Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 3

3. Package:

Now about package, Although Satyam mentions your package in your OL with full details you must refer to it and another thing is that at Satyam, people have same package in training duration too and what you will get in hand depends on your designation and salary mentioned in OL...coz Salary offered to you depends on your designation and your Institute’s band in Satyam (i.e. IITs, NITs, Others)...

Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 1
Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 2

New Playa'

Kantaris Media Player 0.3.4

There is a new media player in the market that vaters to people who are not satisfied with VLC player’s less than aesthetic appearance or require an alternative to Windows Media Player. Kantaris, being developed as an open source program, is based on VLC (VideoLAN Client) and bass audio library. Hence, it can open any video or audio file that you can throw at it and more. Kantaris is sure to appeal to users of Windows Media Player, not only because of the similarity in skin, but the fact that being based on VLC it doesn’t need to install separate codecs. The top navigation panel includes ast.fm and Apple’s movie trailer along with playback and menu. Also included are some nice visualizations while playing audio. The latest release comes with hotkey support and bug fixes for incompatibility with certain audio files. While the player still doesn’t offer support for operating systems other than Windows 2000 and above, its development progress indicates a Linux and Mac compatible version in the future.


For: Sleek skin, vivid visualizations, integration with internet radio and movie trailers.
Against: Need numerous bug fixes.

My Disclosure Policy

This policy is valid from 14 January 2008

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.


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Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 2

2. E-support & related formalities:

Generally you get your Virtue-Id with OL or very soon after receiving your OL. By this Virtue-Id you can log on to www.esupport.satyam.com , where you have to fill a lot information about you...if don’t do that, no worry at all you will have to fill all these things at the time of your joining... , yeah on the joining day you get forms, which are directly printouts of record of your these accounts so better to feel a bit comfortable there fill them at home......here again if you facing any problem regarding virtue-Id...Its better to contact helpdesk...and you are advised to contact them between 10 AM-1 PM on work days for getting quick response...

Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 1

Store more

GMail Drive 1.0.12 beta

Since google introduced gmail, almost everybody has used it at one time or another as a virtual storage device by appending attachments to a self-addressed e-mail. Gmail Drive simplifies the process to harness the 6000+ MB of a gmail account. The program, after installation, adds an additional icon to the ‘My Computer’ as if it were a drive actually attached to your hard drive, instead of a virtual drive space. Login to your gmail account, by right clicking on the drive icon and get started. If you fail to login on the first try, you need to persevere. Any of the three – drag and drop, or right-click and send to, cut-copy-paste- commands work. Upload time depends, of couse, on your conection speed. Even EXE, CHM, ZIP files can be stored Deleting the e-mails prefixed with ‘GMAILFS’ from your gmail account will delete it from the Gmail Drive and vice versa. While Google’s ‘Terms of Service’ doesn’t ban usage of a gmail account as a virtual drive using the Gmail Drive software, there is always a possibility that they may do so in the future.

For: Easy installation, good interface with Windows Explorer
Against: Can’t store files above 20 MB

Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 1

Hi Satyamites,
In this post am gonna give you guidelines on what to do after getting paced at Satyam Computer Services Ltd

1. Regarding Offer Letter (OL):

Once you got selected for Satyam means your name has been declared in final list at your selection drive, then you need not to be worry about your Offer letter at least for 2-3 months and then Satyam sends you, your OL through mails only and generally to complete batch so if your batchmates start getting OLs and even after about 1-2 months passing of that you don’t get your OL, you must contact to helpdesk at helpdesk@satyam.com or call to 1800 345 4004 Satyam help desk extension is 5 for joining helpdesk that will solve your problem surely...and keep this in mind Satyam gives OL through mails, i.e. only soft copy...hard copy will be given to you at the time of reporting..., so All the Best.

                                                                                                                                           (to be contd...)
Guidelines for Satyam Freshers - Part 2

New Indian websites launched

www.getaserviceprovider.com: For everyone who requires any kind of service but has no idea where to find them, this site aims to be a directory of service providers where users can vote to rate them based on their experiences, and also request quotes for a job from multiple service providers before deciding whom to hire.

www.books.yulop.com: Dedicated to all types books in Indian regional languages, Yulop Books currently lists over 2500 volumes in kannada which users can order online. The site plans to extend to other languages as well, and allow users to request particular books as well as post their own articles and interact with the authors.

MS to catch up with Google

With the unsolicited acquisition proposal for Yahoo at the beginning of February, Microsoft proved that it was more than willing to put its financial resources at work in order to catch up with Google. Microsoft's $44.5 billion marriage proposal is still valid, with the Redmond Company working to erode Yahoo's initial negative answer into a "yes." But the Sunnyvale Internet giant is just the largest item on Microsoft's shopping list for the online search and advertising market. And the latest name to get scratched off that list is Rapt.

The Redmond Company announced that, following the competition of the take-over, Rapt's advertising management solutions would be transitioned to its Atlas Publisher Suite. The new components would boost the offerings associated with the Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group and aimed at digital media publishers.

"Online publishers have a complex array of needs, and they require more attentive and sophisticated partners to help them solve these challenges. With this acquisition, we are uniquely positioned to help publishers succeed on all fronts. Our end-to-end solution will include workflow tools, ad package and delivery, turnkey distribution, content partnerships, and yield management and optimization," said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group at Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, the Atlas Publisher Suite, resulted via the acquisition of aQuantive in 2007 for $6 billion, will now feature an enhanced array of management capabilities focused on integrated assets, inventory, forecasting, yield and sales, on top of ad delivery and operations handling. Rapt's acquisition comes on the heels of the YaData purchase at the end of February, and of the EU Antitrust Commission's approval for Google's purchase of DoubleClick.

In terms of Google's monopoly on the advertising and online search markets, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said, at MIX08, that the Redmond Company was not going anywhere. So far, the recipe that Microsoft is exercising to perfection if throwing money at the Google monopoly, and its best move has yet to be completed as long as Yahoo continues to say "no."

"We've got an aspiration about online. And in online, yes, it's Google, Google, Google, and we're in the game, and we're just the little engine that could. We're working away, we're working away, and we’re working away. It may be my last breath at Microsoft, but we're going to be there, and we're going to be working away building share," Ballmer stated.

Make Earth a better place to Live - In

Gonna start this post with M.K Gandhi’s quote:
“Be the change”

Not only me, but everybody in this world want to make earth a better place to live in. But had we done anything crucial to make earth greener. Do you know that by saying making earth a better place to live in am not only mentioning the environment that’s around us, but also the people around us? Most recent research found after considering the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use, they came up with this list of the top 10 most dangerous drugs as follow; Heroin, Cocaine, Barbiturates, Street Methadone, Alcohol, Ketamine, Benzodiazepines, Amphetamine, Tobacco and Buprenorphine. If you, your love one, or some members of your family have addicted to one of these drugs, it is now the time to take action, find professional care to support the healing process. Chapman House offers their highest quality of professional care available for those with chemical dependency, dual diagnosis/co-occurring disorder.

In order to have a peaceful and calm world, the health of everybody should be in proper condition. This is a remedy for most of our problems. But how could we make this happen? It’s simple. We could just help people around us who are addicted by drug usage, tobacco usage, alcohol addictions etc. Please visit www.chapmanhouseinc.com to find out more how Chapman House addiction treatment services offers. This site also provides information on Chapman House adult addiction treatment center, drug rehab facility and our exclusive adolescent program located in Orange County, California. Chapman House offers wide range of options includes drug treatment for co-existing disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction, food addiction and eating disorders and more. They also offer family intervention, psychological testing, drug testing, drug rehabilitation and other services to help end addiction. Take your time to learn what Chapman House offers, as we all know this is not an easy decision to make for you, your family and your love one.

