Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Google Chrome Won the Fastest Browser Race In Site-Loading Tests

Last fall, Google claimed that its Chrome 2 Beta browser was “many times faster” than rival browsers at running JavaScript. In February, as it launched the beta of its new browser, Apple asserted that Safari 4 Beta was the world’s fastest browser. And this month, Microsoft started marketing Internet Explorer 8 with videos purporting to prove that it’s faster than its rivals.

Speed test results; click for full-size image.They can’t all be right, so PC World undertook detailed real-world tests to determine how quickly each of four browsers--the three mentioned above and Firefox 3.0.7--loaded a series of popular Web sites. The results: Google Chrome 2 Beta beat the field. Its average page load speed for our nine test sites was 1.3 seconds, half a second faster than runner-up IE 8. Safari and Firefox tied for last with an average loading time of 2.12 seconds for each of the test sites.

They saw the most significant difference in page load times with the English-language Wikipedia home page and the MySpace home page.

Chrome 2 Beta completed the job of loading Wikipedia in a mere 1.12 seconds, easily outpacing the competition. Internet Explorer 8 chugged to a second-place finish, loading the page in 2.24 seconds on average. Firefox 3.0.7 and Safari 4 Beta lagged behind, however, with average load times of 3.31 seconds and 3.38 seconds, respectively.

Chrome 2 also dusted the competition in loading the MySpace home page, getting it done in an average time of 1.43 seconds. Internet Explorer 8 loaded the page in 2.59 seconds, while Firefox took nearly 3 seconds on average, and Safari well over 4 seconds.

Safari's overall results were disappointing, especially given Apple's claim that Safari is the fastest browser on the market. To its credit, though, Safari did load the Amazon home page faster than any of its three competitors.

The ironic thing about browser makers’ speed claims is that many users probably won’t notice the difference between the fastest and slowest browsers. What with fast broadband connections and a bunch of pretty peppy browsers to choose from, few of us spend a lot of time waiting for pages to load. On the other hand, if you're stuck on a slow connection, not even the fastest browser in the world will help you. All four of the modern browsers tested are fast enough. The key factor to consider in determining which one to use shouldn't be "Which one's fastest?" Rather, you should ask "Which one do I like most?" “Which has the features I need?” and "Which one is safest?"

Source: Pcworld.com

Monday, March 30, 2009

Skype for iPhone: Its Official

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype’s native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

In terms of navigation, Skype’s VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple’s sleek interface archetype, that’s a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype’s branding may feel disappointed.

Skype’s screens are well organized and use the iPhone’s ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who’s online. There’s chatting as well, though Skype’s flagship feature is its VoIP calling that’s free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines. Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby–calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.) Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.

Courtesy: CNET Reviews

Friday, March 27, 2009

Mozilla and Khronos to bring standards-based 3D to the web

Emerging standards are bringing a growing number of rich media technologies to the web, ranging from programmable raster graphics to video playback. The next area that will be tackled by Internet innovators is support for interactive 3D graphics, a capability that would enable a whole new class of browser-based games and expressive data visualizations.

The Khronos Group, the organization behind OpenGL, has teamed up with Mozilla to define a new royalty-free web standard for bringing 3D graphics to the web. They are inviting other companies to participate in the effort and aim to have a functional specification ready for publication within a year.

Recent advancements in JavaScript performance have opened the door for building web applications that can leverage client-side processing to perform computationally intensive tasks that were not previously possible in web browsers. These capabilities are already being used experimentally in very impressive ways with video and 2D graphics. Bringing standards-based 3D to the web is the next logical step in the evolution of programmable Internet graphics.

Mozilla, which will serve as the chair of the working group, has proposed basing the new standard on the OpenGL ES 2.0 APIs. The plan is to make these APIs accessible directly through JavaScript so that they can be used in web applications. In a blog entry published on Tuesday, Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard wrote that the feature is tentatively planned for the next version of Firefox after the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release.

"Accelerated 3D graphics with the super-fast next-generation JavaScript engines from nearly every web browser vendor means that we're going to be able to start to see more and more advanced applications written using open web technologies. 3D is a huge part of that story and we're happy to bring our proposal to the table," he wrote. "It's our intention to include this as base functionality in the release after Firefox 3.5, assuming all goes well on the standards front."

Mozilla's Vladimir Vukićević released an experimental Firefox plugin last year that brought support for a subset of OpenGL to the browser. His Canvas 3D plugin provides some insight into the approach that developers could eventually take to integrate standards-based 3D into browsers.

Although the proposed OpenGL APIs provide a strong foundation for 3D development, their intrinsically low-level design will pose challenges for developers who want to do practical development. Vukićević and others believe that third-party developers will create libraries and other abstraction layers on top of the standard APIs to provide higher-level interfaces for developers. An entry at the Mozilla standards blog points out that such libraries could serve the same function for 3D that toolkits like jQuery and Prototype provide today for conventional JavaScript development.

Indeed, there is already a very promising effort to build an open source JavaScript library that sits on top of the Canvas 3D plugin. The project, which is called C3DL, is being developed by a team at Seneca College in collaboration with Mozilla. We looked at C3DL back in January. It supports loading 3D models in various formats and has a wide range of functionality needed to jumpstart the development of comprehensive 3D engines in JavaScript on top of the OpenGL APIs.

Adapting OpenGL seems like the right approach, because OpenGL is a strong existing standard that already has a lot of traction in the computer gaming ecosystem and other industries that heavily depend on 3D graphics. Using it as the basis for creating a vendor-neutral 3D standard will ensure that content creators will have choice in their authoring tools and that the technology will be broadly inclusive. Integrating it into JavaScript and designing it to function in much the same manner as the existing Canvas element will make it conform well with conventional web technologies.

The web is growing up and displacing the desktop as the primary vehicle for delivering applications. The addition of support for standards-based 3D graphics is another significant milestone in the movement to make the web a more modern medium for conveying interactive content.

