Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Top 10 biggest Tech stories of 2008
Top 10 biggest Tech stories of 2008
In the year 2008 Tech industry has seen lot of ups and downs. Starting from Microsoft proposed acquisition of Yahoo to launching of Apple’s iPhone; Tech world has seen lots of new things in year 2008. As the year 2008 coming to end, let us sum up some of the BIG stories in tech world in this year.
Techmeme.com, the technical news aggregator website has come up with Top 10 biggest tech stories of the year 2008. The data for this has been aggregated by the site from various sources and is manually compiled for creating this list.
Following are the Top 10 “biggest” tech stories of 2008.
1. Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share
The story at the top of the Techmeme’s charts for 2008 was Microsoft’s ultimately futile attempt to purchase Yahoo. The initial shock of Microsoft’s $44B offer - not to mention the ungodly hour which the news was released - caused a seismic wave to pierce the heart of Sunnyvale and startle everyone from San Francisco to Seattle.2. Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld
Just a few weeks ago, Apple decided to bow out of an industry conference MacWorld, like many of its peers and colleagues. The vaunted gathering which launched the iPhone, the Apple TV, and a rainbow’s worth of iPods would be sans official support of the Cupertino fruit company starting in 2010.3. Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project
Browser wars are back! Or so people thought in early September, when Google launched Chrome, its secret project to topple Microsoft’s exploit-addled Internet Explorer. Huh, here’s a twist: perhaps it’s Firefox, the browser developed by Mozilla, Google’s neighbor and dependent, which is really in Chrome’s sights. (How do you react when your benefactor switches from patron to competitor?) Oh, but nevermind the competition, this thing is slick, lightning-fast, and, brand-new. Wait, whaddya mean it’s only for Windows?4. To Our Developers
Everyone loves the iPhone. But better than owning an iPhone is profiting from other people who have them. In early October, Apple revised its developer terms to rescind a cumbersome non-disclosure agreement, allowing curious coders to share their findings amongst each other. A win-win for both Apple, who placated its popular App Store suppliers, and developers, who concentrated their brains and created successful masterpieces like iFart.5. Google Is Taking Questions (Spoken, via iPhone)
With every developer and her sister getting into Apple’s iPhone App Store game, might as well expect tech’s giants to play along, right? In mid-November, Google did just that, releasing its Voice Search as an application.6. Google to buy Valve
Sometimes a rumor just is too good to pass by, or too outrageous not to debunk, and that’s what happened with a mid-October report about Google buying games-maker Valve, creators of Half-Life and Counter-Strike. It turned out to be false, but not before a lot of questions were raised.7. Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits
Downloaders rejoice! The nefarious RIAA decided in the midst of the holiday season to drop its policy of suing the pants off of people for peer-to-peer sharing of songs.8. Google, Microsoft Said To Be Preparing Bids For Digg
Social discovery site Digg was Silicon Valley’s most eligible startup of 2008. Rumors of an acquisition first surfaced in March and heated up again over the summer, but ultimately fizzled out. In the fall, Digg raised a $28.7M Series C round and kept its independence for at least one more year.9. Introducing Windows 7
Microsoft’s upcoming OS - its apology for the disappointing Vista? - was officially announced in mid-October. After lackluster launches from operating systems with cutesy names like Vista and Me, the wise simplicity of Windows 7 being named, well, Windows 7, was enough to propel this story up the charts.10. iPhone 3G Launch Date Confirmed
The most anticipated gadget of 2008 was, hands down, the iPhone 3G. Apple stayed mum on the gadget upgrade, officially announcing the shiny new toy at a WWDC speech in June. But rumors and eager early adopters clamored for any news they could find.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Pasanga - Movie review
Very good family movie with lots of fun and personal touch. Innovative ideas have been exhibited throughout the film. Tamil slang used in the conversation of various character give extra flavour to the movie and takes the viewers to “right into the center of the Tamil country - Viraachalai” feeling. Director has proved that story and dialogue are key to the success of any movie rather than just big budget or big star cast. He has consciously avoided traditional masala songs and fights. New comer Director Pandiraj deserves our appreciation. Music is scored by James Vasanthan.
