Latest Home Dehumidifier By Panasonic : Dries More Than Your Room

If you are handed over something which not only dries up your room quickly, but dries up your just washed clothes with an electric speed too, probably you would be happier than normal, wouldn't you?

Also, definitely, you would love something which can remove the foul smell completely found in your clothes and in-home atmosphere caused by imbalanced humidity. Moreover, it can also get you rid of all the allergens which cause a havoc around you.

This is possible because it has got a filter made of anti-bacteria enzyme and super alleru-buster and has got two-way air outlets which keep balancing the internal temperature.

And this 'something' is nothing but the recently launched, almost a fortnight ago, Panasonic dehumidifier. This is called F-YHC12X and aims to put all your 'dry' woes to an end. Amazingly, this consumer appliance works with almost double efficiency. It measures 54cm by 34 cm by 21cm.

Unlike the older dehumidifiers which dried, or dry, not more than two pounds of clothes, this latest household appliance by Panasonic can dry upto 4-4.5 pounds of clothes taking not more than 55 minutes only. Definitely, you are not going to lose something which is twofold effective and a product of efficient hybrid technology.

Most importantly, it will fit comprehensively into your energy saving plans. Its humidity sensor keeps a continuous tab on the clothes and as soon as it senses no moisture inside, it stops working ensuring no extra energy consumption. Thus you get your clothes saved from getting deteriorated too.

Moreover, it works according to the amount of internal temperature, moisture and humidity. Thus it can modulate its efficiency as per the need. So its 'drying' ability is proportionate to the moisture found in the clothes and the room.

Finally, it is again up to you only as how you are to bring this HK$3,680 Panasonic dehumidifier in this blood soaking phase of global recession.

Dacor Ensures A Furnished Kitchen Amid Recession

Now the consumers will have their dream-kitchen, even in this groaning phase of recession, if they happen to follow the latest consumer promotion sparked by Dacor, an established name since 1965, in the field of making one of the most luxurious and stylish kitchen appliances.

According to this consumer promotion initiative, a consumer, up to 30 th April, 2009, can get numerous gift and concession plans comprising cash back rebates and complementary products. This exciting consumer appliances promotion is applicable to a range of selected kitchen appliances produced by Decor, based in California.

The move by the company has got much admiration and recommendations. Consumers, now, are happy to know that there is something in the market which can help them to remodel their kitchen, despite the fact of this rugged market slope which has affected every department of their lives.

Consumers, preferred to have held the money tightly, are coming to spend, without any caution, as they have visualized getting something in concrete form what once they had dreamed of. This was echoed by Steve Joseph, Vice President, Marketing, too as he said, "It's an extremely challenging time and we are all concerned about how we spend each dollar, wanting to be sure we make the best possible investment."

He further said, “For the customers who are currently in the market to remodel, we wanted to let them know that there are a variety of options available that will still allow them to install premium appliances in their kitchens." Of course, if a consumer gets ovens, refrigerators and many other kitchen appliances with a variety of offers, he/she will feel a great load of irresistible temptation to bring them in.

Look out below what are the special offers Dacor has in the block.

You can get a free

Warming Drawer or Microwave, if you buy an eligible Cooktop and a Wall Oven.

Warming Drawer or Microwave and $100 cash back, if you buy an eligible Cooktop,a Wall Oven and a Freestanding Refrigerator.

Ventilation Hood, Integrated Ventilation System or Epicure Raised Ventilation and $100 cash, if you buy an Epicure Dual-Fuel Range and Freestanding Refrigerator.

This is just a glimpse of unlimited gift offers planned by Dacor. In fact you have to go to a nearby kitchen appliances store in order to know more about what Dacor has in its Pandora's box. So hurry up before it is April 30, this year. Get Set Cook!

SanDisk Plans To Produce 'X4' Flash Chips With Toshiba

Probably, tired of making 16GB and 32GB flash chips, at a San Francisco technology conference, Sandisk announced about its an ambitious plan to start manufacturing high-end memory chips. Such memory chips would have a capacity of 64GB and be based on X4 technology.

Thus in each memory cell, we can be allowed to pack four bits of data, unlike the modern chips which can contain no more than two bits of data in a memory cell.

