Computer world

One of the side effects of the arrival of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G will be a flood of original iPhones on the used market, according to a company that specializes in refurbishing Apple's electronics. And that's going to push down prices of the older phones.

The move also spells an end to most of the "gray" market in unlocked, or hacked, iPhones, argued Aaron Vronko, service manager at Rapid Repair, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company that buys and repairs used iPods, iPhones and Zunes.

"There's going to be a large push on the used market," he said. "A lot of the early adopters for the original iPhone are going to be the same people who want to be the early adopters for the second generation." And many of those people will want to fund part of their iPhone 3G purchase by selling their now-unnecessary iPhones.

"Even if you only get $50, that brings down the price of a new phone to $150 or so," Vronko said.

The price for a fully-functional used iPhone will fall from last week's price of around $200 to the $75-to-$90 range, Vronko said. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone 3G on Monday and announced it would go on sale in 22 countries, including the U.S., on July 11.
more...

Iphone @ $199

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs kicked off his company's developers conference today by unveiling a new iPhone that connects to faster 3G-based networks, includes built-in GPS and costs half as much as the current lowest-priced model.

The new iPhones -- $199 for one with 8GB of storage space, $299 for 16GB of storage -- will be available starting Friday, July 11 in 22 countries, including Canada, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. By the end of the year, said Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple expects to be selling the iPhone in 70 countries.

In the U.S., the new iPhone will be sold at Apple-owned retail stores as well as the stores operated by its network partner, AT&T. As of Monday, the Apple online store was not taking pre-orders.

"We've learned so much with the first iPhone," said Jobs near the end of the 105-min. keynote. "We've taken everything we've learned and more and created the iPhone 3G."

He called out a number of things that Apple needed to add to the iPhone to take it to the next sales level, including 3G, enterprise support, wider availability, third-party applications and a lower price. "Everyone wants an iPhone, but we need to make it more affordable," he said.

At the new price points, the future iPhone will cost less than a comparably-equipped iPod touch, which currently sells for $299 for an 8GB device, a fact not lost on Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "There's nothing to be lost buying an iPhone then, is there?" Gottheil said, who added that he expects Apple to revamp or re-price the iPod touch line soon.
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From New York Times

Space tourists are getting their own ride. Space Adventures, a Virginia company that arranges passage for wealthy explorers to ride on Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station, plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more.A new investor is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight: Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google. He made a $5 million investment in the company that will serve as a deposit on a future flight.
more...

Reuters

At a news conference in New York, Anderson announced the creation of an Orbital Mission Explorers Circle of members who will each contribute $5 million to help finance the company's first private mission to the space station.

Previously Space Adventures has bought seats on Russian space agency missions to the orbiting ISS. It now plans to build its own Soyuz rocket for private missions that could start as soon as the second half of 2011.

The $5 million down payment gives members first option on a seat on the mission. Anderson said he was looking for five more wealthy people to be founder members of the Explorers Circle.

But he said he was determined that private space exploration shouldn't be just for the very rich.
more...

Cnet news

"I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space," Brin said in a statement.

Space Adventures' new club was formed to help kick-start a new effort by the company to fund its own rockets and missions to the International Space Station. Previously, Space Adventures, which has been around for 10 years, has bought seats aboard already scheduled Russian missions to the International Space Station for its clients. Now it will build its own rocket for its own missions. The inaugural flight with its own Russian-built Soyuz rocket is scheduled for 2011, Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, said at a press conference here Wednesday.
more...

In the first of its kind in the history of Indian science and medicine, the health minister A Ramadoss has ordered a test. In a recent study at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), rats were subjected to radiation from mobile phones. They were found to have damaged DNA and a very low sperm count. This were leading reduction in size of testis and infertility. The Union health ministry now wants to find out whether cellphones could have same adverse effects on our health. A study earlier had found out that if cell phones are kept in the pockets of your pants, the infertility levels could be higher. The excessive growth of telecom in India is prompting the medicine industry to investigate into such matters and whether in long term, they could affect the health of people.
This 5 yr study will be conducted by JNU's School of Environmental Sciences and AIIMS ( neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology,biochemistry)

Google has intorduced Gmail labs that helps you decide the way you use your email. They have added some very cool features and some very basic features in their labs. The following are the 13 things they've added to their labs. You can click on the settings links and then click on the labs tab to enable some these cool basic features.

