The 18-year-old girl posted a desperate blog in an online forum, telling family and friends she was sorry for what she was about to do.

Strangers concerned for the girl's safety then began a frantic mission to track down the girl and her family on Twitter, with users re-posting the blog.

It travelled around Australia and even captured attention of worried social media audiences in the US.

The girl's mother, who cannot be named, was eventually contacted by strangers who described the post as a 'suicide note' and told her to contact police.

"I'm grateful to everyone that chased me down and contacted me," she told 3AW today.

"Through her posting and everyone re-posting it, three people have tracked me down through social media by getting my work details and contacting me at work and basically just asking me if I was her mum.

"I was able to get onto police and tell them where she was."

The mother said police discovered her daughter asleep at her home, and she had come to no harm.

The woman said her daughter has a history of self harm and is now receiving treatment in hospital.

The girl has since thanked the strangers who were looking out for her on the same blog site.

"I'm alive. I'm in hospital. The police came to my house and found me well," she wrote.

"I'm so sorry to the people I worried."

The girl's mother warned that social media has a dark side, but she said on this occasion it had helped to save a life.

"It is bad in some ways, but it does have a good side too."

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 131114 or SANE Helpline on 180018 SANE (7263)

YAHOO NEWS

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Google has launched an invitation-only website called Schemer. The site's goal seems to help users to discover new things and share schemes with others using Google+. 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Whether it's exploring a new city, checking out a friend's movie recommendation, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day. Think you're up for it? Join Schemer," says the site announcement. 

As per the site, users can find stuff to do, big and small; keep track of what they want to do; and get ideas from celebrities, experts and friends. 

"We started out as a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world," the Schemer team said in a post on Google+. 

The site's partners include Food Network, Zagat, Bravo, IGN, Entertainment Weekly, National Geographic, and Thrillist among others. 

The service, which is in beta presently, is reserved to a few members who can invite others via invitation. "Still don't have your invite? Fret not! There are some sneaky ways you can get invited too," says the Schemer team's post. "Of course, you can always try your luck at Schemer.com but you can also keep a lookout for our partners' Google+ pages...you never know when an invitation may pop up!"

TOI Tech

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Google has launched an invitation-only website called Schemer. The site's goal seems to help users to discover new things and share schemes with others using Google+. 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Whether it's exploring a new city, checking out a friend's movie recommendation, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day. Think you're up for it? Join Schemer," says the site announcement. 

As per the site, users can find stuff to do, big and small; keep track of what they want to do; and get ideas from celebrities, experts and friends. 

"We started out as a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world," the Schemer team said in a post on Google+. 

The site's partners include Food Network, Zagat, Bravo, IGN, Entertainment Weekly, National Geographic, and Thrillist among others. 

The service, which is in beta presently, is reserved to a few members who can invite others via invitation. "Still don't have your invite? Fret not! There are some sneaky ways you can get invited too," says the Schemer team's post. "Of course, you can always try your luck at Schemer.com but you can also keep a lookout for our partners' Google+ pages...you never know when an invitation may pop up!"

TOI Tech

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Google has launched an invitation-only website called Schemer. The site's goal seems to help users to discover new things and share schemes with others using Google+. 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Whether it's exploring a new city, checking out a friend's movie recommendation, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day. Think you're up for it? Join Schemer," says the site announcement. 

As per the site, users can find stuff to do, big and small; keep track of what they want to do; and get ideas from celebrities, experts and friends. 

"We started out as a scrappy team of Google engineers who wanted to help people do fun stuff in the real world," the Schemer team said in a post on Google+. 

The site's partners include Food Network, Zagat, Bravo, IGN, Entertainment Weekly, National Geographic, and Thrillist among others. 

The service, which is in beta presently, is reserved to a few members who can invite others via invitation. "Still don't have your invite? Fret not! There are some sneaky ways you can get invited too," says the Schemer team's post. "Of course, you can always try your luck at Schemer.com but you can also keep a lookout for our partners' Google+ pages...you never know when an invitation may pop up!"

TOI Tech

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LONDON: Facebook users from a village called Effin in Ireland cannot use the name after the social networking website banned it for being "offensive". 

This was discovered by residents of the Irish village who said they could not register the village name as their place of birth on the website, The Sun reported. 

Ann Marie Kennedy, who was born in the village, has launched a campaign to get it recognised by Facebook. 

But when she tried to create a Facebook group called "Please get my hometown Effin recognised", it was also rejected. 

"It came back with an error message saying 'offensive'. I would like to be able to put Effin on my profile page and so would many other Effin people around the world to proudly say that they are from Effin, but it won't recognise that," she said. 

Kennedy is trying to get the village's population of around 1,000 behind her cause.

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SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc's Chrome internet browser overtook Firefox for the first time globally in November and it continues to narrow the gap to market leader Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer, web analytics firm StatCounter said. 

"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter chief executive, said in a statement. 

In November Chrome saw its market share roughly doubling from a year ago to 25.7 per cent, while Internet Explorer's share dropped to 40.6 per cent from 48.2 per cent. 

The market share of Firefox -- which is popular in Europe -- slipped globally to 25.2 per cent from 31.2 per cent. 

Apple Inc's Safari is a distant No 4 on the market with a 5.9 per cent share of all browsing, with No 5 Opera 

controlling 1.8 percent of the market. StatCounter statistics are based on aggregate data from more than 3 million websites with a sample of more than 15 billion page views per month. 

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But virtual keyboards are not just constrained to the screen. Today almost anything can become a keyboard – from a table top to the palm of your hand.

Korean company Celluon has been developing virtual keyboards for several years and their latest product is the Magic Cube, a small box that fits in your hand yet provides a full-size keyboard when needed.

Switch it on, sit it on a desk and it projects an image of a keyboard on to the surface in front of it. Tap the virtual keys and the corresponding characters are communicated wirelessly to any compatible device, from a laptop to a smartphone.

The principles involved are very simple. The projection of the keyboard is just that – made by a tiny projector at the top of the box. At the bottom of the box beams of infrared light are emitted just above the surface of the desk. As your fingers tap the surface they cut through these beams which are reflected up to a camera in the middle of the box. The camera sees the reflection and works out from its position which key you have "pressed".

Though the Magic Cube is clever it is essentially just a very portable replacement for a real keyboard.

More radical possibilities are on the horizon. Microsoft researchers Hrvoje Benko and Andrew Wilson, along with Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, recently showed off a system they call OmniTouch, which turns any surface into a touch screen.