For more information visit:http://arstechnica.com/

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Google Launches iGoogle Game Themes

On Wednesday or there about, iGoogle users will have access to new game-oriented themes to decorate their personal pages.

The themes -- banners at the top and bottom of iGoogle pages, with related type treatment -- consist of art culled from games like Galaga, Mega Man, Tomb Raider, Street Fighter IV, Mario, Magic: The Gathering, Spore, Dungeons & Dragons, and World of Warcraft, among others.

Google VP of search and user experience Marissa Mayer introduced the addition of game related art to iGoogle at a media event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening.

She explained that the addition of game themes was about allowing people to express their personalities and their interests.

During a conversation following her presentation, Mayer disagreed with my suggestion that gaming themes represented a departure from previously introduced artistic themes and social cause themes.

But gaming themes are by far the most commercial themes offered to date. Certainly the artist themes serve as advertising and branding, as do the fashion designer themes, but the gaming themes tie into a specific product.

It's a smart move for Google and one that shows how important personalization and online community has become to a company that began in search.

For the nine gaming companies that have partners with Google to make their game art available, having persistent ads affixed to iGoogle pages probably isn't a bad deal.

iGoogle is also getting more games, like Mafia Wars. More on this tomorrow.


Google's blog post on the topic can be found on google blog.

Source:http://www.informationweek.com

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

MySpace profile is being changed up by the upcoming of IM

With the passage of time previous MySpace’s desktop-only instant client, MySpaceIM, is transferring in-browser. It is under planning that it will be rolled out to other English-speaking countries (including the U.S.) in the coming few weeks though the company is beta-testing it with Canadian users at present.

From the Web-based Meebo, MySpaceIM is already accessible. At the bottom of the browser window in its own toolbar the new MySpace is attached and is very much akin to the Facebook Chat.

Also it can be popped out into its own browser window. Not only this you can also IM with MySpace users who aren't on your friends list, something that I don't quite understand the benefits of, or you can toggle the privacy settings to always be "invisible" or to only accept IMs from people you've already approved as friends.Whereas MySpace owned by News Corp is not ditching its downloadable desktop IM client. It is said that they both are interoperable.

Though it is suspected that Facebook users have simply turned off Facebook Chat still a younger, more entertainment-focused feel, MySpace may have better luck with in-browser IM. It is like a planned scheme to loose the membership-count battle to Facebook many months before. And finally MySpace is making its efforts to increase its edge in user engagement.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Hot Dog and New York!

A hot dog is a type of fully cooked, cured and/or smoked moist sausage of soft, even texture and flavor. It is usually placed hot in a soft, sliced hot dog bun of approximately the same length as the sausage, and optionally garnished with condiments and toppings. The flavor of hot dog sausages varies widely by region and by personal preference, as do the accompaniments.

In the United Kingdom and Australia, hot dog refers more commonly to the combination of sausage and bun, with the sausage called a frankfurter.

We in New York believe we have some of the best hot dog in the country. And we take our hot dog seriously. Did you know that a hot dog stand in front of the metropolitan museum can cost upward of $300,000.

You can read more about hotdogs and New York here:

Hotdog Stands are a multimillion dollar business
Best Hotdog in New York from nymag
Serious Eats Disagrees with nymag choice
PBS Documentary on hotdogs
Wikipedia on Hotdog

Facebook's fbfUND Is Accepting Applications For FB Connect and iPhone Apps

fbFund, a $10 million seed fund focused on supporting entrepreneurs who are building their business around Facebook.com or with Facebook Connect, is now accepting applications for its third funding round. The fund, which is backed by Facebook, Founders Fund and Accel Partners, is shifting its focus to funding Web and iPhone app developers leveraging Facebook Connect. In the past, fbFund focused on the broad spectrum of successful and promising applications built on the Facebook Platform.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the fbFund at TechCrunch40 in 2007.

Facebook will choose 50 teams based on app metrics, developer talent and potential to succeed. From those teams, a subset will later be chosen and offered the opportunity to receive up to $100,000 in equity investment and an invitation to participate in an incubator program in Silicon Valley later this year. While there, the teams will be able to meet with Facebook engineers, venture capitalists and other tech executives.

Read more : www.techcrunch.com

Apple just launched the iPhone 3.0 SDK

Apple just launched the iPhone 3.0 SDK This launch is extremely significant for developers and anyone who is planning to launch applications on the iPhone for business purposes. Noteworthy developments in this launch are:

i) Over 1,000 new APIs, the new SDK version for iPhone  provides you with an amazing range of technologies to enhance the functionality of your applications. New APIs also provide support for applications to communicate with hardware accessories attached to iPhone or iPod touch.

ii) Apple enabled the SDK to allow for subscription and native app purchasing - This will allow for a variety of business models on the iPhone to be enabled. With new release, developer can now charge users AFTER they have downloaded an application. "In-App Purchase" will allow developers to sell updates to their applications. This is not enabled for free applications.

iii) Push notification was a big issue on the iPhone. Apple did not enable that due to concern with battery life, but did add Apple Push Notification Service optimized for mobile networks, so that applications like IM can be woken.

iv) The SDK 2.0 was also a hit among the developers while 3.0 extends the Beta 2.0 firmware with various bug fixes and support for the latest iPhone OS.

v) The added core location support in the SDK allow richer LBS (Location-based services) applications. You can now embed maps within your applications using the new kit. It works with the Google Mobile Maps Service and features panning and zooming, custom annotations, current location and geocoding.

vi)Access to user's iPod library directly from the application.

vii)Another new addition to the pack is the peer-to-peer connectivity. This would enable automatic bluetooth discovery without joining a Wi Fi Network or pairing.

