Slash News

Search engine leader Google Inc. is delving deeper into an unconventional business, offering an Internet streamcast of last week's television premiere of Chris Rock's new comedy. Other online outlets have made network prime-time shows available before, but "Everybody Hates Chris" marks Google's most high-profile video offering so far. It comes as Google increasingly ventures beyond its search roots as it battles the likes of Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. "We're constantly exploring new ideas on how to deliver content to users," said Peter Chane, senior business product manager for Google's video team. He described the Rock offering as a test of "how many users want to watch the show on the Internet if they didn't watch it on television." The series premiere — 21 minutes long after removing commercials — is being offered through Google's servers Monday through Thursday, when the new episode broadcasts on UPN. For UPN, the offeri...

Palm today introduced a new smartphone "The Palm Treo 700w (Treo 670)" powered by "Windows Mobile 5.0" in place of "Palm OS". The "Treo running on Windows" will be available for sale in early 2006. Other specification details were limited to "an Intel processor" and pricing was indicated to be "slightly higher" than current Treo products. The executives however revealed that the new device will distributed exclusively through Verizon Wireless to take advantage of the carrier's 400-700 kbps 3G EVDO network and it will run a modified version of Windows Mobile 5.0 for a Palm OS-like feel. In addition to the Windows OS, the smartphone will offer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, 1 megapixel camera and will run on Verizon's high-speed EV-DO data network. It can synchronize with the popular Microsoft Outlook messaging and scheduling software. It allows to link users to multiple email accounts and display Powerpoint Presentat...

This Friday, Nintendo revolutionised the Gaming Industry by launching an unconventional Game controller aptly named "Revolution" console. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata launched it at the Tokyo Game Show. The controller is similar to a conventional TV Remote Controller, that has a Motion detection Sensors, allowing players to move and swing it around like an actual Sword, Gun, Steering Wheel or a Baseball Bat and more depending upon the game. The Nintendo launch was the biggest buzz at the Game Show, and is expected to attract 150,000 people. The Revolution is available in bright red, black, silver, white and green colors. It can also be fitted with a joystick add-on. Also, people can use it with much ease, just like a TV Remote, so gamers can adapt to use quickly. The Virtual Reality that it creates in the minds of players while holding the controller in hands is the biggest advantage. Players can handle it like an actual handheld during their games. It adds a lot more real...

Yahoo Inc. told to upgrade its Yahoo Mail service, the most popular Web-Based Email Service, making it more efficient and fast like a desktop application. The New Web Interface is a look-alike of Microsoft Outlook program and provides features like drang-n-drop, autocomplete, right-click menus that are generally available on desktop programs. Yahoo Mail upgrade has quickly followed AOL Mail's improvements meant to make its e-mail service quicker and easier to use. The new Interface is based on advanced technologies like DHTML, XML and SOAP and AJAX eliminating the need to refresh the browser to load new page/data. It sounds similar to the Interface that is currently provided by Gmail. The Yahoo Mail upgrade was expected after Yahoo acquired Oddpost Inc. (a company that provides Web-based e-mail applications) in 2004. And after the war of storage capacities, that Google started with Gmail, now, the fight is turing for the best Interface of these Email services. Further details can b...

It seems all big companies are on a shopping spree. Continuing the trend, Oracle has bought Siebel to become the number one CRM applications company in the world," as told by Larry Ellison, the Oracle chief executive. The deal comes after nine months of Oracle's PeopleSoft acquisition, one that took nearly two years to be completed amid a flurry of lawsuits and anti-trust investigations. Oracle is offering $10.66 per Siebel share, 16.8% more than Siebel's closing share price on Friday. While Oracle shares rose 1.6 percent to 13.49 on the news while Siebel shot up 12.7 percent to 10.29. After the acquisition of Siebel, Oracle has got a leg up with its rival SAP, the German Software Giant in the business management applications field. The purchase of Siebel is likely to help Oracle achieve its stated goal of 20% long-term annual earnings growth. Also, Oracle is now the second largest software group in the world after Microsoft.

eBay Inc. is buying Skype - the Internet Telephony Company in a $2.6 bn deal. Skype, founded by the creators of Kazaa, the file-sharing program that riled the music business gives away software that allows people talk for free over the Internet using computers and microphones . A paid version, SkypeOut , allows those calls to be connected to regular phones. Similarly, SkypeIn is a real phone number your friends can call and you pick in Skype. eBay is buying Skype to speed up the communication between the buyers and sellers instead of the current method of exchanging messages. Skype has 53 million registered users, including more than 2 million who pay for its premium services. In 2004, Skype generated about $7 million in revenue, which it projects will snowball to $60 million this year. eBay said it would pay an additional $1.5bn to Skype over the next three years , bringing the total size of the deal to $4bn.

