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At times, we feel disgusted when we arrive at a web page with some nice music listed, but to listen to them you first have to download some irritating software. This downloading of MP3 software will no longer act as an impediment, for Yahoo has arrived with a rather amazing music service that requires no software downloads!

You only need your browser to embed some simple JavaScript-based code to activate the MP3 player on any website. This means, you will no more require installing plug-in and flash players. The player in your browser will find the MP3 on a website and create a playlist. Definitely, other popular software will now get a run for their money.

I only hope that Yahoo does not add any money tag to this exciting musical gift.

Source: techcrunch

The software giant Microsoft is getting innovative and also experimentative. After the Queen of Britain setting “The Royal Channel - The Official Channel of the British Monarchy” on the video-sharing website ‘YouTube’, Microsoft PR people have also started their own channel “WindowsVistaAndLive” on the site. The channel, started on December 21, offers some good demonstrations of Vista, but it’s making news in the blogging world not for the less known features being publicized on the video-sharing site, but for the comments people have left on the channel.

As one can easily guess, the channel has received good number of comments and most of them are against the Vista. Most bloggers see Microsoft’s move to open the channel for comments as self-destructive. Most of the people who have left comment on its channel have found Vista to be a bad operating system, making is more annoying than appealing.

The web is huge, full of a vast treasure of good things. But then with all the bright part of the web, it comes with some really dark alleys as well which need not be visited, at least not by underage children who are too immature to make wise decisions as to what’s wrong and what’s not. This can be really difficult for parents to monitor children and keep them away from venturing into those dark alleys of the world wide web which are best not tread by children. Though you can install a parent-control program to keep your children away from the part of the web which is not suited to children. Given the vast expanse of the web, these programmers have their limitations. They may not be able to include the new entrants of the web. Moreover, you may not want your child to visit some sites which the parent-control programmer may think to be innocuous. So, do parents need to keep standing by their child while she surfs the web and keep saying no to child-unfriendly sites. Not really. Now, parents have an option in the form of Glubble.

AOL developed the most famous Netscape Browser which was originally launched in 1994, would now find its end on February 1, 2008. The announcement came from the AOL director Tom Drapeau.

The existing Netscape Browser’s need not panic, as the company would continue to support current version Netscape 9. They would even release patches or security fixes until the date. News is that AOL will cease further development on all Netscape web browsers.

Mozilla Firefox would not get the uplift as Drapeau recommends it for anyone running a Netscape-branded browser. Mozilla Firefox is an open-source browser and carries the last few versions of Netscape.

The success of Mozilla Foundation have certainly made them take this drastic step, desktop users would never forget the combat of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer from Microsoft. It was during that course of time AOL purchased the Netscape Communications Corporation and adjoined it with the Mozilla project.

Mozilla was literally the successor of Netscape browser that had the problems of downloading and installing, its right that AOL decided to kill the lagged one and handover the reign to Firefox completely.

With the arrival of Apple Safari browser, the scenario of operating systems are challenging, no wonder the Netscape’s browser would be considered irrelevant as their users were vulnerable to attacks.

Source: wired

Image: ntlworld

Most of us consider Wikipedia to be the ultimate online knowledge base or encyclopedia. I always use Wikipedia for Celebrity information, games and other technical stuff that I don’t know. The next best thing after Wikipedia is obviously Google. But, with Google about to launch it’s own online encyclopedia the scenario is about to change.

The search engine company Google is going to design an encyclopedic dictionary for internet users. According to Google, this will compete directly with Wikipedia. This ‘dictionary’ has been christened as Knol. I guess that’s probably a short for Knowledge.

Finally PentHouse Media Group has acquired adult-oriented social network operator Various Inc, the owner of AdultFriendFinder for $500 million. Various runs more than 25 social network sites under its flagship site, called FriendFinder.com.

This is true that porn is still the most lucrative areas of online media and more traditional companies like PentHouse and Playboy have been struggling to bring it on the digital side. After the acquisition, Palo Alto-based Various is also offering more than 260 million existing users with roughly 1.2 million paid subscribers to PentHouse. Apart from the porn related social sites, Various is also involved in sites like Italianfriendfinder.com, gradfinder.com and faith based community site, called, bigchurch.com.

The Yahoo Messenger is back in the news headlines again! The Yahoo messenger for the Vista windows has been finally launched. After almost 12 months of last version update, we are getting this new vista Yahoo messenger.