For further reading, the following sources have a good overview of the launch and what it means for developers and consumers:

The official announcement from Apple

Apple's iPhone 3.0 SDK Renews Developer Gold Rush

Monday, March 23, 2009

For Palm, Some Tough Acts to Follow

COMEBACK stories are irresistibly appealing, in business as well as in sports. But recovering from some strategic mistakes is awfully hard. A case in point is Palm’s failure to anticipate the threat that Apple posed to its core business.

Nearly two years since Apple introduced the iPhone, Palm has yet to release the Pre, the successor to its aging Treo. Much is riding on the Pre, which the company says will available before July 1: sales of Palm’s older smartphones have collapsed.

Last Thursday, Palm reported smartphone revenue for the quarter ending Feb. 28 declined to $77.5 million, from $171 million the preceding quarter. Its net loss of $94.7 million was its seventh consecutive quarterly loss.

“The Pre is a bet-the-company product,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.

A Palm spokeswoman said it is not the Pre, but Pre’s new operating system, WebOS, that is the bet-the-company offering. Palm plans to introduce additional products for WebOS, but has not announced any specifics.

Apple, meanwhile, has been bounding ahead. Last week, it previewed the third generation of iPhone software, which over all has attracted 50,000 companies and individuals who have registered as software developers. After only eight months, Apple’s App Store is stocked with more than 25,000 applications, the company says.

Palm was once in a similar position, boasting of an unmatched collection of third-party software in the 1990s, when the Palm Pilot brought computing power to the palm of one’s hand.

In the innovation race, Palm has fallen behind not just Apple but also others, like Google and Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, that have introduced products or software in response to the iPhone.

In January, Palm demonstrated the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show, where it impressed industry observers. The phone uses finger-flicking gestures, which the iPhone popularized, but it also has a full-sized qwerty keyboard, which the iPhone lacks.

Neither Palm nor Sprint, its exclusive United States distributor, has been willing to announce the Pre’s price. I spoke with Brodie C. Keast, Palm’s senior vice president for marketing, about how Palm planned to position the Pre.

“We don’t want to go head-to-head with Apple, and we don’t want to compete with RIM,” he said. The Pre, he suggested, could find a comfortable place between them: “If RIM is about your work life and Apple is about simply entertainment, then the Pre is about having a single phone for your entire life.”

But aren’t different flavors of the single essential phone already here? After all, the second-generation iPhone works nicely with corporate e-mail and provides security features demanded by I.T. departments. And BlackBerry now runs Facebook, Flickr and MySpace software.

One thing that the Pre will do that the iPhone does not is multitasking, running more than one program at once. Having such capability will be welcome, but we must await the chance to test the Pre in actual use. Last week, Apple said it would permit software developers to send notification messages to the iPhone, such as news headlines or Twitter updates, while a user is looking at another software application, but had decided not to add full background processing because it drained the battery unacceptably.

Pre’s success will hinge on consumer perceptions of not only the phone but also of Sprint. In January, Consumer Reports published the results of a survey for cellphone service ratings among its subscribers. Of the 22 cities in the United States in which Sprint is mentioned, Sprint came in last in 20 cities, and third among four in the remaining two.

Asked about the results, a Sprint spokesman said that “third-party analysis shows Sprint is making progress” and that this year it shared first place in the West region, as measured by the Call Quality Performance Study from J. D. Power & Associates. (Sprint remained in last place, alone or with others, in four of six regions in the same study.)

David Owens, a Sprint marketing executive, said that he understood that “consumers don’t perceive Sprint as having the best network,” but that if they were to “look at actual network performance, there’s a gap between perception and reality.” He said that his company’s 3G data network in the United States covered an area populated by 250 million people, which “is significantly larger than AT&T’s.”

(A spokesman for AT&T said that it plans by year-end to expand its 3G network to 370 metropolitan areas, populated by approximately 258 million.)

When the Pre is ready, Palm has a lot of catching up to do in achieving sales that will attract software developers in large numbers. Last week, Apple said that it had sold 30 million devices running iPhone software.

In 2006, the year before Apple unveiled the iPhone, Ed Colligan, Palm’s chief executive, brushed aside the notion that Palm had anything to worry about from new entrants like Apple. “I would just caution people that think they’re going to walk in here,” he said.

“We’ve struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he added. “PC guys are not going to just knock this out.”

Apple, the novice, didn’t merely walk into the business. It climbed a 10-meter platform and executed a back two and a half somersaults with two and a half twists in the pike position.

Palm’s turn.

By RANDALL STROSS

To get some more info :http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22digi.html?ref=business

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Effect of 6 big smartphones players on primary market

Today there are 6 world famous smartphones iPhone , Android , BlackBerry Palm webOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian, in market.

The primary market–driver for smartphone till date was enterprises and small business. And it is expected that it will remain the same though iPhone has proved that there is a large market for smartphones.

This vibrant is a kin to the PC operating system market. Like Window Vista which has been approved by the consumers because they have already bought new PCs over the past two years. Because many businesses have ignored Vista and wedged with Windows XP, Vista has failed be the biggest OS in market. It has been labeled as a crash.

In the approaching conflict of the smart phone platforms, business will play alike function for making decision of the winners. Consumers will be driven by price, product design, and brand-recognition when buying smartphones while the businesses will be driven by platform issues like applications, security, and manageability.

Gatner has recently liberated its figures on the worldwide smartphone sales by operating system. It is said that iPhone market will not merge to 2 or 3 platforms like PC market. But there is no doubt that smartphone platform will be definitely be merging in the coming 3-4 years.

In records it has been mentioned that 162 million smartphones were sold globally in 2008. It is a record breaker actually because as per Informa it exceeded the unit sales of laptops for the first time. It is also said by viewing the Informa that smartphone sales will kick the global recession and will grow by 35% in 2009 and 38% by 2013.

By this type of information the vendors mostly get bullish and try to grab a piece of that market.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Google Adds Analytics For Email And Gmail Preview

Google move out improvements to Gmail two days back. It is having the capability to preview few Web links within messages. Also it has the feature to see Google Apps administrator’s usage statistics of their Gmail users in Analytics service.

