YouTube Blocked In Pakistan

Recently the most popular video sharing website owned by Google, YouTube.com was banned in Pakistan due to some anti-Islamic movies posted by some users. This move by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has taken aback everyone. Though exact content was not mentioned but officials said the ban was specifically due to an anti-Quran movie displaying the religion as provoking violence in women and homosexuals.

According to Darren Waters (editor at BBC technology news), the Pakistan Telecom hijacked the server of YouTube.com to prevent citizens of Pakistan from visiting the website. As soon as the details of the hijack were leaked into the internet from PCCW, YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world.

Pakistan officials said the ban would be removed if YouTube removes the objectionable content. This is not the first time a country has banned YouTube. Before also many countries like Turkey and Thailand have banned the site for displaying objectionable content.

[via BBC News]

Sony PSP With GPS Unveiled At GDC 2008

Recently Sony unveiled its GPS enabled PSP in the Gamer Developers Conference. Well its been talked about numerous times earlier but this time we could see the real thing. The GPS capabilities of the device were testes there, however the results were not quite accurate because the testing ground was underground. Hope it will give impressive results when working in normal conditions. Till now only 7 GPS supported games have been released like Metal Gear Solid Portable and some more.

Lets see how this change affects the sales of the Sony PSP :)

Law Suit Against Samsung For Providing Defective Blu-Ray Players

There's always some or the other issue with Samsung's Blu-ray players. The company has failed to provide hassle free players all these years. While Samsung has tried to put some efforts by releasing firmware updates time to time, but many customers still feel dissatisfied.

The latest addition is its BD-UP5000 hybrid player which was heavily criticized after it gave all sorts of troubles to its owners. According to the law suit filed by a consumer, Samsung despite knowing the player's (BD-P1200, in particular) inability to play back select BD titles has failed to provide a remedy.

While Samsung claims that some fixes have been released to solve the problem, the consumers told that they are dissatisfied. Needless to say, the outcome of this should be pretty interesting.

Is Microsoft Acquiring Ustream.tv?

Microsoft is talking with Ustream.tv to acquire it for around $50 million, according to a report from Valleywag. Given the Microsoft's urge to acquire more and more companies, this deal this likely to take place soon but nothing is confirmed right now.

Ustream.tv has a good reputation as a provider of live shows and events and is one of the earliest live streaming service providers that includes companies such as Justin.tv, Blogtv and Mogulus. It has offered a complete package of streaming and post show videos. It is also the home of major league live streamers including Chris Pirillo, and also scored a viral win with Walrus TV.

The acquisition, if comes true, doesn't seem to affect its takeover bid for Yahoo, but this deal will surely allow Microsoft to showcase Silverlight to a broader audience.

[via TechCrunch]

iPhone And iPod Touch Capacity Doubled By Apple

The capacity of iPhone and iPod Touch was doubled by Apple on Tuesday for an additional $100.

The iPhone once again comes in two capacities: 8GB for $399 and now 16GB for $499. Apple discontinued the 4GB model after it cut the price of the 8GB model to $399. A reason for this could be that almost 90 percent of all iPhone buyers opted for the 8GB version.

Another blow is that the iPod Touch will now be able to store more music and videos, with 32GB of capacity for $499 only. That device is now available in three versions, with Apple also selling a 16GB model for $399 and an 8GB model for $299.

The new iPhone and iPod Touch appear to be unchanged from their previous versions, though they ship with the new software unveiled at Macworld, which provides the ability to edit the home screen and triangulate your position using Maps.

Finally these changes have increased the chances of me buying an iPhone. :)

Intel's 45-Nanometer Chips Creep Into Notebooks

Dell will be offering Intel's "Penryn" processor as an option on most of its notebooks within a week or so, according to sources close to the the company.

Although the 45-nanometer generation of Penryn processors targeted at laptops was announced back in early January, the chips haven't exactly leaped into laptop lineups.

