the developer of popular anti-virus for Windows has released a technical prototype of the latest anti-virus for Windows 7. The technical prototype is a complex solution for securing computers running under Windows 7. The prototype includes not only an antivirus component but an effective and fully functional firewall and anti-spam filter.

The prototype comes with a new user interface developed to meet the needs of both inexperienced and advanced users.The prototype is based on a new Antivirus engine which provides complete antivirus protection from all types of Internet threats.

“We knew the release of the new version of Windows would be a huge event for the IT community, which is why we were prepared for it,” said Alexey Kalgin, Director Product Marketing, Corporate Business Division, Kaspersky Lab. “Our company has always made support for Microsoft’s new operating systems a top priority. For example Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Vista was released simultaneously with the operating system’s official launch. When Windows Server 2008 was released, Kaspersky Anti-Virus was the only antivirus product on the market certified by Microsoft. Users can now see for themselves how our antivirus protection technologies perform on the new platform.”

Kaspersky Antivirus for Windows 7 includes real time scanner, firewall and anti-spam protection. It is optimized for multi core systems and will be available for both 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows 7.

Download Kaspersky Antivirus Beta For Windows 7.

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Google-owned video-sharing site, YouTube on Monday unveiled a new feature which may prove useful to poor spellers or people suffering from "comment regret."

"Whether you misspelled "pwned," back in the day when you were just a newbie to the internet, or you simply said something you wish you could take back -- now you can remove your commentary at any time," YouTube said in a blog post.

"Of course, we always encourage everyone to think things through before posting comments anywhere on the site. But if you don't get it right the first time, now you can simply delete your comment," it added.

To remove a comment, a user goes to the "Text Comments" section below a video and clicks on the "Remove" button.

Users can delete only their own comments.

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Wikipedia: The Missing Manual book written by John Broughton and published by O'Reilly Media, announced the migration of its book about Wikipedia to the English language online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Starting today, the entire contents of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, $29.99) will be available freely online for editing and updating just like any Wikipedia entry.

This book contains all the information you need to get started with editing pages on Wikipedia. It gives you practical advice on creating articles and collaborating with fellow editors, improving existing articles, and working with the Wikipedia community to review new articles, mediate disputes, and maintain the site.

“What makes this project different than any of the other zillion books online today is the format we’ve chosen–a wiki,” explains Peter Meyers, Missing Manuals’ managing editor. “Book viewers will be able to do all the same things they do on any other wiki: view the document, edit it, add to it–in short, whatever they want. The book is going to reside in the site’s Help area, naturally, since the book is all about helping people edit and navigate their way around Wikipedia.”

The drive to post “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual” to Wikipedia was spearheaded by author John Broughton. Broughton, a registered editor at Wikipedia since 2005 with more than 20,000 edits under his belt, says he’s looking forward to see what changes and improvements his fellow Wikipedians will make to his book.

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Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3 which are now available for download from Adobe Labs. Both release candidates provide additional raw file support for the Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 cameras.

In addition,the Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate provides a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all customers.

The Lightroom and Camera Raw teams would like to hear your inputs to help verify the quality of this update through normal usage as this will ensure that the application is tested on a wide variety of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.

Adobe also announced the availability of Lightroom in eight new languages, including Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Korean, Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional). The Lightroom 2.3 Release Candidate available on Adobe Labs also includes these additional languages. Feedback regarding this can be provided on the Adobe User forum.

Lightroom 2.3 can be downloaded from here and Camera_Raw_5.3 can be downloaded here.

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A new cell phone music service that Microsoft launched in the UK is one of the most restrictive DRM-based music stores yet. Tracks can only be played on the phone and cannot be transferred to another device or even backed up on a PC.

The world's largest software maker just launched a mobile phone-based music store in the UK that charges nearly twice the price for media while offering even fewer rights. Dubbed MSN Mobile Music and tied to Microsoft's MSN Mobile portal, the service offers over one million songs and 10,000 videos to UK cell phone users from the big four labels.

MSN Mobile Music was launched in partnership with VidZone Digital Media and offers songs for $2.07 (£1.50), ringtones for $4.05 (£3), and videos for $2.77 (£2). These prices include a fairly steep premium over the standard 99¢ charged for most MP3s, though MSN Mobile Music is compatible with over 130 handsets.

The service can be reached via mobile browser at msn.co.uk if you're in the UK, otherwise it redirects to uk.msn.com. For more details visit here.

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The long-rumored GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favor of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centers.

