Yahoo Photos to be discontinued!

According to Techcrunch Yahoo Photos will be discontinued soon in favour of Flickr. I am a fan of Yahoo Photos and user for more than 6 years. I wish Flicr is shut in favour of Yahoo photos since the number of Yahoo users photos are more than Flickr. Yahoo photos is the leader in online photo site as per the data from Techcrunch:

Yahoo Photos ---> 31.1 Million unique visitors
Flickr ---> 28.5 Million unique visitors
Photobucket ---> 28.1 Million unique visitors
Facebook Photos ---> 23.5 Million unique visitors

It is an irony that eventhough Yahoo photos is the leader in photo sharing site it is getting discontinued. I wish it is otherwise. Any how I hope the migration from Yahoo Photos to Flickr will be less painful!!

Get Open Solaris kit!

Sun Microsystems is giving out free open solaris kits. The kit contains two DVD's. It is obvious that Sun is looking for improving the market of Solaris. Here is your chance for trying out open solaris. The Open solaris kit contains the following:
1. Solaris Express
2. Live CD's (Nexenta OS, Belenix, SchilliX)
3. Sun studio compilers
4. Open solaris source code

Get it here!

Online Yahoo Messenger!

After Meebo and other online messengers Yahoo released its online version of Yahoo Messenger. It was obvious that the online messenger usage had increased drastically in the recent past and it is likely to grow. So Yahoo is prepared to tap this market by relasing its online version of messenger today. Unlike other online messengers Yahoo Web messenger is built on flash 9. The interface is very cool and stores the chat history!


Recently Yahoo integrated its chat with Yahoo mail. The online messenger is evolving and Webmessenger from yahoo fuels that evolution.

Aol.in is out!

AOL launched its web site for India. It is following the suit after Google, Yahoo and MSN. It provides email, messenger services with "@aol.in" address. The other services provided are news, sports, local search and videos.

``India is one of the world's fastest-growing online markets, and our India portal will help us compete for users and advertisers in this important region,'' Ron Grant, AOL's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

AOL is betting on the Indian internet market as it is said to be having 45 million users now and expected to reach 145 million by 2010. I don't see anything new in the AOL India portal. Since the Indian internet users are growing rapidly and since the Indian internet market has a huge potential, AOL wants its share. The AOL needs to bring something new to get the attention of Indian users since the Indian portal market is already dominated by Google, Yahoo, Rediff and Indiatimes.

Best Speech - Steve jobs

Speech given by Steve Jobs to Stanford students on a gradution day in 2005. Its truly motivating and I am sure you too will love this speech.

Free Solaris DVD

Are you interested in trying out Solaris OS for free?? If yes, Then here is your chance to order your Solaris DVD for free. I received it last week and yet to try Solaris express edition. The only solaris distro i tried is Belienix, which is a live CD and eager to try solaris..

Link for ordering Solaris DVD kit: http://www2.sun.de/dc/forms/reg_us_2211_391.jsp

More Info: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp

IBM Linux Ad

Another Linux ad. This is from IBM and its wonderful!! Take a look at it!

Remember the milk!

Every one of us needs to manage our tasks every day. It can be anything from project related tasks to shopping list. In my opinion Rememberthemilk is the best among all the softwares I ever used. It has almost everything I wanted from a "To Do list manager".

A bit of history....
The project was started in August, 2004 and the first release was made in October, 2005. The founders are all from Australia and Only three people are behind this project(Emily, Omar and Bob)!!!

Features:

1. Web based.
2. Interactive user experience using Ajax.
   
3. Tag support for grouping task lists.
4. Netvibes, Google calendar integration were recently added!
5. Mobile version of rememberthemilk.
6. Multilanguage support.
7. Remainders in messenger and email.

Its worth a try... check it out!

Truth happens!

Any open source enthusiast will love this video as I did and I hope you like it as well!!! :)

In-Game advertising getting hot!

After the google's acquisition of AdScape Media I researched about In-Game advertising industry and here are the facts.

What is In-game advertising?
In-game advertising is another kind of advertising where the advertisements are placed inside the computer games. In-game advertising dates back to late 70's where the in-game advertising was purely static. The advertisements will be created during the development and It can never be changed. But now, its an era of dynamic In-game advertising. In dynamic In-game advertising the advertisements can be altered remotely by advertising agency.

Why its hot?
According to these sources, the size of computer gaming industry is more than $38 billion and its growing rapidly. With the recent releases of Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 gaming consoles, gaming industry is reaching new levels. Computer games engage the gamer fully and no longer considered to be just for entertainment, It has a high potential for advertising which is not tapped so far. And virtual reality games like Second Life adds fuel to the fire of In-game advertising.

Who's is in?

• Google entered the In-game advertising industry by acquiring AdScape Media for $23 Million .
• Microsoft entered by acquiring Massive Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
• Other players include Double Fusion, IGA World wide, NeoEdge Networks
  

Google acquires AdscapeMedia!

Google yesterday acquired AdScape Media for $23 million! Adscape media is the video game advertising company and the developer of the worlds first in-game advertising. Advertising is taking a big leap nowadays and with acquisition of AdScape google plans to widen its advertising empire. There are new innovative ways to advertise now and In-game advertising is one such an example.

To know more about in-game advertising click here.

From Wikipedia..

"2005 spending on in-game advertising was USD$56 million, and this figure is estimated to grow to $1.8 billion by 2010"

Its obvious that google is planning to seize the growing opportunity by its new acquisition.

What is a recursive program? Its cool!

Best example of the recursive program I have ever seen! Its simple and cool!

I got this in a forward mail.I admire the creativity of the person who created this image. What do you think buddy?

