'Manhunt2' to release in US

Manhunt 2, a computer game banned in the UK for its extreme violence, is to be released in slightly sanitized version in the US in time for Halloween. This modified version of the game was given an updated 'Mature' rating by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) from an 'Adults Only' rating in June when it became the first game to be banned in the UK in ten years and subsequently its release in the US was delayed.

Manhunt 2 is developed by Rockstar Games, a development division of games publisher Take-Two Interactive. Rockstar Games is responsible for other controversial games such as Grand Theft Auto(GTA) and Bully.

"Manhunt 2 is important to us, and we are glad that it can finally be appreciated as a gaming experience," said Rockstar Games founder and executive producer Sam Houser. "We think horror fans will love it."

Yahoomail gets updated!

Five months after announcing its plan to offer unlimited storage for its Web-based free e-mail service, the Webmail giant Yahoo! Inc. is now upgrading its free e-mail service with new enhancements and taking the “beta” label off the product.

With the competitive pressure rising significantly in recent years among Webmail providers, due in large part to Google's introduction of Gmail in 2004, Yahoo's radical revamping of Yahoo Mail is targeted at protecting and extending its traditionally solid standing in this market.

Starting Monday, the improved Yahoo! Mail will incorporate quality enhancements that will make it easier to send email, instant messages or text messages from a single Web site. A button provided at the top of the page gives users the option to choose between sending an e-mail, chatting over IM or sending a text, or SMS, message, for free.

Although the new Yahoo Mail will now become the service's primary version, users will be able to continue using the "classic" version. "We'll continue to offer both products for the foreseeable future and we'll let our users decide what's the right Yahoo Mail experience for them," said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

Microsoft waters XBox owners.

Microsoft has told the owners of its Xbox 360 console that it will pay to replace a 'racing wheel' controller which could overheat and release smoke. About 230,000 of the wheel-shaped controllers – used for driving games such as Test Drive and DiRT – have been sold worldwide. Microsoft said there had been only 50 reports of the devices smoking when plugged into the mains using an AC/DC adapter. The company told Xbox owners not to plug the £90 controllers into a power supply until they had obtained the "retro-fit", but said the device could safely be used with batteries."There have been no reported incidences of fire, personal injury or property damage due to the wheel malfunction," Microsoft said in a statement. Owners of the racing wheel can visit their Online Support or call Microsoft (US) on (0800) 587 1102 to register for a retrofit.

Wanna unlock iPhone? Hotz can help you!

Armed with a soldering iron and energy drinks, a teenager has found a way to free Apple's much-hyped iPhone from the AT&T network. The development could represent a serious blow to the US phone giant AT&T, which had been hoping to leverage the popularity of the sexy new phone into a dominant position in the US market. The hack would also allow the phone to be used on networks in countries outside the US. But they failed to take into account 17-year-old George Hotz, and his desire to use the phone on the T-Mobile network. Hotz posted details of the ten step hack on his blog and also a video of the procedure on YouTube. The video has already been viewed more than 130,000 times.

Hotz seems an unlikely candidate to have hacked the world's most hyped product. The recent high-school graduate had little experience hacking cell phones, and by his own admission he feels more comfortable with a soldering iron than a piece of computer code. "My iPhone works with T-Mobile now, and that's all I ever wanted," Hotz told MacNewsWorld, adding that it had taken him about 500 hours to figure out the workaround.

SMS Threat on Rise!

An expert Central committee appointed by the government has sought penal action against hackers who steal phone numbers to send SMSs.
The committee was appointed by the department of telecom after getting several complaints about mobile numbers being stolen by hackers to send SMSs, which often ‘phish' for personal information.
According to the committee, stealing a person's number and using it amounted to ‘impersonation and forgery', is a criminal offence.
Centre has already blocked sites which offered SMS hacking tools for free.
There were also complaints that hackers had used SMS messages in the name of banks to get information about accounts.

Thanks To DC-IT-Watch.

Monster attacked by Monster?

