SMV Converter
Video Converters
SMV
If you have an MP3/MP4 player that supports .SMV video playback, then you will need the SMV Converter to convert your videos to a .smv file so it will be playable on your player.
File Size = 1.33 MB
Fresh HTML 1.60
Webmaster Tools
Fresh HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a tool for webmaster to
Download
From Software Author.
WildFire CD Ripper 1.5.0
CD & DVD Utility
WildFire CD Ripper is pulling out the data (
Here are few supported encoders:
1. Lame MP3 encoder
2. Internal MP2 encoder
3. APE lossles audio format
4. Ogg Vorbis encoder
5. The
6. NTT VQF encoder
7. FAAC encoder
8. Windows WMA8 encoder
Monday, October 29, 2007
PCLinuxOS - Playing those DOS games in Linux
At home my elder brother still uses an old i386 PC though he has a brand new Compaq. That i386 machine has a history - it was the first PC ever in my village and it was the first machine on which I laid my hands on. I learned those nitty DOS commands on it. It’s aged more than 15 years old now, but still functional.
My 10 year old nephew, Sonu will be visiting me at Delhi on 13th of October. He is an avid games freak. Each time he called me on phone he reminded me to load some games - mainly those age-old DOS games that he plays on the i386 - paratrooper, aliens, antactic, blocks, mario, digger, ace speeder, dangerous road etc.
I was in a difficult situation "how can I install those DOS games on my PCLinuxOS 2007 machine, a brand new VIA-Intel hybrid PC?". I browsed forums, googled for a while, punched the keywords "linux dos games", "how to play dos games in pclinuxos, linux" etc. And then got search results related to Wine and DOSemu. Installed those packaged from PCLinuxOS repository through synaptic. And I am there, I could play almost all those games.
(For a wholesome knowledge of DOSemu, please refer this great guide: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DOSEMU-HOWTO.html. This guide will help you how to emulate any DOS applications in Linux.)
Now I can understand, DOS games are not that bad, except for their graphics. Even I could not pass 3 levels of Ace Speeder and Dangerous Road. Alas! If I could know about these software earlier!
PCLinuxOS - Some Great Linux Links and other web resources
http://tldp.org/ : The most usable and master Linux Documentation portal. Nowhere under the sun there is any guide as detailed, as comprehensive and as pure as http://tldp.org . Here you will find howtos, guides, man pages and an online magazine. No hanky panky, only pure information.
http://www.slackware.com/ : Simple is beautiful, that is slackware linux. People use mandriva, pclinuxos, ubuntu, fedora…. to use linux, but they use slackware to master linux. If pclinuxos is the big daddy of desktop linux, slackware is the great grand daddy of everything linux. There is a famous link http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.html , read it to know the ins and outs of linux.
http://www.linux.org/ : The official linux online. It offers applications (source packages), information on distributions and downloads to famous linux, books and all. You will get real big linux news here.
http://distrowatch.com/ : All about linux distributions, their rankings, updates, releases, news and all that. The best resource for linux hobbyists.
Not Linux related but interesting anyway
http://www.firsteuropa.com : As you can not do without a car, you can not ignore car insurance. So, why not book your insurance at First Europa and save big money? First Europa is a leading insurance brokerage in Europe. It is growing to spread across the globe like wildfire. Next time you think of buying an insurance visit first europa to save big money on your insurance policy.
http://www.alistapart.com/ : The veteran website on content, design and e-marketing. As they say - “from pixels to prose, coding to content.” It has them all. Besides, those designing, content and marketing, if you wish to hone your writing skills, just read a few article at
PCLinuxOS - My Experience with amaroK
Last night I had a problem - I messed up my good-old xmms.
The default PCLinuxOS in my system had amaroK, the versatile music player in Linux World built for KDE. But I rarely used it for several reasons of which the most painful is “slow startup and response.” My favorite is XMMS, the darling of every music lover who has been using Linux for past couple of years.
At 1:30 last night, I was working on a friend’s project and a wild idea struck me, “how about removing amaroK as my chore is done through XMMS।” The next moment I opened synaptic and completely removed amaroK।
Sad... half an hour later I ran XMMS and lo… it’s gui opened but it could not play any media player. Then came the loop of installation and removal. I removed XMMS and libXMMS and did a fresh installation again through synaptic so as to resolve all the dependencies. But that never worked again.
If you are reading this blog. Please try it at home and if you are able to fix this problem, please let me know.
As for now I am happy with Kaffeine, it plays both audio files and video files.
Crossover Linux 6 on PCLinuxOS 2007
People have been using Microsoft Office as an office productivity suite ever since the home desktop revolution started. Likewise they are using Adobe Photoshop, Winamp, some old Nintendo games etc. Most of them who have started computing in PCLinuxOS or other desktop linux such as Ubuntu, Mepis, Suse or Zenwalk, still can’t find the productivity from Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop from their Linux counterparts such as OpenOffice.org Writer and GIMP. Besides gaming in Linux World is not much of a phenomenon in comparison to gaming in Windows World.
Chills to them who are using Linux but still retaining the copies of Word, Photoshop and games. They can now use those Windows software on their Linux desktop. Crossover Linux 6 makes it possible for every Linux user to use some versions of Flash, Dreamweaver, Framemaker, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, some games and many win32 applications to run on Linux Desktop. They can enjoy the benefit of Windows productivity and Linux Safety.
On my home PCLinuxOS desktop (VIA Mainboard & Chipset + Intel P4 2.66) I tried Photoshop, Word, Winamp and Super Mario. All of them worked fine except for some minor flaws.
Adobe Photoshop 6
I have been using GIMP for quite a long time, but I still longed for Photoshop. Gimp has no option to use spacebar (which is quite common in Photoshop) to browse though the image while editing. Besides animated GIF creation in GIMP has always been painful. (Hope GIMP developers will soon incorporate these features). I purchased a copy of Crossover Linux 6 online. 
Installing Crossover Linux 6 was damn easy (Another version - Crossover Linux 6 Pro is also available but functionality of both general and pro are almost similar, for a home desktop I will never recommend the pro version). I got an rpm and installed Photoshop 6 in its win2000 bottle (you have option to install in win98 bottle also, keep in view the Microsoft application compatibility). One frustration is that Crossover offers installation only upto Photoshop 7 whereas the computing industry uses Photoshop CS3. However, home desktop users will be fully satisfied with Photoshop 6 (that’s what I use), no need to ride on CS3. As you can see in the screenshot, on Linux, Photoshop docked panels also occupied positions in deskop bottom panel.
Microsoft Office 2003
We may blame Microsoft Office many ways, but fact is that it rules all the office productivity suites. Microsoft’s usability is perhaps at its best in its office suite – the great contextual menus, handy reference and blazing fast behavior (characters are true only upto 2003 version, 2007 version has killed many of these great characters to be a little eye-candy). OpenOffice.org is good but compatibility with Microsoft documents is never perfect, besides it’s a way too slow.
Microsoft Office installation was seamless. It was installed in less time on my PCLinuxOS than it might install on any Windows OS. I did a custom installation of only Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I use Thunderbird as my home mail client, so there was no point installing Outlook.
Super Mario Brothers and others
Gaming on Windows has always been great. On top of Crossover Linux 6 I installed Half Life, Mario, AceRacer and many others. But I loved the old world game Mario the most.
Including the above applications, Crossover Linux supports many win32 software. Try them and put your thoughts here.
PCLinuxOS - DOS vs. Linux Commands
Linux geeks love the Command line, because it is simple, fast, cool and highly intuitive. Besides, it offers more options to do certain task. For example, compare video encoding in mencoder (the cli program that often comes bundled with mplayer) with any other gui application. Using mencoder you can play with encoding changing the parameters the way you like, but while using a gui applications you can use only the preset values.
Well, those who are unfamiliar with command line interface (CLI), don’t blame it on Linux. Forgot the old DOS ways of doing things? Don’t you remember that MS DOS which was as much cryptic as linux terminal, but unfortunately less powerful.
You newbies please have a look at these command line comparison between DOS and Linux, so that you will never frown upon the good old CLI. Here is the table of comparison.
The Substandards of "Linux For You," a Leading Indian Magazine on Linux
As far as I remember, books and magazines on Linux have contributed much towards Linux adoption. My Linux mania was fueled by such magazines and books. Years back I used to become very happy buying a Linux magazine, reading the usable tips and then playing with my vintage machine with the distro CD that I got free with those reading stuff.
When "Linux For You" (LFY), an Indian magazine on OSS and Linux was launched, I really appreciated it. After all, it was supposed to further the Linux knowledge in Indian subcontinent. But pitiful, this magazine has been distributing substandard Linux disks with the magazine. The story does not end here, this magazine does not entertains any of the user queries regarding replacement of those faulty/substandard disks. So, next time you purchase any "Linux For You" magazine. Please don't purchase it for the sake of its free CD/DVD.
Here is a screenshot of my query and a reminder, to which LFY did not bother to respond.
Good heavens! Today (Oct. 24, 2007) LFY people turned up and replied me this mail. Hope the person in charge of disk delivery responds promptly. I am still in a doubt.....
PCLinuxOS - Image Manipulation on Terminal - work & fun
People think linux console/terminal is for administration, configuration, text processing and programming. The reality is terminal can do much more things than what we regularly do on it. You can listen to audio (read man pages for mpg123, mpg321, ogg123, play, mp3blaster….), record/process audio/video files (read man pages for sox, rec, mencoder, ffmpeg… ), manipulate/animate image (read manpages for import, fbgrab, fbshot, convert, composite, imagemagick, ), and many more…
Let’s discuss how to manipulate images in this post.
Taking Screenshots:
The easiest tool pclinuxos has for taking screenshot is fbgrab.
Just issue: fbgrab filename.png in the commandline, that’s it. Fbgrab produces only png image shots.
Else you can use import command (from imagemagick suite). Import produces screenshots in jpg, png and bmp. Choose the one that suits best to your screenshot color depth.
To take screenshot of the entire screen issue: import -window root filename.png
To take screenshot of a particular screen issue: import screenshot.png you cursor will turn into an crosshair, drop the cursor on the section you want to capture.
Using import you can also set a time delay so that you hide the terminal containing the import command or arrange your windows properly. For example if you want 5 seconds delay issue: sleep 5; import -window root screenshot.png
You can also add timestamp. For it issue: import -window root ‘date +%Y-%m-%d’.png
Image Conversion:
ImageMagick is a small but versatile suite to manipulate images. It comes as default in many linux distributions.
To convert a BMP to a PNG, issue: convert image.bmp image.png
Tile images:
You can issue convert with tile argument to tile the input image into an output image of a size you specify with the -size argument. For example: convert -size 640x480 tile :image.jpg tiledimage.jpg
Add border to image:
Using -border and -bordercolor arguments with convert, you can add a border to an image. The width you specify applies to the left and right of the image, while the height applies to the top and bottom of the image. You can pass a color either in text (red, blue, white, etc.) or as an RGB value. For example: convert -border 15x18 -bordercolor white image.jpg image2.jpg
Make thumbnails:
Using convert with -thumbnail argument you can create thumbnails. To create a thumbnail that has a width of 160 pixels, issue: convert -thumbnail 160 image.jpg thumbnail.jpg
To create a thumbnail with a height of 160 pixels, precede the geometry with x: convert -thumbnail x160 image.jpg thumbnail.jpg
This command is very useful if you have handle a lot of digital images to a web gallery. You can create a script to automate thumbnail creation. For example, to create a thumbnail with a width of 160 pixels from every JPEG image in a directory, issue: for i in *.jpg; do convert -thumbnail 160 $i thumb-$i; done;
Add watermark:
With the help of composite using -gravity and –watermark options you can define watermarks to your protected graphics.The -gravity option defines a number of locations for a watermark. The supported locations are north, east, south, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest, and center. The -watermark option takes as its argument a percentage that defines how translucent to make the watermark. To add a 35% translucent watermark in the bottom right-hand corner of an image, issue: composite -watermark 35% -gravity southeast watermark.gif image.jpg image-watermarked.jpg
In this example, watermark.gif is the watermark, image.jpg is the image to watermark, and image-watermarked.jpg is the newly created image.
You can also create a script to automate watermark creation for your web gallery.
Animate images:
You can use the animate tool of imagemagick suite and apply -delay option to create nice web animations. For example how it looks like one second delay on a directory full of gif images, issue: animate -delay 100 *.gif
This command will display images in that directory in alphabetical order.
If you are satisfied with the above delay effect. You can use convert command to convert a directory of gif files into a single gif animation by issuing: convert -delay 100 *.gif animated.gif
Smoothening the Rough Edges of PCLinuxOS for Desktop Users - A Minimalistic Approach
Linux desktop has many edges over Windows, but let's agree a few of them are rough. I love Linux but I respect the feeling of some Linux converts (specially millions can't be wrong when they say it ROUGH). One of these rough edges is: cryptic software installation (if the users don't have knowledge of the Linux and/or don't have access to the Web and/or 'confusing nomenclature' of the software packages).
Linux becomes the best desktop (and server) in sync with the Web. Linux developers are more internet-savvy than their Windows counterparts. Linux people spare more time on the Web sharing codes and peer-review. Perhaps this web-savvy nature has lead them to think that all the desktop users under the sun use the Web (or have access to it). But in reality a few of the poor users don't have access to the Web. So how can they resolve rpm dependencies, browse forums for help, and update their systems?
Well, here is a minimalistic approach to software installation after which you can have a smooth PCLinuxOS computing (alongside Windows XP, if it's installed on another partition of your hdd) even if your PC is not powerful. Here under is an optimized list of packages (much of the potato cheaps removed, and some real meats added) in presence of which you can do the regular office chore, have a great multimedia experience, work in sync with your Windows ntfs partitions, and find yourself in a sober but sophisticated desktop environment.
Just query your packages list (type rpm -qa in a terminal), match the screen output (it's the list of packages present in your PCLinuxOS) with the list packages mentioned below. Remove the extra packages you have in your system. Make a list packages that your system lacks. Access the web for just once and download all those packages. Install them. That's it! Now you have a optimized set of applications that's just enough to do any home desktop job.
