Broadband - Voip

There are many different types of software’s which are used for business and it is because of these specially designed software’s that the businesses are running successfully. There is always some kind of specific software which is designed for a different kind of business and these software’s are designed for the business type and to manage many different things in the business. For example the systems that banks use allow the bank staff to find out about bank transactions, the different accounts held by bankers and much more. The software’s in companies have made a significant change in businesses and is increasing.

British telephone company BT has recently announced that they will offer Sony PSP owners customer software. This will enable users to make voice and video calls to other users of the PSP, this will also apply to BT phones as well. This software will eventually be distributed to other 100 countries, which will again enable connectivity between PSP’s, landlines, mobile phones and PC’s.

A couple of months ago, search engine giants Google shipped an innovative software combo named Google Pack which included some free and shareware applications with a common installer. It included some well known applications like Trillian, RealPlayer, Mozilla Firefox and popular Google’s own applications.

However, the latest news on this front is that Google has dumped the popular instant messaging client Trillian out of this pack. And they have not exactly given an explanation for this action.

Scott Werndorfer, Cerulean Studios’ co-founder and head developer said in a statement on this development: “Our goals are seemingly no longer perfectly aligned with those of Google. Their reasons for removing Trillian are their own and were not made available to us. We harbor no ill-will towards them and wish them the best of luck; they’re going to need it.”

The application has been popular for users who want to access multiple messaging protocols from a single interface. They enable the users to access a variety of IM services, such as America Online’s AIM, Yahoo’s Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft’s MSN Messenger from a single application.

A Google representative said in a statement: “Google Pack is currently in beta, and the selection of software available through the Pack will continue to evolve.” No other explanations were given.

Checkout: Google Pack

Apple Computers has released a significant upgrade to its video-editing application, Final Cut Express. The latest version is now the Final Cut Express HD 3.5.

This new update comes in a universal binary and would run on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs. Other than that, the new feature includes Dynamic RT for real-time playback of multi-stream effects, Soundtrack 1.5 with a complete suite of professional level audio production tools, and LiveType 2.1 with additional animated text and titles in the box.

Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing spoke about this new update: “Final Cut Express HD 3.5 is the total movie making package with many of the same tools the pros use at a price designed to appeal to aspiring pros.”

He added: “Whether it’s multiple streams of video, professional audio tools or animated text and titles, Final Cut Express HD 3.5 is ideal for anyone who is passionate about the movies they make and delivers incredible performance on Apple’s new Intel-based Macs.”

This application costs £199 for a fresh purchase. Owners of previous versions can upgrade for £65.

Google has been playing a waiting game with their Google Video beta service as YouTube continues to excite the web users with their ease and flexibility.

However, they have now changed their plans and have made it easier for the users to upload their videos on the Google Video service.

The company is hoping that more and more users would now prefer to use their service instead of the competition.

Until now, uploading a video on the service required the user to download a special application and install it on their machines. However, with the updated module, this step is no longer required.

In addition, users will not have to wait for long to see their videos hosted on the Google Video website. The process is easy and relatively fast on their competitor YouTube’s website.

Microsoft is taking some inspiration from the Apple iLife suite and adding blogging support to their word processor application MS Word.

The company is due to launch the latest version of their office suite, MS Office 12 early next year and they have incorporated blogging capabilities in this update.

Users would be able to configure some of the popular blogging platforms in MS Word. This would allow them to publish straight from inside the word processor.

Interestingly, Google already provides an add-on to MS Word, which enables blogging to Google Blogger weblog service. Microsoft would be supporting a variety of platforms including MSN Spaces, Google Blogger and others.

Interestingly, this new feature will also automatically upload pictures and convert Office graphics such as charts and diagrams into browser compatible PNG images. This would make it very easy for new users to blog using their favorite web processing application.

I have seen market analysts complaining about the fact that a lot of startups now fear launching new innovative services in the market as they fear that Google would copy their concept and kill their project.

We now have another Google’s service, which mirrors the functionality provided by sites like del.icio.us and many others. Google Notebook is now on.

The service allows the Google users to store and compile links to web sites, favorites, and snippets of information. It is currently in beta stage like a lot of other Google services.

Google Notebook was officially announced last week with the company saying that the launch would take place in the coming days. We had seen some screenshots floating on the internet and now it is open to anyone with a registered Google account.

The service currently supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browser.

Visit: Google Notebook

Apple has released updates for several applications included in their iLife 06 suite. These updated applications are iDVD, iWeb, iPhoto and iMovie HD.

The latest versions of these updates are now: iDVD 6.0.2, iWeb 1.1, iPhoto 6.0.3 and iMovie HD 6.0.2. These are available for download from the Software Update system preference in the Apple Mac OS X operating system.