1. Quick Links
• Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages and more.
2. Superstars
• Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature, you can choose which icons you wish to use in the "General" Settings page. This I think is the best feature of the Labs
  
3. Pictures in chat
• See the pictures of your friends in chat.
4. Fixed width font
• See you email in a fixed font and size
  
5. Custom keyboard shortcuts
• Customize your keyboard shortcuts. A good feature.
  
6. Mouse gestures
• Use your mouse to navigate with gestures. Hold right-click and move the mouse to the left to go to a previous conversation, move it to the right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the Inbox view. Works best on Windows.
7. Signature tweaks
• Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures. Can't use this and the "Random signature" Labs feature at the same time.
8. Random signature
• Allows you to send random quotes, in your signature. This cannot be used in sync with signature tweaks.
  
9. Custom date formats
• you can use a 24-hour clock (14:57) or show dates with the day first (31/12/07).
10. Muzzle
• This feature saves screen space by hiding the status message of your friends. This is a good feature.
11. Old Snakey
• That old snake game. This is just a "Overweight feature". If you wanna play a game, play a better one on a gaming website. This feature I think is unnecessary, so i call it overweight, or excess fat.
  
12. Email Addict
• Gives you a break time by simply putting your gmail account on standby. By doing this you become invisible to your friends.
  
13. Hide Unread Counts
• Hides the unread counts from your inbox and labels
  

Source: Gmail

Previous topics
Assemble your PC #1 : The basics
Assemble your PC #2 : Choosing the parts

What operating system am I going to use?

Before you buy components, be sure that they are supported by the operating
system you plan to use. Almost all current, commonly available PC devices have
drivers available for current versions of Windows (generally, anything 2000, XP,
Vista, or newer); if you want to run an alternative operating system, you’ll have
to do some research; many alternatives have extensive ’Hardware Compatibility
Lists’ as well as software comaptibility.

Windows hardware support lists
Windows XP supports most processors and motherboards based on the i386
(x86; 32-bit) or x86 64 (AMD64/EM64T; 64-bit) architectures. Put simply, all
available consumer processors (especially from AMD or Intel) will work with
the Windows XP operating system.

Linux hardware support lists
As one of the most popular free operating systems, Linux is a very good alternative.
It has versions for many different architectures, including i386, x64 and
PowerPC, though i386 versions are much more common. It will also support all
kinds of processors, enabling it to be used on Palm PCs and even iPods. There
are many different versions of Linux, produced by different companies. These
are called ’distributions’ or ’distros’ for short. For a desktop PC, you should
make sure to pick a desktop distro, one where the company/organisation has
desktop users in mind, e.g. Ubuntu, SimplyMEPIS or Mandriva. SUSE is also a
good choice, and has tools that make it easy to use as a server. Ubuntu has won
many awards from PC magazines and is noted for being particularly easy to use
(for basic tasks, e.g. web, email, word processing). It should be noted, however,
that many popular programs, especially games, are not available for Linux, and
the only way to run them is with special compatibility layers or programs like
Wine, which may or may not work with a specific program.
All this is important to bear in mind as different distros will support different
hardware (generally more ’bleeding-edge’ distros will support newer hardware
look at Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, but not the stable release of Debian). A good
rule of thumb is to buy hardware that is 12 to 18 months old, as it most likely
has Linux support with most distros, but won’t be too old.

Previous topics
Assemble your PC #1 : The basics
Assemble your PC #2 : Choosing the parts

Previous post : Assemble your PC #1 : The basics

• Video Card/Graphics Card/GPU does processing relating to video
output. Some motherboards have an “onboard” GPU built in so you dont
need (but may add) a separate video card. Otherwise, you will need a
video card. These plug into a slot on the motherboard and provide a
place to connect a monitor to your computer.
On top of the internal components listed above, you will also need these
external components:
• Keyboard for typing on. Many motherboards won’t even boot without
a keyboard attached.
• Mouse for pointing and clicking. Unless you chose a text-based operating
system, you will likely want one of these.
• Monitor This is where the pretty pictures go. They come in many forms,
the most common being CRT and LCD.
These are the parts that a standard PC will use. We are not considering
such esoterica as headless, touchscreen, or voice-controlled systems. You might
want to make a check list (perhaps using a spreadsheet) of parts to use as you go
about your process of research and selection. That way you wont find yourself
sitting down with a pile of brand new hardware only to find that you forgot an
essential component.

