Apple has released a device in tablet form factor calling it iPad. Its main purpose it consuming internet services and reading books. Microsoft has been silently working on a device concept called “Courier” which is rethinking the way touch devices are used.

Steve Jobs has recently commented about touch devices “If you see a stylus they blew it”. Apple is against stylus in a touch device. I feel they will be proved wrong. Microsoft is redefining itself slowly, First, they announced Windows Phone 7 which is a new OS from ground up focusing on touch interface. Now, check these videos of Courier. It is a cool concept device which takes touch device to next level.

They are making a device which will be not only good for consuming internet services but also create content. I think you will agree with me on that. Natural handwriting input in a notebook form factor is killer. I can’t stop thinking of applications which can come to life with this combination. Multitouch + Handwriting + Apps will bring Microsoft to forefront in devices market making it a viable competitor to reigning champion Apple.

I feel Courier will become perfect companion for any business.

Source

Have you ever wondered how you can be safe on the net?

If you answered NO, Think again!
If you answered YES, then you know the hazards on the net.

We know that Internet provides immense data to quench any thirst. But, beware there are places on net you might not want to be in but may end up being if you are not alert.

Here are few steps you can take to make sure you are safer on net than before.

Choose the right browser

Safe browsing starts with choosing the right browser. We all know Internet Explorer (‘blue e’ on your desktop) is the browser to surf the net. There are other alternative to it like, Mozilla Firefox (www.getfirefox.com), Opera (www.opera.com), Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome), Apple Safari (www.apple.com/safari).

You might want to use the alternate browser for few simple reasons. Those browsers work pretty well on all sites, they are faster, they are free, they have low market share when compared to Internet Explorer.

Let me explain why you need to choose browser with lower market share. Lets consider you are the doing a business with a choice to choose a market with ten lakh prospects or few thousand prospect. Which one will you choose? Most of the business men/women will choose market with ten lakh prospects. Same applies to the browsers, if you are using a browser with lower market share, probability of someone writing a software exploit for your browser is less than browser with bigger market share.

Also, make sure you are using latest version of the browser.

Keep your Operating System up-to-date.

Always keep your operating system up-to-date. If you are using Windows then make sure Windows Update is enabled. If you use Linux make sure your distribution is upto date.

Always use user with no administration privilege

As Uncle ben tell in the Spiderman movie “With great power, comes great responsibility”. with a less privileged user, even if you end up in a infected site, you will not affect other users or entire system.

Install Antivirus / Antispyware

Make sure you have installed security software like Antivirus, Antispyware and Windows Firewall is enabled. Let me suggest few free Antivirus, Antispyware.

Microsoft Security Essentials (antivirus, atispyware) – (www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/), Avira Antivirus (www.free-av.com/en/download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html – use only for personal use), AVG antivirus (www.avg.com/in-en/homepage). Or you can spend on some paid antivirus/antispyware software.

Never provide personal information

Personal information like home address, phone number, social security number (uniqueid we are going to get soon), passwords, names of family members, credit card numbers, bank account number are something which are not required for operation of any website. Refrain from providing information which you feel are not related to the service provided by the website. Most genuine websites will not ask for these details. If some website is asking for such details then they should be providing service related to them. DON’T TRUST EVERY WEBSITE you visit.

Phishing / Malware sites

Phishing is a fraudulent activity where a site will look like a legitimate site but will have different url. These websites are hosted by cyber criminals to gather private information of the internet users. These links are usually sent through emails or instant messengers.

So, DON’T CLICK ANY LINKS on a email sent by unknown person. Check these links for further information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing, http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/phishing/symptoms.aspx

Ok, you might want to know which sites are safe. Fortunately, there is solution to your problem. Internet Explorer 8.0 has something called SafeScreen which takes care of identifying a site as trustable or not. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome also has similar feature which identifies whether a site is safe or not and warns you when you visit a page which is suspected to be either fraudulent or is infected and will harm you or your computer.

Always make sure that the url in the address bar is same as the url of the site you think you are in before providing any information. This might save you from sleepless nights and prevent you from giving away your credit card/bank information to phishing sites.

Protecting your kids

There are many parental control software available which can protect your kids from landing into unwanted sites and also lets you to monitor their online activity. Let me suggest you few of them. Windows live family safety (http://download.live.com/familysafety), it is part of windows live essentials package. K9 web protection (http://www1.k9webprotection.com/).

I started my career working in Linux and continue to do so. I recently bought a laptop with Windows 7. I like windows 7 for bringing back the performance which was lost in Vista.

I am so much used to writing code in vim and using shell for doing all development that I felt I need to look around for making windows 7 my development box.

You might argue I should use cygwin, I wanted to use native applications.

Search is ON

Command Shell:

I looked around for possible shell for windows. Windows comes packaged with cmd.exe and powershell. Powershell seemed like it will fit the bill for my requirement. My major requirement is to run python, vim, mercurial and any other software needed for development.

Editor:

I have been using vim for past 7 years and could not think of using any other editor for development. I searched whether I can get vim for windows. There are multiple versions available for Windows and found vim for win32 console, just what I wanted (http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc).

Add the editor to the PATH.

If you use some other editor, I am sure it would have been ported.

Other utilities:

Other unix utilities like grep, awk, sed, less, tee, tar and more are used in day to day work. I thought basic development environment will be complete only after I have those in my laptop. Fortunately, most everything is ported to windows and is available @ gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. If you are lazy to download packages one by one, there is another project in sourceforge which takes care of automating the download process (http://getgnuwin32.sourceforge.net/). All you need to do is download one package, extract it and run download.bat and install.bat found. Voila, all command line utilities are in your system. Check readme file for further information.

Thanks to everyone who worked on porting these software to windows, I have a workable environment in windows!

I am not claiming that this setup can replace a development environment setup on linux. This setup helps me do what i wanted to do. I feel at home if i use shell thats all .

IBM presented at December 2009 the Solution Edition for Cloud Computing, a solution offering for large enterprise customers providing the automation and management framework necessary to get started with cloud computing. This solution provides the key components for cloud computing:

# A foundation for the cloud offering massive virtualization, resiliency and security capability provided by IBM System z
#  Automation and management capability for the lifecycle of cloud computing services provided by IBM Tivoli software

This solution offers customers a framework for cloud computing, but in order to realize true value a cloud computing workload is desirable.

Ring°Wall: World Largest Multi-Touch and Multi-User Wall

The World’s Biggest / Largest / Longest Multi-Touch (and evidently Multi-User) Wall [sensory-minds.com, click Projects then choose 19.07.2009) seems to be installed in Nürburgring, a famous motorsport race track around the village of Nürburg, Germany The two-piece wall consists of a huge LED media facade (at the top), and a multitouch information-wall (at the bottom), and impresses by its physical size, as it totals a surface of about 425 square meters, equaling more than 6000 computer displays.

The interactive interface emerges out of 34 million pixels generated by 15 high definition projectors, supported by sound produced by 30 directional speakers. The multitouch capturing itself is based on laser technology, also called Laser Light Plane Illumination (LLP). This means more than 80 users can simultaneously get informed about news and activities around the ringworld. Now imagine the sorts of sparklines this device could display…

You can watch a documentary movie below.