Google intalks with twitter regarding a buyout - Industry rumour

Multiple sources have told that the negotiations are going on between Twitter and Google regarding its buyout. Recently, Twitter turned down offers of Facebook buying them out, for $500 million dollar. Google is offering them a big high amount as compared to Facebook and chances are high of Google owning Twitter.

French governemnt pushing ISPs to disclose downloaders details - An attempt to ban piracy

A new national surveillance program enlists ISP’s to monitor what users are doing. The creator or copyright holder would have access to this program. The ISP sends an email to that user to stop executing piracy. Afterward, they will send registered letter to that fellow but in case otherwise at the third step, they will completely cutoff his internet facility for one year or so. French lawmakers have also shown their interest in eliminating piracy and for that they voted last Thursday. Once the "Creation and Internet Law" is approved, it will go to the National Assembly for a final vote.

The UK and New Zealand have attempted to pass similar laws, but those efforts were struck down. The French government, however, has stronger ties to the media industry. According to France's entertainment industry, 450,000 illegal downloads take place each day causing loses of $10 million in royalties each year.

John Kennedy, CEO of international music industry organization IFPI said

"Over the last two years the French government has led the way in addressing this critical challenge. It has recognized that involving ISPs in addressing the massive flow of infringing content on their networks is not only essential to protect the rights of creators and producers, but can provide a sensible and proportionate solution that will work effectively in practice."

On the other hand, France socialist party has given their 180 degree opposite view on this; They said

"This is an assault on public and individual liberties."

The end consumers are also very worried about this law as they are the one who suffer at the end.

Nokia believes WiMax is dead - LTE is the new standard

Nokias' executive vice president thinks that WiMax era has ended, as the company has shown its interest in LTE, an upcoming standard.

Nokias’ spokesperson told the financial times that the company has decided to leave WiMax as a standard. Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of New Markets at Nokia said

"I don't think WiMax future is very promising. This is a classic example of industry standards clashing, and somebody comes out as the winner and somebody has to lose,"

Vanjoki put his money on LTE as the future of wireless broadband as most infrastructure providers have shown their keen interest in this technology. However, currently it only hold 26 network operator worldwide.

Vanjoki is quite hopeful that by the start of 2015, LTE network will cover the major share worldwide.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 leaks

Microsoft is currently working on SP2 for Office 2007 and could be ready to release a final version as early as this month.

Today an early copy has leaked to BitTorrent according to Windows Vista Magazine.

SP2 will support Open Document Format (ODF), XML Paper Specification (XPS) and Portable Document Format (PDF).

Microsoft releases Windows Demo Toolkit for Windows 7

Microsoft has recently released the “Windows Demo Toolkit Foundation Suite”. It helps corporate partners to demo windows 7 to valued customers or clients. The toolkit includes demos for Consumers and Enterprises. Whether selling Windows OS, Windows Live, or related products and services.

The Windows Demo Toolkit is available in the form of an ISO image which includes

1. Windows 7 Beta Ultimate (build 7000)
2. Windows Live Wave 3
3. Internet Explorer 8
4. Office 2007 Ultimate
5. Forefront Client Security
6. Windows Automation Toolkit
7. Application Compatibility Toolkit
8. Click-through demos
9. Pre-configured settings

You can download it from Microsoft Connect by joining the Windows Demo Toolkit program.

For more information please look at videos

Windows 7 Official video

Amazons’ Elastic MapReduce service

Amazon will launch Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables business, researchers, data analysts and developers to process vast amout of data cost effectively. It is, in other words, the numbers-crunching capability without the cluster setup and management. Prices are lower, too, starting out at $.015/hour.

The service is available in the US only.

IBM Lotuslive engage

April 7, IBM will commercially launch LotusLive Engage, the latest addition in social network-inspired business collaboration software.



Major features of Engage include a Web meeting space, with desktop sharing, recording, and security; instant messaging, with photo and file sharing; online file storage and sharing; and project tracking, to-do lists, and brainstorming. Price Waterhouse Coopers, Nortel Networks, and Penn State University are a few of the early users.

Multitouch devices can be made paper thin

BOFFINS have developed an inexpensive pressure-sensitive pad that creates images of objects that are in contact with it. It means that Inexpensive Multi-touch Pressure Acquisition Devices (IMPAD) can be made paper thin for portable devices. Boffins pressure sensitive touch pad is able to recognize the stress level. It is so sensitive that it can be used for virtual sculpting and painting and for a simulated mouse with left clicks, right clicks, and drags, as well as for musical instruments like a piano keyboard.