Yahoo might reject Microsoft's next offer

An emergency meeting was held over this weekend by the Board-Of-Directors – Yahoo at Sunnyvale, CA. The purpose of this board meeting really being to discuss on whether to accept or reject Microsoft’s second bid of $29.36 billion. The board believes that the current bid seemingly undervalues Yahoo nad is expected to reject the offer, something that will probably make yahoo an all time rival for Microsoft.
According to the Financial Times, the board was meeting late on Sunday as mentioned by the inside source. As of now, Yahoo executives believe Microsoft’s bid is too low. The seemingly low price maybe because of the due in part to the slip in Microsoft’s share price in the past few months. Back on February 1st, Microsoft had bid for .95 shares of Microsoft stock for yahoo’s each common stock or $31 cash. That offer had made a total value of approximately $44.6 billion during that period. But now Microsoft’s stock has since slipped to $29.36 a share which might be the reason for the low value bid.

Gagner De L'Argent

Il est un fait que vous pourriez faire de l'argent en ligne - argent gratuit. Vous entendrez parler de cela partout et tout le temps, mais avez-vous déjà trouvé une façon de faire cela par vous tous. C'est simple. Il suffit de vous connecter sur www.make-money.fr et d'apprendre à votre façon de faire de l'argent en ligne (argent facile sur le net)  et de devenir riche.

Choose the best!

Here’s one site that offers some expert advice on your doubts about penis enlargement. The people here are professionals in this field for over years and could get you information on any kind of products such as enhancement pills, penis extender etc. This is one site where in you could get all the information about the penis extender products and select the one that suits you the best. 

Know your pills!

Though you have settled in for a conclusion of using Penis Enlargement Pills, you must make sure that you take in the right pill. Am not trying to say that the product available out there is a bad one. But you must choose the one that suits you the best for your penis enlargement. For complete reviews about all the penis enlargement product reviews, click here.

Griffin Journi Mobile Speaker

"This Journi is not the reward!"

There are so many iPod speaker systems these days that we’ve resolved to cover only the most interesting devices. Boring, me-too products need not apply. Griffin’s Journi made the cut by virtue of its stylish industrial design. When closed, the Journi looks every bit like a stylish woman’s clutch. Unfold the rigid outer shell, insert tab A into slot B, and you have a convenient speaker stand with a built-in iPod docking port. An ingenious dial on the back of the speaker adjusts a rubber support disc behind the iPod, so you can mash any model iPod’s buttons without putting undue stress on its dock connector. You can keep the iPod ensconced in its dock when you take the speaker system with you, too. A magnetic catch holds the assembly securely closed. The Journi’s shell offers genuine protection, but take care when you unwrap it: The top of the iPod can flop around, putting strain on the docking connector. Another set of magnets holds a small infrared remote control inside a well on the back of the Journi. The remote lets you skip tracks forward and back and play and pause songs; it also switches the speakers on and off and controls their volume.

The Journi’s Lithium-Ion battery can be recharged using either A/C power or a USB connection (you can sync a docked iPod to iTunes in the latter scenario). You can measure battery strength by pushing a button on the left side and counting how many of the four LEDs light up. After giving the Journi all those style points, listening to it was a bit of a letdown. We typically shun post-processing audio tricks (Creative’s  24-bit Crystalizer being a notable exception), so we were disappointed to discover we couldn’t defeat the Journi’s SRS Wow circuit. The amplifier, meanwhile, is noisy enough that we heard its hiss above our PC’s fan, and it distorts badly when pushed. Finally, the 2.5-inch passive radiators offer little bass compensation for the small 1.97-inch active drivers, resulting in a rather shrill audio experience.

Live TV

Live Show, Recorded Videos, Live Broadcast, Music Videos, Comedy Clips – it’s a never ending list. Wondering about what am talking about? Its blogtv.com. It features some cool videos that you can’t neglect just like that. Just visit the site and the user interface will take care of the rest. Am saying that, the overall layout of the website is cool and refreshing. Glad we got a great live TV site.

E-Commerce Software

If you are looking out for great e-commerce software, then this is the post that you need to take a look at! The below contents contains information solely about this.
One can’t deny the fact that a single person can’t do all the jobs simultaneously. That’s why all the business men are in search of good e-commerce software. E-commerce software that is both reliable and easy to use as well is the most sought one. But where could anyone get such software. Even if it is out there, how come one can search and find the exact one that suits him/her the best. No worries. Your problem ends here.
Ashop.com offers you one of the best ecommerce software available out there. It is the winner of “My Business awards” in the year 2006. Apart from being awarded, the look of the software itself relieves you from half of the pressure that you get from your routine work. This software not only features some cool user friendly interface but also includes a great package that you won’t regret. Even if you are new to this business and new to operate the e-commerce software, it won’t be a problem for you. You could breeze away your job easily! Hope that you’ll find this post useful.

Best deal for a business man!

Why waste your time browsing online, while you could finish your job easily with the touch of single software. Yes, there are application packages in order to help you do your online business smoothly without any hassles. It’s not often you see an ecommerce software getting so popular among the business people and online merchants. But this one, I had recently come to know about, is an application software solely made for shopping cart purpose. I didn’t realize this one little software package could handle all of my online business pressures. But it took care of all my works as a breeze. This is the one stop solution for merchants people like us to do our online business. Do not think that, in order to operate this software, you must have a complete knowledge about it! Naa, Its very easy to operate, you need not be a geek to explore the features of this package, as it is all there – in front of your eyes. In this software package, the shopping carts are 100% optimized to top the search engines. The number of featured clients is increasing day by day. Thanks to ashop commerce for providing us such a good shopping cart software. I hope that you will take a look at this shopping cart wonder!

Finally NVIDIA 9800 GX2 released!

Though this most awaited video card is not yet ready for prime time, it keeps the enthusiasts at bay. Consider this, the bad performance offered by the drivers makes the Quad SLI benchmarks had to be postponed. As of now, Nvidia's aim with the GeForce 9800 GX2 is simple, as with all very high end cards. NVIDIA wants to take back the coveted title of the most powerful videocard that it had surprisingly lost by a small margin to its rival ATI's Radeon 3870 X2 came out. It not usual, even today, to build a card on two mainstream chips. Yet, as I had said before, it's a design that has some advantages from a production point of view. We aren't the only ones to take this position. NVIDIA's CEO himself stated last month that he was convinced the GeForce 8800 GTX remained the most powerful card and that a single GPU board was the best approach, though if a dual-GPU board was the fastest in the world, it would be accepted.

Make money out of your scraps

Got tons of scraps in your office? Don’t know how to dispose it? Why consider these as scraps when you can actually make some money out of it. Didn’t quite get me right? Rawpolymers.com is here to solve our problem. Things that you consider as wastes, like plastic polymer products can be sold out at good rates. There is no catch in it. The only condition is that these products that you are about to sell must be free from contaminations like Paper labels, Dirt, Organic matters, Moisture, Nylon, PVDF, PVC, Polystyrene, PET, ABS, PBT. If you’ve got plastic (polymers) that satisfy these conditions then these people will take care of that. What’s more? You can even buy HDPE materials (Recycled plastic material) from them at best rates. Just enter into their site for further details.

Fix Vista Networking

In the name of security, Vista wholly revamps the way networking operates. The Network and Sharing Center (part of the Control Panel) can be daunting and confusing when you want to share files on your local network. Here’s the easy way to get the job done. First, make sure you use the same workgroup name on all PCs. In Vista, this setting is in the System control panel. Click Change Settings on the main page to join another workgroup. Second, you’ll have a far easier time if you use the same username and password on all PCs you want to network. In Vista, you set up users in the User Accounts control panel. Administrator rights make this considerably easier, though it’s officially discouraged. Now you’re ready to set preferences in the Network and Sharing Center control panel. Here’s how it should look:

Network discovery: On this makes your PC visible on the network.
Public folder sharing: Up to you The Public folder is a special folder Vista creates in which you can put data you know you want to share across the network with multiple users. You might store your pictures, videos, and music here, for example. It’s just like any other folder, except it can be simply managed and shared with one click here. Turn it on (either read only or read/write) and you’ll see the Public folder in the Computer view directly under the Desktop folder.
Printer sharing: Up to you only if you want to print across the network.
Password protected sharing: On
This is the setting that lets users with a valid login on the Vista PC reach shared folders on that computer. Turn password-protected sharing off and users can do just about anything. Leave it on for better security.

