Telenor with AeroMobile launches first in-flight phone service

Pakistan's most rapid growing cellular company, Telenor has commercially launched the mobile phone service during the flight on Emirates Airline aircraft equipped with the AeroMobile system. This service is only available for post-paid customers to use their GSM services.

The first in-flight mobile phone calls using the Telenor Group's GSM network took place on Emirates flight EK75I on March 20, flying between Dubai and Casablanca with full approval from aviation authorities.

Continue at source: Brecorder

Windows Search 4.0

New and improved version of Windows search is now ready for download. It helps you find 'anything present' in your computer. Kindly refer to the Knowledge base article KB940157 for a full description of this launch.

Note: The WS4 installation process automatically upgrades previous versions of Windows Search technologies.

Download: Windows Search 4.0 Preview for Windows Vista x86 x64 Edition

Download: Windows Search 4.0 Preview for Windows Server 2003 x86 x64 Edition
Download: Windows Search 4.0 Preview for Windows XP x86 x64 Edition
Download: Multilingual User Interface Pack for Windows Search 4.0 Preview for Windows XP

Adobe launches Photoshop Express online

Adobe Systems has opened up the shop on Photoshop Express through which millions of users can easily edit, share and photos.

For those users who want to enjoy this portal free, they can use to 2GB of storage at Photoshop Express Website which is a significant departure from Adobe's desktop applications.

It requires only Flash Player 9 to run and it is also tied up with some social networking sites like Facebook etcetera.

More features are offered to those customers who pay yearly fee like printing service, more storage, support for audio and other media etcetera.

Engineers in Adobe wrote Photoshop Express from scratch using its Flex Development Framework and ActionScript.

As it is in beta test mode so the company will focus on the feedback by customers from now on.

Source: CNET

Approval for mobiles on aircraft

Restriction of using mobile phones on flying planes is removed in European Space by Ofcom. Although the first mobile call on commercial airlines was allowed by Emirates Airlines on 20th March, 08.

The services on the mobile phones will be accessible after reaching an altitude of 3000m or more. Specific hardware will be used to ensure the services offered.

Pico Cells the mobile base stations will be installed into the aircraft and will be switched on after take off.

Obviously, there will be higher call rate from the plane than from the ground but it will bring you closer to your loved ones.

Source: BBC

Microsoft confirms Word attacks.

The Computer Giant warned about the vulnerability that affect users of Microsoft Word running on the Microsoft 2000, XP and 2003 after couple of weeks when it was reported first.

There were also some targeted attacks related to Microsoft Jet Database Engine, company acknowledged.

The reason of attack was the usage of malicious Microsoft Word documents that caused Jet.dll vulnerable, Symantec Corporation reported.

"We believe that the issue being described [by Microsoft] is one described on March 20, 2008 by Elia Florio of Symantec Security Response," the security firm told customers of its DeepSight threat analysis network on Saturday. "He notes a recent discovery, by Panda Security, of a possible zero-day exploit observed in the wild."

Source: Neowin

Firefox 3 ready for prime time

The latest beta vesion of Mozilla's Firefox web browser can easily be downloaded and installed.S Some improvements are made in security and memory domains.

"In many ways it (Firefox 3) is much more stable than anything else out there," Mozilla Corp Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview.

Fifth round of changes includes the tuning of visual look and feel of the browser and its stability.

Source: Neowin

Vista Service Pack 1 released to public

An update to Windows Vista that includes many fixes. Microsoft claims that this will improve the stability, security and performance of the software but it has also warned about the clash with some of the security/firewall software and other programs that are installed on users' machines. SP1 also will continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista.

It is recommended that users should install the more appropriate version via Windows Update rather than downloading it from Microsoft's downloads section.

Download: Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista [434.5 MB]
Download: Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista 64bit [726.5 MB]

Also check out the Vista SP1 overview

Source: Neowin

Nokia unveils 2600 Classic and 1209

Mobile Giant, recently unveiled its new phones Nokia 2600 Classic and Nokia 1209 during an exciting launch event in Karachi organized by the Nokia's regional officials.

These two phones offer a wide range of features with respect to messaging, colors, languages, ringtones etcetera. Sets' covers can also be interchanged with several casings.

The key product of the event was Nokia 2600 Classic with MP3 ringtones support. The Nokia 2600 Classic also includes an FM radio and a VGA camera.

Source: Business Recorder

P4P: Open standard for P2P

After the fourth generation of P2P and their need around the globe yields out the new standard for devliering network awareness to P2P networks. As in tradional P2P, peers communicate with each other without regard to network topology but now, P4P basically boosts up the P2P downloads by localizing the network.

There are several ways to make it work and one of them is to add two types of tracker;

• pTracker (Peer Tracker)
• iTracker (Internet Tracker).

