Mozilla: No 'kill switch' for Firesheep add-on

Mozilla today said it wouldn't -- or couldn't -- pull a "kill switch" to disable the Firesheep add-on that lets anyone steal log-on and account access information to Facebook, Twitter and other major Web services.

Firesheep adds a sidebar to Mozilla's Firefox browser that shows when anyone on an open network -- a coffee shop's Wi-Fi network, for instance -- visits any insecure site on a list that includes the microblogging service Twitter and the hugely-popular Facebook social networking site.

Mozilla has a "blocklist" mechanism that it can, and has in the past, applied as a last-resort defense against potentially-dangerous browser add-ons. The blocklist automatically cripples or uninstalls unwanted extensions that have been added to Firefox.

But Mozilla either can't or won't add Firesheep to the blocklist.

"[Firesheep] demonstrates a security weakness in a number of popular websites, but does not exploit any vulnerability in Firefox or other Web browsers," said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, in an e-mail reply to questions about Mozilla's possible moves.

Beltzner did not respond to questions about whether Mozilla is technically able to cripple Firesheep, or simply chooses not to.

As Beltzner pointed out, Firesheep is not an officially-approved Firefox add-on, but was "created and distributed by a third-party developer."

Most Firefox add-ons are obtained by users from the browser's Add-On center, which hosts Mozilla-vetted extensions.

In earlier instances when Mozilla has dealt the blocklist "kill switch" card, it's done so for add-ons that the company had previously approved, but later discovered were stealing information or distributing malware. In July, for example, it yanked a password-stealing extension that had been available from Firefox's gallery for more than a month before its malfeasance was detected.

The add-on, called "Mozilla Sniffer," contained code that intercepted login data submitted to any site, then sent that information to a remote server. Firesheep does some of the same, but it doesn't show what it finds to anyone but the tool's user.

In May 2008, Mozilla acknowledged that a worm had gone unnoticed in Firefox's Vietnamese language add-on for months, and last February it warned users that the Sothink Web Video Downloader 4.0 and all versions of Master Filer were infected with a Trojan horse.

As with Mozilla Sniffer, those add-ons had also been offered in the Firefox add-on center.

Firesheep has proved very popular. Since its Sunday debut, the add-on has been downloaded nearly 320,000 times, or an average of about 79,000 downloads per day. That puts it within striking distance of the Firefox's most popular add-on, Adblock Plus, which has averaged just over 80,000 downloads daily during its lifespan.

Using Firesheep may be a criminal offense under U.S. law, suggested Chet Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at antivirus vendor Sophos. "[Firesheep] isn't illegal, but using this tool is a crime in the U.S.," he said. "It would be considered wiretapping. You can play with it on your own network, use it for research, but not to invade the privacy of others."

Facebook, Skype integrate their services

Skype now allows its users to log into their Facebook accounts and perform a variety of Facebook tasks from within the Skype interface.

By meshing the Facebook News Feed and Phonebook contact list with the Skype interface, users will be able to view and post messages to their Facebook activity stream, comment on others' posts and communicate via SMS, phone and Skype voice service.

The functionality comes with Skype 5.0, the latest version of the company's PC software, available now for Windows machines, Skype said on Thursday.

"We're working with companies such as Skype to make it easy to find your friends anytime you want to connect," wrote Ethan Beard, director of Facebook's Developer Network, in a blog posting.

In addition to the Facebook integration, Skype 5.0 also introduces in beta, or test mode, a free trial of group video calling, as well as new functionality to improve the quality and stability of calls' audio and video.

The deal is far from exclusive. Facebook also offers integration with Skype rivals AOL AIM and Yahoo Messenger, while Skype has had for several years a tie-up with Facebook competitor MySpace.

The Original Microsoft Windows 1.0 Press Release

On November 20, 1985, a small technology company out of Bellevue, Washington launched a 16-bit graphical operating system for the PC. Originally called Windows Premiere Edition.1, it soon became the foundation for the world’s most prevalent operating system and for one of the most dominant technology companies in history.

25 years later, Microsoft is a household name and co-founder Bill Gates remains the world’s wealthiest person. Back in 1985 though, there was no guarantee of success or knowledge that Windows would dominate the world. It was the beginning of a revolution in computing.

Earlier today, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie resurfaced some of Microsoft’s history in a recent post on his personal blog. In a sealed packet in his office, he uncovered the original press kit for Windows 1.0 and decided to put the documents online. It’s a fascinating look into the beginnings of computing and into a technology that has fundamentally changed our world.

From the company’s original press release:

Microsoft Windows extends the features of the DOS operating system, yet is compatible with most existing applications that run under DOS. Windows lets users integrate the tasks they perform with their computer by providing the ability to work with several programs at the same time and easily switch between them without having to quit and restart individual applications. In addition, it provides a rich foundation for a new generation of applications.

“Windows provides unprecedented power to users today and a foundation for hardware and software advancements of the next few years,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “It is unique software designed for the serious PC user, who places high value on the productivity that a personal computer can bring.”

Windows 1.0 was the beginning of the Control Panel and the Clipboard, but more importantly it was the beginning of an era that brought personal computing to billions of households worldwide.

Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo all team up against Google

Microsoft advanced its partnership with Facebook this week, a move that could represent the biggest threat to Google's search standing yet.

Microsoft and Facebook announced that they're teaming up to make Internet searching more social. Now when someone uses Microsoft's Bing search engine to look for a new car or a book, she can see which ones her Facebook friends liked. It will now be easier for searchers to get their friends' opinions before they make purchasing decisions.

Industry watchers said this was an interesting development for search in general, but it also holds big implications for Google in particular. What's notable is that Facebook turned to Microsoft for this deal and not to the search market leader, Google.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at the press conference on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Wash., on Wednesday, said there was a specific reason he wanted to go with Bing.

"They really are the underdog here," Zuckerberg said. "They're incentivized to go out and innovate. They have all these smart people and are trying to do all these new things."

Google, not surprisingly, dismissed the notion that the deal may have any far-reaching implications and said it welcomes the challenge.

"We welcome competition that helps deliver useful information to users and expands user choice," said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space. It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."

But industry analysts said this Microsoft-Facebook partnership could spell trouble for Google, despite the fact that the search giant handled 72.15% of all U.S. searches last month.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have thrown stones at Google, but nothing has yet chipped its hefty search lead. When the two companies combined their search engines in August, the dominant search company barely blinked. So, if Microsoft couldn't rattle Google when it teamed with Yahoo, which is No. 2 to Google in terms of search market share, why might Microsoft's new partnership with Facebook have Google executives looking nervously over their shoulders?

"Let's face it, Bing has been a big disappointment, but this could act as a differentiator," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research. "People prefer Google to Microsoft, but they prefer Facebook to Google. If the partnership makes Facebooking better, then it could pull users away from Google."

In other words, a major social network, like Facebook, could end up being Google's Achilles' heel.

Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner, said the partnership announcement was less about Facebook and Microsoft than it was about Facebook vs. Google.

