Archive for: November 2, 2009

With 600 unique visits per month, Yahoo sees a large amount of traffic to its sites. In order to maintain sites in the cloud, Yahoo uses Traffic Server, a piece of software initially acquired via Inktomi, to support this massive amount of traffic. Tomorrow, Yahoo will be debuting an open source version of Traffic Server. The code is available through the Incubator project at the Apache Software Foundation. Traffic Server enables the session management, authentication, configuration management, load balancing, and routing for an entire cloud computing stack. Yahoo says that with the open source version of Traffic Server, organizations can benefit access to cached online content. In addition, Traffic Server enables faster responses to requests for stored Web objects, such as files, news articles or images. The company’s global network of data centers allows Traffic Server to choose the closest servers to store and access cached content for increased speed. Traffic Server is capable of handling more than 30,000 requests per second per server and it currently serves more than 400 terabytes of data per day. Yahoo is also announcing an update to the Yahoo Distribution of Hadoop which is now deployed extensively in Yahoo data centers worldwide. These include new features and bug fixes that continue to improve robustness, security, performance, and operability of Hadoop for ongoing large scale deployments. Yahoo says that opening of code for Traffic Server and the distribution of Hadoop reinforces the technology company’s commitment to open source technologies. Yahoo has been the primary developer and investor to Apache’s Hadoop. In 2006, Hadoop founder Doug Cutting joined Yahoo to lead the project of developing the open-source software. Hadoop now provides the framework for many Yahoo properties including Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, and several content and ad services. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and ...

By now, Tweetie 2 has probably stormed your iPhone. If not, you should check it out; in our opinion, it’s the best Twitter iPhone app out there (and yes, definitely worth the $3 [ iTunes link ]). But developer Loren Brichter isn’t resting on his laurels. Instead, he’s hard at work on Tweetie 2.1. So what’s new? Well, there are a ton of small bug fixes, but also some pretty big additions. There are two that you’ll probably care the most about: New-style rewtweets and geolocation support. We got an early alpha build of 2.1 to try out, and it’s looking good. Retweets While Twitter has yet to enable the new-style retweets or geolocation for most accounts, Tweetie 2.1 offers a glimpse of how it will work. Tweets from accounts with the new retweet function show up in Tweetie 2.1’s stream. As promised, these are the tweets from the actual person who originally sent it, rather than the person doing the retweeting. But Tweetie 2.1 highlights these retweets in a nice way. First of all, you see both the user icon for person who originally tweeted the item and the person retweeting it. The original tweeter’s icon is big, while the retweeter’s icon is small and stuck in the lower right hand corner (see image). These tweets are also tagged with a pinkish-red triangle in the upper right hand corner to let you know this is a retweet. Clicking on these tweets takes you to a page that shows you the tweet from the original source, but also says at the bottom “retweeted by @USERNAME.” The way to retweet something in Tweetie 2.1 remains the same: You click on a tweet (or swipe a tweet in the stream) and hit the box with the arrow icon. The top option ...

There is a perception that Google’s Chrome is a rounding error when it comes to browsers. And maybe it still is, but Google is now fighting that perception in a very public way. Today, it announced that the Chrome Team won a Founder’s Award for their achievements so far, and for the first time revealed how many people are using the Chrome browser: 30 million active users. Now, 30 million is certainly a big number, but it is still a tiny fraction of Internet Explorer or Firefox (which has 330 million users ). NetApplications shows Chrome with only a 3.58 percent market share at the end of October, compared to 24 percent for Firefox and 65 percent for IE. Nevertheless, Google is signaling with this award (which was previously won by the teams which created Gmail, Google Maps, and AdSense) and this figure that it is dead serious about Chrome. A few weeks ago, at a press conference I attended, CEO Eric Schmidt was asked about how Chrome was doing. Here’s an excerpt from that part of the Q&A : Q: You keep adding to Chrome and nobody seems to be paying attention. If that is one of the places where the battle is fought you seem pretty far behind. Sergey: Perhaps that is true in media . . . Schmidt: let me, some of your assumptions about Chrome adoption are wrong. The adoption rate of Chrome is [very strong]. We are going to do a better job of getting that message out. Schonfeld: Steve Ballmer calls it a rounding error, is it? Schmidt: I don’t respond to Steve Ballmer questions. Next question? The messaging has begun. Google generally doesn’t reveal user numbers for anything, so this is significant. And now it sets a precedent for Google to update ...