A computer program was used to access the employers' section of the website using stolen log-in credentials. Personal details stored on Monster.com, a website that lists job vacancies, were taken after a raid by hackers who posed as employers to gain access to the site. Having stolen the information, hackers e-mailed the victims claiming to have infected their computers with a virus and threatening to delete files unless demands for payment were met. The details, which included names, surnames, e-mail and home addresses, as well as phone numbers, were then used to send 'phishing' e-mails to members, apparently from Monster.com, encouraging them to download a tool known as 'Monster Job Seeker'. The tool was in fact a malicious 'trojan' program called Infostealer.Monstres, which encrypted the files on the victim's machine, making them inaccessible to the computer owner. A message was left requesting that money be paid to the attackers before the files – which could include photos and other personal documents – would be decrypted. As an initiative for prevention Symantec said users should always limit contact information posted to job websites and to use a disposable e-mail address.
"Never disclose sensitive details such as your social security number, passport or driver's license numbers, bank account information to prospective employers until you have established they are legitimate," said the firm.

Google launches Indian Languages tool

Google Inc. today launched Google Labs India, a version of its Google Labs platform that includes technologies to allow people in India to conduct searches and get results in their local languages, according to a Google blog post. Google has put up two technologies for testing by users on the Google Labs Web site: an Indic On-Screen Keyboard iGoogle Gadget and Google Indic Transliteration. The engineers said they are testing two technologies on Google Labs India, an Indic On-Screen Keyboard iGoogle Gadget and Google Indic Transliteration. Users can search by choosing letters from the on-screen keyboard using a mouse. They can add the gadget for their chosen language to their personalized iGoogle home pages and use it to search for content in their languages. Google Indic Transliteration allows the user to type in Hindi, a key language in India, using phonetically equivalent English text entered through an English keyboard. The content created can be used in e-mail, word processors and other applications from both Google and its competitors, Agarwal, a spokeswoman for Google India, said. Internet growth in India is expected to come from outside of cities, where many people are more at ease using Indian languages, he added.

The End Of Yahoo Photos!!

Well its time to vacate all the Yahoo Photos accounts as they decided to close it once for all. Its seems that they are going to concentrate on 'Flickr'-The Award Winning Photo Sharing Program. Yahoo Inc., give their users time to either download their favourite photos to their system HDD or transfer it to any other photo sharing program. However they recommend the use of Flickr for all its user's future photo uploading need.

Yahoo! Photos is closing on September 20, 2007. That's in 32 days.

We're sorry. Yahoo! Photos is closing on September 20, 2007 so we are no longer accepting new accounts or allowing users to upload photos if you don't already have photos in your account. We've decided to focus all our efforts on Flickr - the award winning photo sharing community that Time Magazine has even called "completely addictive". Why not head over to Flickr for a look?

Google's click-fraud tracking site.

Google has announced it's new Web site to serve as the single source for all click-fraud and ad traffic-quality-related information. Google developed the new Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center primarily to give its advertisers a single place to find Google's information about click fraud, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google, on Friday. In the pay-per-click format, advertisers pay every time someone clicks on their ads, which are linked to a Web page. Click fraud happens when companies click on competitors' ads to drive up their ad spending. Another common click-fraud practice is for Web publishers to click on their sites' ads to increase their commissions.
The group decided to prioritize organizing a click-fraud forum for Google advertisers that was held at the company's headquarters in May, he said. A similar event will be held later this month in Google's New York City offices, he said.
Already in place is a service called IP Filtering, which lets advertisers "blacklist" certain IP (Internet Protocol) addresses for whatever reason, such as suspicion of click fraud or simply because their clicks never lead to a sale, he said.

Happy Birthday! CD turns 25.

Twenty-five years (17 August 1982) ago the first compact discs rolled of the production presses at the Philips factory near Hannover in Germany. Since then more than 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide after pushing out vinyl records and then cassettes as the format of choice for listening to music. Those early CDs also paved the way for other digital discs, like the DVD and CD-Rom, which became ubiquitous in the computer and and movie industries. "In the late seventies and early eighties we never imagined that one day, the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the digital CD to store the growing volume of data for computer programs and movies," said Piet Kramer, one of the Philips engineers who developed the CD. Those first CDs contained Strauss' Alpine Symphony and would sound equally sharp if played today, says Holland's Royal Philips Electronics NV, which jointly developed the CD with Sony Inc of Japan. But their future looks increasingly under threat from iPoda and MP3 players that play music downloaded directly from the internet or digital storage devices for computer files.

