I KNOW WHAT YOU SURFED LAST NIGHT!

Version 5 of web code may spell end of privacy

HTML 5 Could Give Marketers & Advertisers Access To More Details Of Users’ Online Activities

           Worries over internet privacy have spurred lawsuits, conspiracy theories and consumer anxiety as marketers and others invent new ways to track computer users on the web. But the alarmists have not seen anything yet.  

           In the next few years, a powerful new suite of capabilities will become available to web developers that could give marketers and advertisers access to many more details about computer users’ online activities. Nearly everyone who uses the internet will face the privacy risks that come with those capabilities, which are an integral part of the web language that will soon power the internet: HTML 5.  

           The new web code, the fifth version of Hypertext Markup Language used to create web pages, is already in limited use, and it promises to usher in a new era of internet browsing within the next few years. It will make it easier for users to view multimedia content without downloading extra software; check email offline; or find a favorite restaurant or shop on a smartphone.  

           Most users will clearly welcome the additional features that come with the new web language. “It’s going to change everything about the internet and the way we use it today,” said James Cox, 27, a freelance consultant and software developer at Smokeclouds, a New York City start-up company. “It’s not just HTML 5. It’s the new web.”  

           But others, while also enthusiastic about the changes, are more cautious.  

           Most web users are familiar with so-called cookies, which make it possible, for example, to log on to websites without having to retype user names and passwords, or to keep track of items placed in virtual shopping carts before they are bought.  

           The new language and its additional features present more tracking opportunities because the technology uses a process in which large amounts of data can be collected and stored on the user’s hard drive while online. Because of that process, advertisers and others could see weeks or even months of personal data. That could include a user’s location, time zone, photographs, text from blogs, shopping cart contents, emails and a history of the web pages visited.  

           The new web language “gives trackers one more bucket to put tracking information into,” said Hakon Wium Lie, the chief technology officer at Opera, a browser company. Or as Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum in California, said: “HTML 5 opens Pandora’s box of tracking in the internet.” 

 

NYT NEWS SERVICE

HTML5:Competitor for Flash

We are sure that you’ll agree that HTML is one of the best web inventions of all times. The hyper text markup language is actually the cornerstone of modern web that appears to be a unique and self-sufficient phenomenon.

When HTML5 was being developed its developers have faced the few important issues that were to be solved with the help of HTML5. And one of these problems was creating a really explicit and extensible semantics. Now the tricky part is that the old versions of HTML were also being designed with the versatility in mind – with loads of various tags that were considered absolutely essential but have eventually proved themselves to be totally useless. The approach in the HTML5 has been changed according to the needs of today’s Internet.

HTML5 New Tags

The task that had to be accomplished by the developers was to create the richer and meaningful semantics for HTML5 version – plus the fact that new solution was supposed to be flexible, strongly efficient and of course to correspond to all modern web standards. Now here comes the list of the new tags that will available in HTML5.

tag defines an article

tag defines content aside from the page content

tag defines graphics

tag defines a command button

tag defines details of an element

tag defines a dialog (conversation)

tag defines a group of media content, and their caption

tag defines a footer for a section or page

tag defines a header for a section or page

tag defines information about a section in a document

tag defines a generated key in a form

tag defines marked text

tag defines measurement within a predefined range

tag defines navigation links

tag defines some types of output

tag defines progress of a task of any kind

tag is used in ruby annotations to define what to show browsers that do not support the ruby element.

tag defines explanation to ruby annotations.

tag defines ruby annotations.

tag defines a section

tag defines media resources

tag defines a date/time

Let’s just hope all of these will really be “alive” and useful tags, not just something we think is awesome today.

The Healing by HTML5 – Old Tags, Long Gone…

Now do you remember those old times when HTML3 was a sort of a miracle that could only be seen in Netscape? Yeah, it was the dawn of the Internet era. Of course we must never forget our history but it is a normal thing when we have to say good bye to some good old things (especially when they’re not that good and no one really cares about them anymore).

So, HTML5 developers have recalled some of the tags that only the HTML geeks remember and since those tags are so much obsolete they were excluded from the new HTML – which by the way we would like to thank the HTML5 developers for. After all these old tags are in fact so old that in 20 years our kids are likely to think that they were used by William Shakespeare in his sonets. Anyways, take a last look at the following archaic tags, the only chance to see them again is by visiting the Internet and HTML museum (is there a museum like that by the way?).

tag defines an acronym.

Can Earth's darkest Hour also be our Brightest??

