Social networking site Facebook has closed its Facebook Lite, which was launched in September 2009 and was regarded as an option for people with slow internet connections.
On its official "fan page", Facebook confirms that it's ending the Facebook Lite project - "Thanks to everyone who tried out Facebook Lite. We're no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site. If you used Lite, you'll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site," reads the announcement.
However, there were no further details mentioned on the site's closure. Industry observers believed that Facebook launched the barebone site to attract the users of the popular microblogging site Twitter.
Mumbai police have managed to track down two or three websites that are used to send masked messages and are collaborating with IT experts to get to the bottom of the matter, reports V Narayan from TNN. Two cases on getting rude SMS from a number a person knows, going to police with a complaint and then finding out that the supposed sender is clueless about what happened, have been reported to Mumbai police in the past month.
Though the police officials are yet to track down the sender, they have managed to unearth a bizarre truth, that of the 'masked SMS'. The user has to register on a website (for as little as $10) and can send text messages to and from any mobile number on the planet without being identified. "We have received two complaints in the last one month where the sender's number was camouflaged," said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Maria told TOI.
The masked SMS service is easy to operate. Giving TOI a demo, the IT expert logged on and sent this reporter an SMS from his colleague's number with utmost ease. Of course, the friend had no record of the said message in his outbox. Senior Nasscom officials say these websites can be blocked but it's a long process.
IT industry sources said, "It's rare for the real miscreant to be caught in such a situation because people might register under false identities and also commit credit card fraud to pay the small registration fee," says IT expert Vijay Mukhi. If caught, can the culprit be charged under our laws? "Yes," says Mukhi. "Section 66 A of the IT Act talks about sending offensive messages using any communication device, Section 66 C is the identity theft section and Section 66 D the cheating by impersonation section." A pornographic message will be charged under Section 66 E, while Section 66 F is quoted in the case of cyber terrorism.
If proved, the offence of identity theft attracts a 3-year jail term plus a cash fine of upto Rs. 1 lakh in India. While there is a misuse of computer act that is invoked in such cases in the U.S., the law in India is still inadequate to handle such innovative mobile spoofing. "Based on our findings we will decide what action should be taken against these websites. If need be, we could pull them down as well," he added.
Commenting on the action plan for this matter, Mukhi says, "Not immediately. As of now, one just has to be careful and cross-check the credibility of a message before filing a complaint." He added that the need of the hour is to spread awareness about the problem. "Time was when wi-fi was misused but we've managed to tackle that. Camouflaging is a dangerous issue and must be dealt with seriously and immediately."
Facebook has surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States, according to industry tracker Hitwise. The important milestone, as described by Hitwise Director of Research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 percent increase in visits in the week ending March 13, compared to the same week in 2009, reports Economic Times.
Visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine percent in the same week. However, the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.
Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.
Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.
To help users in getting content from television and the web, Google and U.S. satellite TV operator Dish Network are testing a television programming search service.
The report published in The Wall Street Journal said that the service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite TV service as well as video from websites like YouTube. It also allows users to personalize the line-up of shows.
With this step, Google e3ntered into a group of companies, which have been trying for years to marry the web and TV and their business models - from rivals Microsoft and Apple to the makers of TV and set-top boxes.
Besides Dish Network, Google is also in touch with a range of other television service providers and hardware makers, prodding them to use its Android-based technologies to offer a broader range of programming, a more personal experience and ads.
The hackers behind the attacks on Google Inc and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said on Wednesday.
The hackers targeted a small number of employees who controlled source code management systems, which handle the myriad changes that developers make as they write software, said George Kurtz, chief technology officer at anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.
The details from McAfee show how the breach of just a single PC at a large corporation can have widespread repercussions across the broader business.
Google said in January that it had detected a cyber attack originating from China on its corporate infrastructure that resulted in the theft of its intellectual property. Google said more than 20 other companies had been infiltrated, and cited the attack, as well as Chinese Web censorship practices, as reasons for the company to consider pulling out of China.
The Chinese government has said that Google's claim that it was attacked by hackers based in China was "groundless."
Kurtz said on Wednesday that he believes that the hackers, who have not been apprehended, broke through the defenses of at least 30 companies, and perhaps as many as 100.
