Review Google Checkout

A test and review of Google's new Checkout payment service, using the 'Buy Now' button feature.

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How to get Songs off your iPod using iTunes

When my Kid bro gifted me the iPod, he had fed about 15 gig of music and some nice music videos from the his laptop, and the itunes on my iPod was configured with his Laptop. Now because of that I haven't been able to do an auto update from my Laptop, because it is not configured to my Laptop. I have do manual update by drag and drop.

If I had to configure the iPod to my laptop, all the music and videos that Bro gave me will also go. And since I cannot back-up the music from the iPod to my harddisk, Copyright protection, said the Customer Care Agent from Apple, I cannot configure it to my laptop without losing all the songs.

That is, until I saw this article which gave a step by step instruction on how to download music from the iPod to your Harddisk.

Step 4 should suffice if you are even remotely computer savvy.

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Laptops outselling desktops

Laptops are outselling traditional desktop PCs for the first time, according to the retailer, PC World.Lower prices and increased take-up of wireless internet use are two factors behind the trend. The number of laptops versus desktops sold by the chain between April and May this year stood at 55 per cent compared with 45 per cent a year ago.

During the same period in 2005 laptops accounted for only 40 per cent of computer sales.

It is partly due to users wanting greater flexibility to watch films or access the internet on their laptops from different rooms in the house, PC World said.



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Arcelor agrees to merge with Mittal

After 5 months of much ups and downs, and even a hint at racism, Mittal will merge with Arcelor, in a classic win-win. Mittal gets Arcelor, Arcelor got its price of 43 Euros and Majoirty of seats in the board and Lakshmi Mittal becoming a co-chairman with Joseph Kinsch. Mittal never talked about upping the offer, but then he knew he would. His shareholding would come down to 45 %. All for the best though. 87% was too much family... 45% is more proffessional. Networth is what counts...

The new entity will be called Arcelor-Mittal and not Mittal-Arcelor. Duh!

We might see more consolidations in the steel sector, which is much needed.
It would have better if the deal were three way with Severstal as well. The Mittal-Arcelor combine or Arcelor-Mittal even after the merger will account for only 10% of Global steel production.


It would interesting to watch the metal scripts on monday.
I have some metal holding bought at the recent bottom :-)

Opera 9 vs. Firefox 1.5 , A comparison

This student-blogger-webdesigner does a detailed comparison of Opera 9 vs Firefox-1.5.

He starts,"I’ve been a diehard Firefox user sense before Beta 1. I wrote my Firefox Guide earlier this year, once that page hit Slashdot there were several comments about how Opera does all of that and more, without the need of the extensions that Firefox has. I put a mental note that I should check this out. Well a few months later and Opera 9 has been released. Well I guess now is a good time to look at this Opera vs. Firefox talk that everyone flamed about. So the goal in this article is to see what is better under different environments. So let’s give it a go.

Both Firefox and Opera have many more features than Internet Explorer. This isn’t about tabbed browsing, having a search box on the right of the navigation bar, added support for extra features, or anything else we’ve come to expect in these browsers. My goal in this is to go into the features that Opera is showcasing and to see how well Firefox holds up."


I hope my template is working well on firefix now..



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Countersuit in the MySpace Case?

"A 14-year-old girl is suing the social networking site, where she met the man charged with sexually assaulting her. Now the man she says assaulted her may pursue his own legal case against MySpace"

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Review of Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner

ExtremeTech reviews the first Blu-Ray burner. Blu-ray Disc is an optical storage medium with capacities of 25GB (single layer) and 50GB (double layer). The standard was jointly developed by members of the Blu-ray Disc Association, though Sony and Philips were the chief technology drivers in the organization. The Blu-ray Disc Association now consists of some 170 companies, including hardware, software and media manufacturers.


Most of the recent attention on Blu-ray has been focused on the ongoing format war for high-definition movie discs that's been going on between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc Association. Less attention has been paid to either drive as a PC storage device, even though both sides of the format fight are planning on releasing PC drives capable of recording discs.

