Google Gdrive competes with other online storage

Posted on February 2, 2012 at 7:01 am by admin

Data storage medium has been improving day by day. From the floppy disks we moved to CD’s and then to DVD’s and eventually to tiny USB drives. The latest in this data storage world is the Gdrive. Tech sites online have been talking about this Gdrive which is supposed to store all your data securely at one central location virtually. This process eliminates the need to carry any kind of storage medium whatsoever. But, people are skeptical about this storage medium. Why? several reasons. First, privacy becomes a big issue when data is stored online even though the Gdrive is supposed to be a pretty secure location online. Second, the amount of data stored is also an issue i.e. file size becomes extremely important. Lastly, the network security is yet another aspect that plagues the user’s mind when it comes to online data storage. Irrespective of all this, the e-gossip is that Google is coming up with the new storage concept called Gdrive. It will be your online hard drive. Similar online drives exist as of now. The Xdrive by AOL is an online storage drive. Xdrive offers a free 5GB of storage space while one can buy about 50 gigs per month at $9.95. Along with AOL, Microsoft and Apple have similar services. So, Google is a little behind when it comes to this technology. With that many online hard drives already existing, I think that most users will simply ignore Google online storage unless of course they come up with something really innovative.

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Project Beacon – a part of Facebook’s new initiative revealed

Posted on February 1, 2012 at 7:00 am by admin

There is much speculation regarding the new advertising network Facebook is going to announce on Tuesday at ad:tech in New York. The Facebook documents leaked revealed that the project named Beacon aims at getting more and more third party data about its users into its database. The Project Beacon makes an effort to work with third parties to gain access to very specific data. An example is if someone purchases a book from Amazon, under Beacon the purchase will be sent to Facebook and automatically included in the user’s News Feed. At the point of sale on the third party site, the user will see a ‘toast’ pop-up asking them if they approve the sale information being included in their Facebook News Feed. The feed information will include the user name, what they bought and where. Users also have a number of privacy options. This data can be used to serve targeted ads back to users on Facebook or elsewhere.

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Enter the Glubble World for better parenting

Posted on February 1, 2012 at 6:59 am by admin

The web is huge, full of a vast treasure of good things. But then with all the bright part of the web, it comes with some really dark alleys as well which need not be visited, at least not by underage children who are too immature to make wise decisions as to what’s wrong and what’s not. This can be really difficult for parents to monitor children and keep them away from venturing into those dark alleys of the world wide web which are best not tread by children. Though you can install a parent-control program to keep your children away from the part of the web which is not suited to children. Given the vast expanse of the web, these programmers have their limitations. They may not be able to include the new entrants of the web. Moreover, you may not want your child to visit some sites which the parent-control programmer may think to be innocuous. So, do parents need to keep standing by their child while she surfs the web and keep saying no to child-unfriendly sites. Not really. Now, parents have an option in the form of Glubble. Glubble is a free plug-in for Mozilla Firefox Internet browser aimed at providing a better child-safe browsing that can be controlled by parents and guardians. Unlike parent-control programs that maintain a blacklist of restricted websites, Glubble maintains a whitelist of websites suitable for children. Parents can add sites to this whitelist and/or create a list of ‘child-ok’ sites for their child. They may also use the list of other users for their children. Glubble does not only provide a safe web browsing for children, it also filters searchs and gives result only from approved list of site, which the Glubble developers call ‘Glubble World’ of the user. The Glubble free tool also improves the browsing experience of the entire family sharing the computer. It makes the Mozilla Firefox browser more user-friendly giving each family member a personalized homepage with individual login. If you are among those looking for good things on the web, why not give it a try. Even if you don’t have child to monitor and guide, you will love the value addition that Glubble will do to your Mozilla Firefox browser. All those Microsoft Internet Explorer users will have to wait till they get something like this in their web browser. Alternatively, they can switch to the open-source Mozilla Firefox browser to have a better experience of the web.

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RealSelf.com promises reality check on anti-aging solutions

Posted on February 1, 2012 at 6:58 am by admin

The quest to look young never dies and men and women try every new product that is released in the market without knowing how effective it is. More over none of the anti-aging solutions come cheap. So, how do you know how realistic the solution is and if it’s really worth investing a huge sum on such treatments? RealSelf.com is a social networking site that promises a reality check on the anti-aging solutions. The idea is to empower consumers to share experiences and help each other find the right anti-aging & personal beauty solutions: products, treatments, therapies and lifestyle choices. Realself Reviews offer real life consumer assessments of anti-aging solutions from teeth whitening to plastic surgery, from laser hair removal to wrinkle fillers and with RealSelf Expert Answers you can get your doubts cleared by dermatologists, surgeons, stylists, and beauty professionals. RealSelf.com helps consumers navigate the anti-aging and personal beauty marketplace by providing access to real-life consumer reviews and answers to important questions from a range of industry experts. Says Tom Seery, president and founder of RealSelf.com. So, whether you are interested in knowing if it’s worth going in for a ‘tummy tuck’ or a ‘face lift’, RealSelf.com is the place to get the reality check on anti-aging solutions.

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Coming soon: Windows Live IM service for Bebo community

Posted on February 1, 2012 at 6:55 am by admin

California-based Bebo has clubbed up with Microsoft to provide instant messaging services to its community members in the coming days. The deal marks a new beginning for Microsoft who always kept itself away from social networking. It is equally beneficial for Bebo in the wake of tough challenges from MySpace and Facebook. As per the deal, the software giant will extend its Windows Live Instant Messaging service to Bebo’s registered users. It means that Bebo users will be able to chat with the friends from Bebo community as well as outside people who are Windows Live IM users. At present, Windows Live Messenger has some 280 million active users per month. The Bebo members can now reach them. Here lies the benefit for Bebo, which is still struggling in USA despite claiming a dominating position in UK. The Birch couple’s founded social networking site has today considered as 85th most popular English website as per Alexa data and third popular social networking site according to Hitwise. However, it shares a meager 1.18 percent of web 2.0 market. I am sure the recent deal with Microsoft will enable Bebo to attract Live Messenger users towards its social networking.