"The real importance of [this week's] announcement is that it highlights the growing strategic conflict between Facebook and Google," Valdes said. "There is a battle for the future of the Web, and it is not about search engines, but about the social Web. The competition is between the new and the old -- between Facebook as the early leader in the social Web, and Google as the dominant player in the content Web. Everyone else, such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Twitter, will play a secondary role, and will start lining up on one side or the other."

And what could make this situation more interesting is that Google is reportedly working on launching its own social network. Rumored to be dubbed Google Me, it's considered to be Google's shot at creating a Facebook killer.

Google hasn't had a lot of luck in the social networking arena. Its Google Wave social networking service was shut down in August and reviews of Google Buzz were lackluster. But the company has learned from its failures and may be ready to try to pull some of those advertising dollars away from Facebook.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research, said there's a big battle brewing between Google and Facebook, and Microsoft may have found a way to use that conflict to chip away at Google's massive market lead.

"[The Microsoft-Facebook partnership] moves some searches from Google to Bing," he added. "For major Facebook users, I believe 'social search' is attractive, and many are likely to switch to Bing for all searches... Not only does [Google] lose users, but they lose young users."

Facebook enables one-time passwords

Facebook, which announced the roll out a new security feature that allows users log out of their account remotely from another computer, announced a new feature on Tuesday, which allows people using public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports to log into the site without having to enter their regular password.

“If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password, Facebok's Jake Brill wrote in a blogspot.

In order to get this one-time password, you have to just text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone, and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. “In order to access this feature, you'll need a mobile phone number in your account. We're rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks,” it read.

The social networking site also said the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely is now available to everyone. “These session controls can be useful if you log into Facebook from a friend's phone or computer and then forget to sign out. From your Account Settings, you can check if you're still logged in on other devices and remotely log out,” read the blog.

Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you'll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session. In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.

Google developing self driving cars

Picture sitting in your car, maneuvering through busy downtown traffic while talking on your phone or sending a few texts.

This isn't a scene of illegal texting or phone use. Why not? Because the car in this scenario is driving itself, leaving the passengers inside free to use their mobile phones. (In Google's ideal scenario, you'd be talking on an Android phone.)

This is Google's image of the future. The company known best for its search engine announced this past weekend that its engineers are working on developing technology for cars that can drive themselves. Autonomous cars may be a bit far afield from Google's normal work in search, browsers, operating systems and maps, but the company is looking to head down a new road.

"Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard," wrote Sebastian Thrun, a distinguished software engineer at Google, in a Saturday blog post. "They've driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research."

Thrun also noted that the cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to virtually "see" other cars and the basic traffic flow. The company that introduced Google Maps and google earth also used mapping technology to navigate the roadways, and it took advantage of Google's massive data centers to hold and process all of this information.

While the autonomous cars were on the road, they were occupied by a "trained safety driver," as well as a software engineer who could monitor the vehicle's software operations.

"We've always been optimistic about technology's ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today," Thrun wrote. "While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting."

So why would Google, a company whose name is a verb for Internet searching, set its sights on autonomous vehicles?

One reason is because it can, said Ray Valdes, an analyst at research firm Gartner.

"The long answer is that likely there are multiple reasons," Valdes said. "This may have been an offshoot of the Street View mapping in Google Maps, and that took on a life of its own. Probably the project was not killed because it is cool, had support of senior management, and there is some potential reward further down the road, so to speak."

W3C warns HTML5 isn't ready for prime time

HTML5 is about to take the training wheels off the Web and unleash a new generation of Internet applications. That has Web developers, cloud computing startups, and the big three tech companies — Microsoft, Google, and Apple — salivating over the possibilities for new and improved Web products with desktop-like capabilities.

However, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the official governing body that oversees HTML5, warned the Web community this week that HTML5 is not a ratified standard and that implementing it too soon is not wise.

“The problem we’re facing right now is there is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues,” said Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C interaction domain leader.

“We basically want to be feature-complete by mid-2011,” Le Hegaret said. At that point, the W3C will open it up for a final call for comments from members and then move to the recommendation stage. “And then we’re done,” said Le Hegaret.

That makes it sound like it will probably be early 2012 before this thing is settled.

One of the most popular HTML5 features that has been talked about (and even implemented in a few cases) is its video capabilities, which companies such as Apple are counting on to eventually replace Flash. However, even that is still half-baked at this point.

HTML5 still does not have a video codec. It can’t use the popular MPEG-4 format because it has “patent issues” according to Le Hegaret. Google is hoping that it’s open source Web Format could become the default, but that is far from settled yet.

The other issue is digital rights management (DRM). HTML5 doesn’t have it, because HTML5 is an open standard. Le Hegaret said, “If we are going to develop a solution for DRM which is open, it would be broken by a hacker within two days. There is no point of us doing that.” Le Hegaret added that a compromise could be reached on DRM, but it is not currently a part of the road map.

Google stays strong as Yahoo slips in search market

Google had a good month in September, with its search share gaining and rivals Yahoo and Microsoft Bing taking a hit.

Google, the dominant search leader, grabbed 72.15% of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending Oct. 2, according to Hitwise, an online traffic monitor. That's up slightly from 71.59% in August.

Microsoft Bing, which is Google's biggest rival, didn't have such a great month in September, though.

Hitwise reported Friday that Bing-powered search sites handled 23.64% of U.S. searches for the month, with Yahoo grabbing 13.54% and Bing itself pulling in 10.10%. Bing-powered search sites are down 2% overall, while Yahoo is down 5%. Bing itself went up 2%.

Microsoftand Yahoo announced in August that Bind is fueling Yahoo search results in the U.S. and Canada. The search integration came more than a year after both companies announced they were joining forces to better take on Google -- since neither company had made any headway on its own.

The latest Hitwise report shows that Yahoo suffered after integration, while Bing saw only a small bump.

"It's a pretty small slip and only based on a month's worth of data," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. "I'm sure that these aren't the results that Bing marketers are looking for... but the holiday season might be key for them. Search engines receive a real workout with all of the holiday shopping, travel planning and the like. It will be interesting to see how Bing fares over the next three months or so."

New Facebook Groups: 5 key facts

Facebook unveiled a new feature on its site that lets you share, chat and e-mail with small groups of friends. Groups, which differs from another feature with the same name, is designed for a small number of people who know one another--think families and coworkers. Here, you can share pictures, comments and articles privately with only the people in the group. The former group pages, which targeted large communities of people with a common interest, will still be active.

In the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Groups was developed to combat "the biggest problem in social media": Sharing everything with everyone, when you really only want to share something with select people. "'Just friends' was the most private setting," Zuckerberg said. "But you might not want to share something with hundreds or even thousands of friends."

Here's how to get started with Groups and details on its three main features.

1. Facebook Groups: Where to start

On the left navigation of your Facebook page is a link to Groups (if it's not visible, choose More). Clicking this will take you to a homepage displaying the groups that you have joined in the past. You are not yet able to access the new Groups page from here; instead, you must visit the Groups landing page at http://www.facebook.com/groups.

