1,440 Topics
 | The impossible has been achieved; in as far as [URL="http://earth.google.com"]Google Earth[/URL] has just got even better. The Beta 4 release seems pretty stable here, certainly no mishaps since I’ve been using it and using it I have been: a lot. Not only has the map rendering become much speedier than …  |
| | Sometimes, I get wind of something that has all the makings of an April Fool’s Day prank: but not often in September. Which is why I took a second look at the story about an IBM supercomputer in the making, with ambitions to break the petaflop speed barrier, which will … |
| | Since writing [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry846.html"]here [/URL]about the release of a new 'privacy preserving web browser', I have now had a chance to test [URL="http://www.browzar.com"]Browzar [/URL]for myself and can make the following additional comments: I do not buy the 'Browzar is adware' comments that have been doing the rounds of the blogosphere, at … |
| | AOL has announced its [URL="http://developers.aimphoneline.com/"]AIM Phoneline Developer Initiative[/URL] that will allow voice application developers and device manufacturers to create new tools to extend the functionality of the still relatively new AIM Phoneline service. Examples of the new APIs for call personalization (or ringtones as mere non-marketing mortals might say), untethered … |
| | AOL has announced its [URL="http://developers.aimphoneline.com/"]AIM Phoneline Developer Initiative[/URL] that will allow voice application developers and device manufacturers to create new tools to extend the functionality of the still relatively new AIM Phoneline service. Examples of the new APIs for call personalization (or ringtones as mere non-marketing mortals might say), untethered … |
| | Well, maybe for a week or three anyway. That is the theory being bandied around wherever more than three geeks assembly for longer than 10 minutes, or so it seems. Perhaps it is just the company I keep. However, is there any merit in the idea that Vista, and specifically … |
| | Once upon a time, back in the late 1990s, Ajaz Ahmed was the founder of an ISP that literally changed the shape of the UK Internet. The reason as to why is hinted at in the name: Freeserve. Ahmed had the vision to understand that free access to the Internet … |
| | [URL="http://www.privacyinternational.org"]Privacy International[/URL] a human rights watchdog, has announced it is to run the second Stupid Security Awards in order to reward the numbnuts responsible for some of the most ridiculous security measures on the planet. If it is annoying, pointless, intrusive, illusory, self-serving and above all else just plain stupid, … |
| | I have long been a fan of [URL="http://www.blinkx.tv"]Blinkx[/URL] the video search engine that, as far as I am concerned, pretty much prompted the whole genre and introduced the idea of live video search and stream done properly. So I was interested to receive word from Blinkx founder and CTO Suranga … |
| | I was reading the [URL="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com"]Google Code Blog [/URL]and noticed that Google software engineer Matthias Zenger happened to announce the availability of the updated Google Base Data API last week. This lets you develop applications that can dynamically interact with Google Base, obviously. Perhaps a little less obviously it also allows … |
| | Some press releases grab your attention for all the wrong reasons, although from the PR perspective if it has grabbed my attention it has obviously worked. One such scurried across my desktop the other day: [URL="http://www.logitech.com"]Logitech [/URL]rolls out its coolest mouse ever, the headline proclaimed. Oh crikey, thought I, here … |
| | It’s bad enough, as an individual, to discover that the domain name you wanted has been snapped up by some corporate pirate looking to make a mighty profit by sitting on it and selling it on. It is even worse when these cyber-squatters snap up a domain you had been … |
| | I admit it; there are times when I have gone to Google (and Yahoo, MSN, Ask and even occasionally a decent Meta-Search such as Dogpile) for no other reason than to see what people are saying about me online. I like to think that I have an excuse, what with …  |
| | Earlier this year [URL="http://www.mcafee.com"]McAfee [/URL]sponsored a rather interesting survey of search engine safety. Safety, that is, from the ‘how safe are the links they deliver and you click’ angle. Now, for the longest time, I have harbored a passing suspicion that the dodgiest links you can follow from any search … |
| | Thursday 24th August could be a date for your diary if you happen to be in the market for compilers and development tools for the high-performance computing arena. Especially that which nods towards parallelization and optimization functionality in order to squeeze multi-core processors to the max. The [URL="http://www.pgroup.com/"]Portland Group[/URL] have … |
| | The news that [URL="http://www.boeing.com"]Boeing [/URL]is to scrap its [URL="http://www.connexionbyboeing.com"]Connexion [/URL]in-flight Internet access service will surprise many people. The fact that it had an in-flight Internet access service will surprise many more. Unless you were a business traveler, flying in Asia where the service was most prevalent, and then one who … |