OmniTouch is made up of a shoulder-mounted projector and depth-sensing camera combination. The projector displays interactive images on any nearby surface – a wall, a table, a pad or even parts of the user's body. The camera tracks the user's fingers, working out where and when they touch other objects.

Putting it all together allows the user to, for example, dial a phone number on a keypad displayed on the palm of their hand, or draw projected pictures on an ordinary paper pad.

Pretty much anything, in fact, that you can do with an ordinary touch-sensitive display, except that the display itself can be any suitable surface.

We take it for granted that the size of portable devices is a compromise between compactness and usability. But if the display and controls need not be physically part of the device, all bets are off. It's too early to tell whether systems like OmniTouch will take off. But in a few years they may virtually replace their physical counterparts in many situations, in more ways than one.

The Press, New Zealand

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Improve PC Performance and Fix Your Slow Computer – Top Tips

To help fix your slow computer, show it some love. It will come back to life! We've compiled 14 quick tips to help you improve PC performance and keep your computer running smoothly so it doesn't slow you down.

1. Keep your computer in a smoke-free environment. The residue from cigarette smoke can corrode exposed metal contacts and damage delicate contacts and circuits.

2. Do a regular spring cleaning. Excess heat will damage the sensitive circuits in your PC. Dust and dirt are the most common culprits and will require you to fix your slow computer in order to regain performance. If your computer's vents and cooling fans are clogged, they can stop air from moving through the computer and cooling it down. Do a spring cleaning every year on your keyboard, mouse, screen, and PC unit with compressed air. Also use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust that is built up inside the case in order to further improve PC performance.

3. Backup your data. A backup of all of your data will help you recover your files, photos, music, and applications when your drive fails. Notice that we didn't say “if your drive fails”…trust us, it WILL happen. You can backup your files manually or use an automatic backup program.

4. Handle with care. Whenever you move your computer, even if it's just across the top of your desk, make sure the machine is shut down and unplugged.

5. Leave your PC on. Powering up your computer from a cold state everyday is stressful to your system's components. If you don't want to leave your PC running all the time, use the hibernation mode rather than completely shutting down.

6. Turn off your monitor. The best way to extend the life of your display is to shut it off when you are not using it.

7. Reboot your PC when programs crash. Failed applications can cause other programs to falter. Don't let the bad apple spoil the rest. Simply restart your computer when a program crashes to clear it out.

8. Update your virus protection. Viruses spread like wildfire within hours, so it's important to keep your anti-virus software up to date. Perform a full virus scan on a regular basis to ensure there is nothing scary hiding on your system.

9. Keep spyware off your computer.  Spyware is nasty and it's evolving so quickly that it's nearly impossible for one anti-spyware program to catch it all. Anti-spyware programs work best as a team because they all have different technologies behind their detection and removal process. We recommend that you run 2 – 3 programs on a regular basis to keep your computer free of spyware.

10. Run a Windows Update. A quick visit to Microsoft's site will ensure you have the latest patches for Windows, your programs, your hardware, or your devices.

11. Update your software. To ensure you have the latest versions of software on your PC, check for vendors' software updates at VersionTracker.

12. Defrag your computer.  The easiest way to defrag your computer is to use a registry cleaner, such as PC Tune-Up™. With the click of a button, PC Tune-Up™ will scan your registry for these fragmented files, bring them together, and safely remove them to fix your slow computer and dramatically improve PC performance.

13. Remove unnecessary files. Take a quick inventory of the files that you have saved on your computer and delete the ones that you don't need anymore. Be sure to empty your recycle bin on a regular basis. Delete cookies, cache files, Internet history, and temp files from your computer. These are all taking up valuable space on your hard drive and removing them will help you improve your PC performance.

14. Uninstall unused programs. One way to fix a slow-running computer is to use the uninstall utility to remove these programs rather than deleting them manually. You can do this by selecting Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. When you click on the Add/Remove Programs icon a dialogue box will appear on your screen. Scroll through the menu of software and select the application you wish to uninstall, then click the Add/Remove button.

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Beijing: China has ramped up its online censorship efforts, with LinkedIn, a social networking site for professionals, the latest site to be blocked as authorities apparently move to snuff out efforts to organise anti-government protests.

Attempts from Beijing to reach the LinkedIn website failed Friday, with the internet browser displaying an error message. Some LinkedIn users said the blocking of the website began Thursday.

Social networking sites were used by activists in north African and Middle Eastern countries to organise anti-government demonstrations which eventually toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. The movements have been dubbed the "jasmine revolutions".

Inspired by those popular uprisings, anonymous internet users have called for anti-government gatherings every Sunday in over a dozen Chinese cities. In Beijing Sunday, the first gathering seemingly attracted more police and foreign journalists than protesters.

The Chinese government runs a pervasive internet censorship system that blocks content that undermines the ruling Communist Party's grip on power.

Searches for the term "jasmine" on Chinese microblog service Sina Weibo and Facebook-clone Renren produced no results Friday. The Chinese name of US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, too, appeared to have been censored on Sina Weibo.

Authorities fear activists could use foreign social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to organise anti-government protests, and so they block access to the sites.

Chinese alternatives to these sites are popular in China. But Chinese internet companies quickly delete posts that could undermine Communist Party rule.

In addition to tightening its internet controls, authorities harassed and detained scores of activists and human rights lawyers in the days before the first planned protest. Human rights groups have widely condemned the crackdown.

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LONDON: Scientists have created what they claim is the world's smallest computer system that is just one square millimetre in size and can fit into one's eyeball. 

Developed by a team at the University of Michigan, the unnamed tiny device is a pressure monitor that can be implanted in a person's eye to treat glaucoma. 

It may be just one square millimetre in size but it packs a hefty punch, containing an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory and a thin film battery, the Daily Mail reported. 

It also has a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device, the researchers said. 

The device is already being touted as the future of the computing industry, although it needs several more years to be commercially available. 

Its creators -- Professors Dennis Sylvester, David Blaauw and David Wentzloff -- claim that as the device's radio needs no tuning to find the right frequency it could link to a wireless network of computers. 

A network of such units could one day track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable, the scientists said. 

Professor Sylvester said: "When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices. 

"The next big challenge is to achieve millimetre-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. 

"Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. 

"There could be tens to hundreds of them per person and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semi-conductor industry's growth." 

Currently, the system is a pressure monitor designed to be implanted in the eye to continuously track the progress of glaucoma, a potentially blinding disease, they said. 

The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers' Phoenix chip, which uses a unique design and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption. 

The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts. 

To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to ten hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight. It can store up to a week's worth of information. 