Click "Create Group" to begin. If you're creating a group for family members, for example, name the group accordingly. Then begin typing the names of the people on Facebook that you want in the group. You can also change the icon that you associate with the group by clicking the drop-down menu next to Group Name.

Note that the default privacy setting is Closed--this means that the members of the group are visible, but everything that anyone posts is hidden to those outside the group. Additional settings are Open, in which all content is public; and Secret, in which both members of the group and content are private. Click Create to finish the setup.

2. Facebook Groups: Group Chat

Another new feature to the new Groups is Group Chat. The difference between Group Chat and Facebook's other Chat feature is that the conversation you have in the pop-up windows are accessed and seen by those members in the group, (rather than just the one person you'd chat with otherwise). So if you enable this, remember: No bad-mouthing one family member while chatting with another in the group.

Group Chat can be found in two places. You can initiate a chat session by clicking the link "Chat with Group" on the right side of the Group page, or if you're not visiting the group page you can find it on the bottom toolbar next to the original Chat feature. If you'd like to remove Group Chat from your bottom toolbar, hover over it and click the X.

3. Facebook Groups: Creating documents

The second new feature that Facebook incorporated into Groups is the ability to share documents. Note that you are not yet able to upload documents you have stored on your computer such as Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. You are only able to create new documents.

Document formatting features are limited: You can bold and italicize text and create bulleted and numbered lists. The documents you create in Groups can be accessed and edited by everyone in the group.

4. Facebook Groups: Choosing an e-mail address for the Group

The last unique feature to Facebook Groups is the ability to create an e-mail address that you can use outside Facebook to contact the group's members. When you send an e-mail to your group's e-mail address, the contents of it will appear on the group's wall. Only Group administrators can access this feature.

To begin, click "Edit Group" on the top right side of the Group page. Then, click "Choose for Group" next to the e-mail address option. Choose an available address that best suits the list; Facebook will tell you if that e-mail address has already been chosen. Your group's e-mail address will have the @groups.facebook.com extension.

5. Facebook Groups: Your notification settings

If you become a member of a larger, more active group, you might want to edit your notifications to cut down on noise. On the group's homepage, click "Edit Notifications" at the top right of the page. Here you can choose when you want to be notified--when a member posts or comments, only when a member posts, when a friend posts or never. You can also choose if you want notifications e-mailed to you.

[Facebook Privacy Fix: new Tool Finds Trouble Spots]

If you want to change the settings for e-mail notifications on all of the groups of which you are a member, go to Account > Account Settings > Notifications > Groups > Change e-mail settings for individual groups.

Microsoft's coming heart-attack moment

Ever since it became clear just how dreadful Vista was going to be, Microsoft started its long, slow decline. Now, others are jumping on the dump-on-Microsoft bandwagon.

Most damning of all, Goldman Sachs has downgraded Microsoft from "buy" to "neutral" spit on the company's feeble mobile computing efforts and suggested that Microsoft divide itself into consumer and enterprise divisions .

It couldn't happen to a nicer company -- well except for Oracle. Microsoft got to the top not by delivering great products -- ever -- but by Bill Gates' white-shark approach to business competition. Even after the Department of Justice slammed it with an antitrust suit, weak enforcement left Microsoft to continue on its way. It was only after Gates left on July 1, 2008, that the company started to lose its mojo.

The first mistake was picking Steve Ballmer as CEO. Ballmer was then, is now and always will be a fine business-to-business salesman. That's it. As I write this story, in early October, Microsoft has a market cap of $206.91 billion. That's well behind Apple's $ 254.56 billion. If you had asked anyone in the summer of 2008 whether Apple would be worth almost $50 billion more than Microsoft, they would have laughed themselves silly. No one, least of all in Redmond, is laughing now.

Ballmer started out by striking our over and over again. Vista was a flop of monumental proportions. The Yahoo deal had just crashed and burned. And Microsoft Office sales had actually declined.

Fast forward to 2010. Microsoft has a worthwhile desktop operating system in Windows 7. Yes, I, a noted Linux supporter, just said something nice about Windows. Mind you, Windows is still as insecure as ever, but other than that, Windows 7 is quite good. So was XP SP3, and over two-thirds of Windows users have continued to stick with it. You don't have to believe me, though. I think Microsoft pulling the Windows 7 Family Pack discount deal out of its pack of sales tricks tells you everything you need to know.

Some of Microsoft is doing quite well. Xbox, for example, continues to make money. Too bad that Bing, Microsoft's search engine, hemorrhages so much cash. And the less said about Microsoft 's incredible Kin mobile phone fiasco the better, as far as Microsoft stock owners are concerned.

Kin, though, illuminates a point that Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, made: "For all of Microsoft's talk, none of the synergy between the consumer and enterprise sides has panned out." He's right.

Facebook offers new tools, changing way users share information

Facebook engineers have been in a lockdown for the past 60 days working on new products, and the company on Wednesday took the wraps off several of those tools and showed how they will change how users share information.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new tool called Download Your Information, which is designed to enable users to download everything they have ever posted to the site, such as photos, status updates and wall posts.

Another new tool is a dashboard that monitors what applications people have used, notes the last time they were used and makes it easier to delete them.

But the biggest news of the day came when Zuckerberg started talking about enabling users to post comments that only some of their friends can see.

For instance, some users might want to post pictures from the day they played hooky from work but don't want their boss or co-workers to see them. Or someone might want to post something about a fun night out but not necessarily want Grandma to see that information.

One of the problems, though, is that users have never seemed overly committed to creating groups of friends, Zuckerberg said during a webcast of the company press conference in Palo Alto, Calif. Only about 5% of users have created lists, he said.

To fix this, the social network overhauled its Facebook Groups.

"We set out to build a solution that could help you map out all of your communities, that would be simple enough that everyone would use it and that would be deeply integrated across Facebook and applications so you can communicate with your different groups in lots of different ways," Zuckerberg said.

"Rather than asking all of you to classify how you know all of your friends, or programming machines to guess which sets of people are likely cohorts, we're offering something that's as simple as inviting your best friends over for dinner. And we think it will change the way you use Facebook and the Web."

Users can add friends or family members to a group and then those people can invite others to the same group.

Expanding from its regular chat feature, which lets two people communicate live online, Facebook also announced Group Chats, which applies to this feature to multiple users.

"We've heard loud and clear that you want more control over what you share on Facebook -- to manage exactly who sees it and to understand exactly where it goes," Zuckerberg said. "With this new Groups experience, and the other tools we're rolling out today, we're taking a few important steps forward towards giving you precise controls."

Google TV gets first ride on Logitech's Revue set-top box

Logitech on Wednesday took the wraps off a set-top box called Revue, which will be the first device to bring the highly anticipated Google TV platform to television sets.

The device is a "companion" box, and brings programming and movies from multiple sources including the Internet, broadcast providers, PCs and mobile devices to the large-screen TV, said Junien Labrousse, executive vice president of products at Logitech, during a product launch event in New York.