Refine the registry with TweakVI

Look, we know you’ve been promised repeatedly that if you just tweak this one registry entry, your computer will never crash and it’ll run three times faster. And then you did it and nothing happened, right? TweakVI, a downloadable application designed to fi ne-tune Windows registry settings, won’t turn a Celeron into a Core 2 Quad, but in our tests it did modestly improve general benchmark performance, in the range of 5 to 10 percent. Download and install the free version of the app from http://tinyurl.com/24yz6q. When you run it, you’ll want to focus your energy on the System Information and Tweaks section, then the CPU Tweaks... subsection under that. Don’t expect miracles, but try running your usual benchmarks before and after installing TweakVI—you might be surprised. That said, a $50 yearly subscription to unlock all of TweakVI’s features is pretty much out of line; the free version should provide most everything you need.

Tech Info

Technology is one such field that needs to be fed regularly with brilliant brains like that of yours. Now that technology has seen a vast development, you may be confused in which domain to be trained and which one of the tech schools suits you the best and nourishes you with great technology. In order to get an idea on various domains and get trained at the best technical school and get the state of the art IT Training, log on to this cool site “tech-training-schools.com” and have a glance. You could easily have a better idea on this and could come to a conclusion.

Wish a dish

It’s not only because you like different tastes and have good cooking talents, you could excel in all types of food. It’s the method of cooking that leaves everyone speechless. A cook is solely responsible for a dish to be prepared mouth watering.
If you think that you could be one of those gifted people, who provide human’s greatest pleasure, be trained in a proper school. You need not while away your time just for searching chef school or culinary schools available over the internet. Just log on to culinary-school-finder.com and find the best suited culinary school for you.

Make it double.

Japan (Tokyo) - A Japanese newspaper has put some number on the failure of HD DVD and the cost of its shutdown for its main promoter, Toshiba. According to Nikkei, Toshiba expects a 50 billion Yen or almost $500 million loss from its HD DVD operations, which however could hit almost twice that because of charges resulting from the shutdown of production lines.

This number, by the way, only reflects the cost of the past 12 months and does include any other costs incurred since 2002, when the development of the format began. As of now, these numbers are based on information from industry sources and we won't find out how much the real loss was until Toshiba will report its financials in April.

Toshiba's guidance for the full year was a profit of 290 billion Yen, while analysts are now expecting the company to end up at about 250 billion Yen. It is unclear which portion of the HD DVD shutdown charges will be included in the firm's fiscal year, which ends on March 31.

Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD on February 19, stating it was impossible to win the format war after Warner announced its switch to Blu-ray in early January. Despite the ongoing $300 million "The look and sound of perfect" campaign, the HD DVD camp lost support from major movie studios, retailers and rental outlets within six weeks.

AMD goes for WorkStation

Workstation graphics isn't particularly a high-volume market, at least not if we compare this segment to the desktop and notebook market, but it is an extremely lucrative and actually rapidly growing business. Shipments climbed from 686,700 units in Q4 2006 to 847,900 in the fourth quarter of last year, translating into an annual growth rate of 23.5%, ahead of the general PC market which came in at about 14.1%, according to iSuppli.

ATI and Nvidia have been fighting over the workstation market, which allows them to sell their (2D tuned) graphics cards for prices of well over $2000 on the high end, for some time now. ATI and now AMD, however, never really gained traction in this market, with Nvidia dominating the segment with a market share of about 86%.

AMD now tries to open up the workstation graphics market to the lower end, offering a new card for $250. The "ATI FireMV 2260 2D workstation and desktop accelerator card" is specifically aimed at financial institutions, where the card can "increase trader density" thanks to its "exceptional energy efficiency" which reduces cooling requirements: The card actually comes without a cooling fan and simply incorporates a passive heat sink.

AMD said that the low-profile card will fit into in practically any PCI, PCI Express 1.0 and PCI Express 16x slot and is the first card of its kind to offer two DisplayPorts. According to the company, the 2260 is capable enough to enable traders to receive 2D and 3D live video feeds and run Windows Vista and its Aero graphical user interface. The card is expected to begin shipping in April.

Quad-Core notebooks to enter market

Intel is planning to launch its first quad-core CPU for notebooks, the Core 2 Extreme QX9300, in the third quarter this year with pricing set at a new high of $1,038 in thousand-unit tray quantities, according to sources at motherboard makers. With the market demand for top-level notebooks still below average, Intel expects the quad-core notebook CPUs will not become standard in the performance/mainstream notebook market until the second half of 2009, and therefore should not impact the desktop PC market, noted the sources.

Trendy look!

Wanna be a trend setter? Looking out for a good fashion school? Then this is the right place for you. No, am not talking about my site. Of course, you get a lot of info from here :). I am talking about the fashion-school-finder.com. They provide you with all the necessary information on fashion schools in California. Not only about the fashion school in California but also about the fashion schools in Los Angeles. Visit the site if you need more information on fashion schools.

Extra Large Solution

Are you thinking of a way for your penis enlargement? Thinking of how to avoid unnecessary pills, pumps, patches and creams? You want something on penis enlargement information? Then this is the right product for you. Euro extender is a special penis enlarger which comforts you while it does its job perfectly. There is a Size Calculator on the website too. You can read testimonials of user who use their products for penis enlargements. They also have support forum for you to keep you updates.

No, Not anymore!

It’s not that only they who could enhance their breasts for perfect shape and structure. Don’t be ashamed of your small penis. Not anymore! There are male enhancement products too! Sinrex, is one such male enhancement product is there for you. It not only ensures penis enlargement but also assures of overall male health and longevity. Now they are offering 90 day guarantee. Hurry up, before anything worse could happen because of this small problem.

Ya, its true!

By this time you are reading this post, my financial crisis would’ve been disappeared. My only hobby is to write blogs. Mind you am a serious blogger. I’d like to share latest information and tell people what I am thinking about the latest products, gadgets and applications. This might seem boring, but once you get into this, you’ll be allured by it. 
Now I could make money out of my own hobby! Yes. You’ve heard nothing wrong! You could get paid for blogging. Thanks to Smorty.
Just advertise on blogs and get paid. Not only me, anyone could easily make money for what they are doing. Now am pretty sure that each and everyone would start blogging. I do admit that to start a blog and maintaining it is not as easy as one might think. But once you know how to do that, you could go with more than one. What’s more, you’ll be paid for each and every step of task you undertake. Let’s put that part apart, and start off with how to start a blog and see some real money! Shall we?
a) Go to blogger.com and create an account with a blog of your choice.
b) Maintain that blog regularly by posting in about your thoughts.
c) When you feel that your blog has enough posts indexed by Google, apply for smorty.

There you go! Some easy money!

BioShock

Believe the hype, this undersea action-adventure is the best game so far!

I’ve played thousands of games since I stomped my first Koopa in Super Mario Brothers—way back in 1986. Since then, I’ve played text games, 2D adventures, first-person shooters, simulations of every sort, strategy games, and role-playing games. I even played a “cyberpunk thriller” once. Of all the games I’ve played in the last 21 years, none has evoked such powerful emotions as BioShock.
BioShock tells a generic story: Kill the bad guy, escape from the dystopia. In that regard, it’s just like countless games I’ve played before. But unlike those other games, BioShock’s story is rife with subtext—objectivist philosophy is obviously the underpinning for Rapture, the game’s underwater setting, but the game is also injected with parables illustrating the dangers of hubris and science unchecked by a code of ethics.

