Google plan to buy DoubleClick scrutinzed in US senate

The Perfect Server - Gentoo 2007

"This tutorial shows how to set up a Gentoo 2007.0 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc."

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Store, access, share and use your digital documents. With complete privacy. 2GB free!

Diino provides users an on-line environment where they can safely store, access & share files of any type and size. It is particularly useful for users with large digital photos and music files that are difficult to access and share because of their size. Diino's strong security also makes it suitable for users desiring a safe place to store personal and confidential documents. Diino accounts with 2GB of storage are available for free.

Store, access, share and use your digital documents. With complete privacy. 2GB free!

Stealth Windows update prevents XP repair

A silent update that Microsoft deployed widely in July and August is preventing the "repair" feature of Windows XP from completing successfully.

Ever since the Redmond company's recent download of new support files for Windows Update, users of XP's repair function have been unable to install the latest 80 patches from Microsoft.

Review of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy features and changes

This review is a summary of practically all the features and changes in the latest version of Ubuntu. It covers such stuff as: major improvements on a desktop; compiz fusion overview; screen, graphics and driver preferences improvements; new default desktop search instrument; changes on printing service; Firefox 3 features.

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Critical Excel 2007 bug cripples users

What is 850 x 77.1 ? a calculator will tell you it's 65535, but a critical flaw in Microsoft's Excel 2007 causes it return 100000 as the answer to this, and any other calculation for which the result is 65535.

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Official Gmail Blog: Updates from Google Docs and Google Calendar

We had a couple of updates to share this week from the Google Docs and Google Calendar teams. First, as you may have heard, the Docs team launched the ability to create and share presentations to go with existing document and spreadsheet capabilities. Now when you're collaborating on that strategy deck, you don't have to worry whether you're looking at version 5 or 15. Plus, having your presentation stored online means one less file to send as an email attachment.



The Google Calendar team, along with the mobile team, released an upgrade to the Calendar interface on the iPhone. It is now tailored for the iPhone, and you can now see your different calendars in distinctive colors. You can see the new Calendar interface by going to http://calendar.google.com on your iPhone browser.

Amazon Launches DRM-Free MP3 Store

Amazon has launched the public beta of its new digital music portal called Amazon MP3, which will feature two million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels, all without DRM. Separate songs will sell for $.89 or $.99 and albums will range in cost from $5.99 to $9.99, with the best selling albums coming in at $8.99.

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Facebook now worth $15 billion?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook is negotiating with Microsoft to sell a stake in the hot social network at a valuation between $10 billion and $15 billion. That would net Mark Zuckerberg's company between $300 million and $500 million in cash, without Zuckerberg having to surrender any meaningful control over the company;

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YouTube Adding 30-second Ads

Google has apparently decided to add 30-second advertisements before videos on YouTube beginning next year. Hopefully they'll come to their senses before they actually follow through with this...

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Forget iPhone Bricking: All Third-Party Apps Void Your iPhone Warranty

Apple just confirmed that running any third party app will bust up your warranty. Pretty shitty way to reward the programmers who made the iPhone better than stock.

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10 Reasons You Should be Using Thunderbird

Thunderbird has a whole host of features and add-ons which together provide an all in one interface for reading and organizing email, RSS, web pages, and newsgroups.

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OPEN SOURCE GOD: 480+ Open Source Applications

Open source software is booming: here we round up over 480 open source applications for you to use or build upon.

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Gmail Wish List: 10 Things I’d Like to See in the New Gmail

"With a new version of Gmail apparently in the works, it’s time to take a look at where the software is today and features we’d like to see added. While Google has made a lot of enhancements to Gmail during its 3+ year “beta,” there are still many things that could make it even better. Here are the top ten on my wish list."

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Digital Trends - Latest Computers

Check out previews and reviews of the latest desktop and laptop computers.

New version of Gmail being tested

Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, and has revolutionized the way many of us use email. The interface has remained largely untouched since it launched, but get ready, it's soon to undergo a change in what they describe as a "New Version"

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Vista Ultimate users will have to wait for "extras"

Tomorrow is the beginning of the fall and end of summer 2007. That means time is running out for Microsoft's promise to release new extras to Vista Ultimate users. The Ultimate Extras blog has not been updated since early July.

