Intel gave a quick preview of its next generation laptop

Intel this week gave a quick preview of its next generation laptop platform, which could shake up the chipmaker's mobile offerings.
The company gave analysts and users a glimpse of the new platform, codenamed Calpella, at its fall Intel Developer's Forum (IDF) in Taiwan this week. Mooly Eden, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Platforms group, said during his keynote address at the forum that the platform focuses largely on energy efficiency and longer battery life.
Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at research firm Insight 64, said that if he was a hardware vendor, he'd be eagerly awaiting the 2009 arrival of Calpella. "It's a very different platform than anything they've done to date," he said. "When Calpella shows up, everything inside that laptop will be brand new."
The analyst explained that until now, Intel's laptop platforms have consisted of a CPU and a Northbridge chip, which holds the memory controller and the graphics chip. However, in Calpella, the memory controller has been moved onto the CPU itself. The graphics remain separate but will be packaged with the CPU, giving it better access to the memory controller and the CPU, he said.
"These are all good things," said Brookwood. "If I was a vendor, I'd be excited over this, but a little nervous because everything inside the platform is changing at the same time. With so many balls in the air, it's easy to drop one."
However, he added that since Intel is previewing the platform a year before it ships, most of his concerns are lessened.
The Calpella platform will be based on Intel's upcoming 45nm-based Nehalem architecture. The first Nehalem chips, which will be quad-core server chips, are expected to ship this fall. The rest of the Nehalem family -- desktop chips, dual-core, more quad-core and eight-core chips -- are slated to be released over the course of next year. Brookwood noted that the Nehalem chips for the laptop are scheduled to ship in the second half of 2009.
Intel execs showed off the first 8-core Nehalem chip at its Intel Developer Forum in August. A week before the forum, the chipmaker announced that it was naming the new family of chips Intel Core. The first Core chips to hit the market will get the added label of i7, making the full name Intel Core i7.
The Nehalem technology has a new modular architecture, which officials say will make it easier to scale from two to eight cores. The Core chips also are being designed to have two-way, simultaneous multithreading, use Intel's QuickPath interconnect, and have a three-level cache hierarchy.

GMail gets auto-replies

This is probably more useful than GMail's last experimental new feature (Mail Goggles): Canned responses (see Official GMail blog). You can now save a reply you're writing as a "canned response" and then quickly select one of these responses when you're replying to a future e-mail.

You can also have your GMail filters auto-reply to messages for you with these reponses. I quickly set up a filter, for example, to reply to people who send me an e-mail with "pitch" in the subject line with a message asking them to reach me on my work account.

The canned response feature is useful and nicely done. If you often have to send people the same (or close to same) e-mail, you'll find it useful. The auto-reply filter is a bit more complex and potentially dangerous, although it is useful. To set up an auto-reply, you have to first save the response as you're replying to an email, and you have to make very sure that your filters aren't going to get you in to trouble by sending out your message to the wrong people. Fortunately, GMail lets you pre-run your filter on your exisitng inbox to show who which messages would be swept up in your filter if it was already running.

If you use GMail to handle work-related e-mail with a lot of typical queries, it's worth trying.To turn on the Canned Responses feature go to Settings Labs. To use the auto-reply feature go to Settings Features.

Windows 7 as an improved version of Windows Vista - Steve Ballmer

Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer characterized Windows 7 as an improved version of Windows Vista this week, prompting the question of why consumers and businesses should adopt Microsoft's current operating system.

Speaking to a Gartner-sponsored conference in Florida on Thursday, Ballmer was asked what would make consumers and businesses buy Vista. The interview, held between Ballmer and Gartner analysts Neal MacDonald and David Smith, was published on the Gartner Web site.

Specifically, Ballmer was asked how Microsoft would sell users on an updated release without in some way breaking from current Vista operating system.

Ballmer responded that Windows 7 was more than just a minor release.

"It's a lot more work than minor release," Ballmer said. "It turns out you can do a lot more than a minor release in what essentially is a 2.5-year period of time. There's no reason to just do a, quote, a minor release, in 2.5 years.

"It's a release that I think will do a lot what people will want to do on performance, cleanup in very nice ways on the UI," Ballmer added. "We're going to pioneer some of things in the way touch and multitouch is used in the user interface. We've improved what people call the shell the basic tools users have to manage programs and applications…It's a real release."