If you’re a Google Voice user like me, you’ll be glad to print out this quick reference card that gives you all the menu options when you call the service to listen to voicemail or change settings, or receive calls. For example, when you receive a call with Google Voice you can hear who’s calling before you answer. Hit 1 to answer the call, or hit 2 to send them to voicemail. Easy to remember. But you can also hit 3 to send them to voicemail and listen in. Or 4 to answer the call and record it. Four is too many things for me to remember, which is why I’m printing this out and putting it in my wallet. Thanks for CoolGeex for creating this! Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Google Voice User? Get The Quick Reference Card

Google took an important step on Monday in the development of Google Wave, opening its servers up to outsiders who want their own waves to communicate with the outside world. Wave servers belonging to Acme and Initech can now talk to each other with the opening of Google Wave federation. (Credit: Google) A “wave” is a stream of messages that blends traditional e-mail, instant messaging, file sharing, and workplace collaboration tools. There have been plenty of supporters and detractors of Google Wave, Google’s bid to reinvent e-mail as a combination of such services. But Google’s implementation of Wave is going to be only one part of the story : outside developers will have the opportunity to build their own wavelike services using the Google Wave API set. And those outside implementations will be able to communicate with each other using the Google Wave Federation Protocol , now that Google has opened up federation of wave servers . This means that if Company A built its own wave servers, it could interact with Company B’s wave servers through a public peer-to-peer network facilitated by Google. At the moment, this is just confined to the developer preview sandbox that was the initial proving ground for Wave. Since its launch, Google has opened up Wave to a wider audience for further testing and bug squashing , with a formal launch not scheduled until early next year. Wave’s complicated interface has not been a resounding hit with early testers, but the combination of external development and a federation service means that others could create more compelling ways to use the technology. Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Google opens up Wave federation

(Credit: Google) Google released a new version of the free Google Mobile App for Symbian Series 60 (S60) phones on Monday. The update gives phone owners the ability to press the Talk button and speak search terms into the phone. While a new feature to the S60 operating system, users on other platforms, like BlackBerry and iPhone, have been able to turn speech into search results for some time. The new Google Mobile App shows up as a shortcut widget on the Nokia home screen, which makes sounding out searches on those Nokia N and E series handsets faster than on other mobile platforms, where you must open the Google Mobile App to begin a search. Whether you talk or type, Google Mobile App uses GPS or cell tower triangulation to fill in your location and find the closest whatever-it-is nearby. This is consistent with Google Mobile App for other platforms, though Windows Mobile is the only other one that also uses the home screen plug-in. In addition to adding digital ears to search, Google has made them more global. Mandarin Chinese has joined Google’s speech recognition database, so Nokia seekers can speak queries in English or in Mandarin. Google warns that the Mobile App is better at distinguishing certain accents better than others; a Beijing lilt may search more successfully than southern-flavored speech, for instance. Mandarin recognition is currently only available for Nokia phones, but Google says in an official blog post that they’re working to expand the capability to other mobile platforms, like Google Android and iPhone. Also, not every S60 owner can take advantage of the new Google Mobile App, only those running version 3. The app is not yet supported on touch screen phones, which run version 5 of the system software. You can download ...

Well that didn’t take long. We outlined the not-so-ethical ways that the big social gaming startups are generating revenue through lead gen scams and subscriptions through a series of posts over the last week. Starting with Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions and Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell . We also threw in some comments by other companies and a former scammer , and a quote from Zynga that 1/3 of their revenues come from offers, much of which are scams. We thought this would be a fight that would take months to end successfully, and we thought that only Facebook or MySpace would make the move to clean up their own platforms. But boy am I surprised today to see Zynga, the worst of the offenders, admit publicly to the problem and take quick steps to change. CEO Mark Pincus says: Michael Arrington posted over the weekend about CPA offers within social games and questioned why facebook, myspace, zynga and others would expose these to our users. He raises good points about ‘scammy’ advertisers and the bad user experience they create. I agree with him and others that some of these offers misrepresent and hurt our industry. Later in the post he also says: We have worked hard to police and remove bad offers. In fact, the worst offender, tatto media, referenced in the techcrunch article, had already been taken down and permanently banned prior to the post. Nevertheless, we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers prior to posting on their networks. We have also removed all mobile ads until we see any that offer clear user value. At zynga, we have faced a similar challenge in providing ...

Site builder Webs.com (formerly known as Freewebs) is launching a new App Store today with the hopes of helping its members customize their sites with rich, dynamic web apps without having to deal with widgets. The company is adopting a model similar to Facebook Platform, inviting developers to build applications that users can install on their Webs.com pages from a central directory. Webs CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada says that one of the biggest problems with traditional website builders is that they generate static content, and it’s up to the site owner to continuously provide new content in order to engage readers. That’s fine in some cases (like for business websites), but most people have a tough time coming up with quality content on a regular basis. But he says that rich applications, which offer users a more dynamic experience, can help. At launch Webs has 15 total application savailable, though most of these were built internally (there are six built by third parties, with more in the works). Launch apps include a game arcade by HeyZap , Meebo’s Community IM, an Etsy store app, and an appointment app by BookFresh that will allow businesses to schedule appointments and execute payment transactions directly from their Webs.com sites. Applications that were built in-house include a calendar, forums, photo galleries, and video sharing platform. The initial app selection covers most of the basics, and will be welcome additions for the site owners looking to customize their pages with new features. It’s also worth pointing out that Webs has recently seen strong growth from a segment of users who are tapping into the site’s social features, which allow users to build their own community websites (much as they would on a service like Ning ). Mokhtarzada says that these still represent a minority of ...

