Tech News - Goggle Challenges Wikipedia With "Knol"

Here is this week's round-up of tech news and what's hot in the Web :

1. Google Challenges Wikipedia With "Knol"
Google has announced that it will be launching a new Internet encyclopedia, a concept called "knol"- a shorthand for a "unit of knowledge"- that will see it competing with the highly popular user-supported Wikipedia.

The Googlepedia, as some netizens are calling it, will consist of material submitted by users but unlike Wikipedia, there will be no cloak of anonymity and all submissions will be identified. There will be no editing of entries by Google but instead, visitors will rate and comment on them. For now, submissions are by invitation only but will eventually be open to all comers. The resource is free to use and Google will monetize it by placing contextual ads related to the topics covered on each page.

CSI - Complete 1st Season

With more than 56 million US visitors eye-balling Wikipedia in Oct alone, making it the eighth most popular website, the concept will definitely pose a challenge to non-profit Wikipedia which has emerged as a widely used reference tool. While lifting the cloak of anonymity to submissions is a step in the right direction, unless it has its own editorial team to vet the entries, Google's "knol", in allowing visitors to rate and comment the submissions, will open it to the same sort of uneven content and the many abuses that Wikipedia has.

2. Flickr Launches "Places"
Flickr, Yahoo's online photo-sharing site, will soon unveil a service called "Places" that identifies on a global map, the latest hot spots for photo contributions and allows users to browse photos from millions of geographically located photos uploaded onto its site. With many of the world's cities, states and countries having their own featured pages, "Places" also allows users to search by geographic location for photos that might interest them.

With more than 40 million monthly visitors to Flickr, the feature will be especially appealing to prospective travellers seeking to go beyond photos of landmarks for places they plan to visit. "Places" will be available in the eight languages that Flickr currently offers - English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Korean and traditional Chinese.

3. ScanR Revolutionises Scanning, Copying And Faxing Industry
Convert an image of a document, business card or a whiteboard message, captured on your camera phone or digital camera, to a PDF file or vCard format and get it emailed or faxed to you through ScanR, a new US-based startup.

The free-to-use web service is set to revolutionise the scanner, copier and fax industry with its technology that identifies keywords during the conversion process and assigns them as tags that make the file searchable on ScanR or any desktop search software. ScanR also works with any mobile phone.

4. Ultra-Mobile PC - Asus Launches Eee PC
While ultra-mobile laptops, which weighs below 1kg and have screen sizes of 7 inches and below, have been around for about a year, the price tags of the initial releases were quite exorbitant, considering their limited capabilities, costing over US$1,300 each. Not anymore.

Law & Order - 1st Year
Asus has just launched the Eee PC, an ultra-mobile laptop that hit the sweet spot with its low price of around US$400. Designed for affordability, it comes with a Intel Mobile Celeron ultra-low voltage 900 MHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 3 USB ports, LAN port, built-in webcam, SD card slot, 800 x 480 seven-inch display, stereo speakers, Wi-Fi and an impressive 5200 mAh battery which supports 3.5 hours of use.

There is no hard disk drive but has instead, 4GB of solid-state flash memory and while using flash memory means that you get less storage, you get better power efficiency, faster boot times and less heat instead. The launch was so successful that over 300 pieces were snapped up within a day or two at the Sitex show in Singapore recently.

The Asus Eee PC, which stands for easy-to-work, easy-to-play and easy-to-learn, uses Linux instead of Windows and the user interface is extremely well-designed and divided into Work, Play and Learn tabs for easy access to applications. The icons are large and at 920g, decked out in a crisp pearl white body, is aptly suited for students and professionals on a budget, and is likely to be a benchmark for all other ultra-mobile PCs to follow.

*More Tech News :
- Google Opens Up Orkut
- Members Blast Facebook

GET SKYPEOUT & CONNECT FOR
FREE WITH OTHER SKYPEES !

Tech News - Members Blast Facebook.