The unfortunate news is that the latest Vista Yahoo messenger doesn’t have any video or sharing abilities which the users are a big fan of. As of now, the Yahoo messenger is only a bare bones version of a fancy text messaging system.

A new suite of online image editing tool, powered by Picnik has been launched by Flickr. The wifi camera cards will make it possible to have a clear image directly from the camera through the Flicker Picnik editor without involving any desktop software. Strong supporters of Photoshop might find many features of Photoshop Express missing from this new image editor but nonetheless it will be possible to upload images directly from the mobile phones to Flickr improving these images considerably.

Google has always found ways to change and improve offering various services to its user, which is pretty much the reason for its unmatched success. It has virtually established and redefined the benchmark in internet-based services with all its innovations and variations of existing products. At times, it has scared the world with technology like ‘Google Map’ due to security concerns (but I find them really wonderful), it has also constantly amazed and pleased its users.

Data storage medium has been improving day by day. From the floppy disks we moved to CD’s and then to DVD’s and eventually to tiny USB drives. The latest in this data storage world is the Gdrive. Tech sites online have been talking about this Gdrive which is supposed to store all your data securely at one central location virtually.

This process eliminates the need to carry any kind of storage medium whatsoever. But, people are skeptical about this storage medium. Why? several reasons. First, privacy becomes a big issue when data is stored online even though the Gdrive is supposed to be a pretty secure location online. Second, the amount of data stored is also an issue i.e. file size becomes extremely important. Lastly, the network security is yet another aspect that plagues the user’s mind when it comes to online data storage.

The much anticipated launch of Firefox 3 Beta 1 has finally been accomplished. People had to wait months to get the taste of the new technology from Mozilla but now the wait is over.

Firefox Beta 1 is now available in over 20 languages and is available in stores right around the world. The new version is an improved one on its predecessor and is a novel one too.

Most of us are familiar with the video collection site called YouTube. It’s a place where you can share your videos and comments on the videos made by others. Recently, the online broadcasting site is working on its fight against Cyber bullying scheme.

Engineers from You Tube vowed to do something against online bullying. So, they dedicated a whole new channel to the cause! Still wondering what falls under online bullying? Setting up offensive websites about their teachers as well as offensive text messages are just couple of instances of online bullying. Of course, they are different from your real life bullying: locker room taunts and getting punched, etc.

After launching its Mobile version, MySpace is coming up with new platform, which will allow advertisers to purchase, create and analyze ad performance throughout its website.

Small entrepreneurs in China are easily finding a global market, thanks to the growing influence of Alibaba.com, the Chinese e-commerce company. The success of this business-to-business website is the most visible sign of the opportunities the internet is offering to entrepreneurs. Such has become the success story of Alibaba.com that on Tuesday 6 November it has listed its share in the Hong Kong stock exchange in the largest internet initial public offering since Google in 2004.

Alibaba.com is part of the larger internet company the Alibaba Group was founded by an English teacher Jack Ma in 1999. The stratospheric success of Alibaba.com can be gauged from the fact that it has raised $1.5 billion from investors for the IPO. Of the total money raised, Sunnyvale’s Yahoo and San Jose’s Cisco Systems have contributed $100million and $17.5 million respectively.

With over 162 million internet users, which is just a fraction of the 1.3 billion Chinese populations it will not be long when China would become the country with the world’s largest internet users. China is fast emerging as the manufacturing arm of the world with millions of small and midsize factories churning out products ranging from handbags, toys to electronics Alibaba will provide a global market for the products.

Alibaba.com helps the companies publish a company profile or as Alibaba.com calls it ‘an online storefront’. Companies worldwide are able to find low cost manufacturing partners from the site.

During the first half of this year, Alibaba.com made nearly$130 million in revenue.

Source:sfgate
Image:frost fire buzz

Skype has teamed up with Logitech to offer high quality video services in its upcoming windows 3.6 version. The partnership with Logitech will provide Skype a strong platform to cater needs of the common customers for whom, accessing high quality video calls are expensive.

The high quality video includes VGA-quality video calls, image description and clarity. The customers don’t require to purchase or install any video-conferencing equipment other than a 2.0-GHz dual-core processor, a gigabyte of RAM, 384 Kbits/s Internet bandwidth and Logitech webcams such as the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, and the QuickCam Orbit AF.