Intel and General electric - Future partners

GE and Intel have mutually agreed to meet and announce an alliance for better health care technologies. This time, the cooperation is targeting toward home health care. Intel has spent quite a few years on this technology and has lead the way in running pilot programs to see products through to implementation and to start benefiting people in need of care.

It seems that private organizations are now focusing toward new areas to build their revenue. Anyhow, American people are the front end beneficiaries of this hook up.

Intel’s new Xeon 5500 series - Nehalem' architecture

Intel’s new Xeon 5500 series uses the chip giant's 'Nehalem' architecture to effectively put a pair of Core i7 CPUs on a workstation motherboard. but at the same time Apple had launched a new Mac pro and it's architecture is different from previous launch.



Features of the product

Next-generation Intel® microarchitecture
Intelligent next-generation Intel® microarchitecture adapts to the workload, automatically increasing processor frequency for greater performance

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology
Better performance enabled by Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, increasing processor frequency and enabling faster speeds when conditions allow

Intel® Intelligent Power Technology
Lower energy costs while minimizing impact to performance by automatically putting processor and memory into the lowest available power state

Integrated power gates
Individual cores are reduced to near-zero power independent of other operating cores

Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)±
Virtualize different generations of Intel® Xeon® processor–based servers in the same pool to deliver peak performance during high-use periods and automatically reduce energy cost during low-use periods

Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration
Integrates multiple generations of Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers, improving flexibility for failover, load balancing, and disaster recovery

Intel® 64 architecture
Flexibility for 64-bit and 32-bit applications and operating systems

DDR3 memory support up to 1333 MHz
Up to 64 GB/s for three times the memory bandwidth over previous memory technology
Up to 144GB supports higher performance for data-intensive applications
Enhanced reliability, availability, and serviceability features

Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel® I/OAT)
Moves data more efficiently for fast, scalable, and reliable network performance
Ability to significantly reduce CPU overhead, freeing resources for more critical tasks

Enhanced reliability and manageability
Many memory controller features, together with PCI Express* RAS features, combine to help improve platform reliability vs. previous-generation platforms
New features include Error Correcting Code (ECC) system bus, new memory mirroring and I/O hot-plug

IBM deal with Sun: Who will buy Fujitsu servers?

As we have confirmed in our post "Another scoop in a bowl: SUN into IBM" that IBM and SUN is going to take place very soon. This is not only frightening to Microsoft but Fujitsu too as the future of SPARC system architecture is getting vague.

A Fujitsu America executive commented on this

"We continue to sell server-based products, we want to assure all our customers ... that product we sell in the SPARC line of products we will continue selling and maintaining them,"
Farhat Ali told Reuters, effectively saying that anyone who's already purchased SPARC-architecture servers from Fujitsu need not worry about long-term customer support. That isn't exactly saying the company will go forth with plans that seemed very ambitious just months ago, including beefing up its midrange SPARC server line.

Last October, Fujitsu announced the availability of its new mid-range T5440 Enterprise server, intended to bring SPARC architecture closer to the "M" part of the "SMB" customer base. It's a surprisingly high-performance server priced at around $45,000, designed at the time to take IBM head-on. IBM, being a principal provider of Linux, has a bigger interest in a lack of Solaris.

Netflix Blu-ray: Monthly fee is going to increase

Netflix has announced an increase in the monthly fee for subscriptions which include access to Blu-ray discs. Blu-rays discs offer subscribers access to high-definition television and movie content.

The increase in monthly fees will range from US$1 up to US$9 depending upon the plan a subscriber. Subscribers can avoid the extra charges if they remove the Blu-ray option from their account beginning on April 27, 2009.

Google free music service in china

Google has entered the digital music market in China this week with the introduction of a free but ad-supported service. Google is facing criticism due to this unpopular decision as such a music service is a bid to catch up with Baidu, A big compititor in chinese market holding 60% of market share, who already have an online music presence and this is something admitted by Google China president Lee Kai-Fu.

Music will be available from Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI, and Universal with 350,000 tracks.

Google is not planning to expand this free service outside of China.

Sony cheaper PS2 for gamers

Today, Sony has officially reduced the price of the PlayStation 2 to $99.99. The company Play station 2's library of titles will grow to almost 1,900, an impressive total by any metric.

John Koller, director of hardware marketing at SCEA, said, "With this new price, we intend to introduce a new generation of consumers -- some of whom weren't even alive when the system was first introduced in 2000."

This means the vast library of games will remain accessible to the public as PS3 has issues in backward compatibility.

Sony has touched many hearts with this great news.

Microsoft going to discontinue Encarta encyclopedia

Microsoft has announced that its Encarta encyclopedia is to be discontinued this year. You have got few months more until October 31, 2009 to enjoy it.

If you are fond of it, Do take its DVD as it is going to be history soon.