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Firefox 2.0.0.7 Now Available

Firefox 2.0.0.7 was released this afternoon to patch the QuickTime issue described here. This will protect Firefox users from the public critical security vulnerability until a patch is available from Apple. I would like to personally thank the individuals at Apple who worked with us and the engineers at Mozilla that work so hard to get security updates out so quickly.This issue was patched in only six (or 6.25 according to John O’Duinn) days. When a vendor ships security fixes quickly, it lowers the incentive for attackers to spend time developing and deploying an exploit for that issue. The window of opportunity for attackers is reduced and so is the potential to compromise users. So thanks you guys, for helping destroy the economics of malicious exploit development.

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Google will definitely launch its own branded handset based on Linux

Given that we're already pretty sure that Google has developed their own mobile OS based on Linux. DigiTimes' sources also note that Google is contemplating going with a 3G handset instead of EDGE for its initial foray into the cellphone market.

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USB 3.0 Brings Optical Connection in 2008

Intel and others plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than 10 times as fast by adding fiber-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires.

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IBM Jumping Back Into the Office Software Game - with FREE Apps

"I.B.M. plans to mount its most ambitious challenge in years to Microsoft’s dominance of personal computer software, by offering free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The company is announcing the desktop software, called I.B.M. Lotus Symphony, at an event today. The programs will be available as free download"

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Mozilla Launches New Messaging Company, Thunderbird MailCo!

In a blog post, Mitchell Baker, Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation board and CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, announced that Mozilla will be creating a new company to focus on email and messaging. David Ascher is joining Mozilla to lead MailCo. Mozilla will provide an initial $3 million dollars in seed funding to launch MailCo.

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OpenOffice.org 2.3.0 Released

Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it.

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Google Presentation - Googles PowerPoint app goes live

Google's long-rumored and eagerly anticipated PowerPoint clone has finally shipped. Although we've only had a chance to have a first look, here are some impressions. What's there: PowerPoint import, Versioning, Collaboration, Online presentation sharing. What's not there: Animations, Sound, Video, exporting to PowerPoint.

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Ubuntu Forums Firefox Plugin

Finding answers to stupid questions was never so easy!

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Live from Apple's "Mum is no longer the word" event in London

Engadget's live coverage of the UK iPhone launch...

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Microsoft loses anti-trust appeal

The European Court of First Instance has dismissed Microsoft's appeal in its long-running competition dispute with the European Commission. The court upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position.

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Free software made mandatory in India

"The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards."

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Winamp Goes Where iTunes Doesn't Dare

Winamp 5.5 (Beta) sports two new and potentially controversial features: support for mp3 blogs and the ability to stream your music collection over the Internet.

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Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal

Tomorrow's legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts surveyed this week by CNET News.com to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed.

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New Ipod Hash Cracked, Linux Supported Once Again

iPod Classic Will Be Supported

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Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Release Dates

In addition to Ubuntu 6-months stable releases and the next version of ubuntu is 8.04 with Code Name “Hardy Heron” but this release will proudly wear the badge of Long Term Support (LTS) and be supported with security updates for five years on the server and three years on the desktop.

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anySIM is here: open source GUI iPhone unlock app

We've seen a couple of early versions of GUI iPhone SIM unlock apps from the open source community, but it looks like the iPhone Dev Team's got its proper release in order.

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A Offline Gmail Client: Sweet

A report from India’s Hindustan Times indicates that Google is prepping an offline version of Gmail.

It’s claimed that a client has already been designed, is in testing, and runs (not surprisingly) on Google Gears. Google has previously offered an offline version of Google Reader using the Gears browser plugin. Other companies embracing the Gears platform include Zoho.

Although the story is unconfirmed by Google at this stage, it would be fair to presume that an offline version of Gmail happening is a given, the only question is when it will be available. Google continues to put together its jigsaw puzzle of office functionality as it builds a serious Microsoft Office competitor.

Sony's Dancing MP3 Player

Top 10 little-known Gmail features (Part 2)

Here are five more entries in my list of little-known features begun last week:

5. Smart links on the right
When you get an email that references an address, look to the right and you'll probably see a link from Gmail pointing you to a map of the address on Google Maps. Gmail also recognizes email text that refers to an event (e.g., 'dinner tomorrow at 8pm'), and will give you a link to add it to your calendar. It'll even pick up on package tracking numbers from UPS and link you directly to the tracking page, so you don't have to copy and paste the number. I really like this last one when I order stuff online and want the instant gratification of knowing a package is on its way.