Ever since i started a new category on technological news to keep up with the rapid changes in the Web, traffic had bumped up and it seems to be well received by readers. So, here is this week's update on the latest tech news :

1. Members Blast Facebook
Users of Facebook are up in arms over the social networking site's decision to make money from its success by plastering users' photos on advertisements for products that they like. Discussion groups have sprung up lambasting the company for selling out its users to the highest bidders, like Coca-Cola, Sony and Blockbuster.

Alias-Complete 1st Season

The site, started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as a way to keep in touch with his classmates, has exploded into a global social networking phenomenon with more than 54 million users. The 23-year-old is now trying to turn those users into dollars and had sold a 1.6 per cent stake to Microsoft for US$240 million, valuing the site at a staggering US$15 billion.

His latest "social advertising" strategy will turn its users unwittingly into cyber ambassadors for commercial brands. The new strategy will allow businesses to build custom-designed "pages" and users can become "fans" of a company's page which means any interaction with that brand will be broadcast to their Facebook friends. Users are upset because they know about the site's plans via a very brief blog posting only when they logged in.

Privacy experts says what Facebook is doing amounted to massive invasion of privacy with some indicating that users can sue Facebook for damages if their photos are being used for advertising purposes without their consent. My take is that Facebook is cashing in on its popularity with minimum consideration for users who have made it the success it is today. It has also broken the illusion that online activities are not being monitored and might just face a rebellion from users.

2. Twine
The buzz words today are "Google it" and "Facebook me" but in future you might say "Twine it". Twine is a new online service that promises to automatically collect and organise all your information, like contacts, e-mail and even YouTube videos in a way that makes sense.

Complete series
Using Semantic Web - Web 3.0 technologies, Twine is now in a closed beta trial now and promises to manage your personal data better than say, Facebook does now. These technologies have the ability to sieve through all the information, sort out the relationships between them and then display it in a manner useful to you, all without your intervention.

As an example, Facebook currently reminds you of birthdays and hooked you up with people of the same interests but Twine promises to be smarter, for example, it can tell the difference between J.P.Morgan the person and J.P. Morgan the firm. Being one of the first to launch a commercial application using Web 3.0 technologies, watch out for the name "Twine".

3. Amazon e-Book Reader
Online book retailer Amazon has recently launched its own electronic book reader called Kindle. The paperback-sized device can stored up to 200 books and sells for US$399. Kindle comes with a 6-inch black-and-white display with a memory of 256 MB that allows users to download e-books onto it. At present, more than 90,000 titles including bestsellers are available for Kindle.

With its steep price, the reception for Kindle might be luke-warm as it has only one function - reading and does not allow for surfing the Web or organising your address book like a personal digital assistant, which can be brought for about the same price. And most PDAs can already download and read electronic books. Kindle also lack international appeal as it currently supports the EVDO wireless broadband network which is available only in America which means all transactions must be done within the United States.

There are also issues with users comfort and avid readers like me, would prefer the touch and feel of a book when i read and e-readers are at best, cold comfort.

Dr.Who-Complete 1st series

4. Spidey Climbs Onto The Web
Here is something for fans of Marvel Comics. In a major move to go digital, Marvel Comics is putting up Spiderman and Captain Planet comics on the Web, with back issues of popular comics like X-Men and Fantastic Four slated to go online soon.

Subscribers can access Marvel's library from the comfort of their homes and using a Flash player, read the comics on their PC screens. The service is expected to cost about US$9.99 per month but new comics, however, will only be available 6 months after they hit the shops and fans can only read them, not download them. Their rival, DC Comics, already has Batman and Superman online.

Just like what is happening in the music industry, it is inevitable that comics move from paper to the digital realm and will be appealing to a whole new generation of wired-up kids who do everything online. A bit of romance is loss though for the many fans who grew up collecting rare copies and storing them in acid-proof containers for posterity.