| | It has been a busy week for both [URL="http://www.w3.org"]W3C [/URL]and anyone who is serious about XML. The [URL="http://www.w3.org/XML/Core/"]W3C XML Core Working Group[/URL] has published the fourth edition of XML 1.0, and second editions of XML 1.1 and Namespaces in XML 1.0 and 1.1. Forming, as they do, the bedrock for … |
| | Please forgive me if I am a little slow in flagging this up, but it has only just floated across my radar: you can now implement Google AdSense for search results on your own page, displaying the all important revenue generating adverts alongside the search results without directing readers off-site. … |
| | I was born in London, and although I no longer live there (having swapped the rat race for a life of rural seclusion) I am a regular business visitor. Unsurprisingly then, I tend to travel a lot by the good old London Black Cab. While more expensive than taking the … |
| | When you are the world's biggest PC maker, your problems tend to be on the large scale when they hit. Such is the case of what the US Consumer Products Safety Commission is calling the biggest recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry. The problem is that a … |
| | OK, so that would just be silly, would it not? Nobody in their right minds would accept a job working in IT on Mars. Yet so far 70 people have applied to the [URL="http://www.imbp.ru/Mars500/Proj_M500-e.html"]Mars-500[/URL] project in Russia, for the unusual position (literally) of an IT Manager willing to be sealed … |
| | The race is on to find the best online coder, as registration for the 2006 [URL="http://www.google.com/codejam/"]Google Code Jam [/URL] US heat starts. You have until September 5th to sign up if you want to prove you are king of the American coders by solving a series of problems to test … |
| | I was caught up in the travel nightmare that has been unraveling in the UK this week, the result of a major gambit in the ongoing ‘war on terror’ being foiled. Like many business travelers, I had been due to fly, short haul across into mainland Europe, when the news … |
| | Born August 12th 1981, the IBM Personal Computer changed the world. Hard to imagine now, but back then it really was the start of a revolution. All those personal computers that came before it were nothing more than toys in the eyes of the business world, the marriage of Microsoft … |
| | Sometimes, the cleverest of folk say the dumbest things. Case in point, I am sure that Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack is very clever, as a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts you would have to assume as much. So why has she claimed that as many as 40 percent … |
| | The Intel Open Source Technology Center has officially released open source graphics drivers for the 965 Express chipset in a move that while not exactly unprecedented is, nonetheless, a most welcome display of commitment to the provision of free software drivers. Moreover, it is a display of that commitment in … |
| | I love IT wars, always have. Back in the day, I was a columnist for a couple of Amiga computer magazines and more than happy to throw my opinion around concerning just why an Atari was such rubbish by comparison. Things have moved on since then, but also stayed much … |
| | I am a writer by profession. Over the last two decades, I have been fortunate enough to have seen more than twenty of my books make it into print. Some have even sold enough copies for me to earn royalties over and above my advance. With publishing house marketing budgets … |
| | Rockstar Games is no stranger to controversy, after all the Grand Theft Auto series of hugely successful video games revolve around the concept of robbing and killing your way to victory. But with the confirmation that it will release the long delayed ‘Bully’ in October, originally slated for a PS2 …  |
| | More bad news from the Las Vegas Black Hat Convention, this time for the blogging community. Most RSS reader software is vulnerable to malicious JavaScript insertion attacks, and web based readers are not immune either. With typical JavaScript based attacks targeting passwords and personal data, it is something that should … |
| | No, it is not a trick question and, yes, your security could be compromised by the fact that you trust your printer almost implicitly. At the Black Hat Security conference this week, Brendan O’Connor proved just how insecure embedded software can be, by exploiting a vulnerability affecting Xerox printers and … |
| | If your neighbour was borrowing your wireless Internet connection, without your permission, and you wanted to teach them a lesson, what would you do? [URL="http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html"]Pete [/URL]decided to have some fun with a fairly simple Squid proxy and turned their online life upside down. Literally. What Pete did was split the … |
| | According to [URL="http://www.spreadfirefox.com"]Spread Firefox[/URL] the Internet Explorer alternative has been downloaded 200 million times. Which sounds impressive enough, until you factor in the small matter of downloads not being the same thing as actual users? Yet while Spread Firefox admits as much and reminds us that the 200 million figure … |
| | How can so many people be so wrong all at the same time? That is the question I am left asking myself following the 410 to 15 vote in favor of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (also known as HR5319 or DOPA.) The answer is, of course, that … |