Its Yahoo vs Google battle now!

A new survey has found that Net users are more satisfied with Yahoo than Google. Yahoo scored 79 points while Google got 78 points in the survey conducted by the University of Michigan. Though Yahoo has only a slight edge over Google, it has much to gloat about. Last year, Google had a five point lead over Yahoo.
It was the comprehensive services offered by Yahoo’s portal which shifted votes in its favour, researchers said. Though Google is still the favourite search tool, it has not been able to promote its other services as robustly as Yahoo.
Larry Freed, president of Foresee Results which did the survey for the university, pointed out that users don’t see anything different in Google’s portal from what they saw three years ago. But Yahoo has refurbished its portal and gained in points.

Parent's Internet Nightmare!

A survey by security firm Symantec has confirmed the worst fears of parents. It warns that most teens and kids who browse the Internet are doing dangerous things online. While most parents thought that kids were online only about three hours a week, in reality, they were online for more than seven hours. And more than 25 per cent of them confessed that they were doing things that would make their parents shudder.
The survey revealed that 88 per cent of parents were wary of their children’s activities online but did not know what to do about it. Over 21 per cent of the teens revealed that they had uncomfortable experiences online and 18 per cent had been subjected to cyber bullying. About 23 per cent of them said they had revealed their details to strangers on the Internet.

Thanks to DC-IT Watch

Kingston unveiled its 4GB MiniSD

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, announced it is expanding its line of Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) memory cards with the introduction of a 4GB miniSDHC card, available in Class 2, 4 and 6 speed ratings. The higher capacity and faster speeds offered by Kingston miniSDHC cards make them ideal for supporting new, smaller-profile multifunction phones and digital devices able to take advantage of the advanced expansion memory platform."As sleeker, more sophisticated mobile phones, PDAs and MP3 players offer digital imaging, music, video, mobile TV and games, the need for higher data transfer rates, increased storage and smaller form factor expansion memory becomes greater," said Country Manager, India, Kingston Technology. Backed by a lifetime warranty and free technical support, Kingston miniSDHC Flash memory cards are available through distributors, resellers, and retailers in India.

Toshiba's Notebook PC--New Release

Korea-based Toshiba has unveiled its latest laptop for professionals, known as the Toshiba Tecra S5.
Toshiba Tecra S5 sports a 15.4-inch monitor, fingerprint reader, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk SATA. Powered by a 256MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 170M, Toshiba offers the S5 a much faster 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo on an 800MHz bus, a serial port to administer older server computers.

Here are the other features of the Toshiba Tecra S5 notebook PC:
Intel Centrino Pro processor technology featuring Intel Core2 Duo Processor T7500
Genuine Windows Vista Business Edition
2,048 (1,024 + 1,024) MB up 4,096 MB DDR2 RAM (667 MHz)
12.7mm 8x DVD-Super Multi +-R DL Ultra light
RGB, USB 2.0 x 3, Modem, Lan, IEEE1394, 4-in-1 card reader.

In addition, it comes with a DVD Super Multi drive and supports the company’s security solution named ‘Easy Guard’.
The price of the Toshiba Tecra S5 is around $2,166 (87,181.50 INR) and will be available in Korea. The latest laptop will be soon available in US with a different configuration and price tag.

Acer's new TravelMate 4520.

Acer announced its new 4520 Notebook PC in Bangkok. The TravelMate 4520 is a mid-range laptop for the mobile professional, featuring an AMD Turioni 64 X2 (1.8GHz) CPU and based on the ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset. It comes bundled with 1GB DDR2-533 RAM, and graphics is handled by the Radeon Xpress which can share up to 384MB of your RAM (and simultaneously slow down your system).
There's a 120GB 5400 RPM hard drive. The display is a nice 14.1" WXGA display with Acer CrystalBrite technology that runs at 1280x800 pixels resolution, and there's also an S-Video out on the back. A DVD-Super Multi double layer drive is available for your backup needs, and as a bonus, it has a 5-in-1 media card reader.
It also sports 4 USB 2.0 ports, integrated Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. Priced at 32,900 baht (approx US $970).

