Archive for February, 2006
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs took the wraps off a few of what he called “medium-scale” announcements at an event here at Apple’s headquarters.
On the Macintosh side Apple added to its Intel-powered lineup with a Mac mini based on Intel’s Core Solo processor and also a version based on Intel’s dual-core Core Duo.
Jobs said both systems are faster than the earlier Mac minis based on the PowerPC G4, 2.5 times faster for the Core Solo unit and five times faster for the Core Duo-based Mac mini, according to industry Spec benchmarks he referenced.
The Core Solo Mac mini, with 512 MG of RAM, is priced at $599 while the Core Duo system is priced at $799. Both are available now.
Jobs noted that with the latest Mac minis, Apple has now moved 50 percent of its product to Intel processors since January. Apple intends to move all of its desktop and portable systems to Intel processors by the end of this year.
Full story: internetnews.com
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Simple File Shredder is a utility that securely deletes your files so they can’t be restored using recovery software.
When you delete a file using the conventional Windows delete method, the file is not actually destroyed. Windows simply acknowledges the file is no longer needed and considers it free space. The deleted file will exist in a recoverable state until it’s over-written with other data.
When you use Simple File Shredder to shred a file, the file is over-written with with random bytes before it’s deleted. If the file was ever restored using recovery software, it would be worthless. Simple File Shredder can also shred free space on multiple drives to securely remove files already deleted through Windows.
Simple File Shredder v3 provides a new fully customizable System Shredder. Using the System Shredder, you can easily group browser cache, cookie, and history files to be located and shredded.
Simple File Shredder will always be 100% free and never contain bundled 3rd-party software.
Download: Simple File Shredder 3.2
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
FocusAlpha is a small utility program that will trigger Alpha Transparancy for all the windows on your desktop. When u select a window (set it on focus) it removes the transparency for that window and sets all the others transparent. The program allows you to control the level of transparency and you can also specify certain program names that you don’t want to be transparent in the exclusion list.
Note : If any program doesn’t display correctly when transparent then add it’s name to the exclusion list.
Download: FocusAlpha 2.0.0 Windows 2000/XP/2003
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
As rumors unfurl about a new gadget upcoming from Microsoft, the company’s Origami Project is starting to take shape as a very small tablet computer, one perhaps affordable enough to appeal to mainstream consumers.
The concept, which Microsoft plans to detail next month, is built on top of the Windows XP operating system but aims to be a new kind of device, rather than a replacement for existing PCs, according to sources familiar with the effort. With a screen bigger than that of a handheld but smaller than a notebook PC screen, Origami devices won’t fit in the pocket, but they’ll make it into purses and even the smallest of backpacks, sources said.
Microsoft’s goal is to create a blueprint for devices that could sell for $600 or less, although the actual prices will depend greatly on what manufacturers decide to include. Origami is capable of supporting features like GPS, Bluetooth, 3G cellular technology and Wi-Fi, though each of these adds to the cost of the device.
Rumors have been swirling about the device over the past week. The Origami Project Web site, which is owned by Microsoft, pledges that more information will come Thursday. However, sources say this is likely to be more buzz, with actual details not expected until later in March, likely at the CeBit show that takes place March 9 to 15 in Hannover, Germany.
In a somewhat uncharacteristic move, Microsoft has remained mum on Origami, while fanning the flames with its Web site.
Full article: ZDNet News
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
MicroBackup2005 is a handy freeware backup tool that makes ZIP archives of any folders you want. You just make a list of folders and MicroBackup2005 will automatically make backups of your files. Simple to operate, but flexible enough to meet your backup demands. MicroBackup2005 can auto-start, run hidden, run on schedule and manually. You can include system/hidden files, choose to backup changed files only or turn compression on/off.
Some handy features are added:
?｢どｨｬ｢ backup on start
?｢どｨｬ｢ backup on close
?｢どｨｬ｢ create seperate archive for each folder
?｢どｨｬ｢ log and log viewer
?｢どｨｬ｢ auto-version check
?｢どｨｬ｢ auto delete logs older than n days
?｢どｨｬ｢ auto delete archives older than n days (after confirmation)
?｢どｨｬ｢ optional window fading (XP)
New in this version is an FTP module that enables you to upload/download your backups to any FTP server.