Apple Computer Inc. today introduces " iPod nano ", the pencil-thin incredibly small music player. Soon after the launch of the iTunes mobile phone Rokr, the company has introduced iPod nano. Steve Jobs, CEO intoduced the iPod nano at a concert calling nano as "the biggest revolution since the original iPod". Surely, as nano is extremely thin, less than a pencil, almost one third of iPod size, a completely new design and posesses an elegant look(hmm...Apple is eying ladies to buy nano...lol). iPod nano is available in 2 models as of now, a 4 GB model that can store around 1000 songs and a 2GB model with a half-capacity of storing 500 songs are available at $249 and $199 respectively. The player is based on flash memory instead of hard drive and has a color screen that shows photos. Usage of flash memory also made the player lighweight at 1.5 ounces approximately. It holds up to three days' worth of music. It plays for up to 14 hours between battery charges. It...

Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs today introduced Apple iTunes phone, based on Motorola "Rokr" phone model. The cellphone runs the popular "iTunes" Software from Apple Computer Inc. and can play music songs similar to the iPod shuffle player, the best-seller item from the Apple's stable. The cellphone can store around 100 songs and users can transfer songs from/to PC's through USB-Data Cable. The music stops when a call is received, so you don't miss your calls. A product like this was in demand for quite sometime, and Apple only recently gave hints about the release of such a gadget only lately. After riding on the huge success of the iPod, the company can expect to unwind another craze amongst the consumers to buy a musical phone similar to iPod music player. The phone is currently available via Cingular phone service only and company expects to boost sales and legal music downloads as well through iTunes. More details are yet to come :)

Sony PSP is breaking sales records with it PlayStation Portable (PSP) to become the fastest-selling games console of all time in the UK, according to figures. It sold more than 185,000 units since its launch in September 1. That is more than double than Nintendo's DS (87,000 at launch), and it became the most successful hardware launch in UK history ever. 24 games were available at launch, the largest for any console, with 20 entering the All Formats Top 40 and 9 games breaking into the Top 10. Games were priced at £34.99 with the console itself retailing at £179. The software for the PSP is also selling well, though no singular title stood out particularly in terms of sales. Ridge Racer recorded the most sales, at 37,000 units sold. Other hit titles include Wipeout Pure, Virtua Tennis and Metal Gear Ac!d, for a total of 20 PSP titles entering in the U.K. top 40. The Sony PSP and Nintendo DS have fought for supremacy in every country they've been released and the recent UK laun...

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is expected to be a coming out party of sorts for the next version of Visual Studio, code-named Orcas. Primary among the new features in and new direction for Orcas will be advances in how the toolset handles data, sources said. Sources said "The future 'Orcas' release of Visual Studio aims to unify the programming models through integrated query capabilities in C# and Visual Basic, a strongly typed data access framework, and an innovative API for manipulating and querying XML." As both its PDC and the launch of its Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 products loom in the next few months, Microsoft is working on delivering technology to eager users, prepping to RTM VS 2005, deliver a release candidate of the technology and provide a third beta version of a key component. Microsoft will officially launch both Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 on Nov. 7 in San Francisco. Link

A federal judge on Monday ordered distributors of the popular file-swapping program Kazaa to alter the software, which millions have downloaded, so it can no longer be used for music piracy. Hailed as a victory by the recording industry that brought the suit, the decision has implications well beyond Australia, where Kazaa executives are based, because Kazaa's users span the globe. The ruling released late Sunday night held liable Sharman Networks, the Sydney-based company that has owned Kazaa since early 2002, as well as its chief executive, Nikki Hemming. The Sydney federal judge also found that a Sharman partner, Altnet, violated Australian copyright law. The ruling applied to Altnet's parent company, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and its chief executive, Kevin Bermeister. Legal scholars said the decision may ultimately lead to the demise of Kazaa, just as a similar injunction by a San Francisco federal judge in July 2000 hastened the death of Napster , the pioneering fi...

SAP, Europe's biggest software maker is focussing on Banking Sector as one of the cores areas for expansion, SAP head Henning Kagermann told Handelsblatt . "We see a lot of opportunity for growth -- mostly organic but we will make fill-in acquisitions if we need to buy in certain expertise," Kagermann told the Financial Times . The market for SAP has the potential of "around 9 billion euros per annum" for SAP according to Kagermann. SAP currently has a market share of less than ten percent in the banking sector. The modernization of some 4500 banking systems, the paper writes, will cost some 100 billion euros according to the extrapolations of experts. And the market experts at Forrester Research say that less than half of this has already been done.

OpenSSH 4.2 has just been released. It will be available from the mirrors listed at http://www.openssh.com shortly. T-shirt, poster and CD sales directly support the project. Pictures and more information can be found at: http://www.openbsd.org/tshirts.html and http://www.openbsd.org/orders.html Changes in the new release includes: Added a new compression method that delays the start of zlib compression until the user has been authenticated successfully. Another round of proactive changes for signed vs unsigned integer bugs has been completed, including changing the atomicio() API to encourage safer programming. Support for the improved arcfour cipher modes from draft-harris-ssh-arcfour-fixes-02. The improves the cipher's resistance to a number of attacks by discarding early keystream output. Increase the default size of new RSA/DSA keys generated by ssh-keygen from 1024 to 2048 bits. Many bugfixes and improvements to connection multiplexing and Portable OpsnSSH: Support f...

