TECHNOLOGY and SCIENCE

SIRI IPhone 4s for Newbies

2011-10-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

What is SIRI?

Siri is a new app that will be included with the iPhone 4S. This app is a wonderful new method that will enable you to actually 'talk' to your iphone.

Does it sound familiar? Are you thinking that androids have speech recognition since one year. So what's new with iPhone's Siri. Well, a helluva lot! Siri is AI - Artificial Intelligence while Android (they are awesome nonetheless) is just a software. So an AI system actually understands the 'context' while to an Android, specific clear instructions have to be given. You can tell Siri..'Whats the time in Newzealand'..Siri tells you the time..and you can continue saying..What about London'..Siri understands the context and replies with the time in London.

Siri can take action based on what you say, and isn’t limited to a small set of specific keywords to do what you ask.

How Does Siri Work?

Watch the following video to grasp what and how Siri could make a difference to your life.

Did you notice that the man says 'My Wife' and Siri actually connects to her. Ain't Siri amazing?

What all Can be done by Siri?

Siri can at present control many of the apps in your iPhone like the reminders, alarms, text, call, video, timers etc.

A compilation 0f some of Siri's capabilities.

Ask for a Reminder – At a specific time or place
Ask to play a playlist
Ask or the weather
Ask about your stocks
Ask for information – Like a restaurant
Ask to schedule a meeting
Ask to send an email
Ask to send a text
Ask to set an alarm
Ask for directions
Ask to set a timer
Ask about Siri
Ask for someone’s number

All these small actions are actually time consuming and often used. Siri quickens up the whole process for you. Siri is Smart!

One more video of Siri for iphone 4s to help you grasp its significance.

TechnIT's opinion: Siri for iPhone is AWESOME! Must buy iPhone 4s for Siri.

Power Of Internet: AUCTION of the Extinct SeaMink

2007-11-17T21:32:00.000-08:00

The Exotic animal Sea Mink ( Mustela macrodon ) , was a North American member of the Mustelidae family. The Sea Mink was hunted to extinction even before it was taxonomically described or scientifically studied.

But the power of the internet. And the irony of our times. Even the extinct sea mink can be bought for $3600 ONLY!!
Confused!!

SeaMink may have been extinct from this world, but it has its own , unique place in the virtual world - SeaMink.COM

:) Yes Thats it. There can only be 1 SEAMINK.COM , now at auction at Sedo. It is quite ironic that an animal which could not get enough attention to save itself from extinction from this earth, has managed to gain all the attention in the virtual world. Anybody could own seamink now via the .com , and convert into god knows what kind of site. The worst would be if it turns into a porn portal ,though highly unlikely, yet its quite a thought. :)

Poor, gentle sea mink. or rather Seamink.COM. Wish we had doled out enough dollars to save them earlier.
I sincerely hope that some environmental groups or individuals lay their hands on this domain. It could be our way of acknowledging this simple small creature whom we failed.

Environmentalists Please Check the Auction: CLICK HERE

Google Suit Raises Ethical Questions About Search Advertising Practices

2007-07-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

This Story has been written by Mr. Scott Karp for seekingalpha.com. i liked what he argues and have taken up the story to make it accesible to my blog readers.
read on...

Scott Karp submits: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is suing Google (GOOG) for deceptive advertising practices. I don’t know if the suit has legal merit, but it puts the spotlight on Google’s advertising formats (which are used by most search engines) and, given that this is a government suit, raises significant questions about commonly accepted search advertising practices:

The ACCC is also alleging that Google, by causing the Kloster Ford and Charlestown Toyota links to be published on its website, engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act.

Further, the ACCC is alleging that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from “organic” search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of section 52 of the Act.

The reference to two car dealers regards a third company, Trading Post, which offers listing services. Trading Post bought ads in Google AdWords that used the dealers’ names in the titles, but sent people who clicked on the ad to the Trading Post site.

Here’s where the details of the suit get a bit confusing, at least to me. According to the ACCC website, the two auto dealers “compete against Trading Post in automotive sales” — but the Trading Post actually provides listing services FOR auto dealers, including the two named in the suit. In fact, Trading Post actually has a listing page for the one of the dealer:

The ACCC site also details another instance where Trading Post bought the keyword “Stickybeek,” a listing site that clearly is a competitor, a directed the ad to the Trading Post site.

There’s a critical distinction that needs to be made here. I can only assume that Trading Post was using the car dealers’ names without the car dealers’ consent, thus stealing traffic away from their sites. To create an ad that leads users to believe they are visiting one site but instead sends them to another is utterly deceptive, full stop. But this is opposed to working with the car dealers to drive search traffic to the the dealers’ listings page on Trading Post — which I think is perfectly legitimate and something that a lot of classified sites, including newspapers, are doing.

The big issue for Google is that this is just one example of what are probably thousands (or tens or hundreds of thousands) of instances where an AdWords ad is deceiving users in one way or another. Google AdWords has scaled so beautifully as a money making machine because the self-serve system requires minimal resources to manage, and much of that management is automated. But if Google had to vet every ad for deception and other malfeasance in a way that required human judgment, it would be a logistical, cost-ballooning nightmare.

A vexing aspect of this problem is that deceptive advertising exists along a continuum, with a lot of gray area in the middle — Google would sooner give away its algorithm than have to manufacture some standard of deception and arbitrate which of the millions of ads in its system are over the line.

Google, of course, claims that “user experience” is its north star, and deceptive ads certainly make for a bad user experience. Google has in fact cracked down on some aspects of user manipulation, such AdSense arbitrage pages where someone uses an AdWords ad to send users to a page full of AdSense ads that pay more than the original AdWords ad costs. But there is so much gaming and manipulation of their system going on that there is no way Google can stop it all — and they have a financial incentive NOT to stop, since they make money off of every instance.

Google was able to let a lot of this advertising malfeasance get swept under the rug — until now. If the Australian government forces Google to police its ads, it could strike a harsh blow to Google’s business in that country — and other countries, especially in Europe, would be tempted to follow suit.

But it gets worse. The Australian government also contends that the way Google presents ads on its search results, labeled only with a “Sponsored Links” in small text, is deceptive.

Common sense tells you that there’s no way Google could make $10 billion without some people clicking on sponsored links because they mistook them for organic links. For example, the ads that appear right above the organic results in the yellow box are labeled “Sponsored Links,” but on high resolution wide screens, which are common on most computers, that label appears far to the right, such that a user focused on the content on the left could easily fail to notice it.

Google and others that have adopted this format walk a very fine line between being inadvertently misleading users and outright deceiving them. The colored background is a fairly strong cue, and I’d guess the majority of users can distinguish the ads from the organic results. But what if 10% of users can’t? Or 1%? Or 0.01%? How many deceptions are too many?

Of course, all advertising walks this fine line. You could also ask how many people turn to a magazine or newspaper ad, hear a radio ad, or see a TV ad and don’t realize that they’re seeing an ad? It’s probably a pretty small number, but I’m sure it’s not zero.

It’s very interesting to note that Yahoo has bought the keyword “Google search advertising” — this is not deceptive along the lines of what Trading Post did, i.e. if the Yahoo ad used the word “Google” in the title of the ad. But it’s still playing off of a competitor’s brand name — something that the open AdWords system enables and does not in any way discourage.

It’s striking that the Australian government chose to go to the mat with Google not just over policing specific instances of outright deceptive ads but also over Google’s entire search advertising format. Imagine the U.S. Justice Department bringing legal action a TV station or a newspaper for running an ad with false claims — and then failing to overtly label the ad as ad, something that traditional media ad formats typically don’t do.

The U.S. government gave Microsoft a beating with the antitrust lawsuit that stretched over many years, which cost Microsoft many millions and much headache to defend. It certainly didn’t put Microsoft out of business, but the effect on Microsoft’s business long term couldn’t have been positive.

It’s not hard to imagine Australia or some other government putting Google up against a legal challenge that similarly cannot be easily dismissed.

Story SOURCE

Consumers chose Microsoft as top brand

2007-07-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is the UK's number one brand, according to a new poll.

The technology behemoth held on to its crown as the public's top "superbrand", despite stiff competition from home-grown brands.

Coca-Cola was ranked second followed by internet search engine Google in third place.

In a separate assessment, media and marketing experts put Google in the number one slot followed by Apple.

Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the Superbrands Council which carried out the research, said: "The UK public clearly love Microsoft which performs strongly amongst all consumer groups, although relative newcomer Google is becoming a major challenger for that elusive number one slot."

The Superbrands Council is a group of marketing, advertising and media experts.

Members rated a list of 1,450 brands according to quality, reliability and distinctiveness.

Of these, the 725 highest-scoring brands were assessed by 3,265 consumers surveyed by YouGov researchers.

This survey was used to create the list of top "superbrands".

The top ten brands of 2007-08, as voted for by 3,265 members of the public are:

1. Microsoft

2. Coca-Cola

3. Google

4. BBC

5. BP

6. British Airways

7. Lego

8. Guinness

9. Mercedes-Benz

10. Cadbury

-------------------------

Story Source

Microsoft launches OneCare 2.0 beta

2007-07-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released a beta version of its next-generation Windows Live OneCare 2.0 desktop security and management package on July 11, touting a number of improvements made to the product, including the ability to monitor multiple PCs on a local network.

Available for free download on the company's Web site, the combined software and service offering -- which is aimed specifically at consumers and small businesses -- also adds new functionality for backing-up data and protecting against malware attacks.

Introduced roughly six months after the launch of Microsoft's OneCare 1.5 release in January 2007, the beta -- which like its predecessors includes firewall, AV (antivirus), backup, and antispyware programs -- boasts security improvements, including new tools for locking-down wireless networks and an automated, self-adjusting firewall.

Among the new management features being introduced in the product are support for the sharing of printers among multiple computers, a start time optimizer for speeding computer boot cycles, and an online backup system for photos and other images.

As part of the service portion of the offering, Microsoft said it has added more proactive system fixes and end-user configuration suggestions to the package along with monthly reports on important computer events or recommended upgrades.

The centralized backup feature claims the ability for users to configure and monitor automated storage controls for all PCs covered under a lone OneCare subscription -- which can cover up to three machines -- in a single network location.

The newest iteration of the package also adds support for 64-bit PC systems.

Microsoft, whose security software product business remains in its early stages, is the third major company to release a new version of its consumer endpoint protection tools in the last month alone as both McAfee and Symantec have also revamped their competing applications.

The software giant gave no indication as to when it might push OneCare 2.0 from beta into production but said it is actively seeking feedback from users who decide to try out the package.

Since its initial launch in May 2006 OneCare has drawn mixed reviews from end users and security researchers. While many experts have said that the product's pricing -- US$49.95 for protection and management of up to three PCs for one year -- has drawn the interest of many consumers, the product has fared poorly against its rivals in some head-to-head bake-offs.

In such a comparison study published in March 2007 by researchers at AV-Comparatives -- a project based in Austria and overseen by security researcher Andreas Clementi -- OneCare performed poorly next to similar products made by Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky Lab, BitDefender, Fortinet, F-Secure, and several other anti-virus providers.

According to the report, OneCare ranked last among the products tested in detecting Windows viruses, worms, macros, scripts, and other OS threats, detecting 91 percent of the threats.

In stopping systems intrusion through backdoors, Trojan viruses and other malware attacks, OneCare also ranked last out of 13 vendors with 79.6 percent detection.

Despite any perceived shortcomings in OneCare, at least one industry analyst said that Microsoft has had a significant impact on the consumer AV landscape for its relatively short run on the market, specifically around pricing.

By offering coverage for multiple PCs for much less than it would have cost using older products from market leaders Symantec and McAfee, Microsoft has forced those companies and others to drop their own pricing and changed consumer perceptions about the cost of AV tools, said Natalie Lambert, analyst for Forrester Research.