Here is the optimized package list:
a2ps-4.13b-11pclos2007
acpi-0.09-2pclos2007
acpid-1.0.4-15pclos2007
alsa-plugins-1.0.14-0.rc4.1pclos2007
alsa-utils-1.0.14-0.rc4.1pclos2007
alsaconf-1.0.14-0.rc4.1pclos2007
amarok-1.4.5-5pclos2007
amarok-engine-xine-1.4.5-5pclos2007
amarok-scripts-1.4.5-5pclos2007
anacron-2.3-19pclos2007
apt-0.5.15cnc6-19pclos2007
apt-common-0.5.15cnc6-19pclos2007
arts-1.5.6-4pclos2007
ash-0.3.8-12pclos2007
aspell-0.60.4-4pclos2007
aspell-en-6.0.0-3pclos2007
at-3.1.8-20pclos2007
at-spi-1.7.11-2pclos2007
atk1.0-common-1.18.0-1pclos2007
aumix-2.8-17pclos2007
aumix-text-2.8-17pclos2007
avahi-0.6.16-3pclos2007
awesfx-0.5.0d-4pclos2007
basesystem-2007.0-3pclos2007
bash-3.1-8pclos2007
bc-1.06-20pclos2007
binutils-2.16.91.0.7-4pclos2007
bootloader-utils-1.13-2pclos2007
bootsplash-3.1.14-2pclos2007
busybox-1.1.2-3pclos2007
bzip2-1.0.3-7pclos2007
cdialog-0.9b-9pclos2007
cdrdao-1.2.1-4pclos2007
cdrkit-1.1.5.1-1pclos2007
cdrkit-genisoimage-1.1.5.1-1pclos2007
cdrkit-isotools-1.1.5.1-1pclos2007
chkconfig-1.3.25-3pclos2007
chkfontpath-1.10.0-3pclos2007
common-licenses-1.0-12pclos2007
console-tools-0.2.3-62pclos2007
coreutils-5.97-5pclos2007
coreutils-doc-5.97-5pclos2007
cpio-2.6-8pclos2007
cpufreq-1.0-26pclos2007
cracklib-dicts-2.8.9-2pclos2007
crontabs-1.10-7pclos2007
curl-7.15.5-2pclos2007
cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-22pclos2007
dbus-1.0.2-2pclos2007
dbus-x11-1.0.2-2pclos2007
desktop-common-data-2007-25.3pclos2007
desktop-file-utils-0.11-6pclos2007
devede-2.11-1pclos2007
dhcp-client-3.0.4-3pclos2007
dhcp-common-3.0.4-3pclos2007
diffutils-2.8.7-5pclos2007
dirmngr-0.9.5-4pclos2007
dkms-2.0.16-1pclos2007
dkms-fuse-2.7.0-1pclos2007
dkms-minimal-2.0.16-1pclos2007
dmidecode-2.8-3pclos2007
dmraid-1.0.0-0.rc11.2pclos2007
dmsetup-1.02.09-2pclos2007
DoAsRoot-1.0.0-1pclos2007
docbook-dtd412-xml-1.0-19pclos2007
docbook-dtd42-xml-1.0-6pclos2007
docbook-dtd43-xml-1.0-4pclos2007
drakconf-10.4.13-12pclos2007
drakconf-icons-10.4.13-12pclos2007
drakwizard-base-3.1-2pclos2007
drakxtools-10.4.81-19pclos2007
drakxtools-backend-10.4.81-19pclos2007
drakxtools-newt-10.4.81-19pclos2007
dvd+rw-tools-7.0-3pclos2007
dvdauthor-0.6.13-1pclos2007
dynamic-0.26.10-3pclos2007
e2fsprogs-1.39-3pclos2007
eject-2.1.5-3pclos2007
emerald-themes-0.2.0-1pclos2007
enchant-1.2.6-3pclos2007
enscript-1.6.4-5pclos2007
esound-0.2.36-6pclos2007
etcskel-1.63-19pclos2007
ethtool-3-4pclos2007
exscalibar-1.0.4-9pclos2007
faac-1.25-1pclos2007
faad2-2.5-1pclos2007
fbgrab-1.0-2pclos2007
ffmpeg-0.4.9-4.pre1.6122.4pclos2007
file-4.17-3pclos2007
filesystem-2.1.8-6pclos2007
findutils-4.2.27-3pclos2007
flac-1.1.4-1pclos2007
flash-player-plugin-9.0.31.0-1pclos2007
font-tools-0.1-14pclos2007
fontconfig-2.4.1-2pclos2007
fonts-ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10-5pclos2007
fonts-ttf-decoratives-1.3-16pclos2007
fonts-ttf-dejavu-2.9-2pclos2007
fonts-ttf-west_european-1.3-16pclos2007
foomatic-db-engine-3.0.2-1.20060711.2pclos2007
foomatic-filters-3.0.2-1.20060827.2pclos2007
fortune-mod-1.99.1-9pclos2007
freetype-1.3.1-25pclos2007
freetype-tools-1.3.1-25pclos2007
fribidi-0.10.4-7pclos2007
fslsfonts-1.0.1-4pclos2007
fstobdf-1.0.2-3pclos2007
fuse-2.7.0-1pclos2007
gail-1.9.2-2pclos2007
gamin-0.1.8-1pclos2007
gawk-3.1.5-3pclos2007
gcc-4.1.1-4pclos2007
gcc-cpp-4.1.1-4pclos2007
GConf2-2.14.0-5pclos2007
gettext-base-0.14.6-2pclos2007
ghostscript-8.15-47pclos2007
ghostscript-common-8.15-47pclos2007
ghostscript-fonts-8.11-6pclos2007
ghostscript-module-X-8.15-47pclos2007
gimp-2.3.16-1pclos2007
glib-gettextize-2.12.3-4pclos2007
glib2.0-common-2.12.3-4pclos2007
glibc-2.4-7pclos2007
glibc-devel-2.4-7pclos2007
gnome-icon-theme-2.16.0.1-2pclos2007
gnome-keyring-0.6.0-2pclos2007
gnome-mime-data-2.4.2-4pclos2007
gnome-themes-2.16.0-2pclos2007
gnome-vfs2-2.16.0-5pclos2007
gnupg-1.4.5-4pclos2007
gnupg2-1.9.22-5pclos2007
grep-2.5.1a-3pclos2007
groff-1.19.1-7pclos2007
groff-for-man-1.19.1-7pclos2007
grub-0.97-22pclos2007
gstreamer-arts-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-audio-formats-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-faac-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-ffmpeg-0.8.7-5pclos2007
gstreamer-mad-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-plugins-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-quicktime-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-tools-0.8.12-3pclos2007
gstreamer-v4l2-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-vorbis-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer-x11-0.8.12-12pclos2007
gstreamer0.10-flac-0.10.5-1pclos2007
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-0.10.11-1pclos2007
gstreamer0.10-tools-0.10.11-1pclos2007
gtk-engines2-2.8.0-5pclos2007
gtk+2.0-2.10.6-6pclos2007
gtkdialogs-2.2-2pclos2007
gtkspell-2.0.11-2pclos2007
gutenprint-common-5.0.0-3pclos2007
gutenprint-gimp2-5.0.0-3pclos2007
gzip-1.3.5-4pclos2007
hal-0.5.9-3pclos2007
hal-info-0.0.1-0.20070402.2pclos2007
harddrake-10.4.81-19pclos2007
harddrake-ui-10.4.81-19pclos2007
hdparm-7.3-1pclos2007
hicolor-icon-theme-0.9-7pclos2007
hwdb-clients-0.18-2pclos2007
iceauth-1.0.1-4pclos2007
ico-1.0.1-4pclos2007
ifmetric-0.3-5pclos2007
ifplugd-0.28-6pclos2007
ImageMagick-6.2.9.2-5pclos2007
imlib-1.9.15-3pclos2007
imwheel-1.0.0-0.pre12.3pclos2007
info-install-4.8-6pclos2007
initscripts-8.51-3pclos2007
inkscape-0.43-0
installation-help-1.0-2pclos2007
iproute2-2.6.16-4pclos2007
iptables-1.3.5-4pclos2007
iputils-20020927-7pclos2007
isapnptools-1.26-9pclos2007
jackit-0.103.0-2pclos2007
jasper-1.701.0-6pclos2007
jfsprogs-1.1.11-2pclos2007
jpeg-progs-6b-40pclos2007
k3b-1.0.1-4pclos2007
kaffeine-0.8.4-3pclos2007
katalog-0.3-5pclos2007
kchmviewer-2.6-1tex
kde-kdm-Dark2-1.0-2pclos2007
kdeaddons-ark-3.5.6-5pclos2007
kdeaddons-konqimagegallery-3.5.6-5pclos2007
kdeaddons-metabar-3.5.6-5pclos2007
kdeaddons-searchbar-3.5.6-5pclos2007
kdebase-3.5.6-14pclos2007
kdebase-konsole-3.5.6-14pclos2007
kdebase-servicemenu-2007-6pclos2007
kdegraphics-3.5.6-6pclos2007
kdegraphics-kghostview-3.5.6-6pclos2007
kdegraphics-kpdf-3.5.6-6pclos2007
kdegraphics-ksnapshot-3.5.6-6pclos2007
kdegraphics-kuickshow-3.5.6-6pclos2007
kdelibs-3.5.6-7pclos2007
kdemultimedia-3.5.6-8pclos2007
kdemultimedia-kscd-3.5.6-8pclos2007
kdenetwork-kget-3.5.6-8pclos2007
kdenetwork-lisa-3.5.6-8pclos2007
kdeutils-3.5.6-9pclos2007
kdeutils-ark-3.5.6-9pclos2007
kdeutils-kcalc-3.5.6-9pclos2007
kdeutils-kdf-3.5.6-9pclos2007
kdeutils-kgpg-3.5.6-9pclos2007
kdmtheme-1.1.3-1pclos2007
kernel-2.6.18.8.tex5-1-1pclos2007
kernel-headers-2.6.18.8.tex5-1-1pclos2007
kernel-latest-2.6.18.8.tex5-1pclos2007
keybled-0.65-2pclos2007
kima-0.7.1-2pclos2007
kipi-plugins-0.1.2-1pclos2007
kjsembed-3.5.6-5pclos2007
kmixautostart-0.1-2pclos2007
knetstats-1.6.1-2pclos2007
ksplash-engine-moodin-0.4.2-4pclos2007
lbxproxy-1.0.1-4pclos2007
ldconfig-2.4-7pclos2007
ldetect-0.6.5-2pclos2007
ldetect-lst-0.1.150-5pclos2007
less-394-5pclos2007
lesstif-0.93.94-13pclos2007
libaa1-1.4.0-0.rc5.17pclos2007
libacl1-2.2.39-2pclos2007
libakode2-2.0.1-4pclos2007
libalsa-data-1.0.14-0.rc4.1pclos2007
libalsa2-1.0.14-0.rc4.1pclos2007
libao2-0.8.6-4pclos2007
libapm1-3.2.2-12pclos2007
libapr-util1-1.2.7-10pclos2007
libapr1-1.2.7-3pclos2007
libapt-pkg0-0.5.15cnc6-19pclos2007
libart_lgpl2-2.3.17-5pclos2007
libarts1-1.5.6-4pclos2007
libaspell15-0.60.4-4pclos2007
libassuan0-0.6.10-3pclos2007
libat-spi0-1.7.11-2pclos2007
libatk1.0_0-1.18.0-1pclos2007
libattr1-2.4.32-2pclos2007
libaudiofile0-0.2.6-7pclos2007
libavahi-client3-0.6.16-3pclos2007
libavahi-common3-0.6.16-3pclos2007
libavahi-core4-0.6.16-3pclos2007
libavahi-glib1-0.6.16-3pclos2007
libavahi-qt3_1-0.6.16-3pclos2007
libavc1394_0-0.5.3-0.72.2pclos2007
libavformats50-0.4.9-4.pre1.6122.4pclos2007
libavutil49-0.4.9-4.pre1.6122.4pclos2007
libbeecrypt6-3.1.0-8pclos2007
libbinutils2-2.16.91.0.7-4pclos2007
libbonobo-2.16.0-2pclos2007
libbonobo2_0-2.16.0-2pclos2007
libbonoboui-2.16.0-2pclos2007
libbonoboui2_0-2.16.0-2pclos2007
libbrlapi0.4.1_0-3.7.2-6pclos2007
libbzip2_1-1.0.3-7pclos2007
libcaca0-0.99-0.beta11.1pclos2007
libcairo2-1.4.2-2pclos2007
libcairomm1.0_1-1.2.2-2pclos2007
libcap-utils-1.10-6pclos2007
libcap1-1.10-6pclos2007
libcdda0-IIIa9.8-12pclos2007
libcdio7-0.77-4pclos2007
libcheck0.9.3-0.9.3-1pclos2007
libconsole0-0.2.3-62pclos2007
libcrack2-2.8.9-2pclos2007
libcroco0.6_3-0.6.1-2pclos2007
libcups2-1.2.4-1pclos2007
libcurl3-7.15.5-2pclos2007
libdaemon0-0.10-4pclos2007
libdatrie0-0.1.1-2pclos2007
libdb2-2.4.14-16pclos2007
libdb4.2-4.2.52-12pclos2007
libdbus-1_3-1.0.2-2pclos2007
libdbus-glib-1_2-0.73-1pclos2007
libdbus-qt-1_1-0.70-3pclos2007
libdc1394_12-1.2.1-3pclos2007
libdevmapper1.02-1.02.09-2pclos2007
libdha1.0-1.0-0.rc1.3pclos2007
libdirectfb0.9_25-0.9.25.1-3pclos2007
libdm0-2.2.5-2pclos2007
libdmx1-1.0.2-3pclos2007
libdnet1-1.11-2pclos2007
libdrm2-2.0.2-2pclos2007
libdrm2-devel-2.0.2-2pclos2007
libdv4-0.104-6pclos2007
libdvdcss2-1.2.9-1pclos2007
libdvdnav4-0.1.10-5pclos2007
libdvdread3-0.9.6-2pclos2007
libelfutils1-0.120-3pclos2007
libenca0-1.9-4pclos2007
libenchant1-1.2.6-3pclos2007
libesound0-0.2.36-6pclos2007
libevent1-1.1b-2pclos2007
libexif12-0.6.13-3pclos2007
libexiv2-0.12-1pclos2007
libexpat0-1.95.8-4pclos2007
libexscalibar1-1.0.4-9pclos2007
libext2fs2-1.39-3pclos2007
libfaac0-1.25-1pclos2007
libfaad2_0-2.5-1pclos2007
libffmpeg51-0.4.9-4.pre1.6122.4pclos2007
libfftw3-3.1.2-2pclos2007
libflac++6-1.1.4-1pclos2007
libflac8-1.1.4-1pclos2007
libfltk1.1-1.1.7-9pclos2007
libfontconfig1-2.4.1-2pclos2007
libfontenc1-1.0.2-3pclos2007
libfreebob0-1.0.0-1pclos2007
libfreetype6-2.2.1-5pclos2007
libfribidi0-0.10.4-7pclos2007
libfs6-1.0.0-4pclos2007
libgail-gnome-1.1.3-2pclos2007
libgail18-1.9.2-2pclos2007
libgamin-1_0-0.1.8-1pclos2007
libgc1-6.7-2pclos2007
libgcc1-4.1.1-4pclos2007
libGConf2_4-2.14.0-5pclos2007
libgcrypt11-1.2.3-2pclos2007
libgdbm3-1.8.3-4pclos2007
libgdk_pixbuf2.0_0-2.10.6-6pclos2007
libggi-2.1.1-4pclos2007
libggi2-2.1.1-4pclos2007
libgii-0.9.1-3pclos2007
libgii0-0.9.1-3pclos2007
libgimp2.0_0-2.3.16-1pclos2007
libglade2.0_0-2.6.0-2pclos2007
libglib1.2-1.2.10-17pclos2007
libglib2.0_0-2.12.3-4pclos2007
libglib2.0_0-devel-2.12.3-4pclos2007
libglibmm2.4_1-2.12.0-2pclos2007
libglitz1-0.5.6-2pclos2007
libgmime2.0-2.2.3-3pclos2007
libgmp3-4.1.4-5pclos2007
libgnome-keyring0-0.6.0-2pclos2007
libgnome-menu2-2.16.0-3pclos2007
libgnome-vfs2_0-2.16.0-5pclos2007
libgnome2_0-2.16.0-3pclos2007
libgnome2-2.16.0-3pclos2007
libgnomecanvas2_0-2.14.0-2pclos2007
libgnomecups-0.2.2-4pclos2007
libgnomecups-1.0_1-0.2.2-4pclos2007
libgnomeprint-2.12.1-9pclos2007
libgnomeprint2-2_0-2.12.1-9pclos2007
libgnomeprintui-2.12.1-6pclos2007
libgnomeprintui2-2_0-2.12.1-6pclos2007
libgnomeui2_0-2.16.0-4pclos2007
libgnomeui2-2.16.0-4pclos2007
libgnutls13-1.4.0-5pclos2007
libgpg-error0-1.3-2pclos2007
libgpgme11-1.1.2-3pclos2007
libgphoto-common-2.3.0-1pclos2007
libgphoto-hotplug-2.3.0-1pclos2007
libgphoto2-2.3.0-1pclos2007
libgpm1-1.20.1-15pclos2007
libgpod-0.4.2-4pclos2007
libgpod1-0.4.2-4pclos2007
libgs8-8.15-47pclos2007
libgsf-1_114-1.14.1-4pclos2007
libgsl0-1.8-3pclos2007
libgsm1-1.0.10-12pclos2007
libgsmlib1-1.11-0.3pclos2007
libgssapi2-0.10-2pclos2007
libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0.10.11-1pclos2007
libgstreamer-plugins0.8-0.8.12-12pclos2007
libgstreamer0.10_0.10-0.10.11-1pclos2007
libgstreamer0.8-0.8.12-3pclos2007
libgtk+-x11-2.0_0-2.10.6-6pclos2007
libgtk+1.2-1.2.10-47pclos2007
libgtk+2.0_0-2.10.6-6pclos2007
libgtkhtml2_0-2.11.0-3pclos2007
libgtkspell0-2.0.11-2pclos2007
libgutenprint2-5.0.0-3pclos2007
libgutenprintui2_1-5.0.0-3pclos2007
libhal1-0.5.9-3pclos2007
libical0-0.26.7-1pclos2007
libice6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libid3tag0-0.15.1b-6pclos2007
libIDL2_0-0.8.8-1pclos2007
libidn11-0.6.5-2pclos2007
libiec61883_0-1.1.0-0.20060103.3pclos2007
libieee1284_3-0.2.10-3pclos2007
libifp4-1.0.0.1-2pclos2007
libimlib1-1.9.15-3pclos2007
libimlib2_1-1.2.2-5pclos2007
libimlib2_1-filters-1.2.2-5pclos2007
libimlib2_1-loaders-1.2.2-5pclos2007
libintl3-0.14.6-2pclos2007
libiso9660_5-0.77-4pclos2007
libjack0-0.103.0-2pclos2007
libjasper1.701_1-1.701.0-6pclos2007
libjpeg62-6b-40pclos2007
libkexif0-0.2.4-4pclos2007
libkipi0-0.1.4-4pclos2007
libkjsembed1-3.5.6-5pclos2007
libkrb53-1.4.3-8pclos2007
libksba8-0.9.15-2pclos2007
liblame0-3.97-1pclos2007
liblbxutil1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
liblcms1-1.16-1pclos2007
libldap2.3_0-2.3.27-3pclos2007
libldetect0.6-0.6.5-2pclos2007
liblesstif2-0.93.94-13pclos2007
liblinux-atm1-2.4.1-10pclos2007
liblirc0-0.8.1-1pclos2007
liblm_sensors3-2.10.0-6pclos2007
liblrmi0-0.10-3pclos2007
libltdl3-1.5.20-10pclos2007
liblzo2_2-2.01-2pclos2007
libmad0-0.15.1b-5pclos2007
libmagic1-4.17-3pclos2007
libMagick10.4.0-6.2.9.2-5pclos2007
libmal0-0.31-10pclos2007
libmalaga7-7.5-2pclos2007
libmeanwhile1-1.0.2-2pclos2007
libmesagl1-6.5-19pclos2007
libmesaglu1-6.5-19pclos2007
libmesaglut3-6.5-19pclos2007
libmetacity-private0-2.16.1-6pclos2007
libmikmod2-3.1.11a-5pclos2007
libmjpegtools1.8-1.8.0-5pclos2007
libmng1-1.0.9-2pclos2007
libmodplug0-0.7-9pclos2007
libmpcdec3-1.2.2-2pclos2007
libmpeg2dec0-0.4.0b-6pclos2007
libmpeg4ip0-1.5.0.1-4pclos2007
libmtp0-0.1.3-1pclos2007
libmusicbrainz4-2.1.3-4pclos2007
libnas2-1.8-4pclos2007
libncurses5-5.5-1.20051029.4pclos2007
libncurses5-devel-5.5-1.20051029.4pclos2007
libncursesw5-5.5-1.20051029.4pclos2007
libneon0.26-0.26.1-4pclos2007
libnet-snmp10-5.3.1-3pclos2007
libnetpbm10-10.34-3pclos2007
libnewt0.51-0.51.6-13pclos2007
libnjb-2.2.5-6pclos2007
libnjb5-2.2.5-6pclos2007
libnspr4-2.0.0.3-3pclos2007
libnss3-2.0.0.3-3pclos2007
libntfs-3g0-1.710-1pclos2007
libntfs9-1.13.1-2pclos2007
libogg0-1.1.3-3pclos2007
liboil-tools-0.3.10-1pclos2007
liboil0.3-0.3.10-1pclos2007
libopal-2.2.8-1pclos2007
libopencdk8-0.5.8-2pclos2007
libOpenEXR2-1.2.2-4pclos2007
libopenslp1-1.2.1-4pclos2007
libopenssl0.9.8-0.9.8b-4pclos2007
libORBit2_0-2.14.7-1pclos2007
libpam0-0.99.6.0-4pclos2007
libpanel-applet-2_0-2.16.0-5pclos2007
libpango1.0_0-1.16.1-1pclos2007
libpango1.0_0-modules-1.16.1-1pclos2007
libpaper1-1.1.8-9pclos2007
libpcap0-0.9.1-3pclos2007
libpcre0-6.7-2pclos2007
libpcsclite1-1.3.1-4pclos2007
libpisock9-0.12.1-1pclos2007
libpng3-1.2.12-4pclos2007
libpoppler-qt1-0.5.3-7pclos2007
libpoppler1-0.5.3-7pclos2007
libpopt0-1.10.6-12pclos2007
libportaudio0-18.1-5pclos2007
libpth20-2.0.3-4pclos2007
libpulseaudio0-0.9.5-2pclos2007
libpulsecore2-0.9.5-2pclos2007
libpwdb0-0.62-5pclos2007
libpython2.4-2.4.3-6pclos2007
libqassistantclient1-3.3.8-3pclos2007
libqscintilla6-1.6-7pclos2007
libqt3-3.3.8-3pclos2007
libquicktime0-0.9.10-4pclos2007
libraw1394_8-1.2.1-2pclos2007
libreadline5-5.2-1pclos2007
librecode0-3.6-12pclos2007
libresmgr1-1.0-7pclos2007
librpm4.4-4.4.6-12pclos2007
librsvg-2.16.0-2pclos2007
librsvg2_2-2.16.0-2pclos2007
libsamplerate0-0.1.2-3pclos2007
libsane1-1.0.18-8pclos2007
libsasl2-2.1.22-22pclos2007
libsasl2-plug-digestmd5-2.1.22-22pclos2007
libsasl2-plug-login-2.1.22-22pclos2007
libsasl2-plug-plain-2.1.22-22pclos2007
libscrollkeeper0-0.3.14-11pclos2007
libSDL1.2-1.2.11-4pclos2007
libsexy2-0.1.8-3pclos2007
libsigc++2.0_0-2.0.17-2pclos2007
libslang1-1.4.9-9pclos2007
libsm6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libsmbclient0-3.0.23b-8pclos2007
libsmpeg0.4-0.4.4-29pclos2007
libsndfile1-1.0.17-4pclos2007
libsoup-2.2.100-1pclos2007
libspeex1-1.1.12-5pclos2007
libsqlite3_0-3.3.6-4pclos2007
libstartup-notification-1_0-0.8-4pclos2007
libstdc++5-3.3.6-1pclos2007
libstdc++6-4.1.1-4pclos2007
libsvn0-1.3.2-6pclos2007
libsysfs2-2.0.0-5pclos2007
libt1lib5-5.1.0-4pclos2007
libtaglib0-1.4-2pclos2007
libtcl8.4-8.4.13-2pclos2007
libtermcap2-2.0.8-41pclos2007
libthai0-0.1.7-1pclos2007
libtheora0-1.0-0.alpha7.2pclos2007
libtiff3-3.8.2-6pclos2007
libtk8.4-8.4.13-2pclos2007
libtpctl2-4.17-2pclos2007
libtunepimp3-0.4.2-6pclos2007
libtwolame0-0.3.10-1pclos2007
libungif4-4.1.4-3pclos2007
libunixODBC1-2.2.11-15pclos2007
libusb0.1_4-0.1.12-3pclos2007
libuser-0.54.5-2pclos2007
libuser1-0.54.5-2pclos2007
libutempter0-0.5.5-3pclos2007
libvbe0-0-10.4pclos2007
libvcd0-0.7.23-4pclos2007
libvisual-plugins-0.4.0-4pclos2007
libvisual0-0.4.0-2pclos2007
libvoikko1-1.0-5pclos2007
libvolume_id0-106-1pclos2007