This was confirmed by the senior vice president of SanDisk, Khandker Quader. When contacted, he said, "It is a 64-gigabit single die (chip), which is 8GB (per die), the highest capacity point in the industry."

The making of these generation next flash chips will be done with an strategic business alliance with another technology giant Toshiba. They are planning to use 43-nanometer manufacturing process technology while the making of these X4' Flash Chips.

Apart from having a capacity to store fourfold data, this chip is also equipped to control the movement of data too. The company calls this technology “X4 controller.” These controllers boost the performance of a chip when the density of the chips increases.

Though the 'X4' Flash Chip is a joint venture of SanDisk and Toshiba, according to Khandker Quader, the “X4 controller technology is solely owned by SanDisk.” He also emphasizes that these chips "will be sold as an integrated solution." Thanks to their increased memory and “controller” feature.

These X4 flash chips, capable of transferring data at the speed of 7.8 megabytes per second, will hit the market shelves around the second quarter this year.

International Space Station Laptops Got Virus Infected

According to NASA officials, a virus of low-destructive ability had infected the laptops being used at International Space Station. Though a laptop might have been partially damaged, the whole of the computers used to control the space operations remained intact.

The virus was capable of stealing password of laptops used by gamers of as many as ten different online games. However, it couldn't bring a serious harm to the space station, so its functions are found in normal conditions.

The NASA officials have termed this computer virus as W32.Gammima.AG. This low-risk virus, according to Symantec, an anti-virus software company, based in California, is a Window based virus. It needs to get copied, for its spread, using removable media.

NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries described this password thief as a “nuisance.” He said, “This is basically a nuisance, ” from Johnson Space Center in houston.

Interestingly, this virus was detected much earlier, on July 25. The search is on to detect and trace how it got to reach this too secured space station. However, NASA officials, bound by NASA protocol,refrained from briefing on the details of the virus, and the quantum and type of efforts taken to stop it from inspiring any potential damage to computers.

Further, they seemed confident to track its origin as Humphries said, "We'll do our best to track down how it got there and close that gateway."

But didn't seem perturbed by this latest invasion of a virus on board. "This is not a frequent occurrence but we have had viruses that have made their way on board before," he said. Importantly, the space station has a history of such virus attacks.

Gene Therapy Set to Make A Deaf Ear Singing

The days are not faraway, if an Oregon team is to be believed, when one can see a deaf listening to the chart busters and enjoying symphonies and we may ,also, see them dancing to many tunes.

Most probably, dancing to the tunes of a certain gene, which the scientists believe can bring back the lost hearing ability.

The scientists have shown success in reproducing cochlear hair cells. These cells are efficient converters of sound waves into electric signals. These signals after reaching brain turn into things what we hear or listen to.

Any damage to these hair cells lead to hearing impairment. These hair cells are mostly damaged by the continuous and elongated exposure to harsh and loud noise.

The medical professionals, once completely clueless, had been trying hard to come up with solution to bring an end to this damage. The recent breakthrough has shown many ray of hopes to millions of hearing impaired around the globe.

The experiment, on an unborn mouse, by the medical experts of Oregon Health and Science University became fruitful when it converted a different cell into a specific cochlear hair cell. The team is led by John Brigande.

They performed the gene therapy , on that unborn mouse, using a harmless virus. The key genes,Atoh1, related to hearing ability, were inserted into cells to produce the cochlear hair cells .

The experts found the newly developed cells no less useful than the natural cochlear hair cells . As the hearing ability of the mouse was found pretty normal.

However, the therapy still not done on a human, is the first of its gene therapy helpful to reproduce or repair cochlear hair cells.

Significantly, if this therapy comes favorable, the use of any mechanical or electrical devices can be forbidden in the treatment of damaged cochlea.

Moreover, seeing the result of the early experiments, it is very likely that it will work on humans too. That's why the researchers at Oregon said, "This capability is a crucial first step in defining translational therapies to ameliorate the effects of inner-ear disease in humans."

At present, the only treatment for hear loss, cochlear implant, is not capable of bringing back the hearing to its normalcy. It provides only a minimized version of the sound sensations.

Hopefully, the deaf will have their hearing days back with the normal and maximized sound sensations, may be very soon.