So far, Hewlett-Packard is the biggest taker of one Penryn chip from Intel: the Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB L2 cache). The HP Pavilion dv6700t, dv9700t, and dv2700t series all use the T9300. The massive 20-inch Pavilion HDX also offers the T9500 (2.6GHz, 6MB cache) as an option.

Toshiba has been one of the most eager early adopters. New models from Toshiba include the Satellite X205 based on the T8100 (2.1GHz, 3MB cache), the 4.6-pound Satellite U305 that uses the T8100, and the Qosmio G45 that integrates the T9300.

Dell is not specifying yet which models will get the processors, but the company's high-performance notebooks, such as the XPS, are likely candidates.

Nvidia To Add PhysX Technology To Its Chips

Nvidia plans to add Ageia's PhysX technology to its GeForce graphics chips.

Ageia is the maker of a chip called PhysX which makes killing and blowing stuff up in games more lifelike. It is essential for satisfying video gamers who are apparently well-acquainted with what really happens when you hit a fuel truck with an RPG. The processing power that is required to simulate events like explosions and smoke or fog is immense, so that a standalone chip for just that purpose was required to make the experience more realistic.

The graphics card for PC gaming and all three major gaming consoles; Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii use the PhysX chip. Developers have to write their games with the processor in mind to unlock the performance, and over 140 titles are available for consoles and PCs that support the PhysX technology.

Intel, AMD, and Nvidia are all working on chips that aim to carry the benefits of graphics processing, extremely fast processing of repetitive tasks with the flexibility of general-purpose PC processors. Intel's Larrabee project, AMD's Fusion project, and Nvidia's CUDA development are early steps towards that goal.

And now Nvidia plans to integrate the PhysX technology into one of its GeForce graphics chips, according to a spokesperson of Nvidia. This is a long-standing trend in chip design, where chips that used to occupy standalone roles for reasons of cost or complexity like PhysX wind up squeezing their way onto the main processor.

[CNET]

The Pirate Bay Blocked By A Danish ISP

The Pirate Bay continues to come in news (not for good reasons though).

The latest one was on Monday when a Danish court ordered one of the country's Internet service providers (ISP) to block access to the torrent search engine, according to a Danish IT magazine.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry brought a civil case against Tele2 Denmark after the ISP refused to filter the Web sites its customers visited.

The Pirate Bay, based in Sweden, is one of the world's most popular piracy tools. The company, founded by three Scandinavians, doesn't host any copyright films or music. Instead, visitors use the site to find pirated material available on torrent files.

Hollywood studios have long considered The Pirate Bay an outlaw organization. The site's founders say they operate in accordance with Swedish law.

Last week, a Swedish prosecutor charged four men connected to The Pirate Bay with conspiracy to violate copyright law.

Google Lets Users Visualize Edits To Google Maps

Google's real-time viewer allows users to watch as other users around the world make changes to locations on maps.

Google has created a real-time viewer that allows users to watch as other users around the world make changes to locations on the maps, the company announced Thursday.

Google began allowing its users to edit locations on Google Maps in November as part of an effort to ensure that homes and businesses are marked in the correct location. While Google restricted access to some listings like hospitals, government buildings and businesses whose listings have been sited through Google's Local Business center, other users could move arrows marking locations. Some edits like moving a marker more than 200 yards from its original location requires a moderator's approval before they show up on Google.

The new viewer lets users "just sit back and watch the world's information improving bit by bit, edit by edit," Charles Spirakis, software engineer at Google Maps, said in a blog post. "I warn you, though, it's highly addictive (almost as addictive as helping make the improvements yourself!)."

Adam Ostrow, a blogger at Mashable, wrote that Google Maps is evolving to become Google's best homegrown social product.

"Although more of a 'that's cool' feature than something incredibly useful, the visualization does highlight the growing importance of social features in Google Maps," Ostrow wrote in a blog post. "They've also recently released collaborative maps, community maps, and in Google Earth, you can now see geo-tagged YouTube videos."

Ostrow said that Google's efforts to ramp up Google Maps seem to be paying off, citing a Hitwise report last week showing that Google is quickly narrowing the gap between its traffic and that of MapQuest. While 426% more users visited MapQuest than Google Maps in 2006, the lead was cut significantly last year as MapQuest pulled in only 126% more traffic than Google Maps.