Ballmer acknowledged that the company had made some breaks with compatibility to implement new security features with Windows Vista, that were "not without some controversy". "I think we made a wise call, but I realize it was a call that was not painless for the customers," Ballmer said.

According to Gartner, just 10 percent of enterprises have adopted Vista; Ballmer, however, said that 180 million users use the operating system. Moreover, he claimed that the adoption rate of Vista is higher, or faster, than the adoption rate of Windows XP after the first two years of its life. Moreover, there is a higher rate of adoption both in the enterprise and in consumer desktops, he claimed.

Ballmer seemed to acknowledge that Windows 7 was just an improved version of Vista.
Source : Read more

WiMax technology - Telecom companies gearing up to launch

NEW DELHI: Telecommunication companies are gearing up to launch the WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) technology in India in a big way. The potential of this technology that allows wireless transmission of data using a variety of transmission modes is huge as the Indian wireless broadband market is estimated to touch Rs. 52,000 crore by 2012.

“The Indian WiMAX market including devices will be worth $13 billion (Rs.52,000 crore) in 2012. This market projection takes into account 2.75 crore WiMAX users, or 1.9 crore WiMAX subscribers in 2012,” C. S. Rao, Chairman of WiMAX Forum’s India Chapter told The Hindu. The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organisation formed to certify and promote the technology.

Stating that all big global WiMAX players, including Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Huawei, Samsung, all are setting up shop in India, Mr. Rao said the projected market included broadband wireless products as well as services. “Soon we will see WiMAX embedded notebook and other gadgets flooding the Indian market. The Government has already announced its rollout by this year-end; and within a year, the entire country is likely to be covered,” he added. In India, WiMAX represents a win-win proposition, benefiting network operators and subscribers at the same time. Broadband penetration being low, the opportunity for operators to gain large numbers of subscribers through WiMAX is incredible. Any service provider with innovative service offerings, attractive devices and go-to-market plans that maximise the utility offered by WiMAX technology to price-sensitive Indian customers can use this ready and proven technology to quickly gain market share,” Mr. Rao explained.

According to Mr. Rao, with the recent regulatory decisions, India has now joined other major developed nations like the U.S. and Japan, besides Korea, Taiwan and Russia in freeing up prime spectrum for mobile WiMAX deployments, which would proliferate the use of this technology. “The major rollouts of WiMAX technology in India will have a tremendous positive effect on the economy as it will greatly increase economic productivity by laying the groundwork for important initiatives, such as distance learning, telemedicine and e-governance,” he added.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said a Web search advertising deal with Yahoo makes economic sense

Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said a Web search advertising deal with Yahoo Inc makes economic sense and may still be possible, though the two sides are not in any discussions.

Shares of Yahoo jumped 12 percent on the news, as investors hoped Ballmer's comments could lead to the two sides returning to the negotiating table. The share gains were pared back to about 10 percent after Microsoft issued a statement saying it had no interest in buying Yahoo.

Talks between Microsoft and Yahoo broke off in July after the Web company rejected Microsoft's proposal to buy its search business and enact a revenue-sharing partnership.

Yahoo had also rejected a full acquisition bid from Microsoft in May that was priced at $33 per share. Instead, Yahoo signed a search advertising pact with Web leader Google Inc, which is being scrutinized by regulators.
Source Read more

"Perhaps there will continue to remain opportunities to partner around search," Ballmer told a Gartner Inc conference in Orlando, Florida.

"We are not in any discussions with them. We'll see. They want to remain independent. There are probably still opportunities around search. I think it would still make sense economically for their shareholders and ours."

New iMacs in next couple weeks

Never a dull moment, or even a lull, when it comes to Apple upgrade news. On the heels of last week's announcements about the company's new MacBook lineup, there's now buzz about new iMacs that could be out in time for the holidays.
(Credit: Apple)

Apple Insider kicked off the latest round of speculation with a report Friday that Apple is expected to refresh its 20- and 24-inch iMacs "in the coming weeks," entering the shopping season with "one of its strongest product portfolios ever."

As for details, there aren't many. Apple Insider and others expect a move to Intel's Centrino 2 platform. A bigger mystery is whether the next iMac refresh will include Nvidia chips like the new MacBooks have.

Despite the build-up, an iMac upgrade could take place with little fanfare, as it did last time around.

Adobe stands off rivals with Flash Player 10

On Wednesday, Adobe Systems announced the release of a major update to its Flash technology to endow Web sites with better video, audio, and graphics. The new version 10 was code-named Astro, and it arrived just days after Microsoft released version 2.0 of its rival Silverlight software.