Forecast of Auto Electronics Market

The worldwide automotive electronics market is predicted to grow at 9% for a total of $173.7 billion by 2013. Sales for 2008 are estimated at $114.5 billion. Strong growth is estimated in driver assistance, car safety systems, and entertainment while the non-entertainment sector consumer retail, powertrain, and body electronics segments will see different growth rates. According to a new research on the non-entertainment automotive electronics market, the global market of non-entertainment automotive electronics is estimated to touch US$52.1 billion by 2010. The forecast of this growth is estimated to be equally distributed among all product segments and regions. The biggest demand is expected from the emerging markets in Asia and East and Central Europe.

• The powertrain electronics will continue to dominate and it constitute 32% of the global market in last few years. It will sustain till 2010.

• The body/chassis electronics will continue to rise at an average growth of 9.4% per year till 2010. During this period, the global market will increase from US$4.0 billion to US$6.3 billion. The manufacturers are looking to enhance the performance and reduce overall system cost, so the trend to fully integrated systems will continue throughout the forecast period.

• The safety and convenience constitute almost 50% of the global non-entertainment auto electronics market at the current time. It was estimated to be at US$18.5 billion in 2005. Overall safety and convenience accounted for 50.3% of the global market in 2005 at US$18.5 billion. Multiplexing/electrical distribution, body controllers and navigation, all of them are fore casted to grow at a rapid rate till 2010. The navigation market, combined with audio and entertainment will be one of the fastest growing section of the auto electronics market. The driver supporting systems, like night vision, collision avoidance and lane departure warning is also expected to show strong growth.

Toyota Motor Corp. is the undisputed leader in hybrid car manufacturing market. Honda Motor Co. Ltd is at second spot, trying hard to grab some of Toyota's share. General Motors Corp. dominates in the United States market and has the broadest portfolio in the hybrid market. However it lags far behind in the competition in terms of sales. With the continuous improvement in hybrid technologies and decreasing manufacturing costs, the powertrain segment should experience higher growth.

White Space: The Debate Over Free Wireless Spectrum

With the announcement of the website “FreetheAirWaves.com” by Google in order to support the white space campaign, the debate over the “white space” issue has reached a new level.

In terms of Google white space is the space of unused frequencies in the range traditionally defined for Television channels. Google and some other leading companies wants to transform this range from licensed, like TV where specific frequencies are granted exclusively to a specific channel, to unlicensed, like Wi-Fi where anyone can use it. They call it "Wi-Fi on steroids." The spectrum would enable longer-range, higher data rate, and faster wireless connectivity for all types of gadgets.

Along with Google other technology companies like Intel, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Phillips Electronics are united in a coalition called the Wireless Innovation Alliance. They have been lobbying the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to open up this spectrum for unlicensed use after the digital TV transition early next year.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and phone companies are entirely against this initiative. The TV and phone companies want exclusive rights to various frequencies. These spectrum that sit idle between TV channels as buffers, in order to ensure that TV signals don't interfere with each other, could be used to provide broadband wireless services. But according to the broadcasters, these channels will cause interference with their TV signals and eventually resulting in major problems for people watching TV.

The FCC has done a number of testing of the spectrum to see if wireless devices will interfere with each other. The results of the tests have been mixed. But Google has make out a solution for this problem. Now it is proposing new rules to designate specific frequencies for TVs, wireless microphones, and for other devices, and then another spectrum for wireless Internet access.

Next month the FCC is likely to release a report based on the test results. It will finally vote on whether to open the spectrum in the next few months. This issue has become as much of a political debate as it has a technical one. The National Association of Broadcasters is pointing that interference can't be avoided, based on tests as evidence. While Google and other technology companies argue that these are simply proof of concept devices and are not even like the prototypes that could be used in commercial products.

NAB and other Wireless companies, such as Verizon are opposing the use of white spaces because they have their own business motivations for opposing the use of white spaces. The afraid of interference might be a concern for the NAB but the more prominent reason for opposing this concept is that its members are reluctant to give up control of airwaves, which they believes are theirs.

Along with other technology companies, Google has its own motivations and interests to consider. Google can make more from advertising if more wireless spectrum and broadband services are available. Other companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Motorola would also be benefited as they could sell more products and services to consumers who use this unlicensed spectrum.