Due to the preview feature, Gmail users can glimpse photos from yahoo’s Flickr and Google's Picasa photo management services. Also play back YouTube video clips and view ratings and other listing information from the help business review site and that too without having to navigate away from the message window.

The number of elements that can be previewed in its email messages is also the objective of Google. Google is also keen for collecting feedback on which other sites and services it should add.

It has also been possible now for Premier and Education administrators to see the statistics that how their associations are using Gmail in Google Analytics. Like what are the users’ locations, languages, length of visit etc. In this way the Analytics statistics presently vacant for the control panel, Google Docs and Google Sites can be expanded.

To know how it works firstly you have to Login in administrative control panel, than go to the Advanced Tools tab in that, after that click Setup Google Analytics and enter the Web Property ID number from your Google Analytics account to begin collecting usage data. Sign in to Google Analytics to view and analyze the data.

For viewing your reports in Google Analytics. Click View reports next to your profile name when you sign in to Analytics. Analytics tracks your content by URL, you'll automatically see different Docs and Sites URLs on your 'Content Overview' dashboard.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Privacy group to FTC: Google's cloud is unsafe

A Washington-based privacy group wants the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation of the cloud-computing services offered by Google - including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and others - to ensure that they are as secure as Google promises they will be.

Specifically, the matters stems from reports earlier this month that a software bug in Google Docs publicly exposed documents believed to be private. The company said the glitch affected one-half of one percent of the documents stored online.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center pointed out in its petition to the FTC that Google uses language in its marketing statements that suggest to users that their documents are safe and secure and that users can “rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators and/or viewers.”

The group cites other security breach incidents involving Google, though none since January 2007, when a security flaw involving Google Desktop was found. The group notes that the matter becomes critical because cloud computing services are growing in popularity among both consumers and businesses, greatly increasing the potential for risk.

Google said the Google Docs problem earlier this month occurred in cases where people had chosen to collaborate on multiple documents and adjusted settings to allow access to others. Collaborators were unintentionally given permission to access documents aside from the ones intended.

Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Great info on the new iPhone additions!

iPhone apps have been downloaded 800 million times, and there are now more than 25,000 apps in the iTunes store. Apple is detailing some of the new features in the next version of the iPhone OS in apress conference going on live right now. The new OS, iPhone 3.0, will support 1,000 APIs. Apple seems to be giving a lot of extra love to paid apps, which will gain the ability to sell additional levels, subscriptions, virtual goods, or extra content from right within the app.

The new APIs will also support peer-to peer applications via Bluetooth, which will be great for head-to-head games. Maps will be able to be embedded directly into the apps, and apps can now talk to accessories such as an FM transmitter or a blood pressure monitor. But Apple is not opening up background processing, which would allow more than one app to be running at once—a feature already common on Android and other phones. Apple says it takes up too much battery life.

Apple is also opening up push notification APIs for developers. This will allow apps to incorporate email, IM, and other messaging services. Meebo for instance, created a native iPhone app using the new API, which it demoed onstage. Apps will also finally be able to tap into the iTunes music library on the iPhone. (About time). And they will be able to handle streaming video as a feature.

And they save perhaps the most requested feature until near the end ('natch): Cut-and-paste. You double-tap a word to highlight it, drag the edges to highlight a block, shake to call up an "undo" button. Finally.. Why was that so hard?

Another much requested feature: landscape support (when you tilt the iPhone horizontally, the screen goes into landscape mode). Now all apps can have it, including e-mail. And email will support MMS. Again, this is all just basic stuff.

Taking a cue from Android, Apple is finally adding search to every app. So now two years later, you can search your emails and think that it is a gift.. But it is not just email. Apple is adding Spotlight to the iPhone: one place where you can search across all apps: your calendar, notes, iTunes library.

The IPhone 3.0 SDK is available to developers starting today. CrunchGear has a full rundown of all the announcements.

Some stats from the press conference:
There are now more than 25,000 iPhone apps in the iTunes Store.
iPhone apps have been downloaded 800 million times.
96 percent of all apps are approved
The developer SDK has been downloaded 800,000 times
50,000 companies have joined the program
13.7 million iPhones were sold in 2008

Crunch Network

Rich
Mobile Phone Development
212-397-7481

IE 8, Silverlight 3 on hitting for Microsoft's Mix

Microsoft web technologies is organising MIX09, this year's annual conference for web developers, designers, and enthusiasts is going to start tomorrow. Though MIX09 will be covering many Microsoft web technologies, including Internet Explorer 8, the biggest focus will be on Silverlight 3.

Within this week we will be having Internet Explorer 8 in our hands. Also Microsoft is adding features for Silverlight and announcing some high-profile deals. Silver light will be the biggest competitor to the Adobe’s Flash. No doubt Adobe Flash has also won back some customers like Major League baseball, and continues to maintain its ubiquity advantage.

It is expected that Microsoft officials will be showing the recent most and the greatest technologies and products for the designers and website developers and in it there will be the first demo of Silverlight 3.0, Microsoft's streaming media technology, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), and Windows 7.

Silverlight is hardly 2 years old, still it bring Microsoft’s hopes of replacing Flash on the user’s PCs, laptops, and phones. Silver light has major media improvements, major graphics improvements and major application development improvements including richer data-binding support and additional controls, 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration, H264 video support.

IE 8 has been released because of the market for Web browsers getting heated up. IE 8 is quite faster in overall loading of Web pages than the slower JavaScript engines.

A near-final release candidate version of IE 8 has already been released. It is supposed that declaration of the browser done will be made because it prepares to address a crowd of Web developers. Microsoft used last year’s Mix event for offering the first public demo of IE 8.

IE 8 has various features like a private browsing mode, the ability to create "slices" of a Web page that can be viewed on their own as well as greater compliance with Web standards .