Previous post : Assemble your PC #1 : The basics

The first step to building a computer is acquiring the parts. This guide will
start with a quick explanation of essential parts and elaborate on them further
on.
A computer is made up of a case, also called a chassis, which houses several
internal components, and the external components, including peripherals.
Inside the case go the following internal parts:
Power Supply/PSU power supply unit, converts outlet power, which
is alternating current (AC), to direct current (DC), which is what the
internal components require, as well as providing appropriate voltages
and currents for the various internal components.
Motherboard/mainboard As the name indicates, this is the electronic
centerpiece of the computer, everything else connects to the motherboard.
Processor/CPU central processing unit, the “brain” of the computer,
most actual computation takes place here.
RAM random access memory, the “short-term memory” of a computer,
used by the CPU to store program instructions and data upon which it is
currently operating. Data in RAM is lost when the computer is powered
off, thus necessitating a hard drive.
Hard Drive/Hard Disk the “long-term memory” of the computer, used
for persistent storage i.e. the things stored on it remain even when the
computer is powered down. The operating system, and all your programs
and data are stored here.
Optical Drive device for reading/writing optical disks. May read CDs,
DVDs, or other optical media, depending on the type. It is essential for
installing many operating systems and programs. It may be able to write
some of these discs, as well. Some people like to have two such drives for
copying disks.

ref:wikibooks

Microsoft® Virtual PC 2007, you can create and run one or more virtual machines, each with its own operating system, on a single computer. This provides you with the flexibility to use different operating systems on one physical computer.

Save time and money as Virtual PC allows you to maintain the compatibility of legacy and custom applications during migration to new operating systems and increases the efficiency of support, development, and training staffs.

Download

Microsoft on 20 th may (Tuesday) let their advertisers display the banner ads to mobile users of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail.

This move by Microsoft is a after following other companies who had started supporting mobile ads.

The Mobile users in France, Spain, U.K. and U.S. will see these banner ads while using the Microsoft services.

Google had made an announcement in April, inviting AdWords advertisers to display their banner ads.
Google, initially displayed tonly text ads on mobile phones.

Yahoo, Third Screen (owned by AOL) and AdMob, are among other companies that display ads (banner) on mobile phones.

Adobe Systems Inc, the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software, started public trials of its next-generation design software on Tuesday.
Registered owners of Creative Suite 3, however, will be allowed to use these betas until the release of CS4, which currently has no release date. However, unless Adobe has some kind of registration system built into those betas, they may need to be installed on production systems alongside CS3.
The beta software is available for free download.

Beta programs are near-final versions of software that its makers allow users to try out in a bid to discover bugs before the products go on sale. Some software makers conduct their betas publicly while others do so in secret, requiring users to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Adobe has yet to start public trials of the CS4 versions of other programs in the CS4 suite, which includes Photoshop and Illustrator.
Adobe's popular Web design and development tool Dreamweaver received a couple of noteworthy updates, including a Related Files toolbar, a Code Navigator, and a Live View Mode. The related files toolbar provides instant access to files used within a page, whether XML, JavaScript docs, or HTML; and the code navigator function allows code updates to be performed in several places with a single entry. Live View Mode is based upon the open source Webkit browser engine which also powers Safari. With this tool, a live preview of projects can be viewed within Dreamweaver.

In future the MacBook Air will use lower-cost solid-state drives and the new generation of flash storage will reduce from a higher price today.Today, a consumer pays dearly for a solid-state drive (SSD). For example, for only 64GB of SSD storage on the MacBook Air, a consumer must pay a premium of about $1,000 over the 80GB hard disk drive model. But the cost per gigabyte of solid-state drive storage will drop as notebook PC makers like Apple switch to solid-state drives with capacities above 100GB based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology. Adoption by notebook PC makers is expected to start in the third quarter, according to industry sources.

All Solid State Device manufacturers have moved from the single-level cell (SLC), which is used in products like the MacBook Air, the ThinkPad X300 and HP 2510p to MLC technology.Intel is also set to move into the high-capacity SSD market on the back of its multilevel cell technology.

"Compared to the price you're paying today for a 64GB drive. You'll get a 128GB of storage for less than half the price (of the 64GB drive)," said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, a supplier of MLC-based solid-state drives. The drives based on MLC technology offer better performance than hard disk drives. The current SSD manufacturers such as Samsung and Toshiba have also moved from single-level cell to multilevel cell.

MLC is a more sophisticated technology than current SLC. Its advantages are not only lower cost but higher capacity. Instead of the relatively small-capacity 64GB SLC-based drives being offered today in notebook PCs, manufacturers are targeting MLC-based drives ranging up to 256GB by the end of this year or early next year.

