IT Masala

Saw the post on TechCrunch about Google adding another company to its list of applications. The company acquired Marratech AB, a Swedish startup (refer to Wikipedia page) with a video conferencing applications, including an interactive whiteboard and application sharing.

It now competes with established players including Microsoft, Raindance, Adobe and WebEx, which was just acquired by Cisco for over $3 billion.

Visit [ Marratech AB ]

Google renamed the name of its shopping search engine from "Froogle" to the more corporately inclined Google Product Search. The name caused confusion for some because it doesn't clearly describe what the product does- said officials of Google .

The name was originally intended as a play on the word "frugal", Marissa Mayer, vice president of search and user experience, and Jeff Bartelma, product manager for "the product formally known as Froogle", wrote in a blog post to the Google Web site.

From their blog post on Google:

We're taking the opportunity to refocus the user experience on providing the most comprehensive, relevant results in a clean, simple, easy-to-use UI. We're also excited about how Google Checkout can help searchers have a fast and secure purchase experience, so the new interface makes it easier to buy with Checkout.

Froogle was sacrificed to the re-branding gods and has emerged as Google Product Search.

[ Google Product Search ] 

The company will offer a complete software package built around Windows and Office for $3.

The software bundle, called “Microsoft Student Innovation Suite,” (MSIS) includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Office Home and Student 2007, Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live Mail desktop. According to Microsoft, the software is part of a “new commitment to help close the digital divide” and an effort to “bring social and economic opportunity to the estimated 5 billion people who are not yet realizing the benefits of technology.”

“All human beings deserve a chance to achieve their full potential,” commented Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, in a prepared statement. “Bringing the benefits of technology to the next 5 billion people will require new products that meet the needs of underserved communities; creative, new business approaches that make technology more relevant, accessible and affordable; and close collaboration between local governments, educational institutions and community organizations.”

Microsoft will also offer the $3 package for high income countries, if those governments agree to sign up for the firm’s Partner in Learning program and limit the (MSIS) software to “underserved communities.”

Visit [ Microsoft Student Innovation Suite ] 

This is a nice way to hook up everybody onto Windows.. We should see how far they will be successful in this new venture !! All the Best Micro$oft !

Note : We can use Gnu/Linux (which is FREE,open source and highly secure) rather than accepting some weird offers from Micro$oft. 

The Official Google Channel on YouTube has posted a tutorial on how to increase productivity by adopting Google Apps for your business or organization.

Video: 

Rajen Sheth(Product Manager,Google Apps) demonstrates a 17:44 minutes video on how to use Google Apps in a company or organization. The video focuses on the integration between Gmail and other Google products: email is seen as a starting point for collaboration. 

Rajen Sheth Demonstrates Google Apps [via Google Operating System] 

Yahoo has announced partnership with Ebay, PayPal to offer an express checkout system similar to Google Checkouts. Search on Yahoo and you will notice small blue icons beside search results. With the Yahoo! PayPal Checkout Program, a blue shopping cart icon appears next to your ad in Yahoo! search results. This can help your ad stand out, and let customers know you offer PayPal Express Checkout. This is very similar to the Google Checkout program. 

Here’s a note from Yahoo’s Search Marketing Blog:

“Here is how it works: When a user goes to Yahoo Search to find an item or service, the results page may include Yahoo Sponsored Search results matched to the user’s query. If the merchant has joined the Yahoo PayPal Checkout program, a blue shopping cart icon will appear next to the merchant’s name in the Sponsored Search results. By clicking on the ad, users will have direct access to a safe, secure purchasing process that does not require any additional credit card information and can be completed in just a few mouse clicks.”

A Screenshot : (Image Source: Google Operating System)

This will create a lot of competition for Google as Paypal has been popular in this area and highly reliable and secure site for transactions, so probability of people using Yahoo-Paypal is more compared to Google Checkout..Only thing is people are already much more familiar to Paypal.

Anyway..always the best survives..

[ Yahoo - Paypal ] 

Google announced on Friday that it will acquire Internet advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash(the largest purchase in Google's history). The deal, which follows Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of video-sharing site YouTube by only six months, is thought by some analysts to have been expedited by the interest rival Microsoft showed in DoubleClick.

Google will integrate its targeted search-ad technology with DoubleClick's graphic display ad technology, allowing it to offer a wider array of options to advertising customers( like Time Warner's AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace) .

What is DoubleClick?

DoubleClick, which connects ad agencies and marketers with website publishers, was bought by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for $1.1 billion in 2005.

The New York Times is reporting that DoubleClicks revenues are about $300 million/year.

Comments from blogsphere : 

Google watcher Donna Bogatin concludes:

Although Google reigns supreme in the category it catapulted to online advertising fame—PPC text ads—it has not achieved similar success with “image ad” serving.

