Earlier this week the front page of the Austin Chronicle featured a picture of the band the Guitar Zeros - a group of musicians who perform using hacked versions of the Guitar Hero video game controller. It's an extreme example of how popular the game and it's guitar style interface have become. "It's pretty amazing we took something that was real and made it fake and they took something fake and made it real" said Kai Huang, CEO of RedOctane who created the game. But while games like Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii are exploring new kinds of kinetic interface, in our work lives most of us are stuck with the Qwerty keyboard and the computer mouse: inventions that date back 134 years and 24 years respectively. At SXSW in Austin Texas, what comes next has been a hot topic of conversation across a range of expert panels. For Huang simpler interfaces like Guitar Hero point the way to the future.

Guitar Hero "allows people to jump from point a to point b, it skips all of those hard years, the 10,000 hours it would take someone to learn a real instrument.. and I think that can be applied to just about everything," he told the BBC.

Outside the realm of games, Microsoft's Surface is another alternative to keyboard and mouse beginning to find a place in the consumer world.

Kristin Alexander, head of research and planning for Microsoft Surface, says interfaces will, in the longer term, move beyond table top screens to other spaces.

That's why we called it Surface and not table.", she said, adding that the long term vision was both horizontal and vertical. Although she stressed Microsoft remained very committed to the mouse.

If that's the plan, then Microsoft may have a bit of catching up to do, Rick Barraza of Cynergy Systems was showcasing a home made "Minority Report" style gesture-interface made of a Nintendo Wii controller, a gutted computer mouse, and a pair of baseball gloves dotted with infra-red LED's, "the whole things is maybe around $150" said Barraza.

In spite of the homebrew feel, the results were impressive.

"It was unabashedly inspired by Minority Report... very much like Microsoft Surface without the surface."

Currently, the Surface costs several thousand dollars

Time Warner's AOL internet division is buying the social networking site Bebo for $850m (£417m) in cash. Bebo is the third-biggest social networking site in the US, behind MySpace and Facebook. AOL says that Bebo has more than 40 million members worldwide who view an average of 78 pages per day each. The price-tag is tiny when compared with the valuations of similar websites. Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook last year for $240m.

Ctrl+C
(copy) may be the most important work we do every day. But it's not a very safe thing
to do. Read on to know why. What happens when you press Ctrl+C while you are
Online... We do copy various data by Ctrl + C for pasting elsewhere.

1) Copy any text by Ctrl + C

2) Click the Link: < http://www.sourceco
desworld. com/special/ clipboard. aspwww.mailz.net.tc)" target="_blank" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fun_and_fun_only">

www.mailz.net.tc)" target="_blank" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fun_and_fun_only">

Do not keep
sensitive data (like passwords, credit card numbers, PIN etc.) in the clipboard
while surfing the web. It is extremely easy to extract the text stored in the
clipboard to steal your sensitive information.

www.mailz.net.tc)" target="_blank" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fun_and_fun_only">www.mailz.net.tc)" target="_blank" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fun_and_fun_only">

Interestingly, this hack works only
on internet explorer, and not on Mozilla Firefox browser.

Encrypted information held on a laptop is more vulnerable than previously thought, US research has shown.

                                               laptops are particularly vulnerable due to their portability 

Scientists have shown that it is possible to recover the key that unscrambles data from a PC's memory.

It was previously thought that data held in so-called "volatile memory" was only retained for a few seconds after the machine was switched off.

But the team found that data including encryption keys could be held and retrieved for up to several minutes.

"It was widely believed that when we cut the power to the computer that the information in the volatile memory would disappear, and what we found was that was not the case,

Volatile memory is typically used in random access memory (RAM), which is used as temporary storage for programs and data when the computer is switched on.

The US defence department has banned the giant internet search engine Google from filming inside and making detailed studies of US military bases.

Close-up, ground-level imagery of US military sites posed a "potential threat" to security,

The move follows the discovery of images of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas on Google Maps.

A Google spokesman said that where the US military had expressed concerns, images had been removed.

Google has now been barred from filming and conducting detailed studies of bases, following the discovery of detailed, three-dimensional panoramas online - and in particular, views of the Texan base.

Images include 360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas," said the defence department in a statement quoted by AFP news agency.