libvorbis0-1.1.2-3pclos2007
libvorbisenc2-1.1.2-3pclos2007
libvorbisfile3-1.1.2-3pclos2007
libvte9-0.14.0-4pclos2007
libwmf-0.2.8.4-7pclos2007
libwmf0.2_7-0.2.8.4-7pclos2007
libwnck-1_18-2.16.0-3pclos2007
libwnck-2.16.0-3pclos2007
libwordnet2.1-2.1-6pclos2007
libwrap0-7.6-29pclos2007
libwvstreams0-4.2.2-1pclos2007
libx11_6-1.0.3-3pclos2007
libx11-common-1.0.3-3pclos2007
libx264_50-0.50.558-1pclos2007
libxau6-1.0.2-2pclos2007
libXaw3d7-1.5E-7pclos2007
libxaw7-1.0.2-5pclos2007
libxaw8-1.0.2-5pclos2007
libxclass0-0.9.1-1pclos2007
libxcomposite1-0.3-3pclos2007
libxcursor1-1.1.7-2pclos2007
libxdamage1-1.0.3-3pclos2007
libxdmcp6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxevie1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxext6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxfixes3-4.0.1-3pclos2007
libxfont1-1.1.0-6pclos2007
libxfontcache1-1.0.2-3pclos2007
libxft2-2.1.12-2pclos2007
libxi6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxine1-1.1.6-1pclos20072007
libxinerama1-1.0.1-4pclos2007
libxkbfile1-1.0.3-3pclos2007
libxkbui1-1.0.2-3pclos2007
libxml2-2.6.27-3pclos2007
libxml2-utils-2.6.27-3pclos2007
libxmms1-1.2.10-34pclos2007
libxmu6-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxp6-1.0.0-4pclos2007
libxpm4-3.5.5-3pclos2007
libxprintutil1-1.0.1-4pclos2007
libxrandr2-1.1.1-3pclos2007
libxrender1-0.9.2-1pclos2007
libxres1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxscrnsaver1-1.1.0-3pclos2007
libxslt1-1.1.20-2pclos2007
libxt6-1.0.2-4pclos2007
libxtrap6-1.0.0-4pclos2007
libxtst6-1.0.1-4pclos2007
libxv1-1.0.1-4pclos2007
libxvid4-1.1.0-1pclos2007
libxvmc1-1.0.2-3pclos2007
libxxf86dga1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxxf86misc1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
libxxf86vm1-1.0.1-3pclos2007
locales-2.4-5pclos2007
locales-en-2.4-5pclos2007
logrotate-3.7.3-5pclos2007
losetup-2.12r-11pclos2007
lsof-4.76-2pclos2007
luit-1.0.1-4pclos2007
lvm2-2.02.09-1pclos2007
m4-1.4.4-2pclos2007
make-3.81-2pclos2007
makedepend-1.0.0-4pclos2007
makedev-4.4-2pclos2007
man-1.5m2-6pclos2007
mandriva-doc-common-2007-0.8mdv2007.0
mdadm-2.5.3-4pclos2007
mdklaunchhelp-2007-2pclos2007
mediacheck-7.3-1pclos2007
memtest86+-1.65-4pclos2007
mencoder-1.0-0.rc1.3pclos2007
mesa-6.5-19pclos2007
mesa-demos-6.5-19pclos2007
micmute-0.1-1pclos2007
mikmod-3.2.1-5pclos2007
mingetty-1.07-5pclos2007
mjpegtools-1.8.0-5pclos2007
mkfontdir-1.0.2-3pclos2007
mkfontscale-1.0.1-4pclos2007
mkinitrd-4.2.17-27pclos2007
mktemp-1.5-14pclos2007
mlocate-0.17-4pclos2007
module-init-tools-3.2.2-7pclos2007
monitor-edid-1.11-2pclos2007
mount-2.12r-11pclos2007
mount-cifs-3.0.23b-8pclos2007
mozplugger-1.7.3-3pclos2007
mpage-2.5.4-4pclos2007
mpeg2dec-0.4.0b-6pclos2007
mpg123-0.60-3pclos2007
mplayer-1.0-0.rc1.3pclos2007
mplayer-gui-1.0-0.rc1.3pclos2007
mplayerplugin-3.40-1pclos2007
msec-0.50.1-2pclos2007
multiarch-utils-1.0.9-4pclos2007
nail-11.25-3pclos2007
ncurses-5.5-1.20051029.4pclos2007
ndiswrapper-1.41-1pclos2007
net-snmp-mibs-5.3.1-3pclos2007
net-tools-1.60-19pclos2007
netprofile-0.10-2pclos2007
ntfs-3g-1.710-1pclos2007
ntfsprogs-1.13.1-2pclos2007
ntfsprogs-gnomevfs-1.13.1-2pclos2007
oclock-1.0.1-4pclos2007
openldap-2.3.27-3pclos2007
openoffice.org-2.2.0-3pclos2007
openoffice.org-kde-2.2.0-3pclos2007
openoffice.org-mimelnk-2.2.0-3pclos2007
openoffice.org-ooqstart-2.2.0-3pclos2007
openssh-4.5p1-1pclos2007
openssh-clients-4.5p1-1pclos2007
openssl-0.9.8b-4pclos2007
ORBit2-2.14.7-1pclos2007
pam-0.99.6.0-4pclos2007
pango-1.16.1-1pclos2007
passwd-0.74-1pclos2007
patch-2.5.9-4pclos2007
pciutils-2.2.4-2pclos2007
pclinuxos-gfxboot-theme-0.3-1pclos2007
pclinuxos-menu-messages-2007-4pclos2007
pclinuxos-mime-0.4-12pclos2007
pclinuxos-release-2007-1pclos2007
pclinuxos-theme-1.1.7-3pclos2007
perl-5.8.8-8pclos2007
perl-Authen-SASL-2.10-4pclos2007
perl-base-5.8.8-8pclos2007
perl-Cairo-1.00-2pclos2007
perl-CGI-3.16-3pclos2007
perl-Compress-Zlib-1.42-3pclos2007
perl-Config-IniFiles-2.39-2pclos2007
perl-Crypt-SSLeay-0.51-7pclos2007
perl-DateManip-5.44-4pclos2007
perl-Digest-HMAC-1.01-13pclos2007
perl-Digest-SHA1-2.11-3pclos2007
perl-Expect-1.20-2pclos2007
perl-File-FnMatch-0.02-2pclos2007
perl-Glib-1.140-2pclos2007
perl-Gnome2-Vte-0.06-2pclos2007
perl-Gtk2-1.140-2pclos2007
perl-Gtk2-Html2-0.04-7pclos2007
perl-Gtk2-NotificationBubble-0.01-5pclos2007
perl-Gtk2-TrayIcon-0.04-6pclos2007
perl-HTML-Parser-3.56-2pclos2007
perl-HTML-Tagset-3.10-2pclos2007
perl-IO-Tty-1.07-2pclos2007
perl-Libconf-0.42.00-6pclos2007
perl-libwww-perl-5.805-3pclos2007
perl-Locale-gettext-1.05-4pclos2007
perl-MailTools-1.74-2pclos2007
perl-MDK-Common-1.2.3-1pclos2007
perl-MDV-Distribconf-3.06-2pclos2007
perl-MDV-Packdrakeng-1.01-3pclos2007
perl-MIME-Lite-3.01-9pclos2007
perl-Net-DBus-0.33.3-3pclos2007
perl-Net-Jabber-2.0-2pclos2007
perl-Net-XMPP-1.0-3pclos2007
perl-Parse-Yapp-1.05-8pclos2007
perl-PDL-2.4.2-6pclos2007
perl-SOAP-Lite-0.69-2pclos2007
perl-String-ShellQuote-1.03-2pclos2007
perl-suid-5.8.8-8pclos2007
perl-SVG-2.33-4pclos2007
perl-Term-ReadKey-2.30-3pclos2007
perl-Text-DelimMatch-1.06-2pclos2007
perl-Tie-Watch-1.2-2pclos2007
perl-TimeDate-1.16-5pclos2007
perl-Tk-804.027-8pclos2007
perl-URI-1.35-4pclos2007
perl-URPM-1.46-2pclos2007
perl-XML-Parser-2.34-5pclos2007
perl-XML-RegExp-0.03-4pclos2007
perl-XML-Stream-1.22-3pclos2007
perl-XML-Twig-3.26-2pclos2007
perl-XML-XQL-0.68-3pclos2007
pico-4.64N-1
pinentry-0.7.2-7pclos2007
pinentry-qt-0.7.2-7pclos2007
pkgconfig-0.20-3pclos2007
playmidi-2.5-7pclos2007
popt-data-1.10.6-12pclos2007
portmap-4.0-210pclos2007
postscript-ppds-2006-4pclos2007
powernowd-0.97-2pclos2007
prcsys-0.0.2-2pclos2007
procmail-3.22-8pclos2007
procps-3.2.7-1pclos2007
proxymngr-1.0.1-4pclos2007
psmisc-22.2-3pclos2007
psutils-p17-10pclos2007
pwdb-conf-0.62-5pclos2007
pwlib-1.10.7-1pclos2007
pwlib-plugins-1.10.7-1pclos2007
pygtk2.0-2.10.4-1pclos2007
pygtk2.0-libglade-2.10.4-1pclos2007
python-2.4.3-6pclos2007
python-base-2.4.3-6pclos2007
python-cairo-1.2.2-2pclos2007
python-gobject-2.12.1-2pclos2007
python-numeric-24.2-3pclos2007
python-psyco-1.5.1-2pclos2007
python-pyxml-0.8.4-7pclos2007
python-qt-3.5.6-5pclos2007
python-reportlab-1.19-4pclos2007
python-rpm-4.4.6-12pclos2007
python-sip-3.5.6-5pclos2007
qscintilla-translations-1.6-7pclos2007
qsynaptics-0.22.0-5pclos2007
qt3-3.3.8-3pclos2007
redo-mbr-0.2-3pclos2007
reiserfsprogs-3.6.19-2pclos2007
resolvconf-1.37-4pclos2007
rgb-1.0.1-3pclos2007
rmt-0.4b41-3pclos2007
rootcerts-20060621-3pclos2007
rootfiles-11.0-2pclos2007
rpm-4.4.6-12pclos2007
rpm-helper-0.17-4pclos2007
rpm-pclinuxos-setup-1.29-6pclos2007
rpmtools-5.1.0-2pclos2007
ruby-1.8.5-3pclos2007
s2u-0.7-4pclos2007
samba-client-3.0.23b-8pclos2007
samba-common-3.0.23b-8pclos2007
sane-backends-1.0.18-8pclos2007
sane-frontends-1.0.14-4pclos2007
sash-3.7-7pclos2007
scli-0.2.12-9pclos2007
scrollkeeper-0.3.14-11pclos2007
sdparm-0.99-2pclos2007
sed-4.1.5-2pclos2007
sessreg-1.0.0-4pclos2007
setarch-2.0-4pclos2007
setserial-2.17-10pclos2007
setup-2.7.3-2pclos2007
setxkbmap-1.0.2-3pclos2007
sgml-common-0.6.3-13pclos2007
shadow-utils-4.0.12-4pclos2007
shared-mime-info-0.19-3pclos2007
sharutils-4.2.1-20pclos2007
showfont-1.0.1-4pclos2007
smb4k-0.8.3-1pclos2007
smproxy-1.0.2-3pclos2007
sndconfig-0.70-10pclos2007
sound-scripts-0.43-2pclos2007
soundwrapper-1.5-4pclos2007
sox-12.18.1-2pclos2007
squashfs-tools-3.2-1.r2.1pclos2007
strace-4.5.14-3pclos2007
subversion-1.3.2-6pclos2007
sudo-1.6.8p12-5pclos2007
suspend-0.5-7pclos2007
suspend-s2ram-0.5-7pclos2007
suspend-scripts-1.26-1pclos2007
symlinks-1.2-18pclos2007
synaptic-0.57.2-7pclos2007
synaptics-0.14.6-1pclos2007
sysfsutils-2.0.0-5pclos2007
sysklogd-1.4.1-14pclos2007
SysVinit-2.86-5pclos2007
t1lib-config-5.1.0-4pclos2007
t1utils-1.32-4pclos2007
tar-1.15.91-3pclos2007
task-x11-2006-4pclos2007
tcp_wrappers-7.6-29pclos2007
termcap-11.0.1-12pclos2007
testdisk-6.5-1pclos2007
thai-data-0.1.7-1pclos2007
time-1.7-29pclos2007
timezone-2.4-7pclos2007
tk-8.4.13-2pclos2007
tmpwatch-2.9.7-2pclos2007
tpctl-4.17-2pclos2007
traceroute-1.4a12-7pclos2007
udev-106-1pclos2007
unrar-3.51-0.1.20060plf
unzip-5.52-3pclos2007
update-alternatives-1.8.4-3pclos2007
urw-fonts-2.0-16.2pclos2007
usbutils-0.72-2pclos2007
userdrake-1.2.5-3pclos2007
usermode-1.85-4pclos2007
usermode-consoleonly-1.85-4pclos2007
utempter-0.5.5-3pclos2007
util-linux-2.12r-11pclos2007
vbetool-0.7-1pclos2007
vcdimager-0.7.23-4pclos2007
viewres-1.0.1-6pclos2007
vim-minimal-7.0-15pclos2007
vixie-cron-4.1-9pclos2007
vte-0.14.0-4pclos2007
which-2.16-5pclos2007
win32-codecs-1.9-2pclos2007
wltool-1.4.2-1pclos2007
wordnet-2.1-6pclos2007
words-3.0-3pclos2007
wpa_gui-0.5.5-3pclos2007
x11-data-bitmaps-1.0.1-5pclos2007
x11-data-cursor-themes-1.0.1-5pclos2007
x11-data-xkbdata-1.0.1-7pclos2007
x11-driver-input-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-driver-input-acecad-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-aiptek-1.0.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-calcomp-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-citron-2.2.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-digitaledge-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-dmc-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-dynapro-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-elo2300-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-elographics-1.0.0.5-4pclos2007
x11-driver-input-evdev-1.1.2-8pclos2007
x11-driver-input-fpit-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-hyperpen-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-jamstudio-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-joystick-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-keyboard-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-magellan-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-magictouch-1.0.0.5-4pclos2007
x11-driver-input-microtouch-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-mouse-1.1.1-2pclos2007
x11-driver-input-mutouch-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-palmax-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-penmount-1.2.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-input-spaceorb-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-summa-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-tek4957-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-ur98-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-input-vmmouse-12.4.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-input-void-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-driver-video-apm-1.1.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-ark-0.6.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-ati-6.6.2-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-chips-1.1.1-4pclos2007
x11-driver-video-cirrus-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-cyrix-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-dummy-0.2.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-fbdev-0.3.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-glint-1.1.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-i128-1.1.0.5-5pclos2007
x11-driver-video-i740-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-i810-1.6.5-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-imstt-1.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-mga-1.2.1.3-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-neomagic-1.1.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-newport-0.2.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-nsc-2.8.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-nv-1.2.2-1pclos2007
x11-driver-video-openchrome-0.2.0.20060725-4pclos2007
x11-driver-video-rendition-4.1.0-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-s3-0.4.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-s3virge-1.9.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-savage-2.1.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-siliconmotion-1.4.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-sis-0.9.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-sisusb-0.8.1-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-sunbw2-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-suncg14-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-suncg3-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-suncg6-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-sunffb-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-sunleo-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-suntcx-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-tdfx-1.2.1-3pclos2007
x11-driver-video-tga-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-trident-1.2.1-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-tseng-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-v4l-0.1.1-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-vesa-1.2.1-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-vga-4.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-via-0.2.1-5pclos2007
x11-driver-video-vmware-10.13.0-2pclos2007
x11-driver-video-voodoo-1.1.0-2pclos2007
x11-font-adobe-75dpi-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-adobe-utopia-75dpi-1.0.1-5pclos2007
x11-font-adobe-utopia-type1-1.0.1-5pclos2007
x11-font-alias-1.0.1-9pclos2007
x11-font-arabic-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bh-75dpi-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bh-lucidatypewriter-75dpi-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bh-ttf-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bh-type1-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bitstream-75dpi-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-bitstream-type1-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-cursor-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-daewoo-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-dec-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-ibm-type1-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-isas-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-jis-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-micro-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-misc-1.0.0-4pclos2007
x11-font-misc-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-mutt-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-schumacher-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-sony-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-sun-misc-1.0.0-5pclos2007
x11-font-type1-1.0.0-4pclos2007
x11-font-xfree86-type1-1.0.0-6pclos2007
x11-scripts-1.0.1-4pclos2007
x11-server-common-1.1.1-16pclos2007
x11-server-xgl-0.0.1-0.20060714.12pclos2007
x11-server-xorg-1.1.1-16pclos2007
x11perf-1.4.1-3pclos2007
xauth-1.0.1-8pclos2007
xclass-icons-0.9.1-1pclos2007
xcmsdb-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xcursorgen-1.0.1-3pclos2007
Xdialog-2.2.1-2pclos2007
xditview-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xdpyinfo-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xev-1.0.2-2pclos2007
xf86dga-1.0.1-8pclos2007
xfd-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xfindproxy-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xfontsel-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xfs-1.0.2-14pclos2007
xfsinfo-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xfsprogs-2.8.11-2pclos2007
xfwp-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xgamma-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xgc-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xhost-1.0.1-3pclos2007
xine-arts-1.1.6-1pclos20072007
xine-faad-1.1.6-1pclos20072007
xine-flac-1.1.6-1pclos20072007
xine-plugins-1.1.6-1pclos20072007
xinit-1.0.2-6pclos2007
xinitrc-2.4.17-4pclos2007
xkbcomp-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xkbevd-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xkbprint-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xkbutils-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xkill-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xload-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xlogo-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xlsatoms-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xlsclients-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xmag-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xman-1.0.2-5pclos2007