2nd quarter of 2008 proves fruitful for global mobile device market

Unlike the first quarter of 2008, the second quarter of this year proves to be beneficial for the mobile phone vendors worldwide. According to the research firm ABI, 301 million units were shipped in this quarter. It positively reaffirms the forecast that the global device market will deliver 13% growth in 2008 and mobile shipment will touch the 1.3 billion units mark.

Despite the slowdown of world economy, the tier one handset vendors enjoyed shipment growth between 15 and 22 percent. Eliminating the inflation woes, consumers in emerging market in Asia, Africa, South America, and Middle East fearlessly signed up smart mobile phones. According to Jake Saunders, ABI Research vice president, “If there is an economic slowdown, no one bothered to tell the mobile device buying public. These healthy gains in net subscriber additions are stimulating replacement and upgrade sales. In developed markets handset purchases tended to be flat, but those consumers who did purchase dug deeper and paid out more for coveted higher-end handsets and smart-phones.” In spite of the turbulence in the global economy the mass market’s attraction with getting the latest and greatest handset shows no sign of weakening.

Nokia continues to be the undisputed leader in the handset market. For the first time Nokia surpassed the 40% market share. Samsung was far behind at the second place with 15.2% share. Motorola and LG are too close to each other. Motorola's share is 9.3% slightly ahead of LG's 9.2%. at the end of third quarter of 2008 lg might take over Motorola. At the fifth place was Sony Ericsson with the market share of 8.3%.

Nokia has been continuously refreshing its portfolio in the high-end, mid-tier categories and the ultra-low cost handset market. Nokia’s overall market share is likely to hold.

China has the largest number of Netizens

The home of world's largest population, China, has now the most number of Netizens too. According to the figures released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China has currently 253 million people using the net thus surging ahead of United States, which currently has 223 million Internet users.

The number of Internet users in US constitutes 71 percent of its entire population while the Chinese netizens constitutes only 19 percent of entire population. The figures itself indicates that China will hugely outnumber US in near future. CNNIC, China's official net monitoring body, told BBC, "This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's number one". Since last year the number of net users have shown 56 percent increase and it is predicted that it will continue to increase by around 18 percent per year.

The Internet market is booming in China and so is the Web advertising. According to the investment firm Morgan Stanley, on-line advertising market in China is growing by 60 to 70 percent a year. By the end of this year it could touch a $1.7 billion market. “The Internet market is the fastest-growing consumer market sector in China. We are still far from saturation. So the next three to five years, we’re still going to see hyper-growth in this market.”, said Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley.

China’s topmost Internet companies, including Tencent, Baidu, Sina and Alibaba, are flourishing and are outperforming the China-based operations of American Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and eBay. The upcoming Beijing Olympics has partly helped the advertising sales. Riding on this wave the Chinese search engine, Baidu showed an 87 percent increase in profits in the second quarter of 2008. Baidu is currently holding a market share of 63 % in the Chinese search market. Its closest rivals, Google holds 26% of the Chinese search market, while Yahoo holds only 8 percent.

Though China tops in the race of the number of Internet users but it has yet to catch the US in terms of total revenue generated. The figures released by Analysys International states that China's Internet firms made total revenues of $5.9billion in 2007. For the same period US combined Internet revenue was around $21.2billion.

Cuil: Claiming to be the coolest search engine

The list of search engines is growing and the latest addition is Cuil, pronounced as cool. The first and foremost thing I want to tell about Cuil is that it is founded by a team of ex Google alumni, including Anna Patterson chief architect of the company’s Tera Google search index. So its comparison with Google is inevitable.

Layout is simple and effective

The homepage of Cuil search engine is quite simple. It has a black background, the Cuil's logo, and the search box. The search form return typing suggestions. The search result display of Cuil is quite different and unique compared to other search engines. Instead of displaying the searches in a list, it displays in three columns. It also includes related images along with the searches. Cuil shows the related searches in the box on the top right, and also in a bar right underneath the search box. However unlike Google and others, Cuil neither check your spelling nor suggest you the correct search terms.

Comparison with Google

People have started considering Cuil as the biggest threat to Google. But it is just the starting time for Cuil and it would be foolish to compare it with Google. According to the Cuil VP of communications, Vince Sollitto, "We are trying to give people different results. Cuil is pitched as an alternative to traditional search engines, and users should not expect the results to be the same”.