MLC NAND flash is a flash memory technology using multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored as opposed to SLC NAND flash technologies, which uses a single level per cell. Currently, most MLC NAND stores four states per cell, so the four states yield two bits of information per cell. This reduces the amount of margin separating the states and results in the possibility of more errors. MLC NAND has the benefit of being cheaper due to the denser storage method used, but software complexity can be increased to compensate for a larger bit error ratio (BER).
The disadvantage is more complexity, which can result in lower performance. "Inherently, MLC is slower and inherently (has) less write cycling endurance," Intel has stated in the past.

Avi Cohen, managing partner of Avian Securities, sees it that way too. "You lose some speed and you lose some reliability when you move to MLC," he said. "Errors per cell with MLC is an order of magnitude worse than SLC, which isn't that great to begin with," Cohen said.

The higher BER requires an algorithm that can correct errors up to five bits and detect the condition of more than five bad bits. The most commonly used algorithm is Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem

A Single-Level Cell, SLC, memory card stores one bit in each cell, leading to faster transfer speeds, lower power consumption and higher cell endurance. The only disadvantage of Single-Level Cell is the manufacturing cost per MB. Based on that, the SLC flash technology is used in high-performance memory cards.

A Multi-level Cell, MLC, memory card stores three or more bits in each cell. By storing more bits per cell, a Multi-Level Cell memory card will achieve slower transfer speeds, higher power consumption and lower cell endurance than a Single-Level Cell memory card. The advantage of Multi-Level Cell memory card is the lower manufacturing costs. The MLC flash technology is used mostly in standard memory cards. The Multi-Bit Cell, MBC, is a similar technology to the Multi-Level Cell but stores only two bits per cell. Intel and STEC say they mitigate the reliability problem and boost performance with proprietary controller chips. "We spend 85 percent of our time grappling with this reliability issue" when talking to customers, said Wilkison. "NAND (flash memory) will forever have limitations. It will be subject to a finite number of program and erase (record and delete) cycles," he said.

"There's a lot of background operations happening to manage the media. Moving the data around to make sure you're evenly wearing down the drive. You're not necessarily pounding on one specific spot and then killing a (memory) cell prematurely," Wilkison said. "This is all controller intelligence."

The kind of technology to optimize the longevity of the drive is generally referred to as wear leveling. Error detection and error correction technologies are also used, Wilkison said.

Wilkison said he believes these techniques result in solid-state drives that are just as reliable as hard disk drives. And he expects a surge in adoption of solid-state drives in notebooks. Whereas today there is only one notebook model per company that comes with a solid-state drive, the number of models offered with such drives will increase exponentially in the second half of the year, he said.


There will still be a "price delta" between hard disk drives and solid-state drives but that will continue to come down with MLC technology, he said. Reports have cited Intel pricing as approaching $1 per gigabyte.

Solid-state drives have no moving parts. Hard disk drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, solid-state drives avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard drives. Therefore, solid-state drives are generally faster and in some respects more reliable.

Google has got a new face on the Web. A smaller one, just 16x16 pixels.The internet mammoth updated its favicon, the small logo that appears in URL location bar, tabs bookmarks and a few other places. The older icon, an uppercase multicolored G has been supplanted by blue colored lower case g. It's just a minor change, but coming from a company which gives detail to its design, I could not help, but draw my (and yours) attention to it. Given the fact that icon is beaming across our browsers like a bulb in a room, this aspect of their branding deserves some attention.But do note that this new icon doesn't appear on all Google sites.

Microsoft security advisory: Blended Threat from Combined Attack Using Apple’s Safari on the Windows Platform

Microsoft

Microsoft on May 30, 2008 issued an advisory that warned windows users to not use apple's safari web browser until a patch is available that could stop the attackers to hack computers.
Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) issued a security advisory, which it called a "blended threat".
It is caused by a combination of a bug in Apple's Safari Web browser and the vulnerability in the way the Windows XP and Vista handle executable (exe) files on the desktop. This allows the remote execution of malicious code on all supported Windows XP and Vista when the Safari web browser for Windows is installed. This bug was disclosed 2 weeks ago by a researcher Nitesh Dhanjani.

Safari lacks an option to require a user's permission to download a file. Attackers, could populate a malicious site with a code that Safari that would automatically download to the desktop, which is the default location.