5. Eye For A Spy
Recruitment of spies has just enter cyberspace with British intelligence service, GCHQ, the high-tech surveillance arm, saying it will embed job ads within video games in a bid to attract Internet-savy graduates. Ads like "Careers in British Intelligence" will be place in games like Enemy Territory and Splinter Cell Double Agent and will be fed to computers and Microsoft Xbox consoles connected to the Internet. Guess what? The advertising agency responsible for the ads is New York-based Massive, which was brought over by Microsoft last year.

*Related post :
- Tech News - Google Opens Up Orkut To Developers

Gift Certificates for
Wonderful Gifts

Tech News - A Round Up Of The Latest News.

With new software releases and advances happening so rapidly in the Web, I thought it will be a good idea to start a new category on technological news to keep up with the rapid changes. I hope readers will find this informative and useful. Here is a round up of what is hot :

1. Google Opens Its Social Networking Sites To Developers
Google recently opened its social networking site, Orkut, to third party developers by making available a tool kit for writing user applications, an initiative called OpenSocial. Echoes of what Facebook is doing but Google is going one extra step by making its software interface workable on other social networking sites like Friendster, LinkedIn, Ning and Plaxo.

Space - Complete Series

Great news for developers because this allows them to develop applications that can be used across the various social networking sites thus making it more efficient and productive. Google is playing catch up with Facebook who already have this facility which has attracted over 21 million users and the accompanying advertisers.

2. MySpace Opens Up
With increasing competition for users, online social network MySpace will finally open its code to outside developers. MySpace CEO Chris Dewolfe has announced that he is seeking to create a far more lucrative environment for outside developers than currently exist on Facebook, by providing advertising opportunities for independent application developers.

After witnessing the effects of Facebook's open invitation to developers, which resulted in more than 6,000 independent applications for its sites, MySpace plans to give developers control over advertising that runs on the webpages they create to host new services.

3. Google's New OS For Mobile Phones
Google recently announced that it was going to build software for mobile gizmos. Called Android, the software is expected give Microsoft's Windows Mobile and the Nokia-backed Symbian software, common on smart phones now, a run for the money. To push Android's adoption by users, Google also tied up with 33 partners through the Open Handset Alliance, which includes phone maker HTC and German cell phone maker T-mobile. Will Google's entry in the mobile phone market and more choices in devices for users be a good thing? We will have to wait and see.
Dr.Who -Complete 1st Season
4. PDF Files Contains Malicious Code
A warning, released last week by IT security firm F-Secure, indicated that pdf files are not as secured as once thought. According to F-Secure it has recently seen tens of thousands of such malicious pdf files being spammed via mass e-mail messages. When such files are viewed on vulnerable machines, PCs get infected. The malicious files exploit a recently discovered frailty in Adobe Acrobat and Internet Explorer 7 and downloads vicious malware from a server in Malaysia with the aim of setting up a network of zombie machines.

The malicious e-mail contains subject headings like "Your credit report" and "Personal financial statement" and has no content in the main body except for the pdf attachment. Adobe has advised users to upgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1.1 or Acrobat 8.1.1 as it affects versions 8.1. My advice is to arm your PC with the necessary firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware software and get them updated regularly and not to open suspicious e-mails.

5. Internet Mapped Out
An attempt was made recently by the University of Southern California's Information Science Institute (ISI) to create a map of the Internet. Over two months, ISI computers sent queries to about 2.8 billion numeric Internet Protocol addresses that identify individual computers on the Web. Replies came from about 187 million of the IP addresses and researchers used that data to map out where computers exist on the Internet. At one dot per address using a regular printer and with only a portion of replies, the resulting map was about 2.7m by 2.7m.

The map will help show how densely populated the Internet is and could help the researchers study the spread of computer viruses.

*Related posts :
- Free firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.
- Google's free web services.

GET SKYPEOUT & CONNECT FOR
FREE WITH OTHER SKYPEES !