ShaswatPatel.com » Internet

Amazon Offers Digital Locker Service “Cloud Drive” Stores 5 GB Of Your Stuff

Zac Davis — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:32:47 +0000

Amazon’s Cloud Drive services is basically an updated version of their S3 service that gives users 5GB of space for free. According to Amazon, users of the service can store whatever they want on their Cloud Drive, but it is clear that the company is focusing on Music. Firstly, the upgrade qualification to 20GB of space is obtained by purchasing an MP3 album from Amazon’s MP3 store. Secondly, Amazon has released a Cloud Player service that ties right into the Cloud Drive, working on Android platforms and in web browsers.

Amazon Cloud Player And Amazon Cloud Player For Web & Android

It appears that Amazon is attempting to monopolize the Android market, with their own marketplace app, and now this service, which only works on Android devices when looking at mobile options, as stated earlier. Amazon has also updated their “Amazon MP3″ app to include a player that will work with both the cloud service and music stored on the device or SD card. The widget included is also very useful.

Any Amazon MP3 purchased is stored on the Cloud Drive, but does not count against your usage, so you have however much space you got for free (or paid for). Space beyond 20GB costs a yearly subscription fee with 50GB being $50 per year, 100GB coming at $100 a year, and so on in that fashion. The only drawback is that the service will not store DRMed material, so your iTune’s purchases will not be able to be used here.

Amazon Cloud Drive

This seems like a great option for people who have under 20GB of music, as it would only cost them one album to have that amount of storage forever. Do you think it’s worth a shot?

Google Search Allow You To Block Unwanted Sites To Cut Spam In Search Results

Savio Matthews — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:14:34 +0000

Google just announced in a blog post that it will enable Web-site blocking on its search engine in its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Now, it works this way, supposedly, a user Google’s for something and by clicking the top result he finds that it is not what he was looking for. He can simply return to Google and there will be a new option available next to the “Cached” link to block all results from that domain name. By clicking on that link, user will get a confirmation. If the user intends to change mind about a site, he can manage the blocked site lists from the search settings.

Once you’ve blocked a domain, you won’t see it in your future search results,” Google said in a blog post, though “the next time you’re searching and a blocked page would have appeared, you’ll see a message telling you results have been blocked, making it easy to manage your personal list of blocked sites.”

Google Allows You To Block Unwanted Search Results

Earlier Google has promoted many different methods of search customization over the years through services like Search Wiki and local setting, until recently they launched a Chrome extension called Personal Blocklist, a tool that falls somewhere between personalization and personal protection against junk content.

“You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve clicked a result and it wasn’t quite what you were looking for,” explain Google engineers Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang in a blog post. “Many times you’ll head right back to Google. Perhaps the result just wasn’t quite right, but sometimes you may dislike the site in general, whether it’s offensive, pornographic or of generally low quality. For times like these, you’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results.”

The blog post by Google also notes that sometimes users will have to move onto a new search term, rather than just hitting refresh, to get the sites blocked. Any subsequent searches made with the same search term will show a message where a blocked site would have appeared. The blocked sites feature is rolling out today and tomorrow on Google.com in English, and will be available for those with Chrome 9+, Internet Explorer 8+, and Firefox 3.5+.

Speedier, Easier Google Chrome 10 Stable Version Launched With Improved Security

Savio Matthews — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:37:24 +0000

Google recently unveiled Chrome 10 that promises 66 percent faster JavaScript speeds with the “Crankshaft” version of the V8 browser engine and includes rich functionalities such as password sync feature, synced data encryption, an improved settings interface. The latest version of Chrome 10 also beefed up security by improving Chrome’s sandboxing feature, which prevents malware from interacting with the rest of your system, to include Adobe Flash player.

“With today’s stable release, even your most complex web apps will run more quickly and responsively in the browser,” Google said in a blog post.

Currently if you wish to access your browser settings by clicking on the menu on the upper right-hand corner and selecting ‘Options’, it will now open on a separate browser tab instead of a pop-up window.. One of the key advantages of it is that it makes navigating your settings seemingly easier as you don’t have to keep track of a floating browser window getting lost under all your other open application windows.

