Author: Pallab De

Yet another week and yet another major release from the folks at Opera Software. This time it’s the Mac users who have reason to celebrate. Opera 10.52 for Mac, which is the first stable build of the Opera 10.5x trunk for Mac, has been released.

Opera 10.52 for Mac includes all the features of its Windows counterpart, including Opera Widgets for Desktop, Private Browsing, Non-modal notification messages, Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine, Opera Carakan JavaScript engine and Opera Vega graphics library.

Some of the highlights of this Mac release are:

• Improved UI: Opera 10.52 looks like a native Macintosh app and behaves like one, thanks to the Cocoa integration. The design has been overhauled to include a unified toolbar and other miscellaneous improvements.


Opera 10.52 for Mac: Peacekeeper Results

• Speed: Opera 10.52 introduces the Carakan JavaScript engine, which is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) JavaScript engines in the market.

  
  Opera 10.52 for Mac: Impact of Turbo onf Page Load Time

  When coupled with Opera Turbo, which compresses webpages before routing them to your computer, Opera 10.52 can deliver blazing fast browsing speed.

• Multi-touch Support: Opera 10.52 also introduces multi-touch support, which takes advantage of the multi-touch trackpads present in modern Macbooks. Pinch to zoom or use two fingers to scroll and three fingers to navigate back and forth in your browser history, all from your trackpad.

The Windows build of Opera 10.52 mainly delivers bug fixes and performance improvements. Linux users have been left out for now. Nevertheless, Opera 10.5x for Linux has been making steady progress over the past few weeks and expect a final build within a few weeks.

[ Download Opera 10.52 for Mac or Windows ]

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We all know that Windows 7 has been selling like hot cakes since its release. However, the exact volume was up for debate. Now, Microsoft has revealed that so far more than 100 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold.

“To put that in context, more than 10% of all PCs worldwide are already running Windows 7 today. That’s amazing!”, wrote Brandon LeBlanc, in the Windows 7 Team blog.

Nevertheless, Windows XP is still proving to be immensely sticky. According to Net Applications, 64.5% PCs are still on the decade old operating system, while only about ten percent are on Windows Vista.

Riding on the back of strong Windows 7 sales, Microsoft’s net profit for the previous quarter soared to $4.01 billion.

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Whether Fusion Garage is a fraudulent entity or not is something the courts will have to decide. Nevertheless, they have now proved that they are at the very least dumber than dirt.

Apparently, Fusion Garage wanted to gather feedback from their entire customer base. So, they fired off the following mail to their customers:

Dear Sir and Madam,
Thank you for supporting JooJoo.
We hope to get your feedback about the JooJoo Tablet.
Please revert back to us want you think of our product.
Please drop us a line on how your JooJoo is working.

Thank you.

JooJooSupportTeam

The trouble is that not only did their customer relations guy not know how to use a spell checker, but he was also oblivious to the purpose of the Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) field. You can very well guess what happened next.

JooJoo Support dispatched the email using the CC field and in the process revealed the e-mail id of its entire user base.

As if this guffaw alone wasn’t embarrassing enough, it also revealed that Fusion Garage has managed to sell a grand total of 64 units. Yes, JooJoo has managed to do the seemingly impossible. It is faring even poorer than the rock bottom market expectations.

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In case you are not aware, Windows 7 has inbuilt support for multi-touch. Of course, you will need to have a touch sensitive monitor for this to work. Although adoption of touchscreen monitors has been slow, manufacturers are slowly warming up to the idea. Major manufacturers like Dell, Asus, Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo have already jumped on the bandwagon. In spite of this, awareness about Windows 7’s touch abilities is still fairly low. Perhaps to remedy this, Microsoft has released Touch Pack for Windows 7.

Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a collection of utilities and games, which makes use of Windows 7’s multi-touch capabilities. The applications included in the Touch Pack are:

• Microsoft Blackboard: An intricate game of physics in which you solve a puzzle by creating a fanciful machine on a blackboard.
• Microsoft Garden Pond: A tranquil game that takes place in serene Japanese water gardens.
• Microsoft Rebound: A game in which you use your fingertips to control Tesla spheres with an electrical field between them to catapult a metal game ball into your opponent’s goal.
• Microsoft Surface Globe: A program that you can use to explore the earth as a flat 2-D map or as an immersive 3-D experience.
• Microsoft Surface Collage: A program that you can use to explore and interact with your photos and arrange them as a desktop background.
• Microsoft Surface Lagoon: A screen saver and interactive water simulation, complete with a meditative rock arrangement and playful, shy fish.

You can download the Touch Pack for Windows 7 from here.

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Although, Gizmodo’s decision to publicly name and shame Gray Powell was despicable, we are glad that at least something good is coming out of it (and no Gizmodo, you don’t get to take the credit for this).

Lufthansa Airlines – the largest airline in Europe (in terms of overall passengers carried), has offered Gray Powell free business class transportation to Munich to check out some of the finest German Beer. Quite obviously, Lufthansa Airlines is trying to milk the situation to gain some free publicity. But, we don’t mind. Gray Powell has possibly had a harrowing time over the past couple of days and he definitely needs a break.

To cut a long story short, Gray Powell – a software engineer at Apple, misplaced his iPhone in a bar. This was picked up by an unknown person who sold it to Gizmodo. After dissecting the prototype for a month, Gizmodo fired a slew of posts in which they publically named Gray Powell.

It will be interesting to see if Powell accepts the offer. I get a feeling that he won’t. Nevertheless, kudos to Lufthansa for some clever marketing. Here is the open letter shared by Nicola Lange, Lufthansa’s marketing director for the Americas.

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Windows XP was one of the most successful operating systems in Microsoft’s history. However, now it is starting to become a thorn in its way, as millions of Windows XP users around the world are refusing to let go. Nevertheless, Microsoft is making it clear that it is ready to move on.

After Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft has decided to drop Windows XP support from the next generation of Windows Live Essential applications. Microsoft confirmed this through a comment posted on the WindowsTeamBlog:

We know many customers use Windows XP and are happy with their experience, and of course we will continue to support our current release of Windows Live Essentials on XP and the new versions all of our web-based services (including Hotmail and SkyDrive) will run on XP. As some have noted on this blog, Windows XP is nearly 10 years old and simply doesn’t provide the same level of platform support for graphics, and we recognized early in our work on Wave 4 that we could do much more in our software on a modern graphics platform. As a result our new version of Essentials will require the new graphics platform and controls that are only available on Windows 7 or Windows Vista and therefore will only run on these platforms. So if you are happy with XP, you can keep running the current version of Windows Live and our new services. When you move to Windows 7 and Windows Vista, we will have a new version that will let you do more on a modern platform.

Windows Live Essential bundles various Microsoft utilities for home users including Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Microsoft is currently getting ready to begin the public beta phase of Windows Live Wave 4. However, an early version has already been leaked on torrent websites.

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Today YouTube is celebrating its fifth birthday. Exactly five years ago, a 19-second clip called ‘Me at the Zoo’ was uploaded by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, after a visit to the San Diego Zoo. Back then, Mr. Karim was employed at PayPal. Here’s the historic video:

This video is also a throwback to YouTube’s humble beginnings. Although YouTube is now big enough to attract movie premiers and live events, for me the biggest draw of YouTube remains its odd amateur videos. It has spawned innumerable viral sensations including the JK wedding entrance dance, the Numa Numa kid, David after dentist and the keyboard cat. And, I am sure we will see more in the years to come. Happy Birthday YouTube!

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It’s a well known fact that Mark Zuckerberg is an insanely ambitious person. So, it’s not surprising that he wants to see Facebook everywhere on the web. And, when I say everywhere, I really mean it. Today, at the f8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook made a slew of announcements that will not only help it stay relevant but also propel Facebook to the next level. Here is a quick look at some of the stuff that really matters.

Open Graph Protocol: Facebook will be shutting down its Facebook Connect product. In its place, Facebook has launched a new protocol and API called Open Graph, which is based on OAuth 2.0. Facebook has already roped in big names like Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft as partners. The chief purpose of Open Graph is to make integrating external content with Facebook as simple as possible.