Flash Player 10, a free download also available for Windows and Mac users from Download.com, includes a number of new features:

• Easier-to-use 3D graphics effects.

• Better text handling for more sophisticated layouts combining words and graphics, more refined typography, and better multilingual applications.

• Better sound handling, so that different audio signals can be mixed together--for example, a music sound track with a game's audio effects.

• High-performance visual effects using technology called Pixel Bender that also works with After Effects CS4 and Photoshop CS4.

Google's second quarter, the company missed expectations for profit

In Google's second quarter, the company missed expectations for profit and issued a more cautious assessment of the online advertising market, sending the stock down to $478 or so. With the current economic pessimism, that price looks downright giddy: Google's stock closed at $353.02 a share on Thursday, and Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal pointed out that a full third of Google's employees have nothing but valueless "underwater" stock options that have greatly diminished incentive value.
"We had a good third quarter with strong traffic and revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business. The measurability and return on investment of search-based advertising remain key assets for Google," said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in a statement. "While we are realistic about the poor state of the global economy, we will continue to manage Google for the long term, driving improvements to search and ads, while also investing in future growth areas such as enterprise, mobile, and display."
Using generally accepted accounting principles, net income increased from $1.07 billion in the year-earlier quarter and $1.25 billion in the second quarter to $1.35 billion in the third, the company said.

Google's Android may be a freely available open-source operating system

Android may be a freely available open-source operating system, but Google hasn't shied away from the idea that it hopes to profit by subsidizing its development. And with Google's first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 built by HTC, nigh upon us, it's becoming clearer exactly how.
Google executives have spoken about Android's indirect benefits: the company wants to use it to accelerate the use and sophistication of mobile Internet browsing. "If the Internet is widely available, that's good for us," co-founder Sergey Brin said.
But judging from my testing of a G1 phone, it appears Google wants a more direct benefit, too: more users of Google's online services. Although there's nothing stopping a G1 owner from using online services from Google rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo, Google technology is built deeply into the G1 and featured prominently as well.
The tie-in to these personal services is telling. Google has trounced its competition when it comes to search, a relatively anonymous act, but it hasn't made as much headway when it comes to more deeply personal uses of its services such as e-mail, photo sharing, and social networking. With Android, Google apparently hopes to establish more of this direct contact with Internet users.
E-mail comes in two tiers on the G1. The upper tier is given to Gmail, which gets its own application; others get relegated to the generic e-mail application. I could connect fine to Yahoo Mail, but lacking a Plus account for free POP access, I couldn't try Microsoft Live e-mail.
Personally, I think the two-tier approach makes sense because Gmail fans (I'm among them) can get accustomed to features not commonly available in ordinary e-mail client software, such as conversation view, the ability to archive and star messages, and sophisticated search abilities. Other e-mail services don't need their own applications.

YouTube launches 'Video Your Vote'

YouTube is urging US voters to shoot video at the polls during the November 4 presidential election and upload it to a new channel on the popular video-sharing site called "Video Your Vote." "Shoot a video of your experience at the polls on Election Day. Document the energy and excitement, as well as any problems you may see," YouTube said in a message today on the website of the new channel, youtube.com/videoyourvote.   YouTube said that the initiative, a partnership with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), was aimed at educating voters while "enabling the world to watch pivotal moments in this historic election as they unfold."   "This program aims to gather massive amounts of polling place video, with the Channel serving as an online library for Election Day footage," YouTube, a Google subsidiary, said in a statement.   "On November 4, the Channel will serve as the premier online destination for up-to-the-minute coverage from voters contributing videos straight from thousands of precincts across the country," it said.   YouTube cautioned, however, that recording video was not allowed at all polling places in the United States.

AMD Spins Into Two Companies to better compete with rival Intel Corp.

After more than a year in the works, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) said Tuesday it will spin off into two companies in a bid to better compete with rival Intel Corp. and ultimately cut costs to reduce its mounting debt.

During a press conference Tuesday morning, AMD said it would split into two, one company that focuses on microprocessor design and the other on the business of manufacturing them.

As part of the split, AMD is launching a new company, dubbed The Foundry Company, a pairing between AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC). The pair will launch a new U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing company in New York. The Foundry Company, which also includes a massive investment from Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development Co., will address the growing demand for independent foundry production capabilities, AMD said.