The FTP window will show your backup files, indicating weither a file is local, remote or both, and options to upload, download or delete your local and remote files.
Nice, quick and secure! Completely free for personal use. No adware or Spyware.
OS: WinXP
Download: MicroBackup2005 FTP 1.2.0.3
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Search firm quietly unveils payment service
Google has added a feature to Google Base that allows merchants to handle payments through a user’s Google account. The feature effectively turns Google into an e-commerce platform for retail operators.
The move could put the organisation into direct competition with eBay and the Craigslist online classifieds network by offering merchants the option of hosting product descriptions and using Google Base to handle the transactions.
“For buyers, this feature will provide a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card. For sellers, this feature integrates transaction processing with Google Base item management,” two Google managers said in a posting on the Google Base Blog.
Read more: vnunet.com
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against wireless content company MForma, charging the San Francisco-based company and a group of ex-Yahoo employees there with theft of trade secrets.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in a Santa Clara County state court, the group of seven former Yahoo employees copied large amounts of confidential business and technical data when they left the Web portal company, and brought it to use in their new positions at MForma.
Yahoo is seeking a temporary restraining order, barring MForma from using any of the business or technical data. The company wants a deeper understanding of how the information has been used before asking for damages, a Yahoo attorney said.
“We have been confronted with evidence that shows a handful of employees has abused our trust and respect,” said Yahoo associate general counsel Reggie Davis. “We have been left with no recourse but to go to the courts.”
In a statement, MForma Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Sacks said Yahoo “deserves the gold medal for hypocrisy,” noting that the Web company had itself been recently sued on trade secrets grounds by Nuance Communications, after hiring a team of that company’s employees.
Full story: C|net News.com
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Monday, February 27th, 2006
Apple Computer fans have long loved to point out the safety of using Mac OS X, which has mostly been left alone by hackers. But the recent arrival of three threats has some asking: Is the software’s charmed security life over?
In the past two weeks, a pair of worms that target Mac OS X have been discovered, along with an easily exploitable, severe security flaw. The vulnerability exposes Mac users to risks that are more familiar to Windows owners: the installation of malicious code through a bad Web site or e-mail.
While these threats represent a sea change, there is no need for Mac owners to worry, experts said, as the published attacks are still mainly theoretical and not widespread. But they caution that Apple fans should not be smug: Now that it’s been done, other malicious code writers are likely to turn their attention to the operating system.
It’s a “small step in malicious code development for OS X,” said Kevin Long, an analyst at security specialist Cybertrust and a Mac user for 11 years. “The message we need to get out there is that Mac users should not be complacent.”
While Microsoft Windows users have grown accustomed to a seemingly incessant stream of computer worms, viruses and security vulnerabilities, the same is not true for Mac owners. Going by forum postings, many Apple customers believe their systems are much better protected against cyberattacks than the average Windows PC.
Full article: ZDNet News
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Monday, February 27th, 2006
Wizard of Woz says deal is ‘like consorting with the enemy’
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, sometimes known as the Wizard of Woz, has revealed that he is unhappy about Apple’s decision to switch to Intel processors.
Although Wozniak officially left Apple in 1985 he retains a keen interest in the company and is still on the payroll.
Wozniak took time out from a game of segway polo in New Zealand to tell The Globe and Mail that he is unhappy about the deal, although he understood it from an engineering point of view.
“It’s like consorting with the enemy. We’ve had this long history of saying that the enemy is the big black-hatted guys, and they kind of represent evil,” he explained.
“All of a sudden we’re the same in this hardware regard, so it’s a little hard to swallow your words from the past.”
Wozniak said that he would have liked Apple to continue using Motorola chips but acknowledged that Intel “did a very good logic design”.
Read more: vnunet.com
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Monday, February 27th, 2006
Although it is still working to finish the code for Windows Vista, Microsoft has reached a decision on which versions of the operating system to offer.
Microsoft has settled on six versions, including an Ultimate edition that will combine the best of the company’s corporate and consumer features. The company is aiming to have all of the versions ready for launch in the second half of this year.
“We’re really trying to make sure we have the right set of offerings for different customers,” said Barry Goffe, a director in Microsoft’s Windows client unit.