While this system is miniscule and complete, its radio doesn't equip it to talk to other similar devices, which is an important feature for any system targetted towards wireless sensor networks. 

But, the researchers are confident their miniature device will take off. "The applications for systems of this size are endless," they added.

PTI

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The newborn girl's father, Jamal Ibrahim, was so moved by the social network's role in the late January, early February Egyptian protests that ousted longtime president Hosni Mubarak that he chose to name his firstborn daughter "Facebook."

TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis reported on the blessed event, which was reported in the Arabic-language Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. Through translators, TechCrunch provided an English version of the announcement:

A New Day
Man Names His Newborn Girl Facebook
A young man in his twenties wanted to express his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose to express it in the form of naming his firstborn girl "Facebook" Jamal Ibrahim (his name.) The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. “Facebook” received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name [Facebook] that shocked the entire world.

Who knows if Ibrahim has started a trend? Will we be seeing kids with names like YouTube, Twitter or Google? (In which case, they'll be right at home with celebrities' kids, such as Egypt Daoud, Buddy Bear Maurice and Moxie CrimeFighter.) Or does Facebook hold a special place in Egyptians' hearts because of its role in the revolution? 

Egypt has about 5 million Facebook users, 20 percent of whom are on it through their mobile devices.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told the Huffington Post that "Groups and Pages created by users from Egypt have 'risen sharply': around 32,000 groups and 14,000 pages have been created" in those two weeks following the Jan. 25 protests. "The most popular Facebook Page among users from Egypt belongs to Amr Khaled, a preacher who has over 2 million 'likes,' followed by that of an Egyptian radio host, Amr Diab."

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SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter suspended UberTwitter, UberCurrent, and Twidroyd applications in a clash with a startup that controls a fifth of the "tweets" at the hot microblogging service. 

The UberMedia applications cut off from Twitter handled messages "tweeted" from Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone smartphones. Other software is available to "tweet" from those kinds of smartphones. 

"We have suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd for violating our policies," Twitter said in a post at the San Francisco firm's online help center. 

"Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies." 

Twitter added that it was taking the unusual step of sharing the news because "today's suspension may affect a larger number of users." 

California-based UberMedia is an Idealab company that has been gobbling up applications people use to synch Twitter messages to various devices. 

UberMedia early this month added popular Twitter "client" TweetDeck to Echofon, Twidroyd, and UberTwitter in a stable of applications said to control 20 percent of "tweets" fired off on any given day. 

UberMedia chief executive Bill Gross described his operation as the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social Internet platforms. 

UberTwitter, Twidroyd, and UberCurrent were cut of from Twitter early Friday and UberMedia was given notice that they were violating several provisions of terms of service, Gross said in an email response to an AFP inquiry. 

"We were immediately in touch with Twitter, and the changes they asked us to make were very small," Gross said. 

"As a result, we have completed the changes, and new apps are currently being posted to their respective stores," he said. "Twitter has assured us that as soon as those changes were complete, they would reactivate our applications." 

Twitter also asked UberMedia to change the name of the "UberTwitter" application, according to Gross. UberMedia rechristened the application "UberSocial" on Friday. 

An Accel Ventures led round of funding last week pumped $17.5 million into UberMedia in a move that some thought would spark concern at Twitter that the company might be growing into a competitor. 

"Our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem," Gross said while announcing the Accel investment. 

The funding came with the addition of Accel's Jim Breyer to the UberMedia board. Breyer also sits on the board of social networking titan Facebook. 

The investment made it clear that UberMedia's plan is to make money from Twitter traffic as Twitter itself grapples with how to cash in on its popularity.

AFP

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Here is a chance to test drive the Chrome OS based Notebook for free from Google. Chrome team is running a small pilot program in which they are giving out limited number of Chrome OS Notebooks for free beta testing.

The link to test drive chrome notebook was surprisingly shown in my chrome browser on opening a new tab. Here is screenshot of chrome netbook ad shown in my browser.

The chrome OS beta testers will receive special notebook called the Cr-48.  This device was designed by an unnamed manufacturer and will not be sold as an actual release product. This device will be just to fine tune the Google chrome OS user experience.

Features of Chrome Notebook

• 12.1 inch screen
• No built in disc drive [could be connected through USB]
• Powered by Intel processor
• Built in 802.11n Wi-Fi 3G
• 3G connectivity via a Qualcomm modem
• Weighs 3.8 lbs.

For receiving the free Chrome Notebook, you'll have to provide an US address and should be atleast 18 years old. Click the link mentioned below, and fill out the form.

Follow this link to apply for free chrome notebook review piece.

:) 

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If you wish to set up a broadcast and don't want to pay the fees a other third-party to host your Internet radio stream - and you are a do-it-yourself kind of person - you might do well creating your own online radio station by using your own personal computer to create a dedicated server for doing the job.

Some of the software options for getting this done include:

SHOUTcast

SHOUTcast is one of the original free Internet radio software solutions for streaming audio. You can start your own station fairly easily and the software is free to download.

Helix Server Basic

Free streaming media server software which can distribute live and on-demand video and other media. Realnetworks.com describes it as: "Simple 5-stream server. This free media server is a great solution if you are getting started with streaming media and want to experiment before rolling it out to a large audience." The Helix Server Basic isfree to download.

Quicktime Streaming Server

Apple.com says: "Whether you are looking to add streaming media to your web site, deliver distance learning or provide rich content for your mobile subscribers, Mac OS X Server has all of the tools you need. QuickTime Streaming Server lets you deliver live or prerecorded content in real time over the Internet." You can find out more at apple.com.

Quicktime Broadcaster

Apple.com writes: "Combining the power of QuickTime with Apple's ease of use, QuickTime Broadcaster allows just about anyone to produce a live broadcast event." Download this software from apple.com

Peercast

Peercast.org is a non-profit website that provides free peer-to-peer broadcasting software. "PeerCast is a simple, free way to listen to radio and watch video on the Internet. It uses P2P technology to let anyone become a broadcaster without the costs of traditional streaming," according to the peercast.org website.

Icecast

Icecast is "free server software for streaming multimedia." Download a copy fromicecast.org.

Andromeda

Andromeda is delivery-on-demand software. "Andromeda scans your MP3s and presents them as a fully-featured streaming Web site. That means you simply add, move, rename, and delete files and folders to update the contents of your Andromeda-powered site. It's as easy as drag, drop, stream," according to turnstyle.com where you can download an evaluation copy.

To setup Shoutcast Radio Station: 

Firstly, there are some preliminary requirements that you need to fulfill for creating your own radio station:

You must have the latest version of Winamp installed on your system. If you don’t have it you can download it here.