New Like Button: Facebook wants to know what’s hot and the new Like button will allow it to do just that. These buttons behave in an identical fashion to Like buttons in Facebook. The only difference is that you can an additional option to include a snippet with each Liked item.

Facebook Bar: Not content with just a button, Facebook will also be launching its very own persistent toolbar. This feature is yet to be unveiled, but you can head over to TechCrunch for more information.

Death of Privacy: Facebook has received flak in the past for its lax privacy policies and I suspect that it may be in for more trouble. The new Open Graph protocol will allow Facebook to auto-login users at websites they have never visited before. Not only that, Facebook also plans on automatically sharing basic profile information with these third-party websites. There are several other potentially troublesome clauses in Facebook’s proposed privacy policy amendment. For example, any data that has not been marked as private will now be available to developers, who are welcome to store it indefinitely.

The word Semantic Web has been floating around for quite some time. So far, no one has managed to get it quite right. However, with Open Graph and Social plug-ins, Facebook is in with a real chance to make sense of the web. The new Facebook will not only know what content you like but also know how you discovered that content, who did you share it with and what was your friend’s reaction to the same content.

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Windows XP users, be warned. If you are using McAfee Antivirus, then do not apply DAT update 5958. Apparently, this update causes McAfee to delete svchost.exe, which in turn sets off a chain of events that ends up messing up Windows XP installations. Affected systems will display the following error message and automatically initiate a system restart.

If you have already installed DAT update 5958, then it is best to perform a rollback (from Tools–>Rollback DAT). In the meantime, exercise caution if you get any alerts related to the detection of W32/Wecorl.a. In all likelihood, it is a false positive that can brick your system. If case your system has already been affected, you can stop the infinite restart loop by entering shutdown –a in the Run command box (Win+R).

Bungled McAfee updates are nothing new. However, this is obviously a big screw up. At the moment, McAfee is undoubtedly working behind the scenes to rush through a fix. However, even that may be too late, as possibly thousands of perplexed users worldwide have already been affected by this glitch.

image courtesey: ChevyGuys.com

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Google’s motto these days seem to be, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do”. Whether Google is good or evil is a different question, but it definitely wants to see the end of arbitrary cyber censorship.

Yesterday, it revealed that some of its products are blocked in as many as 25 of the 100 countries they offer products in. However, Google didn’t disclose all the countries that are currently censoring Google products. Most observers took this half-hearted disclosure as signs of Google’s reluctance to take on governments around the world. As if just to prove these experts wrong, Google has just launched Government Request Tool.

The Government Request Tool (or GRT in short) displays the number of content removal requests and data requests Google received from various countries between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009. The included dataset is quite detailed. For example, Google received 3580 data requests and 123 removal requests from the US Government. Out of this, 80.5% of removal requests were fully or partially complied with. Removal requests included 25 web search items and 70 YouTube videos.

The dataset is not 100% comprehensive or accurate. However, it is good enough to serve its purpose, which is to pressurize governments into being more responsible about censorship. Google encourages positive censorship, which includes banning stuff like child pornography. However, it hopes to reduce political censorship by being aggressively transparent.

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Facebook has decided to shut down its stripped-down version dubbed Facebook Lite. The company didn’t offer any explanation behind its decision, but simply thanked all testers in a brief status update. If you try opening Facebook Lite (lite.facebook.com), you will just be redirected to the main site.

Facebook Lite stripped away all the fancy packaging while retaining the essence of Facebook. It began as an experiment to attract users from countries like India, where average internet speed is still sluggish. However, many users preferred the uncluttered experience provided by Facebook Lite over the full-fledged interface populated with thousands of third party applications. Nevertheless, the demise of Lite means that it possibly never took off in the way Facebook envisioned it to.

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Within a fairly short time, Google Chrome has managed to make a name for itself. Its impressive performance coupled with Google’s aggressive promotion has allowed it to zoom past Opera and Safari. However, fame always comes with a price to pay.

The increased adaption of Chrome has prompted malware developers to focus their attention on Google Chrome. According to BitDefender, there is already at least one malware, which is specifically targeted at Chrome users.

