Desktoptwo...an Online mobile Desktop for free!!!

Desktoptwo is an online Operating system(not exactly), that gives you the look and feel of your desktop within a browser window. It provides all the features of your normal desktop aswell as a 1GB space to store your files in the online hard drive, bunch of softwares like Open Office, MP3 players, messengers, free email ID and lots more.
If you have an internet connection, from anywhere in the world you can access your Desktop..ie your desktoptwo. So they say "You can bring your desktop too". The concept looks exciting and I think there are not much members, I could get the ID "narayan" while signing up. Also without a reasonable bandwidth, this idea seems to be just a dream.

The sign up is rather a breeze, asks for you name and address, and an alternate email id. Once you signup you can use your online desktop by pointing your browser to http://www.desktoptwo.com/your-id. It also provides you a email ID (POP account), your-ID@desktoptwo.com.

The beta version is out, so it's worth trying out and you might also probably get better ids as i got, and maybe in a few years this would prove worth. So here I am signing off, still waiting for my Desktop2 to load... ( I started writing this blog after opening it).

Site URL : http://www.desktoptwo.com
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Google again...buys YouTube for 1.65$ billion!!

YouTube.com though started in Feb 2005, was fast to pick up the momentum and creating a new breed of video hosting, streaming and sharing, and today has a few million users. It's unique style and simplicity made it popular from word "go". As in the cases of orkut.com, blogspot.com, x, y, z.. Google once again found this one, and did not hold back, and bought youtube.com for a whopping 1.65$ billion on stock. This merger brings together the web's biggest video entertainer and sharing community with the technical giants of data organizing and searching.
Though Google said that Youtube will operate independently to preserve its brand and passion, this really gets the equation more interesting. Google already has it's own video sharing service called Google video, and recently it was quoted Google saying, youtube is better than Google video as it allows instantaneous availability of uploads. Now Google's umbrella of services are widening like anything!
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Google sprays e-mail worm accidentally!!!

Google Inc., one of the most popular name in the webbed world, today continued it recent series of bad runs when it spread a e-mail worm W32/Kapser.A@mm known popularly as the Kamasutra worm through its free video service, Google Video on tuesday. Almost 50,000 subscribers have been sent this mail, on this Tuesday. Recently Google's official blog had been hacked, even before that Google even deleted its own official blog accidentally.
"Some of these posts may have contained a virus called W32/Kapser.A@mm--a mass-mailing worm," Google said in a note on its Web site apologizing for the incident. Three postings were made to the Google video blog user's list on Tuesday evening. Google has also advised their blog users to use an virus removal tool to remove it. Google said they would be more careful and won't repeat the mistakes again.
The kamasutra virus as it popularly known spreads when users try to access porn content. It deletes the victims files on a specific date. No casualties have been reported from this Google mishap. Now think twice before going for the "cheap term life" over free web content.
This may interest you.
Google Video
W32/Kapser.A@mm
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Intel, AMD leave the mobile phone processor market

In early june this year AMD divested the whole non x86 processor line, Alchemy line of processors selling it to Raza microelectronics Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Though this does not mean complete sell off of its mobile processor sector, their presence is now restricted to support the RMI.
As if following the "green company", Intel later in the month announced that they will sell off the XScale PXAxxx applications and 3G baseband based processors for a speculated sum of $600 Million along existing liabilities, to a company called Marvell. This is seen as a strategic move by the Chip major. It was quoted Intel saying that it was to focus on its core x86 and wireless LAN chipset businesses.
This makes Marvell the single largest supplier of 3G and smartphone processors. However, Intel has reserved some fuel for the mobile, as they still hold the 4G range of processor technology with them.
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Revised Licensing policy for Vista

If you were to change your hardware configuration, you would be one among the many who wish, why doesnt Microsoft throw some sense into their Activation policy. The Windows XP registration policy does not allow any major handware changes, and if you do, you might have to buy a new license. Most of the people dont find it sane to pay twice for a single copy of software.
It seems Microsoft has realized this mistake and are making amends. The new policy would also eliminate the piracy issue, or that is what they think. In Vista, the product is activated by "calling home" or contacting Microsoft online and registering there.

"So, what's the big deal???" eh? Well, that's not all. You are allowed to cancel an activation and apply a new activation. Doesnt that mean sense?? Consider this, you are going to sell of your computer for good. And you plan to buy a new one. All you have to do is to simply cancel your old activation and apply a new. So for the time being it seems Microsoft is onto the right path to tackle the Activation policy criticisms.
The idea sounds good, but, we have to wait and see how they implement this to perfection. And here I am signing off, wishing all the luck to Microsoft for this idea.
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Adode says "No 64-bit Flash"! GNU,GPL say "yes!"