"The market is dramatically changing, and Microsoft is part of reason for that," Lambert said. "If you look at demand, consumers are not willing to pay for security software as they were in the past, they've found ways to get these programs for free, and Microsoft started some of that activity by driving prices down."

In terms of functionality, Lambert said that OneCare 2.0 appears to have pulled Microsoft closer to some of its rivals, although she does not believe that most consumers are ready to use all of the tools, such as centralized backup for multiple PCs.

Instead of buying off-the-shelf AV products as they may have done in years past, the analyst said that consumers are increasingly using programs bundled for free in their PCs or signing up for services offered by their ISPs, many of which are offered at no charge.

"Partnerships are more essential than ever before in this market," she said. "Winning this space will come down to who has the most and best partnerships in the future; consumers want full functionality, but they don't want to pay for it, and the vendors will need to get money from someplace, and it will be from the PC manufacturers and ISPs."

This story has been taken from HERE . Thank you Computerpartner.nl

News: Ubuntu - It's tough to install on laptops

2007-07-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

THIS IS NOT MY STORY... I borowed it from here and am presenting here without any changes... The first person referred to is Mr.Alexander Wolfe. Anyway.. its true that Ubuntu is tough to install on laptops. Read on...

I started my Linux journey wanting to like Ubuntu. It's pitched as a great operating-system option that's ideal for newbies and experienced PC users alike. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is, like Bill Gates, both an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. And there's something appealing about joining a community that's built up such a robust ecosystem in so short a time (Ubuntu was introduced less than three years ago.) What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, none of the Ubuntu stories--no Linux reviews, for that matter--talk about the inevitable problems many people run into during the installation process. Yet online forums are rife with traffic on stumbling blocks, which often cause people intent on converting to the open-source operating system to give up and go back to Windows.

When Ubuntu starts up from the Live CD, it commences by loading the Linux kernel.

Things go most smoothly when you pick the plainest of plain vanilla desktops for your Ubuntu install. Selecting anything else--like the reasonably standard HP laptop I chose--could be an invitation to a software nightmare. Sadder still, the average homebrew Linux newbie will falsely feel that it's his technical ignorance that's the problem.

By now, you can guess what my conclusion is: Ubuntu isn't all it's cracked up to be. Indeed, if you're an individual user--and even more so if you're supporting an enterprise--the only path around problems is to use a heavily tested, commercially supported distro. My preference is SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (though Red Hat is probably fine, too). I don't doubt that many fanboys will take issue with this (leave your comments below), since you'll have to pay $50 for SLED 10, and that's counter to the "free" open-source ethos.

Now that I've told you where I'm going, let me show you how I got there. Come along on my Ubuntu safari.

My test bed was an average machine, picked at random from the computer detritus lying around the house. The salient detail for our tale is that it's a laptop, not a desktop. Notebooks are always harder to work with, whether you're talking Linux, Windows, or hooking up add-on hardware. That's just a fact of life, because of the unusual variety of specialized drivers and hardware permutations you'll often find in downsized systems.

Preparing For Liftoff

My laptop guinea pig was an HP Pavilion ze4200 laptop, running Windows XP, purchased new in January 2003. The 6.6-lb laptop has a 14.1-inch display and is powered by a 1.53-GHz Athlon XP-M 1800+ processor. It's also got 256MB of DDR SDRAM, a 20GB hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW drive, and two USB 1.1 ports. While this might seem like a light configuration today, it's more than capable of running Ubuntu. The 20-GB drive is well above Ubuntu's 4-GB disk-space requirement. The 256-MB of memory exceeds the 64-MB minimum posted on the main Ubuntu installation page, though it only just meets the minimum spec on the 7.04 release notes, so I'm primed to accept a slightly longer installation time.

True, my HP laptop has nowhere near the heft of the four systems Dell is offering with Ubuntu. Dell's machines include two notebooks--the 1.73-GHz Core 2 Duo-based Inspiron E1505 N and 1.5-GHz Core 2 Duo Inspiron 1420 N--and two dual-core-based desktops, with 1.6-GHz and 1.8-GHz Intel processors.

When I requested a review unit from Dell in June, they said they didn't have anything immediately available. (Dell's reps recently told me they should have a tester available in about a month. I'll review it then.) That's when I decided to install Ubuntu out on my own machine.

....technit again.... i'll get the review too on my blog. But thanks for an eyeopener. Story SOURCE

Ubuntu launches new "freedom-focused" Gobuntu derivative

2007-07-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Although Ubuntu is highly regarded by desktop Linux users, the popular Linux distribution has been the subject of perpetual criticism from a small but vocal minority of users who believe that it doesn't set a high enough standard for software freedom. New initiatives announced this week aim to tackle those criticisms at their source, by resolving the perceived problems. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced the availability of daily CD images of a "freedom-focused flavour of Ubuntu" called Gobuntu.

Gobuntu, which will eschew virtually all proprietary software components, aims to pacify critics who think that Ubuntu's support for "non-free" software is detrimental to users. Last year, the Free Software Foundation announced the release of gNewSense, an Ubuntu derivative without proprietary graphics drivers, proprietary plug-in components like Adobe's Flash player, and patent-encumbered proprietary media codecs. According to Shuttleworth, the goal for the Gobuntu derivative is to "provide a cleaner and easier to maintain base for projects like gNewSense."

Shuttleworth says that the current focus is on hardware drivers, but more significant differences will emerge as the team grows. In his announcement, Shuttleworth asks for interested developers to participate by joining the Gobuntu development team. "This is a call for developers who are interested in pushing the limits of content and code freedom—including firmware, content, and authoring infrastructure—to join the team and help identify places where we must separate out pieces that don’t belong in Gobuntu from the standard Ubuntu builds," says Shuttleworth.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, also announced plans to start releasing parts of the web-based Launchpad project management system under an open-source license. Launchpad's proprietary status has been source of controversy since the web site's inception. Earlier this year, Mark Shuttleworth responded to the criticism by saying that Canonical was "actively working on making Launchpad open source," but that it couldn't be done "until there is a clear revenue model to be able to pay the salaries of the developers working on the platform itself." Canonical took the first step towards opening the Launchpad source code this week by releasing Storm—Launchpad's Python-based object relational mapper—under the permissive LGPL license. Storm source code and documentation are now available from Canonical's web site.

This Story has been taken from HERE ( thank you arstechnica.com)

Automatically update your Ubuntu system with cron-apt

2007-07-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

Updating all the software on your system can be a pain, but with Linux it doesn't have to be that way. www.builderau.com.au shows you how to combine the apt package management system with a task scheduler to automatically update your system.

If you've been using Linux for even a short time you'll surely have experienced the wonders of having a package management system at your disposal. For Debian and Ubuntu users the package manager you get is the excellent apt-get system. apt-get makes installing a new program (e.g. xclock, a graphical clock) as simple as:
% apt-get install xclock
That's nice, but the real reason apt is so useful is that updating your entire system all at once is just as easy:
% apt-get update
...
% apt-get upgrade
...
This will refresh the apt system with the newest information about packages and then download and install any packages that have newer versions. Do it regularly and you can be sure that you've got the latest and most secure software on your machine, without needing to hunt down the newest edition of each program individually.
You can make things even easier, however, by combining the apt system with the Linux scheduling daemon cron. cron let's you schedule any command to run periodically at given intervals. Take the following command:
% (apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade) > /dev/null
Which both updates the apt cache and upgrades the system. The -y flag tells apt-get to answer yes to every question, which prevents the process from hanging waiting for user input, say in the middle of the night so the bandwidth from the downloads won't bother anyone. It's also a good idea to redirect the output of the command to /dev/null, so that your terminal is not flooded with the results of automatic maintenance.
It's a bad idea to just install everything regardless of errors, sometimes incompatible software can creep into the repository, and that can bring down your whole system. A better idea if you want to be more careful with what your machine is doing is to add the -d flag, which tells apt to merely download the packages, but not install them. You can then run apt-get dist-upgrade later to install the packages without waiting for them to download, and letting you keep a watchful eye over what's being installed without having to wait for everything to download.
If you want to use this approach then you can add the following lines to your crontab using crontab -e, which will download new packages every Sunday morning at 12am:
# Automatic package upgrades
0 0 * * 0 root (apt-get update && apt-get -y -d upgrade) > /dev/null
There is still an easier way -- using the cron-apt package, which as the name might suggest, combines the cron and apt utilities, but provides a bit more flexibility and a simpler interface -- as well as supporting e-mail alerts on errors or new information. cron-apt automatically adds the -d flag, so you'll have to run apt-get dist-upgrade to install the changes. You can install cron-apt like any other common utility by using apt:
% apt-get install cron-apt
The configuration for cron-apt reside in /etc/cron-apt/config -- except how often the script runs, that's depended on cron so you can find it in /etc/cron.d/cron-apt. One popular configuration change is to add the line:
MAILON="always"
This will make sure an e-mail is always sent when the update runs, rather than only when an error occurs.
That's it. Setting up your machine to automatically update itself is as simple as a couple of lines in the console. If you need to have closer control over what is happening during the automatic update process then you'll want to write your own script, the Ubuntu help pages have a good run down of how to write a script around aptitude to achieve the same results.

[ This story has been taken from HERE ]

Microsoft to take part in the Olympic Games in 2008 with Vista

2007-07-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

On Friday in Beijing, the organizational committee for the Olympic Games 2008 and Microsoft China announced that the software vendor would be an official software supplier to the Games, which will

be held the capital city of China. In addition to standard software, Microsoft will also be working on systems to capture and process information for the Games.
Furthermore, the software vendor's Chinese subsidiary will be providing operating systems, databases, office software, solutions for project management and administration, and professional support for the IT infrastructure required at the Games. The Committee estimates that between 11,000 and 15,000 computers will be used at the upcoming Olympics.
Microsoft says it will be providing 1500 experts to help the technology for the Olympics run smoothly. Vista will be one of the products used. According to Chinese media reports, Microsoft is currently looking into the use of Vista at the Olympics in a research lab cofounded with Lenovo. The organization committee for the Olympics says that it will, however, also be using products from other vendors. (Craig Morris) / (jk/c't)

Universal 'to revise iTunes deal'

2007-07-03T04:02:00.000-07:00

Universal Music Group is reported not to be renewing its annual contract to sell its music through Apple's iTunes.

The New York Times quoted unnamed executives as saying that Universal had decided to have monthly deals instead.
That would allow Universal to remove songs by some or all of its artists quickly if there are disagreements on terms and pricing in the future.
But the San Francisco Chronicle carried a denial from Apple, which said that talks were still continuing.
"We are still negotiating with Universal," the newspaper quoted an Apple spokesman as saying.
"Their music is still on iTunes and their not re-signing is just not true," he added.

Flat charges
There have been disagreements between Apple and record labels in the past about the pricing and protection of the songs on iTunes.
Apple has stuck to a flat charge of 99 cents per song in the US since iTunes was launched four years ago.
But many of the labels are understood to want to be able to charge more for popular songs and less for songs that they are trying to promote.
There have also been objections to the copy-protection that iTunes uses, which means that iTunes downloads cannot be played on MP3 players other than Apple's iPod.
In February, Apple boss Steve Jobs called on labels to allow iTunes to remove the copy-protection. EMI has since begun to sell "premium" versions of its tracks through iTunes without copy protection.
But some labels have refused to have the protection removed and say that Apple should instead license its technology so that its copy-protected songs can be played on other devices.

Shares fall
Both Apple and Universal have much at stake if their relationship deteriorates.
If Universal pulls its catalogue from iTunes then the store would lose access to record labels that account for one out of every three new releases sold in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
On the other hand, iTunes is by far the most popular download store, with a 70% market share, according to the NPD Group.
Reports of a dispute hit Apple shares on Monday - they closed down 78 cents at $121.26 on Nasdaq, although that was also linked to some disappointment about the first weekend's sales of its new iPhone.

iPhone owners: Most gush, some glitches

2007-07-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

(via CNN)
Of 11 iPhone owners contacted, nine reported little or no trouble setting up their handsets.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -- Proud owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhone raved about their first day with the device Saturday, but a glitch took the shine off the year's most anticipated device for a few unlucky customers.
Of 11 iPhone owners contacted by Reuters Saturday, nine reported little or no trouble setting up their handsets, a combined cell phone, music player and Web browser.
An iPhone buyer proudly displays his loot Friday at an Apple store in New York.