Heavenly shopping!

Make your online shopping more easily. Get rid of the regular method of paying to the shop keepers. Hail this innovative method of payment. Don’t take risk by paying money from your account directly. Just log onto to Couponchief.com and buy coupon that suits you the best. And voila! There you are. You could do the shopping with these coupons on your favorite shops. Now couponchief has added almost every famous online shop. Get the promo codes and while away your shopping time. They even give discounts for your purchase. Get the coupon and make a wise decision. Some of the famous stores available at couponchief are BestBuy.com coupons, Dell Home, circuitCity coupon codes, BlueNile, Staples, etc.

Pa. Vijay turns producer

Pa. Vijay, the lyricist turned actor, is said to be ready to don another role. The decision is rumoured to be fallout of a predicament faced by ‘Thai Kaviyam’, in which the lyricist plays the lead role. The film, written by the Tamil Nadu CM M. Karunanidhi, is now crippled by a controversy over the expenses made so far.

Sources reveal that, though the movie has been on roll for quite some time, only one and half songs and a few talkie scenes have been finished. The expenses, on the other hand, have touched a whooping amount of Rs. 50 lakhs. The producer, upset by the obvious mismatch, has demanded explanation and detailed accounts. He has even gone to Producers’ Council to settle things with the director.

Since the producer too is close to the ruling party like Vijay himself, both have been advised by the party circles to settle the issue amicably. As part of the compromise formula, Vijay is said to have offered to pay the amount spent so far and take up the responsibility of the producer of the film. The producer too is believed to have accepted it.

Track'em

Ever thought of your company’s vehicles are being misused? Don’t you know what to do with your driver? Or ever wondered how to make a track of your vehicle.I have observed how people get restless when their car driver is not available and they don't know where he would be. At times your drivers disappear from your visibility. This is smaller thing compared to what kind of worries fleet owners have. Specially when your customers need to know where their delivery is - as tracking becomes more important in this business. And it again gets the priority depending on what is being delivered.

These days GPS services are getting pretty cheap and when combined with online tracking functionalities they can be extremely powerful. When GPS systems first started to come out, they typically requires long-term contracts. The technology has gotten cheaper and the systems to manage that technology have also been simplified and scaled out. You shouldn't have to get a GPS system shackled to a long-term contract. You should not have to get a GPS system that requires you to maintain a large number of GPS tracking units even when the size of your fleet varies over time moving up and down.

With that said we would like to check out GPSInsight vehicle tracking system, an online company that provides a relatively cheap and very powerful system for tracking fleet vehicles.

GPSInsight's service helps you to identify what your drivers are doing. You can figure out where they're going, if they're staying on Route, you can even determine if they are exceeding the speed limit for driving dangerously or taking the most efficient path to their destination! It's very important to know what your drivers are doing with your vehicles.

GPSInsight sets up a GPS tracking system for your fleet of vehicles within few days, not long period like in past.

You can take a look at a number of online tutorials at GPSInsight where you can see just how powerful their systems are and all of the advantages that you can manage with the online systems that support the actual devices in your vehicles. They only charge a couple dollars per unit and that means you don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle to buy the equipment and hundreds more to install it. The installations are fast and quick and very cheap to get the system up and running. Also dont miss the company's blog - Blog for GPS vehicle tracking

GPSInsight provide excellent support systems through GPS Insight support wiki for customers and they are constantly evolving their online tools such that you'll receive new product services on a regular basis. It’s good for seasonal needs as well, as your fleet gets ramped up or ramped down as the business goes in the time of the year. As you need not to go for long term contract, GPSInsight's flexibility will help you save lot of money.

what's the Buzz?

A Blogger’s work doesn’t end with starting and maintaining a blog. He has to update the blog regularly with some quality content. Moreover he has to increase the site traffic by generating more number of visitors. The only way to pull more number of visitors to one’s site is to advertise and share your blog with others. This site Buzzfuse.com helps you in sharing your site with others.

Anjathey's success story

Mysskin’s 'Anjathey' is going places. Literally. The movie, which is running with packed houses in Tamil Nadu, is getting released in Karnataka and Kerala. Both states will have ten prints each. The movie, which has been receiving critical acclaim from all quarters, will be screened in the prestigious PVR complex in Bangalore. Since the movie has many stars from Kerala, it is but natural that it would be received well by the Kerala audience. The movie will be released by Srivas Films in Thiruvananthapuram, Palgat, Kozhicode and Ernakulam.Meanwhile, the houseful shows in Chennai has resulted in an increase in the number of screens.

Everything is Planned!

Planning on a vacation for this holiday or setting up a shot period plan for going out for this weekend.
Good things happen at the unlikeliest time. I saw this Hotel Reservations the other day and thought it would be nice presentation before my readers who look for hotel reservations. I do like to write travel. Before me finalizing the decision to review the website, I thought it would be possible only if the website has hotel reservations from Kerala. Kerala is my place, you see. Sure there are hotel reservation deals for Kerala hotels, just as there are for hotels from Goa, Delhi, Kolkata, etc in India, among destinations at 100 different countries.
The website has done its homework to offer hotel reservations at 70,000 properties in 100 countries of seven continents. A brief overview article on India, in the destination guide section gives an accurate account of prevalent weather conditions in different parts of India, clearly telling first time visitors what they can expect where and when in India. The account of rain, snow and temperature conditions one can experience at different parts of India during different months is accurate. You can get some cool discounts for registering at this site. Not only you could book your destinations but also include the reservations of Motels, resorts etc.
There are also useful run downs on communication facilities, costs, legal issues, destination recommendations, special interest destinations like Yoga Meditation Ashrams, an account of important festivals, etc. Same kind of overviews are available on most destination countries and I expect them to be accurate too. Apart from hotel reservation deals, there are also airlines ticket booking, car rentals, vacation rentals and vacation packages – normal things you can expect from travel websites. HotelReservations.com also offers Price Guarantee for hotels, condos and resorts – something business and pleasure trip planners can look forward to. Travelers can also contact Hotel Reservations directly over telephone.

A Place for Trend-Setters!

This post is dedicated to the people who set the trend in this world, in this world of fashion. Just like the computer world, the only other field that gets updates on a daily basis is the world of “Fashion”. There are many reasons for one to be fascinated by fashion, fashion world, fashion designing and the latest fashion technology. There are even some people who are looking out to be the trend setters. Nowadays they provide good syllabus in the fashion field. But there are a lot of schools coming in for this purpose. For example, New York fashion schools provide one of the best learning and practical environment for the students who are keen on setting the trends in the world of fashion.
The problem is that, which school suits you the best. The only thing that can be done in order to solve this problem is go online. You need not be a geek to go online and find a fashion school in New York. But it is highly impossible for one to select the best school that offers best academics and that should suit that individual. Difficult isn’t it?
Here comes the life saver – Just log onto fashion-school-finder.com and get the fashion school New York of your choice.

Make a decison!

No one could deny the fact that a lot of offers are being made to the public through phone calls and mail. There are some firms that even spam your mail box or make unnecessary calls to make a deal with them. Finally you will be left with no choice other than selecting credit cards for bad credits.
This makes the customers go crazy on them and they get confused on what firm to choose for their requirements to be fulfilled. The needs of the people may be of different kinds such as credit card requirements, personal loans, auto loans etc.
But at last I found out a solution on deciding the best firm for your requirements. By this you method you could easily avoid any bad credit credit cards offers that come to you.
The solution is simple just log on to the badcreditoffers.com site and choose the best deal that suits you. This site offers you all kinds of options.
The next time you need a credit card, make sure that you take a wise decision.