AMD said Mubadala will invest $314 million, more than doubling its current stake in AMD, reaching 19.3 percent from 8.1 percent.

ATIC, also based in Abu Dhabi, will invest $2.1 billion, assuming $1.2 billion of AMD's current debt, for a stake in Foundry. ATIC also expects to invest between $3.6 billion and $6 billion to the Foundry Company over the next five years to help AMD, the world's No. 2 chip maker, expand its capacity beyond the manufacturing facilities AMD initially contributes to the Foundry Company. The funds will be used by the Foundry Company to expand capacity at its fabs in Dresden, Germany and the construction of the new facility in Saratoga County, N.Y.

AMD said the New York facility will create more than 1,400 direct jobs and generate an additional 5,000 jobs in the region. Meyer said the New York facility will be the only independently managed, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing foundry in the U.S.

The Foundry Company's board of directors will be equally divided between representatives of AMD and ATIC, with AMD owning a 44.4 percent stake and ATIC holding the remaining 55.6 percent.

The Foundry Company is expected to launch in 2009, with construction to begin on the new New York facility in the same year. The Foundry Company will also join the IBM joint development alliance, a collaborative group of leading semiconductor companies working on next-generation silicon technologies, for both silicon-on-insulator and bulk silicon through the 22nm generation.

AMD To Launch 45nm Chips Ahead Of Schedule

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday confirmed that its first 45-nanometer processors are in production and will be on shelves before the end of the year. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker will first roll out 45nm, 75-watt server parts, code named Shanghai, and follow up with 55W and 105W chips in the first quarter of 2009, said AMD's new Server and Workstation Division GM Pat Patla.

Patla recently replaced former server chief Randy Allen, who was promoted in May to head up AMD's Computing Solutions Group in a major executive reshuffle that presaged Dirk Meyer's replacement of Hector Ruiz as CEO in July.

AMD's quad-core Shanghai processors are achieving 35 percent increases in both power efficiency and performance in clock-for-clock competition over the chip maker's current 65nm generation of quad-core server chips formerly code named Barcelona, Patla said in a press briefing held Tuesday in San Francisco.

The server chief said AMD had reviewed its engineering processes ahead of the Shanghai validation process in an effort to avoid silicon glitches like the TLB errata that slowed the ramp of its Barcelona and Phenom chips in the first half of 2008.

WD Launches New 500 GB Portable Drives - Priced between Rs 9,000 to Rs 11,000

Western Digital has launched a range of My Passport 500 GB portable USB drives. The new 500 GB capacity is offered on its Elite and Essential portable drive models.

Weighing less than 7 ounces, the portable drives are small enough to fit in a pocket or backpack for easy portability. They are powered with an USB-bus that eliminates the need for an external power adapter. They also have synchronization software that lets users sync their changes and protect their information with 128-bit encryption. The plug-and-play capability with gaming consoles makes it easier to play music and view photos and videos on TV. The drives are available in bronze, titanium, westminster blue and cherry red color.

Priced between Rs 9,000 to Rs 11,000, the drives come with 5-year limited warranty and are available with authorized distributors of Western Digital.

Microsoft is extending again the time period for which PC makers can use 'downgrade rights'

Microsoft is extending again the time period for which PC makers can use 'downgrade rights' to switch from Windows Vista to Windows XP on their machines.

In the face of demand for continued access to Windows XP and dissatisfaction with Vista, Microsoft has moved out the time frame for downgrade rights to XP from Jan. 31 2009 to July 31, 2009, The Register reported last week.

"Downgrade rights do not expire," a Microsoft spokesman confirmed Monday. "As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible. Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment."

Microsoft elaborated on its intentions in a statement to Mary Jo Foley's "All about Microsoft" blog, saying: "What's changing is Microsoft is giving six more months where it will provide downgrade media for XP Professional for OEMs and system builders to provide to their customers who purchase Windows Vista Ultimate and Business editions " (which the company figures will be) largely going to be small businesses since that's the audience that would want/use XP Pro. So it's the same old downgrade right thing that was in the EULA (End User License Agreement) before; it's just Microsoft is providing the media to partners a few months more.
Source : http://www.crn.in/Software-007Oct008-Microsft-Extends-Windows-XP-Life-By-Another-Six-Months.aspx