The trojan in question spreads through unsolicited emails, which lures unsuspecting users by promising better e-mail management features in Chrome. Once a user clicks on the supplied link, he is taken to a look-alike of the official Google Chrome extensions page, which serves an executable file (.exe) that spreads the infection.

It is worth noting that the malware does not directly exploit Google Chrome. Instead, it just uses it as an vehicle for fooling gullible users. The lesson in this case is simple – always pay attention to what you are downloading and from where you are downloading.

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Cloud computing is quite the buzzword these days. Both Google and Microsoft have acknowledged its importance and have introduced multiple cloud related services over the past year. However, neither of them are the owners of the world’s largest cloud network. No, it is not Amazon either. According to the ReadWriteWeb, it is Conficker.

Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries, more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth. Among the legitimate entities, Google is the largest, followed by Amazon. Google is made up of an estimated 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwidth.

Conficker was first spotted in 2008 and quickly went on to become one of the most notorious worms in the history. It was not the most dangerous worm ever seen. However, the lengths to which it went to avoid detection and disinfection made it remarkable.

Conficker remains an enigma. Thanks to the massive botnet under its control, Conficker can unleash havoc, if it ever wishes to. Yet, to this day, it has remained largely silent. It is quite possible that Conficker became too large for its own good and the intense spotlight madethe entire operation too risky for the owner.

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Oh the irony! Internet Explorer’s XSS filter, which was designed to prevent cross-site scripting attacks, can be exploited to carry out attacks that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

XSS or cross-site scripting is a type of vulnerability that allows malicious attackers to inject client-side script into web pages. A successful XSS attack can even allow the attacker to gain unrestricted access to the user’s personal profile and other sensitive information.

The IE8 XSS Filter vulnerability affects almost every website that lets users create profiles. Google.com, Wikipedia.org and Twitter.com are some of the high profile sites, which are affected by this attack.

According to Jerry Bryant, a spokesman for Microsoft’s security response team, most of the problems were fixed in the MS10-002 security patch, which was issued earlier this year. MS10-018 cumulative security update for Internet Explorer made further changes to the XSS filter to reduce the security implications. However, not all of the issues have been fixed. Some websites like Google have begun to proactively disable the XSS filter. Until the issue is completely taken care of by Microsoft, regular Internet Explorer users may be better served by switching to an alternate browser.

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If spelling is not your strongest suite, then cheer up, as Google is here you lend you a helping hand. Google has beefed up its already impressive spelling tool, which is capable of automatically spotting spelling mistakes and suggesting correct alternatives.

As a result of this update, Google is now capable of offering spelling suggestions even for names by taking into consideration the context. For example if you search for “matthew devin oracle” Google will automatically realize that you are looking for Oracle’s Matthieu Devin. This feature is currently supported only for English spellings in the U.S. However, Google will be rolling out the change to other parts of the world in the near feature.

Google is also rolling out auto-correct for certain terms in 31 languages. For common misspellings, Google will directly offer results for the spell-corrected term instead of displaying the “Did you mean..” prompt. For example, if you search for “aiprt”, Google will automatically pull up results for “airport”.

Another aspect of Google Search that has been improved upon is Google Suggest. Google Suggest will now take into consideration your location and offer appropriate suggestions. So, if you live in New York, you will be getting different suggestions than folks living in Seattle.

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Microsoft has launched Fix it Center Online – a repository of Fix It solutions offered by Microsoft. Fix It patches are nothing but one-click solutions to common system problems that Microsoft has been offering for quite some time. In the past, we have referred to them on numerous occasions. However, until now there was no central repository for all the Fix It patches released by Microsoft. So, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, it was practically impossible to locate the required solution. The newly released Fix It Center (FIC) takes care of this problem.

The FIC client packages old and new fixes into a neat utility. Once installed, it will automatically scan your system, detect your hardware and software configuration and offer to fix any detected incorrect system settings. Microsoft claims that FIC can even find and fix issues before they become real problems.

FIC also allows you create an online account, which maintains a record of all the fixes applied by you in the past. You can install Fix it Center client on as many PCs you like, and when you use the same sign-in account during the client setup on each PC, the information about all your PCs will be registered in the same account. This feature may appear unnecessary to home users but it can be of great help to computer technicians and system administrators.

