Almost 50% of all people using BitTorrent at any given point in time do this to download TV-series, while only 10% of the available torrents are TV related. People who download TV-shows also have one of the best share ratios, only Anime fanatics beat them.
For complete Statistics and other details visit ::
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-in-focus-tv-series-are-hot/
StarCraft II! The epic interplanetary battle between the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg will take on new dimensions in this sequel to the classic real-time strategy original. With new units and functionality for each race, upgrades to several familiar units, and a powerful 3D engine that supports explosive fast-paced combat between massive armies, StarCraft II will be the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.
Highlights of StarCraft II include:
* Tightly balanced competitive real-time strategy gameplay that recaptures and improves on the magic of the original game
* New units and gameplay mechanics that further distinguish the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races
* An all-new 3D engine that supports fast-paced play with realistic physics, massive units, and massive army sizes
* A groundbreaking single-player campaign that continues the epic StarCraft story
* A powerful map editor that puts the tools used by the game's designers into the hands of players
For more information about Blizzard's plans for StarCraft II visit www.starcraft2.com ..
You're a BitTorrent freak, so why should you let a little thing like being away from your home computer stop you from getting your fix? Using the popular, free uTorrent client, you can control your BT downloads from anywhere using a full-featured web interface.
With uTorrent's WebUI, you can add, remove, and manage the downloads you've got running at home no matter where you are.
visit ::
http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/remote-control-your-torrents-with-utorrents-webui-260393.php
meebo is launching Meebo Rooms, a rich media chat room product that users can put on their blogs and websites. They can be private or public chat rooms, and can feature video content from sources such as youtube and NBC.
Meebo's core product is a browser-based IM platform, allowing people to use multiple IM accounts on the one webpage. Meebo has 2 million registered users and gets about 1 million sessions and 100 million messages per day. According to the press release, meebo rooms "are places where people can chat and view media live with IM buddies, both inside meebo.com and across the Web on their own pages." Meebo has partnered with a number of content providers - including blip.tv, Capitol Music Group, CNET Networks, NBC Universal, and others. They are launching with pre-assembled meebo rooms from the 14 initial partners, with more to come.
best of april 2007 in computer world by smashing magazine ..
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/15/best-of-april-2007/
Google accounts, maps, blogs, pack, desktop, pigeonrank, talk, toolbar - WOW they've made a lot of stuff!
http://lloydi.com/blog/simplygoogleoriginal.htm
The following Linux courses have been released under the GFDL . They can be viewed in slide format online, but for a more complete introduction to the material contact information is listed at the bottom of this page ..
http://www.schabell.com/linux-courses/
Forget cables; the way you'll connect devices to your PC will be wireless. That's according to new research from In-Stat which predicts that Wireless USB will become the way to connect kit to your PC by 2008.
The wireless variant works in exactly the same way as cabled USB, but uses a short wave radio technology. And it's about to explode.
Some devices already exist, but hubs and other connection kit will be available commercially later in the year. In-Stat reckons there's plenty of potential in the market. Over two billion wired USB devices shipped last year, and it expects Wireless USB to grow by over 10 per cent annually.
"Certified WUSB is designed to replace USB cables on the PC desktop, as well as to facilitate temporary connections between mobile and fixed devices, such as portable digital audio players and PCs, or digital still cameras and printers," says Brian O'Rourke an analyst at In-Stat.
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One of the first hubs became available in Japan back in March.
The next generation of wireless Internet products certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance is expected to hit shelves this summer, even though a final standard for the technology isn't due for another year, the industry group says.
The Wi-Fi Alliance was announcing Wednesday that it will begin certifying wireless routers, networking cards, microchips and other so-called "Draft N" products in June. The products, which take their name from the upcoming 802.11n technical standard, are expected to reach retail stores shortly thereafter.
Wi-Fi comes in several flavors _ "b," "a," "g," and soon "n" _ referring to the subsection of the technical guidelines issued by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a technical professional organization.