He said the common link in several of the cases that McAfee reviewed is that the hackers used source code management software from privately held Perforce Software Inc, whose customers include Google and many other large corporations.
"It is very easy to compromise the systems," Kurtz said.
Perforce President Christopher Seiwald said McAfee performed its analysis on a version of the Alameda, California-based company's software that had many of its security settings disabled. Customers typically enable those settings, he said.
Kurtz said the hackers succeeded in stealing source code from several of their victims.
The attackers also had an opportunity to change the source code without the companies' knowledge, perhaps adding functions so the hackers could later secretly spy on computers running that software, Kurtz said.
But investigators have yet to uncover any evidence that suggests that they made such changes, he said.
McAfee, the world's No. 2 security software maker, has spent the past few months investigating the attacks. It declined to identify its clients.
Other makers of source code management programs include International Business Machines Corp, Microsoft Corp and privately held Serena Software Inc.
With an aim of keeping the user connected forever, Olive Telecommunications launched country's first hybrid dual powered handset that works on AAA batteries named as Olive FrvrOn.
While using if the lithium Ion power runs out, the user can shift to the replaceable AAA battery in the phone. Launched at a price of Rs.1699, FrvrOn has 1.5-inch color display, stereo handset and speaker phone. Other features of the phone include FM radio, polyphonic ring tones.
Skype and Nokia today jointly announced the release of Skype for Symbian, a Skype client for Nokia smartphones based on the Symbian platform. Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users worldwide to use Skype on the move, over either a WiFi or mobile data connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G). It is now downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, Nokia's one-stop shop for mobile content.
Jo Harlow, Senior Vice President for Smartphones, Nokia said, "Symbian enables us to bring smartphones to more and more people and ensures scale for our solutions and compelling services, such as Skype. We're seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day on Ovi Store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones will have wide appeal to Symbian users."
Skype for Symbian enables Nokia smartphone users to:
- Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world*
- Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad.
- Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
- Share pictures, videos and other files.
- Receive calls to their existing online number
- See when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM
- Easily import names and numbers from the phone's address book
Russ Shaw, General Manager, Mobile at Skype said, "With Skype for Nokia smartphones, more than 200 million smartphone users worldwide, will be able to take the Skype features they love with them on the move. Alongside Skype's relationships with operators and handset manufacturers worldwide, making Skype available direct to consumers will help millions of users keep in contact with the people that are important to them without worrying about the cost, distance or whether they are away from a computer."
The initial Skype for Symbian application is compatible with the following Nokia touchscreen models: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 5320
Microsoft seeking to regain its footing in the fiercely competitive mobile market is expected to unveil a new smartphone platform at the industry’s biggest trade show. The US software giant has remained tight-lipped about what CEO Steve Ballmer will announce at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but analysts widely believe he will reveal an upgrade of the Windows operating system.
Microsoft has been up against strong competition from telecommunications giant Nokia’s Symbian platform and internet giant Google’s Android. “They do seem to have been pushed on to the backfoot with the Android which seems to have caught them on hoof,” said Jeremy Green, mobile analyst at research firm Ovum.
Google plans to build a fibre optic broadband network that will connect customers to the internet at speeds 100 times faster than most existing broadband connections in the US, the company announced on its corporate blog.
"Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make internet access better and faster for everyone," two Google product managers, Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, wrote in the blog post Wednesday.
They said that Google plans to build and test the network in trial communities around the country starting later this year and that the tests could encompass as many as 500,000 people. They cited 3-dimensional medical imaging and quick, high-definition film downloads among the applications of such high-speed internet access.
"We'll deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fibre-to-the-home connections," the post said. "We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people."
"We're doing this because we want to make the web better and faster to everyone," said Kelly, who also promised that the network would operate on open access network, in which users could choose various internet providers and which would not give preference to any one kind of content. Kelly appealed to local officials who were interested in having their community participate in the trial to contact the internet giant.
The announcement continued Google's recent initiative to expand into market sectors beyond its core web search speciality. In the last year it has made a splash in the mobile phone market with its Android operating system and Nexus One handset, and Tuesday announced a social networking feature aimed at taking on Facebook and Twitter.
While broadband industry incumbents may fear the entry by Google, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski welcomed the move, the Washington Post reported.