Consumers will also be able to buy either Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium, in addition to the Ultimate edition, while businesses will be able to choose Vista Business or, if they have a volume licensing deal, they can opt for a higher-end Vista Enterprise edition. Microsoft also plans a Vista Starter edition that will be sold only on new PCs in emerging markets.
The final versions that Microsoft is announcing on Monday are similar to the ones Microsoft has long been considering, with one exception; there is not a version specifically for small businesses. Instead, Microsoft is adding a number of small business features, including advanced backup and additional tutorials, as part of its Vista Business edition.
Microsoft is also doing away with the notion of Media Center and Tablet PC as distinct flavors of the operating system, as was the case with Windows XP. With Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate, consumers will be able to buy a machine that has both Media Center and Tablet PC capabilities. Tablet PC functions will also be included in Vista Business and Vista Enterprise.
With Windows XP, Goffe said, people “really have to compromise.”
“Either I get all the great media experience or I get all of the mobility features,” he said. “What if I want a great home experience and a great business experience?”
Goffe said that Windows Vista Ultimate is Microsoft’s answer to that question. “More and more customers are using the same PC at work and at home, particularly small businesses,” he said. “We are delivering an offering that brings everything together.” Ultimate combines features from the Enterprise and Premium versions.
Full article: CNET News.com
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Sunday, February 26th, 2006
R-Firewall is a FREE program comparable with commercial firewalls!
R-Firewall is an effective and easy-to-use solution to secure your on-line activity. It protects a computer connected to a local network and/or to the Internet against any intrusions, attacks, trojans, spyware, and other external and internal threats. R-Firewall also filters out inappropriate Internet pages content and blocks dangerous active components you may get while browsing over the Internet or receiving e-mail massages.
Automatic configuration during setup allows you securely surf the Internet right after the software installation. Mobile users can create multiple and easily switchable configurations for specific network environments (Internet surfing at home, office local networks, or public Wi-Fi spots).
Download: R-Firewall 1.0 build 53
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Saturday, February 25th, 2006
Court disappointed with RIM and NTP?｢どｨび｢s inability to reach a settlement
A US judge has delayed ruling on the shutdown of RIM?｢どｨび｢s BlackBerry network yesterday, extending an already long running patent dispute with NTP.
Judge James Spencer of the US District Court in Richmond is reported to have said that he was disappointed with RIM and NTP?｢どｨび｢s inability to reach a settlement but had decided to first rule on damages in the case, before deciding on a shutdown.
Earlier in the day, the US Patent and Trademark Office had issued a final rejection of the third NTP patent that forms the basis of the company’s complaint against RIM, but Spencer said this would not affect his ruling.
Full story: vnunet.com
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Saturday, February 25th, 2006
A marching band begins to play. The United Newsreel logo, an eagle in a martial pose, flickers onto the black-and-white screen. Bold letters proclaim: “Nazi War Plants Blasted by R.A.F. in Night Raids.”
This is a World War II era newsreel, one of 100 historic videos retrieved from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and posted Friday on Google Video. The content represents the first fruits of a joint project aimed at putting as much of the National Archives’ video content as possible online.
In this first batch are dozens of newsreels, films on the early 1930s park service, and National Air and Space Administration documentaries on space travel. A must-see includes Orson Welles reading from H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” before discussing the likelihood of extraterrestrial life “beyond the petty surface of our own minute sphere.”
Google Video product manager Peter Chane said the company is working in stages to put as many as possible of the National Archives’ 114,000 film reels and 37,000 videos online.
Full story: ZDNet
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Friday, February 24th, 2006
BERKELEY, Calif.–It’s not easy to get hardware designers and software developers in sync when it comes to developing a new computer architecture, according to Dave Patterson, one of the pioneers of the original RISC architecture.
The hardware takes years to develop, and work on affiliated software doesn’t start in earnest until the hardware is done. Simulators exist, but the software developers really don’t take advantage of them like they should, Patterson said. That causes the development cycle to drag out even longer.
Enter RAMP, or Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors. The idea behind the program is to build a laboratory computer out of field programmable gate arrays, reprogrammable chips that can be reconfigured to act as different chips. (As one Intel researcher has described it, the FPGA is the utility infielder of the semiconductor world.) Ideally, an FPGA-based RAMP computer could be assembled cheaply and easily.