Although there is already a built in Adobe Flash player in Chrome, but the latest version puts Flash in a protective sandbox to confine security problems to a walled-off area of memory. In the security section there are just about 23 security fixes discovered through Google’s Chrome bounty program and ranging in severity from low to high.

Chrome 10 Stable Version

This all new settings of the latest version of Chrome also features a search box in the left navigation panel that lets you quickly find specific settings based on keywords. Surprisingly the link address in OmniBar has also changed as you move between different settings categories. But this makes it easier for users to bookmark a specific settings category if you want to get back to it quickly in the future. If you’re trying to help someone figure out their browser settings over the phone or via IM, you can also send them a link to paste into their browser instead of explaining how to navigate to the specific setting they need to change. If you’re running the new version of Chrome try out the link feature by pasting “chrome://settings/advanced” into Chrome’s address bar.

“Chrome’s new settings interface will help you get to the right settings quickly so you don’t have to dig endlessly to find a way to import your bookmarks or change your browser’s homepage,” Google said.
With the latest version of Chrome, users will now have the option of syncing their passwords across computers. There is option to encrypt the passwords, which users need to enable by navigating “Personal Stuff” section in Chrome’s settings. This syncing option also applies to bookmarks, extensions, themes, etc.

Go and give it a try, the latest version of Chrome.

Mozilla Announced Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate For Windows, Mac Aand Linux

Savio Matthews — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:28:34 +0000

Recently Mozilla announced the release possible release candidate version of Firefox 4 which certainly means the next version of Mozilla Firefox is just around the corner. Users who are currently using the Mozilla Firefox 4.0 beta versions will be automatically updated to the new release and asked to assess the feature which is available in 70 languages, Mozilla said in a blog post. To showcase the features of Firefox 4, Mozilla teamed up with GlobalVision and set up a demo page featuring 360-degree videos and other demos showing the versatility and power of HTML5 and CSS3.

Mozilla released as many as 12 betas before announcing the final release candidate and said that users those who update will be “validating the new features, enhanced performance and stability and HTML5 capabilities in Firefox 4″. We build Firefox with help from our contributors and millions of beta testers. The team has fixed more than 8,000 bugs since the first beta release of Firefox 4,” said Mozilla in the blog post. Please help test the release candidate and provide feedback to make sure Firefox 4 is the best it can be.”

Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate

Mozilla also highlighted the browser’s fresh new user experience. To give browser tabs higher visual priority, open tabs now appear above the streamlined “Awesome Bar”. It also includes added support for HTML5, as well as changes to the C++ representation of JavaScript values, which should let the browser handle bigger data loads. If you wish to access Firefox on your tablet, desktop or even mobile, Firefox 4 has the ability to sync settings, passwords, bookmarks, history, open tabs, and other customizations. In addition to all these new features Firefox 4 will also include JetPack SDK, which is designed to speed up add-on installation by removing the need to restart the browser, WebGL for displaying 3D graphics and multi-touch support for Windows 7.

Mozilla Firefox became popular for its “Add-Ons” option and keeping that in mind Mozilla said that more than seventy percent of its add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 4. Besides that for easier access it includes an Add-On Manager that helps people discover new add-ons and manage existing ones. It also includes a “Do Not Track” option. Besides that the advanced screen in Firefox option will now include a box that Web sites that you want to opt-out of tracking used for behavioral advertising. Mozilla added the feature to a pre-build version of Firefox in January, and added it to the beta in February.

Google Unveils Smart Labels To Reduce Email Overload In Gmail

Savio Matthews — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:17:42 +0000

Internet giant Google on Wednesday introduced a new option for Gmail that filters messages into bulk, forum, or notification folders. Smart Labels are a Gmail Labs project that sorts e-mails into three different sections; first one is the Bulk option that applies to mass mailings like newsletters and promotions, second the forums for group mailing lists and lastly notifications for e-mails sent directly to you.

