IT Masala

An astronaut glove stitched together on a Maine engineer's dining room table won a cool $200,000 Thursday in a NASA competition.

via [ space ] 

[Right click and choose "Save Target as" to download any of these Adobe Wallpaper images]

Terry White's beautiful wallpaper set for download - Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, Master Collection, CS3 Creative License

Available in 800×600, 1024×748, 1280×960, 1600×1200 and 1920×1440 sizes.

via [ DI ] 

Remember those beautiful framed prints from Flickr 333? Now you can have your own photos printed, matted and frame photos sent directly to your home by Imagekind.

How to Get to Imagekind: 

From the Flickr 'Do More' page, click on Imagekind and you'll be taken to the Flickr member page on Imagekind.

Select a photo, choose your framing options, and away you go. Imagekind also provides a way for people to sell their prints to others.

You can read more about Imagekind's service on their blog. Join the Imagekind group on Flickr for questions or comments.

Photos from Planet Vicster and diyosa.

via [ flickr's blog ]

The Wall Street Journal said:

Microsoft and Yahoo discussed a possible merger or other matchup that would pair their respective strengths, say people familiar with the situation. The merger discussions are no longer active, these people say, but that doesn't preclude the two companies from some other form of cooperation.

Briar Dudley's blog, The Seattle Times:

The New York Post owes everyone a good follow-up story. You can't just drop a bombshell that jerks around 80,000 Microsoft and Yahoo! employees, rocks Wall Street and then fizzles before the day is over.

The Post should investigate — and report — whether its anonymous investment banker sources made any money off the huge run in YHOO caused by its story. If the Post doesn't do this, the SEC might. We don't need any more reporter subpoenas.

At the very least, the Post needs to go back to its sources and clarify if and when Microsoft and Yahoo! ended their latest round of merger discussions.

According to SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists):

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth.

 

So what do you all think about this ? How can NY write something like this ? saying "unknown source" or "people" ,,,Do think Microsoft and Yahoo are really gonna merge ??

If yes will it affect Google's market share ??  I don't think Google might be worrying anything about this..as Google is GOD. Google is way beyond these two ..So maybe this merger isn't a potential problem for Google !

YouTube is going to start helping some of its indie video content creators make money, starting tomorrow. The company will launch a program that puts the creators of some of the more popular YouTube channels — including Lonelygirl15, LisaNova, HappySlip, renetto, Smosh, and valsartdiary — on the same playing field as large media partners like CBS.

“A select group of content creators will get promotion on the YouTube platform, and we will help them monetize their content,” said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing, in an interview on Thursday. “This will help erase the the stigma around the user-created content, and, to be honest, these guys are media entities in their own right.”

While YouTube had previously said it might populate videos with pre-or-post roll ads as soon as this summer, the monies for the new program will come from the sales of banner ads.

via [ newteevee ] 

Its been just a few months of the Vista release and there have been hell lot of problems. Even though some tried to increase the usage of Vista by giving out Free Windows Vista, still people don't use it. You should look at the minimum requirements for running Vista..its really crazy to run a system with such high requirements..instead run a gnu/linux system which takes only 1/100 of the resources of what Windows take.It has hell lot of security vulnerabilities which were seen right from the day it got released. 

Some of Microsoft's most important customers aren't happy with the battery life offered by notebooks running Windows Vista.

"It's a little scary," said John Wozniak, a distinguished technologist in Hewlett-Packard's notebook engineering department, referring to the work HP needed to do on making Windows Vista more suitable for notebooks.

When Aero is turned off, battery life is equal to or better than Windows XP systems. But with it turned on, battery life suffers compared with Windows XP.

Microsoft, for its part, will likely have to improve Vista's battery life performance over time through the release of service packs and other tweaks, Shim said. "The (PC companies) are getting pressure from consumers–who are the notebook adopters–who are saying their number one priority on a notebook is battery life."

According to TechCrunch and USA Today - Yahoo is to close its popular Yahoo Photos service completely in the coming months, telling people to either switch to Flickr or leave to a number of other competing photo sharing services.

But when i visited it today morning , it dosen't seem anything like that.. Moreover the old page is changed and has a new look..

S what does all this mean ? Are they going to force everybody to shift to Flickr ? or Let users use both !! wait and watch !!

Around a year ago, India pulled out its support from the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ (OLPC) initiative. Now Human Resources Development ministry in India is seeking ways to develop a laptop that would cost an unbelievable $10.

The Indian government has two options. The first design is from a student at Vellore Institute of Technology and another from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, according to the Times of India.

At present, none of the two devices has managed to get the price to $10; in fact $47 is the lowest they could reach. Till now, the Indian government has not got any company to agree to produce the device, since building it for merely $10 would most probably mean that the manufacturer would have to take a significant loss.

Don't you think its crap ?? or is it really possible to make a $10 laptop ?? I think we lack practical thinking !! anyway ..lets see what happens..put in your comments ! 

Scammers all over are taking advantage of the knowledge of common people using Windows. They have adopted nice engineering tricks to trick ppl …

According to the Symantec Security Response Weblog:

Recently we came across an interesting Trojan sample, detected by Symantec as Trojan.Kardphisher. The Trojan is not very technical - it's really just another classic social-engineering attack. What makes it interesting is that the author has obviously taken great pains to make it appear legitimate.

Here’s the scam. The Trojan installs itself onto a PC and presents the user with the following message:

“Your copy of Windows has been activated by another user.
To help reduce software piracy, please re-activate your copy of Windows now.
WE will ask for your billing details, but your credit card will NOT be charged.
You must activate Windows before you can continue to use it.
Microsoft is committed to your Privacy. For more information, www.microsoft.com/piracy.
Do you want to activate Windows now?”

Look at the screenshot:

Read the rest of this entry »