Science and technology news blog

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You can download Firefox 3 from the following link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/123304491/Firefox_Setup_3.0.exe

Thanks to Halo 3, Microsft’s Xbox 360 finally beat the Wii in console sales in the US. However, the disappointing figures in Japan have made Microsoft announce a 13 percent cut in the console’s price. Sony’s PS3 also got a 10 percent price cut in Japan. On the other hand, Nintendo’s Wii is steal beating industry expectations as the units are still hard to find even after 9 whole months of its launch.

Microsoft may also announce a further price cut globally, come holiday season, to be more competitive against the PS3 and also against the Wii. Its been almost 2 years since the Xbox 360 was launched and, despite the hardware problems, the console has enjoyed superlative success thanks to games like Gears of War and Halo 3, with more to come. PS3 on the other hand, seems to be going the Betamax way. It may be well ahead in technology, but even that could not prevent Sony from selling its Cell processor-making unit to be sold.

This is a sponsored post.

For all you gamblers, I just found the best online casino site – ICasinoReviews. It is basically a casino directory that prides itself for containing only the “trusted” casino sites in the world. They have a strict criteria for rating casinos based on payout percentages, customer support, realistic games, bonuses, and reputation.

The top 5 list is a definite must-look for any person interested in online gambling. The casinos are reviewed thoroughly and a review is posted with no unnecessary information that might confuse the visitors. The reviews are important as there are a lot of unscrupulous websites out there that are looking to entice the naïve users and then try to rip them off. So to have someplace that can have a review of a site is always a good starting point and I think this is where Icasinoreviews.com scores.

The site has a Review Guidelines page that tells you how each casino is reviewed. The process is fairly intensive and atleast there is someplace that has this information rather than a user doing all the research themselves.

The “How to choose an Online Casino” is also an excellent guide to selecting the casino that would suit you. I suggest following that guide as well. Overall, this is definitely a good good place to go to if you are interested in online gambling.

The following is a message from Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates:

If you’ve been in the work force for 20 years or more, you can remember a time when the pace of business-and life in general-was quite a bit slower than it is today. Back then we read newspapers and magazines and watched the network news to stay informed. Faxes were just becoming a common way to share written business information. A phone call might elicit a busy signal or no one would answer at all. In those days, no one expected to send documents to coworkers on the other side of the globe instantly, collaborate in real-time with colleagues in distant cities, or share photographs the very day they were taken.

These and similar advances have delivered remarkable results. The ability to access and share information instantly and communicate in ways that transcend the boundaries of time and distance has given rise to an era of unprecedented productivity and innovation that has created new economic opportunities for hundreds of millions of people around the world and paved the way for global economic growth that is unparalleled in human history.

But few people would argue that there is no room for improvement. Although we have once-unimaginable access to people and information, we struggle today to keep track of emails and phone calls across multiple inboxes, devices, and phone numbers; to remember a growing number of passwords; and to synchronize contacts, appointments, and data between desktop PCs and mobile devices. The fact is that the proliferation of communications options has become a burden that often makes it more difficult to reach people than it used to be, rather than easier.

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To a technical person, stats mean everything when shopping for a PC. And that is why a review is very important. Wize.com is a site the provides PC Desktop Reviews on branded PCs. Say, for example, I want to buy a Hewlett Packard HP Pavilion M7780N Media Center PC w/ 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (5584792) P, the site has 60 reviews, both user generated and expert.

Wize.com also provides full specs for the PC in question and it also has a shopping comparison list for different retailers. There is a “Wize Rank” for each product that can be part of your shopping criteria. How does it work? WizeRank’s proprietary technology collects reviews and ratings for hundreds of thousands of products from tens of thousands of sources on the web. This includes huge, comprehensive sources, such as Amazon.com and Cnet, and smaller niche sites, such as Digital Camera Magazine, Popular Photography & Imaging Magazine, and Shutterbug for digital cameras (to name just a few). The list of review sources is constantly growing as they continue to add independent sources of trusted content.

Once the data is collected and normalized, the WizeRank algorithm uses proven statistical methods to rate each product in our database. Read more about their ranking process in the WizeRank white paper.

Wize.com does not just stop at PCs, it also has video games, computer systems, cameras/camcorders, various electronics devices, and tons of other products. A definite “must look” website that could help finalizing your shopping needs.

Microsoft announced today that come christmas, the Xbox 360 will be bundled with two games – Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. This will further tighten the noose over Sony’s beleaguered Playstation 3. Despite price cuts, the Sony console still lags way behind the 360 and Nintendo’s Wii. Sony may have a futuristic system in its hand, but lack of quality, and more importantly, exclusive titles has hampered sales.

Microsoft’s announcement should further spark sales of the 360 after Halo 3 initiated a second coming of the Xbox’s latest iteration. With latest news on Bungie splitting from Microsoft, the monolith wants to cash in on all the hype surrounding the console at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the new consoles came with the 65nm processor. Sony desperately needs  some much needed system-seller games if it doesn’t want to go the Betamax way with its heavily priced console.

You may have heard a lot about GPS devices and how they can make travelling a whole lot easier. So what is a GPS device? First of all, GPS stands for Global Positioning System and it consists of a constellation of atleast 24 satellites around the world. The GPS was developed by the United States Army and is maintained by the United States Air Force 50th Wing at an annual cost of approximately $750 million. The service is provided free of charge for civilian use.

Each GPS satellite continuously broadcasts a Navigation Message at 50 bit/s giving the time-of-day, GPS week number and satellite health information (all transmitted in the first part of the message), an ephemeris (transmitted in the second part of the message) and an almanac (later part of the message).

