Yearly Archives: 2011

369 posts

Microsoft Has New Plan For Making the Internet Safe

Internet

Speaking at the RSA Conference, Itworld reports Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney said that he no longer thought it was a good idea for service providers to be the ones on the hook for keeping infected PCs from the rest of the Internet.

“Last year at RSA I said, ‘You know we need to think about ISPs being the CIO for the public sector, and we need to think about them scanning consumer machines and making sure they’re clean and maybe quarantining them from the Internet,'” he said. “But in the course of the last year as I thought a lot more about this I realized that there are many flaws with that model.”

Full story: http://www.itworld.com/security/137159/microsoft-has-a-change-heart-how-keep-internet-safe

Skype Launches Skype Access WiFi Hotspot Program

Internet

Skype Access, pay-as-you-go Internet that uses your Skype Credit to get online, has officially launched a partner program for WiFi hotspot operators. Leading WiFi hotspot providers around the globe including BT Openzone, Fon, Tomizone and others have signed on to provide Internet access for consumer and business users on-the-go using Skype.

With one click, Skype users can connect to the Internet through a WiFi operator partner in over 500,000 hotspots around the globe including 500 airports, 30,000 hotels and numerous cafes, trains, planes, offices buildings, and convention centers. Whether in a neighbourhood cafe or in the airport on a business trip, you can quickly connect to the Internet for voice and video calls, email, or simply surfing the web.

In celebration of Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona this week, Skype Access will be free to use from 0001 CET on the 14th February 2011 to 2359 CET on the 18th February 2011 across the whole of Spain.

Rather than paying costly per day or per hour Internet access fees, Skype Access allows you to pay per minute using Skype Credit to control your costs at rates starting at £.04 /€.05/$.06per minute**. All you need is a connection to a Skype Access compatible hotspot and the latest version of Skype for Mac or Windows.

Through the Skype Access partnership program, WiFi operators are able to generate additional revenues from untapped users who prefer pay-as-you-go models versus traditional vouchers. Partnering with Skype provides operators access to Skype’s 145 million average monthly connected users*who are communicating with their friends, family and colleagues both at home and while travelling.

Skype Access partners include:

BT Openzone – The UK’s largest WiFi hotspot provider with a network of two million hotspots
Fon – The world’s largest WiFi network with over 3.35 million Fon Spots across the globe
M3 Connect – WiFi provider in Germany with hotspots in many hotels, fairgrounds, airports and places like the German Stock Exchange
Row 44 – Provides the world’s leading in-flight broadband platform to commercial airlines around the world
Skyrove – WiFi hotspot solutions for Guesthouses, Hotels and Coffee Shops throughout South Africa.
Spectrum Interactive – Specializes in offering WiFi for the travel and media sector including airports and hotels across the UK
Tomizone – WiFi provider in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific
Vex – Offers WiFi services in thousands of locations around the world including South America

Google Chrome Extension Targets Content Farms

Internet

Google has announced personal blocklist extension for Chrome browser which will block domains/hosts from appearing in your Google search results and transmit to Google the patterns that you choose to block. When you choose to block or unblock a pattern, the extension will also transmit to Google the URL of the web page on which the blocked or unblocked search results are displayed.

Matt Cutts has written in a post on the Google blog that the company hopes the extension will improve the quality of search results. extension

Matt Cutts wrote in a post on the Google blog that the company hopes the extension will improve the quality of search results.

More info: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html

Skype announces Mobile Partner Program

Internet

Skype today announced a Mobile Partner Program for operators in markets with low 3G broadband penetration. The program aims to bring the Skype experience to a broad range of mobile users and will enable carriers to differentiate their offerings in a competitive market environment. This program follows the successful operator partnerships that Skype has already launched with Verizon, KDDI and Hutchison 3.

The Mobile Partner Program from Skype is a simplified operator program that utilises a purpose built client/server solution. The solution developed specifically for operators, enables use of Skype on a broad range of handsets including smartphones and feature phones. Optimised for efficient bandwidth usage, it keeps users connected with minimal impact on battery life and data usage.