Your internet speed should be at least 25 kbps to start streaming.

First of all download all the 4 tools given on this page:http://www.shoutcast.com/broadcast-tools

Now after you have downloaded, install the SHOUTcast DNAS 1.9.8 and also the SHOUTcast DSP Plug-In for Winamp.

After installing both the tools mentioned above, you need to edit the Shoutcast DNAS Configuration file, you can find it in Start–>SHOUTcast DNAS–>Edit SHOUTcast DNAS configuration.

Open this file and just look for these three fields which are usually surrounded by rectangles :

MaxUser=32; this field determines the maximum number of listeners your station can have, maximum permissible value is 50, so if you want you can change it to 50 by replacing the value 32 by 50.

Password=changeme; this field is your password and the default password provided to you is “changeme” so better change it to one that you want bye replacing the “changeme” by password of your choice.

PortBase=8000; this is your port number which by default is 8000, if you don’t have any other service running on your system on port 8000 then don’t change it. Otherwise, change the value to any other port.

After you have finished editing the configuration file don’t forget to save it.

After doing this, open Winamp and press Ctrl-P, a Winamp preferences window will open up, select DSP Effect under Plugins, and just select the Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP v1.9.1.
After selecting this, a new window will open up by the name SHOUTcast source having four tabs Main, Output, Encoder, Input, now follow these steps:

Select the Encoder Tab, and select Encoder 1, and also select Encoder type as MP3 encoder from the drop down list.

Now in the Output Tab, change the password to the one you edited in the SHOUTcast DNAS Configuration file, by default the port number is 8000 but In case you changed it in the SHOUTcast DNAS Configuration file then set the port number to the one in your SHOUTcast DNAS Configuration file. Also select Encoder as 1 from the drop down list.

After this Go to Start–>SHOUTcast–>SHOUTcasr DNAS(GUI), a window will open up with the title Server Monitor.

Now go back to winamp and open a song and play it, and now in that SHOUTcast Source window having those four tabs select the output tab and press Connect.

Now in the Status if you see the data sent changing then your radio station has started, you can make your friends listen to the songs that you are playing by giving them the link of the type: http://(Your-IP-Address):(Port number)/listen.pls

You can find your IP address here and your port number by default shall be 8000 but if you have changed it in the configuration file put in the changed number.

That’s it you are done..!!

References: About.Com Guide & Instructions by Aniruddh. 

Cheers :)

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Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites

·  Reddit: Upload stories and articles on reddit to drive traffic to your site or blog. Submit items often so that you'll gain a more loyal following and increase your presence on the site.

·  Digg: Digg has a huge following online because of its optimum usability. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, sports and more.

·  Del.icio.us: Social bookmark your way to better business with sites like del.icio.us, which invite users to organize and publicize interesting items through tagging and networking.

·  StumbleUpon: You'll open your online presence up to a whole new audience just by adding the StumbleUpon toolbar to your browser and "channel surf[ing] the Web. You'll "connect with friends and share your discoveries," as well as "meet people that have similar interests."

·  Technorati: If you want to increase your blog's readership, consider registering it with Technorati, a network of blogs and writers that lists top stories in categories like Business, Entertainment and Technology.

·  Ning: After hanging around the same social networks for a while, you may feel inspired to create your own, where you can bring together clients, vendors, customers and co-workers in a confidential, secure corner of the Web. Ning lets users design free social networks that they can share with anyone.

·  Squidoo: According to Squidoo, "everyone's an expert on something. Share your knowledge!" Share your industry's secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.

·  Furl: Make Furl "your personal Web file" by bookmarking great sites and sharing them with other users by recommending links, commenting on articles and utilizing other fantastic features.

·  Tubearoo: This video network works like other social-bookmarking sites, except that it focuses on uploaded videos. Businesses can create and upload tutorials, commentaries and interviews with industry insiders to promote their own services.

·  WikiHow: Create a how-to guide or tutorial on wikiHow to share your company's services with the public for free.

·  YouTube: From the fashion industry to Capitol Hill, everyone has a video floating around on YouTube. Shoot a behind-the-scenes video from your company's latest commercial or event to give customers and clients an idea of what you do each day.

·  Ma.gnolia: Share your favorite sites with friends, colleagues and clients by organizing your bookmarks with Ma.gnolia. Clients will appreciate both your Internet-savviness and your ability to stay current and organized.

Professional-Networking Sites

·  LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a popular networking site where alumni, business associates, recent graduates and other professionals connect online.

·  Ecademy: Ecademy prides itself on "connecting business people" through its online network, blog and message-board chats, as well as its premier BlackStar membership program, which awards exclusive benefits.

·  Focus: Focus is a business destination where business professionals can help each other with their purchase and other business decisions by accessing research and peer expertise. Most importantly, Focus provides open, quality information for all businesses that is freely available, easily accessible, and community powered. 

·  YorZ: This networking site doubles as a job site. Members can post openings for free to attract quality candidates.

·  Xing: An account with networking site Xing can "open doors to thousands of companies." Use the professional contact manager to organize your new friends and colleagues, and take advantage of the Business Accelerator application to "find experts at the click of a button, market yourself in a professional context [and] open up new sales channels."

·  Facebook: Facebook is no longer just for college kids who want to post their party pics. Businesses vie for advertising opportunities, event promotion and more on this social-networking site.

·  Care2: Care2 isn't just a networking community for professionals: It's touted as "the global network for organizations and people who Care2 make a difference." If your business is making efforts to go green, let others know by becoming a presence on this site.

·  Gather: This networking community is made up of members who think. Browse categories concerning books, health, money, news and more to ignite discussions on politics, business and entertainment. This will help your company tap into its target audience and find out what they want.

·  MEETin.org: Once you've acquired a group of contacts in your city by networking on MEETin.org, organize an event so that you can meet face-to-face.

·  Tribe: Cities like Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, New York and Chicago have unique online communities on tribe. Users can search for favorite restaurants, events, clubs and more.

·  Ziggs: Ziggs is "organizing and connecting people in a professional way." Join groups and make contacts through your Ziggs account to increase your company's presence online and further your own personal career.

·  Plaxo: Join Plaxo to organize your contacts and stay updated with feeds from Digg, Amazon.com, del.icio.us and more.

·  NetParty: If you want to attract young professionals in cities like Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Orlando Fla., create an account with the networking site NetParty. You'll be able to connect with qualified, up-and-coming professionals online, then meet them at a real-life happy-hour event where you can pass out business cards, pitch new job openings and more.