A GPS receiver is composed of an antenna, tuned to the frequencies transmitted by the satellites, receiver-processors, and a highly-stable clock (often a crystal oscillator). The GPS navigation systems like the Magellan Maestro™ 4040 GPS Receiver uses the navigation signal data to provide a whole variety of information to the user. With advancement in software and technology, these systems now provide not just the current location of the device, but also information like the shortest route to a destination, which route will have less traffic, the closest restaurants.

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If you are travelling to the UK, then you need to prepare for your accomodation, as like any other place. For that, I suggest having a look at CheaperThanHotels.co.uk which is a very good place for travel information. You can search for London hotels, Edingurgh hotels, Glasgow hotels and more in your budget range.

Who wouldn’t want to travel to the UK and enjoy the nightlife that is offered in places like London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The multi-cultural society of England has come a long way. The food, the people, everyone lives peacefully with each other. There is so much to see and do in England that you really need to prepare very much in advance. And this is where CheaperThanHotels.co.uk comes to the rescue.

There are a lot of other websites that offer a searchable database, however this is still worth a look if you are interested in making a booking for a hotel. There are also discounts available on group bookings. There are package deals and last minute deals. Not a site to be missed.

Some interesting Halo Facts:

• Halo and Halo 2 have sold more than 14.8 million copies worldwide (Xbox and PC versions). By the end of the year, more than £500 million would have been spent on the franchise.


• American gamers have already reserved more than one million copies of Halo 3.


• In May, Microsoft gave gamers a sneak peek at Halo 3 with a multiplayer beta test included with its Crackdown title. It attracted more than 820,000 people to participate from 25 different countries, who spent a whopping 12 million hours playing it online. That is the equivalent of 1,400 years of continuous play by a single person.


• Xbox Live has seven million members, 80 per cent of whom have played Halo 2 online. In fact, 300,000 gamers still log on to play each day.


• Master Chief is the first gaming character to be enshrined in wax by Madame Tussauds and will be seen at the London attraction. The 7ft 2in figure weighs 275lbs and was created using 1,000lbs of clay. It took 10 studio artists 892 man-hours to complete, including 687 hours for sculpting, 168 hours for moulding and 37 hours for painting.

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This latest announcement from AMD really caught me off-guard. I was thinking of hearing an 8-core announcement, but AMD surprised everyone when they announced that they will be offering a triple-core processor. Its strange for a microchip company to go from single to dual to quad to triple core processor. But this could be a masterstroke from a company that has been struggling off late.

Being the underdogs ever since their inception, the Opteron range really set them up to compete against big bully Intel. However, Intel has struck back with it’s Core range of processors and Barcelona seems to be the one and only hope for AMD to claw back into this race.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a price cut on the iPhone barely 2.5 months after its launch. This irked a lot of existing customers and Jobs quickly went into damage control by announcing that all existing iPhone customers would be getting a $100 credit towards their phone bill. This has by far been the quickest price cut that I have seen, but it makes sense as Apple can afford a cut right now. The iPhone is supposedly costing Apple around $250 in manufacturing costs and sells at $499 and $599 for 4GB and 8GB models respectively.

The following is a good article to read on the recent price cut from Apple:

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_The_iPhone_vs_the_PS3_A_Price_Cut_Comparison_08398.html 

Today, the scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) reported the successful launch of India’s latest communications satellite, Insat-4CR.

“The launch is crucial to the extent that the high-powered satellite will augment the country’s communication capacity and help meet increasing demand,” said the spokesman for Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation.

Soon after the successful launch, the India’s Prime Minister and the Vice President congratulated the Indian space scientists and technologists involved in the successful launch of a rocket that put the country’s latest communications satellite into orbit.

In a message sent to ISRO Vice President Mohammad Hamid Asari noted that the successful launch further validated the immense economic and strategic importance of the country’s space programme.

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Google Apps may not be the be-all, end-all answer to enterprise groupware that some analysts believe it will be, according to a new report by the Burton Group. The consulting firm has released a 55-page smackdown detailing what it sees as the pitfalls of trying to replace more robust enterprise software with Google’s set of stripped-down web applications. It cautions IT managers not to be tempted by Google’s siren call of low price and low maintenence, going so far as to say that switching to Google Apps could be a “career-limiting move.”

Read the full article here.

In what could be considered as a massive blow to the momentum that Blu-ray was generating, both Paramount and Dreamworks have announced exclusive support for HD-DVD. In the following press release from Viacom, both Paramount and Dreamworks have officially announced that they will be releasing their high-def content on HD-DVD only:

Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and DreamWorks Animation SKG (NYSE: DWA), each announced today that they will exclusively support the next-generation HD DVD format on a worldwide basis. The exclusive HD DVD commitment will include all movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films, as well as movies from DreamWorks Animation, which are distributed exclusively by Paramount Home Entertainment.

This is definitely a major shock to the Blu-ray camp as until now, Paramount and DreamWorks were supporting both the formats.

Over the last few days millions of internet users were affected by a Skype outage. The VOIP leader had an unexpected breakdown when millions of computers were restarted at the same time due to the installation of Microsoft updates. Since Skype depends on peer-to-peer technology, such a large number of users logging off at around the same time caused a lack of resources. An article from PC-World discusses what exactly happened:

“The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe” Skype says. But careful read of Skype’s explaination today shows that that led to two seperate meltdown-inducing problems.

There is also widespread speculation about the service as discussed in the following article:

“Outages and quality problems with VoIP service providers are sadly still too common – most service providers have glitches that can last from a few minutes to a few hours,” Main said. “That Skype has gone so long without a prolonged problem is quite an achievement.”