Google is far ahead of its peers, Yahoo and Microsoft, in terms of paid search business. In 2007, Google’s paid search business made up 40% of all online search dollars. Yahoo and Microsoft have tried and tested a lot of measures and spent billions trying to figure out how to narrow the gap on Google in the lucrative paid search market.

It will not be an easy way for Cuil to make a mark in the search engines market and that too in near future. Only time will tell that how far it goes in this race.

What are the new features in WordPress 2.6

Blogging has provided an efficient and magnificent tool to publicize info about any company on the net. We have got so many blogging platforms and WordPress is one of them. WordPress has released its new version 2.6. WordPress 2.6 has got a no. of features for content creation and improvements. We will just take a look at the major and minor features of the newer version.

Here are the major important features of WordPress's newer version:

Edit-Tracking: The new edit-tracking system will be quite handy for multi-author blogs. It allows you to see the changes made to a post and enable you to see who made what changes to a post and when. It also provides the option to revert back to the older version of a post, in case you make a mistake.

Press This: “Press This” is like a bookmark you can add to your toolbar. It offers a fast and smart popup to do postings to your WordPress blog. Suppose you are viewing a Youtube video and finds it relevant for your blog and want to post it on your blog, then what you have to do is to just click “Press this” button. It will automatically extract the embedded code and post it on your blog. In the same way you can post to your blog from anywhere on the net.

Google Gears Support: The most exciting feature of WordPress version 2.6 is support for Google Gears. Gears is an open source browser extension project provided by Google. You can cache the most important files of the WordPress management console to your local hard drive, by clicking the "Turbo" button in the upper right-hand corner of the WordPress administrative interface. It will allow the authors to keep blogging even if the network connectivity is temporarily lost.

Theme Previews: Theme Preview support permits the admin to preview how their site will look with a new user interface before making it live. As soon as you select a theme, it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content. It will be great for just test driving the themes prior to publishing. It will also be helpful for the persons developing a theme and need to test it without allowing anybody to see your ongoing mistakes development.


Following are the smaller features and improvements in 2.6:

• Word count: It does the counting of number of words in your post.
• Image captions: Now you can add sweet image captions at your will.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.

Apart from these there are a number of small changes and new features. Only time will tell that how much these new features help the bloggers.

Be ready for the new gaming experiences

Holiday season is approaching fast and so is the gaming season. Considering the right time to turn consoles and games into commercial market, the biggest companies in the video game console business, Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp., and Nintendo corp., have come up with new games and services at the same time, targeting mainstream users like never before.

Earlier most video game consoles were aimed at serious players who spent the most money and time on games but now the companies are aiming at players who purchase game machines when their costs are reduced and when better arrays of titles become available.

So what are the offers?

Microsoft has clinched a deal with Netflix Inc., an online rental service, to stream movies over the Internet to Xbox 360 game machines. The announcement came on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo Media and Business Summit, a major video game industry trade show in Los Angeles. The Xbox owners will now be able to watch movies streamed through game consoles to their TVs.

Sony is also expected to demonstrate its own service for downloading movies and television shows from the Internet to PlayStation 3s. According to Sony, this summer, its store for buying and renting movies and other video content on the PlayStation 3 should go online.

The credit of all these current moves, by Sony and Microsoft, goes to the sensational commercial success of rival Nintendo Co. Nintendo turned industry rules by going after casual game players with its Wii gaming system right from the day the console went on sale.

Nintendo stressed on fun intuitive Wii games. Instead of the costly and hyper-realistic graphics favored by hard-core players, it has been using the console's motion-sensing controller. In the U.S., Microsoft and Nintendo are neck-to-neck in selling their latest generation of consoles.

It is slated to release a new video game accessory for its Wii game system, Wii Motion Plus. It will help improve responsiveness and precision in tracking the hand movements of players. The new accessory will attach to the existing motion-sensing controller. The device will enable even slight flicks of the wrist and arm to be rendered on screens.

Isn't it looks exciting for the video game lovers?

Microsoft's another offer: Yahoo's same answer

In yet another negotiation round, Yahoo again said no to the proposal offered by the Microsoft Corp and billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The duo, Microsoft and Carl Icahn, made a proposal on 11 july and gave yahoo only 24 hours to decide, which Yahoo!'s board rejected saying, it is not in line with shareholder interests.

