i-Stuff... Interesting Stuff that Matters

"Interesting stuff of the Technology, Products and Web 2.0..."

Friday, May 02, 2014

Smashingfeeds.com is back and up...

Hello there !!

After a long time, i am writing here. Well, there are lots of things going around and so quite busy with daily life. If you are regular visitor of smashingfeeds.com, then you know that the site was down since long time. There were some issues and now site is up.

In coming days, i will be make few feed updates to provide you more quality news.

Stay tuned ...!!

Thanks
Kevin :)

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Orkut Is Hit by ‘Bom Sabado’ Virus

‘Bom Sabado’ virus hit the popular social networking site orkut, owned by Google. Lots of orkut users are affected by this virus. Many orkut users find a scrap as “bom sabado” on their scrapbook written by their friends. However this is some kind of virus scrap which automatically written to your friends’ scrapbook.

Bom Sabado means “Good Saturday” in Portuguese. Google has not confirmed about this virus yet on their office blog, however orkut team may be working on this. Data affected by this virus is not clear yet. Users are waiting for official release by google about this virus and worry about their data.

Let hope to hear something soon from Google.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

HTC Acquires Abaxia To Strengthens Its Software Capabilities

HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, announced it has acquired Paris-based Abaxia, a leader in custom software for mobile operators and handset manufacturers around the world.

“HTC is committed to creating the best possible mobile experience for our customers today, tomorrow and into the future,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation.  “The addition of Abaxia deepen and broaden our software development capabilities so that we can innovate at an even faster pace.”

“HTC and Abaxia have worked closely together in the past and our businesses complement each other well,” said Cedric Mangaud, CEO of Abaxia.  “We’re excited to be joining such a significant and emerging mobile brand.”

Founded in 2001, Abaxia is a leading software developer specializing in mobile solutions that quickly promote and monetize operator and handset manufacturer services on smartphones.

Abaxia has 22+ million software deployments, across 36 countries on 60 different handset models with tier-1 network operators, and 10 global technical contracts with major handset manufacturers.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Google Increases Search Security With Encrypted Google Web Search

When people spend lot of time on the internet, they want more control over who access their communication. There are may internet services which provides security using secure http connection i.e. https which uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections to encrypt information that travel between your computer and the services. Banking and e-commerce websites use this technology to secure data communication.

Years ago Google added SSL encryption to products ranging from Gmail to Google Docs and others. Like banking and e-commerce sites, Google’s encryption extends beyond login passwords to the entire service. This session-wide encryption is a significant privacy advantage over systems that only encrypt login pages and credit card information.As a part of continuous improvement, google rolled out a choice to search more securely at: https://google.com

When you search on https://www.google.com, an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. The service includes a modified logo to help indicate that you’re searching using SSL. Remember to check the start of the address bar for “https” and your browser lock indicators:

This release comes with a “beta” label for a few reasons. First, it currently covers only the core Google web search product. To avoid misunderstanding, when you search using SSL, you won’t see links to offerings like Image Search and Maps that, for the most part, don’t support SSL at this time. Also, since SSL connections require additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server, your experience with search over SSL might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience. What won’t change is that you will still get the same great search results.

A few notes to remember: Google will still maintain search data to improve your search quality and to provide better service. Searching over SSL doesn’t reduce the data sent to Google — it only hides that data from third parties who seek it. And clicking on any of the web results, including Google universal search results for unsupported services like Google Images, could take you out of SSL mode.

To learn more about using the feature, refer to our help article on search over SSL.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Orkut Made It Easy To Add Images To Your Scraps!

Till now it was little tricky to add images to your orkut scrap. With the recent changes, new orkut brings this feature back which enables you to add images to your scrap easily.

To add images to your scraps, first click the text box to write and edit a message. You'll then see customization options, such as font color and emoticons. Click the image icon to add an image to your your scrap:

You can upload images from your computer, add from your Picasa Web Albums, or search for them in Google Images.

Related Post:

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Smart Rescheduler for Google Calendar

Google has recently added a Smart Rescheduler in Google Calendar which is a Google Lab output. People spend lot of time in checking calendar, scheduling or rescheduling meetings, investigating other people's calendars, finding replacement conference rooms and rescheduling conflicts.

In order to help people, Google came up with a gadget called Smart Rescheduler to help you re-schedule an event by analyzing everybody's schedule, evaluating conflicts, obtaining conference rooms and proposing the best meeting times.

It uses some of Google's search experience to the problem of scheduling. Google experimented with using ranking algorithms to return the most relevant meeting times based on specified criteria like attendees, schedule complexity, conference rooms, and time zones. Just like Google search ranks the web, scheduling search algorithm returns a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times.