"Big broadband creates big opportunities," he said in a statement. "This significant trial will provide an American testbed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed internet apps, devices and services."
Google Inc took the wraps off the first of its smartphones on Tuesday, a device with speech recognition that it hopes can take on Apple's iPhone over time and help shore up the company's dominance in Internet advertising.
Analysts say the phone -- to be sold directly to consumers -- is not expected to dramatically alter the carrier-hardware vendor relationship the industry relies on, nor is it likely to yield a revenue windfall in the short term, though executives said it could be profitable.
Google plans to use what it calls a "superphone" -- the first of many types of smartphones that it will make -- to expand its reach from the PC to the mobile world and ensure its online products and ads get prominent placement on a new breed of wireless Internet devices.
The highly anticipated Nexus One, which marks the first time the 11-year-old Internet search titan has designed and sold its own consumer hardware device, could provide Google with a viable challenge to the iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry.
It "wasn't the game-changer people thought it could be," Canaccord Adams analyst Jeff Rath said. Google could have shaken up the industry by offering the device for free, but instead chose more traditional pricing, he said.
Rath added that though his early impression was that the Nexus One was a good phone, it was unclear how much better it was than Motorola's Droid, released last year and that also runs on Google's Android operating system platform.
"It's very close to the Droid, some people will debate whether it's better. But it looks like an incremental improvement rather than a blow-the-doors-off improvement," Rath said.
The Nexus One, which was garnering favorable first reviews on tech Websites and forums on Tuesday, ships immediately from Google's online store for $179 with a two-year contract from Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA, or $529 without a service plan.
Executives said the phone will be carried on Verizon Wireless's network in the United States, and eventually on Vodafone's in Europe. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Vodafone and Verizon Communications.
WAIT AND SEE
Investors are taking a wait-and-see view on Google's first effort to sell a hardware product directly to consumers.
Google's stock has risen about 7 percent since the start of December, setting a 52-week high of $629.51 on Monday. But analysts say that was driven by improvements in its core business of Internet search advertising, rather than the prospect of tapping a new pool of revenue selling smartphones.
Its shares closed 0.44 percent down at $623.99.
The Nexus One phone comes a little more than two years after Google jumped into the mobile market with the announcement it was developing a free smartphone operating system. Google's Android software is currently available on more than 20 phones from vendors including Motorola and Samsung Electronics.
It pits Google -- the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, with annual revenue of about $22 billion in 2008 -- against a variety of more experienced players in the increasingly crowded smartphone market, including Palm Inc and Nokia.
Some analysts were positive on Google's effort to continue to establish the Android as a popular operating system for smartphones and wireless devices.
"It will help them keep consistency for Android platform," said Jim McGregor, Chief Technology Strategist for In-Stat.
The new phone helps Google "get their partners all on developing a single platform that applications can be developed on."
Motorola, which is banking on the Android system to power a new generation of smartphones to revitalize a flagging business, said on Tuesday it welcomed the competition. Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha told Google's audience he did not see the Nexus One as a threat, but as an expansion of the market.
Google worked closely with HTC to develop its phone, which uses a 1 gigahertz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm Inc. The Nexus One is 11.5 millimeters thick and weighs 130 grams -- which executives said was lighter than a Swiss Army knife and no thicker than a No. 2 pencil.
The phone will feature a 3.7-inch (9.4 centimeter) touchscreen display. It will run the 2.1 version of the Android operating system and feature OLED display technology, a trackball for user interface control, an accelerometer chip, and a 5 megapixel camera.
US Version
Indian Version
Chinese Version
This is Serious !
After the Chinese demands for Arunachal Pradesh, Google now has started FOOLING Indians, as well !
Google shows a different maps for the US, Indians and Chinese !!
In the Indian Version, it shows Arunachal Pradesh as Integral Part of India …....
In the US Version, it shows Arunachal Pradesh as a Disputed region…
In the Chinese Version, it is not even part of India…........................
INCIDENTALLY THE SAME APPLIES TO JAMMU & KASHMIR TOO !!! HAVE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF !!
BSNL has become the first operator in India to launch wireless broadband service. It has launched this service in rural areas with a tariff of Rs. 140 per month, according to PTI.