It comes with Google TV software, which is designed to blend Internet surfing with TV programming. Google announced the Google TV platform to much fanfare in May along with partners Intel, Sony and Logitech. Google at the time said the platform would revolutionize the way people watched television by merging the Internet and TV into a single interface.

Logitech's Revue provides a glimpse into Google TV's capabilities and its promise.

Consumers have access to a vast amount of content including videos, pictures and games from various sources using the box. Google's search capabilities will make it easier to find the right programs from the TV, Internet, digital video recorder or PC. For example, a search for a particular program could render listings from TV channels, YouTube or DVRs.

The device will also run specific applications to stream movies and TV shows from websites like Netflix or Amazon, or to access other Internet services like Twitter. Applications will also allow users to listen to radio from sites like Pandora, check stock prices or read newspapers and magazines from the Internet.

Google earlier this week announced content distribution partners for Google TV, including The New York Times, USA Today, Turner Broadcasting, HBO and the NBA.

Applications from the Android Market will become available next year, opening up the device to many more games, content and applications, Labrousse said.

Users can also watch TV and run an application simultaneously. For example, users will be able to check Twitter messages or sports statistics while watching a TV program. Users also can use the Chrome browser provided within the software to surf the Web.

Take that Microsoft: IE drops below 50%

For everyone who ever thought that once Microsoft had a market by the throat that it would never lose significant market-share, should be presented with the news that Microsoft's Internet Explorer's share of the world web browsers market has dropped to 49.8% Finally!

While the Department of Justice couldn't bust Microsoft's Web browser monopoly even though it had won its anti-trust suit against Microsoft, open-source software is finally cracking Microsoft's once iron-grip on Web browsers. First, Firefox, and more recently Google with its Chrome web browser have managed to pry Microsoft's fingers from around the users' throat.

They did it the old-fashioned way. They delivered better products.

When Firefox first appeared in 2004 as a Web browser only spin-off from the all-in-one Mozilla Internet application suite, Internet Explorer was sitting pretty with more than 80% of the market. Even before it reached the 1.0 milestone, Firefox 0.9 though was winning fans. It was faster, safer, and its XML User Interface Language(XUL) had opened up a world of themes and extensions for both developers and users that continues to redefine what we expect from a Web browser.

For years, Firefox slowly eroded Internet Explorer's stronghold. In response, Microsoft started to improve IE. The company finally dumped the truly awful IE 6, and produced two much better browsers, first, IE 7 and then IE 8.

But, while Microsoft was busy producing browsers that were comparable to the newer marks of Firefox, Google was working on its own redesign and radical speeding up of the Web browser: Chrome.

Like Firefox, the first version of Chrome was a winner, and it's only gotten better since then. I'm not the only one to think so. According to StatCounter, "Google's Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year."

As a result, Chrome has been taking increasingly large bites out of IE's market share. That 11.54% was just enough, combined with all the other alternative Web browsers, to push Microsoft below the 50% mark.

I don't think Microsoft is going to be clawing its way back to the top anytime soon. True, Internet Explorer 9, which is now in beta, has gotten a lot of good reviews. Unfortunately, Microsoft is only going to be offering it to Windows 7 and Vista users. XP users are out of luck. Guess what Microsoft?Xp is still the number one operationg system with about 60% of the market.

Eventually, and that's the key word here, most Windows users will switch to Windows 7, but by the time that happens I think the majority of users will be solidly using Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Opera. The age of the Internet Explorer monopoly is finally over.

how do antivirus programs detect virus

How Do Antivirus programs Detect Virus?
Many Of us wonder how our Antivirus software scans for Virus, Worms, Trojan. We scan a Folder Or Local Drive for Virus but what actually happens during the Virus Scan Period?

4 techniques used by Anti virus program to detect malware:

1.Signature Based Scan.
2.Heuristic Based Scan.
3.Threat Sense Technology.
4.Artificial Intelligence (Behavioral Antivirus Programs).
5.Proactive Defense.

1.Signature Based Scan:
Traditionally, Antivirus solutions have relied strongly on signature-based scanning,also referred to as "scan string-based technologies". In signature based scanning anti virus program searches within given files for the presence of certain strings (also only in certain regions).If these predefined strings are found,then antivirus report A Threat has been detected.

Fact:
According to Macfee Lab, approximately 250 Virus are released every day, so it's very difficult to catch all those viruses every day.So a new technologies are used to detect unknown threats as explained below.


2.Heuristic Based Scan:
The first heuristic engines were introduced to detect DOS viruses in 1989.Heuristic (hyu-ˈris-tik) is an adjective for methods that help in problem solving.A heuristic scan is used to detect new, unknown viruses in your system that have not yet been identified. Only some anti viruses can do this type of scan, the majority are only able to detect known viruses.

In this scanning, anti virus program searches instructions or commands within a file that are not found in typical good application programs. As a result, a heuristic engine is able to detect potentially malicious files and report them as a virus.


3.Threat Sense Technology:
In past when a virus was released it was detected by antivirus experts after 15-30 days. Till then virus had done enough damage to millions of users like "I love you worm". Then anti virus experts started using Threat Sense Technology.

In this technology , when a certain files does specious activity in computer, Av program doesn't perform any action and keep eye on that file. Next, when you update your anti virus these files are send to security experts of that anti virus that you are using. They analyze the file, if it is a virus then they make it's signatures. By this a virus is caught within 3-4 days.


4.Artificial Intelligence (Behavioral Antivirus programs):
These programs monitor you computer activities. If any dangerous or specious activity occurred by a file, they inform user and give some option to perform certain action.Now user has to take decision that is it a virus file or helpful file. Some times, if user takes wrong decision then the software which is reported by anti virus get corrupted and antivirus quarantined.

5.Proactive Defence:
One more technology is "Proactive Defense". It was first used by Kaspersky.When a program or process gets executed, "Proctive Defense" tells the user about the activity of the program and asks it to allow or Block.
The Most advanced Proactive Defense is Provided by Comodo Internet Security.

Some Additional Information:

• Eset NOD32 uses Threat Sense Engine. Since it doesn't responds to the activity of the program till it get it's info from the Internet, it can be dangerous to the Computer.
  
• Kaspersky provides hourly updates. So it is Best in signature based detection.
  
• Bitdefender has a most powerful Heuristics analyser and Bitdefender 2009 has Behaviour based detection also. So it is a very good choice.
  
• "Norton Antibot" has world's best Behaviour Based Detection Engine and it stood 1st in the test conducted by CHIP Magazine with 100% detection rates. It is totally based on Behavior Analysis ,therefore never requires updates.

What the heck is Cloud Computing???

Cloud computing is the next big thing in the Internet's revolution. The "cloud" means "internet" and "cloud computing" means internet computing. According to wikipedia, cloud computing is Internet based computing, whereby shared resources, softwares and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

In cloud computing you can use the pool of computing resources available like storage, applications, servers, services, and information etc, on pay-as-you-use basis. Since all the resources are available on the web.you need not invent your valuable time, money and efforts in hardware resources.

