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Technology View - by Arun On Technology

Technology View - December 2007

New features coming to Digg

Due Credit: DailyBits
A list of new features that are expected to make it to Digg this year definitely mark the transition that bookmarking sites are making from the Web 2.0 space to a general representation of the pulse of our times.



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December 31st 2007 @ 11:29

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Yahoo into mobile search in big way

Due Credit: DailyBits

Yahoo has been quite active in the mobile search arena. Taking a different strategy from Google, Yahoo has been keen on expanding its partnerships with Telecom service providers.

Since mobiles are expected to really take off in the coming year, it will be interesting to watch the top search giants fight it out in the mobile space.








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December 31st 2007 @ 11:23

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Bookmarking search reults via BookMach

Due Credit: SearchEngineJournal
For users constantly in the need for updated information around a given topic, BookMach is a must try.

The search engine functions as a normal type-ur-keywords-view-results and as a personalized internet search engine as well.

The technique used here is that you could set a 'BookMach' to search the innumerable blogs and other online portals for information on a particular theme and let the results get updated themselves as new information matching the keywords appears on the web.



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December 28th 2007 @ 00:39

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Visual search on Like.com

Due Credit: SearchEngineJournal
If searching for keywords is based on the fact that the keywords in a text are indexed then it only follows logically that searching for an image should also take into consideration the characteristics in the image.

Unfortunately the world of image search is not so simple. Most of the image search engines today rely on meta-data for image files i.e. on the information that the person uploading the image mentions in the image name, description, tags etc. It does make sense to have that approach since why would you ever want to fill in wrong information for something you want others to find? But it is a fact that when left to the discretion of the user, exact data or perfect classifications are never undertaken sincerely


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December 28th 2007 @ 00:34

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Perl 5.10 released

Due Credit: TechRepublic
After a gap of five years, the Perl foundation has announced a major update to the Perl language. Version 5.10 includes more flexible regular expressions and also many more dynamic features.

Initially developed as a language to manipulate text it has grown to be a full fledged language with a wide fan base


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December 27th 2007 @ 18:00

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


2008 : The year for mobile banking

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Mobile banking debuted last decade but failed to catch-up owing to the spread of telephony, atleast affordable telephony among the masses. Now, with mobile computing set to take off, mobile banking is also becoming the upcoming buzz in the financial industry.

Already several banks in the US are rolling out services available via mobiles and many are predicted to follow suite. While mobile as computing platforms are yet to take off, what matters is how devices handle the security aspect well


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December 27th 2007 @ 17:32

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


A brief walkthrough on Google's doodles

Due Credit: DailyBits
The logo that shines on the front of Google's home page is most viewed entity on the Web. And that shiny logo has a history of its own. Every now and then to commemorate a great event in history or very much in the present, Google adds changes to the logo that make it the topic of discussion the world over.

This article talk about the doodles and how they came to be on the home page of the search engine. Its great the the company showcases how it is alive to the times of the world. Perhaps a feature that many other companies would also do nice to implement


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December 27th 2007 @ 01:58

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Data Leak Prevention tool from Websense

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Data leak prevention is the new area that is being secured with a number of security products entering the market. Essentially it refers to enforcement of company policy around copying and transmission of data within and outside the organization. Data leaks are a definite scare to organizations. And it is also a fact that most of the leaks are accidental rather than intentional.

To that extent DLP software help in monitoring the transmission of sensitive data across an organization and enforce in real time the policies within the company. So for employees it is like a means to keep in check all the policy requirements. And when some errors do occur, the software will cause an error to pop up indicating the reason for not allowing the particular data transmission


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December 26th 2007 @ 16:37

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


FBI's $1 billion database to store biometric data

Due Credit: TechRepublic
FBI has made public its plans to spend $1 billion on a database project to store and compare in real-time data on individuals such as fingerprints, ear lobe size, facial features, walking and talking style and iris patterns.

In one of the largest projects being undertaken by the FBI it is predicted that the database would make possible the detection of people using facial features from upto 200 yards


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December 26th 2007 @ 16:14

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Coming soon : Google Profiles

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Google will be soon making available a single access for profile information that gets reflected across all of Google's products. While the move seems like an extension to the single-sign on feature that is present with Google Accounts, this may also be more like a weaving content around the Social networking concept.

FaceBook has already shown how consistently people can be retained on the site by having applications reside alongside buddies. With OpenSocial also up and gunning, perhaps Google has a few acts up its sleeve


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December 25th 2007 @ 07:19

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Vianet brings CCTV over 3G

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Vianet, a company specializing in mobile to mobile communication has taken the concept of CCTV to mobiles with the service running over 3G technology. The technology enables wireless monitoring of cameras and does away with the hassles of trying to find wires to lay out cameras in out of reach areas.