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Yahoo Mail to get cool, new features

Posted on January 31, 2012 at 6:54 am by admin

In an effort to rule the web and attract more users, Yahoo would be seeing two major changes. As per a recent announcement, Yahoo Mail will witness two new additions: the new service that will make text messaging available on your mobile phones and the amalgamation of Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger, in a bid to make the service more convenient. Yahoo mail also plans to go global and upgrade from its beta version. However, the bad news is that the free text messaging will be available in US, Canada, India and the Philippines. Another new feature that will be seen in Yahoo Mail would be the integration of a lot of shortcuts. Locating them is also easy as they will be underlined with blue dots. The new text messaging that Yahoo is coming out with, will let you exchange IM’s and also convert emails into text messages or IM’s in a wink. Source: Mashable

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You Tube engineers fight online bullying

Posted on January 30, 2012 at 6:53 am by admin

Most of us are familiar with the video collection site called YouTube. It’s a place where you can share your videos and comments on the videos made by others. Recently, the online broadcasting site is working on its fight against Cyber bullying scheme. Engineers from You Tube vowed to do something against online bullying. So, they dedicated a whole new channel to the cause! Still wondering what falls under online bullying? Setting up offensive websites about their teachers as well as offensive text messages are just couple of instances of online bullying. Of course, they are different from your real life bullying: locker room taunts and getting punched, etc. Whatever it is, YouTube people seem to have taken a step to prevent the online or Cyber bullying. The new channel devoted to the cause is known as beatbullying. Initially, folks thought that this isn’t going to work. All it’s going to do is make the online bullies more aware of what they are doing. Furthermore, bullying is definitely a sensitive topic and can mess you up. Also, this kind of channel faces the legal aspect, censorship. However, despite of all these ‘barriers’, engineers at YouTube decided to move on with the beatbullying channel. I think this is a great effort on the part of the YouTube. Hopefully, it will create a positive impact on the folks around and stop the whole bullying thing.

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Japan to develop an alternative Internet technology

Posted on January 30, 2012 at 6:53 am by admin

Internet is soon reaching its limit. So, it is high time to find out an alternative to this networking technology. This is what Yoshihiro Onishi, assistant director at the Japanese communication ministry has strongly asserted. The Japanese researchers will come up with a new technology, which would replace internet by 2020. The new technology will address the security problems that we are confronting with the internet. The Japanese Communication ministry plans to set up an organization for the research work by the end of this year with the support from the private sector. Japan now joins with USA and other European countries who have already taken the initiatives to develop post-internet technology that could call for the replacement of current networking equipment demanding new software for computers. The increasing number of hacking and spamming problems in the last few years has demanded a new order in networking technology. The new network will replace the internet networking technology fully or partially. Thus, what could be the post-internet technology?

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Stumblers stumble upon new features

Posted on January 30, 2012 at 6:51 am by admin

For the people who are new to the web, StumbleUpon is a great website. It is basically an eBay startup that lets you tag multiple sites, and recommends the same to your friends. If you are keen on discovering more sites or just another net junkie like me, you might want to take a look at StumbleUpon. The StumbleUpon site provides you with four major options: Home, Sites, People and Videos. The latest addition to the site allows us to jump out of the toolbar and go straight to webpages. I consider this particular site to be a mini blog. Keywords are listed on the right, which allow you to pull up facts, figures and info on various items. This site tells us that converse to the popular belief, the technology does have a social aspect. Here, you can stumble upon 3,719,331 members who joined the internet site. You can contact, meet and share ideas, views and info with the members.The folks visiting the site get to use an extremely user friendly toolbar that allows them to do search the web. If you are bored with all this, you have the option to use the channel changer and check out newer sites. A real interesting aspect of this site is the site is the SearchReview system that comes along with it. This system lets you perform search along with a review. The star system tells you which link is closest to your search. The search engine built in this site is a pretty neat feature. The site also has a wide collection of videos. Altogether, the Stumble upon is a nifty search engine for the online stumblers. So, what are you waiting for? Start stumbling at StumbleUpon.com Image Credit:Profy

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Skype to provide high quality video in Windows 3.6

Posted on January 29, 2012 at 6:50 am by admin

Skype has teamed up with Logitech to offer high quality video services in its upcoming windows 3.6 version. The partnership with Logitech will provide Skype a strong platform to cater needs of the common customers for whom, accessing high quality video calls are expensive. The high quality video includes VGA-quality video calls, image description and clarity. The customers don’t require to purchase or install any video-conferencing equipment other than a 2.0-GHz dual-core processor, a gigabyte of RAM, 384 Kbits/s Internet bandwidth and Logitech webcams such as the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, and the QuickCam Orbit AF. The above three webcams feature a 2.0 Mpixel sensor, an integrated mic, Logitech LightRight 2 technology and an integrated autofocus. The Logitech QuickCam software version 11.5 is a free downloadable application, while the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 and Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks webcams are available for $99.99. The price of Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF is $129.99. Skype will launch its Skype 3.6 for windows this month. It is a free downloadable software supporting 28 languages. Interestingly, Skype’s video package is comparatively economical than Microsoft’s Unified Communications offer. The latter demands numerous servers and thousands of dollars to get started. Therefore, Skype may get an edge in the field of unified communication. Image: Sfgate

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