Laptop thieft caught on cam!!

Dawson Anthony Bliss, 50, of Hastings, was convicted in Greymouth District Court yesterday after pleading not guilty to a charge of theft.
The court was told a video of the theft from a window display at a computer shop was posted on the internet websites YouTube and Google Video. The man was taped slowly circling the store, stealing a laptop computer, slipping the computer into his overcoat and stepping out of the store in the South Island town of Greymouth, local media reported on Friday.
The video had recorded more than 500,000 hits, one of them from a man who recognised the thief as Bliss.
Judge Gary MacAskill fined Bliss $2000 and ordered him to pay $1990 reparation. He noted Bliss had behaved himself for six years but said he had lapsed into his old ways on a visit to Greymouth.

Google's Online Storage

Search giant Google Inc. on Friday began selling expanded online storage, targeted for users with large picture, music or video file collections.
The price range is shown below

$20 per year for 6 GB
$75 per year for 25 GB
$250 per year for 100 GB
$500 per year for 250 GB


According to the company's official blog, the storage can be used across several Google products, including photo site Picasa; Gmail, a Google email application; and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google's office applications.
Gmail users currently get 4 gigabytes of free storage while Picasa users get 1 gigabyte of free storage.

Vista Updates Ready

Microsoft Corp. Tuesday released the two Windows Vista updates that had leaked to the Internet at the end of July. Pegged as performance and reliability packs, the pair install a long list of non-security bug fixes, among them speed improvements to wake-from-hibernation, a patch that eliminates the long wait to calculate the time it will take to copy or move large directories, and several that target compatibility glitches with video drivers. The performance update, designated KB938979, weighs in at nearly 10MB, and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. The accompanying support document is also available.

Microsoft's Surface Computer- The Next Gen PC!

Microsoft has announced the release of their most hyped and awaited Surface Computer. A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. It is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Unlike most touchscreens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time. The world's largest software maker said it will manufacture the machine itself and sell it initially to corporate customers, deploying the first units in November. It is considered as the major step towards the co-founder Bill Gates's view of future!

Gphone-The Next Boss!

The search giant Google Inc. is in the process of developing a new mobile phone. The Google "GPhone" with proposed free subscriptions said to include adverts via its search engine, e-mail, and Web browser applications. Although Google has not yet issued any official comment on the story, the source report points out that a prototype version of the handset has been dispatched to mobile phone manufacturers and network operators. Google has been testing new softwares and mobile services to bundle it all together with its search engine and new mobile web browser, to be able to present an attractive product.

While a free subscription to Google’s phone might attract those not willing to invest $499 USD or $599 USD for the much hyped Apple’s 4GB or 8GB handsets, an industry analyst offers that consumers might not readily accept listening to commercial ads prior to each and every outbound call. The GPhone is expected to arrive at retail before the close of 2008

Kittens fight against spammers?

Web majors are scratching their heads to stop the increasing email spam-mania as the recent study indicates that around 90 billion pieces of email spam is being sent everyday. In this course, software giant Microsoft have come up with a new idea to fool the spammers; an alternative to the currently implemented Human Interactive Proofs (HIP). According to Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, asking the user to identify the subject of a photo like kittens would help them block spam programs. In order to avoid spammers matching the correct response with each photo in the catalog and begin to spoof the system, Microsoft would continually take videos of kitten jumping around a room so that it generates almost an endless series of photos for identification. Jokingly, kittens can become the wave of future!

"Music Eater": The Latest Virus

Security experts have detected a mischievous worm which slips into computers and destroys all MP3 music files. It does no other damage. Graham Cluey of security research firm Sophos said that the worm could be the brainchild of teenaged geeks since it only feeds on MP3 files. It is suspected that the music eater enters computers through USB devices.