Apple had following comments regarding the updates in these four applications:

iDVD 6.0.2 “addresses issues with burning some 16:9 projects and improves overall stability”.

iWeb 1.1 adds comment and search support for blogs and podcasts published to .Mac, addresses usability and performance issues, and fixes image management problems associated with site load performance.

iPhoto 6.0.3 fixes problems with Photocasting of Smart Albums, sharing iPhoto libraries, and creating calendars and books.

iMovie HD 6.0.2 fixes a problem with PAL audio and displaying iLife sound effects automatically in the iLife Media Browser.

In addition, Apple has also fixed minor stability issues in all these applications.

Search engine giant Google had just recently launched a new service enabling their users to create simple web pages (sites).

The company has been working on enhancing this service and has now launched an experimental feature enabling the users to place Google Gadgets on these pages.

These gadgets are similar small applications, which are already available on their Google Personalized Homepage service and enables third party developers to contribute their own code and mini applications.

The feature is currently in beta stage as the company warns the users of potential problems with this new facility. However, it is interesting to see that now users can get complicated features on their Google Pages by just selecting from a wide range of pre-developed mini gadgets.

I for one love to have a working version of the Pacman game on my test page on Google Pages!

Visit : Google Pages 

VoIP software market giants Skype has collaborated with two firms to provide instant translation services in more than 150 languages for their users.

The company has joined hands with Language Line Services, a language services firm, and Voxeo, which provides standards-based interactive voice response (IVR) technology.

Callers would be able to ask their queries in English and other languages. The service is quite flexible with languages ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Interestingly, this service would be available for a small fee 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The company would be charging $2.99 a minute.

Open Source foundation Mozilla has launched the second major release of the Bon Echo edition of their popular Mozilla Firefox web browser.

This release is primarily targeted towards the developers and testers as they are looking for feedback on several new features added in this update.

Some of the new features are:

Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behavior is slightly different
Inline spell checking in text boxes
Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
New search plug-in manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

Download: Bon Echo Alpha 2 Milestone

U.S. antitrust authorities have good news for the software giants Microsoft. They have rejected the concerns raised by search engine giant Google related to the search box feature being introduced in the upcoming version of the popular Internet Explorer 7 web browser, which defaults to MSN Search Engine.

Google claimed that this default setting would give Microsoft an unfair advantage as Windows is the dominating operating system in use worldwide. Microsoft countered that challenge by claiming that if a user upgrade from an existing setup, the upgrade does not change the selected search engine. In addition, the company is providing users enough instructions on how to change the default search engine on the web browser.

The US justice department said in this issue that they found no basis for concerns voiced by Google over the search box being added in the IE7 update. They added that the new Internet search box in Microsoft’s browser “respects users’ and (computer makers’) default choices.” In addition, they also made it clear that the decision is final and they have concluded their findings in this matter.

Microsoft has finally launched the public beta of the next major overhaul to their instant messenger application MSN Messenger. The application is now called Windows Live Messenger though little except for the interface has changed and a few new features have been added.

The company has also collaborated with companies like Uniden and Royal Philips Electronics who would be selling cordless phones that work with the service. This would enable the consumers to use the capabilities of the Windows Live Messenger with a cordless phone to make calls.

Microsoft is also working with Verizon Internet telephony service to provide a PC-to-phone feature. The service now works with numbers in countries like Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands. The application now also builds a unified contact list that draws on information from other applications.

This application would take on the AOL’s recently announced AIM Phoneline Unlimited and Yahoo’s under development next update to their Yahoo! Messenger. We are yet to see what Google does with their Google Talk.

The developers and operators of the BearShare online file-sharing service have decided to payout $30 million to avoid being sued for copyright violations.

In addition, Free Peers Inc., which distributed this application, has also decided to stop their operations and would no longer be operating any unlicensed online music services.

They were one of the seven software companies developing and providing p2p software products who were sued by the recording industry last fall.

Developers of i2Hub and WinMX have already closed their operations and Grokster agreed to payout $50 million to settle that copyright infringement case.

The remaining four companies are Warez P2P, Limewire, eDonkey, and Soulseek.

As part of this latest announcement, Free Peers would be selling off their technology and would also give away rights to the BearShare domain name and data on users of the software.

Opera Browser ASA has released the second version of their popular web browser application for low-end mobile phones, Opera Mini.

Opera Mini 2.0 browser has been developed to make it easier for mobile users to surf the internet using older generation mobile phones.

This update makes it easier for them to buy ringtones and other mobile content online. Opera Mini 2.0 now also support downloads of files from the internet. This means that users can now store music and images on their mobile handsets after downloading them using the Opera Mini 2.0 application.