Visit www.a1technology.com to get the best services on all microsoft technologies.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Palm Pre vs the iPhone

Palm investors "Evolution Partner" recently predicted the downfall of the iPhone with the release of the Pre in June. Fighting words but the pre from its description seem to have a lot going for it.........

The new Palm® Pre™ phone is always thinking ahead to make your life easier. Pre pulls your different online calendars into one view, bringing you the information you want without having to search for it. Pre links your contacts from different sources, giving you one place to find what you need. And Pre delivers incoming messages1 and notifications in an intuitively subtle way, letting you react or respond however you want. People, events, information that matters. With Palm Pre, it�ll come to you.


If you want to get some more insight into the pre.......http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html

Via .....Engadget

Microsoft repels Google with 40,000 e-mail account deal

Now Microsoft's Live@edu will be hosting messaging and storage platform by offering a substitute to the successful Google Apps education rush because Queensland University of Technology (QUT) will migrate some 40,000 student user accounts.

QUT joins "thousands of institutions around the world" by shifting to the Live@edu platform according to Microsoft. Microsoft Outlook Live, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive for storage are all included in the Live@edu suite of online applications.

When the existing email infrastructure "reached its limit of functionality and storage capacity QUT evaluate a host named Web-based e-mail solution which a big IT-expenditure for in-house. As per discussions with students, university administration and company representatives, and the deal included an opt-in trial involving students from the Faculty of Information Technology it was decided finally to go with Live@edu.

Actually Live@edu is attuned with "Windows, Mac and Linux machines" and with the IE, Firefox and Safari browsers. It’s being heard from QUT’s end that the university "carefully considered" various options and was happy to offer students a "greatly improved" e-mail service through Microsoft.

The students are provided with benefit of better capacity of mailbox and attachment file size, Also Live@edu service offers useful calendar, plus a number of improvements in related services, while retaining their identity as QUT students in their e-mail addresses. "The University will help by having automated service upgrades, and improved scalability and availability by setting up this software as a service offering from Microsoft."

Not only this QUT's 40,000 students will also have right to use a suite of online applications for the duration of this semester. Along with calendaring and contact management Live@edu service will horde student e-mail accounts with a 10Gb mailbox capacity, and allow 20Mb file attachments.

Not only this it will also provide include instant messaging and file sharing; Windows Live Spaces for personal Web publishing, blogging and photo sharing; and FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that allows users to synchronise files between multiple devices and share files with other student users features also.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Apple to reveal next generation of iPhone software

Tomorrow, yes tomorrow Apple is going to provide a peep at its newest tech fiddling for the iPhone.

It’s in news from some sources that "Get an advance preview of what we're building” is being said. It is also said that Apple will be using the events which are to be held at company headquarters so as to talk to the SDK (Software Development Kit) and which in turn will help the independent engineers in writing the applications for the device, and for discussing the features of the new iPhone 3.0 operating system.

The last week’s iPod shuffle redesign, which included a "talking" function, could provide a hint for new iPhone capabilities. It is supposed that making iPhone calls easy while driving will be possible because Apple is going to add speech recognition functions which is the demand of many users.

More updates will also be there like including a better way for consumers so as to navigate the App Store and a new iPhone Safari browser. It is expected that whatever be the changes that Apple is planning to proclaim will be considerable. Also it is expected that features like universal search or a new user interface will also be there.

In an investor report also this is said that "Apple may be settling into an annual summer hardware refresh cycle with the iPhone, similar to the iPod's fall refresh cycle.

All of us know that iPhone’s physical design, its multi-touch display and 3.5- inch screen were also revolutionary in the mobile-phone industry but the iPhone’s software will make future innovation.

A-1 developers are best in industry to offer best and cost effective iPhone Apps developlment. So visit a1technology.com to get the best services.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

RIM to open applications store within a month

Very soon just within a month, we will be getting the news that Research In Motion Ltd. has launched the online applications store for its Black Berry phones which will intensify competition with Apple Inc. for consumers.

It is expected that Black Berry App World will start offering games, networking software and music applications, within the month. RIM had initially said the store would be available in March. User friendly programs which will be easily accessible are being made by RIM so as to move ahead of the business users which make up the bulk of its customer base. Most of the world’s biggest banks and securities have cut more than 260,000 jobs since July 2007 so as to manage the bottomless economic slump activated by the fall of supreme mortgage market.

Behind a successful device there is not only the hardware but software too. All the users have this query in mind that “What are you going to do for me beyond the actual device to make it more interesting?"

With the help of this device you will be able to download applications for a fee by EBay Inc.'s Paypal site. According to Milanesi in Las Vegas, RIM may make the store public on April 1 at CTLA.

RIM shares had fallen down since last year by approx 58%. It is expected that this year sales growth of handsets with Web and e-mail functions will slow to 8.9% which is according to IDC, one-third the rapidity of the year 2008. Yet it is expected that the fragment will perform better than the total mobile-phone market, which will contract for the first time since 2001.

Mostly all the consumers are paying out less because the recession is deepening, with the World Bank predicting the global economy may shrink for the first time since World War II.

For More guidance you can visit our site www.a1technology.com as A-1 developers are best in industry to offer best and cost effective Black Berry applications. So visit a1technology.com to get the best services.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Google Reader gets its own comment system

Google Reader users can now leave comments on shared items. Google has introduced it as a way to have a discussion with friends outside of a site's main commenting system, and specific just to that shared item and their group of contacts.

To help manage this new stream of information, Google Reader now has a filter that shows you the latest conversations in one place. Here you can view all the latest chatter, and continue to add more comments just like a forum.

In addition to reading and adding comments through Google Reader in your computer's browser it also works on Reader's iPhone version.

It's all very much like FriendFeed, although the privacy it a bit tighter since only friends of the person who shared the item can see what was said. Another limitation is that comments are limited to the friends' shared items section of Reader, however Google says it will be making its way to the "all items" section of user's feeds in a later release.

