Edunology - Saumya Aggarwal

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Notwithstanding opposition from telecom operators, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has made it clear that it is not going to withdraw its move to restrict SMS to 100 per day per SIM for all subscribers. The restriction on SMS, however, will not be applicable on festival days such as Diwali and Eid.

The cap has already been effective from 27 Septembet, 2011.

My view:

The move will not go down well with the operators. But does anyone care? Not really, apart from youths who have been trained to do heavy texting by pesky operators, nobody should complaint. Personally, now I wake up without junk sms of real estate developers and marketing company messages selling only the things that I do not require.

Bottomline: Very bold move by TRAI and would be respected by many than otherwise.

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Another rapid release of Firefox is now available, this time with a number of core new features, but not without its problems.

The problem first for relief to those suffering from it, currently builds of Firefox 7 have an issue that causes your installed add-ons to disappear. Mozilla assures that they are still there, along with all their data. In fact you can use this add-on in the meantime to recover them.

This release is significant in a number of ways, since it includes features that are a culmination of work that happened over multiple release cycles. Firstly we have the MemShrink effort that aims to reduce the memory requirement of Firefox. The result is that Firefox 7 is much more memory-efficient. It generally uses lesser memory than Firefox 6, and is much better at releasing unused memory when tabs are closed etc. The MemShrink effort isn't over, it will continue to have an influence in future Firefox releases.

Another major new feature is Azure, which is the rendering backend for Gecko. Azure performs much better than the previous Cairo backend. Azure is intended to be a stateless graphics API that closely maps to Direct2D. As a result it can give best performance improvements on Windows Vista / 7 systems with a good graphics card. Azure can take multiple backends for different 3D APIs such as OpenGL, Direct3D and Direct 2D. Currently Azure is only in use for rendering the 2D canvas using Direct2D (Windows Vista and above). Eventually Azure will replace the API Firefox uses to render all its content and will be accelerated on all platforms.

Thirdly, Firefox 7 now includes basic support for measuring the performance of the browser and reporting it to Mozilla so that this information can be used to improve future versions of Firefox. This new telemetry feature in Firefox will prompt the user to be enabled the first time it is launched, and after that it can be enabled from the Firefox options. No personal data will be collected in the process of course, only memory usage, CPU core count, cycle collection times, and startup speed.

Firefox 7 also comes with a number of new features for developers, such as new HTML5, CSS and JavaScript features. Firefox 7 updates the WebSocket protocol implementation to the latest standard, and adds support for the Navigation Timing specification. The Navigation Timing specification allows developers to monitor and collect data about the performance of their web page in the end-users' browsers.

The latest version of Firefox can be downloaded from the Mozilla website, although you might want to wait for an update that resolves the Add-ons issue before you update.

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Kaspersky Labrecently announced that it has appointed Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador, starting October 2011. Calling it an “exclusive association in the antimalware field,” Sachin will represent Kaspersky Lab brand in India, as well as other regional markets around the world.

“Cricket is like religion in India. The youth of this nation looks up to Sachin Tendulkar as a huge inspiration. We are naturally excited to be associated with the cricketing maestro....Sachin Tendulkar personifies our core brand truths of Relentless Expertise, Always Ahead, Different, Optimized and Reassuring. We recognized the great synergy between our brand and Sachin Tendulkar, both being leaders and specialists in their own fields. Through this association, Kaspersky Lab aims to strengthen brand recall to meet the company’s ambitious growth plans. We believe that Kaspersky Lab will benefit from the tremendous credibility and influence of brand Sachin.”

''I am very happy to be associated with Kaspersky Lab - a leader in IT security space. To be part of their major involvement in sponsorship of world-class sporting events such as motor sports, rugby, and now cricket will indeed be wonderful. I myself have used Kaspersky products in the past to protect my personal computers and mobile devices, and am satisfied with the performance, security and speed. Just like in cricket, where you need quicker reflexes, what I understand is that Kaspersky’s response time to threats is much quicker and faster than the others.” 

My view on the tieup:
Very strategic move by Kaspersky Lab. It is already known by moderate computer users in India. With Brand Ambassador in place, surely the target segment is home user rather than corporate world. Even having brand presence in mind of users, Indian market is tough to sell softwares more importantly security products. I do believe Kaspersky will be more present but will that mean translation into more sales, we will have to see.
Especially, the market has seen giant Microsoft coming up with free antivirus software "Security Essentials" and we can not deny Norton brand presence in minds of most of Indian users.

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Intel has launched 16 new processors, of which half are new Sandy Bridge or second generation Core processors, and the rest are Pentium and Celeron offerings. The chip giant also announced price cuts for six of its recently released Sandy Bridge offerings.

All this is presumed to be an attempt of keeping alive interest in the Sandy Bridge platform ahead of the AMD Bulldozer launch later this month, and to compete with the AMD Llano Fusion APU, until at least Sandy Bridge Extreme processors, and the Ivy Bridge lineup make it to retail shelves.
The price cuts are minimal, anywhere between $11 and $14, or a 2% to 6% drop that probably won’t make much difference to consumers when building or upgrading their PCs – no-one should let a mere ten dollars to sway their purchasing decision by much more than a hair.