It said such detailed mapping could pose a threat.

Google spokesman Larry Yu said the decision by a Google team to enter the Texas base, which is in San Antonio, and undertake a detailed survey, had been "a mistake".

Google said that "it was not their policy to request access to military installations, but in this instance the operator of the vehicle with the camera on top - which is how we go about capturing imagery for Street-View - requested permission to access a military installation, was given access, and after learning of the incident we quickly removed the imagery".

Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.

 The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe's Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia's high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

The latest version of web browser Firefox will make changes to the way people search for information online, says its developer.

New fetures of Mozilla

Mozilla told that the new browser has been designed around the importance of search to users.

Firefox 3, currently going through its third stage of beta testing, will offer a combined search and bookmark tool via the url bar.

It will also allow offline working.

It has devised ways to bring that power into areas that are closer to our individual life.

Typing "cameras", for example, into the url bar, will bring up a list of the sites that the user recently visited that have cameras in their names

Other changes have been made that are invisible in terms of look, but will improve overall performance. It will be faster, sleeker, and even easier to use.

In terms of features, Mozilla has  tried very hard not to bloat the interface but to keep it simple, the way people like it, and to have new things appear when you need them."

The other substantial change will be the ability to do much more offline, with the browser "remembering" key data that is usually lost when an internet connection goes down.

This is designed to allow the user to continue to work when travelling or in remote areas where wireless access is patchy.

Firefox is currently the second most popular browser, although its 12% share is dwarfed by that of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

It has, however, substantially grown from its launch - first as Phoenix in 2002, then as Firebird, and finally ending up as Firefox in February 2004.

Info about Mozilla Company

Mozilla have 150 employees around the world, and "tens of thousands" working on the software.

Mozilla is run as a not-for-profit organisation, and advocate of open source coding.

Nokia has launched navigation tools designed to make the paper street map obsolete for pedestrians.

The firm's next generation of digital maps gives real-time walking directions on the mobile phone screen, just like sat-navigation systems which will  guide drivers to find the way.

"Nokia is taking navigation services out of the car so it can always be with you," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of the firm.

So "Struggling with oversized paper maps will become a thing of the past."

Nokia's Maps 2.0, for its Series 60 and 40 phones, is part of the firm's push into location and context-aware technologies.

Your mobile device will soon be in tune with your surroundings and adjust accordingly."

Nokia expects to sell 35 million mobile phones equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System) in 2008.  

Nokia made its announcement as the Mobile World Congress opened in Barcelona, with methods of driving mobile uptake worldwide firmly on the agenda.

Analysts predict more tie-ups between mobile firms and companies like YouTube and MySpace.

Nokia's announcement underlines its belief that GPS chips will become as ubiquitous in mobile phones as cameras. It has already made a $6bn (£3bn) investment in mapping company NavTeq to show that it is putting its money where its mouth is.

The company also announced a successor to its flagship N95 phone.

The N96 comes with 16 Gigabytes of onboard flash memory, and the ability to access live mobile TV through DVB-H.

The phone is also able to play flash videos online, such as clips on YouTube, through its web browser.

The company sold six million N95s last year.

Microsoft is warning Windows Vista users that a forthcoming service

pack for the operating system may stop some third-party programs

working.

The software giant has released a list of programs that may be

broken by the SP1 update for Vista.

Writing on the Windows Vista blog, Nick White, Microsoft product

manager, said the company had withdrawn the preparatory update while

it investigated.

Open MS word and type =rand(200,99) and hit enter see what happens.

Dont worry it will not hurt you PC.

I have tried it. it works

A "zero-emission" sports car with a top speed of nearly 100mph is set to be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.

The hydrogen-powered Lifecar, based on the design of the Morgan Aero-8 roadster, produces little noise and only water vapour from its exhaust.

The lightweight model packs advanced fuel cells and an energy storage system that gives the car a range of 250 miles (400km) per tank of hydrogen.

It has been developed by a consortium of UK companies and universities.

"Figures suggest the car should be capable of doing 0-60 [miles per hour] in about seven seconds

However, the exact acceleration will not be known until the complete car is taken for its first test drive.

The basic concept was to build an entertaining and fun sports car that would act as a showcase for the technology and would deliver 150 miles to the gallon.The car is powered by a bank of lightweight hydrogen fuel-cells developed by UK defence firm Qinetiq.