While HD-DVD beat Blu-ray to market in the consumer player arena, with the Toshiba HD-A1, the first PC recordable drive on the market is Pioneer's BDR-101A Blu-ray recorder.


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Introducing the Google Maps API Geocoding Service

On June 11 Google quietly added geocoding capabilities to its Maps API. What's more, this feature isn't limited to the U.S.; street-level geocoding is also offered for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain! This tutorial shows you how to use this new feature, further streamlining your use of this wonderful API.

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Samsung Contemplates Hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player

With the first batch of Blu-ray movies finally hitting store shelves and Samsung's BD-P1000 ready to launch on June 25, the war between the next-generation optical formats is about to be joined. Given the slow launch of both formats, the early battles will likely prove to be little more than inconclusive skirmishes as consumers begin to educate themselves about the new discs and recover from sticker shock.

Samsung, which is a high-profile backer of Blu-ray, is considering whether to hedge its bets by introducing a hybrid player. Still in development, the device would be able to play both HD DVD and Blu-ray content in a single drive.

The idea of hybrid devices is not a new one. Just before CES began in January, chip maker Broadcom took the wraps off an A/V decoder chip that was compliant with both next-gen optical disc formats. The BCM7411D handles realtime HD decoding of VD-1, H.264, and MPEG-2, the video formats supported by Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Broadcom's chip is a significant step, but more work is needed to create a hybrid drive due to the differences between the two formats. Both use a blue-violet laser of the same wavelength, but differences in disc size—minute though they may be—and data paths mean that it will require some solild engineering to get a single drive to handle both formats. Without such a drive, consumers who want to hedge their bets would have to buy an expensive player with a drive dedicated to each disc type.

If Samsung follows through on the develoment and releases a hybrid drive, it could give them an edge in the consumer electronics space. However, it is not a done deal. Samsung executive Kim Du-Hyon says that the company will only release a hybrid player if HD DVD is as successful as Blu-ray. The hybrid player would be available some time around year end, should it be released.



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The World's Fastest Microchip clocks in at 500Ghz

The world's fastest silicon-based microchip has been demonstrated by scientists in the US.
The prototype operates at speeds up to 500 gigahertz (GHz), more than 100 times faster than desktop PC chips. That is half a trillion calculations a second...
To break the world record, the researchers from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology had to super-cool the chip with liquid helium.
The team believes it is possible to make chips run at 1,000 Ghz, or one Terahertz, at room temperature.



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Apple's iTunes Movie Muddle

"Apple has hoped to get the store up and running within weeks, Hollywood sources say. But the deal isn't yet doneâ??and there's a chance it won't be any time soon. That's because Apple and studios remain at loggerheads on a range of issues, from how much movie downloads should cost, to the degree of piracy protections they should carry."

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Opera 9 Released!

Opera 9 is finally out! The new version includes bittorrent support, widgets and many other new exciting features.

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Preparing For a Software Engineering Interview

Written by Google employee, Niniane Wang: "Of the 300+ software engineers I interviewed for Google (and previously Microsoft), some of them really shone, and others seemed ill-prepared.. Below are some tips that I've gathered over time"

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Nanowire Transistors Four Times Faster than Silicon

"Advances in nanowires show they can be fast enough to use as ultrasmall transistors in cheap, high-performance electronics. Researchers at Harvard University have shown that nanowire transistors can be at least four times speedier than conventional silicon devices."

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Vista performs as good as XP on same hardware

CNET ran a few performance tests in Vista Beta 2 and XP on the same hardware, and results showed that Vista, even in its beta stage, can perform as well or potentially even better than XP!

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How Billions of Bogus Pages Undermine Search Engines and The Web

What the world needs now is someone with global reach, clean search results, and thoroughly authenticated ad servers.