·  Networking For Professionals: Networking For Professionals is another online community that combines the Internet with special events in the real world. Post photos, videos, résumés and clips on your online profile while you meet new business contacts.

Niche Social-Media Sites

·  Pixel Groovy: Web workers will love Pixel Groovy, an open-source site that lets members submit and rate tutorials for Web 2.0, email and online-marketing issues.

·  Mixx: Mixx prides itself on being "your link to the Web content that really matters." Submit and rate stories, photos and news to drive traffic to your own site. You'll also meet others with similar interests.

·  Tweako: Gadget-minded computer geeks can network with each other on Tweako, a site that promotes information sharing for the technologically savvy.

·  Small Business Brief: When members post entrepreneur-related articles, a photo and a link to their profile appear, gaining you valuable exposure and legitimacy online.

·  Sphinn: Sphinn is an online forum and networking site for the Internet marketing crowd. Upload articles and guides from your blog to create interest in your own company or connect with other professionals for form new contacts.

·  Foursquare: Foursquare s a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application.

·  HubSpot: HubSpot is another news site aimed at connecting business professionals.

·  SEO TAGG: Stay on top of news from the Web marketing and SEO (search-engine optimization) industries by becoming an active member of this online community.

General Social-Media Sites

·  Wikipedia: Besides creating your own business reference page on Wikipedia, you can connect with other users on Wikipedia's Community Portal and at the village pump, where you'll find conscientious professionals enthusiastic about news, business, research and more.

·  Newsvine: Feature top employees by uploading their articles, studies or other news-related items to this site. A free account will also get you your own column and access to the Newsvine community.

·  43 Things: This site bills itself as "the world's most popular online goal setting community." By publicizing your company's goals and ambitions, you'll gain a following of customers, investors and promoters who cheer you on as you achieve success.

·  Wetpaint: If you're tired of blogs and generic Web sites, create your own wiki with Wetpaint to reach your audience and increase your company's presence online. You can easily organize articles, contact information, photos and other information to promote your business.

·  Twitter: Is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers."

·  Yahoo! Answers: Start fielding Yahoo! users' questions with this social-media Q&A service. Search for questions in your particular areas of expertise by clicking categories like Business & Finance, Health, News & Events and more. If you continue to dole out useful advice and link your answer to your company's Web page, you'll quickly gain a new following of curious customers.

Job Sites

·  CareerBuilder.com: Reach millions of candidates by posting jobs on this must-visit site.

·  The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal: The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal attracts well-educated professionals who are at the top of their game. Post a job or search résumés here.

·  CollegeRecruiter.com: If your firm wants to hire promising entry-level employees, check CollegeRecuriter.com for candidates with college degrees.

·  Monster: Post often to separate your business from all the other big companies that use this site to advertise job openings.

·  Sologig: Top freelancers and contractors post résumés and look for work on this popular site.

·  AllFreelance.com: This site "offers self-employed small business owners links to freelance & work at home job boards, self-promotion tips" and more.

·  Freelance Switch Job Listings: Freelance Switch is the freelancer's online mecca and boasts articles, resource toolboxes, valuable tips and a job board.

·  GoFreelance: Employers looking to boost their vendor base should check GoFreelance for professionals in the writing, design, editing and Web industries.

·  Yahoo! Hot Jobs: This site is often one of the first places that job seekers visit. Post open opportunities and check out informative articles and guides to gain insight on the hiring and interviewing process.

·  Guru.com: Build your company's repertoire with top freelancing professionals by advertising projects on this site, otherwise known as "the world's largest online service marketplace."

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Chop off a rat's head, and a minute later a wave of electrical activity passes through their brain. Is this the boundary between life and death?

WHEN people were guillotined in the French revolution, witnesses reported that sometimes the eyes on the decapitated heads would blink, or lips would twitch.

Enthralled audiences wondered: was the victim still conscious? Such speculation about the precise moment of death has now been revived by an ethics experiment that uses the guillotine once more.

Anton Coenen, Tineke van Rijn and their colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands think their study may have pinpointed the boundary between life and death. That is a big claim, but even if it does not pan out, the research has still revealed a crucial step in the process of brain death. It also hints at ways to resuscitate patients who are currently beyond saving.

The Dutch team took healthy rats, embedded electrodes in their heads to monitor brain activity, then decapitated them. The study was carried out at the request of their university's ethics committee to find out whether this method of killing animals is humane. Lab rats are commonly decapitated without anaesthetic for post-mortem examination, as drugs can contaminate tissue samples. Coenen's team aimed to find out how quickly the rats lost consciousness and therefore how much they might suffer.

After decapitation, the rats' brain activity, as measured by electroencephalogram (EEG), immediately started dropping, falling to half the pre-decapitation level within 4 seconds. Earlier studies comparing awake and sleeping rats suggest that such low activity is a good indicator of complete unconsciousness.

Nine of the 17 rats used in the study were fully conscious, while the other eight had been sedated. Before decapitation their EEG traces were quite different, but afterwards they both followed the same course. That suggests the awake rats become completely unconscious just as quickly as the sedated animals.

Coenen thinks this is good evidence that decapitation is humane, even when the rats are awake. "Killing by decapitation causes the lowest amount of suffering," compared with other methods, he says.

Reports from revolutionary France suggested that guillotine victims remained conscious for up to 30 seconds after decapitation, even blinking at their executioners to alert them to their condition. "I think it's likely that these people had an awareness for maybe seconds," says neurologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He says the clinical evidence shows that people are completely unconscious within 10 seconds of blood flow to the brain being cut off.

But Coenen noticed something else. He kept the EEG running for several minutes after decapitation and noticed a 10-second wave of electrical activity in the rats' brains. The wave appeared 50 seconds after decapitation in rats that had been awake, and after 30 seconds in sedated animals (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016514).

Coenen thinks the wave could represent neurons' electrical potentials collapsing. Healthy neurons maintain a small negative voltage, roughly 70 millivolts, across their outer membranes. They do this by pumping positive ions out of the cell, using molecular pumps in the outer membrane. When a neuron fires, the voltage temporarily flips and the cell interior becomes positively charged. This "action potential" travels along the length of the neuron and is how nerves carry signals. It can only be generated if the cell maintains its negative charge during its resting state, and this means keeping the ion pumps going.

Coenen suggests that with a loss of blood supply, the pumps run out of energy and positively charged calcium ions flood back into the neurons. This depolarisation could be responsible for the EEG wave.

This "wave of death", Coenen says, could be a good indicator of ultimate brain death - the moment beyond which neurons cannot function, even if their energy supply is restored. Crucially, a similar wave has been seen in humans.