The director narrates the whole story from a childs perspective. The school life in the movie starts with the introduction of Jeeva (Sriram), the son of a government school teacher, as the local bully and his side-kicks (Pakkada & Kuttimani). Anbu (Kishore), the new kid is transferred from a private school to the government school due to financial difficulties at home. The story deals with the friendship, love, enimity, parenting, family relationship and competition between the kids.
Scenes move on with the events and skirmishes within their gangs in the school. Sweet love story running parallel between Anbu’s uncle - Meenakshisundaram (Vimal) and Jeeva’s elder sister - Sobikannu (Vega). The love story has been narrated very well and the dialogues between Meenakshi and Sobikannu was simple, touchy, funny and impressive. Good to watch their comments and chats with reference to cell phone and ring tones. The scuffle between Anbu and Jeeva resulting in a rift between their respective families is something everybody can relate.
Later in the second half, Anbu’s parents have a misunderstanding which affects their kids performance in school. Here comes Jeeva’s father who gives some simple valuable advise to Anbu’s father. Also the love story gets a nod from both
the families.
Even the marriage proposal fails to brings back to life the lost friendship of Anbu and Jeeva. Was their friendship revived - forms the.
Kudos to Director, Producer and Story Writer - for taking the risk to make a unique and wonderful movie. A “do not miss” movie from the Kodambakkam industry.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Turn Your Home Computer into a Web Server in 2 Minutes
You may find this technique useful even if you are not a very tech-savvy user.
Before getting into the actual process, let’s look at a couple of real-world situations that explain why you may want to turn your home computer into a web server.
Situation #1. Say you have music MP3s, documents and other important files on the hard drive of your home computer. If you turn this home computer into a web server, you will be able to access all these files from office or any other Internet connected machine including your mobile phone.
Situation #2. You have some personal photographs that you want to share with other family members. You can either upload these pictures online to a site like Flickr or better still, just convert the computer into a web server. Now you can connect the camera to the computer, transfer the digital pictures to some designated folder and they’ll instantly become available to your friends and family anywhere in the world.
Situation #3. You want to host a website on the internet but the web hosting jargon like FTP, DNS, etc. is way too complex for you. The workaround therefore is that you setup a web server on your home computer (it’s easy) and then host a website in seconds without spending a single penny on external web hosting services.
Now if any of the above reasons look convincing enough, here’s how you can convert your Windows, Mac or Linux PC into a web server in less than two minutes - no technical knowledge required.
Go to labs.opera.com, download the Opera Unite software and install it. Congratulations, you are now running a web server on your machine and just need another minute to configure local file folders that you want to share with others over the internet.
Here’s an illustrated screenshot of the configuration panel - nothing technical here again.
Start the Opera Web browser (yes, that’s also you web server now) and enable the Opera Unite service from the lower left corner. Now double click the File Sharing link and select the folder whose content you want to share on the web. Any file or folder inside this folder can now be accessed over the internet - you can either use a public URL or specify a password for private sharing.
The following screencast video has more detailed instructions on how to get started with Opera Unite or you may refer to the User Guide if you get stuck somewhere.
Opera Unite looks pretty useful but there are other services around that can also do pretty similar stuff. For instance, both PurpleNova and Dekoh Dekstop enable users share content on the Internet directly from the hard drive without having to upload it anywhere.
Update: It’s important to note that your computer must be in running state and also connected to the Internet for others to download files and web pages since Opera Unite streams content directly from your machine - it doesn’t upload or caches anything to its own servers. Give it a shot.Monday, June 22, 2009
Hats off to Saina Nehwal !!
Ace shuttler Saina Nehwal survived a gruelling battle with Chinese Lan Lu to advance to the final of the Indonesian Open Super Series in Jakarta.
Sixth-seed Saina beat seventh-seed Lu 25-23, 21-19 to set up a title clash against Chinese third-seed Lin Wang in Sunday's final.
World number three Lin beat eighth-seed Xingfang Xie 21-19, 21-13 in another semi-final.
In an edge-of-the-seat match, which saw fortunes fluctuating between the two, it was Saina who held her nerves to emerge the winner.
In the first game, Saina and Lu battled tooth and nail and were on even keel, moving from 13-13 to 23-23 before the Hyderabadi sealed the game.
Not willing to take it lying low, Lu made a dramatic comeback in the next game and raced away to 0-5 but the world number 8 Indian clawed her way back into the game to first draw parity at 13-all and then after more see-saw battle, pocketed the match.