Nitesh Dhanjani

A combination of the default download location in Safari and how the Windows desktop handles executables creates a blended threat in which files may be downloaded to a user’s machine without prompting, allowing them to be executed. Safari is available as a stand-alone install or through the Apple Software Update application.

An attacker could trick users into visiting a specially crafted Web site that could download content to a user’s machine and execute the content locally using the same permissions as the logged-on user.

Microsoft

Google adsense is up and ready for RSS feeds and will be launched next week to a limited set of publishers on feedburner. According to the blogpost by steve on 30th may on feeburner weblog, he said that the publishers will get to see the CPM based feedburner ads and also will see the contextual advertising by google, which will add to their inventory. All you need is an adsense account.

He also adds that " You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate "
Steve is confident of the "chocolaty goodness that will come from ongoing integration effort with Google" and so am I.
The contextual advertising by google has been a big hit and publishers with a good number of subscribers are going to benefit from this service as it is a cpm (cost per 1000 ads served) based service.

Google adsense has been for quite a while now and when ads will be there in RSS feeds there wouldn't be a place left for the reader to read ad free content. Earlier services like google reader gave a clean approach for reading content and the ads by feedburner were didn;t give a bad look either. I too use adsense for generating some pocket money . The "mix and mash" would actually crash the purpose of RSS feeds.

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.

Wikipedia

The standard and the ease of reading the RSS format will disappear and then will come a mix and mash and the ads. This integration with google is good, but what I suggest is that let there be one server of ads and since Google's adsense is far more advanced than that of feedburner, let Google rule the roost. Everything in the world is not about money, we need some aesthetics. Anyways I hope the mix and mash is proper and feedburner, which is going to come under the umbrella of google ads. It is a good news of for all (because if the money). I just a bit concerned over the aesthetics and the nature of service which will be under adsense

Video games have been known for the gripping and entertaining powers. The more involved you get in a game, the better it is. This is what basically GTA series by rockstar games was all about. Now comes Nintendo, planning to make a mark and satisfy the mothers who were not happy with the GTA 4 after the MADD(Mothers against drunk driving) controversy. This strategy seems perfect. Satisfy those who were not satisfied by the last popular game.
The game's novel appeal is delivered through an electronic Wii balance board controller, sold in a bundle with Wii Fit for $90. The board, with multiple sensors, measures a player's weight and turns steps and shifts in balance into moves on screen.

Players can chart their weight and body mass index over time and work to improve them by engaging in about 40 activities including yoga, aerobic step routines, strength and training exercises, and balance games. The balance board can track the progress of up to eight players, so users can encourage each other toward their respective goals.

Windows enthusiasts hungry for details about Microsoft 's next operating system will have to sit tight.

Microsoft is staying quiet on many of the details of its Vista follow up, dubbed Windows 7, until the company gets closer to its expected January 2010 launch date, blog post.

Microsoft is careful and has decided to strategically decided to share information on Windows 7 as it says that talking about the planes for Windows 7 significantly impacts partners and customers.

The developmental process of the Windows 7 is on and it will shipped approximately 3 years after the general availability of Windows Vista. The early releases and builds of the Windows 7 will be released for feedback prior to its general availability.

Scientists across the world are devising new techniques and are exploring other protocols to serve one purpose, a high bandwidth. Internet service providers are competing with each other to provide higher bandwidths to customers at competitive prices. The world is on the internet highway, where the speed limit is continuously increasing. We live, talk and socialize on the internet. Some of us met their life partners on the internet. Wow! what a life changing experience. Amidst all this positivity and development, there have been many people who have been affected. Some positively and a few negatively. The most affected people have been the movie producers. Their movies have been stolen, ripped and are available for download on forums across the world. For the internet user with a high bandwidth and a less price, it would take a few minutes to download the DVD rip of a movie. A movie once downloaded, will surely be circulated across and once his friends see the movie, they wouldn't actually spend money to go to the theater to watch them. If you are more patient, a week or two (maximum) after the movies release, pirated copies are available for less than $1. With high bandwidth comes the risk of huge file transfers (illegal). Recently some chinese suckers (hackers), hacked Indian defense websites, stealing vital information. I feel hacking is an achievement (of evil) in itself and hackers being the lord voldermort (the evil guy) of harry potter. Some times this evil is used by us, when we use and watch pirated stuff. It will take some hard work and smart effort by the antivirus and web security companies to curb the ill effect of high bandwidth