IT Masala

Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year.

According to apcmag.com, Microsoft's Office 2008 for Mac has proceeded into private beta stages of development. Microsoft has detailed several new features. One is a program called My Day, which gives users quick access to calendar information without requiring them to first go into the Entourage e-mail program.

Screenshots : (apcmag.com)

 

  Artful charts

"Part of our mission with Office 2008 is to expose all the things that are already there and make the product easier to use" says Jones. "We wanted to make it more discoverable, to bubble up the features that people didn't always find. We also have an opportunity to have a simple UI and a more intuitive interface.

"We got a lot of customer feedback (on the UI), we've kept the menus and embedded toolbars, but I can hide rid of embedded toolbars to have a really streamlined interface."

Parts of the redesign are peeking through almost every application, as well as application modules such as the notebook view in Word, and Jones promises that there's plenty to share in the months ahead.

Also on tap are improved page layout controls in Word and new Excel templates, called ledger sheets, which allow users to handle tasks like producing invoices without having to create or understand the underlying formulas.

Microsoft has taken longer than its normal 18 to 24 months to come out with a new version of Office for the Mac. The current version, Office 2004 for Mac, debuted in April 2004.

Here’s your chance to name something much bigger than a street after yourself.

TierneyLab hereby promises to name Saturn’s mysterious hexagon after the reader who comes up with the most entertaining explanation for this 15,000-mile wide feature at the planet’s north pole. NASA says it looks like clouds are whipping around a hexagaonal race track.

This atmospheric feature, first spotted in 1980, turns out to be more than a transient gap in the clouds. Last year it was spotted again by the the Cassini spacecraft, whose infrared spectrometer captured the first full image of the entire hexagon.

Here’s NASA’s summary of expert opinion:

“This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides,” said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We’ve never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn’s thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you’d expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is.”

The hexagon is similar to Earth’s polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon like cars on a racetrack.

“It’s amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn’s poles,” said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, University of Arizona, Tucson. “At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different.”

After reading all this ..what NASA and the lab need is some creativity. So come on guys this magnificent looking structure maybe named after you.So come on give some convincing explanations and theories and also name it.

via [ Nasa ] 

California-based Yahoo Inc., which already provides the has a huge userbase, is ready to shift from its existing ‘1GB per account’ to "Unlimited Storage" in response to its competitors Google which provides at present 2.8gb and counting , Microsoft which provides 1gb for all and 2 gb windows live account for us people.Users can now share greater amounts of imagery, music, and video media through e-mail from now on.

The lifting of Yahoo’s account sizing is expected to start in May of this year, and the changeover should take around a month, says the company.

“We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under 1 gig(abyte), on average,” said John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail, before outlining that, “What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos.”

“We are giving them [Yahoo e-mail account holders] no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails,” commented Yahoo co-founder David Filo via a phone interview with Reuters. “You can keep stuff forever.”

What do they mean by "You can keep stuff forever" ..nothing is permanent.. 

It would be useful to know whether they will also allow POP3 access to clients (e.g. Outlook) which is currently only available to subscribers of Yahoo Mail Plus (~US$20/year) This feature is free for Gmail.

This is one of the most common questions.One of my friends had taken a pc from the vendor and it was bios password protected. So he wanted some solution .So here are some tips on how to reset the bios password.

Some of the most common bios include AMI, Award, IBM and Phoenix. Some BIOS's allow you to require a password be entered before the system will boot. Some BIOS's allow you to require a password to be entered before the BIOS setup may be accessed.

Best Solution : The BIOS password is stored in CMOS memory that is maintained while the PC is powered off by a small battery, which is attached to the motherboard. Just REMOVE that CMOS battery for 30 seconds and put it back. Everything is reset. You are done.

If you don't wanna meddle with the motherboard and battery here are some of the common passwords used for bios password.

Using a Backdoor BIOS Password: 

Here there's a list of common backdoors and default passwords used by manofacturers.
It depends on the BIOS model and if you're lucky will work for you.

Using Software: CmosPwd will recover the BIOS password.

Happy bios hacking ! 

We all know the power of Google. We all know how Google loves it users and how the Google Team strives to provide the best of the best features to its users. We know Google keeps track of our searches, but we aren't worried, Google puts related ads in our inboxes ,we are not worried, becoz we all Love Google !. It always gives everything more than expected , its always Feature+ that Google gives its users.

Video :

But All put together still there are some things due to which people are worried about , Privacy .

Do you think Google is worried about our privacy ? I think its a Yes & a No sometimes. Many say No. 

So here is an excellent movie about Google and its power. check out .. 

All said and done , We still Love Google ! Long Live Google ! 

There is more sweet news about chocolate. A cup of cocoa a day may help drive heart disease away, researchers say.

Overweight adults who drank a specially processed cocoa beverage significantly improved their blood vessel function in just two hours.

Improved blood function, in turn, mitigates the risk of cardiovascular disease, says researcher Valentine Yanchou Njike, MD, of the Yale Prevention Research Center in New Haven, Conn.