On the surface this may seem like a very small feature. But if Google were to open up the commenting threads to all Reader users, regardless of their friendship, and enable publishers to feed these Reader comments into their own blog comments, it could make Reader more than just a feed catcher the same way FriendFeed has enabled blogs to suck in the conversation that's happening outside of their own pages.

Source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10194895-2.html

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Lets overcome recession with outsourcing

Outsourcing is a cost-effective method to do business in recession. In case you have staff or an in-house business partner even then you can get in benefits. So look at outsourcing, as a method of cutting infrastructure costs and adding suppleness in vague economic times. On outsourcing a strategic outside partnership is always developed with whom your interests match so as to raise and expand your business. Also it alleviate from stress and fatigue. Never allow recession to anguish you away from outsourcing. It is a common view that we can’t afford outsourcing. It’s a myth that outsourcing is costly. Actually outsourcing costs approximately half as much to outsource as compared to doing things in-house.

In business for making money it’s indispensable that money is to be spent. But focus point should never be price. Always focus should be on the value that outsourcing adds to your business and your bottom-line.

Whenever a business owner see the slowdown in the economy one thinks that there are two options: cut expenses or increase your revenue. In such situation many business owners choose the first option and again think on their expenses. It’s a general view that whenever you want to stay in business you should reduce your overheads. And the overheads can best be reduced by managing the staff properly.

Now the question arises that how could a business survive if there is not adequate staff ? Well one solution is outsourcing your non-core administrative tasks to a virtual assistant - or remote secretary.

Independent business owners which provide secretarial and administrative services to clients are Virtual Assistants (VAs). These services are usually provided from a home-based office. VAs are contractors and charge hourly rate or per project rate, accounted at regular intervals - the cost of which is fully tax withholdable. Clients are not responsible for the traditional staff on-costs of superannuation, leave loading, time in lieu, worker’s compensation, payroll tax and so on because VA is not an employee. Though it seems at first sight that VA will appear quite high but it can actually end up costing the business significantly less than on-site staff when the above on-costs are factored in.

Moreover the VAs are only paid when their work is required. So clients pay only for time on task - and not for time taken for cigarette breaks, lunch or chatting with office colleagues. In the situation when you want to relocate to smaller premises, a VA is a great solution as you don’t require providing them with equipment. Also there is no need to you to provide space, lighting, power, and telephone.

At A-1 technology we provide your business smartest support and the best outsourcing; you would have never ever availed.So have a faith and outsource with us.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

New outsourcing trends to watch

Which way is the wind blowing in the outsourcing market? What's alarming on the horizon in the next five years to come?

Consolidation
Contest for outsourcing agreements is more competitive than ever. As there is a large number of suppliers so major consolidation is on the prospect. The rise of offshore competition creates quality options for outsourcing and creates value for your company.


Globalization

It has been said With the advent of globalization, more and more jobs are being outsourced to India. The outsourcing trend has brought with it a vast number of opportunities to India.. India is still dominating other countries .But IDC analyst studies say that by the year 2011 the cities in China will be leaving behind their Indian counterparts as top destinations for offshore global delivery. As more and more regions look for cash in on the offshore boom, the trend is for increasing globalization of the market though China is expected to surpass India in the outsourcing business.

Ahead of these Brazil, Russia, India, China, i.e the developing nations like Egypt and Portland are emerging as sources of offshore labor. According to TPI Aitchison, trend is not only for a "greater pattern of diversity" in the outsourcing sector but it is also for better specialization because smaller players look for something different from the market.


Person-to-person offshoring

One thing which is related to large- scale business redeployments is Offshoring. Study put forward that there is rising drive for reuse of a much smaller scale. Some of the examples of the services which are outsourced in similar way are online tutoring, Web and software development, and writing and translation services. For these services the customers can be individuals or can be small businesses too. According to Evaluserve the revenue for this division located at more than $250 million between April 2006 and March 2007, and it predicts that the value of the P2P offshoring market will rise to more than $2 billion by 2015.

Green sourcing
The increase in the growing prices has placed ecology matters rigidly on CIOs' radar. Now the question arises that whether the pressure to show green credentials influence businesses' outsourcing decisions as well?
It has been revealed that environmental features play a basic responsibility in the selection of technology suppliers and partners.

Virtual worlds
The growth of virtual worlds like Second Life makes it easy for the companies to give explanation for hiring offshore workers for everyday jobs which may comprise building virtual offices or even working as virtual-world "meeters and greeters." It’s well known that the market for outsourced virtual-world services is still not so old. Also the businesses are taking great interest in the likes of Second Life.

For More Information about Software Outsourcing visit our site A-1 technology.com

Monday, March 09, 2009

MoMo Austin Presentation on iPhone App Store

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Iphone Opportunity

We all know that the iPhone App opportunity is big. How big is it. Here are some presentation and data which try and pin it down.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Did-We-Mention-the-Apple-iPhone-Market-Opportunity-Is-Big/

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Microsoft Online Services


Microsoft is not a company which we identify as a leader in Saas Services. However recently Microsoft has come out with a slew of services which are hosted online both for personal and business use.

Microsoft online services are particularly interstesting as they are extensive and represent tremendous savings for both small and large companies versus buying licenses and running them in house. If you are interested in Microsoft Online Services, you can get more information here:

http://www.microsoft.com/online/business-productivity.mspx

Some reviews can be found here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/02/microsoft-expands-online-business-services-trial-to-19-more-countries-signs-glaxosmithkline/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/160462/microsoft_extends_hosted_services_to_europe_asia.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10185073-92.html

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Facebook Adds Chat to Apps, Foresees Adoption Jump

Applications created for the Facebook platform can now feature live chat, a capability the company foresees will not only make programs more appealing but also boost their usage and rate of adoption.

Adding Facebook Chat could result in end users interacting more with an application, as well as in making it easier for them to invite their friends to install the application, increasing its user base through word of mouth, according to Facebook.