xmessage-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xmms-1.2.10-34pclos2007
xmms-wma-1.0.5-1.0.rh9.rf
xmodmap-1.0.1-3pclos2007
xmore-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xorg-x11-75dpi-fonts-7.1.0-7pclos2007
xorg-x11-xfs-7.1.0-7pclos2007
xprop-1.0.2-2pclos2007
xrandr-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xrdb-1.0.2-4pclos2007
xset-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xsetmode-1.0.0-4pclos2007
xsetpointer-1.0.0-4pclos2007
xsetroot-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xsettings-kde-0.4-2pclos2007
xstdcmap-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xterm-215-6pclos2007
xtrap-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xvidcap-1.1.4-3pclos2007.i586.rpm
xvidtune-1.0.1-6pclos2007
xvinfo-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xwd-1.0.1-4pclos2007
xwininfo-1.0.2-3pclos2007
xwud-1.0.1-4pclos2007
zip-2.31-3pclos2007
zlib1-1.2.3-3pclos2007
Added packages to PCLinuxOS:
Libdvdcss2
Ntfs-3g
Unrar
Win32codecs
Xmms (with wma codec)
Xvidcap
Removed stuff from PCLinuxOS:
Beryl/Compiz
Many of the KDE artwork, addons and themes
Sun Java
and many many more ...
Reason Behind the Lack of Release Cycle for PCLinuxOS
Let me ask you a question - why does a Linux distribution need release cycles?
A software release is the distribution, of a new and upgraded version of a computer software product. Each time a system or a software program is changed, the developers and the company (or community) doing the work decide on how to distribute the software (or the latest changes to the software) to the users (customers or community members or general public). Software patches are one method and the full package (full OS and/or software including the patches and changes) is the other.
Generally a distribution undergoes a release cycle such as: pre-alfa, alfa, beta, release candidate, general release and the boxed copy. A release cycle is necessary to be on the edge of the latest stable software.
So, why does PCLinuxOS lacks a regular release cycle, whereas Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva and many others come up with roughly two releases per year including much alpha, betas, rc (release candidate)s and boxed editions? The reasons are:
- PCLinuxOS repository keeps itself always updated with the latest in the Linux World. The users can easily update their systems online, so there is no need to download the full bundle. It's tiresome. By the way, every release of PCLinuxOS is so stable, up to date and usable that any desktop user can have happy computing for quite a long time (till a major release), even without installing the updates.
- PCLinuxOS has a unique approach to releases (and updates). Each of its release comes with some major updates, so that the user can feel the difference in the Linux world in general (between two consequitive releases) and PCLinuxOS in particular. That's why there are discernible changes among PCLinuxOS 92, 93 (Big Daddy) and 94 (2007). In other Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora, Suse...) you will hardly find any major difference between two releases, except for some change in software update numbers.
- PCLinuxOS has no set dates for releasing. This helps the developer and the community to be patient and work on the distro steadily to offer a really stable and usable distro, when they are at all satisfied after much alpha, beta and release candidates. Hence, every PCLinuxOS release has very less number of bugs compared to other distros.
- Frequent Release Cycles create chaos in Linux User Community. They feel the urge to update (though for not worthwhile benefits). And they spare much work-hours in tweaking the system, updating, installing and configuring. The actual productive computing is ignored. But late and stable releases help users to work on a usable system and forget about the update thing, till a really major release knocks in.
As of now, I think the next PCLinuxOS release will be groundbreaking with stable KDE4. So, I would tell every Desktop Linux User to get back to life and work on PCLinuxOS 2007, than trying the minor updates of Gutsy, Herdy, Celena, bla... bla.... bla…..
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Microsoft has killer Q1, profits surge, beats estimates
Whatever else you want to say about Microsoft, it makes its investors happy. Very happy. Profits surged for its fiscal first quarter, the company reported today, helped nicely along by strong sales of Halo 3, Windows and Office Suite, reports AP.
On the news, shares rose a hefty sum today, from $31.99 to $35.55. For the quarter ended Sept. 30, profits climbed to $4.29 billion, or 45 cents per share, from $3.48 billion, or 35 cents per share, over the same period last year. These results beat Wall Street estimates – which called for 39 cents a share.
Revenue grew, too, 27 percent to $13.76 billion from $10.81 billion in the year-ago quarter, again topping analysts' forecasts by more than $1 billion. The business unit responsible for Vista contributed $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, 25 percent more than a year ago. It claims to have sold more than 88 million copies of Windows.
Halo 3 pushed the entertainment division into the black for the second time, contributing $165 million of profit for the quarter. Ad revenue, too, grew thanks to the aQuantive acquisition, but, the story reports, that even without that, ad revenue would have been up 25 percent
IBM Lotus Sametime tops corporate IM platform review
Jabber and Cisco follow as close seconds in test of corporate IM platforms
Messaging has come a long way from the early days of rudimentary chat programs, the DOS and Windows "NET SEND" command and the Novell NetWare "SEND" command.
The ideal corporate instant-messaging environment lets users communicate anything they choose, from simple typed messages to documents to video. It tells employees which colleagues are available for an impromptu meeting and which don't wish to be disturbed. The ideal IM environment offers impenetrable security that thwarts intrusion attempts, as well as IM-borne malware. It's nimble and responsive; intuitive to use and administer; and integrates seamlessly with other IM products and protocols, such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
Preferably, it safely archives IM sessions for easy retrieval by an auditor, is highly scalable, exhibits rock-solid reliability and uses network resources frugally. A corporate IM product taps into a Windows Active Directory or a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) back end for grouping and authenticating users. And finally, it provides the necessary VoIP capabilities to turn a chat session easily into a telephone call.
In short, the model platform makes holding meetings via IM as productive as - or even better than - meeting face to face.
To test the state of corporate IM tools we invited all vendors in this space to send products. We received Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) 5.2 from Jabber, Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 from IBM and Openfire Enterprise Edition 3.2 from Jive Software. We downloaded Gordano Messaging Suite (GMS) 5.0 from Gordano's FTP site and Mirador Instant Messenger for Windows 3.0 from Serial Scientific International's (SSI) Web site, and we accessed Cisco's WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition via the Internet.
Microsoft also plays in this space with its older Live Communications Server 2005 platform and will be forging ahead with enterprise IM as part of its Office Communication Server platform running on Exchange 2007. As this product was still in beta during our testing Window and won't be available until next month, we could not include it in our head to head test. We have, however, test early beta code to help give readers a feel for what they can expect from this unified messaging platform.
Cisco's Next Municipal Wireless Move
Can Cisco Systems transform the perfect storm into the perfect business opportunity? That's the question facing Cisco as the company heads to a municipal broadband conference in Santa Clara on October 21.
For those who missed the first two chapters of the municipal broadband story, let me get you up to speed. In Chapter One, several big city mayors promised their citizens free or low-cost universal broadband access. It was a "feel good" political story. How can affordable broadband be a bad thing?
In Chapter Two, we discovered that these municipal wireless networks were more difficult to deploy than expected. Successful projects in Providence, R.I.; Oakland County, Mich.; Corpus Christi, Texas; and other locations were overshadowed by big setbacks in San Francisco and several other major cities.
In Chapter Three -- beginning right now -- we finally get to the heart of the matter: Applications. Find some killer applications and the municipal broadband market will follow (that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it). A case in point: Cisco earlier this week announced its intense focus on public safety applications for emergency first responders. Smart move. Many of the most successful municipal broadband networks involve police, safety and video surveillance systems.
Instead of posing with mayors for municipal broadband photo opportunities, Cisco and its rivals are zeroing in on the municipal departments that are willing to pay a few bucks for mission critical wireless systems.
Chapter Three hasn't played out yet. In fact, we're only getting started. There is a risk that some smaller wireless mesh vendors will suffer more layoffs or go bankrupt before this chapter is complete.
Still, some venture capitalists are willing to pump money into very targeted opportunities. (Firetide just received $14.4 million.) And newer technologies -- such as 802.11n -- promise to enhance municipal broadband network performance.
Where do Cisco and its mesh wireless rivals go from here? I'll be searching for answers and blogging live from the MuniWireless conference, October 21-23. If you're at the event look me up.
IDS vs. IPS
Gartner predicted intrusion-detection systems would be dead by 2005
A firestorm of controversy exploded four years ago when consulting firm Gartner declared that intrusion-detection systems that passively monitor for malicious traffic would be “dead” by 2005, a dinosaur wiped out by intrusion-prevention systems that proactively block bad traffic.
Buying an IDS to monitor unwanted traffic is a waste of time and money, Gartner stated, urging enterprise managers to start
buying in-line IPS products and step up to the plate and block the attack traffic comin’ at ‘em, primarily from the Internet.
Blocking the bad traffic with an in-line IPS opened the possibility of mistakenly blocking good traffic, too, yelped IDS proponents.
Hands on: Getting down to iWork '08
Can Apple make even a spreadsheet cool? Our reviewer examines the new office productivity suite for the Mac.
With iWork '08, the latest generation of its office suite, Apple has given Mac users a powerful alternative to Microsoft's Office for Mac. This new version finally offers an alternative to Excel called Numbers, a spreadsheet tool unlike any that has come before it. It also adds some great new features to iWork's other two applications -- the presentation program Keynote and the word processor Pages -- including a few that many users felt were lacking in previous releases.
For example, all the iWork applications now present a contextual Format Bar that displays only the controls or commands relevant to a selected item. This makes it easier to locate specific image effects, text styles or even spreadsheet functions based on what you are working with. In many cases, the Format Bar brings up commands that were always commonly needed but used to be buried somewhere in one of the tabs of the Inspector palette.
Sharing and collaboration seems to be an overall key focus in iWork '08. Pages, Keynote and Numbers all offer a variety of export and sharing options that range from integration with Apple's iWeb to, in the case of Keynote, publishing directly to YouTube.
And collaboration isn't limited to just putting your material out there. All three applications have excellent comment and markup support, allowing multiple users to easily make suggestions, explain changes, and provide information about whole sections or single items in a document.
They also offer the ability to open documents saved in the native Open XML format used by Office 2007 for Windows (though exporting files to Office still puts them in Office 2003 format). This is a major achievement for anyone who needs to exchange files with Office 2007 users, since it means that you don't need to make special requests if you're the only iWork user on a project. It also makes iWork a more reasonable choice in a wide range of environments.
 Getting down to iWork '08 | |
Evident across the board is Apple's continued commitment to providing users with high-end templates to use as a starting point for projects. The design quality and visual impact of the templates in all of the iWork apps is superb, and unlike the templates in most office suites, these actually include sample content (and, in the case of Numbers, functions and formulas) so you truly see how to use the design. This is particularly helpful in Numbers, which includes templates for things that you might never think about using a spreadsheet for, such as planning a dinner party, a vacation itinerary or a home improvement project.
As helpful as this can be for new users, however, the sample content can become annoying after a while when you already have a clear idea of where you want to go with a new document. You can create your own blank templates by deleting the sample material and saving the empty pages as a new template; and many of the templates in iWork '08 have the welcome ability to add a new blank page, in addition to the content-filled pages that were always there. Still, I would have preferred to see Apple include some layout-only, contentless templates for Numbers and Pages.
Pages
When asked about how previous versions of Pages compared with Word, I would often say that it was more like a combination of Word and Publisher -- a hybrid word processor and layout tool. This was one of the things that you either loved or hated about the program. One of the best things Apple did with this new release was to give Pages two distinct modes: one for word processing and one for layout, with separate templates for each mode.
Usability test: Does iPhone match the hype?
Users try out the iPhone, HTC Touch and the Nokia N95
We all know that in the technology world, the hype about new products often doesn't match reality. So it's fair to ask: Is the iPhone as good as its hype? In particular, does iPhone's much-discussed touch-screen interface really make using the device simpler and more intuitive?
Everybody will have an opinion, but what's need is something more objective and definitive. So an expert in the field -- Perceptive Sciences, an Austin, Texas-based usability consulting firm -- was asked to examine and compare the iPhone and two competitors.
The results of its tests were unequivocal: While the iPhone is not the most feature-rich device, this group of experts found that when it comes to usability, iPhone does, indeed, live up to its hype.
The phones
Besides iPhone, the two other products in this usability comparison test were selected for two reasons: They were available, and they had competitive feature sets. In particular, the testers needed a touch-screen phone to compare to the iPhone and a more traditional button-based phone with strong multimedia capabilities.
For now, there are few touch-screen devices available. One that has received a fair amount of publicity is the LG Prada, which is not yet available from a U.S. cellular carrier. LG declined to participate in these tests.