NBC Universal Unhappy With iTunes Profit

More dirt has emerged regarding the Apple/Universal deal that turned rotten. According to an article in Variety, the deal went south when NBC Universal wanted to raise the price of hot properties like "Heroes" by a dollar, to $2.99, in addition to requesting a cut of Apple's hardware profits. On both counts, Apple refused. And the head honcho of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, was none too happy: "Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money."

Less than satisfied with his company's cut of Apple's pie--$15 million in revenue over the last year--NBC Universal opted to pull out of iTunes and spend who-knows-how-much to launch its own online video site called Hulu, which is headed into beta this week. "We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side." Hey, anytime someone wants to throw $15 million in pennies my way, please go right ahead.

HD DVD Breaks The $100 Barrier (With a Little Help From Wal-Mart)

If you'd asked me a week ago -- and as a matter of fact, someone did -- I'd have said that you could sum up the high-definition disc war like this: Blu-ray is selling a lot of software, and HD DVD is aggressively pushing hardware. Essentially, each side has banked on either the chicken or the egg.

In scenarios like these, industry observers look for knockout punches (rare), or potential tipping points (a bit more common). We may be witnessing one right now: as part of its "pre-Black Friday" promotion, Wal-Mart will be offering Toshiba's entry-level HD-A2 player (soon to be replaced by the HD-A3) for a mere $98.97 -- making it a lot easier for cash-strapped consumers to get into the HD world at their own pace.

Should Blockbuster start restocking their shelves to take advantage of a potential wave of new HD DVD owners? I guess we'll find out pretty soon.

Porn-Induced Malware Attacks Leopard

Apparently at least some of the Leopard security vulnerabilities have already been exploited, but only through the aid of stupid hornball Mac users. Was that childish of us to call porn-craved Mac users "hornballs" and imply that some of them are stupid? Maybe. And the image of of Justin Long doing the dirty certainly won't fit nicely in our next Mac fantasy, but we're just doing our job here.

Security company Intego discovered that the OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan horse malware is infecting users on certain porn sites who agree to upgrade their video codec. Oh, and it's not a simple button press, either. Users need to agree, download the file, mount the .dmg and install it on their dic- disk. When the malware is setup properly, a computer's DNS settings will change, redirecting browsers to phishing sites and ads for porn.

Cry me a river. This isn't some dangerous Trogan horse, it's pornographic Darwinism. [CNET]

New Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta Released

The all new Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta is out. Now you can talk for hours by making free PC to PC calls. The file transfers between contacts can be as large as you want, instead of limited to one gigabyte in size. New emoticons and skins have been added in this version. I just downloaded this today and installed it.

*The Changes*

1. The add a contact button has been moved to the bottom of the messenger.



2. New Skins - There is a small round button on the top which is next to the minimize, you can change the skins of your messenger with the help of it. There are 7 cool skins that you can change.



*New Features*

1. Now you can also add emoticons in your status messages.



2. Now if you just paste the image link while chatting with your friends, they can see the image without actually clicking on the link. The image appears inside the chat box. Aint this great?



Download Here - Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta

Google Has Mobile Plans, But No Google Phone

Here's the newsflash: Not only is Google not making its own cell phone, it's hoping other people will do most of the work of coming up with new software. I don't know how many times Google has to tell you this: Google is not coming out with a Google Phone. But the idea is clearly so entrancing that tech reporters keep returning to it, as in a new Wall Street Journal article. The short version: Google will announce plans that, instead of involving its own models of cell phones, will work with existing carriers and handset makers.

It's a big comedown for Google's wireless engineers, who have, it seems, wasted as much as $100 million Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin staked on the failed Googlephone project. But as a piece of corporate jujitsu, the Googlephone may still pay off brilliantly. The mere threat of a Googlephone may have been enough to corral some wireless carriers into its camp.

