Mozilla’s Personas reaches 5 Million downloads..
Jun 6th
The Personas community has welcomed over 5 million downloads and over 13,000 gallery designs.
The Mozilla Labs team has announced that in only ten short weeks since the Personas launch, the Personas community has welcomed more than 5 million downloads! The downloads have been worldwide, with approximately 60% of them coming from outside of the United States. The community has welcomed more than 13,000 designs from nearly 9,000 artists.
It is community of artists and developers have evolved the product in remarkable ways.
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People can more easily access, discover, and share art.
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Artists can more easily create and promote their art.
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Community members can more easily collaborate and contribute to the project.
- I personally use Personas but never got chance to design one for me. I will do it soon..
WordPress 2.8 release schedule on June 10th
Jun 6th
WordPress – A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
The new version, 2.8 has taken a long time before the release date has been set. It was originally planned for April, then May, now June.
Ryan Boren announced on Wednesday that the developers were hoping for the content management system to be released on Wednesday 10th June.
The new version will include a built-in theme installer, just like the current plugins installer that arrived with 2.7. Not only that but a better permalink system, new icons and an updated admin color scheme, a better widgets API among other things. and an even more controllable user management system.
The most interesting thing is that WordPress versions have a history of being named after famous jazz musicians. Version 2.7, the most recent, was named ‘Coltrane’, who was famous for improvisation, due to the sheer ability to customise the admin interface. 2.7 recently had a small update, and was re-numbered to 2.7.1.
There is news for WordPress 2.9 as well, WordPress said:
WP 2.9 will require MySQL 4.1.2 or greater. This is raised from the current requirement of 4.0.
Checks will be added to the automatic upgrader that will prevent upgrading to 2.9 if MySQL < 4.1.2 is being used. The upgrader will also issue a notice that suggests asking the host to upgrade MySQL to meet the minimum requirement.
There have been two betas of WordPress released already, the first on May 16th, and the second on May 23rd. I can’t wait for the new version, and I’m sure the other millions of bloggers can’t either. Lets hope for the release on date given by WordPress.
Windows 7 upgrades pricing leaks; much much cheaper
Jun 6th
It is reported that Widows 7 prices have been leaked. The memo is legitimate and accurate, Best Buy will allow customers to preorder Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99 and Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $99.99 bye the end of June.
It seems that these prices are recommended retail prices, and not a special Best Buy discount offer, then what it could mean is Microsoft will be taking quite an aggressive Windows 7 pricing strategy. The original retail price of Vista Home Premium Upgrade was $129.95 and Vista Business Upgrade (nearest equivalent of Professional) was $199.95, ~60% and 50% cheaper respectively.
Even if this was a Best Buy promotional offer, Microsoft cant bear a loss on each sale so retail prices should still be cheaper than Vista.
If we take these comparisons between upgrade versions and impose them onto full editions, then Windows 7 Home Premium could cost ~$99.99 (Vista $269.99), and Windows 7 Professional $149 (Vista $299). If these predictions are true, then Windows 7 could be quite the offer. If not, then you know where to order from to get the best deals on 7.
Similar if not exactly the same deal was also offered for the introduction of Windows Vista which could indicate this be an time-limited offer and will not reflect the retail price of Windows 7.
Newzealand to get Windows 7 first
Jun 5th
During the course of this week, we informed you about the release date for Windows 7. Microsoft during this week informed and confirmed that NewZealand and Australia will be the first countries whose retail stores will be getting Windows 7 on 22nd October. The reason that NewZealand will get Windows 7 first and then Australia is due to the placement of the respective countries in the International Date Line. Yesterday a Microsoft spokesperson said:
Our understanding at this time is that the availability of Windows 7 will ‘follow the sun’ on Thursday October 22.As such, we’re excited that the first retail sales globally of Windows 7 will take place in New Zealand and Australia as we cross the dateline ahead of other markets.