Timothy Ballew, seated, and Tom Thornton of Perceptive Science observe as tester Mindy Cambel tries out a smart phone.
Another is the HTC Touch, a Windows Mobile device that has both standard button-based navigation and touch-screen capabilities. Like the Prada, it isn't offered yet by U.S. carriers, but HTC still agreed to participate in this test. This device is based on the Windows Mobile 6.0 platform, has a 2.8-in., 240-by-320 resolution display and a 2-megapixel camera. It supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
While the HTC Touch currently isn't available from a U.S. cellular carrier, the company has indicated that it will be before the end of the year. An unlocked GSM version of the Touch is currently available from numerous resellers for between $450 and $600.
Nokia's N95, based on the Series 60 variant of the Symbian platform, provides only the more traditional type of button-based navigation, but it is a multimedia powerhouse. It boasts a 5-megapixel camera and can create VGA-quality, 30-frames-per-second videos. It also supports many types of media playback and has a long list of other features including built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, not to mention a bar-code reader that came with the test device. It has a 2.6-in., 320-by-240 resolution display.
Unlocked versions of the Nokia N95 are available for between $600 and $700.
The 8 most dangerous consumer technologies
High-tech consumer products and services of all kinds are making their way into the workplace. They include everything from smart phones, voice-over-IP systems and flash memory sticks to virtual online worlds. And as people grow more accustomed to having their own personal technology at their beck and call -- and in fact can't imagine functioning without it -- the line between what they use for work and what they use for recreation is blurring.
In a recent survey of corporate users by Yankee Group Research Inc., 86% of the 500 respondents said they had used at least one consumer technology in the workplace, for purposes related to both innovation and productivity.
Unfortunately, this trend poses problems for IT organizations. For one thing, the use of these technologies increases the risk of security breaches. Moreover, users expect IT to support these devices and services, especially once they interact with applications in the corporate environment.
But in many companies, it would be against corporate culture to simply ban the devices or to block employees from accessing consumer services. At the same time, companies can't depend wholly on policy to maintain the level of security they need.
"I don't know of any business where employees have the time to read and comprehend every single policy related to a computer in their environment -- they're busy doing their jobs," says Sharon Finney, information security administrator at DeKalb Medical Center in DeKalb County, Ga. "I consider it my responsibility to implement things that make security seamless, easy and completely in the background."
Others, like Michael Miller, vice president of security at telecommunications services provider Global Crossing Ltd., wait until the devices or services affect productivity or otherwise cause a business problem, such as the security department battling worms or dealing with bandwidth issues. But no matter what companies decide to do, the response always involves a balance of enabling employee productivity, abiding by the corporate culture, not eating up too much of IT's own resources and ensuring a level of security that's right for the company.
"Consumerization will be a nightmare for IT departments, creating maintenance and support problems that will swiftly overwhelm IT resources, unless they embrace new approaches to managing the rogue employees," says Josh Holbrook, an analyst at Yankee Group. Holbrook equates banning the use of consumer technologies in the workplace with "an endless game of whack-a-mole." At the same time, ignoring the adoption of such technologies would lead to a potentially hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications within a corporate enterprise, he says. He proposes ceding control to end users via an internal customer care cooperative model. (See "Zen and the art of ceding control of consumer tech to end users.")
To help you decide how to respond, below we look at eight popular consumer technologies and services that have crept into the workplace and provide some insight into how companies are achieving the balance of security, productivity and sanity.
1. Instant messaging
People use instant messaging for everything from making sure their kids have a ride home from practice to communicating with co-workers and business partners. In the Yankee study, 40% of respondents said they use consumer IM technology at work. Instant messaging present numerous security challenges. Among other things, malware can enter a corporate network through external IM clients and IM users can send sensitive company data across insecure networks.
One way to combat threats is to phase out consumer IM services and use an internal IM server. In late 2005, Global Crossing did just that when it deployed Microsoft Corp.'s Live Communications Server (LCS). Then in August 2006 it blocked employees from directly using external IM services from providers such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Now, all internal IM exchanges are encrypted, and external IM exchanges are protected, as they're funneled through the LCS server and Microsoft's public IM cloud.
Adopting an internal IM server also gave Global Crossing's security team more control. "Through the public IM cloud, we're able to make certain choices as to how restrictive or open we are. We can block file transfers, limit the information leaving our network or restrict URLs coming in," which was a common method for propagating worms, Miller says. "That takes away a huge component of malicious activity."
You can also take a harder line. DeKalb's security policy, for instance, bans IM use altogether. "It's mainly chat-type traffic, not personal health information, but it's still a concern," Finney says. As backup to the restrictive policy, she blocks most sites where IM clients can be downloaded, although she can't block MSN, AOL or Yahoo because many physicians use those sites for e-mail accounts. Her team also uses a network inventory tool that can detect IM clients on employee PCs. If one is found, the employee is reminded of DeKalb's no-IM policy and notified that the IM client will be removed. Finney is also considering various methods of blocking outbound IM traffic, but for now, she also uses a data loss prevention tool from Vericept Corp. to monitor IM traffic and alert the security team about any serious breaches. To do that, Finney's team needs to shut down most of its Internet ports, which forces IM traffic to scroll to Port 80 for monitoring.
DeKalb is looking into the idea of implementing the IM add-on of IBM's Lotus Notes or even an internal freeware IM service like Jabber for business users who want to communicate across campus. "Nothing is 100%," Finney says. "IM is always a huge concern from a security as well as a productivity perspective."
Science and Beauty Combine at the US Botanic Garden in Washington
VOICE ONE:
This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
 |
(MUSIC)
VOICE ONE:
The United States Botanic Garden is America's plant museum. Congress established the Botanic Garden as a center for the science of growing things. But the Garden is also a center of beauty.
The Botanic Garden has twenty-five thousand plants in its collection. Visitors can see many of them in the Garden's public Conservatory. It is a large stone and glass structure near the United States Capitol building.
VOICE TWO:
 |
| A titan arum plant at the US Botanic Garden. It is called the "corpse plant" because its flower smells something like a dead body. |
The Conservatory offers examples of plants that provide the makings of medicine. It also has plants of special interest to children. Rare and endangered plants occupy a place all their own.
Many visitors show an interest in the plants of North America and economic plants. Economic plants get their name because they are used in products like food, drinks and wood.
VOICE ONE:
The tradition leading to the present Botanic Garden began almost two hundred years ago. In eighteen sixteen, a cultural group in Washington proposed creating a special garden. This area was to have plants from the United States and other nations.
In eighteen forty-two, the explorer Charles Wilkes donated two hundred fifty four living plants. The plants were carefully kept. After a short time, they found a home in a new greenhouse. The greenhouse was moved to its present home in nineteen thirty-three. That was a year after the opening of nearby Bartholdi Park. This open-air space is also part of the Botanic Garden.
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
On a hot summer morning, many people make their way through the Conservatory building. They say the cool air inside feels good. But wetness levels and temperatures are carefully controlled for the health of the plants.
Some of the visitors spend time in the Botanic Garden's seasonal demonstrations, or exhibits. Among the crowd in the open air exhibits are high school students. They study plants on the terrace -- the space around the Conservatory.
Several women wearing hats also walk around the terrace. Then they move west of the building to look at the new National Garden. They watch workers set new plantings in the ground.
VOICE ONE:
The National Garden first officially welcomed the public last October. Private donors and groups added this open-air growing space to the United States Botanic Garden. The Office of the Architect of the Capitol operates the National Garden and all parts of the Botanic Garden, often called the U.S.B.G.
The U.S.B.G. and the American Public Gardens Association organized the temporary exhibits. The exhibits are part of an event called "Celebrating America's Public Gardens." The celebration will last until early October. Twenty botanic gardens from all over the country are represented.
An exhibit called "Green Today, Growing Tomorrows" shows the importance of respect for the future of the environment. A second exhibit is named "A Sense of Place." It shows the great differences among plant life in America. Experts in the study of horticulture and plant science say an important part of an area's identity comes from what that area grows.
VOICE TWO:
The exhibit of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii shows plant life of warm climates. The National Tropical Botanical Garden operates four gardens in Hawaii and one in Florida. Dried fronds, or leaves, of palms form the top of a Hawaiian shelter in the Washington exhibit. To most Americans, the Hawaiian plants and trees look unusual. For example, there is ulu, or breadfruit, and the aluha plant from the bellflower family. A nearby banana tree looks more common.
The National Tropical Botanical Garden says saving tropical plants is one of its main purposes. Experts say thirty-three percent of all plant life in the United States could disappear from Earth. An even higher percentage of tropical plant life is threatened.
VOICE ONE:
Another popular exhibit comes from the Heritage Farm. The farm is part of the Rio Grande Botanic Garden in New Mexico. An old red wagon with large wheels contains evidence of nature's products in the American West. The vehicle contains apples, onions, strawberries and mission grapes. It has honey and a honeycomb, the wax cells where bees store the honey. Many kinds of trees, grasses and plants need bees to grow.
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
A young man is watering flowers in the National Garden. He takes a long look at roses from the Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University. These flowers are special. They are stronger and require less care than other roses. The university says this is because they were developed to survive the cold winters of Iowa. Scientist Griffith Buck produced them. Mister Buck worked at the university's College of Agriculture from nineteen forty-eight until nineteen eighty-five. He developed ninety kinds of roses.
VOICE ONE:
Several people are taking pictures of the exhibit of the Cleveland Botanical Garden in Ohio. A huge reproduction of a salsa can is marked "Ripe from Downtown Salsa." Real tomatoes and vegetables grow on top of the can.
The salsa mixture contains tomatoes and other healthful foods. Members of the Cleveland Botanical Garden's Green Corps manufacture the salsa. These young food manufacturers are fourteen to nineteen years old. They also attend a special high school while making the salsa.
VOICE TWO:
 |
| Dale Chihuly's ''Summer Boat 2006'' |
The North Carolina Arboretum also provided colorful artwork. The arboretum sent a steel sculpture measuring more than four meters long.
Grace Cathey's sculpture is a yellow dahlia on a green stem. The dahlia is a popular flower in the American South. But the sculpture provides more than an appealing artwork. It honors the color that dahlias provide for North Carolina's crafts industry.
(MUSIC)
VOICE ONE:
The United States Botanic Garden also provides year-round education in plant life. For example, the U.S.B.G. is currently showing the photography of biologist Amy Lamb. Her pictures hang near the entrance to the Conservatory. Most of the plants seen in the pictures are grown around her home in Bethesda, Maryland.
As a scientist, Miz Lamb says she looks at flowers for more than just their beauty. She studies them to learn the reasons for their forms and colors. Miz Lamb takes cuttings from her plants at several periods of their development. Then she places the cuttings against something black. The results show the smallest hairs and lines.
VOICE TWO:
The Botanic Garden also provides information about insects. A researcher will offer a program on the subject in August. Dayna Lane will explain whether gardeners should step on insects -- or learn to love them. Also in August, the U.S.B.G. will hold four classes in cooperation with an agency of the Department of Agriculture. Scientists with the Department's Agricultural Research Service will explain Research Service projects.
Even people visiting the Botanic Garden for only one day can get horticultural education. Information in the National Garden describes grasses and plants native to the middle-Atlantic Ocean area. It also explains uses for the plants and suggests the best soil for them.
VOICE ONE:
Today, the United States Botanic Garden continues many of the traditions it started long ago. America's plant museum continues to prove that science and beauty go together.
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Jerilyn Watson. Brianna Blake was our producer. I'm Bob Doughty.
VOICE ONE:
And I'm Faith Lapidus. Read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again at this time next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.
How the Job Description for US President Has Gotten Longer Over Time
This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
 |
| The White House |
A listener in Cambodia heard our recent call for questions about the process of electing an American president. Tath Sok in Phnom Penh wants to know about the duties and responsibilities of the president.
This question touches on a continual debate in American society. The separation of powers in the federal government was designed to create a system of checks and balances. Experts could argue for hours about the limits to the powers of the president, Congress and the courts. But we just wanted a few facts, so we looked in the World Book Encyclopedia.
The Constitution gives the president the duties of chief administrator of the nation and commander of the armed forces. But developments including court decisions, laws and customs have expanded those duties. Today the president has seven major areas of responsibility.
First, as chief executive, the president is responsible for enforcing federal actions and developing federal policies. The president is also responsible for preparing the national budget and appointing federal officials.
The president nominates cabinet members, Supreme Court justices and other officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. There are other jobs in government agencies that the president can fill without Senate approval.
As commander in chief, the president shares some military powers with Congress. Under the Constitution only Congress has the power to declare war.
The president also serves as foreign policy director, as the encyclopedia calls it. For this job, the Constitution gives the president the power to appoint ambassadors, make treaties and receive foreign diplomats. Treaties and appointments of ambassadors require Senate approval.
As legislative leader, the president has influence over many laws passed by Congress. The president has the power to veto any bill. But if a vetoed bill is passed again, this time by a two-thirds majority in both houses, the bill can still become law.
The president is also the head of a political party and has responsibilities as popular leader and chief of state.
So these are the main duties of the president. But our listener in Cambodia would also like to know how much the president earns. The job currently pays four hundred thousand dollars a year.
Just this week, in a blog at washingtonpost.com, political reporter Peter Baker wrote about the current debate over presidential powers. He noted criticisms of President Bush's claims of powers by Hillary Clinton, the Supreme Court and others.
But he also wrote about the long history of battles over presidential powers, or what is known as "executive privilege." Presidents have expanded their powers during wartime and also during times of peace. Peter Baker noted that before Thomas Jefferson was president, he was an activist for limited central government. But then he more than doubled the size of the country on his own with the purchase of the Louisiana territory.
And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written by Brianna Blake. I'm Bob Doughty.
Microsoft, the EU and Facebook
25 October 2007
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.
This week, Microsoft agreed to end its fight against European Union competition officials. The world's largest software company withdrew its remaining appeals at a European court.
 |
| European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes negotiated the agreement with Microsoft |
In two thousand four, the commission ordered Microsoft to share information with competitors. This information would help them develop software for server computers to "interoperate," or work easily, with Windows.
Windows is the Microsoft operating system found on more than ninety percent of personal computers. The company argued that it needed to protect trade secrets.
But now, Microsoft has agreed to share secret information with developers for a one-time payment of ten thousand euros. That is about fourteen thousand dollars at current exchange rates.
Microsoft also wanted to charge competitors almost six percent of the sales from products that use its information. But in the end it agreed to charge less than half a percent for worldwide use.
The European Union began to investigate Microsoft in nineteen ninety-eight after Sun Microsystems accused the company of being anti-competitive. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, fought back. But last month, it lost a big ruling. The second-highest court in the European Union agreed that Microsoft abused its market position.
In a separate case, Microsoft decided last week not to appeal a thirty-four million dollar fine by the Fair Trade Commission in South Korea.
But Microsoft could at least claim a victory in one of its efforts to expand its Internet business. This week it won the right to invest in Facebook and to expand an advertising partnership with the social networking site. Facebook chose Microsoft over Google, the leading Internet search company.
Microsoft will invest two hundred forty million dollars to buy a one and one-half percent interest. Microsoft values Facebook at fifteen billion dollars. Facebook reportedly expects about one hundred fifty million dollars in revenue this year. The company will be four years old in February and says the site has almost fifty million active users.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. Our reports are online with transcripts at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Jim Tedder.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Windows XP SP3 to include some Vista features
It's not just a patch and hot fix update, says site that leaked details
A Web site that leaked details of Windows XP Service Pack 3 over the weekend claimed that the update includes several new features, including some borrowed from Windows Vista.
According to NeoSmart Technologies, Windows XP SP3 build 3205, which was released to beta testers on Sunday, includes four new features among the 1,000-plus individual hot fixes and patches that have been issued since XP2's debut three years ago.
Features backported from Vista, said NeoSmart, include Network Access Protection (NAP), an enterprise policy enforcement technology that inspects client PCs before they access a corporate network, then updates the machines if necessary or blocks them if they don't meet specified security criteria.
Other additions range from a kernel module containing several encryption algorithms that can be accessed by third-party developers, to a new Windows activation model that doesn't require users to enter a product key.
Microsoft had previously announced SP3 support for NAP, which is part of Windows Vista and will be included in the not-yet-finalized Windows Server 2008.
Windows XP SP3, which Microsoft has said will be released early in 2008, will be one more move by the developer to extend the lifespan of the six-year-old operating system. Last month, for example, Microsoft gave Windows XP a five-month reprieve by pushing back the end of retail sales and sales of XP-powered PCs by large resellers to June 30, 2008.
And last week, Microsoft debuted a new "get-legal" program that lets companies purchase large quantities of Windows XP Professional licenses through their usual resellers.
Microsoft was not immediately available for comment on the leak, or the new features touted by NeoSmart.
Microsoft considers opening up Device Manager
Door left open to support for non-Windows Mobile devices
SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft Corp.'s new Mobile Device Manager faces a shortcoming because it is exclusive to Windows Mobile devices, but that might change, an executive said today.
Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft's mobile and embedded device group, left the door open to potential future support for devices that aren't based on Windows Mobile.
"Today, we have nothing to announce," he said. "But we're looking at it, we're thinking about it. Who knows what the future brings." Horn spoke during a press lunch at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference here.
He mentioned that Microsoft has in the past licensed Active Sync as a way to extend services to non-Microsoft devices.
Microsoft introduced System Center Mobile Device Manager at the conference. The software lets IT administrators manage and secure Windows Mobile phones. Unlike some other management products on the market, including Nokia Corp.'s Intellisync, it is only compatible with phones running the Windows Mobile operating system.