"It's awesome, it's the best thing I ever saw in my life," said New York private detective Jerry Gregory. "Once people see this phone they are going to want one. Everybody I show this phone wants one, even people who were anti-iPhone."
But Brad Bargman of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, who waited in line nine hours Friday to buy his phone, said excitement turned to dismay when the device stubbornly refused to activate, meaning it can't be used.
"It's a real buzz kill," said Bargman, adding that repeated calls to AT&T failed to get the device to work. "Now I'm soured on it a little bit."

David Clayman, the third person in line at Apple's flagship Manhattan store, said he was still unable to activate his iPhone a day later, probably because he couldn't update the software on his computer needed to start the process.
The iPhone, which costs $500 or $600 depending on memory capacity, is activated through a process handled by the phone's exclusive carrier for two years, in Apple's iTunes online music store.
In a sign of strong initial demand, AT&T said it had sold almost all its phones within hours of the device going on sale at its 1,800 stores. The company did not say how many units it had sold. (For a quick estimate of first-day sales, click here).
Asked about problems some buyers were having, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the "vast majority" of customers were able to use their phones within minutes. "There are some whose activation process is being delayed and that's something that can happen in a launch like this and we're resolving those on a case-by-case basis," Siegel said.
Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock declined to comment on the number of iPhones sold at its outlets, saying only: "So far we've seen a lot of excitement and buzz."
Apple aims to sell 10 million units in 2008, giving it 1 percent of the global mobile phone market. The company is banking that the iPhone will become its third pillar product alongside its popular iPod music players and Mac computers.
By mid-afternoon on Saturday, Apple's store in downtown San Francisco was crowded with shoppers interested in the iPhone display. The store was sold out of the $600 models and about 10 $500 models were visible on shelves.
Indeed, the iPhone's inclusion of so many features into a sleek package triggered a sort of nerd rapture among enthralled gadget freaks.
"It's not like it's a computer, it's not like it's a phone, it's like a living sculpture in my hands," said Dale Larson, a mobile business consultant in San Francisco.
Buyers cited the large screen, full-blown Internet browser, ability to play music and video, and camera quality as among the phone's best features.
Two of the top concerns raised prior to the phone's launch - the on-screen keyboard and quality of AT&T's network - were annoying to some people, but no one said they regretted buying the device.
"At first I tried to use my thumbs to type but it didn't work so well. But if I use my finger it's okay," said software developer Tim Brown.

Google Desktop for Linux Released

2007-07-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

Close to three years after its launch for Windows, Google has finally ported its Google Desktop software to Linux.

Come April, Linux users will be able to take advantage of the software’s potent indexing and search functions, which enable documents, emails and other files to be

located virtually instantly.

The software is currently compatible with Red Hat’s Fedora Core 6, the ever popular Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, Debian 4.0 and Red Flag 5. However, Unlike the Windows and recent Mac version, Linux users will have to wait a while longer for the applications fluffy other bits, such as the sidebar and Gadget features.
A Gadget is a small web-enabled application that sits in the sidebar or on the desktop and displays streaming information from internet sites or elsewhere. While handy and growing in popularity thanks to the likes of Adobe’s Apollo and Microsoft’s Silverlight, index and search are the most important aspects of the application, particularly considering Google Desktop for Linux can also hunt down old versions and recover files that have been deleted.

“Google Desktop hit the operating system trifecta today with the release of a version of Google Desktop for Linux,” said Google in a written statement.
“Now available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, the Google Desktop application allows users of every major operating system to search their desktop and the web as quickly, easily and comprehensively as they search the web with Google.”

Rare conjunction (Venus+Saturn) spectacle in skies

2007-07-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

Venus and Saturn will be in conjunction with each other on June 30-July 1,2007 a full moon night.

Ajay Talwar of Delhi's Amateur Astronomer Association told HT, "The Celestial show begins on Saturday evening. When the sun is about to set, Venus will appear first , a bright point of light not far above the horizon and as the sky darkens, one will also be able to spot Saturn.

The two planets will almost touch each other."The planets will get closest on July 1.Talwar said this conjunction happens once every 13-14 months approximately, but most of the time, the distance between them is much larger or the conjunction happens in the fierce glare of the sun.

This time the conjunction is almost 45 degrees away from the sun and the event will be clearly visible, he added.Although the planets appear close, the distance between them is 9.4 AU. 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is 149,597,870 kilometres.

Images from google image search

Software pirate ordered to pay NT$740 million

2007-06-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: Lin Jung-peng had also been sentenced earlier to two years in prison for selling 148 types of software that he downloaded from a Chinese Web site.

The Taoyuan District Court yesterday ordered an online dealer of pirated software to pay damages totaling NT$740 million (US$22.52 million) to 10 software companies.

The court estimated that from July 2002 to January 2005, Lin Jung-peng(林榮鵬) earned NT$3 million by selling 148 different types of professional graphics software that he downloaded from a Chinese Web site before being caught by police. The court ordered Lin to pay NT$5 million for each type of software pirated in violation of the Copyright Law
(著作權法).

The court had already ruled last month that Lin must serve a two-year prison sentence, after which the software companies can apply to the court to force him to make monthly payments out of his salary. Lin must also print apologies to the software companies in newspapers.

Acknowledging that Lin might not be able to pay such an astronomical figure, Judge Chen Ching-yi (陳清怡) said the verdict was more symbolic than practical.

Sung Hung-ti, chair of the Taiwanese branch of the Business Software Alliance, an international organization representing software manufacturers, said that the NT$5 million in civil damages per program that the companies claimed was the maximum.

However, the programs that Lin pirated typically sold for less than that on the legal market. Lin sold the programs -- including Advanced Design System, AutoCad, Cimatron and Windows operating systems -- for between NT$8,000 and NT$10,000.

The 10 companies included nine US companies and one Israeli company.

The court awarded US software manufacturer Autodesk the highest amount of compensation at NT$190 million after 38 of its programs were pirated. Parametric Technology Company was second with NT$145 million, and Bentley Systems was third with NT$135 million.

Chen said that buyers of the pirated programs could pass them on to other users, making it impossible to calculate exactly how many other people received pirated copies, as well as contributing to the severity of Lin's infringement of intellectual property rights.

Source

Video: How to protect a cell phone

2007-06-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

Protect Your Cell Phone Warranty
Water damage will void you cell phones warranty, but how dothey know its been wet? Well there is a little dot behind thebattery that changes color, UNLESS you protect it when you get your phone! Its quick and easy.. A video guide..

Protect Your Cell Phone Warranty - Click here for another funny movie.

IPhone dials up YouTube: Apple device will stream videos

2007-06-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

Add YouTube to the new Apple iPhone’s list of promised goodies.
California-based Apple said yesterday iPhone buyers will be able to stream videos from Google’s YouTube wirelessly.
It’s yet another feature being tacked on as Apple prepares to launch one of the most-talked-about devices in years.
At first, about 10,000 YouTube videos will be available in the high-quality format used by the iPhone. The rest will be available by fall.
The anticipation has been building for months around the launch of the iPhone on June 29.
And, in the end, all that hype might come back to bite Apple as the hoopla leads to unreasonable expectations, said Christopher Hazelton, senior analyst at Framingham-based research firm IDC.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s such a big phenomenon, it’s such a household name, it’s almost out of control,” he said.
The question remains whether Apple can turn that buzz into big sales - the kind its music player the iPod has been able to rake in.
The iPhone will carry a high price tag, running between $500 and $600.
But Apple is hoping to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. “That would be quite unprecedented,” said John Jackson, an analyst with Boston-based the Yankee Group.
And the iPhone faces some major hurdles. Its high cost coupled with the price of dropping another cell phone plan to sign up for the iPhone, which can average around $175, might keep many consumers away, analysts said.
Consumers need to take a step back and consider other options that might better suit them, said Bill Nebes, chief executive of IMO Independent Mobile. “It’s sort of like cars you get excited about. You want to buy it, but you don’t think about how it’s going to drive in the snow,” he said. Nebes said other, cheaper alternatives might work better for certain features. The Ocean from Helio, for instance, is good for instant messaging and the Sprint Upstage M620 has a music player while costing less than the iPhone.
But already the iPhone is causing a stir in the mobile industry as more cell phone makers are adopting similar touch screens, Hazelton said. Also, unlike other manufacturers who depend on cell-phone carriers to market and distribute their products, Apple has largely taken control of its launch in spite of its five-year deal with AT&T, Jackson said. Other manufacturers might take a closer look at that business model, he added.

Yahoo Mail Links With IM

2007-02-12T22:37:00.000-08:00

Rollout of messaging and mail integration begins this week.

Yahoo will soon start to fulfill a promise it made to users several months ago to tie its new Web mail service with its instant messaging application.

Starting today and continuing over the coming months, Yahoo will activate this feature for users of the new version of Yahoo Mail, which is in beta, or test, phase but available to all users of the service.
Chats Encouraged

Yahoo officials demonstrated the integration of the Yahoo Mail beta with Yahoo Messenger in November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The audience reacted enthusiastically to the plan.

The new feature alerts Yahoo Mail beta users if their contacts are logged on to Yahoo Messenger and gives them the option of starting a text chat session from within the mail interface. If the user is composing an e-mail message but wants to chat instead, Yahoo Mail can grab the text and paste it into the text chat window. Likewise, the chat session can be automatically imported to an e-mail message form.
More Links to Come

This integration with Yahoo Messenger is the first of several tie-ups the company plans to implement in the (Yahoo Mail beta), because it wants the service to offer multiple communication options to its users, said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

Although he declined to confirm future plans, he acknowledged it would make sense to let Yahoo Mail users launch voice conversations and to create links to the company's social networking service, Yahoo 360. Another likely development would be to extend Yahoo Messenger's interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger into the Yahoo Mail beta, he said.

The beta version, a free service, offers a number of improvements over the current version, including a more agile interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that works like a desktop application. The beta was introduced in September 2005. Unlike typical Web mail services, it lets users drag and drop messages into folders, provides a pane to preview messages' content and offers the ability to have multiple message windows open.

Viacom Demands YouTube Remove Videos

2007-02-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

Viacom Inc. on Friday demanded that Google Inc.'s online video service YouTube remove more than 100,000 video clips after they failed to reach a distribution agreement.

Viacom said it sent a notice to YouTube on Friday morning asking the popular video-sharing site to remove clips from Viacom-owned properties including MTV Networks and BET. The media company controlled by Sumner Redstone said its pirated programs on YouTube have generated about 1.2 billion video streams, based on a study by an outside consultant.

A YouTube spokeswoman said it would comply with the request and added, "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows." The company has historically removed clips at the request of copyright owners within hours.

"Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video," Viacom said in a statement.

The company is taking a hard stance against the Internet's most popular video service Youtube, which is renowned for its quirky, viewer-contributed video clips as much as for being a repository for unauthorized television shows.

"This is a negotiating tactic," UBS analyst Ben Schachter said. "We think a deal gets done ... The terms have major implications for the value of content online."

Viacom's move also runs counter to the strategies employed by other media companies, such as the Warner Music Group, Vivendi-owned Universal Music Group, and General Electric controlled NBC Universal, which have all landed deals with YouTube to test the service.

CBS Corp, which was spun off from Viacom, also has a deal with YouTube.

CBS, which last year said YouTube viewership of its clips contributed to traditional TV viewing, held a contest in which YouTube users submitted videos they created. The winners will have their videos aired on CBS television.