Many large Australian organizations have expressed interest in the latest operating system sensation from Microsoft and have started examining it. These Australian organizations include:
- National Australia Bank
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia
- Centrelink
Even a company of quite large magnitude and structure like Telstra has signalled their clear intentions of migrating to the Windows 7 platform eventually.
Microsoft Australia at the current stage was unable to confirm and provide details as to what upgrade programs would be available to locals. At the global stage, Microsoft has confirmed, without digging deeper and providing details has highlighted its intentions to offer some sort of technology guarantee to all those who buy Vista compatible machines close to Windows 7 launch to get a free or discounted copy of the new operating system
As always pricing details will be set and decided by the individual PC makers. However Microsoft did say that Vista Home Premium and higher-priced editions will be eligible for the upgrade program. So users who use Vista Home Basic won’t be able to benefit from the upgrade program.
Microsoft updates Bing to stop porn access
Jun 5th
Very recently Microsoft launched it new search engine called Bing. People and community is very happy about the release.
Fox news criticized about the about Bing, claiming that it provides “a cornucopia of pornography” and that it is easy to transform “the search engine into [your] very own pornographic Web site.”
But there are certain issues discussed about this video clip preview feature. Built into the search engine to give it the edge over its competitors, the feature allows users to search for videos, and by getting the cursor over the video to get a small preview of what the user can expect to see.
This has upset a lot of network administrators who want to block sexual content from being watched in the work place.
In order to fulfill their requirements Bing has been updated with more restrictions options that disable video previews, but as a temporary fix, Microsoft has released a string of code for administrators to enforce the strictest search settings.
A finalized update will be released shortly as Microsoft tackles the issue, but as for now the end user will not be able to search key words related to sexual content such as “porn”, prompting the user with the warning “The search [porn] may return explicit adult content. To view these videos, turn off safe search.”
What is Google Page Speed?
Jun 5th
Making websites more speedy will make them easy to load and display. So here comes the solution with Google Page Speed.
Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.
Page Speed is a tool used to improve the performance of web pages — it’s a Firefox Add-on integrated with Firebug. When you run Page Speed, you get immediate suggestions on how you can change your web pages to improve their speed.
Page Speed automatically optimizes images for you, giving you a compressed image that you can use immediately on your web site.
It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn’t actually used to display the page, which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display.
Page Speed’s suggestions are based on a set of commonly accepted best practices that we and other websites implement.
By using Page Speed, you can:
- Make your site faster.
- Keep Internet users engaged with your site.
- Reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs.
- Improve the web!
Google Mobile App now for Nokia S60 smartphones
Jun 4th
The development of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 smartphones, which was just launched yesterday, has addressed three aspects of an issue we hear about on a regular basis: immediacy.
1. Immediacy of access
Quick key mechanism launches the application directly from the home screen, making search, Google Maps, Gmail, and other Google mobile services available immediately.
2. Immediacy of location
Google Mobile App for Nokia Series 60 smartphones comes with location awareness built in. If you use the My Location feature, you’ll get local search results that relate to where you are.
3. Immediacy of query formulation
The dual approach is followed to help make query formulation little efficient. First, your search history is available so that it’s easy to repeat queries. Second, query based suggestions is offered on what has been entered so far to get you to your results as quickly as possible.
In Google Mobile App, an item is provided in Settings to let people choose what best suits them.
Download Google Mobile on your phone’s browser.
Wolfram Alpha or Google Squared?
Jun 4th
Google Labs just revealed Google Squared, shows how Google are continuing to evolve in the presentation of search results.
As we all know some information is easy to find but for some of the information we have no clue. Just for example: if you want to learn the rules of golf, you can search Google for [golf rules] and get a list of relevant web sites right at the top. Some questions can be more complex, requiring you to visit ten, perhaps twenty websites to research and collect what you need.
Lets consider another example, if someone is a big fan of roller coasters. He will definitely use Google to search for information about roller coasters, such as which ones are the tallest, fastest, and have the most loops. Finding this information used to take multiple searches — like finding the roller coaster sizes on one website, heights on another, and speeds on a third. By manually comparing the sites, one can get the information one is looking for but it is cumbersome .