This increases agility, reliability, scalability and helps in reducing cost, maintenance efforts, Let's have a look at cloud computing in more detail.

Characteristics of Cloud computing
1. On-demand self-service: User can request and configure services by themselves without requiring much help from service providers.
2. Broad network Access: Services are available on all the Internet-enabled devices like desktops, laptops, PDAs, mobile phones etc.
3. Resource Pooling: The service providers give shared access to computing power spread across multiple geographic locations- multi-tenancy
4. Rapid elasticity: Elasticity can be defined as the ability to scale up or back depending on demand of resources. In cloud computing customers can increase or decrease the demand of resources at will.
5. Measured Service: Customers pay only for the resources they have used. This billing system is based on the pay-as-you-use model.

Cloud service Models
There are three types of cloud service models- Software, Infrastructure and Platform.
1. Cloud software as a service(SaaS): The service providers provide customers the access to the softwares already installed on the cloud. Customers don't need to install or manage or buy any hardware for the software. He just has to connect and use it. Customers controls only the underlying operating system, hardware or network infrastructure.
2. Cloud platform as a service(PaaS): Customers are provided with operating system layer and application toolset. Customer controls the application and can also customize the application. He does not control or manage the underlying hardware or network infrastructure.
3. Cloud Infrastructure as a service(IaaS): Customers are provided with the storage networking and other fundamental conputing resources. Here, customers can deploy their operating systems and applications. They have control on the operating system and applications and storage and may also have limited control on networking infrastructure like firewalls etc.

Cloud deployment Models:
There are four types of deployment models irrespective of service models:
1. Public cloud: the cloud infrastructure is owned by cloud service provider and is made available to general public or some large organization.
2. Private cloud: The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated by the organization only.
3. Community cloud: The cloud infrastructure is owned and managed by a group of organizations who have shared interest like security requirements, policies or common mission.
4. Hybrid Cloud: The cloud infrastructure comprises of two or more models ( public, community or private)

Avaya, Skype in deal to offer low-cost, IP-based calling

Avaya and Skype signed an agreement Wednesday to offer Skype Connect to Avaya customers to help them lower international voice-calling costs through IP-based calls.

Avaya and Skype also plan to deliver a wider range of communications and collaboration capabilities for large businesses, helping both Avaya and Skype users connect with presence technology, instant messaging, voice and videoconferencing. The companies said such a service would be an efficient way for a company call center to resolve customer service inquiries. These services would be offered in the second phase of the agreement, beginning in the last half of 2011.

Alan Baratz, senior vice president of Avaya, said the agreement will offer customers a common user experience. Skype's David Gurle, general manager of Skype for Business, said the relationship with Avaya will help expand Skype Connect's footprint into more large U.S. businesses.

The first phase will bring Skype calling to IP-based enterprise communications systems running Avaya gear. A Session Initiation Protocol channel will be set up between customers with Avaya Aura Session Manager or SIP Enablement Server, CS 1000, IP Office or BCM systems. Those Avaya customers will use Skype Connect to make international calls at lower cost while getting enterprise-level security features in the Avaya systems.

Skype users globally will be able to make inbound calls to Avaya customers in the U.S. market for free or at low cost, and the Avaya gear will add a variety of features for collaboration. A business, for example, could add a Skype Click & Call button to its Web site for a customer to make a call to a customer care center.

Small- and medium-size business customers already using Avaya IP Office should be "very excited about getting access to Skype," said Steve Hilton, an analyst at Analysys Mason. "It will help them save money on international calling and get access to webcam-style video communitcations integrated with their Avaya phone systems."

Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research, said the partnership between Skype and Avaya should enhance the value of the coming Avaya Desktop Video Device and its Flare user interface. "This partnership would open up Skype presence information and voice over IP to be displayed and used by the Flare tablet," Kerravala said.

Avaya will also gain greater credibility as an IP switching vendor with the Skype agreement, Kerravala said. "With Cisco having such a huge palette of unified communications [systems], Avaya can gain credibility through its partnerships," he said.

Soon Google will search before you even ask

In the not-so-distant future, you'll be walking down the street and your phone will beep and offer you a few lunch suggestions just around the corner, or it may tell you that the museum across the street is having an exhibit of that artist you once Googled.

That's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's vision of the future.

In a keynote address at Tuesday's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Schmidt said that at some point in the future, Google's search technology will be antonomous, meaning that it will offer you search results even before you've looked for them.

"While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don't even yet know you need, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real in the future," said Augie Ray, an analyst at Forrester Research. "Combining a person's context -- where they are, who they're with -- with their past opinions and actions, and the opinions and actions of others, can create tremendous value for people."

While both Google and its main search rival, Microsoft Bing, have been making significant advances in the past year -- Google Goggles real-time search, for example -- autonomous search would be a major shift. It would make typing in queries and getting lists of result options rather archaic if you could get information before you even realized you wanted it.

Autonomous search would take your past experiences, likes and dislikes and use them, along with geolocation information, to give you information about things that might interest you wherever you might be.

"Imagine you're someone who has positively rated Mexican restaurants in the past," Ray said. "As you drive through town around lunchtime, your device can alert you to a well-rated Mexican restaurant that is nearby and likely to suit your tastes. It is the combination of social media, individual preferences and context that creates the opportunity for proactive discovery rather than reactive search. This isn't about opening Yelp and seeing the same search results as everyone else. It's about having the hardware and software that intuits the things you really care about."

Hadley Reynolds, an analyst at IDC, said this capability would be a major advance for search technology.

"Moving to a model in which the search system anticipates your intentions and makes suggestions is a big step forward from the box and links lists we have today," Reynolds said. "Google wants to lead in this trend, and they have already created the technical innovations that will allow them to do so."

Red alert! Sinking into an Internet black hole?

It seems like a full-fledged red alert when I can't connect to the Internet. Some experts may have figured out the why and the how to fix these outages, but will the cure making hacking harder or easier for cyber-criminals?

Have you ever had one of those days when you reboot the router but you still can't access anything on the Internet? Those unexplained outages might be caused by Internet "Black holes"-places where data can't get in or out. Some scientists estimate as many as 2 million temporary black holes come and go every day. One reason for these black holes are the routing difficulties caused by more than a billion Internet users at a time. As more people and devices connect to the Net, stressing routers and their ability to pass data packets, some scientists worry that the Net might permanently collapse into a black hole.

New research offers hope that hyperbolic mapping could stress routers less and reduces the number of black holes. Dmitri Krioukov from the University of California, San Diego, explained the router problems during an IEEE prodcast. Krioukov said to imagine that you need to find a route on a road, but you have no maps or GPS. In fact, all you have is an extremely long list of all the roads in the whole world and all the intersections of those roads. A road along the route might be closed for some reason, but the long list does not have this update. It would be unimaginably difficult to use this long list of road names to find a route for where you needed to go. This is similar to the task that routers perform. It's also why the Net is having all these temporary black hole problems.