In 2009, Lakhmir Chawla and colleagues at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington DC published case studies of the brain activity of seven critically ill patients during and after their life support machines were turned off. After the patients' hearts stopped and their blood pressure fell, Chawla saw sharp spikes in brain activity lasting between 30 and 180 seconds (Journal of Palliative Medicine, DOI: 10.1089/jpm.2009.0159).

Like Coenen, Chawla thinks the wave could reflect neurons depolarising. His paper made headline news after he suggested that the wave might represent a near-death experience, though he now emphasises that this was just a hypothesis.

Nelson, who has studied near-death experiences for many years, thinks they have nothing to do with the wave. Neurons depolarise en masse during severe epileptic seizures, he points out, and people who experience such seizures have no memory of them afterwards. "If all the neurons depolarise, you can't have the neuronal patterns that cause memory," he says.

All Voices 

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8148979-death-rattle-of-a-decapitated-brain 

News item originally from New Scientist! 

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When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type “www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.

Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.

You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.

You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.

You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)

On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can return a call by highlighting one of these calls and pressing Send again.

When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.

You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

You can adjust the size and position of any window on your computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the lower-right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize it.

Forcing the camera’s flash to go off prevents silhouetted, too-dark faces when you’re outdoors.

When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”

You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

Oh, yeah: on the computer, means “times” and / means “divided by.”

If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)

Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.

You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.

You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhoto or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

Whatever technology you buy today will be obsolete soon, but you can avoid heartache by learning the cycles. New iPods come out every September. New digital cameras come out in February and October.

Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *emptythe Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)

You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,” for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the “.com” part.)

On the iPhone, hit the Space bar twice at the end of a sentence. You get a period, a space, and a capitalized letter at the beginning of the next word.

Come up with an automated backup system for your computer. There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety copy.

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Google is sending out invitations to an Android event in which it promises to show off the release of Android 3.0, Honeycomb, its tablet specific mobile operating system (OS).

The video opens with the message that it is “built entirely for tablet” and then shows a preview of screenshots and screencasts of what appears to be a 10-inch tablet running a version of Android with a dark blue theme consistent with the new color scheme that debuted in Android 2.3 (”Gingerbread”) in December.

The video shows:

• The ability to open multiple smartphone-size apps at a time and stack them next to each other (something iPad doesn’t do)
• A full-size horizontal keyboard similar to the iPad’s
• A slick visualization of Google Books in action
• A tablet-optimized email client similar to the Web version of Gmail for iPad
• A cool new tablet UI for YouTube
• A full screen video call using GoogleTalk
• A tablet version of Google Maps with 3D modeling and StreetView

The Android 3.0 platform introduces many new and exciting features for users and developers.

New User Features

New UI designed from the ground up for tablets

Android 3.0 is a new version of the Android platform that is specifically optimized for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. It introduces a brand new, truly virtual and “holographic” UI design, as well as an elegant, content-focused interaction model.

Android 3.0 builds on the things people love most about Android — refined multitasking, rich notifications, Home screen customization, widgets, and more — and transforms them with a vibrant, 3D experience and deeper interactivity, making them familiar but even better than before.

The new UI brings fresh paradigms for interaction, navigation, and customization and makes them available to all applications — even those built for earlier versions of the platform. Applications written for Android 3.0 are able to use an extended set of UI objects, powerful graphics, and media capabilities to engage users in new ways.

System Bar, for global status and notifications

Across the system and in all applications, users have quick access to notifications, system status, and soft navigation buttons in a System Bar, available at the bottom of the screen. The System Bar is always present and is a key touchpoint for users, but in a new "lights out mode" can also be dimmed for full-screen viewing, such as for videos.

Action Bar, for application control

In every application, users have access to contextual options, navigation, widgets, or other types of content in an Action Bar, displayed at the top of the screen. The Action Bar is always present when an application is in use, although its content, theme, and other properties are managed by the application rather than the system. The Action Bar is another key touchpoint for users, especially with action items and an overflow dropdown menu, which users frequently access in a similar manner in most applications.

Customizable Home screens

Five customizable Home screens give users instant access to all parts of the system from any context. Each screen offers a large grid that maintains spatial arrangement in all orientations. Users can select and manipulate Home screen widgets, app shortcuts, and wallpapers using a dedicated visual layout mode. Visual cues and drop shadows improve visibility when adjusting the layout of shortcuts and widgets. Each Home screen also offers a familiar launcher for access to all installed applications, as well as a Search box for universal search of apps, contacts, media files, web content, and more.

Recent Apps, for easy visual multitasking

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it is central to the Android 3.0 experience. As users launch applications to handle various tasks, they can use the Recent Apps list in the System Bar to see the tasks underway and quickly jump from one application context to another. To help users rapidly identify the task associated with each app, the list shows a snapshot of its actual state when the user last viewed it.

Redesigned keyboard

The Android soft keyboard is redesigned to make entering text fast and accurate on larger screen sizes. The keys are reshaped and repositioned for improved targeting, and new keys have been added, such as a Tab key, to provide richer and more efficient text input. Users can touch-hold keys to access menus of special characters and switch text/voice input modes from a button in the System Bar.

Improved text selection, copy and paste

When entering or viewing text, a new UI lets users quickly select a word by press-hold and then adjust the selection area as needed by dragging a set of bounding arrows to new positions. Users can then select an action from the Action Bar, such as copy to the clipboard, share, paste, web search, or find.

New connectivity options

Android 3.0 includes new connectivity features that add versatility and convenience for users. Built-in support for Media/Photo Transfer Protocol lets users instantly sync media files with a USB-connected camera or desktop computer, without needing to mount a USB mass-storage device. Users can also connect full keyboards over either USB or Bluetooth, for a familiar text-input environment. For improved wi-fi connectivity, a new combo scan reduces scan times across bands and filters. New support for Bluetooth tethering means that more types of devices can share the network connection of an Android-powered device.

Updated set of standard apps

The Android 3.0 platform includes an updated set of standard applications that are designed for use on larger screen devices. The sections below highlight some of the new features.

Browser

 

The browser includes new features that let users navigate and organize more efficiently. Multiple tabs replace browser windows and a new “incognito” mode allows anonymous browsing. Bookmarks and history are presented and managed in a single unified view. Users can now choose to automatically sign into Google sites on the browser with a supplied account and sync bookmarks with Google Chrome. New multitouch support is now available to JavaScript and plugins. Users can enjoy a better browsing experience at non-mobile sites through an improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling, support for fixed positioning, and more.