First, peer queries the pTracker and it searches and returns the result regarding the right bytes in the local area otherwise pTracker could go to the iTracker for peering suggestions that take into account network topology and costs.

The list of active peers is then seen by peer with the help of pTracker. The pTracker is normally run by any P2P file sharing system like BitTorrent while iTracker can be run by P2P networks or ISPs.

There will hopefully be better performance for users and less network overhead
for the ISP.

Source: Zdnet Blogs

Yahoo! to use semantic web standards

Yahoo has announced that it will now focus on some key factors which would improve its indexing of search.

As the technology is inclining towards richer understanding of the masses of data placed online in several shapes, Yahoo announced that it would also started some semantic web identifiers that would be big boost for the technologies which have struggled to achieve better hits.

Continue at source: BBC News

YouTube uploads high-quality videos

YouTube is now offering the option of watching the high quality videos. It doesn't mean that all the videos will be shown on higher quality, it just depends on the strength of the library. This option is available for everybody who has signed up as user on YouTube.

You can watch these videos by simply choosing "never show me higher quality" or "always show me higher quality when available" only if you have got a fast internet connection otherwise you'll find it slow.

Further more, the videos in higher quality also give you an option to watch in either normal or higher quality mode.

However, there are some limitations with videos' file size which can only be upto 1GB and they can't be longer than 10 minutes.

Anyway, a good change! So enjoy. =)

Source: InformationWeek

Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference

Apple's developers are gathered yearly in Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) to see what are the interesting technologies and how it can be incorporated in their applications.

For the first time, apple will discuss the iPhone software development kit (SDK) which would allow third-party developers to write some applications for iPhone and iPod.

Apple set June 9-13, 2008 for WWDC and after the Steve Jobs keynote address, following topics will be discussed:

• Getting Started
• Build Powerful Application
• Create Engaging Media Experiences
• Target the Web
• Integrate the Technologies of iPhone

Along with iPhone, Mac and IT tracks will also be highlighted with some topics like Sophisticated Tools, Dynamic Web Experiences, Go Beyond the Desktop, Leverage Rich IT Applications and Services etcetera.

One should go and have a taste of "Apple".

Source: Macworld

You too can YouTube

YouTube, the largest online-video portal has released its application programming interfaces (APIs) to help programmers to create fully functional YouTube players on their websites unlike earlier YouTube players, which only streamed videos.

"For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and Web communities they already love and visit regularly," said Jim Patterson, product manager at YouTube.

This new set will allow the third-party sites to customize the YouTube player and upload their videos and modify its further attributes. Among few applications; YouTube announced the Electronic Arts' upcoming game, "Spore", which would allow gamers to upload clips of the game's character to the web. YouTube videos will also be accessible to TiVo users from their TV sets. Users will also be able to upload video directly to the site by Logictech and Casio cameras.

It will definitely increase the Google's video adverstisement capital and number of fans for YouTube videos.

Source: InformationWeek

Good News for WiMax operators

U.S. based company NextWave Wireless has developed a multimedia platform named MXtv for WiMax operators that is compatible with the 802.16e standard and will be delivered by Huawei Technologies.

Service providers can avail the facility of mobile TV, interactive media services and digital audio without investing in new spectrum.

"MXtv's wide range of applications completely transforms the economics of WiMax for operators," said Allen Salmasi, chief executive officer of NextWave Wireless, in a statement.

Network operators can allow its users to watch as many as 45 mobile TV channels in 10MHz as the platform supports 30 frames per second QVGA and WQVGA content.

Company claimed that the incorporation of MXtv won't take too much effort as it come will along with NextWave's Wave 2-compliant MW2000 WiMax system-on-a-chip for mobile devices.

Huawei will integrate MXtv technology into its base station and ASN-GW network platforms, which conform to the 802.16e air interface standard.

In Pakistan or in whole region, Wateen Telecom is the only operator of WiMax. Let's see when do they incorporate this service.

Source: Yahoo! News

Ufone launches 'Ur Number'

Ufone launched a revolutionary product named as "Ur Number" by which you can easily ssociate your name with your number. For instance, instead of demanding golden numbers, you may ask for 0333-blue444 which will automatically be translated to 0333-2165444.

There will be a very uncommon way of telling your new number to someone so that he/she remembers it. Ufone is basically the second largest celullar company with 16 million customers and this new wave will definitely raise its market soon.

What are your opinions about it?

Source: Business Recorder

Microsoft launched its alternative to Amazon's SimpleDB

Microsoft planned a service that would enable the users to host unlimited amount of data on Microsoft hosted database. It started the beta hiring for its SQL Server Data Services known as 'Sitka'.

It was launched first by Amazon named SimpleDB, which is based on Elastic Computing Cloud EC2 and Simple Data Storage Service (S3). Microsoft marks some prime target applications for this kind of storage service which includes business applications, healthcare records management and social networking applications etcetera.