Cocoa Improves Blood Flow

Results showed that the ability of arteries to relax and expand to accommodate increased blood flow to the heart increased by about 39 percent by two hours after people drank the sugar-free cocoa. When they drank cocoa with sugar it improved by about 23 percent. In contrast, it dropped 12 percent when they consumed the nonfat milk drink.

If this is the case so go on having some nice cup of Cocoa everyday ..Its surprising to see so many results out of eating cocoa.previously we have seen Chocolate May Protect Smokers' Hearts

Cool.. Happy Cocoaing ! 

Batteries powered by anything sugary - even flat lemonade - could run gadgets up to four times longer than conventional lithium ion batteries.

Fuel cell technology that is currently in development boasts the ability of extracting energy from virtually any sugar source to power portable electronics like cellular phones, laptops, and sensors. The new technology is expected to be biodegradable, environmentally friendly and more energy efficient than current options, providing a green alternative to current Lithium-ion batteries.

About the cell :

The cell operates at room temperature and uses enzymes to oxidize sugars, hence generating electricity. So far, researchers have run the batteries on glucose, flat soft drinks, sweetened drink mixes and tree sap.

Efficiency :

Despite only attaining a maximum of 20 percent efficiency in the conversion of sugar to electricity, researchers say the new batteries will operate three to four times longer on a single charge than current battery technology.

"This study shows that renewable fuels can be directly employed in batteries at room temperature to lead to more energy-efficient battery technology than metal-based approaches," said study leader Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at Saint Louis University in the U.S.

Still a loong way to go..  

The technology has been licensed to a small company for commercialisation, and is expected to reach the market in three to five years.

via [ idg ] 

The Internet porn industry generates $3 billion annually.More children and teens are being exposed to online pornography, mostly by accidentally viewing sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet, researchers say.

Recently a federal judge dealt another blow to government efforts to control Internet pornography. The US federal judge ruled that a 1998 law called Child Online Protection Act is “unconstitutional”, leaving parents with the responsibility to protect their children from online pornography.

Frankly speaking children know more about computers than their parents. So obviously they are more smart and they watch porn on the net even after you put lot of restrictions on the child. No software or rules can stop the child , they break into everything !

David A. Milman, CEO - RESCUECOM Recommends to Parents : 

• Use Internet content filtering software such as the Net Nanny or CyberPatrol
• Locate your home computer(s) in the family room, living room or otherwise open area in your home. ( this rarely works )
• Limit the amount of time your children spend online.
• Educate your children to the dangers of online threats in the same manner you would about the dangers of talking to strangers. ( this might work)
• Make sure your Windows automatic updates are turned on and your content filters are up to date. ( this is a good joke )

The UNH study recommended that parents become more educated and get state- of-the-art Internet filters.

Some Facts :

- Most of the subjects who were exposed to unwanted online porn were aged between 13 and 17

- Among those questioned in the study, 42% have confessed that they have seen pornographic content (images or even short movies) in the last year.

- 66% of those who responded that exposure to porn occurred while they were Web-browsing have declared that they did not intentionally search for pornographic content and did not want it.

- Even though 48 percent of parents use some type of parental controls, still the problem continues.

- Britain now leads the world in tugging its collective todger to online porn. The official statistics is that Britain leads the world on porn downloads.

- Another study published in February’s edition of Pediatrics revealed that children and adolescents stumble upon more and more porn on the Internet, despite search filters.

eShare lets you do 24/7 non-stop sharing while freeing up your computer for other purposes. You can utilize the latest P2P technology “Bit-Torrent” to download and share your favourite multimedia files.

Why waste your computer resource when a dedicated box can do the work for you. Use this Procare e|Share ES-8068, a dedicated BitTorrent client that you can be set up using a Web browser. Without using your PC at all, it will connect directly to the Internet using Ethernet, storing files in a USB 2.0 hard drive. isn't this a cool feature..

Very light, this box can be bought for $85 plus shipping.

Note : Its Patent Pending.

Product page [Procare via PC Watch]

No link of where to buy. But interested people could contact them at their office here. 

It would be good if it had some features like , a small lcd screen, and bad thing is it supports only fat 32 file system. 

No doubt Googl's look was elegant enough..but not so impressive, but now with the new feature of skins added you could make your google homepage look better. With around 7 themes to change you could change the looks of Google homepage.

The Google Personalized Home Page, which is almost two years old now, is among Google's most practical features, especially now that you can customize your home page with thousands of useful gadgets from Google and third parties. Like i have Orkut birthdays,How to of the day,india news and calendar attached to the page. You could add hundreds of gadgets and third party addons too. This will certainly make the page look better.

How to change the theme :

- Login to Google Account

- Goto  Google Personalized Home Page

- Click on Select theme , you will see a windows below saying "Select a Theme For Your Homepage". Click on any of the themes and save the changes to have an awesome looking Google homepage.

Here are some screenshots :

Google is highly user concerned. These new features added regularly shows its concerns for its users. Long Live Google ! Thank You Google !