Hours after Viacom made its announcement, CBS said it would show the first winning video on Sunday.

Universal Music threatened to sue YouTube last year, but reached a partnership with them. Its deal included taking a small stake in the company, according to several published reports.

Even as some media companies have decided to experiment with YouTube, other companies including News Corp., NBC and Viacom have held discussions to create its own online video business, sources have said.

Last October, Viacom asked YouTube to take down some of its video clips including those from hit shows from cable network Comedy Central, whose on-air talent joked about the site's popularity during the shows. But thousands of clips remained on the service.

"YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said. "The recent addition of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this issue."

It was not immediately clear what percentage of YouTube's estimated 100 million views per day Viacom clips represent.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told analysts on Wednesday YouTube was in "various stages" of introducing technology, such a digital "fingerprinting", to identify copyrighted material.

"That is an area of big research in the computer science community and also a significant investment here at Google," Schmidt said after Google's quarterly results.

Apple TV: Cool enough to buy?

2007-02-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

IT is clear that Apple is not a company that will sit back and relax while the money is flowing in. They have become the masters for developing cool and funky gadgets.

The iPhone has not yet disappeared from the front pages of technology reviews and the Apple TV has already been announced.

But the questions I have are: Is the Apple TV really cool enough and will this gadget make you rush to the closest vendor to buy one? Is this a new and fresh idea?

The cool factor

What will make this a cool product to own?

It firstly looks good; it has the ability to stream video and music from another source within its built-in wireless range.

The Apple TV has a built-in 40GB hard drive to store your music, digital photos and downloaded movies or TV episodes (not that I think any of these movies would be legal) and enjoy it on your television at any time.

All this features come with a funky new user interface and remote control.

The un-cool factor

Unfortunately for the Apple TV the list of un-cool factors is longer.

So what does make the Apple TV un-cool?

The first thing I'd like to have seen built-in to the Apple TV is an input channel, thus giving it the capability to record from your television reception.

The second thing - and this is probably one of my biggest considerations before I will buy one - is: It can't play standard DivX files.

For those of you who don't know, DivX files is an encoding for video and sound mostly used in internet downloaded movies and television episodes. Converters are available from third party developers to convert DivX files to work on the Apple TV, but this is time consuming.

And even though Apple TV looks good, and comes with a cool logo, there are lots of other similar and even better products on the market. Some have bigger hard drives, are compatible with DivX and other formats, utilise 5.1 surround sound and some even have the ability to record.

There have been reports that Cisco - under their Linksys brand - is also developing a product similar to the Apple TV, but with more capabilities. Cisco has a score to settle for the iPhone name, the name they allege Apple stole from them.

Although I still like the idea that Apple keeps developing new gadgets and broadening their focus, I think they could have done more with the Apple TV. I will definitely be the first in line when they bring out an updated version.

Source

How to Program a DirecTV Remote to Control an Xbox 360

2007-01-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

Written by EDFACTOR
Monday, 22 January 2007
This is pretty awesome. If you don't have the Xbox remote control, you can use a DirecTV Universal Remote to navigate through the Dashboard and to play DVDs and whatnot in 4 easy steps.

1) Switch the DirecTV remote to AV-1. Point the remote away from your receiver. Press and hold the select and mute buttons until the light above the AV-1 switch blinks twice.

2) Press 991, then press 2. Now press Power.

3) Press Ch. Up 35-40 times, pausing between each press. The light above AV-1 should go on every time you press it.

4) When your Xbox 360 turns on, immediately press Select.

Article From : HERE

Shocker on Orkut, obscene calls for airhostess

2007-01-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

It was the worst joke one could have played on her. A 23-year-old airhostess with a private airline was shocked to see her profile posted on Orkut, describing her as a “sex-struck woman”.

The person who got her on Orkut, popularly known as an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends, also posted her neighbour’s phone number along with her profile. A photograph of the airhostess in her uniform was uploaded with her profile, and she was made a member of online communities soliciting sex. To make sure her friends and colleagues notice her, the person also connected her to communities of airhostesses, both national and international airlines, and multi-national companies.

Within no time, she was flooded with scraps (messages) “very obscene in nature”. Her neighbour, an official at Lok Sabha Secretariat, also started receiving “vulgar” calls. “For three weeks, men have been calling up these numbers asking to get in touch with my client. They have posted more than 250 messages in the scrapbook (on Orkut). The accused has also made her a member of several communities that involved prostitutes and sex workers,” the woman’s lawyer complained in a city court on Monday.

Rest of the story: HERE

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360) Review

2007-01-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

January 22, 2007 After you've heard about Lost Planet selling one million copies since its initial release less than a month ago (only a week if you're outside Japan), you're probably wondering if this figure is more to do with the lack of any Christmas blockbusters for the Xbox 360, or because it's a great game in its own right. Our Games Editor has the lowdown after spending a bit too much quality time with the game.

The Story
In the future, humans decide it's a good idea to colonise a frozen planet infested with nasty, hostile insects ranging in size from big to absolutely massive. In the process, they determine the insects are storing thermal energy (T-ENG) in their bodies, and that this energy source is the key to their survival, and develop Vital Suits (VS) to aid their battle. Think MechWarrior/Virtual On...

There's no question it's a premise with potential, however the progression of the story throughout the game is decidedly B-grade, shoestringing the missions together in a manner that barely justifies the action. Your team (comprising of the is-he-evil-or-not scientist, token cute girl and sickeningly cliched hacker kid) decide to risk your life more than once for the sake of investigating a heat signature, at a stage in the game it's obvious that heat signature is a massive insect. It's pretty painful stuff, and does little for the experience aside from providing two key game mechanics, in that you constantly have to top up on T-ENG to stay alive, and provide fuel to the Vital Suits you'll also be needing to stay alive.

Presentation
The first thing that will sell you on Lost Planet is the amazing graphical detail. Crisp textures, incredibly detailed models, beautiful expansive environments, and realistic explosions and (somewhat overused) smoke effects put Lost Planet on par technically with Gears of War, albeit in a drastically different art style. This is a real testament to the power the 360 has under the bonnet, and Capcom doing a damn fine job harnessing it.

Unlike Capcom's Dead Rising, you'll be able to read in-game text on a Standard Definition TV without a microscope (we at gizmag don't look down on late-adopters of HD technology), but needless to say, everything steps up a notch in beauty when running through a computer monitor or HDTV.

Game Mechanics
This game is arcade shooting done 2007 style. You're constantly outnumbered, and underpowered, and the only way to survive is to kill everything that moves, and collect the T-ENG their dead bodies spew forth to stay alive. An unfortunate thorn in the side of this arcade feel is the relatively slow movement of your character. You will grow accustomed to it, but it detracts greatly from the feel of the game.

This article has been borrowed from and continued at: GIZMAG

2 Linux Consortia join Together

2007-01-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

Linux, the free operating system, has gone from an intriguing experiment to a mainstream technology in corporate data centers, helped by the backing of major technology companies like I.B.M., Intel and Hewlett-Packard,

Paul Sakum/Associated Press

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, with the system’s penguin symbol, will assist the Linux Foundation.

Those same companies have decided that the time has come to consolidate their collaborative support into a new group, the Linux Foundation, which is being announced today. And the mission of the new organization is help Linux, the leading example of the open-source model of software development, to compete more effectively against Microsoft, the world’s largest software company.

“It’s really a two-horse race now, with computing dominated by two operating-system platforms, Linux and Windows,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “There are things that Microsoft does well in terms of promoting Windows, providing legal protection and standardizing Windows.”

He added that “the things that Microsoft does well are things we need to do well — to promote, protect and standardize Linux.”

In data centers, both Linux and Microsoft have benefited from the shift to data-serving computers powered by lower-cost microprocessors and other industry-standard hardware using personal computer technology. These machines, running Linux or Windows, have increasingly replaced more costly, proprietary hardware, typically running Unix operating systems.

That shift to industry-standard hardware has helped makers of personal computer chips like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and makers of PC-technology machines including Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Dell, and Fujitsu.

Traditional rivals of Microsoft in the software business, including Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Dell, NEC and Fujitsu. and I.B.M., have championed Linux to undermine an adversary and have tweaked their database and other software programs to run on Linux. Companies like Red Hat and Novell distribute Linux and charge companies for technical support and maintenance.

So while Linux is distributed free, a sizable market has grown up around it. The yearly sales of Linux-related hardware, software and services is more than $14.5 billion, according to estimates by IDC, a research firm.

The new Linux organization is “a clear sign that we are going to continue to work together,” said Daniel D. Frye, vice president for open systems development at I.B.M.

There is vigorous competition among companies in the market for hardware, software and services that work with Linux, Mr. Frye said. But collaboration is also essential to move Linux technology forward, he said, and avoid the kind of splintering of the marketplace that occurred in the 1980s, when different companies supported different versions of the Unix operating system.

The work of two other groups — the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group — will be folded into the Linux Foundation, and those organizations will no longer exist. Mr. Zemlin had been the head of the Free Standards Group.

Stuart F. Cohen, the chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs, said he was starting a new venture that would use the open-source development model to build software applications tailored for individual industries like financial services.

The Linux Foundation will pay salaries to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and a few other key Linux programmers. That support had previously come from the Open Source Development Labs.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Torvalds noted that some of the original reasons for forming the Open Source Development Labs six years ago, like “helping companies come to grips with Linux and open source in general,” had in large part been addressed.

Referring to the new organization, he said, “The technical, legal and standards issues do seem to be part of a bigger whole.”

Mr. Torvalds said his role would not change. “I work on the technology itself, not any of the other issues,” he wrote. “I literally just sit in my basement and do technical management. Nothing else.”

Screenshots: 2 worlds (Xbox)

2007-01-21T02:21:00.000-08:00

Screenshots: Two worlds (Xbox)

Source:

Two Worlds (Xbox 360) Coming this Spring + 3 New Screens

2007-01-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

SouthPeak Interactive is looking to make a one-two punch on Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with their release of Two Worlds, an exciting new RPG that's akin only in genre. The title's release date, when originally announced, was slated as TBA, so a more precise Q1/early Q2 2007 launch date should give followers of Two Worlds some solid confirmation and peace of mind that's it's actually coming. We look forward to getting our hands on a review copy when it ships, so keep it right here for more info.

Press Release:
SouthPeak Interactive, a leading independent videogame publisher, today announced that its massive, open-ended role-playing game, Two Worlds, will be released this spring for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.
Developed by Las Vegas-based TopWare Interactive and Reality Pump Studios, Two Worlds is an evolution of the role-playing genre. Combining unlimited character development and fierce, spectacular combat, Two Worlds brings a new kind of gameplay experience where players are encouraged to experiment with the world, test the results of good and evil deeds and find the most satisfying way to face challenges. Never before has an RPG given gamers such an unprecedented level of freedom to change the world and shape the story within it – for the first time, choices made in an RPG game are actually meaningful.

Expanding the depth of gameplay even further, Two Worlds online multiplayer action allows up to 8 people to adventure together online via Xbox Live® online entertainment network. Gather with your friends and battle cooperatively, exchange equipment, or simply attack them and see who’s left standing.

“Two Worlds is quickly shaping up to be an experience that sets the benchmark of what a role-playing experience can be,” said Katie Morgan, Executive Vice President of SouthPeak Interactive. “We couldn’t be more excited to be bringing this gargantuan title to both Windows and Xbox 360 gamers.”

Gabe Boker - 01/19/2007

Two Worlds Screen Shots: here

'Sonic the Hedgehog' for the Xbox 360 lacks spontaneity, excitement

2007-01-21T02:05:00.000-08:00

'Sonic the Hedgehog' for the Xbox 360 lacks spontaneity, excitement

More than a decade ago, "Sonic the Hedgehog" was a video game icon, producing hit after speedy hit for Sega.

Now, Sonic is running at breakneck speeds on the next-generation consoles.