Earth Hour 2010

In 2009 hundreds of millions of people around the world showed their support by turning off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour. In 2010 Earth Hour will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to take responsibility and to get involved in working towards a sustainable future. So turn off your lights for one hour, Earth Hour, 8.30pm, Saturday 27th March 2010.

I created a lantern to show my support for Earth Hour. Create one at http://www.earthhour.org/lantern/

The Future of Storage

The Inevitable Rise of SSDs

So what about SSDs, or solid-state drives? They're by far the buzziest of the storage options, and we're constantly told that solid-state drives will replace hard drives, like, now. That's not quite right. Solid-state drives, which have no moving parts and store data with electrical charge rather than magnetism, are taking over—just, not everything.

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. An SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus easily replacing it in most applications. An SSD using SRAM or DRAM (instead of flash memory) is often called a RAM-drive, not to be confused with a RAM disk. Recently, NAND based flash memory has become the standard for most SSD's.

The original usage of the term "solid-state" (from solid-state physics) refers to the use of semiconductor devices rather than electron tubes but, in the present context, has been adopted to distinguish solid-state electronics from electromechanical devices. With no moving parts, solid-state drives are less fragile than hard disks and are also silent (unless a cooling fan is used); as there are no mechanical delays, they usually enjoy low access time and latency.

Comparison of SSD with hard disk drives

A comparison of SSDs, Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) drives, and hard disk drives (HDDs). The disassembled components of a hard disk drive (left) and of the PCB and components of a solid-state drive (right) Comparisons reflect typical characteristics, and may not hold for a specific device.

Advantages

• Faster start-up because no spin-up is required.
• Fast random access because there is no read/write head
• Low read latency times for RAM drives. In applications where hard disk seeks are the limiting factor, this results in faster boot and application launch times.
• Consistent read performance because physical location of data is irrelevant for SSDs.
  File fragmentation has negligible effect.
• Silent operation due to the lack of moving parts.
• Low capacity flash SSDs have a low power consumption and generate little heat when in use.
• High mechanical reliability, as the lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of "mechanical" failure.
• Ability to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and extremes of temperature. This makes SSDs useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions (flash).
• For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size: although size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash form-factor. As of 2008 SSDs up to 256 GB are lighter than hard drives of the same capacity.
• Flash SSDs have twice the data density of HDDs (so far, with very recent and major developments of improving SSD densities), even up to 1TB disks (currently more than 2TB is atypical even for HDDs). One example of this advantage is that portable devices such as a smartphone may hold as much as a typical person's desktop PC.
• Failures occur less frequently while writing/erasing data, which means there is a lower chance of irrecoverable data damage.
• Defragmenting the SSD is unnecessary. Since SSDs are random access by nature and can perform parallel reads on multiple sections of the drive (as opposed to a HDD, which requires seek time for each fragment, assuming a single head assembly), a certain degree of fragmentation is actually better for reads, and wear leveling intrinsically induces fragmentation.[citation needed] In fact, defragmenting a SSD is harmful since it adds wear to the SSD for no benefit.
  

Disadvantages

• Wear leveling used on flash-based SSDs has security implications. For example, encryption of existing unencrypted data on flash-based SSDs cannot be performed securely due to the fact that wear leveling causes new encrypted drive sectors to be written to a physical location different from their original location—data remains unencrypted in the original physical location. It is also impossible to securely wipe files by overwriting their content on flash-based SSDs.
• As of early-2010, SSDs are still more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. Whereas a normal flash drive is US$2 per gigabyte, hard drives are around US$0.10 per gigabyte for 3.5", or US$0.20 for 2.5".
• The capacity of SSDs is currently lower than that of hard drives. However, flash SSD capacity is predicted to increase rapidly, with drives of 1 TB already released for enterprise and industrial applications.
• Asymmetric read vs. write performance can cause problems with certain functions where the read and write operations are expected to be completed in a similar timeframe. SSDs currently have a much slower write performance compared to their read performance.
• Similarly, SSD write performance is significantly impacted by the availability of free, programmable blocks. Previously written data blocks that are no longer in use can be reclaimed by TRIM; however, even with TRIM, fewer free, programmable blocks translates into reduced performance.
• Flash-memory drives have limited lifetimes and will often wear out after 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 write cycles (1,000 to 10,000 per cell) for MLC, and up to 5,000,000 write cycles (100,000 per cell) for SLC. Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device, called wear leveling.
• As a result of wear leveling and write combining, the performance of SSDs degrades with use.
• SATA-based SSDs generally exhibit much slower write speeds. As erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large (e.g. 0.5 - 1 megabyte), they are far slower than conventional disks during small writes (write amplification effect) and can suffer from write fragmentation. Modern PCIe SSDs however have much faster write speeds than previously available.
• DRAM-based SSDs (but not flash-based SSDs) require more power than hard disks, when operating; they still use power when the computer is turned off, while hard disks do not.