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December 25th 2007 @ 00:54

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


IT carbon footprint calculator

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Logicalis's IT carbon footprint and power consumption calculator is a tool that enterprises can use to obtain an estimate on their power consumption and the benefits that will accrue from the use of virtualization technologies.

In recent times the issue of green data centers has cropped up quite often. IT infrastructure costs also include the cost it takes to power the data crunching machines. Scalability is one factor that gets hit when the compounded costs of data center power consumption is taken into consideration


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December 23rd 2007 @ 18:43

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Semantics in email from IBM

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Semantic search is the next technological frontier. Computers parsing information to extract information that is relevant, not just plain text matching and copy-paste but actual computation of concepts such as events, contact information, presence information etc.

Semantics has been a hot topic in general Web Search. Hakia and PowerSet are two of the major efforts to bring semantics based search mainstream. IBM has recently announced its free e-mail search tool that brings the advantages of semantics based search to emails
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December 23rd 2007 @ 12:56

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Solar energy made cheaper than Coal !

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Coal is the bane but the dark horse of the industrial world. The cheap and most obnoxious of pollutants is also the material of choice for producing electricity.

Now, Nanosolar, a privately held firm has come true on its commitment to develop solar technologies for producing electricity more cheaply than coal. The solar panel are going to be deployed in Germany for a project to deliver 1 mega watt of electricity


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December 22nd 2007 @ 13:48

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Broadband users need more choice

Due Credit: TechRepublic
The report from the Consumer Panel at OfCom has come to the just conclusion that consumers need to have more information on the realistic speeds they can expect from their net connection and also need to have a choice to make a switch in the package or opt out the contract as a whole.

The report has been submitted to the Chairman of OfCom and he also supported the changes but in abstract terms. Advertisements from ISPs usually refer to the high side of the connection speed but in reality users seldom get to enjoy those


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December 22nd 2007 @ 13:40

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Yahoo to be platinum sponsor for Apache Software Foundation

Due Credit: DailyBits
Yahoo will be a platinum sponsor to Apache Software Foundation. The partnership will see the search giant providing financial and hardware resources to the non-profit outfit that manages some of the most high profile and collaborative open source projects on the planet.

Yahoo's committment to open source is evident in the contribution of its employees to the open source community


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December 22nd 2007 @ 10:15

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


IBM acquires Solid Information Technology

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Solid Information Technology, the makers of in-memory databases will be acquired by IBM. Thus IBM adds more value to its line of data services. There are some issues here for MySQL which will now have to look for other solutions for transaction engines.

The transaction engine from Solid is what MySQL database depended on. MySQL is working on its own transaction engine called Falcon that is expected to be out with version 6.0


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December 21st 2007 @ 20:07

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


GTalk talks more languages !

Due Credit: DailyBits
Google's brought out a great new year and Christmas gift for its users with the translation bots for GTalk. So now users have to only add the bots that are specific to their language conversions and whatever is typed to the bots is converted to the other language.

The bots are named in the format that refers to the source language first and then the destination language. Also, adding the bots to the groups will enable translation within a group chat session as well


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December 21st 2007 @ 19:25

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Open sourcing router code

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Cisco and Juniper made one-upping announcements last week and it all came to naught when the fact of the announcements was brought to light. The issue started with Juniper announcing that they had open sourced their code and it was up for extension. It was later that a blogger detailed on how the process was not exactly open source as it was not possible to obtain the source code by just downloading but would require for a developer to go through lengthy un-encouraging processes to just get to see the code.

Cisco, even before the details of Juniper's announcements, announced that it would also be open sourcing the IOS code in the near future. Now, the millennium development goals would be met in the near future. The developing nations in the world would be all developed in the future as well. So, Cisco's code would also be open in the near future


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December 21st 2007 @ 03:06

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Sophisticated trojans can mimic online money transfer, pilfer funds

Due Credit: TechRepublic
This was coming. The only question was when rather that how. Trojans are now able to even mimic online transactions by noticing the activity of users during banking transactions. While the programs have not got to the level where they are able to start transactions by themselves, they lay in the background as daemon process and once the user goes online, the funds are transferred to other compromised accounts.

Not only that but the amount from the compromised accounts also keeps shifting to avoid detection. The transactions are performed so smoothly that at the banker's end its difficult to make out a human initiated transfer from a program initiated one


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December 21st 2007 @ 02:52

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Alliance for smaller chips

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Software is free on the Web. When was the last time you paid to have your mails, messages, voice, images and video uploaded onto a storage you did not own and streamed from servers you did not pay for? Well, it call comes for a price, the price of your privacy but that is another topic. The point is, more features mean more crunching (bit crunching) at the silicon level and that means more R& D in to better technology that can get those electrons past the ever shrinking layers in the transistors.