One of the technical person in Microsoft’s Data Storage Platform Division denied the likeliness with Amazon's hosted services. He also mentioned that it is not an online version of SQL Server and it will also be available locally for better performances.

Let me know your views regarding this new service.

Visual Studio Gallery Launched!

A month after the launch of MSDN Code Gallery, Visual Studio Gallery is launched to help its developers. This resort for all kind of Visual Studio extensions offers commercial and free roducts. Products can be in the form of macros, add-ins, packages, projects, templates etcetera.

Plenty of extensions are available at the gallery. In order to publish a Visual Studio extension, you have to sign in with your LiveID.

I must say, its a complete resource for developer.

http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/

Source: meraTechPort

Sprint Launches iPhone Competitor

In Las Vegas Sprint has announced a new mobile called the Instinct made by Samsung. It weighs in and is about the same size as the iPhone, and seems to use similar interface ideas. One of the most touted features of the Instinct over the iPhone is the ability to run on EVDO Rev. A, which can achieve much faster speeds than AT&Ts EDGE network. Instinct will come with a 2GB microSD card and it can be expanded up to 8GB. It also features a 2 megapixel camera, GPS navigation (using Telenav), Visual Voicemail (using the touch screen to scan through and browse voicemail messages), and two 1000 mAmp batteries giving up to 5.75 hours of talk time each, as well as some other accessories.

Link: PhoneScoops Video of the Instinct
Link: Sprints Instinct Website and Order Reservation

Internet Explorer Beta 1 Features Revealed

Microsoft has revealed some expected end-user features of Internet Explorer Beta 1.

Following additions are made to IE:

• Activities: Contextual services to quickly lookup/send information to some web application, such as retrieving an address map, sharing some page etcetera.
• WebSlices: It behaves just like feeds where client can easily get updates. Internet explorer can discover WebSlices within a webpage and add them to the Favorites bar and a particular space can be dedicated below the address bar to access them.
• Favorites Bar: The contents of the favorites bar is now visible at the top pane and users can easily access their favorites web content.
• Automatic Crash Recovery: This feature recover yourtabs if the browser crashes or
  hangs.
• Improved Phishing Filter: The quick new filter known was "Safety Filter"
  continues to block known Phishing sites and this new improved filter blocks sites
  known to contain malicious software and steal their info.

Microsoft will release the IE 8 Beta 1 this year which begins today. It can be downloaded from here.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft Surface to launch commercially!

On 17th April and onwards, customers will be able to experience Microsoft Surface in AT&T retail locations including some of the famous stores in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco. AT&T will be first one to bring Microsoft Surface into the market giving customers the ability to touch and device recognition technology.

Source: Neowin

UltimatePC for Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

After the 4 months of domain transfer, Microsoft has hosted UltimatePC.com for the "blueprints" of the best PCs available for its Vista Ultimate plans.

The site for Vista Ultimate will be directed to ultimatepc.com soon. Microsoft is willing to offer discounts on Vista Ultimate customers with some partners. Stardock's Multiplicity Pro is offering reasonable discounts for only $29.25.

It seems to be a marketing site and it is benefial for those who have already paid for the remium account until Microsoft decide any time line for Ultimate Extras.

It is believed that the new portal will provide a platform for the team to interact with its members for different plans.

Source: Neowin

Intel names 'Atom' for its new chips

The california-based Intel Corp. chose 'Atom' for its new family of microprocessors. Two versions will be available in the market later this year known as Silverthorne and Diamondville.

These smallest processors designed specially for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) while keeping in mind the Intel Core Duo 2 instruction set compatibility. It is measured less than 25 mm², which makes it smallest and lowest power processor as of now.

Silverthorne is a low-power processor, while Diamondville is a single-core processor for low-cost laptops. Intel named these low-cost notebooks as 'netbook' which will have an estimated price of $250.

"This is our smallest processor built with the world’s smallest transistors,” said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney in a statement.

Intel believes that it will generate a great revenue in electronic devices. It has also rebranded its 'Menlow' chip as the Centrino Atom processor; a low-power chip with integrated graphics, wireless radio and a thinlight design.

Source: eFluxMedia

Windows PowerShell Workshop

Learning is a never-ending story especially when it comes to something related to your interests. So, if youre concerned with Server Administration (SQL, ADO, .NET etcetera) with Windows PowerShell so its available at Microsoft Downloads.

Microsoft Windows PowerShell is a command line shell and scripting language and allows the IT professionals to control system administration easily. It is now built-in with Windows Server 2008.

Grab your free copy and spread the word. It can also be reused by anybody, anywhere. The package contains workbooks for both workshops along with the scripts and demo files.

Download it from here.