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Nokia Launches Five New Phones

Nokia has unveiled five new mid-range handsets including two CDMA handsets; the Nokia 6275/6275i and 2875/2875i, two GSM handsets; the Nokia 6151 and 6080, plus the Nokia 1110i.

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Satellite imagery of North Korea missile site

The missile test facility causing all the stir is called the Musudan-ri test facility. A series of satellite images reveal the preparations for testing. Other links contain additional diagrams and discussions.

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Scientists discover leukaemia trigger

Scientists here believe they have uncovered the trigger for leukaemia, a cancer of the blood that afflicts millions worldwide.This could pave the way for the design of new drugs to combat the abnormal proliferation of white blood cells and might also lead to new treatments for other types of cancers.

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A New Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives

Sometimes you need to QUICKLY erase your Hard drive. The article explains how to do it when you only have seconds, and the data needs to be 100% unrecoverable.

And,let me apologize to all my readers who use Firefox. Somehow this template get all worked up on Firefox. Will be fixing it soon. Please bear with IE for sometime.

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IMDB for Comic Books

ComicBookDB.com is the fastest-growing comic database on the web. The first goal of this project is to catalog every comic, graphic novel, manga, creator, character and anything else that could possibly relate to the field of comics. And it is built by anyone and everyone who wants to help.

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Drugs firm blocks blindness cure

Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more and is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

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Study shows taste for meat and fish inherited

Children inherit their taste for meat and fish but when it comes to vegetables and desserts it's more nurture than nature, according to a study on Wednesday. Scientists who compared the food preferences of identical and fraternal twins found that some tastes are inherited while others are acquired.

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MacBook Discoloration Solution - Nail Polish Remover!

After days of trial and error, testing various cleaning solvents and solutions, there is finally a cure - nail polish remover.

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Yahoo mail worm author merely job hunting

A person claiming to be the author of Monday's Yamanner worm that targeted an unpatched vulnerability in Yahoo's mail application has contacted several security vendors, asking them for a job.
The security industry collectively told him to get lost.

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Om Malik Quits Business 2.0 , takes VC Funding

Om Malik took funding for his tech site, GigaOM. The news comes from a leaked internal memo from Time Inc monthly, Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner, his current employer. He will turn full time blogpreneur, or what we like to call as Pro-blogger.

He took VC funding from the partners at six-month-old True Ventures to turn his highly popular blog, GigaOm, into a full-fledged online media property of the same name.

“GigaOm already has a following of highly intelligent people and it makes about $5,000 a month,” Malik says of his website. “I just thought: What if I turned this into the ESPN.com of the business and technology industry, a place that is fun and inviting to visit, with rich graphics and greater interactivity and regular-and innovative-software releases that really help people parse the information they are reading?”


Malik has been writing for Business 2.0 for several years and will remain a contributing editor with the magazine. In years past, he has been a writer for Forbes.com and Red Herring magazine. He also authored the book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist.





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Yahoo Says E-Mail Worm Now Contained

"Yahoo said it has contained a malicious program aimed at the millions of people who use its e-mail service, which ranks as the world's largest. The worm, dubbed "Yamanner," infected a recipient's computer as soon as the toxic e-mail was opened. It then scanned contact lists for additional targets, according to security software maker Symantec."

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AOL with search enhanced IM-linked email

The upgrade includes an improved search tool for finding information in e-mail messages and integration with AOL's photo service. Kind of like Gmail and Google Talk with a little Picasa/Hello thrown in. Only, it's still not free.

BTW I watched that Aaj Tak Live Rakhi Sawant Show. I was wondering aloud that the Indian Viewers are so starved of Good TV Programs, that people actually watch Rakhi Sawant Proclaiming that, unlike others she don't do Kiss Wiss, and Won't leave Mika until he Apologizes. But then I was also watching it... The newspaper too can't get enough. But the picture in Hindustan Times suggested some forceful tongue Entry, with hands forcibly grabbing Rakhi's Jaw.