MS Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000

We’ve long admired Microsoft’s Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000; its combination of a downward tilting typing surface and a split layout is the perfect salve for our aching wrists. But we aren’t as fond of the Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, which is unfortunate, as the devices are paired in one bundle for the weak-wristed. The wireless version of the Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is virtually identical to the wired one, but it communicates with your PC via a 2.4GHz transmitter. The key action and layout of the two boards are the same; the only differences between the two are that the wireless board sports a slightly lighter color scheme and its status lights (for Caps Lock and its cronies) are replaced by software toggles to conserve battery life, which is good. The Ergo plank didn’t run down its two AA batteries after two months of constant use. The Natural Wireless Laser Mouse is another story. While we appreciate that the mouse allows for a neutral hand position, which lets you grip it in your hand’s most relaxed position, we don’t like the loss of precision that holding the device like a soda can engenders. Even after several weeks of use, we weren’t able to consistently make horizontal mouse movements; the cursor invariably drifts down when you use your wrist to move the mouse from right to left. We also wonder why this mouse requires standard disposable batteries. Unlike keyboards, wireless mice need rechargeable batteries; they simply suck up too much power to use standard AAs. Although we were able to use the mouse for extended periods of time unassisted, we don’t feel that this device is a significant improvement over a more accurate, traditional mouse paired with a good gel-covered wrist rest. The keyboard is a good match for gamers, but we can’t recommend the mouse for anyone who needs to make high-precision movements. Unfortunately, this wireless keyboard’s score is brought down by its subpar companion.

My Disclosure Policy

This policy is valid from 14 January 2008


This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

Shopping on BlackFriday

Its true that everybody loves shopping. But everybody agree to the fact that it saps all our energy. Moreover shopping during the occasion festival time is much difficult. In order to do an ideal way of shopping, proper planning is the key. Black Friday is one of those days where we find huge crowds standing out in many shops from early morning. Its practically impossible for one to do shopping during these days and blackfriday.info provides the answer for all your needs. You got it, blackfriday.info website helps you plan the perfect shopping experience you desire. With their user friendly interface you can easily place order. Also during black friday you can save money by checking out the site and taking the best deal offered by black friday ads. One of the stuff which fascinated me was the email alert which allowed me to know when new ads were posted in blackfriday.info.

CircuitCity is my favorite, they provide all the products at lowest prices. Infact my dad bought our 4.1 digital camera at Circuit City. With its excellent customer service and high quality products, Circuit City get a lot of customers during black friday. Hence in order to avoid that one can simply log on to blackfriday.info and gain access to all the products of Circuit City. Thereby saving time, energy and the last minute rush. With its excellent information on shopping during black friday , blackfriday.info is my choice for all those shoppers out there.

Throttle User Account Control

Spare yourself the headache of endless pop-ups

You won’t get far in Vista before you start losing hair thanks to UAC, Vista’s overbearing security pop-up system. If you’re an even remotely sophisticated user, turning off UAC should be job one. It’s easy to do: Visit the User Accounts control panel and click “Turn User Account Control on or off,” then uncheck the box on the following screen. If you just want a little more control over UAC (without turning it off altogether), download TweakUAC (www.tweak-uac.com), which suppresses UAC messages whenever you’re logged in as an administrator.

Run Vista Command Line as Admin

Don’t let the OS limit command-line rights

Typing cmd in the Start menu’s search box will bring up the familiar command-line window, but depending on your machine’s confi guration, you might be stuck in a restricted mode even if you’re logged in as an administrator. To launch an unrestricted Admin command line, type cmd at Start, then press Ctrl-Shift-Enter. You can also do this by right-clicking the CMD.exe result in the search box and selecting Run as Administrator in the drop-down menu. You’ll notice you’re in Admin mode by the Administrator prefi x in the window’s title bar. Now you can move and copy fi les and folders from the command line and run system tools such as msconfig; by default these privileges are locked out.

Display Port Finally Cometh

Computer users will see VESA’s new video interface in shipping products (we mean it this time)

It’s been a long time coming, but once the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) approved the DisplayPort 1.1 specifi cation in April,it became all but certain the digital interface would replace DVI and VGA in computer products. After all, the interface standard—which is capable of meeting the demands of high-def video and copy-protected content—has the blessing of many PC industry heavyweights. Those companies are now stepping up with announcements about forthcoming products that will feature the new connector. First, there was word of Dell’s prototype half-inchthick LCD that uses DisplayPort and which is rumored to be shipping late this year. Now Samsung has stated its plans to use DisplayPort (as opposed to Dual-Link DVI) in its next 2560x1600 30-inch panel. And AMD, as well, says, “We will begin shipping native DisplayPort interfaces on our graphics products in early 2008.”

Program, Optimize Thyself

AMD proposes psychic extensions for CPUs

AMD is floating a set of new instructions that could make it easier for programs to tune themselves. Called Lightweight Profiling (LWP), the new instructions would become part of AMD’s AMD64 instruction set.
LWP would add little overhead yet give applications direct feedback from the CPU on how a process for the application is running. If the process is generating excessive cache misses, branch mispredictions, or thread locks, the app—with real-time feedback from the CPU—would, in theory, correct the problem and run faster. LWP could help programmers in the daunting task of optimizing for the increasing number of execution cores in PCs. That number is predicted to reach from eight to 16 within a year or two. AMD hasn’t said when LWP will be integrated into its CPUs, but it will apparently not be available in upcoming quad-core Opteron and Phenom FX CPUs.

Game /Art

“Games are not art.” I said as much, rather pompously, in this spot many years ago. It generated as much reaction as I ever received, oddly enough. Gamers want to believe their passion is more than just a diversion—that it could aspire to greatness, even transcendence. A friend of mine, a game designer, insisted that games were merely awaiting their Orson Welles. In other words, the medium merely needed an auteur to come along to create and refine a new vocabulary for this form that would lift it to the realm of capital A Art. The games-as-art debate got a bit of a jump start recently with a back-and-forth between film critic Roger Ebert and author/director Clive Barker. Ebert made the case that games can’t be “high art” and Barker said that they can. Ebert was a bit of snot, but he’s right for the wrong reason. He claims that interactivity, what Barker called the “malleability” of the forms and narratives of games, removes it from the realm of high art.
That’s only half right, and BioShock made it a little clearer to me just why that’s the case. If any game can make a claim to be Art, its BioShock, which deals with weighty issues, is beautifully stylized, and breaks the bounds of the medium. Even its use of Randian Objectivism as the source of its dystopia is strikingly original and persuasive. It is clearly the product of artists: writers, visual artists, musicians, sound artists, and designers. But it’s not, in the aggregate, Art, for a simple reason. Gamers are not lining up to play BioShock for its Objectivist discourse: They are lining up to play, to explore, to solve puzzles, to shoot things. The main purpose of a work defines it as Art, not the incidentals. The main purpose of a game is to be played, like football or poker or kick the can. However rich a narrative, whatever depths of philosophy or human nature or character are explored along the way, these are not the point of the game. They may be central concerns of the creator (artist?), but they are incidental to the gamer: fine wallpaper for the abattoir.

JOURNALISTS SUE HP

It’s been a year since Hewlett-Packard officials were caught spying on company board members and journalists to root out a media leak, but the issue is getting renewed attention. Several journalists from the Associated Press and News.com are filing suit against HP, citing invasion of privacy and violation of California’s business code. HP had earlier offered the affected parties a financial settlement, which they rejected.

LIMEWIRE GOES LEGIT

Following the leads of Napster and BitTorrent, LimeWire is looking to put its peer-to-peer prowess toward the service of good. The company, whose eponymous P2P software has been popular with content pirates, hopes to gain a more wholesome following with a new online portal that offers only legal content. A stand-alone website, which will eventually be accessible via the LimeWire software, will connect people to legitimate DRM-free music for a competitive price. So far, LimeWire has struck deals with two indie music publishers.