Camera and Gallery

The Camera application has been redesigned to take advantage of a larger screen for quick access to exposure, focus, flash, zoom, front-facing camera, and more. To let users capture scenes in new ways, it adds built-in support for time-lapse video recording. The Gallery application lets users view albums and other collections in full-screen mode, with easy access to thumbnails for other photos in the collection.

Contacts

The Contacts app uses a new two-pane UI and Fast Scroll to let users easily organize and locate contacts. The application offers improved formatting of international phone numbers as user types, based on home country and an international number parsing library. Contact information is presented in a card-like UI, making it easier for users to read and edit contacts.

Email

The Email application uses a new two-pane UI to make viewing and organizing messages more efficient. The app lets users select one or more messages, then select an action from the Action Bar, such as moving them to a folder. Users can sync attachments for later viewing and keep track of email using a home screen Widget.

New Developer Features

The Android 3.0 platform is designed specially to meet the unique needs of applications on devices with larger screen sizes. It offers all of the tools developers need to create incredible visual and interaction experiences on these devices

New UI Framework for creating great tablet apps

Activity fragments, for greater control of content and design flexibility

Starting with Android 3.0, developers can break the Activities of their applications into subcomponents called Fragments, then combine them in a variety of ways to create a richer, more interactive experience. For example, an application can use a set of Fragments to create a true multipane UI, with the user being able to interact with each pane independently. Fragments can be added, removed, replaced, and animated inside an Activity dynamically, and they are modular and reusable across multiple Activities. Because they are modular, Fragments also offer an efficient way for developers to write applications that can run properly on both larger screen as well as smaller screen devices.

Redesigned UI widgets

Android 3.0 offers an updated set of UI widgets that developers can use to quickly add new types of content to their applications. The new UI widgets are redesigned for use on larger screens such as tablets and incorporate the new holographic UI theme. Several new widget types are available, including a 3D stack, search box, a date/time picker, number picker, calendar, popup menu, and others. Most of the redesigned UI widgets can now be used as remote views in application widgets displayed on the home screen. Applications written for earlier versions can inherit the new Widget designs and themes.

Expanded Home screen widgets

Home screen widgets are popular with users because they offer fast access to application-specific data directly from the home screen. Android 3.0 lets developers take home screen widgets to the next level, offering more types of content and new modes of interaction with users. Developers can now use more standard UI widget types home screen widgets, including widgets that let users flip through collections of content as 3D stacks, grids, or lists. Users can interact with the home screen widgets in new ways, such as by using touch gestures to scroll and flip the content displayed in a widget.

Persistent Action Bar

The platform provides each application with its own instance of the Action Bar at the top of the screen, which the application can use to give the user quick access to contextual options, widgets, status, navigation, and more. The application can also customize the display theme of its Action Bar instance. The Action Bar lets developers expose more features of their applications to users in a familiar location, while also unifying the experience of using an application that spans multiple Activities or states.

Richer notifications

Notifications are a key part of the Android user experience because they let applications show key updates and status information to users in real time. Android 3.0 extends this capability, letting developers include richer content and control more properties. A new builder class lets developers quickly create notifications that include large and small icons, a title, a priority flag, and any properties already available in previous versions. Notifications can offer more types of content by building on the expanded set of UI Widgets that are now available as remote Views.

Multiselect, clipboard, and drag-and-drop

The platform offers convenient new interaction modes that developers can use. For managing collections of items in lists or grids, developers can offer a new multiselect mode that lets users choose multiple items for an action. Developers can also use a new system-wide Clipboard to let users easily copy any type of data into and out of their applications. To make it easier for users to manage and organize files, developers can now add drag-and-drop interaction through a DragEvent framework.

High-performance 2D and 3D graphics

New animation framework

The platform includes a flexible new animation framework that lets developers easily animate the properties of UI elements such as Views, Widgets, Fragments, Drawables, or any arbitrary object. Animations can create fades or movement between states, loop an animated image or an existing animation, change colors, and much more. Adding animation to UI elements can add visual interest to an application and refine the user experience, to keep users engaged.

Hardware-accelerated 2D graphics

Android 3.0 offers a new hardware-accelerated OpenGL renderer that gives a performance boost to many common graphics operations for applications running in the Android framework. When the renderer is enabled, most operations in Canvas, Paint, Xfermode, ColorFilter, Shader, and Camera are accelerated. Developers can control how hardware-acceleration is applied at every level, from enabling it globally in an application to enabling it in specific Activities and Views inside the application.

Renderscript 3D graphics engine

Renderscript is a runtime 3D framework that provides both an API for building 3D scenes as well as a special, platform-independent shader language for maximum performance. Using Renderscript, you can accelerate graphics operations and data processing. Renderscript is an ideal way to create high-performance 3D effects for applications, wallpapers, carousels, and more.

Support for multicore processor architectures

Android 3.0 is the first version of the platform designed to run on either single or multicore processor architectures. A variety of changes in the Dalvik VM, Bionic library, and elsewhere add support for symmetric multiprocessing in multicore environments. These optimizations can benefit all applications, even those that are single-threaded. For example, with two active cores, a single-threaded application might still see a performance boost if the Dalvik garbage collector runs on the second core. The system will arrange for this automatically.

Rich multimedia and connectivity

HTTP Live streaming

Applications can now pass an M3U playlist URL to the media framework to begin an HTTP Live streaming session. The media framework supports most of the HTTP Live streaming specification, including adaptive bit rate.

Pluggable DRM framework

Android 3.0 includes an extensible DRM framework that lets applications manage protected content according to a variety of DRM mechanisms that may be available on the device. For application developers, the framework API offers an consistent, unified API that simplifies the management of protected content, regardless of the underlying DRM engines.

Digital media file transfer

The platform includes built-in support for Media/Picture Transfer Protocol (MTP/PTP) over USB, which lets users easily transfer any type of media files between devices and to a host computer. Developers can build on this support, creating applications that let users create or manage media files that they may want to transfer or share across devices.

More types of connectivity

The platform offers new connectivity that developers can build on. API support for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP profiles lets applications query Bluetooth profiles for connected devices, audio state, and more, then notify the user. For example, a music application can check connectivity and status and let the user know that music is playing through a stereo headset. Applications can also register to receive system broadcasts of pre-defined vendor-specific AT commands, such as Platronics Xevent. For example, an application could receive broadcasts that indicate a connected device's battery level and could notify the user or take other action as needed. Applications can also take advantage of the platform's new support for full keyboards connected by USB or Bluetooth.