Google Competitor Uses Google Tech To Take Email Offline

Cloud service provider Zoho announced that its e-mail service is exiting private beta today and is now publicly available. Interestingly, Zoho uses Google own Gears technology to take Zoho Mail offline.
Zoho has been providing cloud-based productivity tools for quite some time, and, like Google, lets people access applications such as document creators and spreadsheets from any Web-enabled PC. Zoho had been holding back on offering a real competitor to Google's GMail, however.
Today, that changes. Zoho Mail debuted, and Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, said, "Zoho Mail is an important application for Zoho as it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of our productivity, collaboration, and business applications. For an application like Mail, offline and mobile support are key. We wanted to offer these features right out of the gate."
Zoho Mail offers hierarchical folders and labels, serial and conversational e-mail listings, unlimited storage, Zoho chat, Zoho productivity suite, and Zoho Business.

Source : Information Week

The Next Windows Has An Official Name

For several months, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has referred to its Vista successor as "Windows 7." Most of us naturally thought that name was a placeholder for a moniker that would be crafted through deep thought in the marketing department and several months of focus groups. Well, throw all that away. The next version of Windows will be called Windows 7.
Microsoft VP Mike Nash announced the new (old? same?) name in the Windows 7 blog today and reiterated that the kimono on Windows 7 would be opening wider during the Windows Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, to be held in just a few weeks in Los Angeles.
Although Windows 7 is not an exciting name, it does avoid the problem of being associated with a particular release year. It also avoids the difficulty of picking a name that can appeal to consumers, small businesses, and corporations. No doubt we'll still see "editions" of Windows 7 tailored to appeal to all of those groups, but the main name won't turn off any of them. Perhaps the bland name signals that Microsoft intends to focus on features, functionality, and performance, which would be a very good thing.

Source:Information Week

GeoEye Starts New Earth Photo Album With High-Resolution Pics

Some five weeks after its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, GeoEye-1, the satellite developed by aerial and geospatial information provider GeoEye, has signaled back to Earth.

GeoEye-1 snapped the first location the satellite saw when the camera door was opened -- Kutztown University, located midway between Reading and Allentown, Penn. Viewed online, the image shows sharper detail than is typical of satellite work: The shot was collected at 0.41-meter ground resolution.

Academic buildings, parking lots, roads, athletic fields and the track-and-field facility were captured in the image. It was collected at 12:00 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7, 2008, while GeoEye-1 was moving north to south in a 423-mile-high orbit over the eastern seaboard, traveling 4.5 miles per second.

Microsoft to announce Silverlight 2.0 on Monday its rival to Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft has scheduled a conference call on Monday to announce, among other things, that it has completed version 2.0 of Silverlight, its rival to Adobe's Flash.


The software maker has scheduled a conference call for 9 a.m. PDT with developer division executive Scott Guthrie.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the impending announcement, but a source told CNET News that the completion of Silverlight 2.0 is among the topics of discussion. Microsoft released Beta 2 of the software in June, while a "release candidate" version was offered up last month.

New Features in GMail

Gmail Labs today released an interesting feature to prevent you from sending mails that may you may regret later. It does so by asking you to confirm whether you really want to send that email.   Also see: All Gmail Users Have Two Email Addresses   So if you're writing a mail late on a Friday night, when you may not be as sober as you would like yourself to be, you can get GMail to ask you a few math problems before the message leave your Gmail outbox.

Seagate - A new technology for HardDisk

The largest hard-disk drive maker is going solid-state. Slowly.   Seagate will enter the market for solid-state drives in 2009, as it slowly embraces a technology that will, in some cases, replace its bread and butter: hard disks.   "Our history is based on rotating magnetic media. But as solid-state comes online, we're embracing this new media type," said Rich Vignes, senior manager of market development at the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company.   Seagate's first target market will be large enterprise customers. Consumer SSDs from Seagate will come later. The challenge is to convince large enterprise customers that SSDs are safe. Although hard-disk drives have endurance problems of their own, corporate customers must be convinced that a technology as new as solid-state storage is reliable.   "There isn't really a clear way of describing endurance or life expectancy of a solid-state drive. So, we're working on that as an industry standard," through JEDEC, a large standard body, Vignes said. Source: Read More

Is this a cold war : iPhone 2.2 getting Google's Street View

Maybe iPhone users won't have to covet one of those shiny new features in Google's Android operating system after all: Google Maps Street View.   The driver's-eye view is a prominent part of the first Android phone, T-Mobile's G1, which goes on sale October 22. But according to Mac Rumors on Monday, Apple has snuck Street View into the iPhone 2.2 firmware beta release.   Other new features described in the report include the ability to disable the typing autocorrect feature and the inclusion of 461 small icons called Japanese emoji characters. Source : CNet