For now, there is no information as to when the new processor models, and the revised prices will hit the Indian market – however, we don’t expect it to take too long, as is usual. Check out the new processors, and various price cuts below. Let us know what you think of Intel’s latest move and offerings in the comments section below:

New Desktop Sandy Bridge Processors
Model	Cores / Threads	CPU clock / with Turbo	L3 Cache	Graphics	Graphics clock / with Turbo	TDP	Price
Core i5-2320	4/4	3.0 / 3.3 GHz	6 MB	HD 2000	850 / 1100 MHz	95 W	$ 177
Core i3-2130	2/4	3.4 / - GHz	3 MB	HD 2000	850 / 1100 MHz	65 W	$ 138
Core i3-2125	2/4	3.3 / - GHz	3 MB	HD 3000	850 / 1100 MHz	65 W	$ 134
Core i3-2120T	2/4	2.6 / - GHz	3 MB	HD 2000	650 / 1100 MHz	35 W	$ 127
Pentium G860	2/2	3.0 / - GHz	3 MB	HD	850 / 1100 MHz	65 W	$ 86
Pentium G630	2/2	2.7 / - GHz	3 MB	HD	850 / 1100 MHz	65 W	$ 75
Pentium G630T	2/2	2.3 / - GHz	3 MB	HD	650 / 1100 MHz	35 W	$ 70
Celeron G540	2/2	2.5 / - GHz	2 MB	HD	850 / 1000 MHz	65 W	$ 52
Celeron G530	2/2	2.4 / - GHz	2 MB	HD	850 / 1000 MHz	65 W	$ 42
Celeron G530T	2/2	2.0 / - GHz.	2 MB	HD	650 / 1100 MHz	35 W	$ 47
Celeron G440	1/1	1.6 / - GHz	1 MB	HD	650 / 1000 MHz	35 W	$ 37

New Mobile Sandy Bridge Processors
Model	Cores / Threads	CPU clock / with Turbo	L3 Cache	Graphics clock / with Turbo	TDP	Price
Core i7-2960XM	4/8	2.7 / 3.7 GHz	8 MB	650 / 1,300 MHz	55 W	$ 1096
Core i7 2860QM	4/8	2.5 / 3.6 GHz	8 MB	650 / 1,300 MHz	45 W	$ 568
Core i7 2760QM	4/8	2.4 / 3.5 GHz	6 MB	650 / 1,300 MHz	45 W	$ 378
Core i7-2640m	2/4	2.8 / 3.5 GHz	4 MB	650 / 1,300 MHz	35 W	$ 346
B840 Celeron	2/2	1.9 / - GHz	2 MB	650 / 950 MHz	35 W	$ 86

New Prices of Existing Desktop Sandy Bridge Processors
Model	Cores / Threads	CPU clock / with Turbo	L3 Cache	Graphics	Old Price	New Price
Core i5-2390T	2 / 4	2.7 / 3.5 GHz	3 MB	HD 2000	$ 195	$ 184
Core i5-2400S	4 / 4	2.5 / 3.3 GHz	6 MB	HD 2000	$ 195	$ 184
Core i5-2405S	4 / 4	2.5 / 3.3 GHz	6 MB	HD 3000	$ 205	$ 201
Core i5-2500T	4 / 4	2.3 / 3.3 GHz	6 MB	HD 2000	$ 216	$ 205
Core i5-2500S	4 / 4	2.7 / 3.7 GHz	6 MB	HD 2000	$ 216	$ 205
Core i7-2600S	4 / 8	2.8 / 3.8 GHz	8 MB	HD 2000	$ 306	$ 294

Source

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Riding on strong users base, twitter has made one more step to woo second largest populated country. It is going to launch its services in Hindi for millions of Indian users.
"After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages," says the company in its blog. It’s notable that both Twitter and Facebook are highly popular in India. Facebook has already launched its services in Hindi and five other Indian languages namely Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali, Telegu and Tamil. As per estimates, Twitter has now nearly 200 million registered users.

Earlier, Twitter had announced accomplishing 100 million active users worldwide. The micro-blogging site put up some interesting figures. It disclosed that 40 percent of its active users simply log on to the website to read out what’s others are posting. “Our 100 million active users range from passionate early adopters to recent coverts, notes the blog.

Twitter still trails far behind Facebook in the number game. Facebook recently announced it has more than 750 million active users worldwide. Twitter is also facing stiff competition from Google+. Earlier this year, LinkedIn had announced hitting 100 million users mark.

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The company makes it sounds easy enough, but in typical Facebook fashion, it's a lot trickier than you'd think. It took me about 80 minutes, start to finish, although most of that time (an hour) was spent waiting for an email for verification. It also took me two shots before I passed the verification test, and seeing as I am indeed who I say I am, I was rather surprised the test was so hard that I couldn't pass it the first time around. It's not a fool-proof test by any means, as you'll see in this step-by-step walkthrough of the process, complete with screens shots at every stage.

On the one hand, it does seem like Facebook made a good faith effort at security. It makes sense that it should be tough to download all your data from the site that hosts more user-uploaded personal information than perhaps any other. On the other hand, the verification process is very odd, and it wouldn't be hard for someone who's not you to pass it if they did a little poking around online. Before you try to back up your Facebook photos, message history, and information, make sure you know what you're getting into, and set aside enough time to do it. November 5 is sooner than you think.

 

1. Find the Link
Go to Account (upper right).

Select Account Settings.

Find and click the little link at the bottom that reads "Download a copy of your Facebook data" (why doesn't it appear in bold like the other important items on the page?).

Click Start My Archive.

2. Wait (and Wait) for an Email
Wait for an email letting you know the archive has been created. For me, this step took about an hour (although the Facebook account I used to test didn't have very much in it, so it could take longer for others).

Copyright © 2010 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.

Source: How to Back Up Your Facebook Data