According to Roy Bostock, Yahoo chairman, "Carl Icahn and Microsoft presented us with a 'take it or leave it' proposal under which we would be required to restructure the Company, hand over to Microsoft Yahoo!'s valuable search business and to Carl Icahn the rest of the Company, giving us less than 24 hours to respond. It is ludicrous to think that our Board could accept such a proposal."

Though Yahoo seemed prepared to sell the whole company to Microsoft for $33 a share, but it is not ready to spilt the company. The company feels that its current business and search advertising deal with Google is worth more than the Microsoft's offer. The concerns were also that once sold to Microsoft, the company would be run by Icahn and his directors, who have little knowledge of running an internet company.

If sources are to be believed, the improved terms included $2.3 billion in guaranteed annual revenue from search advertising for five years. There was the option to extend the deal for another five years.

Latest electronics & electrical industry news.

Recycle your mobile phone & help environment

When you buy a new cell phone what you do with your old phone? Just throw in the drawer or pass it your friend or someone else! You are not alone in doing so. Have you ever thought about recycling your mobile phone? Perhaps you are not aware about it! Again you are not alone. 97% people don't recycle their phone.

In a recent worldwide survey, conducted by Nokia in accordance with the global consumer survey, it is found that only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones. The survey was conducted in 13 countries including Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, UAE, US, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, and 6500 people were interviewed. The survey was conducted to help Nokia find out more about consumers' attitudes and behaviors towards recycling.

Unawareness: The prime concern

Nearly half the people are even not aware of the fact that their mobile could be recycled. Two-third of the interviewers said they did not know how to recycle an unwanted device while 71% were unaware of where to do this. If each of the 3 billion mobile owners brought back just one unused device, even a mobile phone battery charger, 240 000 tonnes of raw materials can be saved and it will help reduce the greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road.

The survey highlighted that on an average, each person own five mobile phones. 4% of these are being thrown into landfill and 44%, are simply being kept at homes never used. Some mobile phones are given another life, one-fourth are passed to friends or family, and 16% are sold in emerging markets.

74% of consumers don't think about recycling their phones, whereas 72%, think recycling makes a difference to the environment. The result was uniformly found in different countries with 88% of people in Indonesia not considering recycling unwanted devices, 84% in India, and 78% of people in Brazil, Sweden, Germany and Finland.

Helping the environment

80% of any Nokia device is recyclable. The precious materials within these devices can be reused to help make new products such as park benches, kitchen utensils, metal musical instruments or dental fillings. According to Markus Terho, the director of environmental affairs at Nokia, “Using the best recycling technology nothing is wasted. Between 65 - 80% of a Nokia device can be recycled. Plastics that can't be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill.”

Nokia has collection points for unwanted mobile devices in 85 countries around the world. People can drop off their old devices at Nokia stores and 5,000 Nokia Care Centers. To find their nearest take-back point, people can visit www.nokia.com/werecycle.

400 GB of data on a single Blu-ray disc

400 GB of data on a single disc. Seems to be quite amusing for some while some would say that it will take time to achieve it. But Japanese electronics giant Pioneer has made it possible. Pioneer has developed world's first 16-layer blu-ray disc, squeezing 25 GB of data on each layer thus totalling to an amazing figure of 400GB.

The currently commercially available blu-ray discs have the storage capacity of 25 GB. Those having two layers can store 50 GB of data. The problem in developing multiple layers disc have been to obtain a clear and stable signal from each recording layer. The frequently visited problems were crosstalk from adjacent layers and transmission loss. Pioneer managed to overcome these issues and developed a disc structure that reduces crosstalk from adjacent layers. Finally it came with a 16-layer optical disc that can play back high-quality signals from each layer.

The good news is that these high capacity discs are backward-compatible and will play on blu-ray disc players. These discs can be read using the same objective lens in current Blu-ray drives. Video game publishers and movie studios can use these discs to take more content on a single disc.

With the development of this technology, Pioneer is putting a green spin on the development. Discs with such enormous capacities mean fewer resources are consumed to deliver the same data or movies on Blu-ray media. For consumers, the main advantage of this technology is the chances of renting an entire season of a television show or collection of movies on a single disc. No need of disc-swapping.