Every router has a long list with all the roads and all the intersections throughout the world. The router acts like a traffic cop at each intersection, looking at every arriving piece of information, asking it where it wants to go, then looking back at the list to direct the information via the shortest and best route. These router traffic cops need to replace the long lists of roads and intersections with something that looks like a navigational map to route data much more efficiently. This navigation could be done with hyperbolic mapping.

According to a statement issued by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Krioukov said, "It is very complicated, inefficient, and difficult to scale to the rapidly growing size of the Internet, which is now accessed by more than a billion people each day. In fact, we are already seeing parts of the Internet become intermittently unreachable, sinking into so-called black holes, which is a clear sign of instability."

Seagate launches 1.5TB portable hard drive

Seagate today unveiled what it calls the world's first 2.5-in, 1.5TB portable hard disk drive.

The new Seagate 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive is now shipping in the U.S.

The GoFlex drive comes with a Superspeed USB 3.0 interface cable, which offers data transfer speeds 10x that of USB 2.0 when connected to a USB 3.0 port. For example, a drive using a USB 3.0 connection can transfer a 25GB file in under five minutes versus the 14 minutes it would take using a traditional USB 2.0 drive.

The drive also comes with a bonus movie already on it, Seagate said.

"Today's announcement is a 'triple-crown' of consumer technology," said Darcy Clarkson, vice president of Global Retail Sales and Marketing for Seagate. Darcy was referring to Seagates recent release of a 3TB GoFlex desktop drive and the Momentus Xt solid state hybrid drive.

The GoFlex ultra-portable drives are compatible with both the Windows and Mac OS X systems and the drives includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the hard drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The NTFS driver must be installed once on the Mac OS X computer, allowing it to read and write files on a Windows formatted drive.

The GoFlex ultra-portable 2.5-in drive is available in capacities of 320GB, 500GB, 750GB and 1TB.

The 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive with USB 3.0 adapter can be purchased on Seagate.com and through select retailers for $249.99.

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Google adds two-factor authentication option to Google Apps

Google added a two-factor authentication option to Google Apps on Monday, allowing enterprises to protect user accounts with a one-time code delivered through a mobile phone, in addition to the usual password.

The option will provide additional protection against phishing and malware attacks, as the one-time codes are valid for a limited period, said Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps.

Two-factor authentication typically relies on something the user knows, such as a password, and something they have, such as a smartcard, security token or -- in Google's case -- a mobile phone.

Microsoft offers a similar two-factor authentication service using SMS text messages, which it first announced in May.

Google will send out authentication codes by SMS (Short Message Service) or voice message. The SMS service will be free and available in 19 countries including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

The authentication codes can also be generated locally using a smartphone app called Google Authenticator, available as a free download from the Android, BlackBerry or iPhone app stores. Apple has already approved the Google app for the iPhone and all three apps are now available, Feigenbaum said.

Google is making the source code for its Authenticator application open source so that companies can change the user interface, perhaps to incorporate their own branding. However, Google will not distribute the source code for the algorithm that generates the codes, Feigenbaum said.

The authentication process is based on an open standard for authenticating devices and networks called OATH -- not to be confused with Oauth, another open authentication protocol aimed primarily at Web applications. OATH supporters include VeriSign, Sandisk and a number of smartcard manufacturers.

Administrators can enable Google's new authentication function for users of the Premium, Education and Government versions of Google Apps. Users of the Standard edition and of consumer services such as Google Docs and Gmail will have access "in the coming months," Feigenbaum said, although he declined to say whether that would be before year-end.

Once their administrator has enabled the function, Google Apps users must provide Google with their mobile phone number for the SMS option, or install the app and set it up by entering a secret passphrase into the app and into the Google Apps website.

After that, each time users log in they will see an additional text box inviting them to enter a six-digit code. To get the code, they can either request one via SMS from the login page, or click on a button in the phone app to generate a new one.

Users who repeatedly log in from the same machine -- their home computer, for example -- can choose to "Remember verification for this computer." That will set a cookie on the machine instructing Google's servers not to request the authentication code. That reduces security protection if the machine is stolen, said Feigenbaum, but "If someone has physical access to your machine, you have bigger problems to worry about," he said.

However, on public access computers, two-factor authentication can provide an additional level of protection, as the verification code delivered through the phone is only valid for a short period of time, he said.

Those with different online identities for Google Apps for work and Gmail for personal communications will be able to program Google Authenticator with both identities, allowing them to generate different codes for each account.

Google began work on Authenticator almost eighteen months ago. The company's staff have all been using it internally for the last three months, Feigenbaum said. That testing allowed them to optimize features such as the code length, he said.

Microsoft's IE9 off limits to most Windows PCs

Microsoft may have a tough time building significant market share for its new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser because eligible users are in the minority.

Several analysts agreed that Microsoft has its work cut out for it, at least in the short term, because IE9 won't run on Windows XP, the aged-but-still-dominant operating system.

Microsoft omitted the still-popular XP from the supported OS list because, among other things, IE 9 speeds up page rendering and composition by tapping the graphics processor in newer PCs. Windows XP lacks support for the Direct2D API, which IE9 uses to accelerate content rendering.

The decision means that only a subset of machines will be able to run IE9, either in its preview or final form, until those systems and Windows XP are replaced by new hardware and Windows 7.

"That's an issue in terms of growth, at least for the next 12 to 18 months as more companies and consumers migrate to Windows 7," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. For that reason and others, Hilwa said not to expect a "tidal wave change in browser share. Microsoft's battle is not to lose much more share."

Worldwide, Windows XP PCs outnumber all other Windows-equipped machines by two to one, according to the most recent statistics from Web metrics company Net Applications.

In August, Windows XP powered 66.7% of the globe's Windows systems that went online in the month, while the three-year-old Vista accounted for 15.3% and 2009's Windows 7 for 17.4%.

Older versions of Windows, including Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Windows Millennium, made up the small remainder.

Even in the U.S., where Windows XP has a smaller slice of the Windows pie, the aging operating system remains in the majority. But its margin is much narrower. Here, Windows XP ran on 52.1% of all Windows PCs used to browse the Web last month, while Vista accounted for 27% and Windows 7 for 20.8%.

Windows' total share in the U.S. is significantly lower than its global share -- 83.5% for the U.S., 91.3% worldwide -- in part because Apple's Mac OS X is more popular in the United States than in most other countries. Net Applications, for example, pegged Mac OS X with a global share of 5% in August, but a U.S. share of 11.2%.

Internet Explorer 9 beta strips down for speed

Those who have written off IE as being slow and old-looking are in for a surprise. The just-released Internet Explorer 9 beta is dramatically faster than its predecessor, sports an elegant, stripped-down interface and adds some useful new features.

(Note: IE9 will only be available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 -- those still using XP will have to stay with IE8.)

