One billion hits a day on YouTube

YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to a new video blog post by the founder of the website.Chad Hurley's blog marks the third anniversary of YouTube's controversial acquisition by Google.The site was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn - a price it later described as "a premium".Earlier this year YouTube was at the centre of a content row over the amount of royalties it paid to musicians for hosting music videos.Six months later the dispute was resolved when Google agreed to pay UK royalty collecting body PRS for Music an undisclosed lump sum.

News source: bbc

Giorgio Armani designs Samsung’s GT-V7650 smart phone

Giorgio Armani, an Italian fashion company, joined Samsung Electronics to present a new GT-V7650 smart phone.The smart phone is powered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5. The 700-euro smart phone, which has been designed by Giorgio Armani himself, is equipped with touch-screen and keypad. The new devise will offer services like GPS plus video player.Hong Won-pyo, VP of Samsung' product strategy division, said, "Three companies [Samsung Electronics, Giorgio Armani, Microsoft] which each represent their respective industry have met to create the ultimate smart phone with an innovative design, cutting-edge technology and the most recent software."The rose bronze-colored GT-V7650 co-ordinates perfectively Giorgio Armani suits.In addition, the phone has 8GB internal memory, support for internet explorer, Microsoft Word and other Office programs.Samsung Electronics has assured that the new devise will not cost more than one million won in Korea.

News source: topnews

Woman Faces Jail Time for Poke on Facebook

The "Poke" feature on Facebook is definitely one of the more annoying features on Facebook, mainly because it's so bloody pointless. Now, you can get arrested for it! That's right, as long as you've got the correct mix of "restraining order" and "stupidity," you too can look forward to spending some time in a pretty cosy.The Tennessean reports that a 36-year-old Hendersonville woman by the name of Shannon D. Jackson was arrested for poking another woman on Facebook. Apparently, by poking the woman, Jackson violated the terms of an order of protection, which stipulates “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”Jackson has been transported to Sumner County Jail and is scheduled to appear in Court at the end of this month. While poking itself is pretty useless and doesn't do much other than inform you that you've been poked, the Tennessean reports that violating an order of protection is a Class A misdemeanor and carries a pretty hefty punishment. If convicted Jackson could spend up to 11 months, 29 days in jail and faces a possible fine of up to $2,500.

News source: tomsguide

Hackers Target Xbox Live

As next-generation gaming consoles go online, some of the same problems that have faced consumer and enterprise IT networks are surfacing.At a session during the SecTor security conference, Chris Boyd, director of research at Facetime security labs, detailed the myriad methods by which gamers — and in particular, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 users — are under attack by cyber criminals. "Though the Xbox doesn't have the number one market share, it is the top target for hackers," Boyd said. "Xbox Live has 17 million plus subscribers and that service requires payment." Xbox Live provides a number of online products and services to gamers. According to Boyd, Xbox Live gamer accounts are now an established commodity on the black market. One way that attackers enumerate their targets is by way of information that is easily publicly accessible. Xbox users gain points during gameplay, which leads to a gamerscore metric. The higher the gamerscore, the more valuable the gamer account. Boyd noted there is no easy way to keep a gamerscore private. "If you go into the Xbox privacy settings, you can't block the gamerscore," Boyd said. "All you can do is hide your list of most recently played games." Boyd added that sites like Mygamercard.net promote users' gamerscores, in effect painting a big target for attackers.Once the attackers have identified their target, there are multiple methods they use to try and gain control of a user's account. One method that Boyd described is by way of social engineering, a tactic that has plagued regular consumer and enterprise users for years. In one scenario, Boyd noted that the attackers actually call Microsoft support claiming to be the Xbox Live account holder and then use the publicly available information to support the claim. Another attack scenario comes by way of phishing messages sent by way of the Xbox messaging service. The messages claim to be from Microsoft and offer users a reward of some kind if they enter their username and password. There are also numerous attacks that act as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on Xbox users. One such attack is a repeated friend request over Xbox Live. Boyd noted that users can set their status to 'away' in order to block the requests, but it does't always work

News source: internetnews

Photoshop for iPhone

There is now a Photoshop app for the iPhone / iPod Touch and it’s called… Photoshop.com Mobile. The best part? It’s free! Free Photoshop?? For the iPhone?? Well, don’t go expecting a full version of Photoshop on your iPhone, it’s a relatively limited and simple image editor, but for quick photo edits on the go, it works just fine and has a nice clean interface.There are some additional publishing features so that you can easily share and upload images to Photoshop.com after you have signed up for an account, but you’ll need to sign up for that login outside of the app itself which is kind of annoying. Instead of signing up for yet another photo sharing service, I’ll just stick to saving images to my iPhone Photo Gallery so I can share them myself via Flickr or Facebook.It’s definitely nice to finally have Photoshop on the iPhone, although I’m not sure if this app warrants the “Adobe Photoshop” name, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction!