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Google Maps Vs local.live.com (Microsoft)

"This post is a comparison of Google Maps and Microsoft's local.live.com. The location that I have chose is 17th & Mississippi St. San Francisco, CA 94107. After reading this post, some of you will probably switch to this one. Here are a few reasons why this makes local.live better than Google Maps:"

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Why Engineers Don't Write Recipes

An engineer's recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
Ingredients:

532.35 cm3 gluten
4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
4.9 cm3 refined halite
236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

Of course, I have never cooked up such a fine dish, maybe I am much less an engineer now then when I graduated. You may see another Engineer's Recipes , ie my recipes here.

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Windows Vista Beta Available on Bittorent

Microsoft, of course, has chosen to ignore the most efficient file distribution method in existence - Bittorent. Chris Pirillo and Jake Ludington have created VistaTorrent with instructions on downloading the file through Bittorent.

I won't be running Vista on my Laptop though. Resource crunch you see. The 750 ram I have on my Portege will be a bit too slow for Vista it seems.

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eBay Lauches Ebay ADwords

Reuters reports that eBay is set to unveil a keyword advertising system for eBay sellers to promote auctions on other Web sites.

Michael van Swaaij, eBay's chief strategy officer, told a conference of software developers here on Saturday of plans to allow Web site affiliates to run contextual ads for eBay auctions in exchange for a cut of the resulting eBay sales.

EBay's system differs from pay-per-click advertising systems offered by Google and rivals Yahoo and Microsoft by linking only to eBay auctions rather than serving as a generic advertising network.


In coming months, the program, dubbed eBay AdContext, will allow Web sites to embed simple snippets of code that can then automatically act to showcase items for sale on eBay's site, eBay officials said."



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How to Mask Your IP and Use Country Restricted Sites

If you want to watch ABC streaming even if you donâ??t live in the US or see the Football Worldcup in BBC Sport, even if you live outside the UK - the next few steps will help you mask your IP by changing your default proxy to the correct country.

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Scoble is Leaving Microsoft

Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble is leaving is leaving Microsoft for real, unlike the april fool post he pulled, according to Chris Pirillo and MsTechToday.. He will be joining PodTech.net. And as Scoble says, he still loves Microsoft, " I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me — at least as a supporter and friend. I am not throwing away my Tablet PC or my Xbox or my other Microsoft stuff. :-) " read more digg story

Taking Pictures in Public can be Costly

In Quebec, a girl sued a photographer for $8,000 after he took her picture without her knowledge, even though she was sitting on the front steps of a public building, and won.

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Top 10 Strangest Clocks

Cathode ray tube clock, water powered clock, functioning HDD clock and 7 others make up this list of the top 10 strangest clocks.

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Feedburner Partners With TypePad

Feedburner and TypePad will announce a partnership on Thursday that will allow TypePad users to automatically redirect their existing TypePad RSS feed into Feedburner.

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Washinton Online-Poker-Players are felonies.

"As of June 7, it is now a felony in the state of Washington to play poker on the Internet. The bill, S.S.B. No. 6613, has stirred up great anxiety in poker forums. Many feel, correctly, that they have been blind-sided."

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The Best Google How-TO Ever

Complete guide to all the most advanced features of Google search. It demonstrates how to easily find & download mp3s and complete albums too.

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Review of Apple 13-inch MacBook

Time reviews the Apple 13 inch MacBook. "The MacBook is a powerful and affordable option, especially for people who are uncertain about their Windows future. You get a computer that runs both Mac OS X and Windows XP today, and even appears to meet the minimum requirements for Vista once it gets here. Dell and HP should be very worried indeed."

Time to trade my 12" Toshiba Portege?

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Cox Interactive Blocks Craigslist

Apparently Cox had its own classified ads service, which was in direct competition with the lists.

Craigslist has approached Authentium several times to get it to stop blocking access by Cox internet users but it has been unresponsive. Jim wasn't aware that Cox had its own classified ads service. "That changes things, " he said.