ABC.COM STREAMS HD

ABC.com is stepping up its online strategy by now streaming many of the network’s shows in HD. The site’s HD channel is still in beta, but theoretically, a person with a monitor capable of high-def resolutions (at least 1280x720), a broadband Internet connection, and the affiliated media player by Move Networks can view entire television shows, such as Lost, Ugly Betty, and Grey’s Anatomy, in HD for free over the web.

Universal Tests DRM-Free Tunes

Could DRM be making an exit? Universal Music Group recently announced that it will sell DRM-free MP3s through a variety of vendors, including Amazon, through January 2008, as an experiment. One place you won’t be able to get the unencumbered music tracks, though, is iTunes. Universal says it’s using Apple’s store as a control group, but we think the test could prove whether it’s possible to break Apple’s dominance over digital distribution. Universal will use digital watermarks to identify songs that have been downloaded via the service; the watermarks won’t contain a unique user identifier but will presumably be used to see which of the songs are shared by P2P users.
We hope Universal’s experiment will convince the company that it’s more profitable to ensure fair use than it is to treat its customers like criminals.

Malicious Wiki Edits Exposed!

WikiScanner reveals who’s been cleaning up their own pages and slamming the competition someone at the BBC seems to think Dubya’s middle name is Wanker. A new program called WikiScanner (http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/), which automatically matches Wikipedia edits to the IP addresses they came from, reveals instances of vandalism, whitewashing, and trickery by everyone from the FBI to the Vatican to the BBC. While most of the edits are mild and quickly rectified, others are more insidious. Users from Exxon, Microsoft, and the Turkish government have been caught removing references to, respectively, the ecological impact of the Exxon Valdez spill, Xbox 360 failure rates, and the Armenian genocide. WikiScanner, which was written by grad student Virgil Griffith, shows that not all users of the peer-edited encyclopedia have transparency in mind. Thankfully, finding these conflict-of-interest edits just got a whole lot easier.

The Future of CPU Integration

For years now, AMD has been crowing about the integrated DDR controller in its processors— something Intel’s chips don’t have. Integrating the memory controller with the CPU definitely has performance advantages, but what’s the next step in CPU integration?
For clues, consider Sun Microsystems’s new server processor, the UltraSPARC T2 (code-named Niagara 2). The first thing everyone notices about this “server on a chip” is that it has eight 64-bit processor cores—twice as many cores as the best server processors from AMD and Intel. In addition, each core can simultaneously run eight threads of execution—four times as many threads per core as the best Hyper-
Threading processor ever shipped by Intel. With eight processor cores per chip and eight threads per core, the UltraSPARC T2 can simultaneously execute 64 threads. Using Sun’s virtualization extensions, a single chip can run 64 different operating systems (or 64 instances of the same operating system) at the same time. Because each core runs at 1.4GHz, Sun likens the chip’s aggregate CPU performance to a singlethreaded chip running at 89.6GHz—a stretch of the truth, but impressive nonetheless. However, I consider the chip’s other integrated features even more impressive. The UltraSPARC
T2 has four integrated memory controllers, two 10-gigabit Ethernet controllers, an eight-lane PCI Express controller, and eight cryptography accelerators. Each dual-channel memory controller supports Fully Buffered (FB) DIMMs. The Ethernet controllers are multithreaded independently of the processors, so their actual throughput should handily beat an external Ethernet solution. The PCI Express interface runs at 2.5GHz, nearly twice as fast as the processor cores. The eight crypto engines support the most common security algorithms (such as DES and AES) and are much faster than general-purpose CPUs at this kind of number crunching. Sun isn’t exaggerating much by calling the
UltraSPARC T2 a server on a chip. And despite its unprecedented level of integration for a server processor, it consumes less than 100W and starts at less than $1,000. But the most interesting thing about the UltraSPARC T2 is what it foretells about x86 PC processors in terms of multicore integration, massive multithreading, and peripheral integration. Eventually, I believe, AMD and Intel will go with the flow of this Niagara.

Symphonies of Destruction

One fringe benefit of having a hardcore gaming laptop for a few months is that I’ve been able to dig deeply into the new generation of multiplayer action games with all the settings cranked up to the max and enjoy some truly spectacular hours of online homicide. And do it without being tied to my desktop. There’s something about playing Quake Wars in bed that’s just so wrong, yet so right. Four CPUs, one man, a bed: It’s like some kind of über-geek fetish fantasy. The real pleasure, however, comes from just how solid this generation of multiplayer action is. With Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Team Fortress 2, and Unreal Tournament 3 forming the core of dedicated multiplayer action, and Call of Duty 4 and Crysis holding the flanks, we are positively swimming in top-flight game design for the online frag crowd. To an outside observer, these games might all seem like more of the same in different wrappings.

But to gamers who truly love online action, you couldn’t have asked for three more radically different approaches than Quake Wars, TF2, and UT3. Each is like a musical composition in a different key. In terms of pure personal appeal, Quake Wars is at the top of my list, since its use of classes and multiple fluid objectives manages to capture some of the feel of an ever-shifting battlefield. If the old Strogg/GDF matchup has grown a little tired, it’s a minor complaint within a system that handles classes and their functions so well. What Team Fortress 2 lacks in objectives and complexity it more than makes up for with its fresh style, focused team play, and outstanding unit balance? And though I haven’t logged time with the final version of Unreal Tournament 3, the material Epic has been showing certainly takes its work on Gears of War to the next level and places UT3 at the fast-and-frenzied instaspawn end of the pectrum. It’s simply wonderful, this late in the life span of the multiplayer action game, to see three teams wind up with such radically different approaches to the same concept. Only people who don’t know the genre would see these titles as mere interchangeable carnage. That’s like saying Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms all sound the same because they wrote symphonies.

ASUS BC-1205Pt

With Asus’s BC-1205PT you get to read high-def discs, but only if they’re of the Blu-ray variety, so you’ll want to have a strong affinity for that format (and its affiliated movie studios) to take the plunge because while you do save money by forgoing the ability to write to Blu-ray, the BC-1205PT still isn’t cheap. Its a couple hundred dollars more than a high-performance standard DVD drive and its DVD burn performance is far from top-notch. The BC-1205PT is rated at 12x for DVD+/-R write speeds—a good deal slower than today’s top DVD burners, now at 20x, and not surprisingly, burn times take a hit. It took us 7:12 (min:sec) to fill a Single-layer DVD+R with the BC-1205PT, compared to the 5 minutes flat it took our favorite drive, Samsung’s SH-S203B (Reviewed October 2007) Burning to a double-layer DVD, the Asus drive maintained a 3.96x average speed and filled the disc in 27:09, more than twice the time it took our Samsung. Only when burning to DVD-RW media did the Asus and Samsung perform on par, writing 4.38GB to a single layer disc at 15:07 and 14:31, respectively. When reading data from all of our test discs, Asus’s drive had notably slower seek times than both the Samsung and the LG GCC-H20L reviewed here. Middling performance aside, the BC-1205PT offers a SATA interface, the CyberLink BD Solution suite for playback and burning chores, and a simple, black face plate.

Great Expectations!

No one could now oppose the fact that you could make money out of your own blog; Why? Because - I had been maintaining this blog for the past four weeks and heard many times at several sites about making money out of your own blog, but didn’t really get what they really meant, till I heard from my friend that he was earning lots and lots of money from PPP (PayPerPost) for simply doing his own job – Blogging.

For beginners, Blogging is an online journal. You maintain a blog (like a journal) online and post whatever you feel, think, like etc. Like in this blog you may find several interesting information about some cool gadgets, new technologies and latest buzz that’s going around. Not only you could share your views, ideas and thoughts with the online community but also earn money by maintaining a blog. Just follow these simple and easy steps in order to become a blogger.
Step 1: Log onto blogger.com and create an account and start a blog.