The "n" version is expected to be about five times faster than the widely used "g" variety, though in practice, speeds rarely reach what's listed on the box. Draft N products are said to offer better reach through walls and into dead spots and will use multiple radios to send and receive data, making them better at handling big video files.
Gear rated to handle n-level wireless already is being sold. But the Wi-Fi Alliance said certified Draft N items from different vendors are guaranteed to work together and to work with older certified Wi-Fi products.
Karen Hanley, senior director of marketing for the Austin, Texas-based industry group, said the wireless industry shipped 200 million Wi-Fi products last year worldwide. Over the next few years, the category will expand from mostly laptops and access points to Wi-Fi enabled cell phones, televisions and video games.
Hanley said the final 802.11n standard isn't expected until 2009.
___
On the Net:
Wi-Fi Alliance: http://www.wi-fi.org
The San Francisco controller's office issued a favorable review Friday on a proposal by EarthLink and Google to provide the city with free wireless Internet access.
The report estimates residents could save $9 million to $18 million in Internet bills annually by having the option of choosing the EarthLink service, which will offer free access as well as a paid service that is cheaper than other broadband options like DSL and cable.
The report said the service will help the city bridge the digital divide, providing many residents with Internet service for the first time. It also noted it would be a boon to EarthLink, giving it a foothold in the San Francisco broadband market.
"I think this is one more reason for the board to approve free Wi-Fi as soon as possible," said Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. "It shows that Wi-Fi creates a favorable impact for the city."
Newsom said in January that the city had finalized language for a contract with EarthLink and Google to provide paid and free Wi-Fi service. EarthLink would pay the city $2 million over four years for the right to build, own and maintain the network. Subscribers would pay $22 a month for 1 megabit per second of broadband service or receive free service with speeds topping out at 300 kilobits per second.
Hitachi has revealed a 1 Terrabyte Blu-ray recorder at the Harvey Norman retail conference being held at the Melbourne Convention Centre.
Hitachi is set to launch a 1000GB Blu-ray recorder. The product that was shown at the Harvey Norman Conference being held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. According to Hitachi Australia the device will go on sale in 2008 for around $2,000.
A leader in storage devices, Hitachi has also released in the USA for US$400 the Deskstar 7K1000. It was first announced at CES 2007 as the world's first one-terabyte hard drive and has now been shipping for a month.
Lenovo has signed a deal with Microsoft to buy Windows, Office and other software suites for its personal computers in a deal worth as much as $1.3 billion.
The agreement emulates one inked in 2006, worth $1.2 billion over one year, to pre-install Microsoft's (Charts, Fortune 500) Windows operating system software on Lenovo's computers, deemed a major step in China's efforts to combat piracy.
Both firms hoped to advance "one of the most important goals of international business: the protection of intellectual property," Lenovo senior vice president Chen Shaopeng, who attended the signing ceremony, said in a statement on Thursday.
Just when you got your hands on the Nokia N95 and the Nokia N75, it seems like there's something cooler on the horizon (as usual). Images and specs have surfaced on two new Nokia N series phones: the Nokia N81 and the Nokia N82.
The N81 looks to be a sleek quad-band (EDGE; 2100MHz HSDPA-lovin') slider phone with 8GM internal memory, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. It's said to be replacing the music-centric Nokia N91 and comes equipped with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the other hand, the Nokia N82 seems to be going the camera route with a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a Xenon flash. It's also a GSM smart phone (candybar style) and has built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, an FM tuner, and a microSD expansion slot. No details on pricing or U.S. availability, but they're rumored to come out in Q4.
`
visit this for pics..
http://flickr.com/photos/caracas/493924386/
New Internet addresses for general use could start appearing in the summer of 2008 .
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers invited public comment on procedures for creating new names, the first expansion for general use since 2000. Names added since then have been limited to specific regions or industries.
There are currently about 250 domain name suffixes, most of them for specific countries such as ".fr" for France. General-use names include ".com" and ".net."