Wait until October 22 or later to get an Android phone

Most of us will have to wait until October 22--or later, given that T-Mobile sold out--but if you have the right connections, you can get an Android phone now.   Google co-founder Larry Page flashed his Android phone briefly in a meeting two weeks ago with reporters, but they're trickling farther down the ranks at the Internet giant, too.   I snapped this shot of one Google employee surfing CNN.com with his Android phone while waiting for his chief executive, Eric Schimdt, to talk about energy at a San Francisco speech last week. Source : CNet

Third Google co-founder - Hubert Chang - Cant Accept Now .....

The whole world cant accept this.... Hubert Chang may not be a name familiar to you but if his claims are true, then hold your breath: Google has three co-founders and not two. In a video message posted in Vimeo.com, a video-centric social networking site, Hubert Chang claims he is one of the co-founders of Google, alongside Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Chang said he helped Page and Brin come up with the name Google way back in 1997 and even helped them set up the PageRank, Google's business model. However, instead of jumping into the new venture, Chang said he chose to pursue his Ph.D. at New York University (NYU). Chang claims that in 2002 he got in touch with Page and Brin and told them of his interest in getting involved with Google. However, he said, he was rejected . Chang said he is aware that many people would think of him as insane or a gold-digger or as someone who wants his two seconds of fame. "After viewing this tape, some people might think I'm lying, some might think I'm crazy, some might be upset, while others will consider I'm honest. But the tape has to be made,"   In the video Change recalls how he was introduced to Page and Brin by Stanford computer science professor Rajeev Motwani in January 1997 and how the three of them began to work together on the search engine that would grow to become an Internet search giant in the modern world. Today, Google Inc. has a market capitalization of $138 billion and Page and Brin are worth $16 billion each, according to Forbes.   Hubert Chang's video was uploaded way back in 2007 but has begun circulating tech sites recently in a big way after Google turned 10.   Chang's claim, however, has been discredited by the Stanford professor himself. "To the best of my knowledge, his (Chang's) claims about being a founder of Google, coming up with the name and/or the business plan etc, are completely unfounded in reality. I am sure I would have noticed a third founder, if one existed, since I was working closely with Larry and Sergey at Stanford at the time," Prof. Motwani said.   Source

Theater View for Google's YouTube

This concept is very intresting who are intrested in special efficets. This feature will make the background dark and enable the user viewing in a Theater.
Google Blogoscoped has unearthed a new YouTube feature that's pretty neat. Called "theater view," when clicked it both darkens the screen and increases the size of the player, centering it on the page and adding red curtains. For a leaned back viewing experience it's certainly not as useful as hitting the full-screen button, but I'd consider it a nice alternative--especially if you don't want to watch larger version of a grainy video just to cut out distracting page elements.

Firefox - understand and use geographic information on the Web

Firefox planning to release a plugin called Geode , which can understand the Geographic location and some of the details associated with that place .
Geode details at this stage remain sketchy, but here's the example used in the alert about the project: "With Geode, a user who is looking for restaurants while they are out of town will be able load up their favorite review site and find suggestions a couple blocks away and plot directions there."
Geotagging most commonly refers to photos with geographic data stored within the file, but there are plenty of other cases, too. Many Wikipedia entries have geographic information encoded, and YouTube users also can geotag their videos.

Bailout bill loops in green tech, IRS snooping

Bailout type Cost to taxpayers (Source: Reuters) Financial bailout package approved this week up to or more than $700 billion Bear Stearns financing $29 billion Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalization $200 billion AIG loan and nationalization $85 billion Federal Housing Administration housing rescue bill $300 billion Mortgage community grants $4 billion JPMorgan Chase repayments $87 billion Loans to banks via Fed's Term Auction Facility $200 billion+ Loans from Depression-era Exchange Stabilization Fund $50 billion Purchases of mortgage securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac $144 billion POSSIBLE TOTAL $1.8 trillion+ NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS PER U.S. CENSUS 105,480,101 POSSIBLE COST PER HOUSEHOLD $17,064+