Step 2: Give an attractive title and find an appealing blog URL.
Step 3: Maintain the blog by posting useful information and attract more people to visit your blog.
Step 4: After a month, if you feel that your blog has some decent number of visitors, create an account at PPP (payperpost.com) and submit your blog and wait for approval of your blog.
Step 5: Once approved, you can make money through your blog.

Things to remember:

->Maintain an attractive blog so that you get more visitors, since more the number of visitors more the opportunities you will get in PPP.
->Before applying your blog, see to that your blog has been one month since the first post was made and you have written more than ten posts with some ORIGINAL content.

Google Unleashes an Android

After months of speculation, Google recently announced its entry into the crowded mobile market. However, instead of designing the long-rumored Gphone, the search giant released Android, a Linuxbased mobile OS. Google developed Android in conjunction with the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of mobile service providers, handset manufacturers, chipmakers, and software developers, and the company has recently made a free, downloadable development kit available. To help spur innovation, Google is also offering $10 million in prizes to developers, in awards ranging from $25,000 to $275,000. While the OS itself is open, Google has placed no restrictions on how the platform is utilized, so service providers could, for instance, remove VoIP capabilities from Android handsets in order to tie users to income-generating voice minutes. In the United States, Android-based devices will initially be available on Sprint’s and T-Mobile’s networks, with numerous handset manufacturers planning to release devices in early 2008. AT&T, which has a major stake in Apple’s iPhone, is not
a member of the OHA; as to whether the service provider would ever offer Android-powered phones, a spokesperson stated, “AT&T does not comment on what it might or might not do in the future.”
While Google hasn’t directly explained how it plans to generate revenue from Android, the OS will make it easy to use Google’s entire suite of apps on mobile devices, bringing an almost PC-like experience to cell phones—and more mobile users on the web almost certainly means more eyes on the search giant’s Ad Sense-generated advertising.

Related Articles:

Google Ponders Spectrum Plans
Fly Me to the Moon!
Google Desktop Search as default in Vista
Google just got better
Virtual Lunar Trip
Google sets its sight on Wikipedia with “Knol”

OCZ Buys Hypersonic

RAM vendor branches out into the PC market

In a buyout that has raised some eyebrows, RAM and PSU vendor OCZ will buy boutique PCmaker Hypersonic to help diversify its business.
Hypersonic will operate as a separate division, but some competing PC vendors are concerned about buying components from what is now a competitor. OCZ officials told reuters that PC vendors shouldn’t feel any threat, as the company has no plans to give preferential treatment to Hypersonic on RAM or other components. OCZ’s main purpose with the acquisition is to grow Hypersonic by giving it access to new markets and platform vendors that OCZ has relationships with. In the long term, it will help protect OCZ’s business from the mercurial swings of the RAM market. In May, the company purchased PC Power and Cooling for $13 million.

AMD’s Odd Phenom

Soon after AMD announced its new triple-core Phenom processor, the jokes began. Some people think a multicore processor with an odd number of cores is...well, odd. Others ridiculed AMD for making triple-core chips by disabling one core on a defective quad-core die. Intel CEO Paul Otellini cracked, “We see a distinct advantage in having all the cores on our dies work.” Actually, there’s nothing odd about an odd number of processors. For 30 years we’ve had PCs with only one processor, and that’s an odd number. But seriously, there’s no technical reason, a multicore chip can’t have any number of processor cores. Sometimes it’s easier for chip designers to lay out an even number of cores because the die will be nearly a true square, which fits more efficiently on circular silicon wafers. However, different layouts are possible and often desirable. Designers can surround an odd number of cores with caches, buses, and other logic to achieve a square die. Indeed, such layouts are becoming more common as microprocessors
integrate more components. Remember that AMD’s processors have on-chip memory controllers and soon will integrate graphics cores, too.
The slap that AMD is merely converting defective quad-core Phenoms into triple-core Phenoms hits closer to home. Rumors abound that AMD’s production yields—especially for the new 45nm fabrication process—are terrible. These rumors are hard to verify because semiconductor manufacturers closely guard their yields as trade secrets. Although poor yields are definitely bad, there’s
nothing wrong with salvaging chips by disabling the defective logic and relabeling the product. In the 1990s, Intel sold 486 processors either with (486DX) or without (486SX) an integrated FPU. Early 486SX chips were found to be 486DX chips with disabled FPUs. More recently, some massively parallel processors have the ability to route around defective cores and keep working. One example is a 430-core chip from PicoChip Designs that’s found in cellular and wireless-network base stations. Should PicoChip scrap an otherwise functional die because it has “only” 429 working processor cores? As PC processors integrate large numbers of cores, inevitably some cores will be defective. It will become commonplace to salvage those chips by disabling the bad cores. And that’s fine, as long as the chips are honestly labeled.

The Home Is Going Digital

High tech is moving into the living room—and the kitchen, bedroom, and garage, too


So many attempts to bring the worlds of PCs and consumer electronics together have failed that the word “convergence” prompts snickers from journalists. But the market is poised for explosive growth, according to a new market study published by Parks Associates and EHX Publishing. Oddly enough, it’s not the PC that’s driving this train, according to the authors of this study; it’s the rapid adoption of flat-panel displays. The study predicts the size of this market will grow to $17 billion within the next five years—and that number doesn’t take into account consumers who build their own networks. Computer manufacturers such as Sony and HP clearly want a piece of this pie, but they’re taking very different roads to get there.
Sony’s not using the C word, but Xavier Lauwaert comes close when he describes the market for the digital home. Sony retreated from the desktop PC market several years ago, but its VAIO brand remains strong in the notebook arena, and according to Lauwaert, the company sold a significant number of its CableCARD and Blu-ray-equipped VAIO XL3 media center PCs in 2007. HP is taking a different approach. We DEC line because the PC doesn’t have to be in the living room anymore.” HP now seems to be taking a three-pronged approach to the market, with its innovative TouchSmart PC, entertainment-oriented Pavilion HDX notebook, and headless MediaSmart Server running Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. But we see the digital home encompassing more than entertainment—and so does Logitech. The company followed up its 2004 acquisition of Intrigue Technologies (best known for its innovative Harmony remote controls) and 2006 buyout of Squeezeboxmaker Slim Devices by snapping up WiLife in November. WiLife designs and manufactures the LukWerks video-surveillance system, which operates on a powerline network and can stream video to remote clients via the Internet. New wireless technologies such as Z-Wave and ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) are enabling do-it-yourselfers to add extensive observation and command features to their homes and apartments, allowing them to monitor and control their lighting, appliances, temperature, and more. Motion and moisture sensors can even alert homeowners to break-ins and leaks via email or MMS. It’s an exciting time to be a geek.

AMD Alleges Benchmark Cheating by Nvidia

AMD and Nvidia have been engaged in a veritable pissing match over the HQV HD video benchmark, with AMD accusing its rival of cooking its Forceware drivers in order to achieve higher scores than its product deserves. Nvidia, in turn, has accused AMD of engaging in a disinformation campaign. The issue stems from beta Vista drivers (Forceware 163.11) that Nvidia provided to reviewers testing HD-video performance with videocards based on its GeForce 8600 GTS graphics processor. AMD’s Aboubakeur Nacef ran the benchmark and took photographs that he says reveal ghosting caused by overly aggressive use of noise-reduction in Nvidia’s PureVideo HD decoder. “My feeling,” Nacef told reuters, “is that Nvidia was in panic mode and needed to release something quickly.” Nvidia’s Rick Allen, countered that Nacef was “using an older driver and overly aggressive driver settings to cause the problem.” Nacef responded that Forceware 163.44 had the same problem but that he hadn’t tested version 163.69, the latest version available at press time.     