This latest update also enable the user to chose his choice of search engine from the search box. They were supporting Google as the default search engine till now. Users can now also assign two-key codes for websites as an alternate for bookmarking the links.

Mozilla Foundation continues to suffer security issues with their much-touted safe web browser Mozilla Firefox as we get another minor update.

The latest version of Mozilla Firefox is Firefox 1.5.0.3 and it fixes a denial of service vulnerability
The open source foundation recommends the users of existing versions to upgrade to the latest secure release to be safe of any bugs and issues. This latest bug was discovered by Martijn Wargers and Nick Mott.

This bug is technically related to how Firefox handles JavaScript code. Interestingly, the users of older Firefox 1.0 browsers and the Mozilla Suite 1.7 are not affected by the flaw. Users of recent versions of this popular open source browser should get the update automatically through the internal mechanism of the application.

Mozilla Developers added that they postponed several feature inclusion to release this quick update to fix the security vulnerability in the current versions.

Google might be the reigning champion of the search engine market in the world today, but they do not control what browser a user runs on his desktop. They have managed to get both Mozilla Firefox and Opera to point to their search engine by default, but Internet Explorer continues to remain the most used web browser in the market.

And with Windows Vista coming early next year with Internet Explorer 7, it becomes important for Google to see how they can compete with Microsoft’s latest invasion in their territory. Microsoft has added the search box to the latest version of their web browser and it points to MSN Search by default.

Google claims that this gives Microsoft an unfair advantage considering it would ship with all the copies of Vista. And they have filed an informal complaint to both U.S. and European antirust regulators.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search services at Google said on this issue: “The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on their quality of search services. We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.”

Interestingly, Google just recently started promoting Mozilla Firefox from their homepage, which makes the open source browser to become the first third party application to get this honor. Seems like Google understands the kind of problems they might face when Vista arrives in the market next year and wants more people to switch to Firefox to avoid giving Microsoft an advantage with Internet Explorer 7.

But the fact remains… If Google has a problem with Microsoft using MSN Search by default on Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft should ask Opera and Firefox (and perhaps Safari) developers to provide an option to their users to choose the search engine of their choice!

Microsoft now plans to help newspapers gain some audience through a new software application, which would ship with their upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

The software giant is developing Times Reader application in collaboration with New York Times, which would make it easier for PC users to read on the computer screen.

Gates was speaking at a newspaper editors’ conference in Seattle when he showcased this application, which would use the graphics power of Windows Vista to make text more readable on computer screens.

Users would be able to view the digital content on any screen size or change the font size. Layout of the content would automatically adjust itself to the size and the surrounding elements on the page.

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. spoke about Times Reader: “The Times Reader is a great next step in melding the readability and portability of the newspaper with the interactivity and immediacy of the Web.”

This application essentially make use of the Windows Presentation Foundation engine and would help the newspaper companies maintain the look of their print editions on the computer screens.

Gates added: “The Times Reader is a powerful example of how companies can use software to forge new types of customer connections that span beyond the browser to the desktop and mobile devices.”

Microsoft would also be making this application available for download in the coming months for the users of Windows XP operating system.

However, someone needs to clarify on how this application further innovates on the various e-book readers Microsoft has developed in the past?

Search engine major Yahoo! have launched a new software product, which would enable the web users to turn a PC into a digital video recorder. 

 

This application is named Yahoo! Go For TV and it makes a PC capable of playing and recording video found through Yahoo search. 

 

Yahoo! Go For TV can also play music from Yahoo’s online radio stations and show pictures from its Flicker photo-sharing service. 

 

The basic requirement of using this application is a PC powered with Windows XP operating system and loaded with 512 MB of RAM, 40 MB of free disk space for installation and 20 GB of additional disk space for TV recordings. There is no support for Apple Computers though. 

 

Users would also require having a TV tuner card and remote control. In addition, the TV would require video and audio input connections. Broadband connectivity is required to fully utilize the potential of the application. 

 

The leaders in the VoIP software market Skype have crossed a major milestone. The company now has a registered user base of more than 100 million. 

 

Interestingly, they just had around 54 million members when the ecommerce giants eBay went ahead and acquired them for an awesome figure of $2.6 billion. 

 

This software application was developed by the creators of the popular p2p application Kazaa. Skype changed the way people communicated over the internet as it enabled voice conversations even for people with slow internet connections. 

 

They now even support calling and receiving calls from regular telephone services for a small fee. This makes them more popular amongst the web users around the world. 

 

The registered user base might have touched 100 million members; however, the real life user base of the application would be comprehensively lower considering not every member who registers keep using the application regularly. 

 

Still, it is a major milestone for the company.