But the GDrive is still unconfirmed by Google. Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a user's hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.

Home and businesses have been turning toward web-based services, such as e-mail — including popular services Hotmail and Gmail — and photo storage, such as Flickr and Picasa. Users would no longer have to worry about their hard drives crashing, since data would be saved on the Web, and can be accessed from any machine.

"There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web,'" said Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise.

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For the past few weeks there had been more rumors about the "honeycomb"-style home screen for the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5. Now it has made its appearance in another leak.

Small-time handset manufacturer Compulab, has posted a few images of its upcoming handset supposedly running Windows Mobile 6.5 Alpha. The two screen shots show the honeycomb launcher and a full screen background image.

The screen shot of the honeycomb appears to be more friendly than the current application. But still this is only an alpha we’re looking at, so things can certainly change.

We can expect more of these leaks in the upcoming weeks as Mobile World Congress approaches and the expected announcement of Windows Mobile 6.5 draws near.

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The worm called Conficker, Kido, or Downadup, has managed to infect almost 15 million Windows PCs to date and continues to spread. It has hit worldwide Windows PCs, not only in the United States, but in Britain, and abroad.

The worm hits Windows operating systems and can be spread in a variety of ways. These include by going on malicious sites, as well as USB memory sticks, etc. Microsoft actually patched this hole in Windows, but since not many people actually downloaded the patch, it still managed to infect many PCs. The best way to help protect yourself is to update your anti-virus software, put up a firewall, and install the Microsoft patches as needed. The Microsoft patch needed to protect from this worm is MS08-067.

But U.S. computer security firm Symantec noted on its blog last week that very few computers in North America had been infected, a trend which it attributed to the greater prevalence of legal and fully patched software."China, India and Russia all have a high percentage of pirated software in use and these countries also feature in the top 10 countries for Downadup infections," said the blog. "The lack of patching due to piracy may be a contributory factor to high infection rates in those countries," the blog concluded.

Security experts say the virus purpose is still unclear and the network of infected computers it has created has yet to be activated. Most such malicious software is used by criminal gangs to send spam or launch so-called denial of service attacks.

You can protect your system from getting infected by disabling AutoRun feature.

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When you uninstall programs or applications in the computer by using Add or Remove Programs option in the Control Panel, it gets completely uninstalled by deleting all the contents of the particular software in the system.

But there are times when even after you uninstall a program or software it still gets displayed in the add or remove programs. Sometimes you don’t want some unwanted items to show up in the Add or remove programs. Many of you think that it is not possible. But this can be achieved with a small registry hack. To do this..

Open the Registry Editor ( Type REGEDIT in RUN window and Hit Enter ).

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Uninstall

Remove any unwanted subkeys under "Uninstall" by deleting them.

This will remove the unwanted applications from the Add or Remove programs of Control Panel.

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A man murdered his estranged wife after becoming enraged when she changed her marital status on Facebook to single. Edward Richardson, 41, of Mayfield Road, Biddulph, was found guilty of stabbing Sarah Richardson to death.

He killed his 26-year-old wife at her parents home in Brown Lees, Staffordshire, on 12 May, 2008, Stafford Crown Court heard. Richardson tried to kill himself after the attack and was sentenced to life with a minimum of 17 years in prison. The couple had been living apart since the previous month, said Fiona Cortese, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for prosecuting cases in England and Wales.

She also said that Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his (text) messages. He gained entry by breaking the front door window and made his way into the property.Once inside, he found Sarah in her bedroom and subjected her to a frenzied and brutal attack with a knife and then attempted to take his own life.

Mrs Richardson's parents, Beryl and Alan Boote, said that, simply there aren't any words to describe how Sarah's death, and the awful way in which she died, has affected them. Sarah was the loveliest daughter anyone could wish for. She was honest, loyal and sweet, and everyone loved her. They said that they hope that Richardson will be an old man before he's ever allowed out of prison.

Detective Inspector Andy Wall, who worked on the case, added that, She had decided that her marriage to Edward Richardson was over but this was clearly something he could not accept. The verdict cannot bring Sarah back but we hope that it gives her family some form of comfort.

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Global Internet usage reached over 1 billion unique visitors in the month of December, with 41.3 percent coming from the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by comScore.

The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15, who accessed the net from their home or work computers in the month of December.

Europe grabbed the next largest slice, with 28 percent of the global Internet audience, followed by the U.S. with an 18.4 percent slice.

