Archive October 2009
Facebook to Memorialize Profile of Deceased
Facebook has come with a rather new idea to provide users with an option to memorialize Facebook profiles of family members who passed away. This new move from Facebook comes after there were a number of complaints about people who received updates about deceased relatives. Facebook will remove all features like status updates and contacts from the profiles of the deceased person and will memorialize the profile.
Relatives of the dead person have to submit solid evidence when reporting a death. Something like a obituary or a news article that reports the death of the person will suffice. Also, memorialized accounts will be viewable only by confirmed friends of the deceased and also these profiles would not show up in search results. Also, the new feature of friend suggestions in Facebook will be disabled for memorialized accounts as there were reports of profiles of dead people showing up in the Friend suggestions tab!
Vodafone now enter’s the UK market with Apple’s iPhone
Vodafone, one of the biggest mobile operators in the world has finally entered an agreement with Apple to sell its popular iPhone in the UK. This announcement came along with the similar agreement with one another operator, Orange. So far, this privilege is held only by the mobile service provider, O2. Now Vodafone and Orange will enter the market as well. Company sources said that that interested people can register the handset online and it will be made available in the market in early 2010. Whereas Orange announced that their handset will be available to the customers from the end of this year itself, but they did not specify any particular date of release.
By this agreement the exclusivity of O2 with iPhone has come to an end. They had occupied the market exclusively from the launch of iPhone in 2007. Sources from O2 say that since the launch O2 has sold more than a million sets in UK. Even though they had and exclusive deal with IPhone in many countries including UK, the customers were able to unlock their handset with some third party dealers and can work on unlicensed network. But Apple has always warned that doing so would cause irreparable damage to the handsets.
Source : BBC
Microsoft’s New Solution for Security Issues
Microsoft has released its new security software and this software is available for free download in the Microsoft’s Security Essentials website. This software can be used as a basic protection against viruses, Trojans, root kits, and spyware. This is the second attempt by Microsoft in providing anti-virus software with the first one being the beta version of the Microsoft’s Security Essentials (MSE) software which has been codenamed as “Morro” and has been made available to the people from specific countries such as US, China, Brazil, and Israel. When Cliff Evans, head of the Microsoft Security and privacy in UK spoke, he said that this software will come as independent software and this won’t be covered by the Windows automatic updates or included in the operating system.
Evans added that most of the systems in UK are still not protected against malware and the launch is targeted to reduce this number and also he assured that this will turn out to be a success. The only restriction with this software is that, it can be used only with the genuine copy of Windows registered with Microsoft. This can be used with Windows XP, Vista and also can be used with the oncoming Windows7. The updates will be given to the users automatically from Microsoft regularly.
Guardian Website Targeted by Hackers
UK’s leading newspaper, The Guardian had the shock of this week when their jobs website was compromised by hackers. This security breach put some of the sensitive data of the site users at risk and the website’s users were increasingly concerned about the safety of their personal information. The Guardian said that it had identified the accounts from which personal data was hacked and emailed the person’s affected in the attack.
A case was registered at the cyber crime division of the Metropolitan Police and investigation of the case is pending. According to company sources, the attack was deliberately done and was no banking or financial data was compromised. A number of users however, expressed their concerns and anger at what had happened and said that the company should have been a bit more careful with personal data as incidences of crimes like identity theft was on the rise. The Guardian is said to attracts about two million users each month .
UK to Put a Leash on File Sharers
Speaking on the issue of audio and video piracy, Business Secretary of the UK, Peter Mandelson said that he was going to work on toughening the UK piracy policy. He said that the UK would go about this by first cutting off people who kept downloading illegal pirated content from the internet mainly by file sharing. He added that the policy would be something like the one that was introduced in France earlier.
Offenders who keep downloading files persistently will be sent two warning letters and if they still refuse to comply, they would be cut off from the internet and sometimes, the ban may extend for upto a year! A number of UK service providers say that they were not the one who were supposed to do the policing work and the Government has to do something about it. Figures show that more than 10% of UK’s internet users download pirated and illegal content by file sharing.
Sky Player + Xbox Release Delayed
The Sky Player service that was supposed to start its service for Xbox Live users was put off in the last minute. With this new service, customers would be able to watch a number of Sky TV channels and other TV shows on demand. A number of Xbox Live users were disappointed when the launching of the service was postponed. Though Sky had announced the decision to work with Microsoft’s Xbox months ago, the release came several months later.