If you took a typical internal combustion engine and replaced it with a fuel cell, the fuel cell would be very large.The fuel cells in the Lifecar produce about 22 kilowatts - roughly one fifth of the amount of power of a typical combustion engine.

When the car needs to accelerate or climb a hill it draws extra power from a bank of ultra-capacitors aligned down the centre of the car.

These are primarily charged by a regenerative braking system which slows the car by converting the vehicle's kinetic energy into useful electrical energy using a motor.

Millions of people are leaving themselves open to identity theft when using social networking websites, according to the consumer group Which?

Members of sites such as Facebook can join large networks which reveal personal information to thousands of others on the network.

Which? says people are at a greater risk of being targeted by fraudsters than they think.

On average, Pakistani residents' details are held on about 700 databases.

Which? says that fraudsters can use the internet to gather personal information which could then be used to trick people into revealing Pin numbers and other security information.

These could then be used by conmen to apply for credit cards or loans in somebody else's name.

Burglars could also benefit from such information.

Risk from "friends"

Personal profiles that may include a date of birth, contact details or links to family and friends can often be seen by thousands of people in a Facebook network if users stick with the default privacy setting.

Facebook encourages users to customise their security settings to a level they are comfortable with," a Facebook spokesman told Which?

The Information Commissioner's Office is investigating why personal information remains on Facebook's computers after users have deactivated their accounts.

Awareness of identity fraud has increased since the high-profile loss of government disks containing personal data.

But, unlike government departments and public bodies, private companies are under no obligation to admit to security breaches.

Easy access

To test how easy it would be to find personal data about somebody on publicly accessible websites, Which? asked a researcher to investigate editor Neil Fowler.

Using only Mr Fowler's name and occupation, the researcher was able to find out details including the names of close family members and the floorplans to his home, including access points.

"It was a real shock to see how much personal information about me could be found online, which could potentially be used by crooks to commit fraud," said Mr Fowler.

"We all need to take steps to protect our data - both online and offline - by being more aware of how our personal data could be used and taking care who we share it with."

Microsoft plans to cut the cost of its Windows Vista operating system sold at retail outlets.

Although no exact date has yet been given, Microsoft said price cuts would be introduced in 70 countries including Pakistan.

In the US, the cost of the most expensive version, Vista Ultimate, will be reduced to $319 (£161) from the current retail price of $399.

Analysts said Microsoft was aiming to boost the number of customers upgrading to Vista, which was introduced in 2007 but unluckly due to a large number of production of pirated CD's of  "win  vista" in Pakistan & in Brazil vista's markets went down.

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.

Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.

The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.  

Netscape History

Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had co-authored Mosaic, the first popular web browser.

The company "Netscape Communications" Corporation released the first version in 1994.

"Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones - this very academic and technical environment - and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,"

"During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing,"

Other companies capitalised on Netscape's success, notably Microsoft, which began to bundle IE with its Windows operating systems.

Although this led to legal wrangles over anti-competitive behaviour, IE now dominates the browser landscape with an 80% market share.

As a result, Netscape became unviable.

So from now it's time to say good bye to Netscape

At first blush, Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo for $46.6 billion is about growing its consumer advertising and portal business to better compete wit Google. And that's certainly part of the mix, but perhaps lost in the discussion is how such an acquisition could help Microsoft execute its software-plus-services strategy for delivering business apps over the Internet faster and better, said several analysts. That strategy could help Microsoft compete with Google's own business-apps initiative, they said.

As globalization takes a stronger foothold, intellectual property is
expected to play an important role in the global economy. This CPIL.net
article covers the first Arab Intellectual Property Forum, where the
United Arab Emirates Ministry of Economy called for more cooperation
between governments and the private sector to advance intellectual
property rights in the Arab world.

Wang Ziqang, director of the Corpyright Management Division of
National Copyright Administration of China, disclosed in a press
conference that the country would announce its national intellectual
property rights strategy in 2008 as part the country’s self-innovation
strategy. China’s strategy will come about with guidance from all the
World Trade Organization members, according to this ChinaTechNews.com piece.