Google’s Chrome is still the fourth-place browser in terms of usage, but it gained more than others in October when it comes to stealing usage away from the dominant Internet Explorer. According to Net Applications’ browser usage share statistics , Chrome gained from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent from September 2009 to October. The company bases its statistics on visits to a global network of 40,000 Web sites, dusted with some statistical processing . Next was Mozilla’s Firefox, which rose from 23.8 percent to 24.1 percent. Apple’s Safari rose from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent. Opera was essentially flat at 2.2 percent. The big loser was IE, which dropped from 65.7 percent to 64.6 percent, according to the statistics. Net Applications' September 2009 browser usage share statistics. (Credit: Net Applications) Net Applications' October 2009 browser usage share statistics. (Credit: Net Applications) Chrome’s early gains are notable–the software has only been publicly available for 14 months. But Google’s challenge in spreading the software will gradually change as the supply of experimental early adopters peters out and the company must look to the slower-moving mainstream crowd for growth. Although a few tenths of a percent may appear small, they represent large numbers considering how many people actually use browsers. The absolute number of users is relevant to Web developers dealing with customer support questions from people who might experience browser incompatibilities. Speaking of incompatibility, one interesting statistic deeper in the Net Applications figures is the growing use of IE 8’s compatibility mode, a feature introduced to help the new browser handle Web sites that are coded for IE 7 or before. In a departure from earlier versions, IE 8 by default tries to conform to Web standards to display Web pages–which can cause problems with Web sites built not for those ...

One of the biggest sources of new searches in the coming years for Google will come from mobile devices, which is why it is attacking mobile on multiple fronts—with Android phones , mobile apps, and mobile search across multiple devices. One of its more impressive efforts lately has been around voice search. Not every phone has a touchscreen or a full keyboard, and some languages simply aren’t keyboard-friendly, and that is where voice search comes in extra handy. Google already has impressive voice search capabilities on the iPhone, Android, and other phones in English. But today, it is extending voice search to Mandarin Chinese and to Nokia S60 series phones. There are so many different accents and nuances to spoken Chinese, which is the most popular language in the world, that getting the speech-to-text good enough to return relevant searches is a huge challenge. I don’t speak Chinese so I can’t evaluate how good a job Google does with Chinese voice search (perhaps some of our readers who know Mandarin can give it a whirl and tell us their impressions in comments). But I am starting to use Google’s English voice search, even though I have an iPhone. The speech recognition in English is surprisingly good. For instance, just this weekend, driving around Bedford, NY, I remembered that Richard Gere has an inn and restaurant up there, but couldn’t remember the name. Typing in “Richard Gere restaurant” into the Google Maps app on the iPhone returned nothing, so I closed that and clicked on the Google Mobile Apps icon. When I selected search, it encouraged me to try Voice Search. Maybe it always did that, but it was the first time I had noticed it. Already frustrated at that point and not wanting to retype my query, I tried ...

cFosSpeed is a Traffic Shaping driver for DSL modems and routers
Internet acceleration and advanced Traffic Shaping for USB DSL Modems Routers and LAN DSL Modems
Here are some key features of quot cFosSpeed quot
middot Perfect for online gamers
middot Extended Traffic Shaping for DSL modems cable modems amp routers
middot Highly responsive when used with online games and filesharing P2P like eMule Kazaa or Bittorrent
middot Minimal ping times for streaming audio amp video Voice over IP VoIP Internet Radio etc
middot Individual program prioritization

DAEMON Tools is an advanced application for Microsoft Windows which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry
With DAEMON Tools you can back up your physical CD DVD HD DVD Blu ray discs into ldquo virtual discs rdquo or so called ldquo disc image rdquo files which run directly on your hard drive You can also work with images created by other burning programs DAEMON Tools supports variety of image types Use CD DVD image converter to have one format images in your Image Catalog
A virtual disc has much better access rates than a physical one in a corresponding physical drive because the reading speed of a virtual CD DVD HD DVD Blu ray ROM is 50x faster compared to normal drive
With DAEMON Tools you would receive up to 32 virtual SCSI drives and 2 virtual IDE drives that behave just like the ldquo real rdquo physical ones
No more CD DVD drive noise No waiting for disc loading No need to buy external optical drive for your netbook DAEMON Tools enables you to use your CD DVD images as if they were already burned to CD DVD