BSNL wireless broadband services, using WiMAX technology, was launched by Minister of State Sachin Pilot from his constituency Ajmer. The service was launched at a function in Pisangan Telephone Exchange in Ajmer district.
"This unique technology has been deployed for the first time in our country. Through this BSNL will usher in a new era of growth in rural areas. This technology offers broadband speed of 7 Mbps at a distance of 15kms," said Pilot.
The high speed wireless broadband connectivity will offer video conferencing, enabling tele-medicine and tele-education, besides providing other services like payment of utility bills, issue of birth certificates, land records and vehicle registration.
The minister further said that this project will be associated with all the 'common service centres' in rural areas, which are associated with e-Governance projects started by the state governments. In the first phase, BSNL would cover 1000 block headquarters across the country and the remaining block headquarters will be connected through 50,000 common service centres in next phase.
The rural common service centres are part of the Bharat Nirman Programme of the UPA government.
The high speed wireless broadband connectivity will offer video conferencing, enabling tele-medicine and tele-education, besides providing other services like payment of utility bills, issue of birth certificates, land records and vehicle registration.
The minister further said that this project will be associated with all the 'common service centres' in rural areas, which are associated with e-Governance projects started by the state governments. In the first phase, BSNL would cover 1000 block headquarters across the country and the remaining block headquarters will be connected through 50,000 common service centres in next phase.
The rural common service centres are part of the Bharat Nirman Programme of the UPA government.
Mozilla drops Google as default search engine, picks Bing
by Mohit Jain | 11:16 PM in | comments (0)
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's Director of community development, has suggested Firefox users to add Microsoft's Bing to the list of the browser's search engines after Google's CEO downplayed consumers' privacy concerns.
Citing a clip from a CNBC broadcast last Friday, during which Google chief executive Eric Schmidt discussed online privacy, Dotzler provided a link to the Firefox extension that adds Bing to Firefox's search engine list. "Here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing," said Dotzler in an entry on his personal blog today. The link he included leads to the Bing search add-on, according to Computer World.
During the interview, Schmidt was asked: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend...should they be?" It was Schmidt's answer that motivated Dotzler to show users how to drop Google, Firefox's default search engine, for rival Bing. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt told CNBC. "If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities," added Schmidt.
Dotzler fumed over Schmidt's comments on privacy. "That was Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, telling you exactly what he thinks about your privacy," said Dotzler on his blog. "There is no ambiguity, no 'out of context' here." Dotzler added that he considers Bing's privacy policy better than Google's.
Dotzler is a 10-year-veteran of Mozilla. What made Dotzler's touting of Bing interesting is that Mozilla, which has a multi-year deal with Google that ends in 2011, derives the vast bulk of its revenue from the arrangement, which sets Google's search as the default in the browser and shunts some revenues from ads that Firefox users click on to Mozilla.
According to Mozilla's most-recently-released financial statement, 97 percent of its revenues came from deals it has with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others. The lion's share of its search engine-based income, however, originated from Google.
Below are some frequently used short forms in business communication like e-mails, faxes and letters:
a.k.a . - also known as
On Monday morning, Kay El, a.k.a. The Boss, walked in happily and greeted her assistant, Pee Jay.
approx. - approximately
Checking her e-mail, Pee Jay read, "Today is the boss's birthday. Can everyone please slip off quietly to the cafeteria in approx.. 15 minutes?"
ASAP - as soon as possible
Pee Jay opened up her daily planner and scribbled ASAP next to some of the urgent items on her to-do list.
Attn . - for the attention of
Leafing through the stack of mail to be sent out, Pee Jay asked her boss, "To whom should I address the cheque for the annual report?"
Her boss replied, "Just write 'Attn: Ms. Christine Jalleh'. She'll know what to do with it."
Bcc . - blind carbon copy or blind copy to. In this case, the carbon copy is sent to an e-mail recipient whose e-mail address is not visible to the cc or other bcc recipients.
"By the way, I think it's better if you bcc me in your e-mail to Brown. We wouldn't want him thinking that I'm supervising you for this project."
Cc . - carbon copy, or copy to
"But I would like to be cc-ed on the e-mail to Mr Green as I have not yet introduced the both of you to each other."
c/o - in care of, used when sending a document to A who will receive it on B's behalf because B is away from the office.