Once you turn it on, just select an event you'd like to reschedule, then click "Find a new time...":

You'll see ranked list of possible times for your meeting. By investigating the calendars others have shared with you, Google Calendar can make some educated guesses about how easy it might be to reschedule a conflicting meeting and even find you a replacement conference room nearby. This process is 100% automated — no Google employees are doing any work behind the scenes. You can refine the results by marking people as optional, changing the meeting duration, ignoring certain conflicts, or specifying the earliest and latest times you'll accept. The results will immediately update to reflect your new requirements.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Send Attachment via Gmail While You Are Offline

Gmail offers lots of useful feature for personal as well as business use. Recently gmail team has announced the addition of a new feature which enables users to send attachments even when they are offline. This is one of the most requested features for Offline Gmail to include attachments in messages composed while offline.

Now attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images). Just add the attachment and send your message.

If you have Offline Gmail enabled, you'll notice that all your mail now goes through the outbox, regardless of whether you're online or offline. This allows Gmail to capture all attachments, even if you suddenly get disconnected from network. If you're online, your mail will quickly be sent along to its destination.

Visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:

  1. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
  2. Click Save Changes.
  3. After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Which Are The Best Websites Of 2009 ?

Have you ever thought about the best websites of year 2009 ? Well, time.com. Well, time.com has published a list of 50 best websites of 2009. Below is a list of top 10 websites as per time.com:

This list also includes other popular websites such as Google, Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia etc…

You can find complete list of these 50 websites at:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1918031,00.html

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Google Now Provides New Site Hierarchies In Search Results

When you search something on Google, Google usually shows a green web address, or URL, at the bottom of each search result to let you know where you're headed. Today Google is rolling out an improvement that replaces the URL in some search results with a hierarchy showing the precise location of the page on the website.

The new display provides valuable context and new navigation options. The changes are rolling out now and should be available globally in the next few days.

Some web addresses help you understand the structure of the site and how the specific page fits into the site hierarchy. For example, consider a search for the biography of Vint Cerf (Google's Internet Evangelist). The URL for one result, "www.google.com/corporate/execs.html," shows that the page is located in a page about "execs," under "corporate," which is on the "google.com" site. This can provide valuable context when deciding whether to click on the result.

Often, however, URLs are too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information. For example, consider this result from ProductWiki for the query [spidersapien reviews]:

The URL of this result is "www.productwiki.com/spidersapien," which doesn't provide much additional information about the site or this result. Now take a look at the result with the new site hierarchy display:

The new text provides useful information about the page. You can tell that the ProductWiki site has information about many different products, organized in different categories, and you can even tell that Spidersapien is a robot toy.

In addition, each phrase in the green line is actually a link. For example, clicking on "Toys & Games" takes you to ProductWiki's listing page for all toys, and clicking on "Robots" takes you to a list of their robot toys. This way if you realize that you're interested in a more general category than this specific product (there are a lot of cool robot toys out there) you can easily access information on broader topics.

The host and domain for the site (in this case www.productwiki.com) will always be shown, so you always know what website you're going to before you click. There's not always enough room to show the complete hierarchy, so sometimes we use ellipses to replace some of the intermediate levels, like in this result for [how to make granola]:

The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you'll see a series of similar links at the top, "Home> Toys & Games> Robots." These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called "breadcrumbs," which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

HP to Acquire 3Com for $2.7 Billion

HP and 3Com Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors.

This combination will transform the networking industry and underscore HP’s next-generation data center strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. The resulting business outcome will help customers simplify the network, deploy a unique and innovative edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise and improve IT service delivery capabilities, all delivered with best-in-class price-performance.

“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”

“Our extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity,” said Bob Mao, chief executive officer, 3Com. “3Com’s networking products are based on a modern architecture which has been designed to offer better performance, require less power and eliminate administrative complexity when compared against current network offerings. Our products are enterprise proven and widely deployed in the world’s largest banks, manufacturers, Internet service providers, public utilities and retailers.”

The acquisition of 3Com will dramatically expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China – one of the world’s fastest-growing markets – via the H3C offerings. In addition, the combination will add a large and talented research and development team in China that will drive the acceleration of innovations to HP’s networking solutions.

3Com also brings to HP best-of-breed network security capabilities through its TippingPoint portfolio. For the past four years, TippingPoint has been the leader in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” in its evaluation of leading network security products. Approximately 30 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have already deployed TippingPoint intrusion prevention systems.

“We are confident that we can run our entire global business of 300,000-plus employees, including our next-generation data centers, entirely on the new HP networking solutions,” said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer, HP. “Based on our experience and extensive testing of 3Com’s products, we are planning to undertake a global rollout within HP as soon as possible after the completion of the acquisition.”

Under the terms of the merger agreement, 3Com stockholders will receive $7.90 for each share of 3Com common stock that they hold at the closing of the merger. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of domestic and foreign regulatory approvals and the approval of 3Com’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2010.