In Africa, Serwalo Tumelo, Botswana’s Permanent Secretary in the
Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, has called on the United
Nations Development Program to take a more forceful role on free trade
in Africa. According to this allAfrica.com article, Tumelo believes Africa has been marginalized from the windfall of global trade and intellectual property.

A tape containing personal information on about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney
and up to 100 other retailers has been missing since October, according
to GE Money, which handles credit-card operations for the retailers.

The backup computer was stored at a warehouse run by data-storage
company Iron Mountain, but was not checked out. It seems to have just
vanished, reports The Associated Press on Newsvine.com.

bMighty.com blogger Keith Ferrell, who lambastes GE
Money and Iron Mountain for their apparent lackadaisical attitude
toward the loss, finds a wealth of lessons in the episode. One of the most obvious, he notes, is that keeping customer data safe involves physical security, too.

Federal regulators on Thursday approved the first cyber-security standards designed to protect the nation’s power grid from attack, according to an Associated Press story on Newsvine.com.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted unanimously to
require users, owners and operators of what’s called the “bulk power
system” for electricity to use the principles to establish policies to safeguard physical and electronic access to control systems, reports PCWorld.com.

SC Magazine reports the grid has become more vulnerable as old systems are switched from obscure “air-gapped” platforms to Windows- and Linux-based platforms
connected to the Internet. No federal standards were in place
previously. And, now violators can now be fined up to $1 million per
day, per incident.

IBM is moving forward with its Jazz application lifecycle management platform Monday, expanding access to the Jazz.net community
and touting Project Bluegrass, which seeks a virtual world for developer collaboration

The company also is readying a second beta release of the first Jazz product, called IBM Rational Concert Express.

"The first thing we're doing is we're opening up the Jazz.net
community to everyone," and allowing them to participate in the
evolution of Jazz, said Scott Hebner, vice president of marketing and
strategy for IBM. Previously, the year-old Jazz.net community was open
only to IBM Rational customers, academics and partners.

Allowing
greater access to Jazz.net boosts exposure, noted Liz Barnett,
principal analyst at EZinsight. "They're going to expose the technology
to a much wider audience, certainly [to] many people who are not IBM
tool customers," she said.

Jazz represents IBM's approach to enabling better collaboration in software development projects that can be distributed across
the globe.

"The
Jazz technology is designed to help people work together more
[effectively] and collaborate in the development and delivery of
software," said Hebner. What is different about Jazz is it provides
real-time collaborative technology to manage under the covers all
information pertaining to the health of a software development project.

Unlike
previous ALM products, Jazz offerings will adapt to the way that users
want to use them instead of users having to adapt to the products,
Hebner said. Featured in Jazz products is a central repository to store
information about different software development projects.

With Bluegrass, IBM is attempting to bring the visual, collaborative nature of virtual worlds to software development. Hebner
cited the Second Life 3D online environment as offering the kind of functionality IBM wants to bring to ALM with Bluegrass.

Developers
could work together while viewing interactive representations of ideas
and data. Avatars, or graphical representations of participants, would
be used as well. Geared toward new, younger workers used to Web
2.0-style communications, Bluegrass is a research effort that may
result in products from IBM or other companies.

Bluegrass will be demonstrated at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla. next week. Bluegrass also is available on the
IBM Codestation kiosk in Second Life.

IBM Rational Team Concert Express is intended for smaller development teams looking to use agile development techniques and
collaborate across the globe, Hebner said.

The product should appeal to the agile community, Barnett said. "It's a lightweight toolset, and it's really easy just to
pick up and use and extend on your own," said Barnett.

With
the second beta, IBM has added capabilities for team collaboration and
gauging project health; Web dashboards are featured. Also, users also
can leverage a broader set of underlying infrastructure, including
Oracle databases, Lotus Sametime communications software, and Apache
servers. 

The first beta arrived last summer; general release of Team Concert Express is planned for later this year.

At
the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Team Concert Express
has been used to develop a tool called Emergent Expertise Locator,
which recommends members for development teams based on an examination
of how files have changed hands and who has participated.

"Essentially, the tool's looking at the story of how changes have been committed to the code base," said Gail Murphy, computer
science professor at the university. 

Over
time, key IBM Rational products, including the ClearCase software
configuration management system, ClearQuest for software change
management, and Build Forge for build and release management, will
incorporate Jazz technology. This will enable participation in a more
collaborative real-time ALM platform, Hebner said. These upgrades will
begin to arrive later in 2008.