"There are countless ways applications can integrate this feature. For instance, users can invite friends to start a live game, a couple can plan a trip or their wedding together sharing links, or friends can exchange reviews on music/restaurants/gadgets -- all without leaving your application," wrote Facebook software engineer Yariv Sadan in the company's official blog for developers on Thursday.

Playfish, a developer of games for social networks, plans to incorporate the Facebook live chat feature in the coming weeks, a spokeswoman for Facebook said via e-mail.

In an interview last month, Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager, said the company this year will make it easier for members to discover applications that are relevant and useful to them.

Facebook opened up its Web site in May 2007 so that external developers could create applications for it, thus enhancing the appeal of the social network for end users and giving developers a chance to generate revenue from advertising and other methods.

Currently, there are more than 52,000 applications available to Facebook members. "We're doing lots of testing around giving users more ways to discover applications that their friends are interacting with, so you'll see some of that work come out this year," Morin said at the time.

Facebook members browse a directory for applications, or search for them using the site's search engine, while developers in turn can promote their applications by buying ads on the site. Facebook wants to improve on these methods of finding and promoting applications.

Last year, when Facebook rolled out a major redesign of member profiles' layout, some developers complained, arguing that the changes robbed applications of visibility. Facebook's position is that the opposite is true.

In their eagerness to promote their Facebook applications and help then stand out from the crowd, some developers have resorted to deceitful practices to get members to install them, resulting in spam and other annoyances. Facebook has regularly taken policy and technical steps to curb these practices, but t remains to be seen if some developers will find ways to misuse this new live chat capability to aggressively promote their applications.

Source of this :PC World

Friday, March 06, 2009

Google And Universal Music Is Joining hands for Vevo

The world's biggest Internet search engine Google and world's largest music label Universal Music is joining hands to launch a new youtube style site”Currently dubbed "Vevo," that would act as a hub for music videos.

The two companies have reportedly been working out the potential agreement since some time in 2008.This would feature premium music video content from Universal artists…and, eventually, perhaps artists from other labels as well. It may be Google's next youtube-like venture that focuses solely on music videos.

The youtube team would be assigned with creating an entirely separate site "Vevo" for Universal's video content, where under the proposed agreement, youtube powered up by Google’s technology and advertising sales support would distribute Universal’s video content to other websites .

With "Vevo"as it appears Google and youtube would be responsible for more aggressive ad sales to run on the music-video-only site. As "Vevo" will differ from youtube's already-existing partnerships with certain content providers in for shared ad revenue .Currently, youtube's partners agree to let their content be played on youtube in exchange for a small share of the ad revenue placed beside the videos, but this tactic has turned out to be less lucrative than both Google and the content providers had hoped.

Talks are still going on and no final agreement has been reached. But a deal could be inked within the next few weeks,"Vevo"will be likely to attract more traffic .

Such a deal would be youtube’s latest attempt to plump up its profits by selling more expensive ads off the back of premium content. Music videos are an extremely popular draw on the site

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Blackberry App World

With the launch of the main Web site for BlackBerry's new mobile application store, dubbed BlackBerry App World, going live on Wednesday, BlackBerry users are getting a glimpse into just how much applications are going to cost for their smartphones.

App World is BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) Ltd.'s answer to Apple's widely popular iPhone AppStore and Google Android's Android Market. App World is a storefront where BlackBerry users can buy applications to run on their smartphones. It also acts as a portal where application developers can submit their applications.

BlackBerry said that applications will be available sometime this month, not citing a specific date. However, the FAQ section of the App World site sheds light on just how much BlackBerry users will have to plunk down for apps.

According to BlackBerry, the store will offer free applications. From there, applications jump to $2.99 and increase in $1 increments up to $19.99. The cost of applications increases in $10 increments from $19.99 to $99.99; $50 increments from $99.99 to $599.99; and $100 increments from $599.99 to $999.99, where the pricing model maxes out.

While applications are not yet available, the pricing model lacks the ever-important 99 cent and $1.99 price points, meaning applications bought through BlackBerry's App World will start at a higher cost than in competing application stores like Android Market and Apple's AppStore.

In the case of Android, which just started offering paid applications last month, the majority of applications are free, and paid applications hover between the 99 cent to $2.99 price point, with the occasional application hitting $10 or $20 and, in very rare instances, reaching above $100.

Same goes for Apple's AppStore. The iTunes-based store offers applications for free and for a fee, many of which start at 99 cents and don't stray too far above $10, except for some premium applications.

While BlackBerry said its pricing tiers are subject to change, the pricing model could hurt the fledgling application store, when competitors offer a lower starting point for applications.

So why is RIM ignoring a lower-cost price point and putting a higher premium on its applications?

That's anyone's guess. It could be that BlackBerry hopes to avoid the criticism received by the AppStore and Android Market that many of its lower-priced and free applications are relatively useless and disposable after a few uses. It could also be that RIM wants to ensure that the majority of applications that make it into App World are enterprise-focused, catering to a different market. Lastly, the higher starting price could be the result of developer pressure, concerned that if applications are priced at 99 cents, they will have to price their applications lower to get noticed.

Regardless of the reasoning, BlackBerry users are likely to be a little more cautious than iPhone users on which applications they ultimately spend their money on. And one thing's for sure: There will be some kind of outcry if a BlackBerry App World application launches for $2.99 and that same application is available for less than a buck in the AppStore and Android Market.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

A more elegant browser : Safari 4

There was time when net browsers simply let you go to internet only. But now when Safarix4 is in, it has set the bar higher for web browsers. It has made browsing a joyful experience by its classy design. It is very easy to use. Also it lets to navigate from one site to another very easily. Its basically developed to accentuate browsing and not the browser.

It has the browser frame which is single pixel wide.It is actually the first browser for bringing the “real” Internet to a mobile device. It delivers pages on iPhone and iPod touch in the similar way as on your computer. Safari is the first browser to mark a built-in RSS reader.