In 2000, two years after its designation by the U.S. government as the authority for overseeing Internet naming policies, ICANN approved seven new names, but only ".info" and ".biz" were truly for general use.
ICANN solicited additional applications in 2004 and has approved six regional or industry-specific names, such as ".travel" and ".asia,"
Also added were .jobs, .mobi, .cat, and .tel.
The new addresses are likely to be in English.
On the Net:
ICANN information on new names:
http://www.icann.org/topics/new-gtld-strategy-faq.htm
"Hundreds of 360 º scenes from the UK, New York and France, including London, Brixton, Wales and more"
http://www.urban75.org/vista/index.html
There was a little surprise for everyone today at the Halo 3 preview in NYC: A special edition Halo 3 Zune. It's due out in mid-June. here are some pics ::
http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/zunehalo3/
These pictures were taken only a few minutes ago. AMD showed off their Barcelona quad-core processors in action today in Monterrey, California. What you see in the pictures below are single processor and dual processor configurations, so a true "4x4" is now realized by AMD that looks very comfortable on an enthusiast desktop. And yes, those are Radeon X2900 XT video cards in the systems. Ian McNaughton showed off both systems encoding a 1080P trailer of Spiderman 3 to an H.264 format. On the dual quad-core Barcelona machine the encoding nearly ran real time. Extremely impressive. You will be seeing Barcelona in servers long before it finally gets to our desktops though.
The speed of the processors was not disclosed, but given the speed of the encoding done they were not "slow" processors by any stretch of the imagination. Sticking my hand into the machines and feeling the base of the CPU heatsinks, the slightest warmth was detected. The same went for the northbridge heatsinks in the systems as well.
Also shown off was a 300mm wafer that was composed of 45nm parts built in AMD's Fab 36 in Dresden, Germany.
follow these links for the pics ...
http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE3ODc1NjI4M25xVWV5U3JERFNfMV8xX2wuanBn
http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE3ODc1NjI4M25xVWV5U3JERFNfMV8yX2wuanBn
AOL's Password Puzzler
A reader wrote in Friday with an interesting observation: When he went to access his AOL.com account, he accidentally entered an extra character at the end of his password. But that didn't stop him from entering his account. Curious, the reader tried adding multiple alphanumeric sequences after his password, and each time it logged him in successfully.
It turns out that when someone signs up for an AOL.com account, the user appears to be allowed to enter up to a 16-character password. AOL's system, however, doesn't read past the first eight characters.
Thanks to WikipediaFS, Wikipedia fiends tired of reloading pages in the browser can now, provided they’re using Linux, mount the site as a virtual filesystem.
WikipediaFS is a mountable Linux virtual file system that enables you to view and edit Wikipedia (or any Mediawiki-based site) articles as if they were real files.
That means you can view and edit articles within your favorite text editor, which is much better equipped to that latter tasks than a browser window.
visit
http://wikipediafs.sourceforge.net/
Clicking through the menu on your iPod demands a significant amount of visual attention, which can be a hassle (while jogging) and even dangerous (while driving). But engineers at the University of Toronto and Microsoft Research are working on software that could make it possible to navigate the menus of gadgets that use circular touch pads, like the iPod, without looking at them--only audio cues would be used.
The researchers have designed an auditory menu technique--called earPod--that provides audio feedback when a person drags his or her finger around the touch pad. Although it's not ready to replace the expansive menus on real iPods, the results are encouraging, says Patrick Baudisch, a research scientist at Microsoft Research, in Seattle, who worked on the project. Within 30 minutes of beginning to use the technology, people can navigate two levels of earPod menus faster than traditional visual menus, and just as accurately.
"Requiring constant visual attention while using a PC is reasonable," says Baudisch, "but if you're using an iPod on the road, [constant visual attention] is unreasonable." In addition to giving people back their eyes, he says, audio menus could help gadgets save battery life by not wasting energy on a screen, and they could add functions to the screen-free devices such as the iPod shuffle.
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a few clicks. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.
follow this link ...
http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html
With the release of Microsoft's new Windows operating system (Vista), more and more people are looking for alternatives to Windows for various reasons. It has all software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that runs also on older hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.
This tutorial shows people who are willing to switch to Linux how they can set up a Linux desktop (Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn) that fully replaces their Windows desktop,
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_ubuntu7.04
use the Google Command Line search engine ... with more than 50 commands ..
http://projects.felipc.com/gcl/
ust between you and me, except the online calendar sharing feature, Google Calendar is a very traditional calendar software. It’s just a prove to say Google can develop a calendar software in a web based platform.
Anne Zelenka at Web Worker Daily proves otherwise. She suggests 18 ways to make it rock:
* Add holidays, moon phases, sporting events, and other public calendars.
* Customize your view.
* See where you are right now on your calendar.
* Turbocharge your quick add.
* Add events without even being on the GCal page.
* Receive event reminders and other notifications.
* Have a daily agenda emailed or text-messaged to you.
* Access your calendar while you’re on the road.
* Or access your calendar from your IM client.
* Learn the keyboard shortcuts.
* Add To Do lists to your calendar.
* Get a bigger view of your calendar.
* Share your free/busy information on your blog.
* Synchronize with your desktop calendar(s).
* Add events from GMail.
* Display an agenda in GMail.
* Add a popup agenda with notifier to your Firefox status bar.
* View the weather forecast for your location.
Want to put a little piece of yourself on your friends' and family's homepages? Creating and sharing these Google Gadgets is as easy as filling out a simple form.
google introduces personalized portals with new features .. for more
http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices
Brad Garlinghouse (Yahoo SVP Communications & Communities) and Stewart Butterfield(Cofounder Flickr)have told that they will announce the closure of Yahoo
Photos tomorrow
The actual closure will occur over the next few months, they say.
The service will be shut down in favor of the newer and more social Flickr, which they acquired in March of 2005. There has long been an issue at Yahoo where newer services have competed with older services, and Yahoo has finally taken some strong action to getting their house in order with a consistent set of product offerings. Garlinghouse has been one of the stronger proponents of this strategy.
Yahoo is not forcing transition to Flickr - instead, users are being given the option of choosing among a number of top photo sharing sites. If you are a current Yahoo! Photos user, you will be given the option to export all your photos into Flickr (a one-click process) or you will be able to export to a few other services such as Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly. Most of these services have built special tools to transition users, Butterfield said. Users will also be able to download full sized original photos, or order CDs and prints at a discount to the normal price. “We have no interest in forcing anyone to switch to Flickr” Butterfield said. “We want happy users.”
Yahoo Photos is currently the largest photo sharing site on the Internet, with around 2 billion stored photos. Flickr, by comparison, has around 500 million photos. But Flickr is also growing much faster than Yahoo photos and coincidentally has just exceeded Yahoo! Photos in traffic, according to Comscore.
Software giant Microsoft is keen to acquire a majority stake in Yahoo Inc, according to media reports.
Microsoft had approached Yahoo a few months ago, but Yahoo -- valued at $50 billion -- had turned down the offer of a merger or an acquisition. However, New York Post says that the two giants have now reopened talks to forge some alliance to take on the formidable challenge posed by the Internet giant Google.
Microsoft plans to take Google head on with the acquisition of, or merger, Yahoo. Google has dominated the online search and Web advertising space so far and with each passing minute the search goliath is becoming stronger.
A deal between Microsoft and Yahoo will give both an edge over online rival Google, say media reports.
This would also hike the companies' share in the search advertising market to 27 per cent as against Google's 65 per cent, says the New York Post.
The talks that had failed earlier seem to have been revived following management changes at Microsoft and Yahoo, said the Wall Street Journal. The talks are currently said to be in early-stage discussions.
Microsoft is a giant compared to Yahoo, but the software major's revenues from online businesses are paltry. A pact between the two companies could help both, as Yahoo will help power Microsoft's online earnings and in turn will get a lot more MS-backed muscle in return.
Yahoo shares on the Nasdaq shot up by more than 13 per cent on the rumours of a possible acquisition. But, both, Microsoft and Yahoo have declined to comment on any market speculation, the WSJ reported.
Although there is a strong buzz that the two firms may merge or come into some sort of an alliance, the WSJ also said that the deal may fall through due to likely opposition from some top Yahoo executives like co-founder Jerry Yang.
At some point or another your computer or a computer you are working on is going to say that its "Missing required .dll files"
If you need them check out this site...
http://www.dll-files.com/
Do a search... all free... and no registration required.
Searching for a sign that quad-core processing is heading to the mainstream? Look no further than Gateway putting PCs based on Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 chip on the shelves of major retailers.
Best Buy's site lists the $2,100 Gateway FX8020 model, while Circuit City is selling the $2,300 FX8030, which adds a second 500GB hard drive for an even terabyte of storage. In addition to the quad-core 2.4GHz Q6600 chip, both models feature 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory, a 512MB ATI Radeon X1950 Crossfire-capable graphics card, and Vista Home Premium.
These Gateway systems aren't the first quad-core PCs at retail, but they cost considerably less than Best Buy's $3,500 Velocity Micro ProMagix E2440 system, which uses the higher-end Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor. While a quad-core PC with a price that hovers near $2,000 may be attractive, we must caution you against a pricey impulse buy.
The Radeon X1950 card is powerful but outdated; we suggest holding off until ATI releases its next-gen DirectX 10 cards (coming soon) or selecting a PC with Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTS card.
REVIEW
The good: The RIM BlackBerry Curve boasts a sexy and slim design with an improved full QWERTY keyboard. The smart phone also has a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a media player. There's a new spell-checker for e-mail and memos, and audio technology that automatically adjusts call volume in noisy environments.
The bad: Unfortunately, the BlackBerry Curve doesn't have integrated Wi-Fi or 3G support. The device's camera still doesn't have video-recording capabilities, and call quality sounded a bit hollow.
The bottom line: Though it doesn't bring Wi-Fi or 3G support, the BlackBerry Curve offers a best-of-breed design and a well-rounded set of features to make it an attractive device for consumers and mobile professionals alike.
To keep track of all of my files across those various computers, I use a program called FolderShare [Windows/OS X].
FolderShare is a free download that, once installed on a computer, allows you to access that computer's files via a web-based interface:
What you need to do is download and install FolderShare on every computer you wish to have access to and assign it to an account you create once. Your account information is what all of your computers will use to verify that you have access to the files. In the above screenshot, you will see the two computers assigned to my kirupa account under Available Devices. From this view, you can select the particular computer you want, browse through your directories, and download the file/files that you want.
For example, whenever I am away from my main desktop, I can still download and have access to TV shows Media Center recorded for me
When you download files, the file is uploaded directly from your source computer. There is no intermediary that caches the files like you would see if you used an online disk storage service. The advantage of not using an intermediary is that you don't have to wait for the files to be sync'ed up with a 3rd party before you have access to them, but the downside is that your download speed is limited by your host computer's network upload speed. Of course, this also means that you have to have your computer powered on and logged in at all times.
Drawbacks aside, this is one of the better programs I have used over the years for allowing me to remotely access my files. Best of all, you don't have to have the FolderShare software installed on a computer to access your files. You just access the FolderShare web-site and download the files directly via your browser, for only the computers that need to be shared need FolderShare installed.
Cheers!
Yahoo is set to release late Wednesday a new Web-based version of its instant-messaging application that lets people use Yahoo Messenger on any browser and any Internet-connected computer rather than having to download it to a hard drive.
Yahoo Messenger for the Web allows people to check their instant messages and access their buddy list from anywhere, which could prove useful for those who are traveling or are forbidden from downloading client software to their computers at work.
The Web version of the chat application offers functions that the downloaded version does not, such as the ability to search current and archived messages from any computer. It also lets users maintain multiple conversations in one window with different tabs instead of opening up chats in multiple windows.
A Yahoo representative said Yahoo is looking at integrating Web-based instant messaging in games, Yahoo Answers and other forums where people could use real-time communication. Yahoo Messenger for the Web is interoperable with Windows Live Messenger. It is being launched initially in Brazil, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and the United States, and is available in English, Portuguese, Vietnamese and traditional Chinese.
Yahoo rivals Google and Microsoft already have Web-based versions of their instant-message applications with Gmail, which launched in 2004, and MSN Web Messenger, respectively.
3G
For the past few years, cellular carriers and handset manufacturers have talked a lot about third-generation (3G) services for mobile phones. Despite all the talk, however, the companies haven't done a particularly good job of explaining what it all means. To many customers, the real meaning of 3G has been lost among promises of video features and zippy data speeds--promises that are only now beginning to live up to reality. Yet the question still remains: What exactly is 3G?
Simply put, 3G cellular technology will bring wireless broadband data services to your mobile phone. Boasting speeds from 144Kbps (roughly three times faster than a 56K dial-up modem connection) to 2.4Mbps (close to cable-modem speed), 3G networks let you speed through Web pages, enjoy streaming music video, watch on-demand video programming, download and play 3D games, and videoconference with your fellow chatterers. While the interface is undoubtedly different on a cell phone, the experience of surfing, downloading, and streaming stands to be very close to that of a broadband connection on a computer.
Sound good? Well, yes, it does. You'll pay for the services, of course, but stateside users have finally begun to catch up with their European and Asian counterparts. To date, three major carriers have introduced 3G services, and a solid assortment of 3G-enabled handsets are now available. Verizon Wireless was first to market in early 2005, followed by Sprint and most recently Cingular (T-Mobile is waiting until 2007). At present, you'll need to be in an urban area to really partake in 3G, but most carriers plan nationwide rollout eventually.
HERE R THE THINGS THAT U LL LOVE IN WINDOWS VISTA IF U USE IT .....
1. Search or create virtual files
Forget directories, forget directory trees. Microsoft has integrated search throughout its new operating system, and you'll quickly come to wonder how you lived without it. You can search for all documents authored by John Doe, then save the search as a virtual file folder for later reference without having to physically relocate or make copies of all those files.
2. Widgets--er, Gadgets
In Windows Vista, Microsoft allows you to drag and drop Gadgets (think Widgets on the Apple OS X desktop) to tell time, calculate currency, or tackle any trivial task you perform regularly that would be handier if it were always on top of your current screen. Presently, you can acquire Gadgets, or Widgets, for your Windows XP machine from online sites such as Windows Live. In the near future, Microsoft says you'll be able to write your own Windows Vista Gadgets, allowing you to really personalize your desktop.
3. Built-in diagnostics
Programs won't run, the operating system crashes--Microsoft says these will be in the past with Vista. So far, we've seen more dialogs, from explaining why an application won't run to warning us that there are driver conflicts that prevent our laptop system from going to sleep. For example, Vista will listen to your hard drive and report pending problems, giving you ample warning to back up your data. There's also a Problems Report and Solutions monitor where you can see what problems Vista has encountered, and then go online to find possible solutions. And, have you ever noticed how Windows computers get slower with age? That's because files get separated from each other on your hard drive and require occasional defragmentation. Most of us never do it, in part because it uses too many system resources. In Vista, the process is automatic and runs in the background, so you won't even notice it.
4. Need more oomph? Vista will find it for you
Need more RAM? How about borrowing some from that 256MB or greater USB drive? In Windows Vista, the new Windows ReadyBoost feature can swap flash memory with any large USB device. If your laptop has a new hybrid hard drive, the Windows ReadyDrive can improve your system's overall performance, battery life, and reliability by taking advantage of the drive's built-in flash capabilities. New Windows SuperFetch can cache on your hard drive frequently used apps based on the frequency of use so that, for example, every Monday morning when you arrive at your desk for work, you can count on Outlook and your Internet browser to launch quickly. Also, finally, there's a new feature called Low-priority Input/Output that should keep you productive: in Windows Vista, user applications will get higher priority with system resources than antivirus or defragmentation processes.
5. Enhanced help
Help used to be limited to a few pithy sentences about the task you want to perform. Windows Vista changes all that. There are more options available within Help inside Vista. For example, you can initiate a remote-assistance session so that someone you trust can take over your PC remotely and diagnose a problem or perform a task for you. You can also go online and search Microsoft's knowledge base or contact Microsoft's technical support. One really cool feature, however, is labeled Do It Automatically. Here, a task such as checking the version of a driver will be automated, with your desktop going dark as a pointer arrow floats over the screen indicating what to click and where. From time to time, the pointer will stop and a dialog box will require your input before it continues to perform the task. While there are only 15 of these automated help sessions within the current Windows Vista beta 2 release, we hope Microsoft adds more.
Along with call quality, a cell phone's battery life is one of the most important considerations when choosing a handset. It's never fun to watch your cell phone die when you're in the middle of an important call. And it's no fun either to have little power when you're nowhere near a charger. While manufacturers make lots of promises about a phone's battery life, the rated times don't always hold true to real-world use. That's why CNET tests every phone we review for its talk-time battery life.
In the following charts, you'll find the tested talk-time battery life for hundreds of cell phones and smart phones, past and present
Phone model Talk-time battery life (in hours)
Nokia 2115i 4.5
Nokia 2366i 4.3
Nokia 2610 8
Nokia 3155i 4.5
Nokia 3200 7
Nokia 3205 3
Nokia 3220 4.5
Nokia 3300 5
Nokia 3620 7
Nokia 5140 6
Nokia 5300 3
Nokia 6061i 4
Nokia 6030 15
Nokia 6061 4
Nokia 6101 7.5
Nokia 6102 7.5
Nokia 6126 3.75
Nokia 6133 4
Nokia 6200 4.75
Nokia 6215i 4
Nokia 6225 3
Nokia 6230 6
Nokia 6236i 5
Nokia 6255i 3.75
Nokia 6305i 5.2
Nokia 6315i 4
Nokia 6600 2.75
Nokia 6610 5
Nokia 6682 4
Nokia 6820 5
Nokia 7270 5.5
Nokia 7280 4.25
Nokia 7370 3.75
Nokia 7380 2
Nokia 7390 4
Nokia 7610 6
Nokia 8800 4
Nokia 9300 5.25
Nokia E61 8
Nokia E62 8
Nokia E65 7
Nokia E70 7.5
Nokia N80 5
Nokia N73 9.5
Nokia N91 5.5
Nokia N93 6.1
Nokia N95 8
hey .. everyone.. wanna see the workplace in google ??
visit this ::
http://www.photopumpkin.com/photo-blog/life-in-the-googleplex/
At the Mix'07 conference in Las Vegas—Microsoft's annual event for web designers and developers—the spotlight has largely been on Microsoft's Silverlight platform, formerly known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere. Silverlight is a set of tools for developing rich, Flash-like web applications. Less talk has focused around the web browser that will provide the primary user interface for all this new technology. On the Internet Explorer blog, Chris Wilson hinted at some of the things that might be coming in IE 8, while declining to give specific details.
While details may be lacking, the structure of the conferences planned for Mix'07 gives a few hints. Improvements in RSS, CSS, and AJAX support are all being given high priority. It is also widely speculated that IE 8 will include support for microformats, small tags embedded in HTML code that can be interpreted in various ways by software, such as calendar events or contact information. Microformat support is scheduled for Firefox 3, so IE 8 will have to include them in order to keep up. The new version may also include more options for user interface customization, as that was one of the biggest criticisms of IE 7, and one which the developers often blamed on lack of time.
The fact that there will be an IE 8 at all is a testament to the fact that the web browser market has become competitive again. When IE 6 finally vanquished Netscape, the team that created Microsoft's browser was largely thrown to the winds, and development slowed to a crawl. It took Firefox gaining a ten percent market share to cause Microsoft to respond with IE 7.
Despite continued criticism over the slow development of IE 7, it is clear that Microsoft isn't ignoring the browser any more. A timeline for the release of IE 8 isn't available yet, but Microsoft is hinting that there will be at least another year of development, which would make it approximately 18 months after the release of IE 7. Microsoft isn't currently planning any interim releases, such as 7.1 or 7.5, but the browser does continue to be updated with bugfixes and security patches through Windows Update.
Computer industry market research firm iSuppli has released a new report that forecasts technology penetration in both the laptop and desktop sectors over the next few years.
One of the more unusual predictions made by the report is that by 2009, more than 60 percent of laptops will feature some sort of flash-based storage.
Today, only 0.7 percent of laptops come with flash drives. However, increasing capacity and decreasing cost of flash storage over the next few years may change this number significantly. iSuppli noted that in 2003, purchasing 1GB of flash memory was over 100 times more expensive than the equivalent cost per gigabyte for a traditional hard drive. However, it expects that this ratio will fall to only 14 times by 2009, leaving flash memory as a viable option for certain configurations. By the end of that year, up to 24 million, or 60 percent, of all laptops sold per quarter will come with flash storage.
iSuppli noted that flash technology can offer faster seek times than hard drives as well as being far more shock-resistant, an important factor for mobile use. In addition, flash drives can be manufactured in smaller enclosures than hard drives and consumer less electrical power. Already flash storage has captured the majority of the MP3 player market for these last three reasons.
Hard drives are unlikely to disappear from laptops entirely, of course, as they will continue to provide more bang-for-the-buck in terms of data storage, and hard drive technology is continuing to improve. Currently, flash becomes prohibitively expensive in larger configurations: 16GB cards are more than twice as expensive as 8GB ones, for example. However, once affordable 250GB flash drives become available, it's hard to imagine how they couldn't be considered adequate for all kinds of laptop configurations. iSuppli predicts that the transition from hard drives to flash drives will still be ongoing in 2009, with most laptops sporting combination drives rather than being flash-only.
Chip maker Intel is already preparing for the transition, as the company announced its first ever flash memory drives back in March of this year.
The master of text-based search is looking to lend a voice to Internet users everywhere ,the system listens to your spoken query, does its magic, and returns the results.
Google's system is aimed at making the voice-based search process more like a standard text-based search query, where the search engine itself attempts to provide the most relevant results with as little interaction with the end user as possible. They key to this the weighted approach. By using an algorithm to weight reconstructions of user's queries, the system looks to tap into the Google search system in order to increase the accuracy of their voice recognition system
this is for online gamers
these 2 sites hav addicting games ....
www.mousebreaker.com
www.wahgames.com
Liverpool v Chelsea
It was one of d best semi finals n for d second time in 3 years these two faced in champions league semi finals.Chelsea came to yesterday's match confidently with 1 - 0 lead.But they must have forgot THIS IS ANFIELD.Liverpool made a bight start.Agger struck d first goal at 22nd min after an innovative Gerrard free kick n by that time Liverpool's possession was over 70%.Chelsea came on strong immediately but Drogba's shot was saved by Reina.Liverpool were definitelly d better team with Kuyt hitting d cross bar,Crouch's header n Zenden's powerful shot were well saved by Cech.In 75th min Blues nearly scored but Carragher stopped them clearing d ball.Kuyt scored in 99th min but it was ruled offside.He came close again in last min of extra time but it wasnt struck well n Cech saved it.Penalty shoot out was almost certain n d two managers made tactical substitutions.Liverpool converted all d penalties while Chelsea could manage only one.Jose said d controversial Garcia goal put reds through in 2005.But Liverpool clearly deserved to win n won it perfectly this time in spite of which Jose claimed that Chelsea were d better side.
Liverpool 1 - 0 Chelsea (Agger 22')
Liverpool won 4(Zenden,Alonso,Gerrard,Kuyt) - 1(Lampard) on penalties