Operators taking part in this program will be able to offer their customers a fast, easy Skype experience that runs on a range of OS platforms covering more than 100 different smartphone and feature phone handsets. Through Skype their customers will have the ability to make free calls and send instant messages to other Skype users. In addition, their customers can take advantage of Skype’s low rates to make affordable calls to mobile phones and landlines virtually anywhere in the world.

“We see a growing demand for differentiated services from mobile operators across the world,” said Russ Shaw, VP and GM of Mobile at Skype. “Our mobile operator program will give operators in emerging markets the possibility to tap into the global Skype community while providing a great user experience on a variety of mobile handsets.”

Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate Launches

Internet

Microsoft has unveiled the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC) during a launch event in San Francisco.

After months of beta testing, the feature complete Release Candidate is available for download at Beauty of the Web. The company is now focused on encouraging developers to build new websites and user experiences on IE9, said Ziad Ismail, Internet Explorer’s director of product management.

Download: http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/

Google Announces Contracts for Java

News

Google has announced Contracts for Java, aimed at saving time debugging Java code.

Contracts for Java is a new open source tool. Preconditions, postconditions, and invariants are added as Java boolean expressions inside annotations. By default these do nothing, but enabled via a JVM argument, they’re checked at runtime.

The interface is now precise and every class that implements it can be checked at runtime.

Contracts are a powerful language feature and can provide great benefit if used correctly.

Contracts for Java is based on Modern Jass by Johannes Rieken. Rather than being a full time project it was conceived and developed in the 20% time of two software engineers and then developed further through an internship.

More info: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/02/contracts-for-java.html

Nokia Teams up With Microsoft

Technology

Nokia has today outlined its new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company’s speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment.

Elements of the new strategy include:

– Plans for a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft to build a new global mobile ecosystem; Windows Phone would serve as Nokia’s primary smartphone platform.
– A renewed approach to capture volume and value growth to connect “the next billion” to the Internet in developing growth markets
– Focused investments in next-generation disruptive technologies
– A new leadership team and organizational structure with a clear focus on speed, results and accountability

Nokia plans to form a strategic partnership with Microsoft to build a global mobile ecosystem based on highly complementary assets. The Nokia-Microsoft ecosystem targets to deliver differentiated and innovative products and have unrivalled scale, product breadth, geographical reach, and brand identity. With Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, Nokia would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging its expertise on hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale. Nokia and Microsoft would also combine services assets to drive innovation. Nokia Maps, for example, would be at the heart of key Microsoft assets like Bing and AdCenter, and Nokia’s application and content store would be integrated into Microsoft Marketplace. Under the proposed partnership, Microsoft would provide developer tools, making it easier for application developers to leverage Nokia’s global scale.

With Nokia’s planned move to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, Symbian becomes a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value. This strategy recognizes the opportunity to retain and transition the installed base of 200 million Symbian owners. Nokia expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come.

200 BBC Websites Saved for $3.99!

News

On Monday 24th January 2011 the BBC announced that it would be restructuring its online department – with 360 job losses and the deletion of 200 of its top level directories (including the websites that live under them – eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast). 172 of of those top level directories are due to be deleted within the coming 12 months.

The purpose of this project is to show how the entire 172 public facing websites that are earmarked for deletion have been copied, archived, distributed and republished online – independently. Download: http://178.63.252.42/

Martin Bryant writing on the Thenextweb.com says; ” The BBC is set to close down 200 of its websites in the near future as part of cost-cutting measures. Hearing that 172 of these sites would be deleted from the Web entirely, an anonymous (and possibly even “Anonymous”, judging by the picture on the website) individual has taken matters into his or her own hands.

The result is a BitTorrent file that anyone can download to store a backup of these “lost” websites forever. The cost of the project? Apparently no more that $3.99 for a VPS server to crawl and retrieve all the sites.”

Full article at: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/02/10/172-doomed-bbc-websites-saved-by-one-geek-for-3-99/

FaceBook Updates Pages and Adds New Features

News

Facebook pages are getting an updated layout and several new features.