AT&T Inc., which is supporting Mobile Device Manager, has encountered inertia among IT administrators when it comes to supporting mobile devices. IT managers are worried about security and management issues, said Mike Woodward, vice president for business marketing at AT&T. He said the System Center Mobile Device Manager software and the services of Enterprise Mobile, a new company supported by Microsoft, will spur more enterprise use of mobile phones. Woodward could not offer specifics about how AT&T will support Mobile Device Manager or how it will work with Enterprise Mobile.
For now, the new software and the services from Enterprise Mobile, which helps organizations deploy and manage mobile phones, are designed for large operations. Mobile Device Manager, which is expected to come out next year, could support as many as 5,000 users. Enterprise Mobile doesn't expect to begin thinking about serving smaller businesses for another 12 to 18 months, because it will be focused on making sure it knows what large organizations need, said Steve Moore, president of Enterprise Mobile.
Cisco to buy WiMax start-up for $330M
Navini Networks acquisition is first foray into WiMax
Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to buy Navini Networks Inc., a developer of WiMax broadband wireless access systems, for $330 million.
The deal marks Cisco's first foray into WiMax technology. Earlier this month, Cisco wouldn't comment on reports that it planned to buy Navini, saying it had no plans to develop wireless base stations using any technology other than Wi-Fi.
Navini makes mobile WiMax wireless base stations.
Wi-Fi and WiMax are wireless networking technologies defined in standards set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. WiMax (802.16) has a range over a hundred times greater than the older and more widely deployed Wi-Fi (802.11) family of standards.
Cisco said it is particularly interested in Navini's expertise with "smart beamforming" technologies used with multiple-input, multiple output antenna arrays, which in Wi-Fi systems allow base stations to handle much higher data throughput.
Cisco plans to fold Navini into its wireless networking business unit. It expects the acquisition, its 124th, to close by the end of January.
Use of IP VPNs, carrier Ethernet to rise, survey says
While many companies are still using legacy technologies, such as ATM and frame relay, most plan on modernizing at least some of their locations within the next two years, according to a Current Analysis Inc. survey.
The survey, which was conducted among roughly 120 decision-makers directly involved in selecting corporate WAN services, found 44% of companies used frame relay, while 25% used ATM. Among frame-relay users, 75% said that they planned on switching to IP VPNs within the next two years, while 46% said they planned on switching to carrier Ethernet within the next two years.
Meanwhile, 80% of ATM users said they planned to switch to IP VPNs within the next two years, while 61% said they planned to switch to carrier Ethernet within the next two years.
"Incumbent service providers are challenged as more businesses demand IP and Ethernet services, yet many of their largest enterprise customers continue to operate on aging ATM and frame-relay networks," said Current Analysis analyst David Hold. "However, our survey indicates that the majority of those legacy users are ready to make the move to next-gen services."
The survey found the major reasons companies are deciding to switch over to next-generation WANs are the need for higher bandwidth, lower costs, and a desire for bundled voice, video and data services.
Overall, a majority of firms surveyed had already implemented next-generation WAN technology, as 68% reported using IP VPNs and 67% reported using carrier Ethernet.
The survey's sample tilted toward bigger companies, as roughly two-thirds of respondents were categorized as medium to large businesses, with 36% spending over $10 million per year on telecom services, and 31% spending between $1 million and $10 million per year. Read more....
Cracking Google's 'secret sauce' algorithm
A clue: 'pretend we're not here'; a reward: tens of millions of dollars
Rand Fishkin knows how valuable it is for a Web site to rank high in a Google search. But even this president of a search engine optimization firm was blown away by a proposal he received at a search engine optimization conference in London last month, where he was a panelist.
The topic -- Can a poker Web site rank high on a Google search using purely white hat tactics -- meaning no spamming, cloaking, link farms or other frowned-upon "black hat" practices. Fishkin answered yes, provided the site also added other marketing techniques and attracted some media attention.
The rest of the panel scoffed. "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight," one chided. After all, this is the cutthroat online gambling sector.
But one poker Web site owner was intrigued, and he later approached Fishkin. "He said, 'If you can get us a search ranking in the top five for online poker or gambling [using white hat methods], we'll buy that site from you for $10 million,'" recalls Fishkin, president and CEO of SEOmoz in Seattle. Intrigued but skeptical, Fishkin consulted other gambling site owners at the conference. "They said, 'If it really does rank there, we might be interested in paying you $10 million more.'"
Turns out, a single online gambling customer brings in at least $1,000 in revenue. With a recent Google search of "Texas Holdem Poker" yielding 1.64 million results, it's easy to see why site owners would pay millions to crack the code for Google's PageRank algorithm -- the elusive Holy Grail of online marketing.
The stakes are high for online businesses -- and Google is the formidable gatekeeper between site owners and their customers. Web sites, such as kinderstart.com, have even sued Google for what they allege are deliberate de-rankings, though none have been successful to date. Site owners are eager to get their hands on the 75% of free Google traffic that is not affected by AdSense and AdWords, Google's pay-per-click programs. With 47% market share among search engines and 3 billion search inquiries a month, Google is indeed king.
Seven things to know about reducing risk with an e-mail archive
Not archiving your e-mail properly can land you in legal trouble and cost millions
The following is excerpted from a transcription of the Sept. 11 Wikibon.org Peer Incite Meeting, focused on issues surrounding an article titled "Architecting e-mail storage," by Wikibon community member and consultant Kashik Das. The meeting was a discussion of specific issues by four recognized subject-matter experts and Wikibon.org community members: Josh Krischer, David Floyer, Peter Burris and David Vellante.
Krischer: There is no point in compliance if you don't keep e-mail. In Germany, for example, e-mail is official business paper, and companies have to put in the footer all the company details. All business e-mail has to be kept for 10 years.
Floyer: A lot of business is done with e-mail. About 10% of an average IT user's working life is spent on e-mail; for some people, it's a lot more than that. And there are huge deposits of e-mail and of instant messaging that leave a very strong audit trail of how organizations and people have been acting. This is a good thing, and it's also a risk.
What we have found in our discussions with people is [that] the primary driver with e-mail archiving is reducing risk. It's usually top-down, either from the CEO or board or from the legal department -- legal counsel [deciding] that e-mail archiving with mitigation systems needs to be deployed.
The courts have been emphasizing that e-mail should be captured. One of the primary objectives of e-mail archiving is just literally being able to prove in a court of law that [the e-mails] have all been captured and none have been changed. The secondary requirement for an e-mail archive is that it allows the exploitation of that data to help reduce risk to the organization.
Krischer: I identify three kinds of risk: compliance requirements for preserving e-mail, the risk of punitive damages if you can't produce the e-mails in a court case and [personal] protection. For instance, in [the Enron case], some defendants [as part of their defense] showed they were ordered to do illegal things ... in e-mails from company officers. Enron investigators found a lot of relevant information in deleted and recovered e-mails. See the $1.45 billion judgment against Morgan Stanley in the Ronald Perelman case because Morgan Stanley could not reliably produce e-mails for the court.
Floyer: If you think of a spectrum of risk, at one end, you have organizations at high risk with a lot to lose, usually highly regulated, so for example banking environments or trading environments in particular. The fundamental risk is that they can be closed down if the regulators find they are not complying with the regulatory requirements -- and there are a lot of requirements in that area. Obviously, to them, reduction of risk is very important.
Vellante: There are certain industries that are regulated. For instance SEC Rule 17A came out and essentially mandated that all electronic communicationd be archived in the financial services industry -- you have to keep everything.
Floyer: At the other end, you might take for example retail operations, which have razor-thin profits and have enormous pressures on just staying in business. What's interesting was [that] the fundamental strategy was one of minimizing the risk by minimizing the number of e-mails kept. So they kept e-mail for less than a month and then got rid of them altogether. They kept [the e-mails] of only about 200 key executives of all the people in a large organization.
Is the second approach legal? The new federal rules say you have to have solid procedures in place and that
those procedures have to be kept -- reasonable procedures. Whether reasonable is getting rid of stuff after 30 days, well, time will tell. But their argument is "the less kept the better."
Burris: This raises a very interesting question. Let's talk for one second about what we mean by risk. It sounds as though in Germany there are statutory edicts that dictate what you are supposed to do from an archiving standpoint. Whereas in the U.S., there have been some edicts, but for the most part, the biggest concerns stems from what we have learned from case law over the past few years -- namely the discovery process and how that is going to work. The risk issue then becomes different in the two places. In Germany, you either are in compliance or you are not, whereas in the U.S. ... you never know because case law is going to evolve over the next few years, and some very high-priced law firms are going to find some loopholes and screw some companies in the process.
So, does that ... change the nature of risk? [It] certainly suggests that in the U.S., because of the uncertainty of how this will play out over the next few years, that this will absolutely be decided by corporate legal minds as opposed to anybody else.
Krischer: Some of the companies I surveyed a few months ago said they plan to keep all their e-mails forever. When we ask, "Why you do that?" then normally the answer is because we don't know what we may need in a few years.
1. Focus on the issue of risk when selecting the technology for the base archive.
Floyer: From an infrastructure point of view, what I've seen is sometimes people are very focused on that risk, but other times, the project gets muddied up with a large number of wish lists that get added into the project around e-mail and around disks and around lots of things.
Then, what are the risk mitigation systems that are going to be put into place? Some of those will be technology-driven: The ability to do e-discovery more quickly or completely, for example, may reduce risk. The ability to search for rogue e-mails, the ability to ensure compliance, etc. But an awful lot of what the people we talked to were talking about -- the general training, awareness, stuff like that -- are part of that project but not the responsibility of IT.
So my point is that if you focus e-mail archiving on those two things, you may well come up with a much simpler and easier type of solution than many that are on the market. This focus will tell you which things to maximize and put significant value on in these solutions and which things to discount in the context of risk.
I think some of the current "magic quadrants" that are out there put far too much emphasis on e-mail functionality and fancy systems and fancy technology, and far too little on the core reason for doing it, which is risk reduction.
Architecting the e-mail archive to be flexible, to have access to that data, is incredibly important. And I think that alone can eliminate a number of vendors from any short list. And much simpler solutions then come into play that previously would not have been considered because they don't have all the fancy bells and whistles on them.
2. Good procedures are more important than access speed.
Floyer: What was interesting for example was that from a legal risk point of view, having good procedures was much, much more important than speed of access to it. As long as you could produce [the e-mail required in a legal discovery] within 48 hours, that was fine. Speed of access was not the important criteria for reducing risk. But good procedures that could be shown in court that were being followed were much more important.
For many companies, the reason for outsourcing e-mail archiving was that the outsourcing company showed world-class procedures that they felt would be much better than their own and would hold up much better in a court of law and therefore would be reducing risk, even though the functionality of the actual solution was not as high as others on the marketplace.
So taking that risk reduction I think can significantly simplify that whole process and therefore the whole focus of IT.
3. Do not archive e-mails from before the archive was created
Floyer: That brings me to one other point. Vendors are often pushing to include historical e-mails. One of the key points of reducing risk is to ensure that you've captured all e-mails and that nothing's been changed. That is a big reduction in risk -- just being able to prove in court that it is a complete record. For historical e-mails, it is going to be very difficult to do that.
Is putting historical e-mails into an e-mail archive going to reduce risk? The answer to that is probably not. It is extremely difficult to do [and] very, very labor-intensive -- extremely disliked by the users themselves. Probably it is better to draw a line in the sand and say from this point onward, all the data is being captured in the e-mail archive. Use the current procedures to go back and look for e-discovery on a best can-do basis and don't try to solve the historical problem by putting it into an e-mail archive. It doesn't reduce risk, and it's extremely expensive.
4. Design for secure transfer from one medium to another.
Krischer: If you want to keep something for 10 years, you can't put it on the same media for 10 years. I mean theoretically you can do that, but it will cost you a lot of money. For example, because of the price erosion of disk subsystems, it is cheaper to buy a new subsystem after three to four years than it is to pay the maintenance fee for the next six years for the old one. In addition, due to constant technology developments, new subsystems will usually be more reliable, deliver better performance and require less energy. Therefore, in 10 years, at least one media change has to be done, and this migration should be designed to and audited [to prove] that nothing was deleted and nothing was modified during this migration.
5. Build to support derivative uses of the data.
Burris: What [does] it mean to build an information store that could be used by derivative applications and create derivative types of value? So, for example, [these could include data] mining activities on e-mail archives to identify pockets of expertise or pockets of activities or pockets of relationships that might have significant business value in an upcoming sales activity or a critical support issue. The storage administrators need to be sensitive when they set up that archive so that there will be derivative uses of that information. It's guaranteed that the business will find ways to use [the archive].
Floyer: This e-mail archive infrastructure ... will live for 10 years, probably more. It's very likely to have a long life because the processes and procedures around it are going to be honed in, going to be assessed by auditors, etc., and you won't want to change those very quickly. What that means is the data held in that archive should be accessible, should not be a format that, to put it crudely, is a vendor lock-in. For example, it should be in some sort of way, either database or file-based system, where you can utilize [the data] for other functions.
Real Reveals Six New Bugs in RealPlayer
For the second time in eight days, new critical vulnerabilities that could be used to hijack machines have been fingered in the RealPlayer media player. The patched editions released last Friday for Windows, however, are not vulnerable to the half-dozen bugs, RealNetworks Inc. said.
Hard on the heels of the revelation that RealPlayer sported a major flaw and that the bug had been exploited by hackers who had compromised an ad server owned by 24/7 Real Media to spread malware to visitors of legitimate, trusted Web sites, Seattle-based RealNetworks Thursday posted information about the latest vulnerabilities.
All six bugs involve RealPlayer's problems parsing file formats and could be exploited by hackers who first crafted malicious files, then duped users into either opening those rigged files when they received them as e-mail attachments or visiting an attack site that hosted such files. Among the file types: .mov, .mp3, .rm, SMIL, .swf, .ram and .pl.
"Attackers can exploit these issues to execute arbitrary code in the context of RealPlayer," Symantec Corp. said in an alert Friday. "Successful attacks can compromise the application and the underlying computer."
RealNetworks said that the most up-to-date Windows editions of RealPlayer 10.5 and beta Version 11 are immune to the attacks. Those versions were released last Friday when RealNetworks fixed a flaw in an ActiveX control it installed on systems running Internet Explorer. At least one of the newest flaws can also be traced to the ActiveX control.
Unlike last week's problem, however, four of the six vulnerabilities disclosed Thursday also can be exploited on Mac and Linux machines that have RealPlayer installed. Updated editions are also available for those operating systems, with links available from the security bulletin RealNetworks posted on its site.
Copenhagen-based vulnerability tracker Secunia ApS rated the six just-revealed RealPlayer bugs collectively as "highly critical," the second-highest mark it gives. Symantec rated the bugs separately, with at least one pegged as 8.5 out of a possible 10. But RealNetworks downplayed the risk. "We have received no reports of any machines actually compromised as a result of the now-remedied vulnerabilities," the company claimed.
It can't say the same for last week's vulnerability, which was used by unknown attackers to plant a Trojan horse on PCs whose owners had visited supposedly safe Web sites. The hackers had previously hijacked an ad server operated by Internet advertising company 24/7 Real Media Inc., then infected valid ads that 24/7 served to legitimate sites. When users viewed a page with an infected ad, their Internet Explorer browser was silently redirected to a malicious page from which the Trojan was downloaded and installed.
Although Symantec posted a detailed analysis of the RealPlayer vulnerability and the use of the compromised ad server, 24/7 Real Media has not responded to repeated e-mails this week seeking comment.
Vista vs. Leopard: Battle of the new Features
Leopard introduces lots of new apps and interface features to Mac OS X. Can Vista match up?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Microsoft Is Yielding in European Antitrust Fight
Microsoft has given up its nine-year fight against antitrust regulators in Europe, saying yesterday that it would not challenge a court judgment from last month and would share technical information with rivals on terms the software giant had long resisted.
European regulators and some software groups in Europe hailed the deal as a breakthrough that should open the door to freer competition, especially in the market for the server software that powers corporate data centers and the Internet.
The agreement was struck in Europe, but it will have consequences worldwide because the terms for licensing Microsoft’s intellectual property will be extended to competitors in the United States and in other markets. If the new terms enhance competition, as the regulators say, consumers could benefit from lower prices and faster innovation in software.
The Microsoft deal leaves untouched the ruling last month by Europe’s second-highest court that provides a strong legal foundation for the European Union’s power to force a dominant company to share its intellectual property with rivals.
But just how much effect the agreement will have on the global software marketplace remains uncertain because many issues in the case already have been addressed, either by engineering or by previous legal settlements, according to some industry analysts.
As part of its past efforts to settle its antitrust problems, Microsoft has reached costly agreements with competitors that were the company’s most outspoken critics, including Sun Microsystems, I.B.M. and Novell.
In general, analysts said, the private settlements between Microsoft and competitors provided for cross-licensing and sharing technology.
What is clear is how much Microsoft’s room for legal maneuvering was limited by the ruling last month by the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. The court reaffirmed that Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, had abused its market power and said the company must obey a 2004 European Commission order to share confidential computer code with competitors.
After the courtroom setback, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, wrote a conciliatory letter to Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, according to a commission staff official. During the first week of October, Mr. Ballmer was on a scheduled trip to Europe and made an impromptu visit to the Netherlands, where Ms. Kroes lives. Over a long dinner, they met and agreed on the broad terms of the deal. To reach the final terms, Mr. Ballmer and Ms. Kroes spoke daily after the dinner meeting, according to a Microsoft executive.