AMD to Try Tri-Core

Are there folks who want something better than dual core but less extreme than a quad solution? That’s what AMD is hoping as it prepares to release a tri-core Phenom in 2008. AMD is positioning the three-core chip as something that will help differentiate PCs that use it from their dual-core brethren. But Intel’s further slashing of its quad-core prices—already at the $200 mark—could lessen a tri-core’s appeal. More troubling is how AMD is producing these chips. The tri-core is likely to be based on the same quad-core die as Phenom, so is AMD disabling one core or is it trying to fi nd a market for its defective quad-core chips?

Spy vs. Spy— Cyber Style

A diplomatic brouhaha has coincided with a recent spate of cyber warfare, with representatives from a number of governments claiming their nations are the victims of coordinated attacks on their computer infrastructure. Systems in England, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States have all been attacked in recent months, and while governments in those countries have not directly accused the Chinese government of coordinating the attacks, intelligence agencies have noted that the attacks do seem to be originating from China. The Chinese government, however, denies any involvement in the incidents, and, in fact, says it has been the victim of cybersleuthing from Western governments. Lou Qinjian, vice minister of Information Industry, stated that 80 percent of the recent attacks have come from computers based in the United States, although he did not directly state that the U.S. government was coordinating the intrusions.

Fly Me to the Moon!

Google is hoping to inspire private space exploration by ponying up $30 million to fund the X Prize Foundation’s latest challenge, the Google Lunar X Prize, which tasks entrants with building and launching an unmanned lunar rover. Google will give $20 million to the first group to land a craft on the moon that can roam
500 meters and transmit a video back to Earth. It will kick in another $5 million if the team completes additional tasks such as photographing man-made objects or discovering water or ice. If your team is slow to launch, don’t worry. The second-place fi nisher will pocket $5 million, but you’d best get to work; the grand prize drops to $15 million after December 31, 2012 and the competition ends on December 31, 2014.

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Holmes is back!

A sinister cult is trying to awaken the Great Old One Cthulhu from his watery slumber, and only Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson can stop it from happening! No, it’s not a description of my high school fan fiction (well, actually, it is, but let’s not talk about that); it’s the premise behind Frogware’s latest Holmes game: Sherlock Holmes—The Awakened. Recruiting Holmes into the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft is a popular geek pastime that sometimes actually works. With The Awakened, the exercise gets a solid 3D presentation and narrative that reminds us of the more sedate pleasures of the puzzleadventure game. Adventure gaming never quite dies but continues to dwell in a shadow realm, on the fringe of the mainstream. Each time I play a new example of this genre, it reminds me of a time when the puzzle-adventure was the dominate PC genre, in the golden days of Sierra and LucasArts. The ascendancy of 3D action gaming signaled the decline of the narrative adventure, and it has never—and likely will never—recover its position. Yet these games still reward the person who adjusts to their slower pacing. As always, I only really understood that when seeing such a game through the eyes of another. My son sat by my side for about an hour as I played through The Awakened. Since the environments are in 3D, he assumed it was another action game. When we’d approach a character, he’d say, “Can you shoot him?” “No, I have to talk to him,” I explained. When he saw that Holmes carried a knife, he asked, “Can you use that as a weapon?” “No, but I can use it to cut this rope in order to open the trap door,” I said. At that, he began to get it. He began suggesting places to search, items to combine, ways to test and examine objects back at 221B. And slowly, he got caught up in the story, the puzzles, the process. He adjusted his expectations and took the game on its own terms. Sometimes, we need to step away from the latest 3D adrenaline rush, slow down, light a pipe, pick up a magnifying glass, and let pure story take us where it will.  

Google Desktop Search as default in Vista

Starting with Service Pack 1, Vista users will be able to set a third-party desktop search engine, such as Google’s Desktop Search, as their Windows default, replacing the OS’s integrated search. Microsoft released documentation in September detailing the syntax and other commands that will let third-party apps use the search functions in the Start Menu and Explorer windows and enable users to set them as their default search applications. The change was prompted by Google’s accusations earlier this year that Microsoft’s search was too tightly integrated into Vista. Google saw this as a violation of the 2002 antitrust settlement in which Microsoft agreed to make it easier for customers to choose third-party software in Windows. SP1 does not, however, allow users to disable Vista’s indexing service, another one of Google’s gripes.

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Make money out of your blogs !

Now that blogging took the online world by storm, every individual has started creating his own blog. What’s blog exactly? – Online Journal, publication of personal thoughts, to catalog someone's personal life or what . . . . In fact you can’t find a single precise definition for it, as there is no exact definition for a blog. A Blog is whatever you do. Ok, you have created a blog; you have shared your experience and provided the world with some useful information, now what?
Get paid for what you have done so far. Log on to some blog advertising sites, post your opinion or review it and make money. Blogsvertise.com is one such site, which offers some cool plans for making some serious money! So what are you waiting for? Jus log onto the blog advertising sites and make money now!

HD on DVD?

DCA Inc., the specialists in mastering have for the first time, saved 135 minutes of HD film on a traditional double-layer blank DVD. The format officially approved by the DVD forum bears the name "3X-DVD-ROM" and is a part of the HD-DVD standard. VC1 and H.264 are used as codecs as in case of HD DVDs, but then, longer films generally fit on the disk only in the low 720p-resolution.
The disks play on any HD-DVD player as well as in PC DVD drives with a minimum of 3X speed. Its special feature is that 3X DVD-ROMs can be burnt without a problem on any PC using an appropriate burning program and a DVD burner. With this, the disk could become what the VCD was to the DVD--a cheap entry in the new technology, till HD-DVD burners and blanks become cheaper. So, sounds like just the perfect thing for the Indian market which is always looking for cost effective measures and simulations of the real thing!

Cheers to the beyond!

While we hear about the rave parties going bust all over, this is one with more than a fairly legitimate reason. A reason that surrounds each one of us and our most gorgeous beyond space Rave parties are usually about all things psychedelic and there's nothing that can really be compared to the high-saturation purples, pinks, blues and all colors fluorescent that we fins in each inch of our vast solar system.
To commemorate Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight in 1961, NASA opened up a hangar at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View. They called it 'Yuri's Night World Space Party' and it happened on the same day in 126 events across 35 nations across the globe. It was NASA's tribute to 'global heritage of space exploration' which was celebrated with techno-rave music, futuristic dances and mind-blowing psychedelic light shows.
To give the party a rather good boy image, NASA had also put up science-imagery program called World Wind (software) besides a telescope aimed at Saturn. There was also an exhibit by artist Pierre Comte of how it feels to paint in low gravity. Besides, all of this there were some great dancers and other space monuments splashed in every nook and corner of the venue, and to say this was just one of the 126 events!

The Sage

McAfee, Inc. recently announced its second issue of sage, a semi-annual security journal designed to update and inform technical personnel and security executives on cutting-edge topics that can help them make better informed security decisions. the new issue of Sage includes articles from an all-star cast of McAfee researchers, managers and evangelists, on topics including cybercrime, Microsoft Windows Vista security, spyware, spam, cell phone security, data leakage and security risk management.
Sage is available for download through the McAfee Threat Center. You can access it at http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp.
Sage examines the near-term future of the security business--the threats, defenses and issues security professional will face over the next five years. Today, the majority of cybercriminals target PC users, but we can expect more attackers to branch out to other areas of technology, such as voice over Internet protocol and radio frequency identifications (RFID), as those technologies become more widely adopted. This journal also gives insight on the future of securing applications which is one of the biggest concerns of the manufacturers and the consumers.

Although programmers add some security measures during development, new spyware technology often far surpasses the best planning of even the most diligent engineers, opening new fronts of attacks. Spyware will follow us into new technologies, such as Bluetooth and RFID. This has also been taken into consideration in Sage besides topics like Vista and its security in the near future which is actually a great concern as more and more hackers will try to disrupt it as time goes by.