But Latin America, which holds a much smaller piece of 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the one to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a comScore senior analyst.

"The U.S. is slowing down in its growth and momentum, but Latin America, with social networking and the mobile Internet, is expected to gain momentum over the next few years," Gavin said.

Within the regions, China accounted for the most Internet users worldwide, with a 17.8 share of unique visitors, United States ranked second with 16.2 percent and Japan a distant third at 6 percent, according to the report.

And across specific Internet properties, Google carried a sizable share of the global Internet market, accounting for 77 percent of the worldwide audience, or nearly 776 million users.

Microsoft Web sites represented 64.2 percent of the pie and Yahoo sites 55.8 percent, according to comScore. AOL LLC, meanwhile, represented 27.1 percent of the worldwide Internet audience.

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Just as the Encyclopedia Britannica announced they will allow end-users to edit their articles with moderation, however Wikipedia, which has always allowed free-for-all editing at its site, is apparently looking to be clamp down a little tighter on edits at its site.

Wikipedia is apparently considering instituting a new editorial process that would require all updates to be approved by a "reliable" user. The so-called Flagged Revisions process would allow registered, trusted editors to publish changes to the site immediately. All other edits would be sent to a queue and would not be published until they get approved by one of Wikipedia's trusted team of editors.

The proposal comes in the aftermath of a false entry that was posted by a user, saying Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd had died after an inaugural luncheon last week.

On his public discussion page, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, "This nonsense would have been 100 percent prevented by Flagged Revisions," adding that the system gives the site the flexibility to cover breaking news stories quickly while avoiding some of the shenanigans it's seen in the past.

This system has already been in use since May in the German version of Wikipedia. But Wales himself points out one major problem with the German model, citing delays of up to three weeks before edits get approved and go live.

"Our version should show very minimal delays (less than 1 week, hopefully a lot less)," wrote Wales, "because we will only be using it on a subset of articles, the boundaries of which can be adjusted over time to manage the backlog."

Which subset of articles would be flagged and exactly how those boundaries would be set isn't clear from the discussion.

Wales writes in his comments that 60 percent of users who responded to a poll approved of the move. Wales has asked people opposed to the Flagged Revisions plan to propose other workable solutions to the problem of wiki malfeasance.

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Encyclopedia Britannica President Jorge Cauz said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that the encyclopedia's free, online version, Britannica.com, will soon be allowing user edits and additions to its pages.

Registered users will be able to make corrections, or add entirely new sections to encyclopedia pages much like Wikipedia. The big difference, however, is that Britannica.com's editing and approval system will be managed by its own editors and contracted staff instead of power users. This system is not yet live, but according to the Herald should be within the next day or so.

Cauz told the Herald that the big reason for the change is to improve Britannica's search engine optimization and dethrone Wikipedia from its current dominance on Google.com and other search engines. These edits will also be used for the print edition, benefiting those who purchase its 30-plus volume set.

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Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database.

The company disclosed on its Web site that it recently learned its database had been illegally accessed. Monster.com posted the warning about the breach on Friday morning and does not plan to send e-mails to users about the issue, said Nikki Richardson, a Monster.com spokeswoman. The SANS Internet Storm Center also posted a note about the break-in on Friday.

USAJobs.com, the U.S. government Web site for federal jobs, is hosted by Monster.com and was also subject to the data theft. USAJobs.com also posted a warning about the breach.

Monster.com was also hit by hackers in mid-2007. At that time the hackers obtained log-in credentials for companies seeking employees and used them to access Monster.com's database of job seekers. An automated Trojan then transmitted the personal information to a rogue server. Monster.com users were then targeted with scams via the stolen e-mail addresses.

In addition, the Monster.com site was the subject of an attack that same year that inserted malicious code onto certain pages of the site, automatically downloading a virus onto computers that visited the pages.

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This simple trick shows how you can show your name in place of AM and PM beside time on the Taskbar and make you feel proud among your friends.

To do this, Navigate to Start -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language option -> Customize (beside English US) -> Time.

Change AM, PM symbol to your name and click on Apply and Ok.

Now look at the Taskbar, your name would have got displayed beside the time.

In case, if it is not displayed, double click the time on the Taskbar and it will open “Date and Time” window.

Now, look for the time in digital form eg: 13:24:52 AM, click the arrow beside it to change the AM or PM.

It will show the name which you entered before. Select it and press on Apply and Ok.

This time surely it will work :-). Feel free to comment.

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Many Blogger users face the problem of not having a embedded comment form below their blog post unlike wordpress. But there is a trick by which you can include the embedded comment form after adding few lines of HTML code below your blog post.

Follow the below steps to achieve it:

1) First login to draft.blogger.com or blogger.com with your Google account.

2) Navigate to Settings -> Comments and select the "Embedded below Post" option as shown below.

If you are using uncustomized blogger template, then the above step is enough. For users who are using customized blogger template continue the below steps.

3) Navigate to Layout -> Edit HTML and first take a backup copy of your template. Then check expand widgets and search the following code

<p class='comment-footer'> <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a> </b:if> </p>

3) Now, replace the above code with the following code.

<p class='comment-footer'> <b:if cond='data:post.embedCommentForm'> <b:include data='post' name='comment-form'/> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a> </b:if> </b:if> </p>

4) Now, save your template and see your blog post having embedded comment form below.

Let me know by writing a comment on this post, how much you liked this post.

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In the last few weeks, a malicious worm called Conficker has exploited a critical flaw in Windows operating system infecting at least 9 million PCs, and is spreading rapidly across numerous corporate networks worldwide.

Conficker worm first disables system services like Windows Automatic Update, Windows Error Reporting, etc. and then downloads additional malware by connecting to a web server. The worm also attaches itself to certain Windows processes such as svchost.exe, explorer.exe and services.exe, every time you turn on your computer.

Your Windows System can be prevented from getting infected with Conficker worm by disabling the AutoRun feature.

To effectively disable AutoRun in Microsoft Windows, import the following registry value:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\Autorun.inf]
@="@SYS:DoesNotExist"

To import the above value, perform the following steps:

1) Copy the text
2) Paste the text into Windows Notepad
3) Save the file as autorun.reg and double-click on the file to import it into the Windows registry

Microsoft Windows can also cache the AutoRun information from mounted devices in the MountPoints2 registry key. It is recommended to restart Windows after making the registry change so that any cached mount points are reinitialized in a way that ignores the Autorun.inf file. Alternatively, the following registry key may be deleted:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
\MountPoints2

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Good News for all Microsoft users who want to try out Windows 7 Beta. The Windows 7 Beta end download date has been extended from January 24th to February 10th.

According to the Windows 7 Team Blog, "the shutdown of general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will occur in 3 phases over the course of the next few weeks:

• Starting January 27th, the Windows 7 page will be updated with a warning that time is running out on downloading the Windows 7 Beta and that we will be limiting downloads shortly. People will be encouraged to register and start the download of the Windows 7 Beta sooner rather than later.

• February 10th, new downloads of the Windows 7 Beta will no longer be available. People who have already started their Windows 7 Beta download and have not yet finished will still be able to finish their download and are encouraged to do so.

• February 12th, people will no longer be able to complete their download of the Windows 7 Beta. Anyone who hasn’t finished downloading the Windows 7 Beta will be unable to do so.

Product keys for the Windows 7 Beta will continue to be available. So if you have the Windows 7 Beta but didn’t get a product key you will be able to do so even after February 12th.

MSDN and TechNet Subscribers will continue to have access to the Windows 7 Beta bits throughout the Windows 7 Beta phase. The above dates do not apply to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers".

In case, if you fail to download the Windows 7 Beta before February 12th, you can still download it from torrents and get the product key from Microsoft.

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Copy & Paste is the most important basic feature that the iPhone has been lacking.  Everyone would benefit from some nice copy/paste action. Clippy can be called the first and real copy-paste app that works with most of the iPhone’s native apps.

Clippy is a new native app (not a web app) that allows you to copy paste between the stock iPhone applications like Mail, Safari, Notes, etc. While it doesn't work with some AppStore apps. To use you first need to be in the txt editor mode on the iPhone. It’s very easy to use this app. Once installed, start typing text, then select it with your finger, and tap the “123 key to show a new line at the top of your keyboard. Now tap copy and then enjoy yourself to paste your text in every other app you want. As long as you can access the keyboard in the application, you utilize the “Copy & Paste” feature. Clippy is not for all iPhones. It’s designed for jailbreak one and you can download it for free via Cydia.

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Mozilla Labs has introduced a new project called Test Pilot. The main aim of this project is to provide Mozilla developers with information they can use to test ideas and further build Firefox. This is to make the developers learn from your feedback to make things better. 

Initially Test Pilot will be available as a Firefox add-on which will collect anonymous user data. One feature of Test Pilot is that it won't actually be gathering data all the time, just when a Mozilla researcher has a specific question that needs answering, like how many browser tabs the typical user has open at any given time.It will gather only the data needed so it won’t slow down the browser nor your network.

This sounds like a great project, and Mozilla is moving forward with this. All participants will receive a “flight badge” displayed in their Test Pilot profile and available to embed on blogs, social networks, etc.

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Apple has announced its milestone achievement through an image in its website. A new banner has appeared on the Apple homepage in the last 48 hours that boasts that there are now currently 15,000+ apps on the App Store, and that they have reached the incredible milestone of 500 Million downloads.

Considering that the App Store only opened 6 months ago on July 11, 2008 it is an amazing achievement. Apple achieved its first milestone by hitting 100 million downloads in September 2008 and last milestone announcement came on December 5th 2008, which stated that they had exceeded 10,000 apps and 300 Million downloads. This shows a massive increase in apps and downloads in comparison to previous announcements. Although the image states that “iPhone users have downloaded an incredible 500 million” apps, it is assumed that this number encompasses both iPhone and iPod touch users, and that downloads also includes post-purchase updates.

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Recently, the news which stunned all the Google users across the planet, was just a misquoted one. A Harvard researcher said that a British newspaper misquoted his research covering the carbon footprint caused by running Web sites.

The Sunday Times wrote that performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate the same amount of harmful carbon dioxide as boiling an electric kettle for a cup of tea where 7 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas is evolved during one search. The figure was attributed to a forthcoming research paper authored by Alex Wissner-Gross, who is a fellow at Harvard's Center for the Environment.

But Google quickly contested the estimate, writing that its own research put the figure at 0.2 gram of CO2. Wissner-Gross also says that he did not commit any figure as 7gm per search etc., Wissner-Gross said one of The Sunday Times writers seemed eager to confirm the 7-gram figure and link it to Google. The researcher also added that he did not do so. Wissner-Gross said he saw a draft of the story before publication and suggested some changes, but those edits were not made.Wissner-Gross said there is a positive angle to the incident, given the wide publicity of the story. "I think that the has actually woken up and discovered green IT," he said.

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A sitemap is a visual or textually organized model of a Web site's content that allows the users to navigate through the site to find the information they are looking for, just as a traditional geographical map helps people find places they are looking for in the real world.

A sitemap is a kind of interactive table of contents, in which each listed item links directly to its counterpart sections of the Web site. Sitemap helps a search engine to index the website content more faster.

Having a sitemap is an optional thing but it is always advisable for a website to have an updated sitemap whenever the website content is changed. Generating sitemap for small website is easy but for website with thousands of web pages, it becomes a difficult task to generate an updated sitemap regularly.

To help webmasters solve this problem, Google webmaster has developed and launched its official Google Sitemap Generator (Beta) Tool. This free tool can be installed on your server and it will create sitemap for your website. This tool is different in lot of features when compared to the existing third party sitemap generator tools.

The features of Google Sitemap Generator are as follows

• Ping to Google Blog Search for new or modified URLs.
• Generates Mobile Sitemaps for mobile-friendly websites.
• Generates Code Search Sitemap.
• Generates XML Sitemap.
• Find new and modified URLs based on web server’s traffic.

In case, if you are a Blogger user, read this article on How to Create Sitemap for Blogger.

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Many Blogger users have one question in common. My articles are too long, which makes the index page and archive page very lengthy and have to scroll down long way to reach a particular post, so is there any way by which only the summary of the post can be displayed in the index and archive page and after clicking "Read More" link the rest of the page will be loaded?

Well, the answer is Yes. Blogger doesn't support this feature by default but you can make some changes in your template code to make this feature work after enabling the post pages.

Follow the below steps:

1) Login to your Blogger account and go to Layout > Edit HTML.

2) Click on “Download Full Template” to backup your template, in case anything goes wrong.

3) Click on Expand Widget Templates and search for the text "<div class=’post-header-line-1′/>". (This is the default code that Blogger includes but some custom templates might not have this code. If you can’t locate this text then try searching for "<data:post.body/>" instead.)

4) Add the below code after the "<div class=’post-header-line-1′/>" and "<div class=’post-header-line’>" tags if you’ve got both. In case, if you have "<data:post.body/>", add the below code above it.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<style>.fullpost{display:inline;}</style>
<p>
<data:post.body/></p>
<b:else/>
<style>.fullpost{display:none;}</style>

5) Now add the below code after "<data:post.body/>" to actually create the “Read More” link in your post.(You can replace the "Read More" text with any text you like).

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read More...</a>
</b:if>
</b:if>

6) The code should look as shown below.

7) Now, Save the template and navigate to Settings -> Formatting in your Blogger account and scroll all the way down to the last option called “Post Template”. Paste the below code in it.

<span class="fullpost">

</span>

8) The code should look as shown below.

9) Now, when you go to Create New Post > Edit HTML, the above code will come in the editor as shown below.

Anything written above the <span class="fullpost"> will come as summary of your post and anything written between <span class="fullpost"> and </span> will come as main body of your post.

Now publish your post to see the “Read More” hack working on your blog. Feel free to comment and in case if anything is not working, post your questions in comments section.

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According to ZDNet, rumors at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco last week reveals that the iphone's next firmware version 3.0 will support multiple processing cores. Apple updated its iPhone's firmware past two months back. Hence, its the high time for the rumors to come up about the next version of the mobile OS X.

The speculation also states that the iPhone hardware will also be upgraded to use the quad-core processor for Serious gaming. As such, it would be a serious threat to not just other phones, but also to dedicated gaming platforms like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.

Of course, by the time anything like that becomes reality, who knows what Nintendo and Sony will have up their sleeves. Which brings us to another couple of rumors.

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Few days back, we had posted about the Samsung World's Thinnest TV, which was unveiled at CES 2009. The images and other details of the same was not leaked till CES 2009.

Despite problems with upper management this past summer, Samsung, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, has released a protype of the LUXIA LED TV, the slimmest LCD television the world has ever seen.

If you’re wondering where the input is, it’s hidden away in the stand. Samsung’s Luxia LED TV sheds some weight by having a panel on top of a diffuser sheet, sitting on a Light Guide Plate that’s on top of an LED module.

Using an LED (light emitting diode) backlight system, this LCD TV is sure to please the gadget lover who just has to have the coolest thing out there. Being a prototype it’s not available in any shops now.

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Nowadays Google has become the best friend for all the people. Not only the youngsters, even the elderly people frequently use Google to get the information that they need in hand. But have you ever thought Googling will cause a damage to the planet that we are living? Yes, it does. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate the same amount of harmful carbon dioxide as boiling an electric kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research quoted today at Harvard University, London. As you, the Google can also be added to the list.

Everytime when a search is done in Google it evolves, seven grams of CO2 whereas an electric kettle generates about 15 gm. So when two Google searches are done at the same time then it generates almost the same amount of harmful CO2. But sources says that Google is “secretive” about its energy consumption and carbon footprint, and refuses to divulge the locations of its data centers. The Google system, which sends search queries to several competing servers that may be thousands of miles apart, “minimizes delays but raises energy consumption”.

Researchers says that “A Google search has a definite environmental impact”. Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has set up a website www.CO2stats.com. A recent study states that global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas - which contribute to global warming - as the airlines industry.

Since 200 million internet searches are estimated globally daily, effective alarm should be raised on this issue considering the the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern

Google says that They are the most efficient of all internet search providers. Google is very efficient to make it searches faster through lot of extra capacity that burns energy. So some preventive measures has to be taken in order to safeguard out Earth.

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Probably the biggest news to come out of the Macworld Expo is the announcement made by Apple to host DRM-free music on iTunes. Apple has signed a deal with all the major record labels to bring eight million DRM-free tracks to iTunes immediately, with all 10 million tracks to be stripped of their DRM by the end of the quarter.

The company has bowed to record company pressure to introduce flexible pricing, with US tracks ranging from $0.69 to $1.29 for the latest chart hits. UK pricing remains at 79p for a single track, although variable pricing may follow.

Apple has boosted the quality of the DRM-free tracks to 256Kb/sec AAC. However, those who’ve already invested in DRM-protected music will have to pay 20p per track to upgrade to DRM-free versions.

iPhone owners will now be able to download tracks over-the-air, rather than having to connect to their PC.

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Today at CES, Sony debuted its Sony VAIO P Series Lifestyle PC Netbook. Sony describes this netbook as “a new line of high-performance, ultra-portable notebooks that fuses Sony’s eye-catching design and mobility".

It has 1600×768 8-inch backlit XBRITE-ECO LED screen, 1.33Ghz Intel Processor, 2GB RAM, 802.11n, WAN 3G Mobile Broadband, A2DP capable Bluetooth, built-in GPS and a webcam. It weighs around 1.4 pound and has dimensions 10.99" x 0.93" x 7.87". Sony claims a 4-hour battery life on the standard battery and up to 8 hours on the extended battery.

Sony stated that VAIO P would be available at SonyStyle site from today and also indicated that top models would also be available for $900 (60 GB HD), $1200 (64GB SSD), $1500 (128GB SSD), and extended battery for $129.

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In a keynote address at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced the beta availability of the Windows 7 operating system as well as the availability of the latest version of the Windows Live, a suite of personal communications services and applications.

“I’m thrilled to announce the availability of the Windows 7 beta, which is on track to deliver simplicity and reliability,” Ballmer said. “Windows 7 and Windows Live are part of an incredible pipeline of consumer technology that is making it easier than ever for people to communicate, share and get more done.”

Without mentioning the security and compatibility issues that have dogged Vista, Ballmer promised that Windows 7 will make PCs faster and easier to use. He didn't offer a timetable for its official release, although Windows Vista went on sale more than two years after it was issued in beta form.

The forthcoming operating system will have touch-screen capability, side-by-side windows for comparison shopping and a "Peek" feature that makes open windows transparent, allowing users to see the icons on their desktop.

The beta version of Windows 7, Microsoft’s next-generation PC operating system, can be downloaded today by MSDN, TechBeta and TechNet customers. Consumers who want to test-drive the beta will be able to download it beginning Jan. 9 from Microsoft's website. Of course, many of you might have already downloaded it from torrent sites when it was leaked to the Internet in beta form in late December. Early reviews of Windows 7 when it was leaked has been positive.

Microsoft also announced the global availability of Windows Live, a free suite of communications and sharing applications. Windows Live makes it easy for people to communicate, share and keep their online lives in sync and in one place with one login. The new and enhanced Windows Live services — including PCMag.com 2008 Editors’ Choice winner Windows Live Messenger — along with Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Photo Gallery are designed to work seamlessly with more than 50 popular Internet services.

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A new way of anti-terror awareness has been launched in Indian city of Hyderabad. Nowadays each and every person has a cell phone with them and its a known fact that the cell phones are used mostly for sending SMS. The Andhra Pradesh state police has introduced a new method for booking the complaints through SMS(Short Messaging Service). Its an alternate way than calling 100 in order to report any complaints.

Any kind of thing can be raised by any person through this. It can be an alert about dangerous objects or suspicious individuals in and around their surroundings or abandoned bags and unattended vehicles parked in busy areas for long hours, among others. This is been majorly initiated in order to clamp down on terror activities in the city.

To make this facility aware for the public, the cops has joined hands with both CDMA and GSM Mobile service providers to send out SMS alerts to all the people. There are certain code letters to be maintained to classify the types of complaints. If a citizen is having a complaint on traffic, he will have to type “t”, followed by a space and the brief complaint. Similarly, for crime related issues one has to type “c”, for harassment of women “w” and for complaints on terror “te”. The number to send the SMS message is - +91-9010100100.

Though this type of experiment has been already done by Kolkata Police during Puja, hope all metro cities in India adopt this type of service soon to fight against terror.

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China has yet again launched a campaign against pornographic and vulgar content sites so that Chinese citizens are given access to nice and clean internet.

In total, it has named some 19 sites spreading offensive content including some large internet firms such as Google and Baidu both being search engines. All sites have been warned that if they don't stop spreading pornography then they could be shutdown.

The aim of China’s Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies is to destroy these sites which are deemed inappropriate for their content. According to Financial Times says, the move comes as China's political leadership faces a growing number of challenges to its authority, many of which have been organized via the internet.

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Samsung has planned to reveal its world’s slimmest LCD TV at CES 2009. Though we are not able to believe, the emerging technological world has made it proved. First Apple released a laptop computer that could fit in a manilla envelope, and now Samsung Electronics has unvelied the world’s slimmest LCD TV at just 1/4 inches think(.26 inches or 6.5 mm, to be more precise).

The most interesting fact would be that this new LCD TV is slimmer than the vast majority of mobile phones. Other features will include the company’s 240Hz MotionPlus technology making sure that motion blur is completely obliterated. A separate tuner device is thrown in with the purchase so the TV can actually do what it was supposed to and not just be a mirror on the wall.

There is no information on the price and also images are not yet brought to limelight for this product, since it is possible Samsung is keeping things under wraps until the announcement in CES 2009. But sources say that the name of this device has been leaked and it is Samsung LUXIA LED TV. We have to wait till CES 2009 to know all the details.