Gmail Smart Labels

When it comes to organizing all of your e-mails Gmail provides you with the best option i.e. instead of the traditional system of placing messages in different folders, it uses a labeling system that allows users to apply multiple labels to a single message, while keeping all e-mails still accessible from the main inbox folder. Users can replace existing filters and labels with Smart Labels or use them together. To add, enable the “SmartLabels” option in Gmail Labs and hit save. You can further edit your settings on the Filters tab under Settings. “We hope Smart Labels help you more effortlessly get through your inbox,” Google said in a blog post.
“A lot of users do want to read this stuff but they don’t want to necessarily read it in their everyday flow,” said Steve Crossan, a product manager at Gmail. He added: “On my personal Gmail account I get a lot of this kind of mail and I find (smart labels) to be very useful. It’s easy to quickly eyeball the amount of mail I’ve got in this category.”

Internet Explorer 9 Set To Debute On March 14 At SXSW

Savio Matthews — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 06:41:01 +0000

Microsoft is preparing to release the the next version of its Internet Explorer browser, IE9, on Monday, March 14, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW), Texas. The new browser, which Microsoft hopes will draw users over Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, had its first and only release candidate land in users’ hands in early February.

According to a March 9 posting on The Windows Blog, Internet Explorer senior director Ryan Gavin described the browser as offering up “a more beautiful web.” He wrote, “Exactly twelve months from the first Platform Preview of IE9, on Monday March 14th we will celebrate the developers and designers who are making a more beautiful web for all of us. We will release the final version of Internet Explorer 9 for download beginning at 9 p.m. Pacific.”

Internet Explorer 9

One of the most important features in IE9 is its brand new look and there are other performance improvements and Microsoft is pouring considerable resources into ensuring that IE9 launches in suitably up-to-date form. It also includes a new JavaScript Engine called Chakra, faster start times and on the security side it adds support for “Do Not Track” through lists which users can subscribe to and as well as a way to filter ActiveX content from page.

It will be available only for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, leaving out Windows Xp.

WordPress Blog Publishing Platform Suffers a Biggest DDoS Attack In Its History

Savio Matthews — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:58:33 +0000

The popular blogging-site hoster WordPress has suffered a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack early this month, causing disruption to thousands of users. According to WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg the large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that hit the WordPress.com blog publishing platform last week originated from China.

“This is the largest and most sustained attack we’ve seen in our six-year history. We suspect it may have been politically motivated against one of our non-English blogs but we’re still investigating and have no definitive evidence yet,” he said.

Wordpress Suffers A DDos Attack

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks generally involve botnets of compromised computers from all over the world, bombarding a site with traffic and effectively “clogging it up” by preventing legitimate users from accessing its content. Very often the true source of a DDoS attack is unclear.

The attacks directed “multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second” and were the “largest and most sustained” in its six-year history. Mullenweg said that WordPress is accustomed to dealing with DDoS attacks, but most of the time they go unnoticed. WordPress has data centers in San Antonio, Chicago, and Dallas that usually squash threats pretty quickly. Very often the true source of a DDoS attack is unclear.

Microsoft Launched IE 6 Countdown To Bring IE6 Browser Usage Down To Under 1%

Savio Matthews — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:27:29 +0000

This might sound a little weird but Microsoft wants users to stop using Internet Explorer 6 and to that more effectively they have set up a website ie6countdown.com as part of a campaign to urge people to stop using its aged, 10 year old browser. The Software giant is ready to move beyond Internet Explorer 6 and has set up the countdown website to monitor progress towards moving users off IE6, a browser that is now 10 years old and well past its sell-by date

According to Microsoft, the IE6 still covers approximately 12 percentage of global browser market share, of which a large number of users coming from India and China who are yet to move on to newer browsers and full of computers running Windows XP which came with IE6 preinstalled. Other countries with a higher-than-average IE6 share include South Korea (24.8%) and Taiwan (10.7%). In the U.S., IE6′s share is just 2.9%

IE6 Worldwide Usages

Roger Capriotti, director of IE product marketing, stated in a blog post, “Now that it’s 2011, IE6 is officially a ten-year old browser. According to Net Applications, IE6 still has 12 percent share worldwide. Our goal is to get this share under 1 percent worldwide. “We bring you the next step in our mission to see IE6 gone for good and to demonstrate our commitment to getting rid of IE6, we’re launching a Web site.” Capriotti tied the launch of the IE6 deathwatch site to the first anniversary of an IE6 “funeral” hosted by Denver, Colo.-based Web design firm Aten Design Group. Microsoft’s IE6 sent a bouquet of flowers to the event, with a card that read, “Thanks for the good times, IE6.”