4. Conversation update notification
It can be really annoying to write up a whole response to an email and click send -- only to discover that someone else has already responded. Gmail has a little feature that helps solve this problem. When you're replying to (or reading) a conversation, and someone else replies, a small notification window pops up to let you know. I sometimes think of it as the "prevent embarrassment" notification. Plus, it can save a lot of time by avoiding the series of follow-up emails needed to clear up the confusion.



3. Advanced search
Most people know that searching your archive is a huge part of what makes Gmail useful. But there are a few search features that you may not know about, which can be really handy. For instance, if I want to narrow down my search to only messages sent from Kevin, I can just add "from: Kevin" to the query. You can even search only for messages with attachments by including "has: attachments," or narrow by date with "after:" and "before:" Check out this whole list of advanced search operators.

2. Offline chat
Offline chat is another feature which makes chatting in the context of your email particularly useful. When you're chatting with a friend and they suddenly go offline, you can keep sending IMs and your friends will receive your messages the next time they open Gmail. The chat will show up as a new item in their inbox. And, of course, if you're still online, your friend can go ahead and reply by chat.

1. Create event
Since I use Gmail and Google Calendar at work (through Google Apps), I'm constantly emailing people about meetings, and scheduling them on everyone's calendars. When I'm writing an email to set up an event, I can actually do it all from within Gmail by clicking the "Add event info" link below the subject line. Then choose the time and location for the meeting or party. When you send the email, the event details will be added to to your Google Calendar, and Gmail will send an invitation to the email recipients to add it to their calendars as well.

iPhoneSIMfree goes retail, let the unlocking begin

After numerous delays and endless cries of "hoax!", it looks like the iPhoneSIMfree iPhone unlocking software is finally available for purchase from four online retailers around the world. Wireless Imports in the US, iPhoneWorldwideUnlock in Australia, 1digitalphone in Germany, and iPhone4arab in Saudi Arabia (currently down) have all purchased bulk licenses from the iPhoneSIMfree team and are selling individual unlocks for around $100 (Update: that price is just from the US etailer, it seems; looks like the Aussies are letting it go for under 50 bucks American. Also, the Hackint0sh community is already busy at work trying to snatch these sites' code as we speak). Go nuts, and let us know your initial experiences below...

Update: The Hackint0sh guys claim they will not be reverse engineering the iPhoneSIMfree software. Ok, well, whatever.

Apple iPod Touch Calendar Can't "Add" Appointments: Why, and What's Else is Being Crippled?

According to support discussions and their own description pages, Apple has removed the ability to add events in the iPod touch's calendar, even while it uses the same operating system and application frameworks as the iPhone [Updated after the jump]

After a lengthy discussion in Apple's support boards about an image published in iLounge's "The Beat is On" galleries, the company has removed the words "entering calendar events" from its US features page, as you can see in this screenshot:

However, the full text can still be read in other international pages (like Canada, United Kingdom, Spain or France), which still carry the original US english copy.

After apparently pulling Bluetooth functionality at the last second, it seems like Apple is trying to further create distinctions between the two devices, positioning the iPhone as a productivity platform and the touch as an entertainment device. Fortunately, if the move is confirmed in the final release of the product, the hackers will come later to the rescue.

[Update Sept. 10th 04:37AM]

A reader points out that Microsoft also does artificial product segmentation. Like with the Home edition of Windows, it includes the Internet Information Server component, which can't be used unless you hack the OS. However, this doesn't make artificial crippling right for the consumer.

I can fully understand Apple removing the CSR Bluetooth chip to make the iPod touch cheaper than the iPhone. It's a cost-saving measure, and they owe to their shareholders to save money and increase profits. But taking a line of code out of a program to make some people buy the iPhone is a dodgy and surprising move by Apple. It may be normal for Redmond, but certainly not for Cupertino. As with shareholders, they also owe their customers some respect.

And yes, it's Apple's choice and they can do whatever they want as a company. However, these practices are quite different from what Apple has been doing in the past with all their products, including Mac OS X vs Mac OS X Server. Segmentation is fine, but having a phone and EDGE and SMS and Bluetooth built in in the iPhone is enough feature differentiation to justify the current $100 price gap. Why limit a simple piece of software and risk customer alienation?