So what do you think? Isn't it the future of data storage?

New chip cooling technology

According to Moore's law the density of chips in microprocessors keep doubling every two years. With the increasing density and effectiveness of the current chips the amount of heat generated by these chips is also increasing. To cope with the enormous heat, new technologies will be needed in future to cool the integrated chips that produces much more heat than the current microprocessors.

Such a new technology has been developed at Purdue University that uses "microjets" to deposit liquid into tiny channels. This technology is able to remove five times more heat than other experimental high-performance chip-cooling methods.


The conventional computer chips usually generate about 100 watts per square centimeter. The chips are air-cooled with finned metal plates called heat sinks and often a small CPU fan. Most of the liquid-cooling techniques are limited to a cooling capacity of about 200 watts per square centimeter. However the new microjet technology is able to cool chips that generate more than 1,000 watts of heat per square centimeter. With its help new doors in the advancement of chips technology can be opened.

This technology is a combination of two cooling methods, the microjets and microchannels, hence called a hybrid system. The microjets cools uniformly because the liquid is supplied in the form of jets everywhere along the length of each channel. It helps to prevent any part of chips from overheating. The coolant is collected at either ends of the channels and is circulated back through the system.

The channels in this cooling system is narrower than a millimeter, or thousandth of a meter wide. They are formed on top of a chip and covered with a metal plate. This metallic plate has tiny holes through which the coolant is pumped in microjets, and then the liquid flows along channels to cool the chip. When the coolant gets heated by the hot chip inside the channels, it bubbles and becomes a vapor, easing the cooling process.

This new technology uses a hydrofluorocarbon as the cooling liquid. It is a dielectric and will not conduct electricity or cause short circuits. However hydroflurocarbons are not very efficient coolants and their heat conductivity is far lower than water. But they avoid electrical short circuits and are environmentally better than other coolants. They have low global-warming effects and are not harmful to the ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere.

World record downloading for firefox 3.0

Within the first day of the release of Mozilla Firefox 3.0 , an unique world record was created. A record breaking 8,002,530 downloads took place for web browser Firefox 3.0. Mozilla officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

According to the Marketing head Paul Kim, "The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen". He told the BBC News: "The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea. It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world." It was called an extremely impressive accomplishment by Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records.

Some security firms claimed to found flaws in the software on the very first day of its release. Within few hours of Firefox 3.0 debut, DV Labs/Tipping Point reported a flaw that potentially let an attacker take over a personal computer if a user clicked on a booby-trapped link. Mr Kim told the BBC News: "Firefox users are safe. We have a patch in the works and hope to release it very soon."

It seems happy timing for the Firefox as its market share reached to more than 19%, second best to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. According to the statistics firm Net Applications, a substantial part of the gain came from rival IE and predicted that it would break the 20% share bar very soon. Mr Kim said: "We offer the best browsing experience and this shows people are getting the message and voting with their browser choice."

10 years for Paypal

10 years ago fewer people dreamed of sending and receiving money all around the world through a single click of a mouse button. It was June 23, 1998 when Paypal was borne to make it possible. The idea of Paypal founders, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek, was to allow the shoppers to buy an item online without sharing financial information, and at the same time, enable retailers, small-business owners and individuals a guaranteed quick and sure payment for a small fee.

Since the takeover by eBay, an online auction house, in 2002 Paypal made more than 60 million active accounts in 190 countries and 17 currencies around the world. The company has carved a niche for itself in the online payments market and is now the most popular alternative to long-established leaders Visa and MasterCard.

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary Paypal officially launched a micro-site, https://www.paypal-10.com/, featuring a series of video interviews with PayPal's founders and others key officials who played important roles in the company's history.

Future lies ahead

With the rapidly increasing use of online purchasing worldwide the use of PayPal service is slated to grow even more in the future. According to a study released by Javelin Research & Strategy in September 2007, the alternative payment methods like PayPal will increase to gain 30% of all online transaction volume by 2012.

A survey conducted by PayPal shows that 84% percent of US respondents have been shopping online for five or more years and 87% report that they shop via the Web at least once a month. It is the most popular online payment service in Britain, with more than 20 million registered users. At present PayPal has 7,000 employees worldwide. In the first quarter of 2008 Paypal posted revenue of $582 million, a 32 % rise from last year.