And the most intriguing element? Google's wireless software efforts will pull in existing mobile versions of Gmail and YouTube, among other Google services. But that's not the key part, as my colleague Gizmodo editor Brian Lam has speculated. No, instead, Google's hoping to establish a software platform that's open to third-party developers.

And that may be the trickiest part to sell. Wireless carriers are famous for restricting what software can run over their networks. That they would crown Google as the new kingmaker seems unlikely. About as unlikely, in fact, as a Google Phone.

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Related Posts:

• Google Phone (Still Not Officially Confirmed)

Mac OS X Leopard - The Big Changes

A lot of changes have been made in the new version Mac OS X Leopard.
Here's is a list of the big ones!!!!

1. Create Web Clips As I mentioned, you can now create your own Dashboard widgets from Web pages in Safari. The idea here is that you can use this feature to save yourself needless trips to your browser just to check a specific portion of a Web page for updates-checking sports scores on the right-hand side of this Yahoo page, for example. Just use this feature to turn that section of the Web page into a Dashboard widget, press F12, and you can quickly scan for updates.

The process is quite simple: click on the Open This Page In Dashboard toolbar button in Safari, and the page will dim, except for a white rectangle. Move your mouse until the rectangle is over the area you'd like to make into a Web Clip, then click the mouse button. When you click, you'll see a series of adjustment circles appear on the rectangle; drag these to fine tune the selection area, then click on the Add button.

When you click Add, Dashboard will open, displaying your newly-created widget. You can then click on the widget's info ("i") button to choose a theme for your widget.

And that's all there is to it-as long as you leave your widget open. Unfortunately, there's no way to save a user-created widget, so if you close the widget (by clicking on its "x" indicator), you'll have to start the whole process again.

2. Improved Search: Searching in Safari is now dynamic. Instead of searching after entering your entire search term, Safari searches as you type (after you press Command-F). As you type characters, Safari highlights all the matching terms on the page, reducing the list of matches as you type more characters. It also shows you all instances of your search term instead of making you cycle through them.

3. Bookmark Groups of Tabs: You can now create a bookmark from a group of tabs, as you can with Firefox. For example, assume you've been browsing the Web for a couple hours, and realize it'd be great to have your current assortment of tabs (say six of them) available as a group for future use. All you need to do is select Bookmarks -> Add Bookmark For These 6 Tabs, and then name the bookmark.

4. Recover From Mistakes: Safari's History menu now includes an Reopen Last Closed Window menu item. You'll say thank you for this handy feature every time you get overly aggressive with Command-W-no longer will you have to retrace your steps to get back to the page you were viewing. Instead, just use History -> Reopen Last Closed Window, and your last-viewed page will open up again.

Need to go even further back in time? Safari 3 also adds a Reopen All Windows From Last Session item as well. And yes, it does exactly what it claims to do-reopening all windows (and tabs) that you had open when you last quit Safari.

5. Prevent Mistakes: Safari has a new feature aimed at stopping you from doing something silly: It will now warn you if you click the red close box when you have more than one tab open. (It will also warn you if you try to close a tab or window with text entered in a Web form.)

6. Make History Disappear: If you don't like the thought that every page you've visited is saved indefinitely, you'll love the new settings in Safari, which adds the ability to auto-expire your browsing history over time via its preferences. You can choose to clear entries from the history file after a day, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, or manually.

Time Machine's Simplicity Compels You

If you're running Leopard and you've got an external hard drive, you will back up your data, even if that wasn't your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac. That's because Leopard's system snapshot mechanism, Time Machine, is dead simple to enable—and Leopard prompts you to turn it on the moment you plug in your FireWire drive. You'll think, "why not?" and why not indeed.

In System Preferences, Time Machine has exactly two settings: the On/Off switch, and what backup drive it should use. Once it's on, it creates hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots of your Mac, and automatically deletes the oldest ones when you run out of space on your drive—no user configuration required (or even possible, as far as I can see).