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Blind inventor makes web accessible

A new device that will make internet content available to blind people without the need for computer skills is to be launched in a few months' time. There already are computers that can be used by the deaf and deaf blind. This is a major leap in the field for computing for the visually challenged. When that person from the Hellen Keller institute, told us by sign language that he also wants to be a programmer to a forum of some 1000 programmers, it broke our heart, and we broke into an applause of encouragement. With sadness and joy.

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Nintendo planning Instant Messenger for Wii?

Gamers will have more incentive to paly more. Nintendo plans to introduce instant messaging service for video games systems. According to the latest United States patent (7056217) filed by Nintendo (planned six years ago) and is now published on June 6th, 2006 it states the following: Messaging service for video game systems with buddy list that displays game being played.

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Inside Google Spreadsheets (Video)

If you haven't received your invite yet but you want to know the look & feel of Google Spreadsheets, take a look at the screenshots and videos.

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AllofMp3.com Breaks Silence

The Russian music site AllofMp3.com fires a return salvo on its legality, royalties, and the WTO.

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Pioneer moving to Blu-Ray! dumps red-laser DVDs

In 1999, Pioneer became the world's first company to commercialize DVD recorders, and is currently the fourth-biggest supplier of the devices. However, since the segment is no longer profitable, they are getting out, and adopting Blu-Ray technolgy.

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Boosting your internet bandwith to the max

Using this guide you will be able to get some significant increase in your internet bandwith. Tweaks include QoS tweaking, Host Resolution Priority Tweaking and many more. Give it a try.

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At Mahape, Navi Mumbai

Sun ray passing through the slit of a cloudy sky and Bouncing of the sea, or is it the Navi Mumbai Creek?


That is the Concrete Jungle in Navi Mumbai. You can still see some mountains in the horizon but, nearer there are mostly grey structures. They look a little prettier after the rains though.

iPod USB Charger From Altoid Tin

Here is a step by step instruction on how to build a small & simple, but very powerful USB charger for your mp3 player, camera, cell phone, and any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge!.The charger circuitry and 2 AA batteries fit into an Altoids gum tin, and will run your iPod for hours: 2.5x more than you'd get from a 9V USB charger!.

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ASK.com Google's Latest Competition

Move over MSN, Google has a more Intelligent competition in Ask.com. With the Search engine market hotting up, and ad revenues breaking through the glass ceiling, google has new competition. Ask.com, started out as askjeeves who had the answer to all, had morphed itself into a search engine after it acquired Teoma. Google's strength was always in technology, and have always been ahead of its competition like msn and yahoo because of its supposedly better technology, the better mousetrap fallacy notwithstanding. But Ask.com might challenge google directly on the technology front, Teoma afterall started out as a Pentagon funded project. And the best thing I see in ASK is by virtue of it being a part of Barry Diller's IAC ( or Interactive Corp). With Web properties such as Hotels.com, Match.com, expedia, Lending tree, shoebuy, bagsbuy, as part of the web portfolia, Ask.com will have extreme synergy with the rest. All the other websites of IAC sells a product or a service, so every referral from ask.com is a potential customer for IAC, and ASK.com already has a 6% share in the search market. They are even entering the blog search market, with blog intelligence from Bloglines which is another group company. And we though google was moving towards world domination.


Some features of Ask search from a CNN article:

Type a typical search into Ask.com - for instance "Global warming." On top of the results page is a link to a Wikipedia entry on the subject - along with a tiny chart showing rising global temperatures. Immediately below are links to two news stories on global warming.
Only then do you see ads - and just three. Below them, Ask lists the EPA's Web site, and next to that entry a little icon of binoculars. If you move your cursor over it, a miniature version of the EPA page pops up. Most of the other links on the results page also offer binocular screens. At the bottom of the page are five more ads.
On the right side of the screen, where a Google (Research) search on the same topic lists eight ads, Ask shows none at all but instead provides tools for more results. First are ten links it calls "Narrow Your Search." They include "Causes of Global Warming" and "Effects of Global Warming." Below that is a set of five more links called "Expand Your Search," including ones for "Greenhouse Effect," and "Ozone Layer."
Unlike Google, Ask gives you content before ads, includes previews, and offers related links, including those like "Ozone Layer" that you might not have thought of. Of the three other major search sites - Google, MSN, and Yahoo (Research) - only Yahoo comes close to delivering value comparable to Ask.com, but even then with a much less well-designed screen.
Jim Lanzone, Ask.com's hyper-enthusiastic CEO, has a simple explanation: "What really differentiates us is our focus on search. Other companies are partnering with content companies and launching wi-fi networks. But we're not building a rocket ship. We're building a better car. It's not what people will want in five years. It's what they want now."[source]

Russian Pirated Mp3 site and WTO

Russian MP3 music Download site AllofMP3.com, based in moscow is the new form of piracy. Here you have top pay to download music that are copyighted but someone else. It is like buying a pirated DVD or an MP3 CD, and with an user base that has pushed it's traffic upto the Alexa top 1000, it is doing good Business. Only, it is illegal and Russia Might be forced to close it down if Russia wants to Join WTO. Nytime writes "So great is the official level of concern about AllofMP3 that American trade negotiators darkly warned that the Web site could jeopardize Russia's long-sought entry into the World Trade Organization."

Operating through what music industry lobbyists say is a loophole in Russia's copyright law, AllofMP3 offers a vast catalogue of music that includes artists who have not permitted their work to be sold online — like the Beatles and Metallica — at a fraction the cost of services like Apple Computer's iTunes service.
Sold by the megabyte instead of by the song, an album of 10 songs or so on AllofMP3 can cost the equivalent of less than $1, compared with 99 cents per song on iTunes.
And unlike iTunes and other commercial services, songs purchased with AllofMP3's downloading software have no restrictions on copying.[source]

Apple Software Quits India

Apple came to India to start a software division like all technology companies and commenced operations in April and hired about 30 people for its subsidiary, Apple Services India Pvt Ltd. But they had hardly begun, when they decided to lay off all employees and Log out. Laid off employees will be paid two month's severance package. Sales and marketing division, will however, continue its operation.

Apple had set a target of increasing the head count to 600 by year end when they decided that the operations will head back to the US. [source]

Tips for Increasing BlogTraffic by Seth Godin

This the best post I have ever read on the QUESTION that every blogger have asked themselves I not to an EXPERT at one time or the other. Not because the post lists down a few EXPERT tips, but because he has covered virtually everthing that one needs to do to increase their blog traffic and virtually everythin that every popular blogger have done. When I say, everything, it is everything.

Some points I would like to highlight from Seth Godin's How to get Traffic for your blog are :-


First he says on Point 9. Write short, pithy posts.

And on point 12. Write long, definitive posts.

11. Don't write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.{ if you are not Heather}
Because he wrote on point 13. Write about your kids.

Point number 2 and 3 are the most important, though.

2. Be topical... write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.

Technorati has Spam Filter

Tehnorati has spam filter, and many Blogs are not being indexed now. Technorati, like the rest of the industry, is struggling to filter out cascades of spam blogs. Some legitimate posts--false positives--are also being quarantined. Technorati has humans attempting to resolve these issues, case by case, but they're "a little backlogged."

So, if you think Technorati is missing your posts, go to the site's Blogfinder page and search your URL. If you don't see it, ping customer support. In other words, flag those humans and ask for help.



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Toshiba's Gigabeat S- Video Review

Check out this video review of the new Toshiba Gigabit S .

Maglev Car With Greater Stability

"Since the late 60s, scientists have been designing, building and operating, flying trains, or magnetically levitated (Maglev) systems. However, the sci-fi-like technology still faces challenges for increased stability, controllability and cost-effectiveness but scientists are making steady improvements." reports physorg

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Pirate Bay will be up.