The upper hand in these talks, legal experts say, certainly belonged to Ms. Kroes. “She was really negotiating from a position of strength, which she did not have before the ruling by the Court of First Instance,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University.
Ms. Kroes cast the agreement as a victory for Microsoft’s rivals, especially companies that rely on open-source software like the Linux operating system, an increasingly popular alternative to Microsoft’s products on servers.
To thrive in the marketplace, open-source software must work well with Microsoft’s desktop programs, notably the Windows personal computer operating systems. More than 90 percent of PCs run on Windows. Microsoft software also powers about 70 percent of the market for servers, so access to that technology will be crucial for competitors.
The European order mandates that Microsoft share its technology information on fair terms, so competing software can work smoothly, or interoperate, with Windows software. It is those terms to ease interoperability that will become more favorable to Microsoft competitors.
“These changes in Microsoft’s business practices, in particular towards open-source developers, will profoundly affect the software industry,” Ms. Kroes said in a statement. “The repercussions of these changes will start now and will continue for years to come.”
Under the agreement, Microsoft said it would not pursue a final appeal to the European Court of Justice, which could have drawn the case out two to three years more. Microsoft said it would make the server protocols available for purchase through its Web site, at www.microsoft.com/protocols.
Under the agreement, software developers must now pay only a one-time fee of 10,000 euros, or $14,300, to gain access to Microsoft’s communications protocols, which specify how to exchange data between Windows and rival products. These protocols are trade secrets, not patents. If competitors want more information than those trade secrets, they must license Microsoft’s patents, paying a royalty of 0.4 percent of the competing product’s sales. Microsoft had originally demanded 5.95 percent of sales as royalties.
“This is a huge breakthrough,” said Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, which had challenged Microsoft’s practice of withholding technical information. “Microsoft is finally doing what the commission ordered it to do. This will level the playing field.”
LİNK:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/technology/23soft.html?ref=worldbusiness
$100,000? Too High. $120 Million? Fine.
The efforts of federal regulators to curtail cronyism on corporate boards have led to some odd outcomes. The case of Michael K. Powell, a new director of Cisco Systems, is a prime example.
Mr. Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, happens to be a son of Colin Powell, the former secretary of state. Cisco happens to have paid the senior Mr. Powell more than $100,000 to deliver two speeches in 2005.
Under guidelines established by the Nasdaq stock market, that connection disqualifies the younger Mr. Powell as an independent director, so he cannot sit on the company’s audit, compensation or governance committees. But by the same definition, Richard M. Kovacevich, the chairman of Wells Fargo, is an independent director of Cisco, even though his company has promised to lend Cisco $120 million.
The difference is that Cisco’s line of credit is deemed too small a part of Wells Fargo’s overall business to present a conflict of interest, while the payments to the senior Mr. Powell exceeded the allowable annual limit of $100,000 to any family member of an independent director. PATRICK McGEEHAN
PLAYING DEFENSE? The former National Football League player Dwight Sean Jones may have met his toughest opponent yet: federal securities regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Mr. Jones, a former Los Angeles Raiders defensive end, to answer complaints that his investment firm, Amaroq Asset Management, has flouted federal securities law.
The commission’s order said Mr. Jones, who went on to become a players’ agent after winding up his pro career in 1996, had refused to produce or permit the inspection of business records at Amaroq, a registered investment adviser. Such examination is required by the Investment Advisers Act.
According to the S.E.C., Mr. Jones told the commission in 2003 that he was managing more than $44 million in assets for his clients, mostly athletes. He said at different times that company records had been destroyed in a fire, that they were on a moving truck and that they had inadvertently been sold by a storage company.
Securities regulators also said that although Mr. Jones contended that Amaroq discontinued business in 2004, he had never notified the commission.
The S.E.C. said Mr. Jones does not have a lawyer representing him. Mr. Jones, 44, did not reply to phone messages asking for comment. ELIZABETH OLSON
BRIDGING THE PAY GAP The average chief executive of a large corporation makes 400 times the pay of his company’s average worker, and that gap has quadrupled in less than two decades, says Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan. He wants to close the difference by ending a corporate tax break for executive stock options.
“The single biggest factor responsible for this massive pay gap is stock options,” said Mr. Levin, who introduced legislation on Friday to require the federal corporate tax deduction for stock option compensation to match the expense shown on corporate financial reports filed with the S.E.C.
Now, companies can show one stock option expense on their books and another on their tax returns, said Mr. Levin, whose legislation is supported by several consumer and labor groups.
The mismatch permitted companies in 2004 to claim $43 billion more in stock-option tax deductions than the expenses shown on their books, he said. That “shortchanges the Treasury,” said Mr. Levin, and “provides a windfall to companies doling out huge stock options.” ELIZABETH OLSON
RED AND GREEN IN AFRICA Red, a marketing program started last year by Bono, the singer, and Bobby Shriver, son of the first director of the Peace Corps, Sargent Shriver, evidently is doing more than raising money to fight AIDS in Africa through sales of Motorola, Gap, Converse, Emporio Armani and other products.
Speaking last week at an Advertising Club luncheon in New York honoring Mr. Shriver’s efforts, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Brookings Institute fellow and a former finance minister of Nigeria, praised Red for employing Africans, who make cloth for Converse sneakers and packaging for Motorola cellphones. “You’re creating so many jobs, and when you do that, they have money in their pockets, they can buy the antiretrovirals, they can send their children to school, they can feed themselves,” she said.
Ms. Okonjo-Iweala said Mr. Shriver was “not someone who just discovered Africa,” but “someone who started discovering it a long time ago.” In his youth, Mr. Shriver often visited Africa with his family.
Russell Simmons, the hip-hop impresario, said Red had inspired his jewelry company’s Green Initiative collection, which donates a percentage of profits to a fund for education programs in diamond-producing African nations. JANE L. LEVERE
LİNK:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/business/30suits.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Monday, October 22, 2007
China's Cyberdissidents and the Yahoos at Yahoo
Suppose that Anne Frank had maintained an e-mail account while in hiding in 1944, and that the Nazis had asked Yahoo for cooperation in tracking her down. It seems, based on Yahoo's behavior in China, that it might have complied.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof.
Granted, China is not remotely Nazi Germany. But when members of Congress pilloried executives of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems at a hearing about their China operations on Wednesday, there were three important people who couldn't attend. They were Shi Tao, Li Zhi and Jiang Lijun, three Chinese cyberdissidents whom Yahoo helped send to prison for terms of 10 years, 8 years and 4 years, respectively.
Only Mr. Shi, a Chinese journalist, has gotten much attention. But Chinese court documents in each case say that Yahoo handed over information that was used to help convict them. We have no idea how many more dissidents are also in prison because of Yahoo.
It's no wonder that there's an Internet campaign to boycott Yahoo, at www.booyahoo.blogspot.com. But it's a mistake to think of all the American companies as equal sinners, for Google appears to have done nothing wrong at all. Here's my take on the four companies:
Yahoo sold its soul and is a national disgrace. It is still dissembling, and nobody should touch Yahoo until it provides financially for the families of the three men it helped lock up and establishes annual fellowships in their names to bring Web journalists to America on study programs.
Microsoft has also been cowardly, but nothing like Yahoo. Microsoft responded to a Chinese request by recently shutting down the outspoken blog of Michael Anti (who now works for the New York Times Beijing bureau). Microsoft also censors sensitive words in the Chinese version of its blog-hosting software; the blogger Rebecca MacKinnon found that it rejected as "prohibited language" the title "I Love Freedom of Speech, Human Rights and Democracy."
Cisco sells equipment to China that is used to maintain censorship controls, but as far as I can tell similar equipment is widely available, including from Chinese companies like Huawei. Cisco also enthusiastically peddles its equipment to the Chinese police. In short, Cisco in China is a bit sleazy but nothing like Yahoo.
Google strikes me as innocent of wrongdoing. True, Google has offered a censored version of its Chinese search engine, which will turn out the kind of results that the Communist Party would like (and thus will not be slowed down by filters and other impediments that now make it unattractive to Chinese users). But Google also kept its unexpurgated (and thus frustratingly slow) Chinese-language search engine available, so in effect its decision gave Chinese Web users more choices rather than fewer.
Representative Chris Smith, who called the hearing and drew the Anne Frank analogy, has introduced a bill to regulate Internet companies abroad, but that's an overreaction. For, as Mr. Anti noted in his own critique, the legislation would just push out foreign companies and leave Chinese with rigidly censored search engines like Baidu.
That said, American companies shouldn't be abjectly surrendering. Microsoft could publish a list of the political terms that it blocks as "prohibited language." Google could post a list of all the Web sites it blocks. They can push back.
In any case, the tech companies are right about a fundamental truth: the Internet is a force for change in China. There are already 110 million Internet users in China, and 13 million bloggers — hugely outnumbering the 30,000-odd censors.
China's security forces try to filter out criticisms, but they often fail. A study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School found that China managed to block 90 percent of Web sites about the "Tiananmen massacre," 31 percent of sites about independence movements in Tibet, and 82 percent of sites with a derogatory version of the name of former President Jiang Zemin. In other words, some is stopped but a lot gets through.
So think of the Internet as a Trojan horse that will change China. Yahoo has acted disgracefully, but the bigger picture is that the Internet is taking pluralism to China — and profound change may come sooner rather than later, for unrest is stirring across the country.
It's the blogs that are closed that get attention and the cyberdissidents who are arrested who get headlines, just as in America it's the planes that crash that make the evening news. But millions of Chinese blogs and podcasts are taking off, and they are inflicting on the Communist Party the ancient punishment of "ling chi," usually translated as "death by a thousand cuts."
Link:http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/opinion/19kristof.html
Social Networking’s Next Phase
SAN FRANCISCO, March 2 — Next week Cisco Systems, a Silicon Valley heavyweight, plans to announce one of its most unusual deals: it is buying the technology assets of Tribe.net, a mostly forgotten social networking site, according to people close to the companies’ discussions.
Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen founded Ning, a social network.
It is a curious pairing. Cisco, with 55,000 employees, makes networking equipment for telecommunications providers and other big companies. Tribe.net, run by a company with eight employees, has been trampled by newer social sites like MySpace and Facebook.
But along with the recent purchase of a social network design firm, Five Across, the deal will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube to bring their customers together online. And that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies and entrepreneurs are thinking about social networks.
They look at MySpace and Facebook, with their tens of millions of users, as walled-off destinations, similar to first-generation online services like America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy. These big Web sites attract masses of people who have dissimilar interests and, ultimately, little in common.
The new social networking players, which include Cisco and a multitude of start-ups like Ning, the latest venture of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen, say that social networks will soon be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites. They are aiming to create tools to let ordinary people, large companies and even presidential candidates create social Web sites tailored for their own customers, friends, fans and employees.
“The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,” said Mr. Andreessen, who this week reintroduced Ning, his third start-up, after a limited introduction last year. “They are restrictive about what you can and can’t do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online.”
Social networks are sprouting on the Internet these days like wild mushrooms. In the last few months, organizations as dissimilar as the Portland Trailblazers, the University of South Carolina and Nike have gotten their own social Web sites up and running, with the help of companies that specialize in building social networks. Last month, Senator Barack Obama unveiled My.BarackObama.com, a social network created for his presidential campaign by the political consulting firm Blue State Digital.
Many of these new online communities cater to niche interests. Shelfari, a Seattle-based start-up, recently began a service to let book lovers share their opinions. This week it received an investment from Amazon.com.
Mr. Andreessen’s Ning, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is fashioning itself as a one-stop shop catering to this growing interest in social networks. Anyone can visit the site and set up a community on any topic, from the television show “Battlestar Galactica” to microbrew beers. Ning users choose the features they want to include, like videos, photos, discussion forums or blogs. Their sites can appear like MySpace, YouTube or the photo sharing site Flickr — or something singular.
Those setting up Ning communities can pay $20 a month if they want the site free of text advertisements delivered by Google. They also have the option of delivering their own advertising, as CBS does on Ning-based social networks for its shows “CSI” and “The Class.”
Mr. Andreessen said that even with its two acquisitions, Cisco might be underestimating the ease of combining technologies behind Tribe.net and its earlier acquisition, Five Across.
“The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches,” he said.
Tribe.net, which developed the technology that Cisco is now acquiring, almost led this new social networking phase. In 2004, the U2 singer Bono approached the company and asked it to create a separate network for his antipoverty campaign, One.org, according to several former employees. Tribe.net, founded by Mark Pincus, a prominent Silicon Valley angel investor, decided to remain focused on building a destination site, like Friendster and MySpace.
Bono went on to create the One.org network with Yahoo. Mr. Pincus left Tribe.net in 2005 but repurchased the company from lenders last summer when it was nearly out of money. Today, Tribe.net is primarily used by artists who attend the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.
Executives at Cisco and Utah Street Networks, Tribe.net’s parent company, declined to comment on their deal or its terms. But people close to the discussions said Tribe.net would remain an independent site, while its underlying technology would go to Cisco.
Several former employees have left Tribe.net to start their own firms offering social network tools. Alexander Mouldovan, who had been a product manager there, started a company called Crowd Factory to design social networks for large companies. He is now building services for several telecommunications customers and says the new model makes more sense for Internet users.
“If I’m into fly-fishing, that is where I’m going to spend my energy online,” he said. “I don’t think it is easy for MySpace and Facebook to adapt and bend to the needs of individual brands.”
One challenge is getting users to join new social networks when there are few other members. For example, Google helped Nike design its soccer community site, called Joga.com, but it does not appear to have significantly attracted users.
Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/technology/03social.html?ex=1330578000&en=f718f182170673a4&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
MySpace-Skype Deal Turns Keyboard Clatter to Chatter
MySpace and Skype are partnering to bring free voice-calling capability to the social networking site. The deal makes sense for both MySpace and Skype, Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst with Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "Skype needs some good news, and this adds one more service that MySpace can use to showcase its site as a platform."
MySpace users will soon be able to chat by phone thanks to a new partnership between Skype and the popular social networking site, the companies announced Wednesday.
MySpaceIM with Skype is a new product that integrates MySpace's instant messaging client with Skype's free voice-calling capability using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Launching next month in 20 countries with localized MySpace communities, MySpaceIM with Skype will enable millions of users to place free Skype Internet calls to other MySpace or Skype users.
"Skype has the leading technology in Internet voice communications and an enormous international user base that we're thrilled to connect with our existing community," said Chris DeWolfe, cofounder and CEO of MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. "Our network has no geographical boundaries -- Internet calling is the natural next step for how our members communicate with each other."
MySpace claims more than 110 million monthly active users, while Skype boasts 220 million registered users. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Privacy Protection
MySpace users will not be required to download any additional Skype software to take advantage of the feature, which will give users more ways to easily connect with friends and family around the world, the company said.
The new functionality will also tap into the personal privacy settings available on MySpace. Users who have a MySpace profile set to "private," for example, will not be able to receive Skype calls from people not on their friends lists. Users can also choose to allow only people on a select Skype personal contact list to call them. They can prescreen incoming callers and block any MySpaceIM with Skype call or user at any time.
Two-Way Connection
Another new feature enabled by the MySpace-Skype partnership will allow users to link their MySpace profiles and photos or avatars to their accounts on Skype. Skype's VoIP service is available in 28 languages and is used in almost every country around the world, the company says, and the new feature will be available globally except in Japan, China and Taiwan.
"Both MySpace and Skype have become a part of people's lives by bringing people closer together, no matter where they live in the world," said Michael Van Swaaij, interim CEO of Skype. "This partnership reiterates that Skype is the platform of choice for Internet communications because we make it simpler and easier for people to place free calls to one another whether they are on Skype or within the MySpace network."
A Communications Medium
The deal makes sense for both MySpace and Skype, Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst with Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.
"Skype needs some good news, and this adds one more service that MySpace can use to showcase its site as a platform," Enderle explained.
Indeed, social networks in general and MySpace in particular are increasingly becoming a communications medium, added John Barrett, director of research with Parks Associates . "I think social networks are the dial tone for the next generation. People plug in when they want to, they exchange messages openly or privately, and then they unplug again. Adding voice to that is a really smart move."
'A Dead Heat'
Whether or not Facebook, MySpace's principal competitor, will offer something similar remains to be seen. "I think Facebook is able to move a little more quickly and to be a little more nimble because it doesn't have a large corporate parent," Barrett said.
The percentage of people using Facebook is increasing at a faster rate than that using MySpace, he noted. "A lot of the chatter suggests MySpace has become slightly less cool, with a tarnish that Facebook hasn't yet acquired," he said.
Will VoIP provide the proverbial magic bullet to fend off competition from Facebook? "It could make MySpace more appealing, but I doubt it could do that," Barrett said.
"MySpace is in a dead heat with Facebook, and both are trying to add more and more capabilities," Enderle concluded. "It will be interesting watching these guys compete going forward."
Link:http://www.technewsworld.com/story/voip/59884.html
IBM Developing Wicked-Fast Wireless Data Transfer Chip
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and MediaTek have announced a joint effort to develop ultra-fast chipsets that will be able to blast a full-length high-definition movie faster than most people can read this sentence. For example, IBM says, a consumer could upload a 10 gigabyte file in five seconds with the new technology versus the 10 minutes it takes using current WiFi technology.
The new technology will be based on the 60 GHz (gigahertz) band, which is a free and unlicensed band of radio spectrum. Most home wireless networks utilize bands in the single-digit range, such as the popular 2.4 GHz band.
IBM and MediaTek will collaborate to integrate IBM's new millimeter wave (mmWave) radio technology chips, antennas and package technology with MediaTek's expertise in digital baseband and video processing chips. The partnership is also intended to leverage MediaTek's influence in the consumer electronics market. IBM first demonstrated a prototype chipset as small as a dime in February of 2006.