The worm, which has been named 'W32.Deletemusic' [Symantec], 'W32/Deletemp3.worm' [McAfee], 'W32/DelMP3-A' [Sophos], does not discriminate between illegally downloaded MP3 files and legally purchased ones. It just eats them all up happily. There are also speculations that some do-gooder who wants to save the music industry from piracy may be the author of the worm. “We need not lose too much sleep over it,” said Cluey. Say that to music lovers.

FireFox's new version released

Mozilla has released a new version of its popular open source browser Firefox three days ago fixing security problems which occur when it is combined with Microsoft's Internet Explorer on desktops.
Secunia, an Internet security firm, had discovered that hackers were using a loophole in Firefox to download malicious data on to the computer. The malware then makes use of the Internet Explorer to create trouble.
The new Firefox 2.0.0.6 version contains a security patch which reduces the risk of malware being passed on.
Mozilla and MS initially blamed each other for the security flaw. However, Mozilla later decided to release a new version of its browser and not just an update. But MS has not done anything to sort out a similar problem in Internet Explorer, though security experts have put the blame on both.
Mozilla has released a new version of its popular open source browser Firefox fixing security problems which occur when it is combined with Microsoft's Internet Explorer on desktops. Secunia, an Internet security firm, had discovered that hackers were using a loophole in Firefox to download malicious data on to the computer. The malware then makes use of the Internet Explorer to create trouble. The new Firefox 2.0.0.6 version contains a security patch which reduces the risk of malware being passed on. Mozilla and MS initially blamed each other for the security flaw. However, Mozilla later decided to release a new version of its browser and not just an update. But MS has not done anything to sort out a similar problem in Internet Explorer, though security experts have put the blame on both.

Dell's 1st 'Made In India' PC

Dell revealed that the company has finished the manufacturing of their first 'Made in India' PC. The desktop computer from Dell's new plant (near the southern Indian city of Chennai) was delivered Monday to outsourcing company Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of Dell's largest customers in the country.
Dell computers are relatively expensive in India partly because the company ships fully assembled systems into the country, paying more in duties than its rivals who manufacture locally.
Dell plans to achieve the target figure of 4,00,000 PCs per year from this Chennai unit.

VoodooPC's new rocking Laptop

VoodooPC, the world's leading architect of personalized, handcrafted high-performance PCs, introduced its 17-inch widescreen notebook PC, the ENVY H:171. The machine is the first notebook to offer a range of next-generation PC technology, including the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme X6800 processor, a Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7950 graphics processing unit (GPU), a 1.3 Megapixel integrated video camera and a hard drive capacity of up to 600GB using three 200GB hard drives. This balanced and powerful platform delivers unprecedented frame rates and extreme multitasking capabilities for gamers, content creators and all other mobility power users.

Internet Explorer on the top

Top software professionals have chosen Internet Explorer as the most influential technology product in the last 25 years. Techies overwhelmingly voted for IE in a survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association recently. The next three places were also occupied by products from the Microsoft stable.
MS Word came second and Windows 95 came third. The fourth place was shared by MS Excel Spreadsheet software and Apple’s iPod. Other technology products that have impressed geeks over the years are Blackberry, Adobe Photoshop, McAfee’s VirusScan, Netscape Navigator, and PalmPilot. The survey was conducted in connection with CompTIA’s 25th anniversary. More than 22,000 companies in 100 countries are members of the association.

Wiki search engine

Jimmy Wales, the founder of the popular Wikipedia, is now planning to barge into the terrain of search engines. He told a conference of software developers the other day that his company Wikia Inc was planning to launch a community-based search service. Wikia has acquired web crawler Grub to power the search service. But the real power will rest on millions of anonymous users, who will use their spare time to index and collate searches. Like Wikipedia, the search service will depend on humans and not on algorithms which are used by Google and other popular search engines. “We (will) collectively work to free the judgment of information from invisible rules inside an algorithmic black box,” said Wales. He added that the new service may change the balance of power in the search terrain. We can take him at his word.