Piratebay says it will be up in a day or two....

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China Passes Internet Piracy Law

The Chinese government passed new laws this week to ban the ability to upload and download Internet material without the copyright holder's permission. The provisions include 27 articles that take effect on July 1, said Gang Bai, who founded the Wan Hui Da IP Agency, one of China's largest law and intellectual property firms.

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MySQL: Workers in 25 countries with no HQ

"This open-source software maker has figured out how to manage a world-wide workforce that rarely meets. Is MySQL the model 21st-century company?"

How on earth do these virtual organizations get anything done? Management gurus have been preaching since the early days of Peter Drucker that workers must be organized into corporations with strict boundaries (between, for example, employees and customers) and a centralized physical plant (the headquarters). Based on those criteria, a remotely controlled entity such as MySQL begins to look no more managerially sophisticated than, say, your average garden club.



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Blogger Abed Tavanchech may have been Arrested.

It is all over the blog that Abed Tavanchech, a blogger and student at Tehran's Amirkabir polytechnic university, who has been missing since 26 May and may well have been arrested after posting photos and reports about the demonstrations taking place at his university for the past few weeks. Two other bloggers Arash Sigarshi and Mojtaba Saminejad, are currently in prison in Iran. Source: Reporters without Border

Via>> The corner, Iran Focus, IFEX

And here is an SOS from an Egyptian Blogger

As I write this, I am watching Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak give his speech at the World Economic Forum, being held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The usually pro-US Mubarak has just delivered what can only be described as a fiery anti-US speech, criticizing the American push for democratic reforms in Egypt. He informed the world that he was confident his government was "on the right path" when it comes to democratic reforms, but he cautioned that changes should be gradual to avoid "chaos and setbacks." -Sandmonkey

And CBS news writes that in Egypt Blogging can land you in jail.

Egypt, blogging can land you in jail, apparently. That’s the case for at least six bloggers in that country, who have been jailed following a spate of arrests after political demonstrations in Cairo. The Washington Post today looks at the case of one such blogger, Alaa Seif al-Islam. His blog, which he writes with his wife, Manalaa “began not only to describe the troubles of Egypt under its authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, but also described acts of repression and became a vehicle for organizing public protests,” writes the Post. The blog has caught the attention of uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and author of Instapundit, who told the Associated Press of Seif Al-Islam: "He's certainly the most famous blogger in Egypt and arguably the best known reformer there now. When you suppress dissent, even minor voices become incredibly powerful."

Interns, Don't blog from work!

Blog, but don't blog about work.

Red Hat's Social Networking Site

Prominent Linux distributor Red Hat has revealed a new open source social networking service called Mugshot. Designed to facilitate integration of live social interactivity into the desktop computing experience, Mugshot emphasizes communication and entertainment. The new service, which is still largely under development and accessible by invitation only, currently enables users to chat, share links, and share information about their favorite music. Fully supported on Windows and Linux and partially supported on OS X, Mugshot is a platform-neutral service designed for mainstream computer users rather than just IT specialists and open source enthusiasts. As an open source platform, Mugshot will allow independent developers to create software and services capable of interfacing with the system and leveraging its functionality.[source]

SixApart Launched Comet as Vox

Vox is a new blogging cum social network, by SixApart (the people behind MovableType, Typepad and LJ). How different will the offering be from Myspace, which is also on similar lines, of Blogging and networking. As the home page on VOX says VOX is about Photos, Videos, Stories and You.
With Vox you can,
Control exactly who gets to see each of your posts and photos.
See all the posts from your friends and family on one page.
Bring in content from other web services you already use (Amazon, YouTube, more).

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Firefox 2.0 alpha 3!

A third alpha release of Firefox 2.0 alpha 3, with Google security features, sporting the Safe Browsing feature is available today, with a first official beta expected by July 6. The next version of Firefox will come out of the virtual box with Google's anti-phishing tools built in.

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