A Chrome-like elegance

With the release of its beta, Internet Explorer now joins the other major browsers -- Firefox 4 beta and Chrome -- in using a stripped-down interface. Web pages take center stage, tabs are at the top of the browser and unnecessary buttons and controls have been removed.

Like those two competing browsers, IE9's interface is spare and clean-looking, although the Bing toolbar, which runs by default, adds a bit of clutter. If you're a fan of toolbars in general, and Bing in particular, you'll find it useful; otherwise you can easily remove it.

The top and sides of the browser are transparent, using the Windows Vista and Windows 7 "glass" feature.

Access to IE9's features is available via three small icons on the upper right-hand side of the screen. They consist of a Home button, a button for using and managing Favorites, and a Tools icon in the shape of a gear, which gives you access to all of the browser's other features, including tools for setting your options, printing, zooming in and out, managing your security level and add-ons and so on.

IE9 also makes good use of another popular feature -- when you open a new tab, rather than go to a blank page, the tab opens with the thumbnails of pages you've visited most frequently. As an added attraction, a bar at the bottom of each thumbnail shows how frequently you've visited the page -- a long bar for one you've visited a lot, a shorter bar for those you've visited less frequently.

From this page, you can also reopen tabs you've closed in the current browsing session or reopen the tabs from your last session.

IE9 gets speedy

Even more surprising than the stripped-down interface is IE9 beta's speed. Internet Explorer has long been the slowest browser by a wide margin, lagging dramatically behind Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. For example, on my machine (using Windows Vista on a Dell Dimension 9200 with 2GB RAM and a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor), IE8 took between five and six times the amount of time to complete the SunSpider tests as its next slowest rival at the time, Firefox 3.6. IE8 also took 14 times as long as it took Chrome; and 15 times as long as Opera.

Mozilla starts dropping features from Firefox 4

Mozilla, which launched the latest beta of Firefox 4 last week, has started to drop features from the still-under-construction browser.

Firefox 4 Beta 5 shipped Sept. 7, and included support for a new audio API (application programming interface) that allows developers to tap raw audio data from within the browser, as well as support for HTTP Strict Transport Security, a Web security protocol that lets site designers force Firefox to automatically use a secure connection.

The latter is meant to help stymie "man-in-the-middle" attacks, in which hackers essentially eavesdrop on users' Web traffic -- most often at public Wi-Fi hotspots -- in the hope of snatching clear-language transmission of passwords or credit card numbers.

Firefox 4 also switched on Windows hardware acceleration by default in Beta 5; Mozilla had included the technology in August's Beta 4, but had left it turned off, requiring users to edit the browser's "about:config" file if they wanted to try it out.

Firefox 4, like rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), relies on Windows' Direct2D API to boost browser performance by shifting some chores from a computer's central processor to the graphics processor.

The hardware acceleration switched on in Beta 5 requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; the more popular Windows XP lacks the necessary graphics infrastructure, a fact that's prompted Microsoft to drop XP from IE9's supported operating systems.

Mozilla isn't going to that extreme. Although Firefox 4 won't boost content rendering in Windows XP, Mozilla does plan to increase the speed of "compositing" -- the process of assembling the various pieces of a site -- in the nine-year-old operating system by leveraging the Direct3D API in a future preview.

But as Mozilla's self-imposed deadline for building a feature-complete beta nears, the company has also started dumping features it once hoped to squeeze into the upgrade.

First to go was Account Manager, which Mozilla ditched late last month.

The beefed-up password manager was supposed to take full responsibility for site sign-ons, relieving users of the chore of remembering and then entering various usernames and passwords. An experimental add-on is still available, but only works with a limited number of sites, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo!

Latest Skype beta offers group video calls for 10

The latest beta version of Skype offers the ability to do group video calls with up to 10 people.

Skype 5.0 beta 2 runs on Windows and includes an updated user interface, the company said on its blog. The release doubles the number of people that can be included in a group video call from the five people allowed with Skype 5.0 beta 1, released in May.

Skype said the 10-person group video calling feature is being offered as a "free trial," suggesting users will eventually have to pay for the feature. To use the 10-person group video call feature, all participants in the call must be using Skype 5.0 beta 2. The company did not say when the feature would be available for Mac versions of the software. However, the company earlier promised group video calls for the Mac before the end of this year.

Skype does not currently offer a beta version of its software for Mac OS X

The announcement of the 10-person group video call feature comes as Skype, which is preparing for an initial public offering, faces new competition from Google, which added a feature to its gmail service that allows users to make calls to phones. For now, Google is allowing users to call phones in the U.S. and Canada for free and charges a fee for calls to other countries.

Skype allows users to make free calls between computers and some handheld devices over the Internet, but charges a fee for users to call phones using its SkypeOut service. Video calls between computers made using Skype are free.

Google wave vs Google Buzz

When Google announced Google Buzz, its new social sharing feature for Gmail, company representatives admitted Buzz was inspired by a similar product : Google Wave, In fact, some of the features of Buzz and Wave are so similar you might be wondering why there are two different products in the first place?

Both services are supposed to help you create conversations and give you a richer experience around Web-based media like videos, images and regular text. But while Buzz and Wave have a lot in common, there also some key differences that set each service apart.

Wave and Buzz? What the heck are you talking about?
Google describes wave as "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be oth a conversational and a document where people can discuss and work together using rickly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more." Basically google wave is e-mail, instant messaging, an online collaboration tool and a wiki all rolled into one service

But google Buzz is designed solely to let you share videos, photos, links and status updates with others just like you would on facebook or twitter. You can access Buzz through your gmail inbox or through your mobile device web browser.

Real-time communication versus e-mail conversation

While you will revieve Buzz updates very quickly via e-mail, communication in Google Wave is much faster, Unlike buzz, communication in Wave happens in real time, and you can actally watch someone typing out their response or comment on an individual wave . Thats the big difference, since it allows Wave users to easily collaborate on a project.

Wave is about collaboration, Buzz is about conversation

Wave was built on collaborative features like editing a document, planning an event, creating meeting notes, and so on. But if you just want to share photos, videos or comments that don't require real-time communication, then Google buzz is probably the better option.

Wave is complex , buzzing not so much

One of the problems with Wave is that it's a difficult tool to explain to others, and once you understand what wave is it's even harder to understand everything you can do with it. Buzz on the other hand, works similarly to e-mail and is focussed on one thing, sharing content with others.

Buzz is gateway to wave

In a lot of ways, Buzz is a halfway point between regular email and wave. For example, when you get an updated Buzz in your inbox or Buzz tab, it displays the various comments and media that have been shared as a list. As the Buzz develops, that hlist gets updated and edited, but you only every have one copuy of an individual Buzz in your inbox.

Similarly, in wave you only ever see one copy of an active wave, making it easier to track changes to a document or conversation, But new email messages pile on top of one another, and it doesn't take long before you end up with these massive conversation string that are constantly being replicated every time you hit the reply button.

