Month: April 2008

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New Compiz 0.7.4 & Skype 2.0.0.68 Released

New Compiz 0.7.4 and Skype 2.0.0.68, two of the most popular applications among Linux users
around the world released. While Skype has only one important future (uPnP support), Compiz has jumped from the 0.7.2 release to this one and includes some important enhances and improvements!

New in Compiz Fusion 0.7.4
compiz_fusion
• Configurable handling of overlapping output devices;
• Enhanced focus stealing prevention with configurable amount of focus stealing prevention;
• Added configurable, optional delay for edge actions to prevent accidential invocation;
• Generalized vertex system to improve plugin compatibility;
• Optimized gaussian blur shaders to support more hardware;
• Improved unredirection of fullscreen windows;
• Several bugfixes;
• Translation updates.

New in Skype 2.0.0.68
Skype
• Support for uPnP
• Fixed crash for upgraders from 1.3 who had autologin enabled
• Fixed crash when adding user who had auto-sending of video enabled to conference call

Download both here..

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Googl May Buy Skype?

Skype

Rumors are abounding that eBay is looking to offload Skype and Google would be only to happy to step in. New information, however, suggests that they are in current talks and that a partnership or outright acquisition may be announced in the near future.

Skype, acquired in late 2005 for $3.1 billion, has been a financial albatross around Ebay’s neck. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction.

Details are scant and the Techcrunch is reporting that Skype is keeping schtum and not talking to journalists about the rumours at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas.

Google has already launched a VoIP service though GTalk, which is a free 411 service and GrandCentral, a telephone management service it acquired last year for $50 million.

source:read
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Intel Anti-Theft Tool For Laptops Soon

Intel

Intel says an anti-theft technology for laptops during the fourth quarter of this year, but the company not offering any details about it.

Intel Anti-Theft Technology, the new capability will be added to Intel’s Active Management Technology, which is part of Centrino vPro and allows IT managers to remotely access and configure computers.

In the event of theft, the technology will “basically lock the system, lock the disk, so people cannot be maliciously using and getting the data,” said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobility Group, according to a transcript of his presentation at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Shanghai.

The anti-theft technology being developed by Intel would presumably give IT managers a way of protecting this data once a machine has gone missing.

Besides Intel, several other companies are working on the anti-theft technology, including Lenovo Group, McAfee, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Phoenix Technologies.

More details of the technology will be made available when it is closer to being released, Intel said.

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At Last Pizza Sold for $2.6m!!

Pizza

Chris Clark, 43, accepted the offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction.He sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6m

The online auction was launched on 27 March. The first bid was $100, jumping to $2.6m a week later.

He sold his business in 2000, but kept paying the $20 annual fees for maintaining the domain pizza.com, which he also used to sell advertisements.

“It’s crazy, it’s just crazy,” Mr Clark, who lives in North Potomac, Maryland, was quoted as saying by the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

“It will make a significant difference in my life, for sure,” he added.

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Intel Unveiled Low-Cost Laptops for $300

Intel

Intel Corp. unveiled new low-cost laptops for schools on Wednesday, adding bigger screens and more data storage capacity as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with the One Laptop per Child organization, which sells a competing machine.

Intel’s new Classmate PCs – slated to go on sale in April for between $300 and $500 – reflect the company’s growing efforts to sell computers equipped with its own chips to schools in developing countries, a battleground for technology companies because of the millions of people there just coming online.

But the target market has expanded to include kids in the U.S. as potential users of cheaper, stripped-down machines.

Other tweaks to the Classmate that Intel announced Wednesday from its developer forum in Shanghai include the availability of both 7-inch and 9-inch screens, a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive and an integrated Web camera.

At the developer forum, Intel executives also rolled out five new processors under the “Atom” brand name. The chips are designed for pocket-size Internet devices. The chips come in speeds up to 1.86 gigahertz while using less than 3 watts of power.

Intel said its Classmate PCs will eventually use Atom processors.

Classmates are based on Intel’s design and include its processors, but they are built by other manufacturers and sold under a variety of brand names. The first generation went on sale in March 2007 with the 7-inch screen and fewer functions. Intel said it has sold “tens of thousands” of the machines but declined to provide more specific data.

Intel and OLPC have feuded furiously over their competing products.

Intel claimed it couldn’t continue cooperating with OLPC when founder Nicholas Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling Classmates overseas. Negroponte said the dispute stemmed from Intel sales reps disparaging OLPC products while pushing Intel’s own machines.

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Yahoo! OneSearch 2.0 with Voice Search Service Unveiled

OneSearch 2.0

Yahoo’s new version of its mobile search service has unveiled oneSearch 2.0, that includes features like voice-enabled search, search assist, idle screen access and open search results.