Officials at Sky apologized for the postponement of the release and said their team of engineers was working hard to put up the service within a day. Users of Xbox can opt for the service on a monthly basis or opt for packages ranging from £15 to £50.Since the service would mostly stream HD videos, users need to have high broadband speeds for it to work properly.
Things to do Right and Things to do Wrong for Effective Web Design
Web Design Ledger has a great post listing the 20 Do’s and Don’ts of effective web design.
The introduction goes like this: When you are creating a website (or hiring a web/blog designer to create one for you), there are specific items you need to be aware of. Things that normally wouldn’t cross your mind. For the average person who wants a website or blog for their business, they are after one very important thing – sales. Now, they may tell you that they want the big flashy logos, or the overdone textures/gradients, but it is the job of a well skilled web designer to steer their clients in the right direction.
Some of the do’s are:
DO: Keep your page structured
DO: Focus on what’s important
DO: Choose the right color scheme
DO: Make it easy to scan your pages
DO: Set your navigation up properly
DO: Choose the right fonts and sizes
DO: Make your page visually appealing
And the do nots:
DONT: Go on and on (and on) about nothing
DONT: Make everything on your page an image
DONT: Have 5 different fonts in 10 different sizes
DONT: Place irrelevant ads across your page
DONT: Overdo it with 20 different colors
DONT: Write one paragraph per page that is 1,000+ words long
If you want to see more head on over to the link below.
Related links:
20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design | Web Design Ledger
Windows 7 Install: ‘Cannot boot from CD – Code 5′ Problem and Solution
Having just got hold of my copy of Windows 7, I decided to install it on my rather long-in-the-tooth PC. It is a 2.5Ghz P4 with only 1.75GB of memory and a 40GB hard drive… OK stop laughing there at the back… But it works for me as I am mainly an Apple Mac user…
Anyway… I stuck the Windows 7 DVD in the drive and booted and I got this strange error: “Cannot boot from CD – Code 5″
This is quite odd as other DVDs boot fine on this machine including Windows Vista. After a bit of research I discovered that something changed in the boot loader for Windows 7. This error is mainly seen on computers with older motherboards from companies like “AsRock” or “MSI”.
Solution
There are several different solution posted on the Internet including amazing ways to burning a new version of the Windows 7 DVD with the boot loader from a Windows Vista DVD… But I wanted a quick and easy solution and here it is.
In a nutshell what you need to do is boot from a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and use Smart BootManager to boot the Windows 7 DVD.
Step by step
- Download the Ultimate Boot CD.
- Burn it to a CD (see the tutorials if don’t know how to do this).
- Insert the Ultimate Boot CD in your DVD drive and boot the PC. Of course you need to make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the DVD and not the hard drive.
- In the Ultimate Boot CD, go to Filesystem Tools->Boot Managers->Smart BootManager
- Once the Smart BootManager is loaded, take out the Ultimate Boot CD and put in your Windows 7 DVD.
- Now scroll down to CD0 and hit ENTER.
You PC should now boot from the Windows 7 DVD without any problems.
iPhone Sales Hardly Hit by the Recession
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The recession has hardly hit computer makers Apple and it was evident from the profit reports they published for the last three months. The computer maker had made a profit of about $1.67 billion in a time period of three months and the sales surged to $9.87 billion. Though computer and iPhone sales rose by 17% and 7% respectively, the sale of their music players, iPod slumped.
Steve Jobs, the Chief Executive of Apple said that the rise in the sales of Macintosh computers and iPhones, compared to previous years has made him happy. This year’s figures showed a 19% increase in the sale of Macintosh computers compared to that of last year. Many have attributed this increase to Apple newly launched operating system Snow Leopard. Also, the launching of the low priced version of iPhones had played a vital role in the increase of iPhone sales in this year.
Automatic Road Trains By 2020; Cars That Drive Themselves
Imagine this, you leave your home in the morning and drive to the motorway. Once there you team up with a number of other cars and you all inch close to each other. Then once you are in formation you can let go of the steering wheel and spend your time reading the morning paper.
This is the vision of a new part EU funded project called SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) which will develop and test technology for vehicles so that they can drive themselves in long road trains on motorways. Read more…
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