News source: osxdaily

Cisco to spend $2.9 billion on Starent Networks

Two weeks after making a $3 billion bid for telepresence service provider Tandberg, Cisco has announced that it is ready to shell out $2.9 billion ($35 cash per share) to acquire Starent Networks.Through this buy Starent, which is a supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions for mobile and converged carriers, will be turned into the Mobile Internet Technology Group, an entity part of Cisco's Service Provider Business. Starent's President and Chief Executive Officer Ashraf Dahod will head the Mobile Internet Technology Group and report to Pankaj Patel, Cisco Senior Vice President/General Manager.Cisco expects to close the Starent acquisition deal in the first half of 2010.

News source: tcmagazine

Intel does better than predicted, reports $9.4 billion revenue for Q3

Beating analyst expectations which had its revenue at $9 billion, Intel has revealed that in the third quarter of this year it has made sales of $9.4 billion, up $1.4 billion over Q2. These numbers result in the company's strongest second-to-third-quarter growth in over 30 years. In addition to the strong revenue, Intel has reported a Q3 profit of $1.9 billion, more than double that of Q2 which was $807 million.Compared to Q3 of 2008, both revenue and net income is down but there are 'special times' due to global economic crisis.Despite a slight dip in microprocessor ASP (average selling price), the Mobility Group's revenue was up 19% sequentially, while the Digital Enterprise Group posted a 14% increase in sales.As for the current quarter which includes the lucrative holiday shopping season, Intel is predicting a revenue of $10.1 billion, plus/minus $400 million. Yep, it's still good to be Intel.

News source: tcmagazine

Openmoko intros pocketable WikiReader device

Openmoko on Tuesday began shipping its WikiReader, a portable device that aims to bring Wikipedia offline. It contains over three million Wikipedia articles in English and doesn't connect to the Internet to get the information, instead storing the Wikipedia database on a microSD card and gets free, quarterly updates from the Wikipedia website. The device uses a monochrome touchscreen for navigation, which includes an on-screen keyboard and support for the site's well-known hotlinks.Three hard buttons let readers check their article history, search for new material and pick a random article. Parental controls are built-in. Two AAA batteries power the device and are said to have a multi-month lifespan.WikiReader is now available both through Openmoko and Amazon for $99. An annual subscription plan that includes preloaded, updated microSD cards costs $29.

News source: electronista

Teens admire Steve Jobs for making the world a better place

According to a survey by Junior Achievement, Steve Jobs is the most admired entrepreneur amongst 35 percent of teenagers, with nearly two-thirds of respondents who chose him saying they did so because he has "made a difference in/improved people's lives or made the world a better place."Eighty-Five percent of those who selected Oprah Winfrey, who came second to Jobs with 25 percent, said they chose her for the same reason.The survey, carried out by Junior Achievement, an organization that educates students on future employment and entrepreneurship, asked 1000 12-to-17 year-olds to choose who their favourite entrepreneurs were and why. The list of celebrities to choose from focused on those who had started businesses themselves, as opposed to licensing their name.Perhaps surprisingly, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg came low, with only 10 percent of teens choosing him despite the huge popularity of the social networking website.

News source: neowin

Clever new device sees through walls

A new contraption that essentially sees through walls using radio receivers to track moving objects could one day help police and others nab intruders and rescue hostages or fire victims.To test out the technique, the researchers placed a wireless network of 28 radio transceivers around a square-shaped portion of an atrium and a similar part of the lawn. The transceivers were placed on 4-foot-tall (1.2 m) stands made of plastic pipe so they would make measurements at a person's torso level.As a person walked around each area, measurements showed the radio signal strengths between all of the transceivers. The resulting processed data displayed a blob-like image of the moving target on a computer screen.

News source: msnbc

Microsoft Security Essentials first week download top 1.5 million

As revealed by Joe Faulhaber on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center's Threat Research & Response blog, the Redmond company's free anti-malware solution, Security Essentials, has dar a good debut, with over 1.5 million download being recorded in the first week of release. Available in 8 languages and 19 countries, the software is claimed to be a low profile, low footprint solution to keep systems running (legitimate copies of) Windows XP, Vista and 7, safe from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.According to Microsoft's statistics, the top three countries using the security software are the USA, Brazil and China, while the most used OS is Windows 7 with about 44% of the install base.

News source: TC Magazine

Eolas sues Apple, YouTube, eBay, others for patent infringement

Eolas Technologies, the company that had a legal spat with Microsoft back in 2004/2005 over the way ActiveX worked in IE, is in the spotlight once more as it has decided to sue a heap of companies for allegedly infringing two of its patents."Intellectual property is the lifeblood of the US economy," said Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas. "We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair."Among the companies named as defendants in Eolas' complaint (filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas) are Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Go Daddy, Google, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo and YouTube. Brace yourself for a long trial.