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After the launch of Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Camera few months ago,Kodak is again making us to check out its new Kodak Zx1 Pocket Video Camera which is scheduled for release in April of this year.

The Kodak Zx1 is a weather-resistant video camera which gives high definition recording at 720p at 60 fps. The camera also supports SD/SDHC memory card slot (up to 32GB), HDMI output, a 2 inch LCD display and remote control compatible for a price of $150.

This pocket camera will be available in black, red, pink, blue and yellow, the Zx1 can capture video in low-light conditions. We have to wait till April'09 to own this highly featured video camera.

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Reliance Communication (RCom), who claimed to be the first telecom operator to offer mobile services on both CDMA and GSM platforms has launched its GSM operations across the country. In a bid to entice new subscribers to the service, the operator is offering tariffs at attractive rates. The operator announced its launch in Mumbai circle with a new scheme offering Rs 900 talk time spread over three months.

RCom’s new scheme dubbed as Customer Experience Programme offers Rs 900 talk time on local calls and SMS which can be accrued by subscribers in daily packages of Rs 10 each for 90 days. Additionally the scheme also offers unlimited calls between 11.00 pm to 6.00 am within RCom network in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa. The scheme is also on offer along with various top-up cards.

RCom claimed that its services will offer congestion-free and zero-Call drop GSM services. The company will offer the services through its retail network comprising of 15,000 retail outlets and more than 100 Reliance stores.

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As we already know the admiring advantages of USB 3.0, the day has come for it to be showcased at CES 2009. Symwave, Inc., a semiconductor supplier of high-performance analog/mixed-signal connectivity solutions for the PC, consumer and mobile devices, has made a collaboration with Seagate to demonstrate Symwave’s USB 3.0 storage controller device designed to comply with the Superspeed (USB 3.0) specification revision 1.0.

Symwave says that it will be the first to demonstrate the use of the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 specification for transferring data to and from external storage devices. The demo is to be done in collaboration with test, cable, component, and hard-drive manufacturers.

“Symwave is honored to be working with Seagate in this show of the first USB 3.0 solution in a real world application of data backup, storage and media streaming,” said Yossi Cohen, president and CEO of Symwave. USB 3.0 devices are expected to be available in market in the second half of the year. So lets wait for the demo in the CES 2009 in the coming week.

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As we all know, IE is facing an increase in its competitors around the late 2008 with the debut of Mozilla Firefox browser 3.1 and Google Chrome 1.0.

The latest figures released by Net Applications, a company that tracks the browser usage, have shown that in December 2008, Internet Explorer was used by only 68.15% of Internet users, while Firefox has managed to maintain its market share over 20 percent, being used by 21.34% of users. And Apple's Safari pressed on to 7.93 percent, whereas Google's Chrome browser moved to 1.04 percent share, marking the first time the browser has hit the 1 percent milestone.

The browser has lost a massive amount of market share however since it hit its peak in 2003 at 94.43 percent. Even at the beginning of 2008 IE was cited as having just over 77 percent of market share.

Of the top four non-Microsoft browsers, only Opera Software ASA's flagship application failed to grow its share; it stayed at 0.71% in December, the same as in November. While December and November have traditionally been tough months for IE, lets see whether it regains back its share by the release of IE8 in 2009.

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Many people spend time online by watching videos over YouTube website but watching videos online will eat out lot of your bandwidth, hence it is not recommended for those who have dial-up internet connection.

Wouldn't it be better if the Youtube videos can be saved on your Hard drive so that it can be watched will you are offline and you need not have to worry about the bandwidth problem.

First, to save Youtube videos on your Hard drive, you need to have Mozilla Firefox browser installed on your system.

If Firefox is installed on your system then follow the below steps:

1. Play the Youtube video that is to be saved in Firefox.

2. Once the video is fully played, close Firefox.

3. Navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings\User Profile\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\Any Name.default\Cache” (where C: is where the OS is installed, User Profile is the name of the user profile and Any Name can be anything followed by ".default" as folder name).

4. In the Cache folder, rearrange all files by size.

5. Now look for the files with maximum size and its modified time to be around the same time you watched the Youtube video.

6. If you find any files like that then those must be Youtube videos.

7. Change the extension of the files to .flv.

8. Now, play the .flv files in an FLV Player.

Do give your valuable feedback, on how easy was it for you to save the Youtube videos.

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