Google Squared, a new feature just released in Google Labs, you can find my roller coaster facts almost instantly.
The Google announcement declares that ‘Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify:
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Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes (we call them "Squares" for fun).
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Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you’re interested in.
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See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
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Save and share Squares with others.’
Is it similar to Wolfram Alpha? Consider that roller coaster example.
At the same time, this is what you get if you query Wolfram Alpha for ‘roller coasters’:
Google Squared looks interesting though as it seems to be able to offer more stuctured results / sense from the masses of information that Google now indexes.
Bing’s Video feature likely to cause concern for parents
Jun 4th
Uptil now Bing, the latest search engine by Microsoft has been liked by many including me. The Bing includes a sleeky and streamlined interface, yields powerful and productive search results and also a very cool Video feature. However there is some problem associated with this cool Video feature. However I would like to make it very clear that it is not related to the problems associated with the video functionality. The Video feature is somehow providing easy access to pornographic and inappropriate videos and sites. This might alarm the parents for reasons well understood by everyone. Even employeers would be alarmed by this.
Although this video feature makes it possible for the user to see a thumbnail of the video without having to leave the search site. The same feature is making access to inappropriate content quite easy as well. With Bing, one can easily search for porn related sites and the results will shows the sites alongwith the associated thumbnail videos. When a user hovers the mouse over that thumbnail, the thumbnails play for a few seconds (around 30 seconds).
This feature is enabling the viewers specially children to view porn videos without having to visit the porn site. To add to the problem, this feature makes it all the more difficult for the parents to control viewage of pornography since the users never shift out of the search engine.
There is no denying that this video feature is attractive but the highlighted problem is creating definite problems and represents quite a significant difference between Bing and other search engines. Bob Kessinger, who happens to be the vice president of security company CyberPatrol.
You’re presumably on a search site. You could be presented with 20 or 30 thumbnail images that the video plays right into the browser. Employees or kids could be accessing that content without ever going to the host URL.It really presents a problem when you have inappropriate material.
There is Bing’s Age verification tool but it is not effective,it seems to be helpless in blocking underage users to access inappropriate sites and content. It is very easy to bypass this age verification test. Kessinger added:
That doesn’t work in a work setting either. Everybody presumably is over 18. You still don’t want your employees to go there.
Here you have it, Microsoft has a pressing issue in its hand, and the IT giant must be quick to respond to this issue and resolve it. Let us hope that Microsoft is listening.
Some funny things about Google Suggest
Jun 3rd
According to the post published at LA Times. As we all know computers can’t think to a certain extent because they have to do what they get. Sometime computers can be unintentionally funny. Check out the funny things about Google’s search suggestion feature.
Google suggest was Launched in December 2004 as a beta product. Suggest wasn’t integrated into Google.com or various Web browser toolbars until last year.
The suggest works like this: type a partial search like "Mansoor Ahmed is" or "Charles is" into Google.
Anyway, if those guesses are entertaining enough, snap a picture of the list and submit it to your local social website.
Type "Charles Darwin is" and you’ll find that in addition to suggesting that the British scientist is, yet again, an idiot — the words "wrong," and "satan" may be just as likely to satisfy some online searchers.
For those too lazy to punch the previous two terms into Google, the search engine irreverently suggests that Barack Obama could be an idiot, a Muslim, a socialist, the Antichrist, "hot" or your new bicycle — whatever that means.
Google offers a similarly variegated list of characteristics for Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, which swings from racist, to idiot and back to the more flattering "nice."
Similarly you can search for “Geek is ”
One of the Digg classic is "how long does …" which shows that search engines may be more likely to be used to skirt a drug test than to learn how long it takes to boil an egg.
Fail Blog, a bulletin board for the world of the tragically funny, caught on to the meme with an example: "I am extremely …"
I am smiling, am laughing rather while referring and writing this post, we will enjoy it too. Keep smiling and always be happy.