| | How much money does Microsoft need? As much as possible would appear to be the answer, considering that it has announced a $1.50 fee to download the Office 2007 Beta as from August 2nd. Claiming a requirement to cover server costs as a result of the 3 million people that … |
| | In what could be an important week for anyone with the slightest interest in online chat, Microsoft and Yahoo began a limited public Beta which sees users of the two IM systems being able to talk to each other for the first time. My inside man tells me that the … |
| | Microsoft's Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group have created an automated tool, as part of the larger [URL="http://research.microsoft.com/SearchDefender/"]Strider Search Defende[/URL]r project, to combat sources of comment spam that is the scourge of blogs across the web. Because sites can get high legitimate search rankings while at the same time serving … |
| | Who would have thunked it, the Sony PS3 has run into yet more trouble before it has even made it into the shops. Well I would have for a start, the project has been plagued with bad planning, bad marketing and bad luck since the get go. The decision to … |
| | Surveys, I often find, manage to arrive at the most unexpected of conclusions. This could be down to the questions that are asked being worded in such a way to solicit a politically or commercially acceptable result. It could be down to the fact that people do not tell the …  |
| | It all started late in 1998 when the European Commission received a complaint from Sun Microsystems arguing that Microsoft had refused, perhaps understandably, to provide the information they had requested that would enable the Solaris OS to interoperate with Windows PCs. In less than 2 years the EU had charged … |
| | American chip maker [URL="http://www.freescale.com"]Freescale Semiconductor[/URL] has today announced the development of a magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) chip which can maintain data using magnetic properties and not the traditional electrical charge methodology. Think of it in terms of storing data more like a hard drive, albeit a very small one indeed, …  |
| | Italy may have won the soccer [URL="http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/"]World Cup[/URL] in a thrilling final yesterday, but they did not even make it through to the group matches as far as the Malware World Cup is concerned. [URL="http://www.webroot.com"]Webroot Software Inc[/URL]. has just released details of global average malware infection rates during June 2006 … |
| | Although the Firefox Version 2.0 Beta is not actually released until Tuesday 11th, you can download the feature complete Windows public release candidate 1 build right now from the [URL="http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/bonecho-beta1-candidates/rc1/firefox-2.0b1.en-US.win32.installer.exe"]Mozilla FTP server[/URL]. Linux and Mac versions are also available, early reports suggesting that it works just fine with Intel based … |
| | Good question, but the answer may not be as straightforward as the announcement this week by Microsoft, and the ongoing online media coverage, suggests. The impression given is that Microsoft is supporting the Open Document Format in Office 2007 by sponsoring an open source based translator. This will take documents … |
| | Are users becoming more wary of link clicking in email? Are they getting savvy to the tricks of the email phisher? Certainly there is some evidence that the security message is starting to get through to the masses, but not nearly quickly enough to turn the phishing tide in my … |
| | [URL="http://metasploit.blogspot.com/"]H.D.Moore[/URL], he of Metasploit toolkit fame, has vowed to publish details of one browser vulnerability every day during July. Already he has been true to his word with exploit information relating to Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari but nothing that would help any would be attacker run unauthorized code on … |
| | The latest Merriam-Webster's dictionary update has ruffled a few feathers online. Not for the inclusion of Manga (noun: a Japanese comic book or graphic novel) nor ringtone (noun: the sound made by a cell phone to signal an incoming call) or even supersize (transitive verb: to increase considerably the size, … |
| | VIA Technologies has long since been known for a small is beautiful philosophy, and there is no reason to start doubting now if the [URL="http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/v-series/vx700/"]VX700 [/URL]chipset is anything to go by. Created specifically for Ultra Mobile PCs, the UMPC Origami form factor getting publicity and hyperbole in equal measure from … |
| | If Mac enthusiasts groaned when Apple announced it was switching to Intel chips, watch out for full-scale hissy fits as they discover that OS X 10.4.7 contacts Cupertino servers on a regular basis. Just how similar to Microsoft does Apple want to be? You would have thought that the furor … |
| | Have you ever wondered if the Internet is having a good day, if it is happy or sad, or maybe feeling a little depressed? Well, probably not, but thanks to a team of information access researchers from Amsterdam University you might be able to find out. [URL="http://ilps.science.uva.nl/MoodViews/"]MoodViews [/URL]work by tapping … |
The End.