On this new website Microsoft is making a very concentrated effort yet to get users to get rid from the decade-old browser. Like the website says in its preamble, “10 years ago a browser was born. …It’s time to say goodbye.” So basically the key of this website is to get Internet Explorer 6 usage to drop to less than 1% worldwide. The IE6 Deathwatch has different links and advices as in why everyone should stop using this 10 year old browser and upgrade. It also got documentation for corporate networks that need to migrate to a new browser and banners that webmasters can embed in their sites, alerting users that they should upgrade.

IE6 Usages

Internet Explorer 6 is a problem for web developers too because it is not only outdated but is non-standard and buggy too which is why understandably Microsoft is keen to persuade IE6 users to upgrade and is asking websites to join its campaign. It has to be noted that Microsoft has been pushing for this IE6 demise for quite some time now and many other have responded them. Earlier in January Google released a statement saying it would begin withdrawing support for IE6 and popular social networking sites like Facebook stopped supporting its chat based service in IE6 on September 15.

Facebook Finally Puts HTTPS Security Guard To Boost Facebook Security

Arun Logesh — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 07:35:23 +0000

Facebook is now allowing all its users to encrypt their entire Facebook usage. It is mainly done to stop hackers and other persons to hack any information that is sent or received from Facebook. This is done to safeguard the Facebook user’s public profiles after the public page of Mark Zuckenberg (Founder of Facebook) was hacked.

Facebook Security

This news was released by the blog of the Palo Alto Company, Calif. This encryption facility can be used by adding “https” as a prefix on the internet address slot in your browser as shown in the picture above. This would make sure that your entire session is encrypted.

This encryption will also stop identity theft or hijacking of accounts using Firesheep or other tools used for snooping. These snooping tools works by receiving the data sent or received from a Facebook account after the user have logged in. This encryption may take a few weeks to be available to all users. The major disadvantage of the encryption is that Facebook would be slower and it would not support any 3^rd party apps. Facebook team is currently working to solve these two problems.

HTTPS Security In Facebook

It is expected that this encryption would be a default setting of Facebook as Google did on its Gmail. Also Facebook is expected to take additional steps to prevent attempts of site impersonation. It is indicated that Facebook would use “extended validation” as an additional layer of Security.

Also Facebook would ask users to identify pictures of their friends if it suspects that the account has been hacked. This is done to prove that the user is the rightful owner of that profile. These steps would hopefully be implemented within a few weeks.

New Facebook Call Button Indicate Facebook Could Soon Have a Call A Friend Feature

Arun Logesh — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:37:01 +0000

Facebook is currently updating itself by adding several new features. According to a report Facebook is adding VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol option at the profile page besides the chat option as shown in the screenshot. This feature is sure to be a hit among millions of Facebook users.

Tipster Williams, a Facebook user said “So I was just chatting on Facebook chat and I got the option to ‘call’ my friend. It swiftly disappeared.” It seems that the new VOIP or call feature is still in experimental stage and Facebook is currently trying to integrate this feature in the profile page of its user

It seems that one user of Facebook has been successful in using the latest VOIP call feature to call his friend in his profile page.

New Facebook Call Button

This information doesn’t come as a surprise as it was known previously about collaboration between Facebook and HTC about a secret project. It is also expected that at MWC 2011 (Mobile World Congress 2011) HTC would give us a sneak peak on its latest gadget which is apparently been made with help of Facebook. MWC 2011 is scheduled to be held in Spain, Barcelona in Feb 2011.

It is yet unconfirmed that whether these are only rumours or are true. We have to wait and see how it will turn up. But it would be a very solid move in the part of Facebook to integrate VOIP. Google also has VOIP service though they are restricted to US only. Same may be the case for Facebook. Also in account of latest security breach, Facebook has to increase the security of its network

ShaswatPatel.com » Internet

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