“If you can put 25 CPUs in one FPGA, you can put 1,000 CPUs in 40 FPGAs,” Patterson said during a symposium here this week at UC Berkeley, where he is a professor of electrical engineering. Such a computer would cost about $100,000, he estimated. It would also take up relatively little space–about one-third of a rack–and consume only about 1.5 kilowatts of power.
An equivalent computing cluster would cost about $2 million, take up 12 racks and consume 120 kilowatts.
Full story: News.com
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Friday, February 24th, 2006
Apple will next week announce that it’s going to start selling full-length movie downloads through the iTunes Music Store, if the forecast of a US market watcher is correct. The prediction comes in the week the company passed the 1bn music downloads mark.
The one billionth song was downloaded early this morning, Apple said, nine weeks shy of ITMS’ third birthday. At this rate, the store should have sold 1.5bn songs by the end of the year - sometime in the Summer, we’d say. Song number 2bn should be downloaded early in 2007, but again, that’s assuming Apple continues to experience an exponential growth rate.
Adding movie downloads will undoubtedly help, if only by raising ITMS’ profile even further as a one-stop content shop. The forecast that that’s what Apple will announce next week comes from American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu, who told clients “there is a greater than 50 per cent chance that Apple will announce its first, full-length feature films available for download on iTunes”, Macworld UK reports.
Read more: reghardware.co.uk
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
Create your own web pages, quickly and easily.
Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes.
?｢どｨｬ｢ No technical knowledge required.
Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.
?｢どｨｬ｢ What you see is what you’ll get.
Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.
?｢どｨｬ｢ Don’t worry about hosting.
Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com
Google Page Creator Beta
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
One of five binned… but appeal on the cards so don’t start cheering yet…
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a final rejection of one of the five patents at issue in NTP’s long-running case against BlackBerry maker RIM.
The final rejection was posted on the USPTO’s website for the NTP-held patent, which covers a system for sending emails over a wireless network to a mobile device. The USPTO has already issued non-final actions rejecting the claims in four out of the five NTP patents in question but a final rejection is required before the appeals process can begin.
Contacted on Wednesday, NTP’s lead counsel, James Wallace of Wiley, Rein & Fielding, said he had not reviewed the final action and therefore could not comment. NTP has the right to appeal any final rejection notice to a three-judge panel at the USPTO, and can file further appeals at the federal-court level.
RIM issued a statement confirming it had received the final action and said it expects the rejections to withstand future NTP appeals.
NTP, a patent-holding company, successfully sued RIM for patent infringement and won an injunction, stayed pending appeal, to halt most sales of RIM’s BlackBerry wireless email device and service in the US.
While the case has worked its way through the court system, the USPTO began re-examining the validity of NTP’s patents.
NTP has said it plans see the full re-examination process through, which could take years, because it has the ability to appeal the decisions through the courts.
Full story: silicon.com
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
Latest preview highlights new features for business customers
Microsoft has used the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP) test version of its forthcoming Windows Vista to highlight new features for enterprises.
The software giant has mainly focused on the consumer features in Windows Vista, but Brad Goldberg, general manager for Windows client product management, said in a conference call with journalists that Vista also provides new features for enterprise users.
“The perception was created that Windows Vista is a consumer release. While there is a lot of cool stuff for consumers, Windows Vista is as much if not more a business focused release that will provide tremendous value for business customers.”
The Vista beta is currently “feature complete” and Microsoft will not add any new functionality. The enterprise-themed CTP is mostly intended to channel feedback. Microsoft intends to release an end user oriented CTP in the second quarter of 2006.
Enterprise users will be primarily attracted to Vista’s new security features, Goldberg predicted.
Full article: vnunet.com
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Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
Google on Tuesday released the beta version of its latest desktop search application, Google Desktop 3 for Enterprise, which the company recommends for companies worried about security risks.
The enterprise version has all the functionality of the consumer version, which was released last week. But it allows network administrators to completely disable features, such as Search Across Computer. That feature, disabled by default, automatically stores copies of data on multiple computers.
Because the data travels through Google servers and is stored there for up to a month, privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as network administrators, have complained that it could lead to the compromise of sensitive data.
Research firm Gartner called the feature an “unacceptable security risk” and urged corporations to turn it off. Even Google officials in Europe have admitted that the feature is a risk for some corporations.
Full story: ZDNet News
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