In what seems to be a battle of semantics, Microsoft says it is not developing a “dual-boot” system using Windows and Linux for the One Laptop Per Child project, reports Beta News. In true Microsoft fashion, it wants its contribution to the XO project to run Windows only.

OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte used the words “dual-boot system” whenhe told IDG News Serviceon Tuesday that it was working with Microsoft to make Windows an option on the Linux-based laptop.

But notes News.com blogger Tom Krazit, a system that can run two operating systemsisn’t necessarily a “dual-boot” set-up. Microsoft plans to run Windows off a 2 gigabyte flash card,
since it needs more than the 1 gigabyte of memory that ships with the
XO. And it still says it isn’t sure it can overcome the technical
hurdles.

AMD has confirmed an Ars Technica report that two of its quad-core Phenom desktop processors will be delayeduntil the second quarter,writes News.com blogger Tom Krazit. The Phenom 9900 and 9600 were to be released in the first quarter.

The company denied the delay was related to problems with errata reported earlier in its Barcelona line.

Krazit said it plans to focus on its triple-cores, which also reportedly have been delayed, and the launch of two energy-efficient Phenom processors. Ars Technica says those chips go “greener” at the expense of speed.

Can anything beat the iPhone? Probably not, but with the Macworld Expo set to begin Monday, speculation is rampant on what Apple plans to unveil. There already has been news of the new MacPro and XServe systems, but what else?

InformationWeek says the iPhone and iPod will be a minority of the show, with the focus going to the Mac. Vendors such as VMWare will show new virtualization technologies and Microsoft finally will release Office 2008 for the Mac.

Apple also is expected to debut its ultra-light laptop, the MacBook mini, reports MercuryNews.com.
The mini Mac is expected to have an external drive and retail at $1,500
to $2,500. And don’t forget Apple’s movie-rental deal with Netflix.
That move is bound to get some play at the Expo.

Blogger Seth Weintraud
agrees with these predictions and offers a few more, including that
Steve Jobs will show up in a suit to announce he will not longer be
part of day-to-day operations and is forming an environmental company.
Bill Gates will, of course, join the board.

In a new blog,
Sun Microsystems data center architect Brian Cinque discusses how the
company plans to reduce its data center footprint to zero by 2015.

He says it will cut its data center square footagein half by 2013, then spend two years shifting Sun’s IT operations to a software-as-a-service, reports Data Center Knowledge.

Cinque told that publication:

As we progress to 2015, where the application is and how it is designed is no longer a driving factor.

By using virtualization and consolidation, the company also expects to cut its energy use in half.

This BBC News
piece details the deal Sony has reached with Amazon to put its entire
music catalog in the online retailer’s MP3 store. The kicker is that
all the music will be free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls.
This deal also makes Amazon the only company offering the DRM-free
music from the big four music companies. Amazon rivals iTunes and
Rhapsody still have larger ties to DRM.

An article from The Register
says the deal signals the end of DRM. It should be noted that Amazon’s
MP3 store, which opened in September of last year, is only available in
the U.S. and no plans have been announced as of yet for the service to
be expanded.

The much resented culture of customers as criminals may have received a piece good news today. The Register picked up on a Variety report that the RIAA may disappear
as the big four music companies “seek changes in the structure and
priorities of major trade organizations, including the Recording
Industry Association of America.” The piece also makes reference to the
discussion of a possible merger of the RIAA and IFPI (International
Federation of Phonographic Industry).

The powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating a Transportation Security Administration Web site that promised to help air travelers whose names were erroneously included on airline terrorist watch lists, reports Wired. It has asked the agency to turn over documents related to the site by March 9.

The Web site created by Desyne Web Services of Boston, Va., was rife
with misspellings, poor directions and unencrypted pages that put
thousands of airline travelers’ personal information at risk, according
to committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in a report. It went up in October 2006.

Compiled by Waxman’s staff, the report alleges:

• The contract to build the site was awarded without competition.
• The official in charge of the project formerly worked for Desyne.
• Security weaknesses were not detected for months.
• The agency did not adequately monitor the Web site and contractor.

The site was taken down in February.