Month: February 2008

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Google’s New Product “Voice mail for Homeless”

 Google

The company’s philanthropic efforts right alongside its new technologies, including a plan called Project CARE to provide phone numbers to the homeless. Another piece of that plan came to fruition on Wednesday, when the mayor of San Francisco announced that Google would use GrandCentral to provide phone numbers and voicemail to homeless citizens across the entire city.

Since potential employers usually require telephone contact information, not having a home phone number can be a major barrier to employment for many homeless people, along with making them inaccessible to family, friends, social workers, health care providers. With Project CARE, those without home phone numbers will be able to visit homeless shelters and set up and accounts for free, receiving both a dedicated phone number and a voicemail account.

Google partnered with Project Homeless Connect to make the program happen. Although only San Francisco homeless shelters are currently able to set up accounts, the company eventually hopes to push the service nationwide.

Hop all world will get this facility soon.

source:digitaltrends 

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AOL will no longer support Netscape Navigator

Netscape AOL

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.

Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.

The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.

“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox

source:BBC News

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Vista prices reduces

 Vista

Microsoft has announced that it is going to reduce the price of several standalone versions of Windows Vista.

The release has been published stateside and we don’t yet have confirmation as to whether prices are going to drop in all contres.

In the release, Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing at Microsoft, explained that the reductions are just going to be on standalone versions of the package sold through retailers.

“In emerging markets, we are combining full and upgrade Home Basic and Home Premium versions into full versions of these editions and instituting price changes to meet the demand we see among first-time Windows customers who want more functionality than is available in current Windows XP editions.”

He added that Microsoft is also lowering pricing on Windows Vista Ultimate in emerging markets.

The price changes will come in at the same time as the retail release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later this year.

source:pocket-lint 

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FreeBSD 7.0 Now Available

FreeBSD7

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the 7-STABLE branch which introduces many new features along with many improvements to functionality present in the earlier branches Like support for ZFS, journaled filesystems, and SCTP, as well as dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability.

FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, and powerpc architectures. The version for the sparc64 architecture will become available in a few days. Some of the package builds are still in progress.

FreeBSD 7.0 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network; the required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones, such as i386 and amd64.

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities

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A New Ultra Portable Projector By BenQ

BenQ

BenQ has launched a new DLP Projector – the BenQ CP220C, the size of a B5 sheet of paper, designed for portability

The BenQ CP220C projects at native XGA (1024 X 768) resolution and features a brightness of 2000 ANSI lumens with a contrast ratio of 700:1. BenQ’s color matching technology ensures that the color quality of the projected image matches with the color displayed on the notebook’s screen. Real time Auto-Keystone technology, Carl Zeiss lens etc. are few of the goodies that make up the projector. It also has an off-and-go function which enables the projector to cool off quickly.

The new projector will be available at BenQ IT zones and through BenQ dealers at $1520

source:tech2

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Google with Web site publishing service

Google Sites

Google Inc said on Wednesday it is offering a simple Web site publishing tool for office workers to set up and run their team collaboration sites, taking aim at Microsoft Corp’s rival SharePoint franchise.

Google Sites, as the new site publishing service is known, is a scaled back version of JotSpot, an easy-to-edit service for organizations and individuals to set up and edit Web sites that Google had acquired 16 months ago for undisclosed terms.

The new service, the latest stage in the Internet leader’s push into the market for business and educational users, allows non-technical users to organize and share digital information such as Web links, calendars, photos, videos, presentations, attachments and other documents in an easy-to-maintain site.

Google Sites is a stripped-down version of Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software, which lets users inside an organization share documents and maintain calendars on secure Web sites, but is far more complex to set up and maintain.

Unlike SharePoint, which typically requires organizations to buy and maintain their own hardware and software at costs that can run from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve one hundred users, Google Sites is hosted on Google computers and is free to users of Google Apps, which the company offers at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft tools.

source:reuters

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Apple iPhone SDK On March 6?

SDK

The iPhone software developers kit, promised by Apple CEO Steve Jobs for February, was delayed.

But, according to invites just issued to American technology journalists, Apple may only miss the deadline by a week.

The company are holding an event, an Apple “town hall” meeting, at its headquarters in Cupertino, under the banner “iPhone Software Roadmap” on Thursday, March 6, at 10am PST.

There are also “some exciting new enterprise features” promised, which some speculate could mean the iPhone getting corporate email friendly – an omission currently seen as one of the reasons the smartphone has not broken into the business world.

It’s not clear at this early stage if this means the SDK will be ready next week, or if Apple, sensing unease at their missed deadline, are just having the event as a holding move whilst they rush to get the job done

source:pocket-lint

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AMD launches First dual-core Sempron Processors in China

AMD-Sempron

AMD has recently launched the first dual-core Sempron processors in China in a bid to counter Intel’s dual-core Celeron product line in the entry-level market, according to sources at motherboard makers.

AMD Sempron 2100+ processors adopt a 65nm process, and have a core frequency of 1.8GHz. Due to the cheap price and potential of AMD’s own-brand RS780 and 690G IGP chipsets, the CPU has been popular with consumers in China prompting them support AMD’s platform.

In order to hit back, channel vendors predict Intel will drop its dual-core Celeron processor pricing. However, they pointed out that even if the two processors are equal in price, AMD’s strong IGP chipsets still give the company an advantage.

Pricing in the China market is set at RMB 399 (US$55).

 source:digitimes

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Apple iPhone 1.1.4 A New Update

Iphone

Apple has released a new update for the iPhone today to version 1.1.4.

The new update, which weighs in at over 160MB does not however seem to include a Software Developers Kit as promised by Apple by the end of February.

In fact reports by users who have installed the software on the mobile phone suggest that no new features have been added with Apple citing “bug fixes” for the update.

However which bugs it fixed, Apple has not clarified.

Those keen to jailbreak the phone so they can install third party applications on it will be pleased to hear that according to Ziphone, its jailbreaking solution for firmware 1.1.3 still works on the new 1.1.4 version.

source:pocket-lint

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Sony New iPhone, iPod Dock ICF-ClipMK2

 Sony Iphone Dock

Sony has unveiled its latest clock radio with a dock for the iPod and iPhone. The device features a wireless remote with full access to the iPod and iPhone devices’ menus, as well as to alarm clocks, radio tuning and volume functions. It also charges the device while docked. An adjustable backstop mechanism ensures that most devices fit snugly and securely in the clock radio’s cradle. It’s also compatible with the smaller iPod players. Because of its supplied cable and line-in jack, other digital music players can be easily connected to the unit.

Sony’s ICF-ClipMK2 clock radio also has a full-function alarm clock. Users can choose to wake up or fall asleep to music, the radio or a buzzer. When first powered on, the Automatic Time Set (ATS) feature will display the correct time (formats and time can be changed to other time zones as well). The unit also has automatic Daylight Savings Time adjustment. Adjustable brightness control over the LCD display provides easy readability.

The ICF-ClipMK2 clock radio comes in both black and white designs. It will be available in May for about $100 at Sony Style stores and at authorized dealers in the US.

source:tech2