That terrible day you delete a file you need, to restore a past snapshot you'll use Time Machine's overwrought interface to fly back through space and time to that happy day when your file did exist. Gimmicky? Sure. But Mac guy John Gruber says that's a good thing:

Apple has made something so effect-laden and so extraordinary that users want to see it in action—the fact that that something is backups, which, let's face it, is effectively a chore, is a noteworthy achievement. Making backup software that people can't wait to try, and which, once activated, just automatically kicks in and does its thing on a regular schedule, is like making people want to go ahead and sign up for life insurance.

In short, Apple's used the best productivity trick in the world: to make the right thing to do the easy thing to do. Leopard's release will no doubt bring on an uptick of Mac users who diligently back up their system and data without even thinking about it.

Google Desktop Adds Leopard Support

Google Desktop for Mac has been updated adding support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, among many other changes.

In addition to Leopard support, Google Desktop also now allows indexing of drives where Spotlight has been disabled; Desktop no longer tries to index PGP disks; Time Machine won't back up Desktop indexes, nor will Desktop search Time Machine backups; and Desktop preferences pane now supports keyword searching in System Preferences for various settings.

There are also some architecture improvements in the new release. Google removed some Spotlight dependencies; removed the use of Input Managers; and they removed use of files in /System.

Google Desktop is a free download from the company's Web site.

Apple To Release Unlocked iPhone In France

Apple is releasing an unlocked version of the iPhone that will allow users to run it on various cellular networks. But you have to live in France to get it.

Under a just-announced deal, the European mobile carrier Orange will be the exclusive source for the iPhone in the French market. The unlocked phone is concession to a French law that forbids companies to bundle a cell phone to a specific mobile operator.

According to a report in the International Herald Tribune, Orange will offer both a locked version for its French net for about $560 and an unlocked version for a higher, but undisclosed price. Both are expected to be unveiled in November.

Apple recently signed exclusive deals, similar to the one with U.S.-based AT&T, with Britain's O2, the wireless division of Spain's Telefonica, and with Germany's T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

According to the Tribune report, Orange wouldn't say whether it had agreed to give Apple a share of the service revenues generated by iPhone users. This is one of the most striking features of Apple's move into the mobile phone market. The Tribune quoted a Nortel executive on how revolutionary this change is: 'For operators, having an handset maker suddenly demand a slice of their revenues is like being asked to change your religion,' said Gerry Collins, the director of strategic marketing at Nortel Networks, a Canadian company that makes wireless phone networks. "This is really a significant change for the industry.

From the outset, Apple's decision has come under concerted attack by hackers trying to unlock the phone's SIM card, thereby allowing the phone to run on a network other than AT&T. Apple has made a just-as-concerted counter-attack to undo those hacks.

Record Breaking Hard Drive Density Announced By Western Digital

Recently, the hard disk manufacturing giant Western Digital announced that it has achieved 520 Gb/in2 areal density in an actual demonstration using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology which is the highest till yet. For those of you who are counting, that makes it the highest density ever reached using continuous media. A density of this magnitude produces a 3.5-inch hard drive storing 640 GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3 TB. Compare that to the current leading density of around 200 Gb/in2 being shipped high volume products like WD's 250 GB Scorpio(R) 2.5-inch drive. That's all well and good, but you will have to wait for quite a long time to get your hands on this technology. Current estimates put the release at around 2010. That's a huge time in this inddustry but the estimated sound impressive. Well for now waiting is the only option.

Till then play around with your existing hard drives. lol :)

[via Gizmodo]

IBM's Symphony Office Suite

IBM is challenging Microsoft with a game of "anything you can do I can do." Its new Lotus Symphony office suite--now available as a public beta--does much of what the $400 Standard edition of Microsoft Office does, only at a much better price: It's free.

Comprised of three applications--a word processor (Lotus Symphony Documents), a spreadsheet (Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets), and a presentation creator (Lotus Symphony Presentations)--Symphony supports both Windows (XP, Vista, 2000) and Linux operating systems. (IBM says a version for the Mac OS is coming, but hasn't said when.) Each app can open and save in a variety of file formats including Office (2003/XP/97; not 2007) and Open Document Format (ODF), as well as save files as PDFs.

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