Techie Buzz Verdict

If there is one thing that I didn’t like about FIC, it is the fact that it forced me to use a web installer. It is not hard to see why Microsoft opted to offer just a web installer – they probably just want to ensure that you always install the latest version on any system. However, this also makes deploying FIC on systems with slow internet connection cumbersome. Other than this, I can find very little to nitpick about. Some of the solutions suggested by FIC are quite basic. But then, this isn’t really a tool for power users.

Fix It Center is a beta product. Hence, it may behave unpredictably. However, during my brief testing it worked flawlessly. It’s definitely a great tool and every computer user should have FIC at his disposal.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent)

[ Download Microsoft Fix It Center Online ]
via TheWindowsClub

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Is Apple preparing to launch a new line of (possibly cheaper) Macs powered by AMD microprocessors? Apple Insider certainly believes that this is a real possibility.

According to Apple Insider, representatives from Advanced Micro Devices have been spotted on Apple’s commuter coach buses. In addition, AMD executives have been spotted on their way out of meetings with senior Apple employees.

It is no secret that AMD has been struggling to compete with Intel’s offerings. This is just the kind of shot in the arms AMD desperately needs. In fact, a partnership with AMD would be good news for everybody. It would offer Apple some bargaining chips when dealing with Intel. Moreover, it would provide Apple, if they are interested, the opportunity to launch lower priced netbooks. AMD’s offerings can also come in handy in Mac Mini and lower end models of MacBook.

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Google Docs is still a no go as far as most enterprises are concerned. However, Google is obviously desperate to claw away at Microsoft Office’s dominance. They have just announced a plethora of new features, which should make Docs a worthy alternative to Microsoft offerings such as SharePoint.

The document editor as well as the spreadsheet editor has been refreshed to provide significant performance improvements. The document editor now offers real-time experience, which means that you can view character-by-character changes as collaborators make edits. Also new to the document editor is sidebar chat, which was previously available in the spreadsheet editor.

New features in spreadsheet editor include formula bar for cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets.

Google has also launched a collaborative drawing editor. Don’t be misled by its name, Google isn’t trying to compete with MS Paint. Rather, the drawing editor is intended for drawing flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics.

The drawing editor should become available later today, while the preview versions of documents and spreadsheets would be rolled out to all users within the next few days.

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It seems that Opera loves to stay in the news. Now that they have taken a break from releasing new products at a breakneck pace, they are keeping themselves busy by drafting self-congratulatory press releases. The latest one celebrates the fact that Opera Software reached the milestone of having 100 million users in March.

Of course, this is not a surprising news, since Opera Mini had amassed 50 million users in January 2010 itself. The desktop version was reported as having 45 million users back in December 2009.

As always, there are two ways of looking at these stats. The fact that Opera Mini has rocketed to 50 million users bodes well for Opera Software. However, its desktop browser continues to disappoint. Opera may have added 40 million active users since it went free, but its market share still pales in comparison to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. In fact, according to most analytic firms, Opera for desktop is still struggling to touch the 3% mark.

Opera 10.5 was undoubtedly an impressive release, but Chrome’s recent beta builds have once again highlighted the glaring omissions in Opera. In spite of being around for more than a decade, Opera still doesn’t have an intelligent form filler and the lack of an API means that others can’t build one either. Google has been incredibly smart about Chrome. Since they outset they have targeted key features and their vision is now paying rich dividends. Until Opera Software wakes up, it will continue to struggle to break out of its niche.

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Microsoft has launched a new initiative dubbed ‘7 Wonders of Windows 7′, which aims to familiarize users with the benefits of Windows 7.

The 7 Wonders of Windows 7 website provides a rich set of tools and training to immerse yourself in Windows 7. The demo highlights seven impressive new features in Windows 7 and provides a live feed to Springboard and TechNet.

Microsoft is also giving away one Windows 7 powered laptop every month. In order to win all you need to do is answer three simple questions (and agree to allow receive promotional mails from Microsoft and its designated partners).

Head over to 7wondersofwindows7.com for more.

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