Apple has long been a strong advocate of web standards.They allow developers in the integration of media directly into standard web pages. Also helps in reducing the development time and hence resulting in quicker response for you.

Safari4 permits web-applications for storing data on your hard drive and hence you can use them without an Internet connection. Also Safari4 is the first browser to support CSS 3 animations. This adds new interactivity to the web, and CSS effects. It allows developers in putting in buff to the websites by stylizing images and photos with noticeable incline, exact masks, and stunning reflections.

It has built-in spelling and grammar checker which make the look of blogs and emails better. Also it provides the feature of Private Browsing which helps in maintaining privacy all the time. With the help of Safari you can check your bank account, sending confidential email, or just browse the web and that too very safely.

Apple has proficiency in Mac OS X and iPhone development tools to the web. Safari 4 consists of influential set of tools which helps in easy debugging, tweaking, and optimizing a website for an excellent performance and compatibility. For accessing them just turn on the Develop menu in Safari preferences.

Safari4 is the one and only one browser which comprises of tools for managing the offline databases and which will be the part of next generation of websites. Databases panel in Safari 4 permits you to analyze tables and databases and even execute SQL queries.

The Scripts pane features the powerful JavaScript Debugger in Safari 4. For using it select the Scripts pane in the Web Inspector. Then click Enable Debugging. The debugger rotates throughout your page’s JavaScript, stopping when it meets exceptions and erroneous syntax. The Scripts panel also allows you to pause the JavaScript, set breakpoints, and evaluate local variables.

JavaScript code can be optimized using the state-of-the-art JavaScript Profiler in Safari 4. The Profiler records the performance characteristics of each of your script’s functions. It makes very convenient to identify the problem areas and drill down the offending lines of code. Just by turning on the Develop menu in the Advanced pane of Safari preferences you can access all of the developer tools in Safari 4 from your menu bar. By this you can have just a one-click access to the Web Inspector, Error Console, disabling functions, and other developer features.

Safari has International localization as it is available in 16 languages and can spell-check in 14 languages. Safari also supports multidirectional text rendering.

Also it permits websites to be drafted in other languages so as to present characters from right to left. Even Safari 4 Beta trails the sites you browse and ranks your favorites. It also presents up to 24 thumbnails just on a single page. Customization is also possible of the display by pinning a favorite site to a specific location in the grid.

While using Safari 4 if you start typing the Smart Address field instantly offers suggestions. You’ll see the Top Hit and the best matches from your browsing history and bookmark collections, each in their own easy-to-read section.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Is Android the real Linux desktop threat to Windows

Android is perceptive and user friendly on mobile hardware such as the HTC Dream. There is no doubt that Android in comparison to full blown operating systems like Windows and Mac OSX.

Though Android is gaining more popularity these days but a very big benefit of Windows mobile is its stiff incorporation with Exchange, and through that to Outlook on the Desktop. If android gets together with Google Apps, then it is the first real competitor to MS Exchange but for it is necessary that we can get our Desktops to Integrate with Google Apps.

Presently we're at the native Linux desktop and drifting towards the Android desktop. The question that comes into mind is that what would then bridge those two environments? It’s damn sure that whatever be the bridge, it will offer a second Linux sandbox which runs along with Android.

Whenever we make comparison between Android and Windows it is like making comparison between Google Apps to Microsoft Office. Starting from the mobile phones environment and running uphill, Android, backed by Google, is likely to be successful where other Linux distributions have failed. It is likely to harvest support from both device manufacturers and applications vendors.

It is well known that Android has a very particular architecture. It has its own libraries and non-X based GUI, which are not favorable to running standard Linux/X applications. Also its libc version (bionic) neglects certain POSIX features and due to which it is not fully compatible. For permitting native Linux apps to run, a second sandbox atmosphere is required that can co-operate with Android. Then Android would be the master environment so as to provide all the kernel, hardware drivers, and complete software stack that it already does. A separate set of non-kernel components would be provided by the co- Linux environment. The components would be like libraries, configuration and administrative files, applications, etc.

The main reason behind this trend is that, consumers and business users equally want something they can take on the road with them. In the era of hotspots and fast speed Internet, people are opting mobile computing instead of desktop computing is- low-power consumption mobile devices which favors lightweight operating systems.

Co-Linux would be a advantage for coming netbook platforms, where some users may want to chose from the accessible native Linux apps, including educational, gaming, just plain familiar, or otherwise. It would be really unruffled if the co-Linux environment itself could be bundled as an Android app. At A1 technology our developers are working hard on this so as to overcome the limitations faced till day.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Now Write Excerpt in Wordpress With Excerpt Editor

In WordPress Excerpts are optional hand-crafted short summaries of your Post or content . It is written by hand and it can replace the full post in places where a summary is preferable.In addition when used as META descriptions, good excerpts bring more and better traffic from search engines.

Presently in WordPress default means offered to manage excerpts is the Excerpt box. If you need more and you are serious about excerpts,fortunately,there are several good plugins to manage excerpts.One of them is Excerpt Editor .

Excerpt Editor provides a convenient plateform for creating and editing all WordPress excerpts.Excerpt Editor lets you do many things. It can also add custom excerpts for pages. It contains many new features like option to append excerpts from the most recent posts or from the sub-pages to all Posts and/or Pages, option to replace the content with the excerpt on the Home page, all archive pages and/or all tags pages,Control the appearance of excerpts. This eliminates content duplication in this

If you need to add excerpts to a large number of posts than Excerpt Editor is a great convenience. It brings all excerpts, empty and filled-in, together in one place, so that you can edit or add excerpts one after the other. For posts with no excerpt, it shows the first 70 words to help you start. Once you are finished, you click Save and it goes to the next post.If you want the extended functionality of Excerpt box in wordpess, I think Excerpt Editor would be useful .

Sunday, March 01, 2009

iPhone AppStore Secrets - Pinch Media

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: