Microsoft Surface Computer

Last Wednesday, Microsoft surprised us, by officially launching its Surface Computer.

Yes its true……..

It was un-believable at first sight, when I saw the screen getting dissolved with a human touch. Being in news for more than a year now, Microsoft Surface Computer (the name as given by Microsoft) as gained lot of prominence. Just Imagine, ordering a coffee with your fingers in a restaurant.



It is just a touch screen, which is re-designed as a magical screen by Microsoft. You don’t need a keyboard to type and no mouse for pointing. The surface computer acknowledges your gestures, you can slide icons on screen. The devices which it is made up of are (Scanner, touch screen, modem and series of infra-red cameras…) touch screen senses the electronic object placed on the screen, scanner reads the bar code on the objects and modem communicates with any wifi enabled device. For example, if you place your wi fi enabled camera on it, you will get all the photos displayed on the screen without having to do any thing. More over, you can re-size your photos just by squeezing it on the screen, if you want to move this photos onto some other device, you can just place that device on the screen and slide the photos to that device. This computer works with the special version of Windows Vista.




According to Microsoft, Surface computer recognizes multiple gestures at a time. You can place your camera and your friend's camera on the screen. Surface computer recognizes these devices with its scanners and electronic modem and displays all the features beside those devices. Moreover, you can even download features from one device to other just by sliding your fingers on the screen.

Presently Surface is a 30” screen, looks like a 30” screen placed on a table. Microsoft is selling Surface computer in between $5,000 and $10,000, but prices are expected to go down with smart technologies and for home usage and very soon we will be saying buy buy to our traditional laptops.


Availability

You can find Surface computer at few of the Microsoft partners like T-mobiles USA, Harrah’s Entertainment inc, Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide inc, Sheraton Hotels, International Game Technology


Read more

Microsoft's Official Surface Computer Site

Watch the amazing video below

NOTE: You should have latest flash player to view this video


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Download Micromedia Shockwave Player

Google Has Acquired FeedBurner

Not sure whether you have noticed a small change on Feedburner.com about this merge. Yes this is true; I have mentioned in my post earlier that, Google FeedBurner merge is in rumors. This rumor has turn out to be true. You can read all the advantages that Google will be getting with this merge in my post here




I am very happy with this deal, infact evrybody is happy with this deal. Very soon, Google will be integrating FeedBurner with Google Analytics or with Google Adsense. Now we can get all my subscribers at one place. Overall we get following services in one place.


Mails, Spreadsheets, photos, groups etc...

Adsense account and its reports

Analytics reports

The above features already exist. One new and most welcomed feature will be My subscribers count and hits being added to my Google bucket.

Isn’t it a very cool feature? Now you can stick to one resource for Blogging, for Mailing, and for promoting your Blog or site and that resource is Google.


But see the clever fox behind the door, FeedBurner was started in 2003, within last 4 years it has grown only $10M. A 10 Million Dollar company being sold at 10 times its price is like a dream come true for FeedBurner.


Wow.....


This is because FeedBurner has all the inventory of the websites and its subscribers in its database. Looking onto this it will be easier for Google to integrate this service with its existing tools like Analytics or Adsense with some minor modifications. This was the best option instead of starting the all new service name Adsense RSS Burner. No doubt, this deal is not a loss for Google.


This deal brings happiness not only for us (Bloggers) but also for advertisers. If you have read my post about this deal, there I have mentioned about the disadvantage which these advertisers were facing with FeedBurner as FeedBurner will not display any advertisement in whichever reader the visitor is reading your post. Now Google will remove this feature as it will bring lots of bucks in its pocket.



There are lots of developments to come in Google…….

There we go, Aaron Brazell has posted a letter of this Deal, check it out below

Open Letter to Google, FeedBurner

RealPlayer 11 In News

The newly launched RealPlayer Blog reports that RealNetworks have launched their new RealPlayer which can download videos in a single click from Youtube, Google, Yahoo, AOL et… The Beta version of this player will be available in public from this month (dates not specified).

According to RealNetworks, this player has the facility to integrate with video hosting websites like Youtube etc.. Users can download the videos in different formats including Flash, Windows Media, Quick time and offcourse Real. You can also burn CD’s, however, to burn the DVD’s you have to get the full version ($30) for offline viewing.








Legality

The company says, they respect the copyright policies. This Player will download the contents if it not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management). Else it will not download the video. Isn’t it a very legal feature. But I think, unless some legal copyright policies are enforced on websites which offer free contents to its viewer like Youtube, this Player is not used to its extent. Till that time viewers will continue to download free contents on Youtube, which includes movies, music videos and TV shows which is not legal.




RealPlayer is the most downloaded player available on internet, used to view videos or listen to audio for innumerable sites. Real Networks says, about 1.5 Million copies of RealPlayer are downloaded daily. The good feature about this new Player is that, you don’t have to open the player to download the videos and even the website from which you want to download contents do not have to do any thing. All the homework is done by this player which will add a pop up button to the window on the browser (generally on the contents being viewed in Flash or any other player) asking you to download. Also, if the file is protected by DRM, then it will display “This video cannot be downloaded”. You will get the reason if you click on that button.

Future Developments

Real Networks is also planning to develop the upgraded version of this player which can upload the contents on web and can even transfer online contents to their Ipods or any personal media device.

Apple Ipod May Go Wi-Fi This Year

A product which has been rumored for almost a year now.

Earlier this year, Apple, one of the leading manufacturers of ipods and other hardware products announced its new range of ipods, i.e… a Wi-Fi enabled ipod. And here we go, after selling its 100 millionth ipod last month there is a good news from Apple. Apple’s rumorist Digi Times (as pointed out by engadget ) announces the new range of ipods from Apple. But mind you, Digi Times is a site which spreads the news of latest products form Apple which fail to develop. Now it reports that Apple ipods may go Wifi this year. This was in news from quite some time now. Digi Times is the primary manufacturer of most of the Apple’s products. They report that Foxconn will manufacture this finished ipod from Apple which will have Wi-Fi enabled.



But till now, there is no news about the specification of our favourite device with such a nice facility. We would not be able to guess whether the Wi-Fi ipod will be a touch screen or a PDA like device. But imagine, if your ipod is Wi Fi enabled, then you can download music on the go. But I think that if at tall a product like this is developed, it should have a stable battery, not the traditional batteries used in present ipods. There is also a concern about the keypad. Generally Wi Fi networks are authorized zones, to enter into which, you have to enter the key codes and typing it using a small keypad of present ipod is very difficult. Looking into all these concerns, Apple must be bringing some changes in its present models of ipod.

No body knows, What’s going on inside Apple. Also if we look at other launches from Apple this year, the major launch is its iphone to be released in june this year, which has Wi-Fi support.



Microsoft was the first player in the market to enable Wi Fi on a portable device like ipod, that was not an ipod but a music player rather. Seeing this there are couple of other players like Sandisk already showcasing it’s Wi Fi enabled devices while Samsung and Sony are preparing to enter the booming market.


Apple was in news this year with most of the new happening with its launches and products. Also the first virus to infect an ipod was developed by some bad guys. Seeing this Apple has released security updates (offcourse it is not a new service)


Related Posts


Play Whatever you like to

Security updates for your Apple product

Apple ipod MP3 Player

The Apple Store (U.S)

Good Practices to Shoo... Spammers

Now a days, every communication is on internet which is very vulnerable but a fastest means of communication. There is a possibility that some un-unknown sender will send a junk mail to you. A junk mail is called spam, it can be an un-wanted SMS in your mobile or a comment on your blog, mail in your inbox. Did you got a mail from a person, whom you do not know and did not met with. This is spamming, read the History of spam.








Any thing which is un-knowing or which you do not want is a spam. This could be a mail, a comment on your website etc. Spam can be from a individual sender or an organization.

Organizations ???

Yes there are some organizations which send spams to the e-mails addresses harvested by spammers. Offcourse that is not spamming for organizations rather seen as a means of advertising, but that is a spam for us.

Why do people do Spamming




There is nothing specific about this, but sources say that spamming is a hobby for some spammers and it is also a source for promotion of a product or a company. Like creating a virus and infecting a pc is a Fun for some of its creators, in the same way, spamming is fun for some.



Volume of Spam on Internet

According to Microsoft present CEO, Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates receives four million e-mails per year, most of them being spam. At the same time, Jef Poskenzer, owner of the website acme.com was receiving over one million spam emails per day. According to Sophos developer of e-mail, and network security products such as anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-virus, last year US topped the rank of most spam receiving state. When we compare the statistics based on the continents, it was Asia with 40 percent.



Spamming is illegal in some countries and legal (with some guidelines) in some. Infact, in Australia, there is a penalty of 2000 USD for individual spammer or 900,000 USD for corporate spammers.








SPAMHAUS hosts the updated list of all the top spammers across the world.


How Do Spammers Get your E-mail Address ?


As we have read above, there are different types of spammers, some do this for fun, some to take revenge etc... Some spammers will be professionals like virus developers. These spammers will create a script or program to find your e-mail address. These programs are called spambots or spam spiders which will crawl through your site to find any @ symbol or any .com like word. If they find such things on your site, will store it to harvest the e-mail address to be spammed. There are other ways in which your e-mail address can be spoofed like hackers spoof your IP address.


How Do I Stop Spamm



We cannot stop spam but we can protect our e-mail address from being spammed. But remember, once you are on the database of spammers then it is very difficult to get out. There are steps in which you can work even if your e-mail address is spammed. Thanks to some of the free services on web which I will be mentioning below

There are many anti-spam softwares, most of them free downloads are available for download on net. Detecting spam based on the content of the e-mail, either by detecting keywords such as “Viagra”, “Cialis” or by statistical means is very popular. If your anti-spam engine is tuned with these type of keywords then you have stopped 10 percent of spamming. But if the word is say (specialist) then this can be mistaken with "Cialis" by some anti-spam engines. That means, if your friend send a joke mail to you mentioning a word “Viagra” in it, them that mail will be treated as a spam by these anti-spam softwares.


Tools to Protect from Being Spammed


As I have mentioned above, Spam spiders look for symbols like @ or .com, to harvest your e-mail address in their pool. So, when ever you mention your e-mail address on a website or blog, write it as

Virasat Dot Khan AT Google Dot Communication.

More such techniques are mentioned by Amit in his blog Digital Inspiration
Postini is a paid service for mail forwarding. This is generally used by corporate organizations today.

Hide your e-mail address published on websites from Spambot. Spambots are the spam spiders which will crawl your site to spoof your e-mail address to hack it or to spam it.

Spambox and mailexpire are also a useful tools. Not to protect from being spammed rather to get important mails from un-known senders. Spambox and mailexpire creates a temporary mailbox in their domain which will direct all the mails sent to that temporary address to your official e-mail address. So, you can give this mail address to the un-known vendor. The best part of this mail address is that, it will expire within the period which you have mentioned. This is a free service, check it out. Thanks to Amit who covered these tool on his blog.

One of the tools CAPTCHAs covered by Amit in his blog is also a good tool to protect your inbox from spammers.

Read more about Spamming

Make your e-mail address less vulnerable to spammers

Hide your e-mail address on websites from spammers

Spam Hunters become a Digg Spammers Best Friend

Spam (Electronics) by Wikipedia