Adode has been in the recieving end of criticisms lately, as they were not moving a step forward to support 64bit platforms for the flash player. Their recommendation is to install a 32-bit browser and use the 32-bit flash player, definitely not acceptable at any means. This has especially haunted the 64-bit Linux users, as most of the distros comes bundled with 64-bit browsers. Despite various online petitions and forum posts, Adobe is still not making a move towards the future.
But the crisis has almost come to and end with Open Source flash players for both Linux and Windows. The first step towards this was the GplFlash project started when there were no Flash player at all for Linux, and lost its importance once Macromedia released a 32-bit Flash player. But with the 64-bit issue propping up, the project was revived in 2005 and this was called GplFlash2, but it seems GplFlash2 has been stopped due to messy code, and it seems new design would be adopted. So there is no chance of it being released in the near future.
But, GNU has done their part to help the 64-bit users with Gnash project which is nothing but GNU Flash project. This is fully supported and is a full fledged player that supports the Mozilla based browsers, such as firefox. So now anyone can view their favourite Flash websites without the Adobe's proprietery Flash player. Gnash supports upto swf v7.0, which is a good news. but the bad news is that there is no Windows based binary for Gnash, though there is one for GplFlash1.
Here is the Gnash ftp download link.
Here is the Gnash homepage.
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Adobe Flex...redefining the web

Once Adobe bought Macromedia, it was looking out to make the most out of the deal. And as everyone knows Macromedia's flagship product is Flash, and almost 80% of today's browsers are Flash enabled. Now the drawback with Flash was, it was good for animations and intros, but it's loosely held at the back by a language called Actionscript. It was not a powerful tool to employ databases and other deep web applications.
Now Adobe knew this very well and they were straight onto business when they released the first version of Adobe Flex, in March 2004 which combines the power of Flash with a coventional programming model. It includes support for major technologies like cold fusion, Java etc. it is used to develop Rich Internet Applications.
Flex uses Actionscript 3.0 and MXML(Macromedia XML) for coding. It's compiled using JIT compiler to produce swf files on the fly. Flex can be considered as the direct competitor to AJAX, OpenLazlo etc.
Flex can add more eye-candy to your web application without losing the strong connectivity capabilities. It's already used by major players like SAP, Harley-Davidson etc to build there website.
But all good things comes with a price and so does Flex. The flex builder which is the IDE to build flex apps, is based on Eclipse. There is also two other priced modules are Flex Data services and Flex Charting. The latter is used to create highly customized charts and graphs and the former for providing addition services for managing data. The Flex SDK, though is free of cost and can be downloaded from the Adobe website. It provides the Command line compiler, debugger and the libraries.
Flex is here to stay, or atleast that is what Adode thinks, take a look at this Flex based website to judge for yourself. http://harley-davidson.com
Latest Flex release : Flex 2.0
Manufacturer : Adobe
You can download flex SDK here
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AJAX. The rising

The events that unfold in the computer industry is stranger than the most bizzare hindi movie you would have seen. A few years back who would have thought that AJAX would become so popular? Though the term AJAX was coined by Jesse James Garrett in 2005, the concept was very much there before that.Take the case of the MySQL. No one ever thought that Oracle would ever be shaken by some small swedish company, but in reality now MySQL is posing a big threat to Oracle, with a strong open source community support.Similar was AJAX's story, it's now one of the most sought out technology for the web applications, especially Rich Internet Applications.
AJAX stands for Asynchronous Java with XML. It avoids page refreshes and sends data to webserver asynchronously using Java. The concept was well foreseen by Microsoft back in 1996 when they released Inter Explorer 3, they added a component called iFrame for asynchronous page refreshes. Now they have a technique called remote scripting to work on this. Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together. It is now widely used in web development, one of the popular implementations is Gmail and wikimapia. Now you can expect websites that look like your desktop applications and can do much more.
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Vista still not ready - Symentac
Symentac claims to have found many security holes in Vista, and were bold enough to announce that in some parts, Vista is more vulnerable than Windows XP, especially in some parts of networking code.
They say that Vista uses fresh written code , replacing most of the tested an tried code, so new bugs and errors are bound to be there. So a bumpy road is ahead for the near future atleast until the code is stabilized.
Microsoft is not taking any chances and are rigorously beta testing the operating system, which is going to be the world's most used one. Already Symentac has announced that some of the holes reported by them have been removed in the RC2 of Vista, and many would vanish in the final release. Who would not listen to a company which has a tradition of 24 years in computer security?
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AMD Intel Duel heating up!

July 2006 marked the revival of lost glory for the inventors of the microprocessors, Intel, with release of the Intel Core Series of processors and first market success in the last three years since the market invasion by Athlon and 64bit processors by AMD.
This was followed by the huge price slash by the Green company, up to 60% and acquisition of ATI, the graphics vendor giant. Now they have gone further and have announced their new offing, Fusion, a processor that will incorporate a GPU onto it. How far this is going to succeed is for time to tell. But AMD fanboys atleast have something to cheer, with the tentative date of Fusion release set to 2008 Q2. Also the 4x4 and Intel's Kentsfield will be locking horns soon with 4x4 schedule revised to 2007 Q2.
Analysts think that 4x4 is better than Intel's Quadro as it has the real quadcore architecture as compared to the pseudo quadcore architecture of Quadro.
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