Get free NetBeans CD!!!

Are you a Java Programmer? If you want to try one of the best Java IDE you can order the NetBeanse CD for free!! It will be delivered at your door for free!!

Link for Ordering Netbeans world tour CD:
http://www.netbeans.org/about/cd-form.html

Yahoo Messenger integrated to Yahoo mail!

Finally Yahoo integrated its messenger with Yahoo mail. It was a great feature in Gmail and now Yahoo mail follows it. I wish online chat history is available in Yahoo messenger integration. I was expecting this for long time and finally it arrived now. Still I am waiting for my mail account to get activated with messenger. Here is the screen cast from Yahoo employee...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year 007 !!

Alert: Yahoo messenger Virus is out there, Beware!

Today I was one of the poor fellows who got infected by W32.Imaut.A
worm. I recieved a link from one of my friend in Yahoo messenger and
innocently i clicked the link. Thats it, my IE got affected and
Registry editor was disabled! And the virus sent the link to all my
friends list before my eyes! I couldnt even stop it. Iam slowly
recovering from the virus, hope the following link helps you if you get
infected by the same virus and it was helpful for me,

Symantec Link

Fortunately this virus doesnot do a fatal damage. But unfortunately if
you are in Yahoo messenger list of infected person,then you are bound
to recieve the virus link. Dont click that suspicious link, If you
click then you are dead! Beware!

PS: I posted this message in couple of groups and forums. So dont think im copying and posting it everywhere. The intention is to spread the world about my bad experience so that others can be cautious.

3d Desktop!

Its amazing to see the 3D desktop! In my opinion its going to be the next generation desktop. 3D desktop is available in next version of Windows Vista. Microsoft uses its own DWM to provide 3D desktop in Vista.And its already availabe in Linux. In linux XGL is used to provide the 3D desktop. The above shown video uses XGL in Linux. According to me, I dont see a necessity of 3D desktop today, but i strongly believe that its going to be a desktop of the furure due to its rich user experience!

Yahoo Phishing Alert !

Beware there is a forward mail around the web which has a phishing link. You might recieve this phishing link saying that your friend wants to share his recent photos with you. This phishing site is hosted in Geocities and If you click this link, you will be taken to Yahoo Photos like phishing site and if you enter your ID and pasword, your Yahoo ID is lost!




What is Phishing?
Phisihng is an fraudulent activity to acquire some sensitive information like passwords, PIN numbers etc. Phishing site is a website which looks like a genuine website and fools the user to enter the sensitive information.

How to prevent Phishing?
1) Dont enter sensitive information in a website unless you are sure that it is a genuine website.
2) Use phishing prevention methods provided by sites like Yahoo.
3) Dont click a link which you recieved from a complete strager.
4) Be aware about the current news about Phishing sites in the web.
5) Use antiphishing softwares.


Worst case Schenario:
If you are a victim of the Phishing and you lost your Yahoo ID and password, follow these steps,

1) Try to change your password ASAP (If your password is not changed after a phishing attack)
2) If your password is changed then try to recover your password by providing the necessary information like DOB in this link.
3) If you dont remember necessary information to recover your password then contact Yahoo to reset your password. Send an email to account-security-help@cc.yahoo-inc.com. And Try calling 866-562-7219
4) If none of the above steps worked then report it to reportabuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com and say "bye bye" to your Yahoo ID and learn from your mistakes. Spread the world so that others will be wary of these kinds of Phishing links.

Related Link:
Webopedia
AntiPhishing

Linus Torvalds Usenet post for releasing Linux!

Many of you might know that Linux Torvalds used the comp.os.minix usenet group to release his Linux operating system.For couple of days I was searching for his post which announced the birth of Linux. Finally found it in comp.os.minx usent group. Read the post which revolutionized the world with Linux!!.The link for the Usenet post is here
Take a look at the post which made history!

Why not try Linux?

One fine day I had this question in my mind.... Why not try Linux??? I have been using Windows Since 2000 and I really got bored. So I thought Linux is worth a try.

Being a newbie to linux there were many surprises for me. One of them is the Live CD. Live CD was pretty new to me (May be for you too!). And explored further and found many live distros. Some of them are Damn Small Linux, SLAX, Puppy Linux, Ubuntu etc. Also I was exploring other unix like systems BSD(DragonFlyBSD) and Solaris. Belenix, It is the Live distro based on OpenSolaries created by an indian(In SunMicrosystems, Bangalore). So i couldnt resist myself from trying it out. Out of the all the live distros i liked SLAX due to its good look and feel(Yes, I didnt learn much of the linux yet, but started learning).

What is Live Distro?
If you are wondering what a live distro is then here is what you want. Live Distro is a OS which runs directly from CD! You need not install any of the above OS. Instead put the OS CD and boot directly from the CD!! I always had a hard time installing linux in my windows machine. I always screwed up my windows when i tried to install linux! So if you know the trick please let me know... Still I find it difficult. Surprising thing for me is most of these disros, after booting they can run directly from RAM!!!!

Its not just these Live Distros surprised me. I found that Linux can be run inside Windows using some Virtualisation softwares like VMWare! And also some Linux emulators are available. Some of the popular Linux emulators are Boscs and qemu.

Are you a Linux Newbie??
If you want to learn Linux then I highly recommend one of the above mentioned live distros. Most of them can even boot from a Pen Drive(Lessthan 128 MB)!. So download it and start learning. Do you need learning materials? Dont worry, visit LearnLinux. Linux Documentation will also be useful for your linux adventure. Join me as a Linux newbie, I will keep you posted about my findings! Lets have fun!