"Boss, I think Christine is back in China this week. Would it be all right if I sent the cheque in care of her assistant? I'll still write her name on top with c/o Ah Sis Tern below."
COD - cash on delivery, where a person makes payment for an item purchase after it has been delivered.
"I'm also sending out the cheque for the set of Business English reference books we bought COD on eBay."
e.g . - exempli gratia (for example)
Pee Jay replied to the e-mail, "Hi everyone. Please remember that the boss doesn't like surprises, e.g. everyone shouting 'Surprise!' in the cafeteria."
et al. - et alii (and others). Usually used to list co-authors after the lead author in a bibliography, this form is now popularly used to address the other people other than the recipient in e-mails.
She received a new e-mail, which read, "Dear Pee Jay et al., I was reminded that the boss does NOT like surprises ..."
etc. - et cetera (and so on OR and so forth)
This means that we will not be able to collectively surprise her by springing out of the cafeteria doors as we had planned, etc.
exc. - except
"Can everyone, exc. Pee Jay, be at the cafeteria in 5 minutes? We need to figure out a surprise without the surprise element. Thanks!"
FYI - for your information
Her boss's voice brought the young assistant back to the present, "Pee Jay, I'm forwarding you all these e-mails FYI, okay?"
FYA - for your action
"Note that some of these e-mails are FYA ..."
i.e . - id est (that is)
After acknowledging her supervisor, Pee Jay decided to help her colleagues out and typed, "She's in a good mood today, i.e. we won a new account and completed a major project."
K - thousand, e.g. 450K = 450,000
"Just to give you an idea of her mood, it's a 450K retainer for the first quarter ..."
PA - personal assistant
The immediate reply to Pee Jay's e-mail read, "Thanks for the info, Pee Jay - you're the best PA!"
p.a. - per annum (per year)
Pee Jay smiled and responded, "Haha, there is a reason why I'm paid RM65K p.a."
p.p. - per pro (used when signing a document on someone's behalf)
Looking back at her paperwork, Pee Jay signed some invoices on her boss's behalf, inserting p.p. just before her signature.
Pto. - please turn over, used at the end of a page to indicate that there is a continuity to the text.
"By the way, please remember to type Pto. on the first page of the proposal you're sending. The last time we sent it to him, he forgot to read the subsequent pages," chimed in Kay El.
viz . - videlicet, namely
She got up and left a note on Pee Jay's work station before leaving. Scribbled on it was, "Can I pass you my slice of birthday cake after I cut it? I really don't need a lot of carbo, viz. refined flour, at my age." The note ended with a wink.
Starting today, Google has made some changes to its search engine by "officially" adding support for real-time search results. This new addition comes in the wake of sites like Twitter and Facebook that are updated with posts and tweets, by the second.
The service will be introduced gradually to all Google users and over the next few days, you will be able to see "new" updates that have been posted seconds ago, in Google Search results. The search results will include items from recently updated blogs, news articles and of course tweets and status updates. This is a step up from Google's earlier option where news and articles from only "a few minutes" ago only appeared in search results by default. The new option will work in a way that is similar to Twitter's existing search feature - albeit on a larger and broader scale. Twitter and Facebook, both have confirmed that they have signed a deal with Google to make real time results a reality. Earlier, Twitter had also struck a separate deal with Microsoft to make live updates available in the Bing search engine.
The power of real time search results was observed in emergency situations like the Mumbai Terror attacks last year and during the Obama elections. Real time search results will prove useful during situations when people need updated information constantly, and aggregate them from various sources.
I was recently designing and coding a new website for one of our clients. As always, I was coding it in TextMate and viewing it in Firefox and Safari for testing. I had finally come to the point where I needed to start up Parallels to view the site in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). This is always a difficult time for me, because ten times out of ten IE6 won’t render something correctly. However, this time I was in for something completely different.
The navigation menu wasn’t displaying correctly, and when I hovered the cursor over the menu options, the browser crashed! I’ve had a lot of strange experiences with IE6 over the years, but I’ve never seen it crash with simple HTML and CSS. I wasn’t using any Javascript or embedded media, just HTML and CSS. At first I thought it was a Parallels issue, so I decided to wipe the dust off of our old IBM ThinkPad and give it a whirl. I pulled up the site, hovered over the menu options, and again, IE6 crashed!