A Whole New Living Room
The idea is to let media devices transmit or receive large amounts of data quickly, making the millimeter wave radio technology particularly useful for PCs, digital video recorders (DVRs), handheld devices like iPods or iPhones and HDTVs. Synchronization between the devices could occur in seconds and without a mess of cables.
Aside from speeding up home networks, there are other uses in store, such as file transfers from kiosks that a consumer might find in common retail spaces.
"[A kiosk would be] more like a point-and-shoot application," Mehmet Soyuer, IBM lead researcher on the mmWave project, told TechNewsWorld.
"It could be used to download DVDs and movies, things like that, in a train station or airport," he explained.
High Frequencies Are the Key
Higher frequencies -- 60 GHz in this case -- tend to allow greater bandwidth for data transmission than lower frequencies like the popular 2.4 GHz used in many home wireless networks. While transmission speeds at 60 GHz are super fast, "the signal doesn't travel too far," Soyuer noted. "It typically stays in a room, so it would be a good match for personal area network -- PAN-types of applications. It's like a much higher data rate version of Bluetooth , in some respects."
Using higher frequencies for the transmission of very large media files is a more logical solution for wireless applications, Soyuer said. "For the application of uncompressed video, we are talking about needing two, maybe three GHz per second, and it's almost impossible to achieve those data rates using the conventional lower frequencies," he added.
Years Away
Wicked-fast movie downloads using IBM's and MediaTek's mmWave technology is a few years away. In addition to nailing down wireless networking standards -- critical so that a variety of devices can talk to each other in the same language, so to speak -- device manufacturers need to build and ship products with mmWave features.
Progress is happening, however. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.15.3c is a working group that was formed in 2005 to standardize the use of the 60 GHz band.
Link:http://www.technewsworld.com/story/59941.html
MySpace: A Place for Developers
In a move echoing one made by rival Facebook earlier this year, MySpace plans to open its platform to third-party application developers.
The wildly popular social networking company owned by News Corp. plans to formalize its relationships with developers and will release a MySpace application programming interface (API) development platform in the coming months, the company confirmed Thursday.
It will also allow developers to monetize their applications, MySpace cofounder and CEO Chris DeWolfe reportedly said at O'Reilly Media's Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Sandbox Testing
Before the doors are officially opened, however, MySpace will first compile a list in the next few weeks of all widgets and tools available on the site so far, the company said. In a few months, it will make industry-standard APIs available through a new platform in which developers can try new ideas out in a sandbox environment.
Down the road, users will be able to participate in an opt-in beta test program to determine usability and vote to determine which widgets get tightly developed into MySpace. The best ones will be formally introduced by MySpace into the community with highly developed integration, the company said.
'Something They Had to Do'
Facebook, which is MySpace's principal rival, announced in May its Facebook Platform, which allows developers to build applications that integrate with its social networking site and enables them to make money by selling advertising on what's known as their canvas pages.
"This is something MySpace had to do," Paul Gillin, blogger, podcaster and author of The New Influencers, told TechNewsWorld. "The amazing popularity of Facebook and the stunning success of its decision have raised the barriers to play."
MySpace is lagging behind Facebook in public opinion, Gillin noted, with a reputation for being not quite as innovative or open as Facebook. As a result, MySpace is "naturally trying to build on Facebook's success with its decision to open up."
Customers Benefit
The result will be a great benefit for customers, Gillin added, as new applications are brought into the environment, building the value of the community as a whole. "
This will make MySpace more of a destination and a real platform," Gillin said.
"What Facebook is trying to do is make itself the place where people spend their day," he explained. "The closer they can get to that goal, the more valuable they become as an advertising venue."
Yet while MySpace's move may be motivated at least in part by Facebook's past decision, there may be more to it than that, Andrew Frank, research vice president with Gartner (NYSE: IT) Group, told TechNewsWorld.
Openness vs. Protection
"I think there's been a bit of a pendulum swinging back and forth between wanting widget platforms to be more open and concern about protecting revenue streams like advertising and also the overall integrity of the platform from a security standpoint," Frank said.
"Right now, largely because of the success of Facebook, we're starting to see more pressure to open up," he explained. "But I'm pretty sure this isn't the end of that oscillation -- there's definitely the potential that we haven't seen the end of the balancing between openness and control."
'Distinctive Experiences'
Though they are often viewed as head-to-head competitors, MySpace and Facebook "still offer pretty distinctive experiences," Frank added. "They may compete for time share among people with accounts on both sites, but I think people use them differently."
MySpace, like all such sites, "has to continue to innovate to compete," Frank noted. "But I don't think this move is all about competing with Facebook."
MySpace boasts 110 million active users worldwide. Facebook says it has more than 47 million.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
DELL LAPTOPS
For this piece, we will discuss the the various classifications of Dell notebook PCs. Here you will find the basics about all that Dell has to offer in the form of portable PCs.
Dell's economy class notebooks, the Dimension, have recently been replaced by the Vostro. The Vostro are being marketed by Dell as a "value-oriented" line of laptops, specifically for the small business sector. Possibly the most appealing feature of the Vostro, is the claim by Dell that all Vostro rigs will come free of any pre-installed "trialware." The Vostro line will also feature a refined black with chrome finish offering a more classy appearance.
In 2007 dell released the following Vostro models in the US and Canada.
-Vostro 1000
-Vostro 1400
-Vostro 1500
-Vostro 1700
The next step up in Dell's laptop offerings is the Dell Latitude. The Latitude line's target market is the traveling corporate sector. All Latitude models feature standardized, interchangeable parts. Dell has also stated that the system specs are not scheduled to be changed for at least several years for support purposes. This is in stark contrast to the Inspiron line which is aimed toward the consumer market's constantly changing specifications.
Models in the Latitude line are generally built to be more durable with stronger internal metal framing. Many also feature hard drive protection systems that protect the computers from sudden impact.
The following models are currently available from Dell:
-Latitude AXG
-Latitude X1
-Latitude D430
-Latitude D520
-Latitude D600
-Latitude D620
-Latitude D830
Dell Precision laptops are the most powerful portable PCs that Dell manufactures. Models offered by Dell are the M4300 and the M90. The M4300 is of slightly lesser quality than the M90, but both are configured for extreme computing and can reach costs of over $3000. These machines offer extremely high-end graphics via their nVidia Quadro FX 1500M- 3500M video cards.
The Dell Inspiron line is aimed at the consumer market. The Inspiron name also is used for Dell desktop systems.
Current configurations of the Inspiron series feature smaller sizes with all weighing in at under 7 pounds. The Inspiron models offer the choice of Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Turion/Sempron processors. Displays of either 14.1" or 15.4" are currently available and all systems feature capable nVidia or ATI graphics cards.
The Dell XPS line is composed of high-end all-in-one media centers and/or gaming stations. XPS laptops feature a lot of bells and whistles like multiple speakers, flashy visual configurations, and backlit accents present throughout the casing of the systems. These systems feature detachable keyboards with full-sized keys along with and integrated trackpad. XPS systems are packed with power, featuring large amounts of storage space and amazing dual processing capabilities. These are the most expensive and offer the best performance of all Dell's laptops.
DELL IS GOING TO OFFER PCs WITH UBUNTU 7.10
The Ubuntu version 7.10 is the latest release of Linux OS distribution and Dell is going to offer laptop and desktop computers with this latest version. This week Linux introduced The Ubuntu 7.10 and replaced the older 7.04 version. Consumers were introduced by the first Linux-based Dell notebooks and dekstops in this year . These computers was shiped with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. But according to DellLinuxWiki , Ubuntu 7.04 -based Dell computers users will be offered an automatic upgrade to 7.10 via Update Manager. These upgrades will be free of charge. As well as the shipping date for Ubuntu 7.10-powered Dell PCs is unknown yet, since the company "needs to take the time to qualify the final code on its systems for optimal interoperability". The latest Ubuntu version, codenamed "Gutsy Gibbon",These are hardware management improvements, better support for display systems, improved Windows compatibility, enhanced user interface which now includes "simple 3D screen effects", the new feature called Desktop search, and automatic installation of popular Firefox browser plug-ins.
Laptop
Fujitsu FMV-Lifebook 718NU4/B
Fujitsu FMV-Biblo 675MG
Toshiba Dynabook A2/580PMC
.JPG)
Fujitsu FM-Biblo NB9/900L
14inch, P3-1.0Ghz, 256MB, 20GB
DVD
420$
.JPG)
Fujitsu FM-BIBLO NE5/55RK CD-RW Meet Asus R3 UMPC with Linux
Looks like 4.8 inch 1024 x 600 screen.. GPS icon near fingerprint reader..
UPDATED: Video after the jump.
Showing Adobe AIR on it...
Click for big picture...
Saturday, October 20, 2007
FeedShake
What is it?
FeedShake is a website that creates a single RSS feed from multiple RSS feeds. You can also filter out posts that contain specified keywords, and/or filter in posts only if they contain specified keywords. The site is incredibly easy to use (it takes mere moments to create an aggregated feed) and no registration or email address is required.
Similar services are listed by libary clips here
. According to Library Clips, “Actually this tool is quite unique as it is the first to do both splicing and filtering…there are many blending tools, but ReFilter seems to be the only standalone filtering tool…here are other general filtering tools.” (Link)
The feed is auto-named “FeedShake” but can of course be renamed in your reader to whatever you want. It would be nice to be able to auto-rename the feed when it’s created so that other users would have the title you selected.
Other current limitations: “This service is beta. Currently it supports RSS 2.0 feeds”
We’d be happy to pay for naming and stats on the feed. 
We tested the service by burning a combined feed of TechCrunch and EarningsCast, another Archimedes blog. The feed is: http://www.feedshake.com/feed.php?code=wc5mjf0wz4. The feed works great. Awesome service. We love it.
Screen Shots of “burning” process:
MSN Virtual Earth
What is it?
MSN Virtual Earth is an excellent mapping/satellite imagery application. Much like Google Earth , it is fascinating to look at, and very useful as well. There is no download required (whereas Google Earth has a 10 meg download).
In addition to excellent search features, you can autolocate via your IP address (although I am in San Francisco today and it says I am in Seattle based on IP) or via a small download, which works very well. There is also a scratch pad to keep notes (there needs to be a print function added to this though).
Mandatory first searches, of course, were of my home in Manhatan Beach and my parents home in Anacortes. The picture quality in MSN Virtual Earth was better than Google Earth, and the picture quality of my parents home in Anacortes was decent, whereas Google had nothing to show for them. Overall, MSN wins in this very limited test:
Jeremy Wright posted an excellent review of the service and comparison to Google maps:
“First, MSN’s Virtual Earth is 10 times easier to use than Google Maps. Between the little compass in VE that you can drag and it’ll just scroll with you (instead of Google Maps’ “click, drag, click, drag, click, drag”) and the ability to zoom much more easily in VE (you can scroll, you can hit the +/- keys on your keyboard OR you can double click), this is an app that is much more thought out.�?
“At the same time, Virtual Earth is much easier to use from an “exploring�? point of view. Hop off a plane, hit “Locate Me”, look for rental cars, then look for hotels, then look for somewhere to eat and then look for somewhere to catch a show. Boom, your whole day is planned and in your Scratch Pad.?
IceRocket
What’s New?
We wrote in our previous profile on IceRocket that they were changing their name to BlogScour (based on something Mark Cuban said at AlwaysOn).
Blake Rhodes, IceRocket’s CEO, called to tell me that our facts were not quite right (he also thanked us for the post). They are not going to change their name to BlogScour, but they are going to launch a site called BlogScour that will contain all of their blog search capabilities.
I saw this at Blogherald a few minutes ago (I cannot locate the mentioned SEW article), and emailed Blake to confirm the facts. He confirmed what he told me on Friday -
“Mike-
We WILL launch a site called Blogscour.com. I dont have a date for that. Basically it will be our blog search we currently have minus all the web and image search features we have on IceRocket currently. It is going to be blogs only. Have a great evening.
Blake”
So there you have it.
Personally, I don’t give a damn, I just love their search engine. They could call it searchcrap.com and we’d still use it twenty times a day to research companies.
iTunes 4.9
Launched: June 28, 2005
What is it?
As was widely anticipated, iTunes 4.9 launched today (22 mb download) for both windows and mac platforms. It includes significant new and enhanced features, including, most notably, support for podcasts.
Michael Gartenberg writes a wonderful post on iTunes 4.9: “I can download one, subscribe to a feed, keep a set number on my device and have them automatically deleted after I’ve listened. In short Apple’s done for podcasting the same thing they did with RSS in Tiger. They made it usable by the mass markets and at the same time, they have the what is going to be the most widely used podcasting client on both Macintosh and Windows and that will make their directory the one to be listed in. But there’s more. Apple also tweaked the firmware in all the iPod so there’s no a separate podcasting category, which means podcasts won’t get shuffled with my music and will support bookmarks so I can listen to podcasts and resume where I left off. So it’s not just the premier podcast PC client, the iPod itself is now first among devices with integrated podcast support. Combine this news and the new pricing and the integration of iPod photo into the core white iPod line and you see why Apple remains the player to beat in this space.”
The software is excellent and includes notable features:
- all podcasts are currently free
- downloaded podcasts show up in a single iTunes folder called “podcasts”
- easy search/find
- one click subscription to a new podcast
- option to have all future podcasts download automatically
- Tools for submitting publisher podcasts on iTunes
- stays separate in iPod, so not shuffled with music
- autodelete after listening (awesome!)
Screen shots:
Yahoo My Web 2.0
Launched: June 29, 2005
What is it?
MyWeb2.0 is a social search engine “that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web.” We’ve used and abused it for a day, and in our opinion it’s good - a bit like regular yahoo plus furl . It was launched today as an early beta version “for a limited number of users.” There could be a cutoff, so it’s a good idea to sign up soon if you want an early look (what a great marketing idea).
Once you sign up (you can use an existing yahoo account), you can do a number of things. If you want to bookmark web pages, we recommend downloading the yahoo toolbar, which will allow you to bookmark pages you are browsing. Otherwise, you can only bookmark pages found on normal Yahoo search. We don’t like toolbars very much because nearly half our screen is taken up with them, but if you want to use MyWeb2.0 it’s going to have to be a part of your life (and hey, maybe you already use the Yahoo toolbar).
When you bookmark a page a popup appears that allows you to enter meta-data on the site, including title, notes, tags, access controls and a “save page” option (again, all of this looks and feels very much like furl:
You can also invite friends (feel free to add us - archimedesventures@yahoo.com) (techcrunch was taken :-)), and see their bookmarked pages. The whole idea is that stuff that is relevant to your friends, could very well be relevant to you, too.
This is user tagging in action (see our profiles on Celebrity Flicker and Feedster for a discussion of the perils of this), but here you have real incentives (like delicious and furl) to do it properly - both to find stuff later and to share with your friends.
Yes, it is yet another service to add friends and go to the trouble of bookmarking sites, but it does have in inport option (including RSS feeds) (yeah!) to decrease the burden. I imported my personal delicious page RSS feed and it seemed to work reasonably well.
There’s a ton thats been written about this (see links below), so our recommendation is try read the reviews and try it out for yourself. Thanks, Yahoo, for launching this experiment in Web 2.0.
Screen Shots:
The iPhone Revolution?
The iPhone Revolution?
John McCormick of Baseline suggests that the iPhone could blow the market for handheld rich Internet applications wide open, even though the iPhone was designed for the consumer rather than the enterprise market. Om Malik concurs, noting the significance of the built-in Safari browser that brings the full Web experience to mobile phones for the first time. Smart Mobs opines that mobile phones (not just the iPhone) represent a mass medium unto themselves that are revolutionizing the fundamental ways in which we communicate.
UPDATE: Read a contrarian view...
Next New Networks Acquires BarelyPolitical.com
Micro television network provider Next New Networks has acquired BarelyPolitical.com, the site behind the Obama Girl video.
This acquisition is Next New Networks’ first foray into politics, and BarelyPolitical will now be served along side Next New Network’s existing content including Channel Frederator. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Whilst the Obama Girl video series (there is more than one) is perhaps an acquired taste, its viral success is quite remarkable, with the original video having been seen over 100 million times.
Under the deal BarelyPolitical will launch multiple regularly scheduled shows, including frequent reports from its videobloggers and correspondents. The first project launched by BarelyPolitical with Next New Networks, “I Like a Boy“, a music video co-produced with the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America, racked up more than 1.5 million online video views in its first week, and was featured on various media outlets including CNN American Morning, Fox News, and ABC’s Good Morning America.
See our previous coverage of Next New Networks here.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Asus F9J Notebook
Asus’s new notebook for Korea comes a 12.1-incher dubbed as F9J. Despite being small, the laptop combines sturdiness, looks and features. It runs on Core 2 Duo T5600 processor, 1GB RAM, Wi-Fi (a/b/g), 120GB HDD, 1.3 megapixel camera and Geforce 7300 GPU. It also boasts some security features like fingerprint recognition and TPM chip which allows user to set the security level for each drive, directory or file. It will go on sale soon at an expected price of $1525.
8GB N95 up for pre order
We have got enough hints about the upped version of N95 with larger capacity. Now here’s the real deal. Popular Electronics has listed the black 8GB N95 which will be available from December 1. And yea, the price. They are taking pre orders for a whopping $1000. So start saving your shillings to get your hands before Christmas.
In case you don’t know yet, it has a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, dual slider, music player etc. which makes it a complete entertainment device.
0 yorum
Yorum Gönder