Google is losing market share in China to primary rival, Baidu.com , according to a survey by a Chinese internet research group. The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based China Internet Network Information Center, reported that Baidu.com Inc. boosted its market share in Beijing by 10.8 percentage points to 52 percent. Google Inc.'s share was at 33 percent, as the American Internet search engine kept its customer base steady while the overall market grew, said the survey, seen Tuesday on CNNIC's Web site. China's Internet population hit 103 million by June, second only to the United States, according to CNNIC. Google owns 2.6 percent of Baidu, which recently went public. Meanwhile, U.S. Internet giant Yahoo! held only a 3.7 percent market share overall, with smaller Chinese rivals Sohu.com and Sina Corp. claiming a 4.6 percent and 4 percent share, respectively. Google has long been popular with Chinese Web surfers, but has suffered from a lack of brand recognition. The Mo...

Nasa's Marshall Center at Huntsville, Ala is supporting NASA personnel, their associates and two Agency facilities recovering from Hurricane Katrina. The Marshall Center is working to restore communications and power to both facilities, and to deliver supplies to recovery teams and on-site personnel. The Marshall Center also is partnering with Huntsville City Schools to enroll children of impacted NASA employees in local schools, and also will partner with the City of Madison and Madison County Schools to accommodate additional children of displaced employees. NASA has designated a telephone number (877/470-5240) for displaced employees to call for assistance and to advise NASA of their whereabouts. Family members also may use the number to inquire about employees and others sheltering at Stennis and Michoud. For contact information for employees and contractors, or for general public information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/eoc In addition, NASA has established a toll-free number (...

Hitachi Ltd. announces today that it has matched Seagate Technologies with what it says is the smallest drive on the market, a one-inch-diameter hard drive that holds eight gigabytes of data. Its product is distinguised from the Seagte products' with the technology that detects when the hard disk is being dropped. Prices of the new devices were not disclosed. But the price for storage has been dropping so steadily that it is now measured in pennies a megabyte - the equivalent of about one million characters. (A gigabyte is 1,000 times that.) - New York Times

Nikon this week announced two WiFi-enabled digital cameras, the Coolpix P1 and P2. The new Coolpix 8 megapixel P1 and and 5 megapixel P2 digital cameras from Nikon have built in 802.11b/g WiFi capabilities that enable the camera to send pictures wirelessly back to a computer running a new version of Pictureproject. Analysts said the Coolpix eight-megapixel P1 and the five-megapixel P2 are indeed the world's first digital cameras with built-in WiFi capabilities. Kodak had announced a WiFi digital camera at the last Consumer Electronics Show that would do far more than Nikon's model, but has not yet brought the camera to market. The only significant difference between the two cameras is the resolution at which they take pictures. The P1 is an 8-megapixel camera while the P2 is a 5-megapixel model. In practice, this means full-resolution images from the P1 are 3,264 pixels by 2,448 pixels and those from the P2 are 2,592 pixels by 1,944 pixels. It takes about eight ...

Google's foray into offline advertising came in the form of full-page ads in PC Magazine and Maximum PC. In this latest move, Mountain View-based Google is betting it can exploit its relationship with hundreds of thousands of small businesses that already advertise online by its search results. The idea is to help advertisers gain exposure in the offline world at cheaper rates, or with less effort, than they otherwise could have. All of this will help Google act as a conduit for content and advertising delivery and distribution, analysts said. They said the deal reflects Google's strategy to offer a one-stop shop for advertising.

Winzip, one of the most popular archiving software has released the beta of the latest version Winzip 10. From now, it is available in two versions: Standard and Professional . The release claims to have major usability enhancements, improved compression ratio, splitting of files, Explorer like view, Automatic Update Checking and some extra features in the Professional Edition exclusively like: Winzip Job Wizard and Zip to CD. But there is no mention about possible improvement in handling of the other archiving formats.

Microsoft announces its purchase of Teleo, a small Internet calling start-up, as a part of a move to expand the capabilities of MSN Messenger. Microsoft has its eyes set on something more like Net phone company Skype's service , however. A key part of Teleo's technology is focused on making calls from a computer to an ordinary telephone, a feature that company executives said would start finding its way into MSN Messenger before the end of 2005. - News.com

Google has bought advertising in a handful of technology-industry magazines and resold chunks of the space to merchants already participating in its booming Internet marketing network - Associated Press Link to Ads By Google in PC magazine: http://adsbygoogle.com/pcmag/2005-09-06/

The frightening prediction came as army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, while authorities drew up plans to move about 25 000 storm refugees out of the city to Houston in a huge bus convoy and all but abandon flooded-out New Orleans. Not counting the dead The Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in US history. - News24.com