Unfortunately, "Sonic the Hedgehog" for the Xbox 360 is rocketing the franchise in the wrong direction.

In fact, the only thing that this game gets right is Sonic's speed. When racing through the game's large environments, the blue hedgehog zips from place to place just as he always has.

So how did Sonic go so wrong?

The game design is the biggest culprit behind this fiasco. Sonic games should be all about zipping along in a blur and reacting quickly and dynamically to what appears. Instead, the game's coolest moments -- such as when the ground gives way under your feet -- all feel scripted with only one right way to escape.

The insertion of adventure elements -- such as when Sonic walks through city streets talking to people in search of power-ups and the next place to go -- slows the game even more.

It's nice to see all of Sonic's friends -- Tails and Knuckles and so forth -- make cameo appearances, but the townsfolk chitchat seems horribly out of place in a game meant to move along briskly.

The game's auto targeting, used for attacking enemies and finding safe ground to land on, is also horribly spotty.

Throw in some horrendously long loading times, a muddy story line and dialogue that will make you laugh in agony, and you have a train wreck of a video game. Not even fans of Sonic's classic adventures will be able to look past the stench this game leaves in its speed wake.

Bank loses $1.1m to online fraud

2007-01-21T01:58:00.000-08:00

Internet fraudsters have stolen around 8m kronor ($1.1m; £576,000) from account holders at Swedish bank Nordea.

The theft, described by Swedish media as the world's biggest online fraud, took place over three months.

The criminals siphoned money from customer's accounts after obtaining login details using a malicious program that claimed to be anti-spam software.

Nordea said it had now refunded the lost money to all 250 customers affected by the scam.

"What is important is that none of our customers will have lost their money," said a bank spokesman.

"We are doing all we can to stop this."

Largest Nordic bank

The attack used a program called a trojan, known as haxdoor.ki, to obtain customers details. Trojans are programs that look benign but contain malicious software.

Victims were duped into downloading the program after receiving an email, purporting to come from the bank, encouraging them to download anti-spam software.

Once installed the trojan monitored the PCs' online activities.

"It listens for key web addresses, in this case the Nordea bank address," said Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee.

When a user navigated to the Nordea bank login page, the trojan would kick into action, saving the customers login details. It then displayed an error message asking them to resend the information.

With two access codes the criminals could transfer money from the customer's accounts.

Trade newspaper Computer Sweden said the police had traced the fraudulent emails first to computer servers in the US and then to Russia.

Nordea added that customers who had been affected often did not have any anti-virus protection on their computers.

The bank, which has 2.2 million customers, is the largest across the four Nordic nations of Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

In August 2005, it was forced to temporarily shut down its online arm due to a sophisticated phishing attack.

Gears of War - Triple Platinum

2007-01-20T23:56:00.000-08:00

—Gears of War® has gone triple platinum, reaching the three million units sold milestone in just 10 weeks on store shelves, ending 2006 as the top-selling game among all platforms during the month of December.

Expanding upon its reign as the fastest-selling title of 2006 and the fastest-selling original exclusive Xbox 360 ™ game of all time, Gears of War has captivated gamers across the globe with its action-packed single-player campaign, thrilling online modes and recently released multiplayer maps, Raven Down and Old Bones.
"Gears of War is tracking to be one of the best-selling video games of all time." —Jeff Bell, Corporate VP, Microsoft

The free downloadable maps were released less than two weeks ago via Xbox Live® Marketplace and sponsored by the Discovery Channel's "FutureWeapons" series. In that short time, the new maps have garnered an astounding 750,000 downloads. There have been more than 1.5 million total downloads of all Gears of War content currently available via Marketplace, including the maps, themes, and video walkthrough, by gamers who can't get enough of Delta Squad and the Locust Horde.

Another Blockbuster Hit
"Like blockbuster titles from Microsoft's Halo® franchise and the Grand Theft Auto and Zelda franchises, Gears of War is tracking to be one of the best-selling video games of all time and has established itself as the most successful new intellectual property (IP) of the next generation," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of Global Marketing, Interactive Entertainment Business Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft Corp.

Gears of War continues to wow consumers and critics alike, garnering more than 20 nominations for Game of the Year. The game is a truly global phenomenon—the prestigious Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu recently gave Gears of War the coveted Platinum award. Gears of War joins Blue Dragon as the second Microsoft Game Studios title in the past two months to receive this high honor.

Not just a gaming sensation, the acclaimed Gears of War Mad World cinematic trailer was featured in Advertising Age's Book of Tens as one of the top creative concepts of 2006. With more than 2.4 million views of the trailer online, the campaign has inspired not only tremendous sales, but also a number of hilarious parody videos currently circulating around the Internet.

Gears of War
Gears of War, rated "M" for Mature, thrusts you into humankind's epic battle for survival against the Locust Horde, a nightmarish race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet. Blending the best of tactical action games with the best of survival horror titles, Gears of War features cinematic, beautifully rendered interactive environments with high-definition visuals.

iPhone prices may go down

2007-01-20T23:39:00.000-08:00

SAN JOSE: Apple Inc will have plenty of room to eventually reduce the retail price of its upcoming iPhone, according to preliminary gross margin estimates by a market research company.

The iPhone, the combination cell phone-iPod media player that Apple unveiled last week, will yield gross margins of more than 50 percent at the current set of retail prices, iSuppli Corp. said in an analysis of presumed component and manufacturing costs.

The 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone, with a retail price of $499, will cost Apple $245.83 to make, iSuppli estimated. The 8-gigabyte version, priced at $599, will cost Apple $280.83.

"With a 50 percent gross margin, Apple is setting itself up for aggressive price declines going forward," said Jagdish Rebello, a director and principal analyst with iSuppli.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Since Apple will face stiff competition in the cell phone market, the company may need to cut into its margins to reduce pricing in the future, he said.

The Apple iPhone, which was announced by CEO Steve Jobs last week, will be available starting in June exclusively through AT&T's Cingular Wireless. Apple has said it hopes to sell 10 million units in 2008, or about 1 percent of the market.

That goal "seems attainable," Rebello said.

Criminal Investigation Into Radio Wii Death

2007-01-18T22:55:00.000-08:00

A criminal investigation has been launched by the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department into the tragic water intoxication death of Jennifer Strange (left, with her family), who died hours after participating in KDND-FM's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest. This follows the firing of 10 of the radio station's employees, including the three morning DJs, and the cancellation of the morning show.

An article on law enforcement website Officer.com reveals more details on the utter disregard the radio personalities held for the health of their contestants.

Authorities decided to pursue the investigation after listening to a tape of the show, obtained by The Sacramento Bee, during which DJs joked about the possible dangers of consuming too much water, sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran said. At one point, the DJs even alluded to a college student who died during a similar stunt in 2005.

The station was also warned by several callers that the contest could be fatal, to which they replied, "Yeah, they signed releases, so we're not responsible. We're OK." OK my ass. I don't care what kind of waiver this poor woman signed...this contest killed her.

As far as I am concerned everyone responsible for the contest, from the promotions department to the on-air talent, had a hand in her death. Sure, the woman should have known better that to follow along with it, but she was trying to do something nice for her now motherless children. That's a fact those children will struggle with for the rest of their lives.

The attorneys of the Strange family plan to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the radio station, and I cannot see how they can possibly lose.

"Oh, my gosh, look at that belly. That's full of water. ... Come on over, Jennifer, you OK?" a male DJ asked. "You going to pass out right now? Too much water?"

It's bad enough to lose a mother, a daughter, a sibling, etc., but to have her death punctuated by some jerk making comments like this in his cheesy radio voice is simply hideous. Michael Fahey

Xbox Linux project

2007-01-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

Xbox Linux project
The Xbox Linux Project, which shows Xbox owners how to install Linux on their game consoles in addition to the stripped-down Windows that runs the console, may have just hit one of its biggest hurdles yet. According to the Xbox Linux Project website, Microsoft has released an automatically downloading patch that plugs the hole in the console's system that allows users to install and run Linux. Apparently, the patch also deletes files off of the hard drive when it is installed, making at least one user lose file he saved on the hard drive via Linux.

The patch is automatically installed when users choose the "Xbox Live" option on the Dashboard--if they have already set up and are connected to an active Internet connection. The update downloads without any prior approval or warning, and can even be activated via an in-game connection to Xbox Live. It is also automatically downloaded and installed even if the user is not signed up for the Live service.

The Xbox may even be transmitting data, including its serial number, to Microsoft whenever an Internet connection is made--again whether or not the user has signed up for Xbox Live.

Activision Trademarks Guitar and Drum Villain Names

2007-01-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

GN's U.K. PS2 channel reports that Activision, who acquired RedOctane last year, has registered new music video game names, leading to suggest it plans to take the "Guitar Hero" franchise in a whole new direction.

Activision has registered trademarks with the US Patent and Trademark Office for two potential new games - Guitar Villain and Drum Villain.

Although these patents were filed towards the end of last year, they're not the only ones to suggest the series is branching out in new instrumental directions. In April 2006, Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane placed an applcation to trademark both Drum Hero and Keyboard Hero.

Hopefully we will learn more about RedOctane's plans for the franchise this year.

Identity Theft: Part 4

2007-01-18T04:28:00.000-08:00

Phising

Cyber-criminals use fraudulent email and web sites (known as mirror sites) that resemble online or retail sites. They are designed to fool users into revealing personal information, particularly credit card numbers, account numbers and passwords.
Hardware
n March 2005, the UK police found out that the London office of the Japanese bank Sumitomo has been under attack from a group of hackers for several months. The investigators initially believed that the criminals had used a Trojan to get into the bank's network. However, after several days of investigation, they found a tiny keystroke-recording device inserted at the back of the computer (where keyboard cable connects to the PC).

In fact a quick search on the Internet lists more than a half-dozen companies offering such devices. Some common characteristics of these products are: Can holds up to 2MB in memory; undetectable by software; transparent to the targeted machine's operating system; capable of recovering material on any PC; Price range varies from $20 to $200, depending on the memory; instructions and material available to build the device.

Identity Theft: Part 3

2007-01-18T04:21:00.000-08:00

Advance-fee fraud

Popularly know as 419-fraud, advance-fee fraud is one of the oldest and popular scam. Originating in Nigeria in the 1980s, this fraud, circulating through postal mail and fax, quickly crossed the borders within Africa. The unsuspecting email users receive an email message allegedly from a family member of an African dignitary. The writer explains that following the death of the dignitary, a large sum of money will be blocked somewhere. With the user's help, and using his or her financial backing for the funds transfer, the contact says that it would be possible to release the money. A substantial reward supposedly awaits those who accept the contract.

Also in this category of swindling come the email messages that announce to recipients that they have won lottery after their email addresses came up in a draw.

These scams qualify as identity crimes because they involve collecting personal and bank information from the unsuspecting internet users who are gullible enough to respond to these solicitations.

Internal Revenue Service form

This one involves the W-9095 form, sometimes named the W-8888 form. Attached to an email, the fictitious form is often accompanied by a fax number, to which it must be quickly returned. The message also indicates that users may lose certain tax exemptions if they fail to respond within seven days.

Key loggers and password stealers

These terms refer to malicious programs that find their way onto the computers of their victims. Each program gathers certain keystrokes and can collect the name of the user, passwords, and other personal and confidential information. The malware then sends the data to the attackers, who use it fraudulently.

The Trojan family known as Haxdoor, A311 Death, or Backdoor-BAC are one of the most common advanced malware. On an infected machine, each Trojan captures network information and logins and waits for the user to browse a web site (usually financial) that requires authentication. When this occurs, the keylogger collects transaction data, such as username and password, and then sends the stolen data to a dedicated host that enters the stolen data into incremental log files. The first Backdoor-BAC variant appeared in 2003 and have grown manifolds since, both in number and sophistication. Many also come with rootkit capabilities.