Commercialization

Cost and capacity

Until recently, flash based solid-state drives were too costly for widespread use in mobile computing. As flash manufacturers transition from NOR flash to single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash and most recently to multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash to maximize silicon die usage and reduce associated costs, "solid-state disks" are now being more accurately renamed "solid-state drives" – they have no disks but function as drives – for mobile computing in the enterprise and consumer electronics space. This technological trend is accompanied by an annual 50% decline in raw flash material costs, while capacities continue to double at the same rate. As a result, flash-based solid-state drives are becoming increasingly popular in markets such as notebook PCs and sub-notebooks for enterprises, Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPC), and Tablet PCs for the healthcare and consumer electronics sectors. Major PC companies have now started to offer such technology. It has been said that using said flash drive incurs an overall speed increase of 250%.

Availability

• Solid-state drive (SSD) technology has been marketed to the military and niche industrial markets since the mid-1990s.
• CompactFlash card used as SSD
• Along with the emerging enterprise market, SSDs have been appearing in ultra-mobile PCs and a few lightweight laptop systems, adding significantly to the price of the laptop, ending on the capacity, form factor and transfer speeds. As of 2008 some manufacturers have gun shipping affordable, fast, energy-efficient drives priced at $350 to computer manufacturers. For low-end applications, a USB flash drive may be obtained for $10 to $100 or so, depending on capacity, or a CompactFlash card may be paired with a CF-to-IDE or CF-to-SATA converter at a similar cost. Either of these requires that write-cycle endurance issues be managed, either by not storing frequently written files on the drive, or by using a Flash file system. Standard CompactFlash cards usually have write speeds of 7 to 15 megabytes per second while the more expensive upmarket cards claim speeds of up to 40 MB/s.
• One of the first mainstream releases of SSD was the XO Laptop, built as part of the 'One Laptop Per Child' project. Mass production of these computers, built for children in developing countries, began in December 2007. These machines use 1024 MiB SLC NAND flash as primary storage which is considered more suitable for the harsher than normal conditions in which they are expected to be used. Dell began shipping ultra-portable laptops with SanDisk SSDs on April 26, 2007. Asus released the Eee PC subnotebook on October 16, 2007, and after a successful commercial start in 2007, it was expected to ship several million PCs in 2008, with 2, 4 or 8 gigabytes of flash memory. On January 31, 2008, Apple Inc. released the MacBook Air, a thin laptop with optional 64 GB SSD. The Apple store cost was $999 more for this option, as compared to that of an 80 GB 4200 rpm Hard Disk Drive. Another option—Lenovo ThinkPad X300 with a 64Gbyte SSD—was announced by Lenovo in February 2008, and is, as of 2008, available to consumers in some countries. On August 26, 2008, Lenovo released ThinkPad X301 with 128GB SSD option which adds approximately $200 US.
• The Mtron SSD
  As of October 14, 2008, Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro lines carry optional solid state hard drives of up to 256 GB at an additional cost. Dell began to offer optional 256 GB solid state drives on select notebook models in January 2009.
  In late 2008, Sun released the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems (codenamed Amber Road), which use both solid state drives and conventional hard drives to take advantage of the speed offered by SSDs and the economy and capacity offered by conventional hard disks. In May 2009 Toshiba launched a laptop with a 512 GB SSD. In December 2009, Micron Technology announced the world's first SSD using a 6Gbps SATA interface.
  

Quality and performance

• SSD is a rapidly developing technology. A January 2009 review of the market by technology reviewer Tom's Hardware concluded that comparatively few of the tested devices showed acceptable I/O performance, with several disappointments, and that Intel (who make their own SSD chipset) still produces the best performing SSD drive as of this time; a view also echoed by Anandtech. In particular, operations that require many small writes, such as log files, are particularly badly affected on some devices, potentially causing the entire host system to freeze for periods of up to one second at a time.
• According to Anandtech, this is due to controller chip design issues with a widely used set of components, and at least partly arises because most manufacturers are memory manufacturers only, rather than full microchip design and fabrication businesses — they often rebrand others' products, inadvertently replicating their problems. Of the other manufacturers in the market, Memoright, Mtron, OCZ, Samsung and Soliware were also named positively for at least some areas of testing.
• The overall conclusion by Tom's Hardware however, was that "none of the [non-Intel] drives were really impressive. They all have significant weaknesses: usually either low I/O performance, poor write throughput or unacceptable power consumption".
• OCZ has recently unveiled OCZ Vertex 2 Pro which is currently the fastest MLC SSD drive with a Sandforce Controller onboard performing more or less as the Intel X25-E series SSD drives.