HP anticipates that the transaction will be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2010 non-GAAP earnings.

More …

Friday, October 30, 2009

Apple TV 3.0 Software With Redesigned User Interface

Apple introduced new Apple TV® 3.0 software featuring a redesigned main menu that makes navigating your favorite content simpler and faster, and makes enjoying the largest selection of on-demand HD movie rentals and purchases, HD TV shows, music and podcasts from the iTunes® Store even better on your TV.

You can now enjoy iTunes Extras and iTunes LP in stunning fullscreen with your Apple TV, as well as listen to Genius Mixes and Internet radio through your home theater system. The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners, and Apple TV with 160GB capacity is available for just $229.

“The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “HD movies and HD TV shows from iTunes have been a huge hit with Apple TV customers, and with Apple TV 3.0 they get great new features including iTunes Extras, Genius Mixes and Internet radio.”

The redesigned main menu on Apple TV gives you instant access to your favorite content. Recently rented or purchased movies, as well as other content including TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube, are accessible directly from the new main menu. The new software also allows Apple TV users to enjoy stunning fullscreen iTunes Extras and iTunes LP, including great new movie titles such as “Star Trek” or classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and albums such as Taylor Swift’s “Fearless (Platinum Edition)” and Jack Johnson’s “En Concert.” iTunes Extras gives movie fans great additional content such as deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album, delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more.

Now Apple TV users can enjoy Genius Mixes through their home theater system and listen to up to 12 endless mixes of songs that go great together, automatically generated from their iTunes library. Customers can also enjoy Internet radio, allowing them to browse and listen to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as tag favorite stations to listen to later. Apple TV’s support of HD photos is enhanced with iPhoto Events, which simplifies finding your favorite photos on Apple TV, as well as iPhoto® Faces, which gives access to photos organized by people identified in iPhoto.

Apple TV users have direct access to a catalog of over 8,000 Hollywood films on iTunes including over 2,000 in stunning HD video available for rent or purchase. Users can also choose from a selection of 11 million songs, 10,000 music videos and over 50,000 TV episodes to purchase directly from their Apple TV or browse and enjoy the iTunes Store podcast directory of over 175,000 free video and audio podcasts. Purchases downloaded to Apple TV are automatically synced back to iTunes on the user’s computer for enjoyment on their Mac® or PC or all current generation iPods or iPhones.* iPod touch® or iPhone® users can download the free Remote app from the App Store to control their Apple TV with a simple tap or flick of the finger.

Pricing & Availability

The new Apple TV software is available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers. The 160GB Apple TV is available from the Apple Store®, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $229 (US). Apple TV requires an 802.11b/g/n wireless network or 10/100 Base-T Ethernet networking, a broadband Internet connection and a high definition widescreen TV. Video availability varies by country.

Apple TV easily connects to a broad range of widescreen TVs and home theater systems and comes standard with HDMI, component video, analog and optical audio ports. Using high-speed Wi-Fi, Apple TV automatically plays your iTunes content without setup or management.

*Movie rentals work on iPod classic®, iPod nano® with video, iPod touch, iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.

Google Introduced AdWords Comparison Ads Making Comparison Of Multiple, Relevant Offers More Easy

Google announced a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of Google’s continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to users and to help you, advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user's query doesn't provide enough information to confidently predict what they want. For example, users who search for "mortgage." Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads. To see how it works, let's use mortgage example. Users searching for "mortgage" on Google.com may see a promotion from Comparison Ads prompting them to select the type of loan they are looking for and to compare various rates.

If they click the promotion, users are taken to a page with more detailed sponsored results. They can choose directly from the offers listed on that page, or they can further refine their search by providing additional information like income and home value. By giving users the ability to refine their search on a number of relevant attributes, it can show more targeted ads and provide more valuable leads.

Once users find an offer that matches their specific needs, they can either call you directly or request a quote. If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user's phone number and sends you a unique code that you can use to contact the user. You only pay if a user calls the phone number on your offer or fills out a form to request a quote.

While Comparison Ads is still an early-stage feature, Google has focused on a number of ways to enhance the user experience:

  • Speed -- Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. There are no long forms for users to fill out - Users see specific offers immediately and only need to fill in additional information if they wish to further refine their results.
  • Transparency -- Comparison Ads only shows real products. There are no teaser rates, or bait and switch offers. Comparison Ads also standardizes the information presented to users, making it easy for them to sort and compare offers on a side by side basis.
  • Privacy -- Comparison Ads won't send advertisers any user information, including anonymized phone numbers, unless the user explicitly requests more information about an advertiser's offer.

At this time, Comparison Ads will only show to a small number of users in select U.S. states and is only available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. Over time, Google will increase the number of users who see Comparison Ads offers as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.