Enhancements for enterprise

In Android 3.0, developers of device administration applications can support new types of policies, including policies for encrypted storage, password expiration, password history, and password complex characters required.

Compatibility with existing apps

Android 3.0 brings a new UI designed for tablets and other larger screen devices, but it also is fully compatible with applications developed for earlier versions of the platform, or for smaller screen sizes. Existing applications can seamlessly participate in the new holographic UI theme without code changes, by adding a single attribute in their manifest files. The platform emulates the Menu key, which is replaced by the overflow menu in the Action Bar in the new UI. Developers wanting to take fuller advantage of larger screen sizes can also create dedicated layouts and assets for larger screens and add them to their existing applications.

http://developer.android.com 

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RESEARCHERS have exploited a security flaw in Apple's mobile devices, taking just six minutes to steal passwords from the iPhone and iPad. 

http://arstechnica.com 

 

 

Experts at Germany's Fraunhofer SIT have found that passwords are not secure, even if the mobile device has an encryption.

The institute also warned that businesses which use iPhones and iPads are being put at serious risk of security breaches. 

"Within six minutes the institute’s staff was able to render the iPhone’s encryption void and decipher many passwords stored on it," Fraunhofer SIT stated. 

"The flawed security design affects all iPhone and iPad devices containing the latest firmware."

For someone to hack the device, they need to have physical access to the iPhone or iPad. They can then link it to a computer, run a few basic software scripts, and locate the user's passwords and other sensitive information.

Fraunhofer SIT's exploit first relies on physical access to an iPhone, so an attacker has to get your iPhone away from you before digging in. In most cases like this, you would likely want to use Apple's (now free) remote wipe feature in order to protect your data, but remote wipe is easily thwarted by removing the device's SIM card. Any attacker sophisticated enough to decrypt the keychain will know this trick.

Once an attacker has your phone, he could use any of the commonly available jailbreaks to install an SSH server, install a keychain hacking script, and collect the decrypted password information.

Part of what makes the attack relatively trivial is that the cryptographic key used for the keychain is stored on the iPhone. Once a device is jailbroken, hackers can use iOS's built-in APIs to access and decrypt certain passwords—including those for network access and e-mail accounts—stored in the keychain. From there, passwords from VPN access or e-mail accounts can be further used to gain more passwords, or e-mail accounts can be used to request password resets for a number of online services.

But while Fraunhofer SIT's particular methods may be new, accessing the keychain and other encrypted information on a jailbroken iPhone has been possible for some time. iPhone forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski told Ars that similar exploits have been around since about the time of the introduction of the iPhone 3G.

"Several dev teams have been able to easily deduce Apple's encryption keys for the keychain; it just hasn't been widely advertised," Zdziarski said. The "new" part of Fraunhofer SIT's attack, however, leverages Apple's APIs to access the keychain instead of other methods.

The real problem, according to Zdziarski, is that Apple hasn't yet fully implemented a truly secure environment for iOS. "Apple has—since introducing encryption—been relying on their DRM know-how, and just erasing the label that says 'DRM' and calling it 'security,'" he explained. "The problem with this is that DRM only makes things a little more difficult for hackers."

"Real security relies on the strength of the key, and the secrecy of the key," Zdziarski continued. "And as long as the keys are all stored on the iPhone and don't rely on a user password, they can easily be compromised."

In other words, even while Apple has continually improved the security of information on iPhones and other iDevices, the same types of flaws that enable moderately skilled hackers to access an entire unencrypted disk image of an iPhone still exist. And while Apple offers APIs for developers to add an additional layer of encryption for user data, it's up to developers to implement it independently.

Zdziarski said that he believes Apple is pushing to make the iPhone compliant with security standards set forth in Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2). When that happens, government and enterprise users can be less wary about iPhone security issues. "But at the end of the day," he said, "Apple will need to abandon their DRM approach if they want true security, as opposed to just some fancy marketing strategies."

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1. Apple iPad users are each downloading 17 apps and.downloading 2.5 iBooks on average

2. Nearly one fourth of all digital books are already being sold via the iBooks iPad app

3. Over 8,500 iPad apps are available after two months on sale

4. An iPad App creator apparently told Jobs that they earned more on the iPad app sales in one day than five years of Google ads on the product’s Web site.

6. 35 million iPad app downloads have been logged since the device went on sale in April

7. 2 million people have already bought iPads in just 2 months, and they are ready to buy your next great iPad application

8. The average iPad reader spends 60 minutes with each monthly issue of magazines’ iPad apps. The average visitor on the Web spends just 2.1 minutes per month at Vanityfair.com and 3.8 minutes per month at GQ.com, according to comScore.

9. Companies are paying newspapers and magazines up to five times as much to place ads in their iPad applications as what similar advertising costs on regular websites.

10. In the nine days since it launched its $4.99 iPad application, Wired has sold close to 73,000 downloads–almost as many copies as the magazine sells on the newsstand–spending five days in the No. 1 paid app slot

11. The New York Times has had 350,000 iPad app downloads on one week

12. The iPad was going to be called the iBook and be like an ebook reader but apple changed it to make it more like an iPhone.

13. The iPad's design is based on the iPhone and the iPhone's design is based on the monolith from 2001: a Space Odyssey.

14. The average cost of an app is $1.99. But it takes an average of 4 weeks to make one and sell it.

15. The most used app on the iPad is safari and the most visited website is apple.com.

16. The iPad can use almost all of the iPhone's apps.

17. The 3G version costs an extra $130 and is locked to AT&T. There are two options 250MB for $14.99 a month or 2GB for $25 a month. IT is a monthly contract which is very good because nobody wants to be signed up to a 12-18 month contract.

18. More Than 1 million apps were downloaded to iPads on the first day.

19. You can sync your iPod touch or iPhone with your iPad. Personally I do not think this is very useful because I can not see why somebody would get an iPad if they had an iPod touch or an iPhone

20. The iPad has a 9.7 inch screen (about the same size as a piece of A4 paper), weighs less than a kilogram, maximum battery life of ten hours, the battery is built in so it can not be replaced and the maximum amount of memory is 64GB.

21. The iPad does not support flash. Most videos and games on the internet are flash so this is quite a big problem for the iPad. However if you jailbreak it flash is supported.

22. Prices start from $499 for a 16GB wifi and go up to $829 for an iPad 3g 64gb in USA 

23. battery life of up to 10 hours from a single charge

24. an online "iBookstore" to complement the iTunes music store. iPad syncs with iTunes so applications and content downloaded from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synched to a user's iTunes library

25.  iPad developers require a Software Development Kit to create iphone/ipad applications

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