Some Paypal Facts

• Paypal processes around US $2,000 every second in payments.
• PayPal payments represent about 9 percent of e-commerce globally and 12 percent in the U.S.
• It operates in 190 countries and transfer money in 17 currencies.
• It operates more than 60 million active accounts through which it transacted $47 billion in 2007.
• More than 100,000 websites accepts the service of Paypal.

Citysense: Socializing the network

Suppose you have set your mobile alarm at 7:30 a.m., but it starts ringing at 7:00 a.m. in order to let you know that the city is busier than normal. This is not my speculation but a reality that you will soon get in your own city. You can use many other such real time like getting traffic updates on a specific route, crowd gathering in restaurants or pubs.

A New York based company Sense Networks is ready to index the real world with its recently launched services, CitySense and MacroSense. The services use a combination of cell phone data, WiFi activity and vehicle GPS locations to measure where crowds are -- and then put the information to use in a number of ways.

You can use this program on your Blackberry and soon on your i Phone -- to locate a city's hotspots at no cost. Once you sign up to this program, it will remember what kind of locations you visit and then compares your movements to other users with similar patterns. According to Skibiski, Sense Networks CEO and cofounder, it opens up an entirely new kind of social networking.

Social Privileges

Using the citysense service, people can look at real time maps to track crowd activity and decide the least congested routes. If you are planning to go for an outing or a nightclub, this service can guide you to discover the busiest places at the moment. Both the services can prove revolutionary from the social perspective. They can easily rectify a lot of our day to day problems. At the moment this program is only available in San Francisco.

Business Applications

Another application of this program is MacroSense, the business application of Sense Networks. All the electronic data currently just floating around can be harnessed by all the companies that want to utilize this service. The giant retail stores can use this service to track the traffic patterns and that will help them to put their stores at the most suitable places.

MacroSense provides the companies a wide range of information ranging from where else its customers shop to how far people travel to get to its stores. It can also determine where customers were exactly before entering the business.

Securing Privacy

A lot of questions arose about people's privacy but Sense Networks has its answers. All the data collected is anonymous that means no specific users can be identified and users will be able to remove their information at any time. They have the choice to delete either their data from the past 24 hours or all their data while connected to the CitySense service.

Roadrunner tops fastest computer's race

Only the name has changed. IBM retained the title of world's fastest computer makers. Instead of the perennial winner Blue Gene/L, this time it is Roadrunner, housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. This supercomputer from IBM attains the speed of petaflops, first ever attained by any computer.

The ranking was announced this Wednesday during the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, a biannual event that ranks the 500 most powerful computers around the world. According to the TOP500 ranking, it achieved a peak performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS (floating point operations per second) to take the top spot. One petaflop is equal to a quadrillion, or one thousand trillion, calculations per second. The No. 2 BlueGene/L, also made by IBM Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, attained the speed of 478.2 teraflops.

IBM's Roadrunner is powered by 12,240 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell chips similar to those found in the gaming console. The basic computing functions are handled by 6,562 AMD Opteron dual-core processors, leaving the Cell chips available to deal with the heavy lifting necessary for the math-intensive calculations in which the processors specialize. It takes the space of 278 refrigerator-size server racks.

IBM, continuing its dominance in supercomputing, makes 210 of the 500 supercomputers. 5 out of the top 10 supercomputers comes from IBM. Just behind them is HP (Hewlett-Packard ), making 183 of the fastest computers.

The Top 10 Fastest Supercomputers

Take a look

• The fastest supercomputer in the world is also one of the most energy efficient.

• The No. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are located in U.S. Department of Energy labs.

• U.S. continues to be the hub of supercomputers in the world having more than half of the systems (257) located in the U.S.

• U.S. is followed by U.K. with 53, Germany with 46, France with 34, Japan with 22, and China with 12. More than half of the systems used Quad-core processors.

• Majority of the systems (208 of the 500) contain between 2,049 and 4,096 processors. It is more than double the systems that used that amount just six months ago.

• Intel dominates the high-end processor market with 75 percent of all systems on the list and 90 percent of the quad-core based systems that were ranked.