The acquisition of a dedicated banner ad serving firm such as DoubleClick, with its established clientèle, would complete a virtuous circle of powered by Google online advertising:

Pay For Performance Text Ads,
Pay For Action Referral Ads,
Pay For Delivery Display Ads! 

Michael Arrington @ TechCrunch:

10x revenue for a mature company is a…healthy…valuation. At least part of the acquisition price appears to be due to a desire by Google to keep this asset out of Microsoft’s hands.

Discussions: Screenwerk, John Furrier, GigaOM, Basement.org, Search Engine Land and Leathern

MySpace is at it again ! It has banned use of Photobucket pictures,videos into MySpace..

Photobucket, founded in 2003, has 39 million registered users and ranked 34th among comScore's top 50 U.S. Web properties in March, with almost 16.8 million unique visitors.

Photobucket ranks by far as the most popular photo sharing site in the U.S. with 41.4 percent of visits to sites in that category in March, according to Hitwise.

Photobucket, which lets users store photos, slide shows, videos and graphics on its servers and then link them to other Web sites, receives almost 57 percent of its upstream traffic from MySpace, according to Hitwise.

Photobucket even had exclusive pages like "The most popular myspace icons on Photobucket" etc…

Likely Reason:

Not a word still from News Corp. as to why; though Mike Arrington @ TechCrunch said that it may be because Photobucket is looking for a buyer. Where the photo and video sharing service is to fall into the hands of one of MySpace's main competitors — say Google or another big media company.

From Photobucket's official blog:

MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.

Is this a bad news to the mashups going on ??How is this ban affecting the users on MySpace ?? Is it too much restrcition?? pour in your comments

Growth takes off in a big way: Jet will have more than 50 per cent market share of domestic air traffic. 

The deal for Jet Airways buying Air Sahara is through. Air Sahara has been valued at around Rs 1,450 crore.
 
Harish Salve, the legal representative of Jet, said Rs 400 crore has to be paid to Air Sahara before April 20.

The deal was signed by Saroj Dutta representing Jet and Pallav Agarwal representing Air Sahara.

[ via News Sources ]

The first thing i can say about this is ' ROFL '. In a report that surprises even the PC lovers around here (me), Symantec has listed Microsoft Windows as the most secure OS out there. They claim that Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest patch development time of any OS, including Mac, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX.

The information was a part of Symantec's 11th Internet Security Threat Report (PDF). The report, released this week, covered a huge range of security and vulnerability issues over the last six months of 2006, including operating systems.

Anuj Nayar, manager of Apple's Mac OS X and developer relations, would only say "Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing vulnerabilities before they affect you."  — he is right ! 

Analyst Charles King with Pund-IT said Microsoft has had to be aggressive about dealing with security issues because it's such a big target. In that regard, the company has met the challenge.

PS — > can't believe this !

Also Note : Microsoft issued a security report for the first 90 days from the release of Windows Vista and gave it an A-plus.
 

Are they making a fool out of us.. . What do they think.. Everybody knows how Windows is. Yeah..No doubt Its one of the best user friendly OS but not the secure one..No No… If you say Gnu/Linux are excellent at security , then everybody accepts , due to its opensource community of the GnuLinux most of the vulnerabilities get rectified as soon as they are brought to notice. Apple Mac is no less, its on the top too.. We can rate then as - first comes MAC , GnuLinux, Solaris,HP-UX ..these top ratings can vary among themselves but will not include Windows in the list of top-5 .. No way.not in the top secure OS list ! ( maybe included in the top good looking OS 's ).

Why such misguiding information to the people ! What will Symantec get out of it ! 

PS : On May 19,2006 Symantec Sues Microsoft to Halt Vista  — How can such a difference in opinion occur so quickly !

Comments from the blog sphere :

Frankly, the rate at which you *patch* bugs is not an indication of the security of the system. A higher patch rate does not mean the system is less secure - according to that metric I could simply patch fewer bugs and look better. Without providing useful details, Symantec can spin the 'results' any which way. — slashdolt

Of course they want to Windows to be perceived as the most secure. They want people to use it. - s5

Since Symantec gets approximately zero sales from Macs and Linux users, of course they would promote Windows  - Belayman

Am I blind? - dpff

I'm getting a headache… nothing seems real anymore -  s0crates82

via [ Internet News ]

John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.

Fortran, released in 1957, was “the turning point” in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J.A.N. Lee, a leading computer historian.

Fortran changed the terms of communication between humans and computers, moving up a level to a language that was more comprehensible by humans. So Fortran, in computing vernacular, is considered the first successful higher-level language.

“His contribution was immense, and it influenced the work of many, including me,” Frances Allen, a retired research fellow at I.B.M., said yesterday.

Innovation, Mr. Backus said, was a constant process of trial and error.

“You need the willingness to fail all the time,” he said. “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”

via [ nytimes ]