Being the curious person I am, I decided to slowly trim and test my code to see what the culprit might be. Eventually, I whittled my way down to just an unordered list and some simple CSS. After a bunch of testing, I narrowed it down to the essential elements that will cause IE6 to crash. Those elements included:
- DocType
- Commonly Used CSS
- Unordered List
JavaScript, graphics performance improvements on tap for IE9
by Mohit Jain | 11:41 PM in | comments (0)
At Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft revealed about what the next version of its browser will bring to the world. The announcement described three main areas of improvement: JavaScript, Web standards, and graphics technology. Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) will contain a new emphasis on performance and graphics, and should make the browser far more competitive with its competitors.
As reported by Ars Technica, IE9 will contain a new, significantly faster JavaScript engine and will have a richer support for Web standards like CSS 3. It will also use the new Direct2D and DirectWrite technology for its graphics and text rendering. Microsoft made the point that different websites place different performance demands on a browser. With IE9, Microsoft intends to not just improve performance in limited benchmarks (that focus on a single aspect of browser performance), but also to ensure that real-world websites become faster. Rendering the webpage in IE8 is performed predominantly on the CPU. Direct2D is a new Windows API that uses hardware Direct3D acceleration to accelerate 2D graphics, available in Windows 7 and as a patch for Windows Vista. Through the use of Direct2D, IE9 will perform all graphics rendering on the GPU, providing quicker page rendering, faster, smoother animation, and high quality image scaling.
JavaScript performance has become an increasingly important concern for Web applications. As Web apps have become more capable and more fully-featured, JavaScript engines have had an ever-greater burden placed on them. Though IE's JavaScript engine has got faster - the widely used SunSpider benchmark takes about half the time to run in IE8 as it does in IE7 - it still lags behind other browsers quite considerably. IE9 is getting a brand-new engine that should take IE's JavaScript performance to the proverbial next level. Technical descriptions of the new engine made it sound quite similar to the V8 engine used in Chrome; the new IE9 JavaScript engine will compile JavaScript into native code, just like in V8, and the technique it will use to speed up the object-oriented nature of JavaScript also sounded similar to the approach V8 takes.
Early results suggest that the current IE9 engine performs in the same ballpark as betas of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. IE is still the slowest, but the difference now ranges from 10 percent slower (compared to Firefox) to 100 percent slower (compared to Chrome), rather than 5-600 percent slower as is presently the case for IE8. The IE team does not want to be trailing any more, and performance is now clearly a big deal.
However, there is considerable demand among developers for new features: CSS 3, HTML 5, SVG, and Canvas. Many of these standards are still themselves in flux, being in the draft stages of development rather than finalized specifications, but many of their features are so compelling (HTML 5's native support for embedded video, CSS 3's rounded corners, Canvas's extensive graphical capabilities) that developers want them right now. At PDC, Microsoft would not commit to supporting any particular features or specifications with IE9. The company did state that its focus would be on providing the features that were actually most useful to developers, and ensuring that those features had robust test suites.
IE9 is still in its early days, and there is no hint of a date at which a beta might become available. Many questions, especially about standards support, remain unanswered. The switch to Direct2D may also mean an end to XP support (Direct2D is unavailable on that OS). Nonetheless, the announcements give a strong indication that Microsoft is taking its browser seriously, and wants it to be a viable alternative to its competitors.
EBay announced that it has completed the sale of its Skype unit, as it had vowed to do before the end of the year. A settlement reached earlier this month over pending litigation involving the web telephone services' founders, eBay and the buyers cleared the way for the sale. Some analysts had worried that the litigation could have derailed the deal.
The deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion, gives eBay approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note in the principal amount of $125 million, eBay said in a statement. EBay, which operates its marketplaces business and also owns Web payment unit PayPal, retains an about 30 percent stake in Skype. As part of a Skype debt financing, eBay purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million, it said.