Obviously, there is a limit to product segmentation and the increasing uproar in Apple's discussion pages demonstrates that people don't get this kind of artificial crippling. Hopefully, Apple will get the message and change this before the product becomes available. [Thanks Jason]

Apple Sells 1 Millionth iPhone

After numerous delays and endless cries of "hoax!", it looks like the iPhoneSIMfree iPhone unlocking software is finally available for purchase from four online retailers around the world. Wireless Imports in the US, iPhoneWorldwideUnlock in Australia, 1digitalphone in Germany, and iPhone4arab in Saudi Arabia (currently down) have all purchased bulk licenses from the iPhoneSIMfree team and are selling individual unlocks for around $100 (Update: that price is just from the US etailer, it seems; looks like the Aussies are letting it go for under 50 bucks American. Also, the Hackint0sh community is already busy at work trying to snatch these sites' code as we speak). Go nuts, and let us know your initial experiences below...

Update: The Hackint0sh guys claim they will not be reverse engineering the iPhoneSIMfree software. Ok, well, whatever.

20+ Sidebar Plugins for Power Bloggers

27 Firefox Addons to Make You a Powerful Blogger

1 . Feed Sidebar - The Feed Sidebar is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that displays the new items from your Live Bookmarks in the sidebar.

2 . Flickr Sidebar - This Flickr sidebar is used for viewing and searching photo lists.

3 . Wordpress.com Sidebar - Get quick access to your wordpress.com account from your browser sidebar. Easy to use.

4 . Another Delicious Sidebar - A sidebar for accessing del.icio.us bookmarks. Now able to edit and delete links.

5 . Netscape Friends' Activity Sidebar - The Friends' Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on what stories your Netscape friends are submitting, commenting, and voting.

6 . Alexa Sidebar Again - It just retrieves the What's Related information from their free service.

7 . MetaTags - This sidebar displays page meta-information (metatags, links, etc.) Has automated search engine submission menu.

8 . Wikalong - Wikalong is a Firefox Extension that embeds a wiki in the Sidebar of your browser, which corresponds to the current page you are viewing.

9 . KeywordBar - Shows a sidebar with all bookmarks that contain a defined keyword

10 . FlashTracer - While running any .swf Flash file in your browser you can see all the output generated by the "trace" flash functions in this sidebar component.

11 . Content Preferences - displays widgets for modifying the Text Zoom, Page Style, and Character Encoding settings (which are normally housed in the View menu).

12 . Navibar - The Navibar Extension adds a new sidebar containing a tree-representation of the current website depending on a special sitemap format.

13 - EditCSS - Stylesheet modifier in the Sidebar.

14 - del.icio.us Complete - It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

15 . GMarks - includes a sidebar, a toolbar, a quick search with Home+Home similar to Google Desktop's Ctrl+Ctrl search, and full content search of your bookmarked pages.

16 . Twitbin - Twitbin allows for the sending and receiving of messages on twitter via your firefox sidebar.

18 . Toodledo - You no longer need to signin to our website just to add a quick todo.

19 . dragdropupload - A Sidebar allows to drop files from a listing.

20 . MediaPlayerConnectivity - Allow you to launch embed video of website in an external application with a simple click

21 . LinkCounter - Display a count of links of a web page and frames.

22 . Alexa Sparky - Get Alexa data in your statusbar!

23 . SearchStatus - Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

24 . RankQuest SEO Toolbar - quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site.

25 . PDF Download - if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader.

26 . Clipmarks - You can save your clips privately or publicly, email them to friends, or post them directly to your blog.

27 . ScribeFire - full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.








Credit to: http://blogtrench.blogspot.com for this great addons guide.

New Apple Ipods

Productivity enhancers for Thunderbird

As with Firefox, you can extend Thunderbird's functionality by installing extensions. Mozilla's official extension repository has quite a few nifty tools on offer, and which ones you choose to install depends entirely on your needs. There are, however, a few extensions that you might find indispensable no matter how you use Thunderbird.

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iPhoneSIMfree begins fulfilling bulk orders, apparently will not unlock end

Are you ready for it? Looks like iPhoneSIMfree is. A number of tipsters have sent us emails that they've received announcing the availability of the elusive software unlock -- delivery on Tuesday, 4th of September. Good news right? Maybe, but here's the tell:

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5 little-known Gmail features

Gmail has a bunch of lesser-known feature that can end up being very useful once you get to know them

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CNN confirms iPhoneSIMfree's iPhone SIM unlock hack

Independent verification of seemingly dubious claims makes the world go 'round, which is why we're a little thankful the iPhoneSIMfree crew has deigned CNN worthy of having the second shot at verifying their iPhone SIM unlock software.

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