So my guess, as well as the guess of others, is that once you're confortable with Buzz, you might be more willing to use Wave for collaborative online projects. But the trick will be to get you to buy into using Google buz and that may be the tough sell if you're already used to sharing items with your existing networks on facebook, my space and twitter.

HTML5 may help Web pages talk, listen

Sometime in the near future, users might not only read Web pages but hold conversations with them as well, at least if a new activity group in the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) bears fruit.

The W3C is investigating the possibility of incorporating voice recognition and speech synthesis interfaces within Web pages. A new incubator group will file a report a year from now summarizing the feasibility of adding voice and speech features into HTML, the W3C's standard for rendering Web pages.

AT&T, Google, Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation, among others, all have engineers participating in this effort.

The human voice and the Web are not strangers: Google includes a voice-based web search app in its Android smartphone operating system and Microsoft promises robust voice-driven features in its upcoming Windows Phone 7.

The HTML Speech Incubator Group is studying the feasibility of developing a standard Web interface for both speech recognition and synthesis, said group chair Dan Burnett, who is also director of speech technologies and standards at voice response system provider Voxeo.

Such an interface could be used across multiple browsers. Using built-in or plug-in voice recognition and speech synthesis engines, browsers could read pages aloud or permit users to audibly fill out Web forms.

While this work may overlap with another voice-based W3C effort, VoiceXML, the two efforts are somewhat different, Burnett said. VoiceXML wouldn't work very well for the Web, given that it was primarily designed for voice-driven applications, such as telephone-based voice response systems, where it is used widely. Like HTML itself, the voice capabilities of HTML would be stateless, or not require a dedicated session with the user.

Burnett noted that while the report would discuss the feasibility of establishing a set of interfaces, the work of developing the interfaces themselves, should they be warranted, would be taken on by another W3C group, such as the HTML Working Group.

The W3C has been busy with speech technologies on a number of other fronts as well. The organization also recently released version 3.0 of VoiceXML. In this new version, the working group added semantic descriptions of the features, and organized the functionality into modules.

The W3C also plans to shortly release version 1.1 of SSML (the Speech Synthesis Markup Language) -- often used in conjunction with VoiceXML -- that will incorporate Asian languages, and provide developers more flexibility with voice selection and handling of content in unexpected languages.

HP targets small business with phones, Wi-Fi

IDG News Service - Hewlett-Packard expanded its IP phone and wireless LAN offerings for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) on Wednesday as part of a broad set of product introductions for those customers.

The company's primary aims with the array of new SMB products, which includes a "microServer" and extends to storage-area networks, are to simplify IT and lower costs for small businesses while increasing their productivity.

Wireless LANs have drawn increasing attention as relatively easy networks to deploy and maintain in lieu of wired Ethernet for every employee's workspace. IP (Internet Protocol) phones are advancing into many enterprises and offer the possibility of simplifying communications into one network that carries both voice and data.

On Wednesday, HP brought high-speed, dual-band IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi technology to SMBs with the HP V-M200 802.11n Wi-Fi Access Point. The V-M200 can operate in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands at the same time and allows 64 simultaneous users on the wireless LAN. The access point can be managed via a Web browser interface. An access point can present four different SSIDs (Service Set Identifiers) for different groups of users, as well as support four virtual LANs for security between workgroups. Administrators can prioritize traffic from specific wireless communities, according to HP.

The V-M200 access point is available now worldwide and priced starting at $219, depending on the configuration chosen.

HP also upgraded its IP desk phones with the HP 350x Series IP Phones, designed for organizations of all sizes. Most of the new phone models come with wideband audio technology that can take advantage of the high capacity of Ethernet LANs to deliver higher audio quality than is possible on traditional circuit-switched phones. All but one model has a Gigabit Ethernet port, and the phones can be powered via Ethernet using the IEEE 802.3af standard. The units come with a power-saving mode that can cut energy consumption by 50% from the level at peak usage, according to HP.

The new phones work with HP VCX IP Communications servers or servers from other vendors, according to the company. A server at a remote facility can be backed up with one at the central site to maintain reliable communication. IT administrators can deploy and manage the 350x Series phones from a Web browser.

The 350x Series phones are available now in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. The phones are priced starting at $119.

What is cloud computing ???

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service. The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams.

A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic -- a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access). Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing.

A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.

Five Things You Need To Know About IPv6

We need it soon. The supply of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses is dwindling, spurring interest in the transition to IPv6, with its exponentially larger address space. Since the IPv6 standard was established in 1999, operating systems and network equipment have steadily added support, says John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers. But the transition got started so early that it has since faded into the background.

It's no cause for panic. "As we got into the mid-2000s, people started thinking, 'Maybe we don't need it, maybe this is a false alarm,'" says Curran. But addresses are running out faster than ever, consumed by things like smartphones. Even if your organization has all the IPv4 addresses it needs, it will soon have to coexist with a many more IPv6 users elsewhere.

It's not sexy. The main virtue of IPv6 is its 128-bit address space, compared with 32 bits for IPv4. Unfortunately, those aren't the kind of numbers that get CEOs and CFOs excited. Outside of the U.S. Department of Defense, which is attracted to the encryption in IPv6, most CIOs will have a hard time making a business case for the switch. "When everybody's forced to do it, that's when the rubber is going to hit the road," says Frank Troy, an IPv6 consultant.

Websites need to learn it. As users move to IPv6, your server won't know how to talk to them if it's still on IPv4. Google provides a separate subdomain for early adopters (ipv6.google.com). IPv6 network managers who want users to have access to www.google.com must make special arrangements. Google has held off on advertising an IPv6 address for its primary domain because only 0.1% of visitors need support for a dual v4/v6 configuration.

Workarounds may be imperfect. Internet service providers will compensate for the differing protocols by creating gateways to relay traffic between nodes that can't talk directly, but that could hurt multimedia performance or interfere with location-based services, Curran says. If those things are important to you, you need to add IPv6 support-at least to your Web servers and firewall.

Intel aims to be a powerhouse in mobile

Intel wants to be a force in the mobile computing world -- a fact that was made clear by the company's recently announced plans to acquire chip maker Infineon Technology's wireless division and security software provider McAfee.

But several analysts questioned whether spending billions of dollars on those two companies and others, and revving up the MeeGo mobile operating system in partnership with Nokia, can be enough to make much difference. Some say Intel has already fallen well behind the mobile curve and has a long way to go to catch up.

With the planned acquisitions of Infineon for $1.4 billion and McAfee for $7.7 billion and the 2009 purchase of mobile software maker Wind River Systems for $884 million , Intel likely will grow more focused on mobile, several analysts said. Those deals could help the company move beyond its primary role as a chip maker whose products are used in 80% of today's desktop and laptop computers but whose sales growth is nonetheless slower than smartphones and mobile devices.

"Becoming more vertical [in mobile] for Intel is about survival," said analyst Jack Gold of J.Gold Associates. "Intel knows it has to change with the times. The Internet of connected things means it's not just about the processor anymore. It's about connectivity -- hence the wireless acquisitions -- and it's about security to keep us safer when we are connected."