5 Futuristic Applications that Are Here NOW

How do you feel about new software applications or new ways of doing business? Are you eager to try something new or do you prefer the tried and true? I love to see how art and engineering come together to make computing fun and easy.

This is why I’ve decided to examine 5 up-and-coming applications – and how to turn them into a daily tool.

1. Augmented Reality and Reality Browsers. You may not be familiar with this phrase, but you’ve already seen this in action on TV and the movies. When you see actors interacting with a virtual computer screen that’s actually an overlay on the space around them; moving files with the swipe of their hand, opening documents in mid air – that’s augmented reality. Augmented reality applications can already be found on mobile phones. The new Android has an application called Layar. Layar is a “reality browser. Users will simply use their phone’s camera feature to point at scenes or objects and the technology will overlay additional information or data on the screen about those objects. For example, say you’re in a new city or town and are looking for a Chinese restaurant, you would point your phone at the street or neighborhood where you are and Layar will tell you what businesses are around you. Think of this application as on-demand Yellow Pages.

How to take advantage: You’ll want to make sure that your business appears accurately on Google Maps. Bryce Sady, a Boston-based healthcare marketer recommended the following: “Enter in the address (not the business name) on maps.google.com and see if it shows up. You can advertise your business for free on Google Maps .When adding the category of business you are in, think about search terms that someone would enter in on their phone or GPS to find a business like yours. Also, be sure and upload an updated photo of the storefront. Prices, hours, credit cards taken are all helpful information for users. If you are listed, you will want to verify the listing, so that it shows up as "owner-verified" in results.”

2. Location-Based Applications: With the widespread incorporation of GPS devices and applications, it’s easier than ever to get real-time information on where your friends are and what’s around you. This trend is related to augmented reality applications because it’s “location-based” technology that is one of the first consumer-accessible ways that we use it. Twitter was a pre-curser to this trend when people were using it to tell their friends where they were and connect in real time. BrightKite was another location-based application that was a little before its time in giving you updates as to where your friends are. The latest in the mix is Foursquare: A location-based service based on your Twitter network with an added layer of social gameplay. Currently Foursquare is gaining traction in big cities.

How to take advantage: You have to be visible, listed and tagged in all the right places, Google Maps and Yelp. Another important way to take advantage of these applications and trends is to build an active community that sincerely promotes your product and talks about it online. If you’re a small business, you must start a customer community program this year. Make it a point to build an accurate customer list that includes e-mails. Create a Facebook Fan page, Twitter, Foursquare, BrightKite and any other location-based application account and offer specials and promotions through those channels to your customers. Also check out: Google Latitude to Loopt and FireEagle,

3. Interactivity and Crowd Sourcing –Wikipedia is a great example of crowd sourcing. But as the trend has become more commonplace, people have come up with increasingly more creative ways to use it. Take Dahlia Lithwick, for example. By day, unassuming Supreme Court reporter, but for her special project, she decided to write her novel (Saving Face) using input from her Facebook Fans. From the other end of the spectrum, budding inventors can use the power of crowds to think up, develop, manufacture and market new products on Quirky. Say that you have a great idea, but don’t have the engineering skill to design it. Submit it to Quirky and engineers will help. The community serves as the market test site and the proceeds from products that actually sell are divided among the community according to their level of input.

How to take advantage: Make it a point to add “interactivity” to your products and services. If you’re thinking about writing a book, involve your audience in the process. If you’re planning on a new product, create a space where customers and users can put their two cents in. Put a crowd sourcing button on your web site from IdeaScale and let your customers tell you what new features to add. Create a Facebook Fan Page or a blog-style web site dedicated to your next new venture and engage your readers in the conversation. Use social media tools like Search.Twitter.com to search on your company name or industry terms to see what people are saying about it in real time in their own words.