To make voice-enabled search possible Yahoo! is partnering with vlingo, a leading speech-recognition company. With the voice-enabled version of Yahoo! oneSearch, consumers can search for anything, including flight numbers, locations, Web site names, local restaurants, and more, by simply speaking. For example, a search query like “N-C-Double-A” will returns a set of results highlighting the latest tournament scores, upcoming game times, and breaking news. Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice lets user perform “wide open” searches – returning relevant results for practically every kind of query.

Available for select Blackberry devices including the 8800 series, Curve, and Pearl in the United States, the new voice-enabled Yahoo! oneSearch can be downloaded from HERE. Over the coming months, the product is expected to support additional devices and become available internationally.

Yahoo! also plans to make it easier to access the search box. The company today also previewed an innovative idle screen search service that makes it easier to search on the phone by integrating the search box right into the main screen. The idle screen will give users one-click access to Yahoo! oneSearch and the Internet. Searching will be easier and faster, as users will not be required to open their browser.

This idle screen solution is expected to roll out in Q2 2008.

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The Hummer Fly’s Most Awaited Phone Launches

Hummer

Fly today launched its most awaited phone, the Hummer. For this French handset maker ModeLabs has carried over General Motors Hummer license to the mobile phone. This design has been styled after the Hummer car and comes in three colors — Yellow, Military camouflage and Black.

Also present for the occasion was Malaika Arora Khan, who is the brand ambassador of Fly Phones.

The Hummer comes with a 262K color LCD with touch screen, a 2MP camera, 256MB MicroSD card bundled, FM radio and MP3 player. The phone is just one amongst 15 more to be launched in the next quarter itself, as informed by CEO, Rajiv Khanna. “We have plans to get really aggressive in the market, but as of now the strategy calls for streamlining the business channels before we can start work on branding,” he said.

The phone will cost Rs. 10,000 in the market and is customized with Hummer paint color.

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Photoshop CS4 to Favor Vista 64bit Not to MAC

Adob CS4

Adobe is prepairing a new version of its Creative Suite, the software bundle that includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and other applications for print and Web design. Only this time there’s a twist: The new version of Photoshop will support 64-bit memory addressing for the first time — but only if you’re running Windows.

Simply put, more bits means you can access more memory, which means you can work with bigger files. By taking advantage of 64-bit CPUs, Adobe is making it possible for designers and photo manipulators to work with really, really big images at high resolutions. Think posters, advertising displays, or even billboards.

As it turns out, Photoshop for Mac OS is written using older APIs that don’t allow access to all the latest Mac OS X features. To bring the software up to speed will require a total rewrite, a time-consuming process that could leave Mac users in the cold for some time.

Will the extra power of Photoshop CS4 for Windows cause designers to jump ship? It seems unlikely. Only a very tiny segment of Photoshop users works with files big enough to warrant 64-bit capability — and designers still like their Macs.

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HDR-TG1 Sony’s Smallest HD Video Recorder Yet in World

HDR-TG1

The HDR-TG1 is 1.3 inch thick by 4.7 inches high by 2.5 inches wide and weighs 10.6 ounces. It’s a tall and thin camcorder with a fold-out display — a design along the same lines as Sanyo’s Xacti line of high-def camcorders, but the Sony camcorder is about two-thirds the volume of Sanyo’s latest full high-def model.

One of the secrets of its thinness is the lack of a DV tape desk, hard-disk or optical drive. Instead the TG1 records to a Memory Stick Pro Duo or Pro-HG Duo memory card.

The camera lays down AVCHD format video at 1920 by 1080 resolution (so-called Full HD).

In the highest quality “FH” mode, which is full HD resolution at 16M bps, the supplied 4G-byte card will be able to store 25 minutes of footage. This lengthens to 55 minutes in HQ mode, which records a 1,440 by 1,080 resolution image at 9M bps. The SP and LP modes record drop the video bit rate — and thus the quality — to 7M bps and 5M bps, respectively and result in 65 minutes and 85 minutes of recording time.

In addition to video the camcorder can also take 4-megapixel resolution still images.

Other features include an optical 10X zoom, 2.7-inch widescreen touch panel LCD monitor and HDMI connector.

It will be available in Japan from April 20 and will cost around ¥130,000 (US$1,300). In the U.S. it will appear in May and will cost about US$900.

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Stirling Microsoft Next-Gen Security Software Set to Announce

MS-logo Next week in San Francisco Microsoft’s unveiling next-generation of security software, code-named Stirling.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has quietly shown the software to a select group of users, but sources familiar with the company’s plans said that it will release a beta version of the code to users during the RSA Conference next Tuesday. Microsoft will allow attendees to “see new technologies,” including Stirling and the company’s next-generation Windows Server 2008 software, according to the conference agenda.

After running the product through beta testing phase, Microsoft expects to ship Stirling by the end of June 2009.

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