Differentiating among keyloggers, password stealers, and "backdoor" applications is not easy. Many backdoors, which allow hackers to remotely control computers, can also collect information. This is why many data-gathering programs are considered backdoors.

Although intended for worthwhile goals, such as parental control, some commercial utilities are occasionally diverted from their original purpose and are used for malicious crimes. Like malware, they are capable of secretly intercepting any computer activity without the user's consent or knowledge.

Identity Theft: Part 2

2007-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

Pharming

Pharming is an advanced form of phising that redirects the connection between an IP address and its target server. This usually happens at the DNS server end -- via cache positioning or social engineering -- or on the local machine with the help of a Trojan that modifies the host file. The link is altered, so that every time users try to connect with an organization's proper site, they are secretly redirected to a mirror site, without ever having typed in the incorrect (fraudulent) address.

Social engineering is especially devious because victims are driven to harmful actions by their own greed of generosity. According to a SANS Institute report, some 1300 companies, including several big names, suffered financial losses in a single cache-poisoning attack.

Hacking, unauthorized access to systems, and database theft

Criminals frequently compromise systems, diverting information directly or with the help of listening devices, such as sniffers and scanners, on the network.

Hackers gain access to a great deal of data, decrypt it (if required), and use the data for exploits elsewhere.

Redirectors

hese are malicious programs that redirect users' network traffic to locations they did not intend to visit. The Anti-Phishing Working Group has witnessed a strong increase in traffic redirectors, as well as in phishing-based keyloggers. They report that the highest volume in traffic occurs with malicious code which simply modifies a DNS server settings or the host file to redirect either some specific DNS lookups or all DNS lookups to a fraudulent DNS server. The fraudulent server replies with 'good' answers for most domains. However, when attackers want to direct a user to a fraudulent site, they simply modify their name-server responses.

This is particularly effective because the attackers can redirect any of the users' requests at any time, and the users would have no idea that this is happening. Several international banks like HSBC Brazil, Banco Itau, Banco Banespa and Bradesco banks witnessed such attacks in December 2005.

NEXT PART: PART 3

ID Threats: Part 1

2007-01-18T04:05:00.000-08:00

ID threats to watch out for:
A snippet Report
UTI Bank recently joined the long list of banks that have been subjected to online identity thefts and attacks. The bank became a victim of a phising attack. A URL on Geocities that was almost a facsimile of the bank's website homepage (online identity theft), was reported to be circulating amongst email users. The web page not only asked for the account holder's login and passwords, somebody had even wickedly put up a disclaimer and security hazard statement and online identity thefts.

Though the incident is first of its kind this year, it is a good pointer to the increasing menace of online identity theft. The other prominent Indian banks which have been a victim of such attacks include leading names like ICICI bank and Citibank.

According to a new report about online identity theft from the security firm McAfee, the instances of key-logging malware to capture passwords and other private information have increased by 250 percent between January 2004 and May 2006.

Additional findings from the security firm's research show that the number of phishing alerts tracked by the Anti-Phishing Working Group has multiplied 100-fold over the same period of time.

Though the majority of these crimes are carried out for economic gains, they might also be committed by terrorist groups who establish false identities to conceal their activities from the watchful eyes of law enforcement. There are several ways in which online identity theft can be committed. We decided to bring you face to face with these Identity Theft.

Contd: Part 2 Identity Theft

Part 2: Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP)

2007-01-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

Complexity of integrations in Enterprise Resource Planning

Most of the customers presently have disparate applications on different technology platforms, built with different tools, and purchased from different vendors, and not working seamlessly. One of the key challenges of the IT managers is to make these Enterprise Resource Planning applications integrated well and work in tandem.
Enterprises have to not only relook process capabilities but also their technology infrastructure that helps them to get real-time information across their supply network.

Enterprise Resource Planning Software vendors have to look into solutions to embrace the concept of demand driven supply network (DDSN) and enable the enterprises to become more demand centric. Analysts indicate that half of all the companies do not have a clear visibility across their supply network, inspite of having IT systems as these systems are not properly integrated due to lack of proper Enterprise Resource Planning.

The major challenge to the ERP vendors is hence to provide seamless integrations between all their extended ERP applications, which can help enterprises become a demand-driven organisation. The next generation of enterprise applications will need to embrace better architectural capabilities to make the integrations more plug and play, rather than being tight point-to-point integrations.

Service-Oriented Architecture in Enterprise Resource Planning:
One of the key market trends is the technology transformation to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) which will have the largest effect on redefining the ERP market. As indicated by analysts, service-oriented architecture will transform Enterprise Resource Planning software from being an inhibitor to an enabler of business change, by 2015. SOA will shift revenue from packaged software to subscription services and from monolithic suites to composite applications.

SOA is an approach to designing, implementing, and deploying information systems via Enterprise Resource Planning such that the system is created from components implementing discrete business functions. These components called “services” can be distributed across geography, across enterprise, and can be reconfigured into new business process as needed.

The services are “loosely coupled” allowing for much more flexibility than older technologies with respect to re-using and re-combining the services to create new business functions both within and across organisation.

The future goal of most of the ERP vendors providing Enterprise Resource Planning
is to provide an enhanced value of the installed systems, by bringing in the real value proposition to the existing customers as well as to the new customer, by enhancing the product with additional features, both functional, technical and ones that are usable.

This article on Enterprise Resource Planning has been taken from the
times of india.
The author is Director, Development, SSA
Global India
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Enterprise Resource Planning,erp software,erp vendor, software,Enterprise Resource Planning.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Where is it heading

2007-01-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Where is it heading

Manufacturers are under constant pressure from customers, shareholders, and suppliers to continuously improve, to make better products faster - and more efficientlyand better Enterprise Resource Planning. They, in effect, need to convert their factories into responsive, demand-driven, profit-making enterprises by optimising manufacturing operations. Their competitive advantage and ultimate survival depends on the use of information systems and technology thus, Enterprise Resource Planning.

Need for ERP systems
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have become synonymous with competitive advantage, especially throughout the 1990s. ERP systems replace isolated information with a single, packaged software solution that integrates all traditional enterprise management functions like financials, human resources, and manufacturing and logistics.

Started with an IT application to handle the inventory problems of enterprise in the 1960s, the ERP systems brought a common information database which helped business functions of the organisation to shift their thinking to an enterprise level from a departmental level. Many companies have implemented Enterprise Resource Planning applications; either developed in-house or off-the-shelf products, to become more responsive to the customer needs and enhance their businesses.

Challenges for future for Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP)
The challenge for many IT managers is to justify the cost of huge IT investment and to show the real return on investment from implementing these applications. Often we hear questions like: “My order process has changed. How long will it take IT to modify the software?” “We have changed our business model to conditionally outsource manufacturing of a sub-assembly. Can our system be modified to control this new process?” “Sometimes it is too late to react to an order cancellation causing loss of revenue. Can we improve our performance through better synchronisation and Enterprise Resource Planning?” “We have customised our ERP system by adding new functionality. Can I reuse this investment?

Can I expose them to my customer portal?” Thus, the demands on ERP vendors serving the market continue to rise. What are the key challenges that they face? ....

...CLICK HERE for the 2ndpart on Enterprise Resource Planning ...
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Enterprise Resource Planning,erp software,erp vendor, software,Enterprise Resource Planning.

Yahoo! got too busy to check its own show

2007-01-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

DOWNSLOPE YAHOO..

YAHOO! the world's most-visited website, has just had a year it would rather forget. The firm issued a series of profit warnings, reported a 38% drop in third-quarter profits to $155 million, and watched its share price drop by more than 25%.

Its disappointing performance indicates that the internet services company has somehow lost its way. Providing a raft of products and services from its search offering to email, music, mobile, shopping, health advice and small-business services, not to mention related sites such as Yahoo!

Answers, the brand could be accused of trying to do too much. The year came to an explosive close in December with a shake-up of its organisational structure amid the announcement that chief operating officer Dan Rosenweig and media group head Lloyd Braun were leaving the firm.

The resulting rejig seems to have been influenced by a leaked memo by Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo!'s senior vice-president, which concluded that the firm lacked a clear vision and needed to cut its workforce by as much as 20%. The restructure is being led by Yahoo! chief executive and chairman Terry Semel and aims to increase accountability and speed up decision-making.

Managers at Yahoo!'s European operations will be hoping that the restructure gives them more freedom to build the brand in their own markets, as US management has kept a tight rein on its operations across the Atlantic. Priorities include the creation of more social media environments and the roll-out of its much-delayed search-advertising system Project Panama, which aims to make its paid-search options more attractive to advertisers.

Search provides one of the most lucrative opportunities on the web, but Google has put Yahoo! in the shade in this area. Google's system, which uses a combination of pay-per-click and rankings based on the price-per-click paid by advertisers, makes up to 40% more ad revenue per search than Yahoo!

While Yahoo!'s social search engine Yahoo! Answers has done well since its 2005 launch, with more than 100 separate services, the brand is in desperate need of streamlining. What can the firm do to bounce back? We asked Nick Blunden, client services director of Profero, which handles online advertising for ask.co.uk, and Nigel Walley, managing director of Decipher and a former marketing director of NTL's internet division.

RFID Expo in India

2007-01-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

RFID EXPO
This is the first time that an EXPO focusing mainly on RFID, is being presented in India – in Bangalore to begin with: later in Mumbai and Chennai.
With the objective of supporting the Indian Industries to adopt the State of the Art technologies to survive in the international arena, Asia Technologies Limited is organizing a massive RFID event called RFID expo ‘Live’ India 2007

BANGALORE Venue : KTPO's International Trade Centre, Whitefield.

Dates : January 19 - 20 - 21
Timings : Daily - 10 am to 6 pm.

The EXPO will feature the latest and the most innovative products and services from top technology solution providers including from the UK, Canada, Finland, Singapore and China.

The unique feature of RFID EXPO is that the RFID technology implementation will be shown ‘Live’ in all the above three Centres, viz. Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. International Fairs on RFID are being held regularly in different parts of the world but nowhere has a ‘LIVE’ RFID Fair been held yet. RFID EXPO 'LIVE' India 2007 is a ‘Trade Only’ event . Admission is by invitation / registration; each visitor will be provided RFID-encased badge / admission ticket carrying his / her personal details. See how the technology works in practice – experience it from the moment a visitor enters the Expo Hall till he / she leaves.

AIM OF THE EXPO
The aim of the EXPO is to promote and spread awareness in India about the various solutions that use RFID technology, among the end – users in sectors such as Manufacturing (Automotive, Pharmaceuticals / Health-care, Textiles), Retailing, Distribution / Warehousing, Transportation & Logistics, Defence, Libraries, Hotels, Hospitals, Jewelleries, Banks, etc. Worldwide, awareness about this technology is growing; successful implementations are being highlighted; adoption is increasing and technology providers/vendors, end-users all agree that the RFID market is positioned for strong growth. Within India, the market potential is huge and the benefits of adoption of this technology are enormous in terms of a cut in manufacturing and distribution costs and time besides enhancing operational efficiency (resulting from changes in business processes), and improving customer service.
The Expo Website: rfid expo

Health: Genetic key to some breast cancers found

2006-12-12T05:27:00.000-08:00

Genetic key to some breast cancers found

POLLY CURTIS
CANCER SPECIALISTS announced recently that they have discovered a gene, which may hold the key to a treatment for up to 10 per cent of all breast cancers. The development could — in time — lead to treatments that would make chemotherapy unnecessary.

Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK have found that one in 10 breast cancers — including many lobular cancers, which are among the hardest to treat and fastest increasing — are linked to an overactive gene called FGFR1.

The gene provides the blueprint for a cancer-fuelling protein. The scientists reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research that when the gene's activity was blocked, tumour growth was reduced.

First stage of trials

Using a compound targeted at FGFR1, scientists reduced the growth of cells in laboratory tests and are now planning the first stage of clinical trials.