4. Real time collaboration – Google Wave is an innovative new way for people to communicate and collaborate. Wave is already being used for projects and collaboration among many small groups and organizations around the world, in large part because of its strength in combining familiar communication platforms. But it’s really no fun or no good if everyone you work with isn’t on the system. Maybe that’s why it’s been so slow to build steam. Because I run so many virtual teams, I think that Google Wave is an amazing way to stay connected, work collaboratively and efficiently with people from all over the world as if they were right next to you.

How to take advantage: Get yourself on Google Wave and get everyone you work with to sign up too. Connect with associates and customers and collaborate on projects in real time.

5. Digital Branding/Real Time Branding: The internet revolution has made it hip to be small. Small businesses can increase their brand equity by becoming ubiquitous participants on social media sites. But there are more opportunities for small businesses who want to build their brand in a more subtle, more cost effective way. Ex-Yahoo Real Estate executive, Arjun Dev Arora used his expertise in real estate to create ReTargeter, a brilliant way to get past visitors BACK to your site. The technology places a little “burr” of code onto your web site – much like the little burrs you might collect on your pants while your hiking. Then once visitors that have been to your site, they collect these digital “burrs” as they wander off to bigger sites like CNN.com, for example. As they wander the web they see a subtle ad for your site on the sites they are visiting (such as CNN.com, that have ad spaces) thereby increasing the perception of your brand and enticing them to return to you.

How to take advantage: Look at digital advertising opportunities. Do your customers have a favorite site in your industry? Offer to sponsor a page or become a regular contributor.

How big is your carbon footprint?

Our modern industrial society emits an unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change.

How much do we as individuals contribute to global warming? There are a variety of carbon calculators available on the Web that can help estimate your carbon footprint, or the amount of greenhouse gas produced by your particular lifestyle.

Chronicle reporter Ilana DeBare worked with researcher Chris Jones from the UC Berkeley Institute of the Environment using the CoolCalifornia calculator ( www.coolcalifornia.org) to estimate the carbon footprints of typical urban and suburban Bay Area households.

Keep in mind that these are very rough estimates, based on average or median data. In some cases, there were no local figures available so we used national data.

HOCK-EYE

Hockey Comes Home!!!!!

Looking forward to India Face-Off With Pakistan on Opening day.

Design the Indian Rupee Symbol – Public contest by Indian Government

Major currencies of the world e.g. US Dollar, Pound Sterling, Yen and the Euro have an Identification symbol. The Government of India also proposes to have a symbol for the Indian rupee to be selected through public competition. Accordingly, all Resident Indians (both Professional artists and Non-professionals) are hereby invited to participate in a Competition for design of the ‘Symbol for Indian Rupee’.

The Design which i have proposed is:-

You all can enter into this contest by filling the registration form along with the fee of Rs. 500. Download the Registration PDF from:- http://img.labnol.org/files/currency-symbol.pdf

Bloom power is out of the box

"powder-to-power"

Bloom Energy claims that it will be an unstoppable force in the alternative energy business and its got huge corporate support.

The future of energy is now, says Bloom Energy. At a press conference today, it unveiled its surprisingly small fuel cell "solutions" boxes. The so-called "Bloom Energy Servers" – which are about as tall as an adult male – can use virtually any hydrocarbon fuel (methane, propane, ethanol, gasoline, liquified coal) and produce energy twice as efficiently as a coal plant. Bloom Energy is trying to revolutionize the power generation industry – the key is cutting out the middle-man (power transmission) and embracing a modular design akin to servers, the backbone of the internet.The company's fuel cell boxes are composed of ceramic (sand derived) discs and special ink. It garnered attention earlier this week when it was featured on the CBS news program 60 Minutes. While many alternative energy startups have struggled to find financial backers, it already has publicized major support from some of the tech industry's biggest names -- Google, eBay, Fedex, Staples, and Walmart.

The result he obtained was a fuel cell that went from "powder to power" and was "twice" as efficient as traditional power plants due to the on-site scheme eliminating grid losses.

The power is continuous and flexible, unlike solar or wind energy. As Mr. Sridhar describes, "This is not when the sun shines, this is not when the wind blows... that's how this little piece of sand is different than what's been done before.

Tendulkar on top of the world with two tons

India virtually came to a standstill between 1700 and 1815 hours today as the country's cricketing God Sachin Tendulkar became the first man in limited overs cricket to cross the individual 200-run mark.

And who better than Sachin to take away the record for highest individual total in a one-day match from left-handed Pakistani opener Saeed Anwar who made 194 runs 13 years ago against India at Chennai.