The buyer of Skype is an investor group that includes private equity firm Silver Lake, Joltid, investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
New Google software will start up a computer as fast as a television, according to Google, as it showed off its Chrome operating system designed for computers that do their work on the Web. "From the time you press boot you want it to be like a TV: You turn it on and you should be on the Web using your applications," said Sundar Pichai, Vice-President of Product Management for Google's Chrome OS.
According to Pichai, those computers running Chrome OS will be able to start in less than seven seconds. Netbooks running Chrome OS will only be able to run Web applications and the user's data will automatically be stored on the Web in the so-called cloud of Internet servers, Google executives said at an event at the company's Mountain View, California headquarters on Thursday.
"It's basically a Web browsing machine," said Altimeter Group Analyst, Charlene Li. Google said that the software will initially be available by the holiday season of 2010 on low-cost netbooks that use memory chips to store data instead of slower hard drives, the current standard.
Google gave the world the first peek at its Chrome OS four months after declaring its intention of developing the PC's main software, a move that pits it directly against Microsoft and Apple. True to Google's Internet-pedigree, the Chrome OS resembles a Web browser more than it does a traditional computer operating system like Microsoft Windows, matching Google's ambition to drive people to the Web, where they can see Google ads. With Chrome, Google is seeking to challenge the dominance of Microsoft's Windows, which runs on nine out of 10 personal computers.
Google said it is giving away the software for free, similar to its Android smartphone software, with the idea that improving the Web experience will ultimately benefit its Internet search advertising business, which generated roughly $22 billion in revenue in 2008.
Google made the computer code for the Chrome OS available to outside developers on Thursday, allowing developers to tinker with the software and potentially design new applications to run alongside it. But, the company said Chrome at least initially will not be able to run on just any PC, and executives said they expected that most consumers would get the operating system when they buy a specially-designed netbook.
Google said that all data in Chrome will automatically be housed in the so-called cloud, or on external servers and also cached on the computer's internal hardware to boost performance. It also said that the Chrome applications, which are used for such everyday tasks such as word processing and email, will be Web-based.
"It's basically a Web browsing machine," said Altimeter Group Analyst, Charlene Li. Google said that the software will initially be available by the holiday season of 2010 on low-cost netbooks that use memory chips to store data instead of slower hard drives, the current standard.
Google gave the world the first peek at its Chrome OS four months after declaring its intention of developing the PC's main software, a move that pits it directly against Microsoft and Apple. True to Google's Internet-pedigree, the Chrome OS resembles a Web browser more than it does a traditional computer operating system like Microsoft Windows, matching Google's ambition to drive people to the Web, where they can see Google ads. With Chrome, Google is seeking to challenge the dominance of Microsoft's Windows, which runs on nine out of 10 personal computers.
Google said it is giving away the software for free, similar to its Android smartphone software, with the idea that improving the Web experience will ultimately benefit its Internet search advertising business, which generated roughly $22 billion in revenue in 2008.
Google made the computer code for the Chrome OS available to outside developers on Thursday, allowing developers to tinker with the software and potentially design new applications to run alongside it. But, the company said Chrome at least initially will not be able to run on just any PC, and executives said they expected that most consumers would get the operating system when they buy a specially-designed netbook.
Google said that all data in Chrome will automatically be housed in the so-called cloud, or on external servers and also cached on the computer's internal hardware to boost performance. It also said that the Chrome applications, which are used for such everyday tasks such as word processing and email, will be Web-based.
Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing its cloud based computing system Azure on January 1, next year. The company plans to take advantage of the growing interest in internet-based software and services, according to Reuters.
Azure provides an online platform for software developers to create their own programs, and space for customers to store data. The service was rolled out for experimentation a year ago.
The announcement was made by Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie in the company's annual software developers conference.
Microsoft is expected to be a big player in the cloud computing market - broadly the trend toward running software in remote datacenters and accessing it over the Internet - but has lagged behind pioneering rivals such as Amazon.com, which already sells cloud-based storage, and Google, which offers a range of free, online software.
The first month of the service will be free, and billing will start in February, said Ozzie.
Microsoft is expected to be a big player in the cloud computing market - broadly the trend toward running software in remote datacenters and accessing it over the Internet - but has lagged behind pioneering rivals such as Amazon.com, which already sells cloud-based storage, and Google, which offers a range of free, online software.
The first month of the service will be free, and billing will start in February, said Ozzie.
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