News source: tcmagazine

EU Prepares to Settle Microsoft Antitrust Case

European Union regulators said Wednesday they were preparing to settle a long and costly antitrust battle with Microsoft Corp. with a deal to give Windows users a choice of web browsers.Microsoft promised the changes after the EU charged it with monopoly abuse for tying the Internet Explorer browser to the Windows operating system installed on most of the world's desktop computers. The European Commission said it would on Friday formally seek feedback from computer manufacturers, software companies and consumers on Microsoft's offer to allow users to pick one of 12 browsers when they install Windows. They have a month to respond to regulators.If the feedback is positive, that could see Microsoft's offer turned into a legally binding settlement to last five years. It would end the EU antitrust case on browsers without adding to the $2.5 billion in fines that the company has already racked up.

News source: foxnews

Mobile phone users top 4.6 billion this year

More than 4.6 billion people will have a mobile phone account by the end of the year if present growth rates continue, says the International Telecomunications Union (ITU).The ITU's latest statistics, published yesterday, revealed rapid growth in information and communications technologiesin most parts of the world. Consumers were taking up everything from mobile cellular subscriptions to fixed and mobile broadband, and from TVs to computers, with mobile technology acting as a key driver, especially in developing countries.The data showed that mobile penetration continued to grow. Global mobile subscriptions was expected to reach 4.6 billion by the end of the year, and mobile broadband subscriptions to top 600 million in 2009, having overtaken fixed broadband subscribers in 2008, the ITU said.

News source: computerweekly

Bulgaria joined PRACE

PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, got two new member countries as Bulgaria and Czech Republic joined the initiative on 8 September 2009.The overall number of partners in the initiative has increased to 20 as Bulgaria and Czech Republic signed the Memorandum of Understanding on 8 September 2009 in Toulouse, France.The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Prof. Stoyan Markov - head of the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications for Bulgaria and Martin Duda - Head of Operational Programmes Centre of the VŠB -Technical University of Ostrava for the Czech Republic.The following countries collaborate in PRACE: Germany (project coordinator), Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and UK.

News source: alphagalileo

Verdurez.com launched as a social networking site

Verdurez.com has been launched as a social networking site for men and women of Indian origin aged 55 and above living in India and abroad. The website seeks to provide an online platform for members to network, make friends, find partners, meet like-minded people and search for resources.The website is being promoted by a UK-based consultant Ishita Sukhadwala and a Mumbai based film professional Robina Gupta. According to the promoters, the website, which is two months old, has over 250 members from places like Delhi, Gurgaon, Vizag, Hyderabad and Atlanta (US).Verdurez.com is divided into two sections: Community and Articles. The Community pages include member listing, chaupal, blogs, groups and agony column. These pages are for registered members only. The Articles section is open to all visitors and covers relevant topics in the areas of technology, relationship, wellness, hobby, money, travel and citizen’s initiative.The website has also got a Job Board which is still in its infancy. The company hopes to attract prospective employers who are actively seeking older employees. Additionally, for its members, the promoters have formed alliances with a couple of health and travel companies and will be adding to the list in the coming months.

News source: alootechie

'Next generation' wi-fi approved

The next-generation of wi-fi technology has finally been approved for use, despite being on sale in laptops and other equipment for several years.The 802.11n technology, as it is known, was ratified by the IEEE, a body that oversees all wi-fi standards.It was conceived seven years ago and offers speeds at least six times faster than current approved technology.Electronics firms have sold PCs and routers using the standard for many years, labelled "802.11n draft".But without the IEEE's approval, there were no guarantees that future networking equipment would be compatible with the devices."This was an extraordinarily wide-ranging technical challenge," said Bruce Kraemer of the IEEE.

News source: bbc

Pigeon transfers data faster than South Africa's Telkom

A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country's leading internet service provider.Internet speed and connectivity in Africa's largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT's offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg.Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds -- the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line.Telkom could not immediately be reached for comment.

News source: yahoo

Digital contacts will keep an eye on your vital signs

The tech industry calls the digital enrichment of the physical world "augmented reality." Such technology is already appearing in smartphones and toys, and enthusiasts dream of a pair of glasses we could don to enhance our everyday perception. But why stop there?Scientists, eye surgeons, professors and students at the University of Washington have been developing a contact lens containing one built-in LED, powered wirelessly with radio frequency waves.Eventually, more advanced versions of the lens could be used to provide a wealth of information, such as virtual captions scrolling beneath every person or object you see. Significantly, it could also be used to monitor your own vital signs, such as body temperature and blood glucose level.Why a contact lens? The surface of the eye contains enough data about the body to perform personal health monitoring, according to Babak Parvis, a University of Washington professor of bionanotechnology, who is working on the project.

News source: cnn

Chinese EBay Rival Aims for 1 Billion Global Users

The company known as "China's eBay" will aim for expansion abroad in the long term, but first it wants more foreign products sold on its platform in China, it said Saturday.Taobao.com, a booming auction and retail site, does not have a concrete plan for the overseas market but will likely target regions with cultural similarities to China first, said Daniel Zhang, the company's chief financial officer, in an interview.Taobao, which charges no transaction or item posting fees, expects to break even this year, a spokeswoman said. The company reported a ballooning transaction volume of 80.9 billion yuan (US$11.8 billion) in the first half of the year but draws most of its revenue from advertising.

News source: yahoo