New Features:

Notifications when fans interact with your page or posts

A place to showcase photos along the top of your page

A news feed for your page

The ability to Like and post on other pages as your page

All pages will automatically be upgraded on March 10.

Google Introduces 2-step Verification for Gmail

Internet

Google has introduced an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification that makes your Google Account more secure by helping to verify that you’re the real owner of your account.

2-step verification requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone. Over the next few days, you’ll see a new link on your Account Settings page.

Getting started with 2-step verification: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=1056283&topic=1056284

Plagiarisma.Net Launches Google Books Plagiarism Checker

News

The owner of Plagiarisma.Net noticed that most students could copy and paste any text coming from the Google books because they are not included in most of plagiarism tools available in the internet. This theft and copyright violation has been rampant because most software is not able to detect the copied text. “Well, it is high time that we push on adding more script to existing plagiarism checker tools and help students and other writers polish their talents by writing their articles and their thesis in their own words and understanding. We need to raise awareness about intellectual property to maintain integrity and credibility of the scholars. This would also encourage other people to be original in writing thesis and content.”

Plagiarisma.Net has gained its customers’ trusts for years now since it has been proven that its plagiarism checker work with Google, Bing, Yahoo, Google Scholar and check url, plain text, html, rtf, doc, odt, docx and pdf files. It also includes synonymizer and similarity checker for premium members with promisingly fast services and no annoying ads. The new tool is added with a big intention to help in preventing plagiarism activities done by book plagiarists. Plagiarisma.Net is a company that tries to keep the balance between accurate scanning software and monthly cost.

Years ago, many people tried to copy and paste content from books because it is so easy and most plagiarism software cannot detect it. Plagiarisma.Net is actually a good plagiarism checker tool to check for any similar phrases or sentences in two or more books. With more than thousands of millions of printed pages in databases, it is possible that the sentence’s duplication can be scaled down drastically. The plagiarism activities can be detected easily with a little effort being carried out to crosscheck for any similarity and duplication of all the published works by using a perfect plagiarism screening tool. People can make choices since there are many good plagiarism detection tools available, regardless whether it is online or offline. Some plagiarism detection tools requires a start up payment fee before the tool can be used but some can be used for free. Plagiarisma.Net is one of the best plagiarism checkers that offers sufficient services required for plagiarism checking purposes and it is free!

Website: http://plagiarisma.net

CIA Introduces Social Media Enhancements to Redesigned Website

News

The Central Intelligence Agency launched several enhancements to CIA.gov to improve its functionality and refresh the site’s design. Among the updated features, visitors will find new ways to connect to a broad array of Agency content, including through social media sites.

“The idea behind these improvements is to make more information about the Agency available to more people, more easily,” Director Panetta said. “The CIA wants the American people and the world to understand its mission and its vital role in keeping our country safe.”

The CIA.gov homepage now includes links to a CIA YouTube channel and Flickr site. The CIA YouTube channel features current and historical videos about the Agency, including speeches by Director Leon E. Panetta and a CIA Overview video. The CIA Flickr site links to copyright-free pictures from CIA.gov for easy access. Both features, which are used by many Americans, will enable the Agency to more easily share information on its mission and history. They can be found under “Quick Links” on the homepage.

The improved CIA.gov homepage also includes a new “CIA Interactive” section that highlights some of our most popular, fun, and educational interactive content. Visitors who regularly use this content will find it much more accessible. In addition, the CIA added new photos on the homepage, broadening the public’s glimpse into the Agency.

More enhancements are planned in the next few months, including content that is mobile-friendly and in foreign languages. These features also will improve the Agency’s ability to reach new audiences. Because more than half of Internet users browse with mobile devices, CIA.gov is developing a truncated, text-based version of the full site. Offering content in foreign languages underscores the global nature of the CIA’s mission and highlights Director Panetta’s emphasis on language excellence at the Agency.

The changes to CIA.gov aim to improve visitors’ experience with the site, increase connections to those using popular Internet sites and tools, and share even more information on employment opportunities with the CIA.