A bit old news: Amazon Kindle replaces Text books

Excellent high-contrast screen does a great job of simulating a printed page; large library of tens of thousands of e-books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon's familiar online store; built-in free wireless "Whispernet" data network--no PC needed; built-in keyboard for notes; SD card expansion slot; compatible with Windows and Mac machines. The bad: Design is ergonomic, but not very elegant; pricing for nearly all the content seems too high, especially considering the periodicals and blogs are available for free online; black-and-white screen is fine for books, but less impressive for periodicals and Web content; lacks a true Web browser; included cover is clumsy and poorly designed; additional file formats need to be e-mailed to Amazon for conversion; yet another dedicated device you'll need to lug around with you. The bottom line: With its free built-in wireless capabilities and PC-free operation, Amazon's Kindle holds a distinct advantage over Sony's Reader and is a promising evolution of the electronic book--but Amazon needs to bring down the pricing for both the device and the content to attract a wider audience. Video : http://reviews.cnet.com/e-book-readers/amazon-kindle/4505-3508_7-32751890.html

Apple Drops iPhone 2.0 NDA, Developers Rejoice

After putting up a wall protecting its iPhone technology, Apple instead started a war with developers -- but now the company is waiving the white flag.   In an effort to stop its technology and innovation from being stolen, Apple placed a non-disclosure agreement for its developers working on applications for the iPhone that went along with its iPhone OS 2.O before it was officially released. Apple has filed for hundreds of patents on the iPhone technology and said it thought the NDA would add another layer of protection. So the company kept the NDA with the release of iPhone 2.0.   Wrong. Instead it made developers question Apple's control of communication between developers and made many developers angry.   In about a week developers will receive an agreement without the attached NDA, according to the company, but unreleased software and features will continue under the NDA until they are released. Source : Yahoo!

Yahoo is contemplating another round of layoffs

Yahoo is contemplating another round of layoffs, according to a report in Silicon Alley Insider. Any carnage count would likely be less than 20 percent of the workforce, SIA notes, citing people familiar with the company's financial health. According to the report:       While our Henry Blodget has called on Yahoo to can 3,018 people (that's more than 20 percent of the workforce), the odds that Yahoo will make cuts on that scale are very low, we're told by people familiar with the company's thinking. But we're also told that another round of layoffs are indeed on the drawing board, prompted by a grim financial forecast. Yahoo plans to report its third-quarter results on October 21.   Yahoo's stock is already under great pressure, closing Thursday at $15.58 a share, down 8.14 percent over the previous day's close and dropping to a level that hasn't been seen since August 2003.   While the broader markets were also down on Thursday, Yahoo's descent was particularly steeper toward the last hour of trading.   Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the congressional subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, sent a letter Thursday to the head of the antitrust division for the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting a close examination of the controversial Google-Yahoo search advertising partnership be undertaken.   Kohl's antitrust committee held a hearing in mid-July to examine the nonexclusive agreement, which calls for Google to place some of its ads on Yahoo search page results. Source  : Cnet

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign launched an iPhone application

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign launched an iPhone application on Thursday that turns the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool. The most notable feature "organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out and make an impact quickly," according to the software. On my phone, the application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California. The application anonymously reports back the number of calls made this way: "Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously." Source

Microsoft still paying people to search ... wowwwwwwww

Microsoft's latest effort to get people to use its search service is something called SearchPerks, which gives people points for using the search engine that can later be redeemed for prizes. Users who agree to download a small program to track their usage get one "ticket" per day for every Live Search query, up to 25 per day. The program runs through April, at which point users can "cash in" the tickets that they get and trade them in for prizes or donate them to a charity.   It's the latest in a series of financial incentive-related projects from Redmond, joining such efforts as Live Search Club, Search and Give, and Live Search Cashback, a program Microsoft introduced in May.   The latest project doesn't just require one to use Microsoft's search engine, however. At least for now, it also requires Microsoft's browser (Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher) as well as a Windows PC. Microsoft said those latter restrictions are not necessarily permanent. "At this time, SearchPerks is a limited promotion, though we remain open to expending availability of the promotion to different browsers and operating systems based on consumer interest," Microsoft said.   There's also the broader question of what it says about Live Search overall that Microsoft has to keep coming up with gimmicks to get people to try it. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft has continued to struggle to make inroads on Google in overall share, promotions notwithstanding. According to figures recently released by ComScore, Google increased its share of the U.S. search market in August--it's at 63 percent--while Yahoo and Microsoft both slipped a bit, to 19.6 percent and 8.3 percent respectively. Source