The discovery raises the hope of a `targeted' therapy which could lead to a sophisticated new age of treatments for women who test positive for FGFR1 and spare them chemotherapy, with its devastating side-effects.

Jorge Reis-Filho, of the molecular pathology laboratory at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at the institute, said: "Breast cancer is a complex disease made up of many sub-types. Currently, most breast cancers are treated similarly but we'd like to be able to tailor treatment for each type.

"To do this, it is important that we find new targets for drug development. The discovery of FGFR1 is the first step on the road to tailoring treatment for the 10-15 per cent of women diagnosed with lobular breast cancer.

"The identification of FGFR1 in this sub-group of breast cancers is a very promising finding and although we are a few years away from clinical trials we are moving closer towards our vision of a future free from the fear of breast cancer."

Some 44,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancers every year and 10-15 per cent of those have lobular cancers. FGFR1 is present in half of this subset of cancers, as well as in around 10 per cent of all breast cancers, he said. The research echoes the work that led to the development of the breast cancer drug Herceptin.

Herceptin can be prescribed for women whose cancer is HER2 positive — around 20 per cent of those diagnosed. The FGFR1 discovery, which is similar to the discovery of HER2, could lead to a therapy for women who are diagnosed with breast cancers that are HER2 negative but positive for FGFR1.

Separately, the same scientists are carrying out the first trials of a drug called a PARP inhibitor, which could be beneficial for other women who have a family history of breast cancer and have developed it themselves.

Results promising

The first trial of 50 women is nearing completion, the drugs are not showing signs of toxicity in patients, and the results are "very promising."

"In the future we hope to be able to provide several targeted therapies which will improve survival rates.

"It's an optimistic view and we couldn't say when it would happen, but this is heading in the direction of chemotherapy-free treatments," he said.

The new research comes shortly after a study published in the journal Science recently, which found that a chemical used in the abortion pill also prevented the growth of breast and ovarian cancers. The drug Mifepristone is used to terminate early pregnancies, but by shutting down the hormone progesterone in breast tissue cells, the drug can also prevent tumours from forming. — Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Image Source
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Tags: breast+cancer genes+breast+cancer treatment+breast+cancer chemotherapy+breast+cancer cancer Institute+of+Cancer+Research latest+cancer+research new+cancer+treatments genetics+cancer

breast+cancer genes+breast+cancer treatment+breast+cancer chemotherapy+breast+cancer cancer Institute+of+Cancer+Research latest+cancer+research new+cancer+treatments genetics+cancer

Alexander Litvinenko And Polonium: The complete Story

2006-12-08T20:18:00.000-08:00

THE UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) is assisting the London Metropolitan Police in investigating the death of one Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-Russian spy who was poisoned with polonium-210 in a bizarre incident.

Polonium-210 (Po-210) is radioactive and occurs in nature in trace quantities. It has a half-life of nearly 138 days. It emits alpha particles and very low intensity gamma rays. Since there are sensitive instruments to detect very tiny traces of radioactivity, HPA could trace the movement of the victim and spread of contamination at several places.
Such low levels of contamination do not pose any significant risk. Large quantities of Po-210 may be prepared by irradiating bismuth-209 in a nuclear reactor.
How Litvinenko got poisoned with such a large quantity of Po-210 continues to be a mystery. He freely moved in the city and frequented many places till November 17, when he got admitted to London's University College Hospital.
He suffered loss of hair, dehydration, and vomiting. He had very low white blood cell count. These symptoms indicated severe radioactive poisoning.
On 23rd of November, just before dying of heart failure, the 43-year-old Litvinenko claimed that someone poisoned him in a London restaurant, which he visited on November 1, this year.
"To poison someone, polonium would most likely have been chemically combined in some type of dissolvable salt, for example polonium nitrate," New Scientist quoted experts in the field. "In this form, the material could easily have been added to his food and ingested", the journal clarified.
Soluble polonium-210 gets dispersed in soft tissue. Kidney and bone marrow will receive high doses.

Roger Cox, director of the U.K.'s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards told New Scientist that the fatal dose would have to be above five grays (gray is a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed by the body tissue). "The quantity of Po-210 involved in the present case may be a few millicuries or a few tenths of a microgram."

Cancer threat
An alpha particle from Po-210 has a range of about 35 microns (A micron is 0.0001centimetre) in tissue. Three or four cells will stop it. Radiation, interacting with cells may kill a few of them. Some of the cells may survive. The surviving cells have the potential to become cancerous as they may lose their precisely set growth control mechanisms.
The UK HPA found small quantities of Po-210 in a few areas at the Itsu sushi restaurant at 167 Piccadilly, London, and at Mr Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill.

Traces located
They located traces of radioactivity at two more London locations, one of them at the offices of exiled Russian oil tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the United Press International (UPI) reported on November 28th... They found Po-210 at the offices of the private Erinys security firm, which guards oil installations. Police tried to trace Litvinenko's movements, who he met and where.
HPA asked anyone who was in the Itsu restaurant or who was in the Pine Bar or in the restaurant of the Millennium Hotel on 1st November to contact NHS (National Health Services) on a specified number for further advice. HPA found contamination in three British Airways (BA) planes flying between London and Moscow. After an overall assessment, the agency declared that the passengers who travelled on any of these planes over the last month were not at risk.
Two British Airways (BA) planes flying between London and Moscow and other European routes tested positive. "... .the risk of having exposed to this substance remains low. It can only represent a radiation hazard, if it is taken into the body — by breathing it in, by taking it into the mouth, or if it gets into a wound," the Agency reassured the public.

Precautionary measure
Since 25th November, until midnight of 28th November, HPA received 1,325 phone calls. The Agency followed up 68 people who it decided to investigate further. In addition, the Agency referred 21 persons as a precautionary measure to a specialist clinic, set up by it for possible radiological exposure evaluation.
Besides these, HPA asked 52 out of 162 healthcare staff and 105 staff or visitors to the various locations under police investigation to provide urine samples. From November 1, the body fluids (sweat, saliva, urine etc) of the victim contained polonium-210. Anyone who came into physical contact with the victim may have received traces of polonium.
It will not pose any significant risk so long as it is outside the body. Those present while carrying out autopsy on the body of the victim at the Royal London Hospital wore special protective clothing, to prevent contamination of their body with polonium.
The denial
The origin of the substance, which claimed its victim, remains unknown. According to Associated Press, Sergei Kiriyenko, director of the Russian nuclear agency, Rosatom, denied that the polonium, could have been stolen from a nuclear facility in Russia.
Kiriyenko revealed that Russia exports 8 grams of polonium-210 monthly, all of it to the United States. That is a whopping amount; what do they do with it? He said there had been no exports to Britain in five years. The HPA reports are reassuring. The incident did not pose significant risks to anyone, other than the victim.
K.S. PARTHASARATHY
Former Secretary, AERB (ksparth@yahoo.co.uk)
Source
litivenko polonium russian+spy polonium+poisoning litvinenko alexander+litvinenko
litivenko,polonium, russian spy, polonium poisoning,litvinenko, alexander litvinenko

Tech: Web Enabling The Portable Document

2006-12-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

Industry leaders need to join in the global quest for a single open document standard...
IT IS one of the ironies of the computer revolution, now a quarter century old, that automation, far from decreasing the dependence on paper has vastly escalated it. First they spoke of the `paperless office'; when that proved to be almost unachievable, they rephrased it as `less-paper' office. We may no longer maintain vast godowns of paper files and records at corporate level; but in our individual capacities we tend to generate, exchange and download a lot more information — a large chunk of it not critical to our work.

Sitting on a gold mine
What is more, we have become choosy: We want to print a document exactly as it was sent — which is why companies like Adobe, who developed the Portable Document Format (PDF) to do just this and created a tool called Acrobat to transport such files on the Internet, are sitting on a gold mine.
This month, the latest — 8th — version of Adobe Acrobat has been released in India. As it proclaims on the cover, it is not just a vehicle to send and receive documents but a collaboration and communication tool.
A single click accesses a separate service called Connect that enables real-time Web-based collaboration on a document. This is aimed at professional verticals like the construction and engineering industry.
Legal beagles, marketing mavericks, publishing pundits...these are some of the professional groups, Adobe has set its sights on. In fact multiple documents can be bundled as a single PDF file — and collaborators can post their marginal comments much as they would stick `PostIT' memos on a real document.

Bloated the product
Now the level of automation has been made smarter. A new feature allows users to selectively hide sensitive information.
All these have bloated the product beyond a simple PDF reader-creator. The Acrobat 8.0 Professional version costs Rs. 25,000 while the Acrobat 8.0 Standard is available at Rs. 17,000.
On his first visit to the land of his birth recently, after steering the mega merger with technology company Macromedia, Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Operating Officer of San Jose, California (U.S.)-based Adobe Systems, took time off last month to brief The Hindu about his Net-enabled road map for the future.
A new technology `combo' codenamed `Apollo', will enable a digital work flow that is aimed at embracing both designers and developers simplifying the process from project conception to completion, Mr Narayen explained. It will leverage Adobe's flagship product Acrobat and the Connect feature.
Naresh Gupta, Managing Director of Adobe's Bangalore-based R&D Centre added that Indian engineers were the brains behind critical features of another element of the new Apollo initiative: the Web publishing tool `Contribute.'
For its fourth and latest edition, the Bangalore engineers had added features to Contribute, that simplified the process of creating blogs — or web logs — allowing tight integration with Microsoft's Office and enabling bloggers to include Flash animation in their postings.
What about the rest of us who look for a simple way to send a document by email so that it is received with the look and feel of the original? While the Acrobat reader continues to be free, the full product that enables one to create a PDF file, has been priced out of the reach of lay users.

Many alternatives
No wonder so many alternatives have sprung up on the Web. A free-to-download PDF creator PDF creator from any Windows platform is available at Source Forge : http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
Foxit 2.3 ( http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php ) is the latest version of a fast PDF Reader that occupies just 1.5 MB.
It allows you to draw graphics, highlight and type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document.
You may convert the whole PDF document into a simple text file. The basic version is free to download.
Microsoft's next Windows version, Vista will allow document creation as a PDF file or in its own challenge to ODF called XPS. The Save as PDF and XPS download is available at http: // http://www.micro/ soft.com /downloads.
The Open Document Format Alliance (http://www.odfalliance.org/) has seen dozens of IT players, nations and states coming together under the ODF flag (ODF was initially a creation of OpenOffice.org).
Indian members include the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and the National Institute for Smart Government, Hyderabad.
The Delhi government has opted for ODF for its commercial tax department.
There will always be a market for compelling corporate document collaboration solutions — like Acrobat's latest avatar. But the Adobes and Microsofts of the world need to nurture the aspirations of the millions of lay users of the Net by joining in the global quest for a single open document standard.

Original Story

Tags: adobe adobe+acrobat+8 document document+standard pdf

Study: Infedility Is In The Genes

2006-12-06T05:50:00.000-08:00

I Bloody well knew She had got it from her mom. Says my Dad too.

WASHINGTON:
The chance that infidelity will intrude on a romantic relationship may be written in the couple's genes, a study has found. The results suggest a DNA test could tell a man the rough chances his female partner will cheat on him, though it wouldn't necessarily work the opposite way. Researchers focused on a set of genes that past studies have implicated in a link between sexual attraction and genetic similarity. The cluster of genes is termed the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC.
The researchers studied 48 male-female couples who were either dating "exclusively" or married or living together. As the proportion of MHC genes the couple shared increased, "women's sexual responsivity to their partners decreased, their number of outside] sexual partners increased, and their attraction to men other than their primary partners increased," the researchers wrote in a paper describing their findings.
Two quantities were almost equal on average, according to Christine Garver-Apgar, the study' author: the fraction of MHC genes shared, and the woman's number of extra partners. In other words, if the man and woman had half the genes in common, the woman would have on average nearly half a lover on the side. But these tendencies were found only for women; men's attraction and likelihood of cheating appeared unrelated to the genes, they wrote.
This may also explain past studies suggesting that humans and animals prefer mates with dissimilar MHC genes, according to scientists. Such a preference might help assure that offspring have a wide range of immunity genes in the holster, giving them an edge over pathogens.