And this R& D does not come cheap. Processors are a costly business. And now, the chips giants ( Not all of them actually), have decided to form an alliance for research and development of the processors based on the 32 nanometer process. Of course, the real biggie here, Intel, has decided to chart its own path


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December 21st 2007 @ 02:37

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


AMD rolls out roster of plans for coming years

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Its been a bad year for AMD. Intel has been just doing the right stuff at the right time and AMD has been finding the wrong in the right at the wrong time. I am of course referring to the much delayed Barcelona chips and more delays due to some critical bugs getting discovered.

Nonetheless, AMD execs were crooning to financial analysts at their Analyst Day with plans to bring some of the best tech to processors in the coming years. While the whole announcements included lot of code names, the important thing is this - they will be in business


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December 21st 2007 @ 02:22

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Israeli firm says its tech can solve spam

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Spam is the single most costly bane to the online world. A majority of the e-mail sent across globally constitutes unsolicited mail. And what adds more to these attacks is the fact that connectivity is on the rise. Meaning more zombie PCs to add to the spam menace.

A firm from Israel says it has developed a technology that can be of help in detecting zombie PCs on the web. Essentially, this would help is preventing mail from those systems from entering an enterprises networks increasing the bandwidth and ofcourse resulting a fewer cluttered inboxes


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December 21st 2007 @ 02:12

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Trojan replaces Google Ads links

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Few weeks back there was a furore when Google search results were found to contain malicious links listing high in the first few pages. The web search engine immediately took action to have the bad links removed (though there still continue to be new links surfacing every once in a while). Now, the Google Ads system is being targeted by malware that resides on the systems of users browsing the web.

The Trojans play with the hosts file that is used to match domains with IP addresses. It replaces the text ads that originate from the Google Adsense server with ads pointing to several other suspicious sites
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December 21st 2007 @ 02:01

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Zuula : Tabbed search across multiple engines

Due Credit: SearchEngineJournal
Zuula, the meta search engine provides an option for users to search across multiple search engines with the result displayed in adjacent browsers.

There are results returned from top engines for blogs, images, news etc


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December 18th 2007 @ 22:29

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Reversing CO2 to Fuel

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Researchers at the Sandia Laboratories are working on designing on an innovative reactor that converts carbon-di-oxide to carbon monoxide using concentrated solar energy. The carbon monoxide generated can be used for generating fuel in due process.

The result of the research may perhaps be the best thing to happen to arrest the increase of greenhouse gases


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December 18th 2007 @ 17:59

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Tech News
   


Searching for yourself on the Web?

Due Credit: DailyBits
The survey by the Pew has uncovered some curious results as to the frequency at which people search for themselves online. Technically referred to as ego-surfing, the global trend seems to be more towards people looking about their profile online.

Online identity is more critical when it comes to applying for a new job. Its common practice for firms to search online for the prospectives candidates just to have a glimpse on the online activities of the individual. With social networking and blogging picking up pace, more and more content that can at times be private and opinionated goes online


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December 18th 2007 @ 17:23

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News, Goggle/Search Engine
   


Social Networking APIs wars

Due Credit: DailyBits
FaceBook has responded to the challenge posed by OpenSocial by announcing that it will be making its platform available to third party networks for a licensing fee. One of the leaders in the social networking segment, FaceBook's decision has created quite a buzz in the online world.

Already online firms are vying for developer attention. FaceBook's release of its platform early on ensured that the applications on the site were well on the way before the other social networks got together with Google to announce APIs for third party development


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December 18th 2007 @ 17:15

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Microsoft Vs VMWare

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Microsoft's announcement of the release of its Hyper - V virtualization product beta is being perceived as the first salvo towards the virtualization industry leader VMware. Its a fact that Microsoft does not consider any technological turf as out of reach.
Virtualization technology is emerging as the best solution for enterprises that cannot afford to dedicate server resources for seperate tasks and are looking to squeeze the most out of the available server infrastructure.
Virtualization enables separation of the server hardware from the software running on top of the server. Essentially making a single hardware perform the functions of several different servers


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December 18th 2007 @ 17:00

Posted By: Arun On Technology - Category: Software, Tech News
   


Zumobi changes the UI for mobile internet

Due Credit: TechRepublic
Zumobi, the firm that licenses technology from Microsoft research has found out a novel way to bring in advertising and also to enhance user search experience over the web.

Browsing from the mobile phone is gaining traction but the traditional methods