Infidelity touches about half of all couples, married or not, according to infidelity researcher Shirley Glass. Last year, scientists also found one in 25 dads may be raising another man's child.

Tech Tags: genes infedelity study research couple love marriage dna dna+test science health

Miscellaneous: Cat Stevens Islam Conversion

2006-12-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

A little wave that pushed Cat Stevens to Islam
WASHINGTON:
Yusuf Islam, formerly the pop star Cat Stevens, said that a small wave literally washed him ashore and pushed him towards Islam. Islam, who recently released his first commercial album in nearly three decades, An Other Cup said that he got caught in a current off Malibu beach in California in 1975 and prayed for help. "Suddenly I was petrified. I thought this might be it," he said. "I said, ‘God, if you save me, I'll work for you.'" "And then a little wave, you know, came behind me," he said. "It wasn't very big. But it was that miraculous moment when suddenly the tide was going in my favour." The singer, now 58, said he was already on a spiritual quest, but that the frightening swim gave him a push. He read a copy of the Koran given to him by his brother. Two years later he converted to Islam, changed his name and ended his career as a pop singer. Islam made headlines in 2004 when a US-bound plane he was in was diverted due to post-September 11 security measures. As Stevens, he hadsinger had several hits in the '70s, like "Wild World".

GLOBAL WARMING and SPECIES EXTINCTION

2006-12-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

A crisis is staring us in the face, it is not just down the road somewhere.

PENGUINS IN PERIL: The number of emperor penguins has dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula.

ANIMAL AND plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.
These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly.
At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says.
Here and real
It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble.
"We are finally seeing species going extinct," said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. "Now we've got the evidence. It's here. It's real. This is not just biologists' intuition. It's what's happening."
Trends reported
Her review of 866 scientific studies is summed up in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.
Parmesan reports seeing trends of animal populations moving northward if they can, of species adapting slightly because of climate change, of plants blooming earlier, and of an increase in pests and parasites.
Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it is already happening; she figured it would be another decade away.
Just five years ago biologists, though not complacent, figured the harmful biological effects of global warming were much farther down the road, said Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
"I feel as though we are staring crisis in the face," Futuyma said.
"It's not just down the road somewhere. It is just hurtling toward us. Anyone who is 10 years old right now is going to be facing a very different and frightening world by the time that they are 50 or 60."
While over the past several years, studies have shown problems with certain species, animal populations or geographic areas, Parmesan's is the first comprehensive analysis showing the big picture of global-warming induced changes, said Chris Thomas, a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in England.
While it is impossible to prove conclusively that the changes are the result of global warming, the evidence is so strong and other supportable explanations are lacking, Thomas said, so it is "statistically virtually impossible that these are just chance observations."
Early springs' effect
The most noticeable changes in plants and animals have to do with earlier springs, Parmesan said.
The best example can be seen in earlier cherry blossoms and grape harvests and in sixty five British bird species that in general are laying their first eggs nearly nine days earlier than thirty five years ago.
Parmesan said she worries most about the cold-adapted species, such as emperor penguins that have dropped from three hundred breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula, or polar bears, which are dropping in numbers and weight in the Arctic.
The cold-dependent species on mountaintops have nowhere to go, which is why two-thirds of a certain grouping of frog species has already gone extinct, Parmesan said.
Better adaptation
Populations of animals that adapt better to warmth or can move and live farther north are adapting better than other populations in the same species, Parmesan said.
"We are seeing a lot of evolution now," Parmesan said. However, no new gene mutations have shown themselves, not surprising because that could take millions of years, she said. — AP
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Space: Sunita all set to become 2nd Indian origin woman in space

2006-12-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

Sunita all set to become 2nd Indian origin woman in space
Sunita Williams is all set to become the second woman of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla to blast off on a space mission and spend six months at the International Space Station where US shuttle Discovery will leave her on completion of a 12-day repair job. Sunita, 41, the daughter of Deepak and Bonnie Pandya, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a final stretch of training and preparations for Friday's shuttle mission STS-116, the first night launch since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
The spaceflight is scheduled to lift off at 8:05 IST on Friday (Thursday, 9:35 pm US time) will take along the most rookie crew since 1988 as five of the seven members have never flown in space before.
Besides Sunita, the crew includes mission commander Mark Polansky, pilot William Oefelein, mission specialists Joan Higginbotham; Nicholas Patrick; lead spacewalker Bob Curbeam; and the European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang, who will become the first Swede in space.
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Interesting News: Pakistan duo win drugs ban appeal

2006-12-05T01:49:00.000-08:00

Pakistan duo win drugs ban appeal
REUTERS
RAWALPINDI, Dec 5:
An appeals tribunal appointed by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has exonerated fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif of doping offences and lifted their long-term bans. Akhtar had been banned for two years and Asif for one year in early November after testing positive for the banned steroid nandrolone. The Chairman of the tribunal, Justice Fakhruddin G Ebrahim announcing the decision in Karachi said that now it was up to the Pakistan Cricket Board to decide if they could play in the ongoing one-day series against the West Indies. Akhtar and Asif were recalled from the Champions Trophy in India in October after they tested positive in out-of-competition tests conducted by the PCB.

Tech Tags: mohammed+asif+shoaib+akhtar+drugs+banned cricket scandal doping pakistan+cricket shoaib+akhtar

HP's Edgeline printhead: Printer or Copier?

2006-12-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

HP EDGELINE PRINTHEAD

In 1987, HP introduced the Paintjet, the first colour inkjet printer, while QMS launched the first colour laser printer, ColourScript Laser 1000 in 1993. Epson has created an alternative to the heated bubble inkjet process using the piezo-electric effect

The 1990s and the early years of this century have seen little by way of innovation with the possible exception of Canon's development of ink droplets as small as a picolitre (1 trillionth of a litre) — and PictBridge, a new standard to directly connect digital cameras to printers.

But HP announced a new breakthrough technology for ink-based printers that promises to make them not only as fast as laser printers but as the best copiers available today.

Lyra Research, an independent U.S.-based analyst hosted a global Webcast where it carefully evaluated the claims made by HP about EDGELINE and concluded that this might just turn out to be an inflection point where printers challenge the colour copier industry by matching their speed, performance and what is called TCO: the total cost of ownership.

The technology is called Edgeline and it is in some ways quite radical: In the inkjet printers of today, a small matchbox-sized print head, moves across the width of the printer, inking a line at a time. Once a line is printed, the carriage advances the paper by the width of a line and the print head prints the next line.

Edgeline simplifies this drastically — by using a print head that is as wide as the width of the paper. This way, the entire page width is inked at one go — and only the paper advances from line to line, leaving the print head stationary.

By cutting the moving elements by half, the printer saves on mechanical complexity and allows pages to be printed at speeds up to 70 pages per minute (ppm) — and up to 100 ppm in light production models. Additionally the number of nozzles in this much-wider print head can be increased to over 10,000, producing a laser-like sharpness.

Lyra's senior analyst Steve Reynolds mentions that the Kodak and Olympus-Riso have similar wide-print head solutions for the high-end ink based printers — but he sees the real disruption from Edgeline coming in the copier arena.

HP has deployed Edgeline in the printers at the back of the Photosmart Express Station digital printing kiosks in the U.S. — though the width is just enough for a 4 x 6 inch print.

In early 2007, it is expected to unveil the first photo printers and standard width multi function printers using Edgeline — and eventually the technology may allow it to challenge the light production printer/copier market.

Imaging innovation

If as promised, the TCO of an Edgeline printer is indeed significantly lower, it might be time to take back what we said about the dearth of innovation in the imaging business.

(Lyra's webcast can be viewed offline using a link from www.lyra.com while HP has created a 5- minute video and a white paper that can be found on a special Edgeline site that can be located by using the keyword search at www.hp.com) .

Source ( Both Story And Image): The Hindu
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3 Bits Digital Computer: Quantum Computer

2006-12-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

Towards a quantum computer

IN A computer, with three bits, there are eight possible combinations of 1 or 0. But three bits in a digital computer can store only one of those eight combinations at a time.

Quantum computers, would be based on the strange principles of quantum mechanics, in which the smallest particles of light and matter can be in different places at the same time.

In a quantum computer, one `qubit' - quantum bit - could be both 0 and 1 at the same time. So with three qubits of data, a quantum computer could store all eight combinations of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

That means a three-qubit quantum computer could calculate eight times faster than a three-bit digital computer.

A University of Utah physicist Christoph Boehme and colleagues took a step toward developing a superfast computer based on the weird reality of quantum physics by showing it is feasible to read data stored in the form of the magnetic `spins' of phosphorus atoms.

`Spin' simplified

A simplified way to describe spin is to imagine that each particle contains a tiny bar magnet, like a compass needle, that points either up or down to represent the particle's spin.

Down and up can represent 0 and 1 in a spin-based quantum computer, in which one qubit could have a value of 0 and 1 simultaneously. In the new study, Boehme and colleagues used silicon doped with phosphorus atoms.

By applying an external electrical current, they were able to "read" the net spin of 10,000 of the electrons and nuclei of phosphorus atoms near the silicon surface.

A real quantum computer would need to read the spins of single particles But previous efforts, which used a technique called magnetic resonance, were able to read only the net spins of the electrons of 10 billion phosphorus atoms combined.

Personal computers today calculate 64 bits of data at a time. A quantum computer with 64 qubits would be 2 to the 64th power faster, or about 18 billion billion times faster.

Souce: The Hindu

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Quantum Science: Exotic Relatives of Protons and Neutrons

2006-12-03T00:04:00.000-08:00

Exotic relatives of protons and neutrons discovered

The finds help in understanding the forces that bind quarks into matter

SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES called `quarks' are the building blocks of matter. Named `Sigma-sub-b' particles, two exotic and incredibly quick to decompose particles have been discovered by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

"These particles are members of what we call the `baryonic' family, so-called for the Greek word `barys,' which means heavy," team leader Petar Maksimovic, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences said. "Baryons are particles that contain three quarks, which are the fundamental building blocks of matter." The simplest baryons are the proton and neutron, which make up the nuclei of atoms of ordinary matter.

Unstable, ephemeral

"These newest members of that family are unstable and ephemeral, but they help us to understand the forces that bind quarks together into matter," Maksimovic said.

Containing the second-heaviest quark — called "the bottom quark" — the new particles are the heaviest baryons found yet: heavier even than a complete helium atom, which has two protons, though lighter than a lithium atom, which has three, according to a Johns Hopkins University press release.

The team combed through a hundred trillion proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, to find about 240 Sigma-sub-b candidates, Maksimovic said.

The new particles are extremely short-lived, decaying within a tiny fraction of a second.

"Little by little, we are compiling an ever-clearer picture of how quarks build matter and how subatomic forces hold quarks together and tear them apart," said Maksimovic.

While the matter around us is constructed with only up and down quarks, exotic matter contains other quarks as well, according to Maksimovic.

Six types

There are six different types of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top (u, d, s, c, b and t). One of the new baryons discovered by the team is made of two up quarks and one bottom quark (u-u-b), the other of two down quarks and a bottom quark (d-d-b). For comparison, protons are u-u-d combinations, while neutrons are d-d-u. The Tevatron accelerates protons and antiprotons close to the speed of light and makes them collide. In the collisions, energy transforms into mass, according to Einstein's famous equation E = mc{+2}.

The odds of producing bottom quarks — which in turn transform into the Sigma-sub-b, according to the laws of quantum physics — are extremely low.

But scientists were able to beat the low odds by producing billions of collisions in the Tevatron each second.
Source: The Hindu

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