Secure connection through DirectAccess in Windows 7

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems introduces a feature named DirectAccess. It allows remote users to securely access enterprise shares, Web sites, and applications without connecting to a virtual private network (VPN). DirectAccess establishes bi-directional connectivity with a user’s enterprise network every time a user’s DirectAccess-enabled portable computer connects to the Internet, even before the user logs on. Users never have to think about connecting to the enterprise network, So that IT administrators can manage remote computers outside the office, even when the computers are not connected to the VPN.

DirectAccess uses IPv6-over-IPsec to encrypt communications transmitted across the Internet. DirectAccess is designed to reduce unnecessary traffic on the corporate network by sending only traffic destined for the corporate network through the DirectAccess server (running Windows Server 2008 R2), However the administrator can choose to send all traffic through the corporate network. DirectAccess can also authenticate the user and supports multifactor authentication. Administrators can configure which intranet resources specific users can access using DirectAccess.

Four displays in a notebook??

Heard about extreme multitasking? Two displays are mounted on a notebook, like Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds' Side Panel. Now Intel's is up with four. Its one primary LCD screen and three auxiliary OLED screens above the keyboard. The aim here is to allow the user to organize information the way he or she prefers it. Touted as the world's first multitouch, multiscreen concept solution, the prototype (code-named Tangent Bay) was unveiled at the Mobility Meetup, an Intel Insiders event for bloggers. Intel's Mobile Product Line marketing manager for Greater Americas showed some music files being dragged and dropped between the OLED panels using a finger, as well as flipped video files being moved up to the main LCD display from the auxilliary panels with ease. One could also contract, zoom, scroll, and pan content from one screen to another.

Unlimited GPRS plans from TATA DOCOMO

The packages are for its prepaid subscribers tagged as Rs 15 GPRS pack and Rs 95 GPRS pack.

TATA DOCOMO packs of Rs 15 come with 3 days validity and enables user to get unlimited access whereas Rs 95 pack come with 30 days of validity and enables user to use and access data download for 30 days. This pack can also be used on PC and laptop. While on roaming, on both the packs the user will be charged 10paisa for 10KB.
To start using internet on phone the user need to save the settings as default settings. (By default the user is purveyed for TATA DOCOMO Internet and DIVE IN at the time of purchase of the connection if the user has a GPRS compatible handset.) To get Internet settings SMS “INTERNET” to 52270 (toll free on TATA DOCOMO HOME & CHARGED Rs.3 at non DOCOMO Network) and save them as default settings. Once the user has done that, just go to the internet browser on the phone and start surfing.

The speed may be a bit slow. TATA DOCOMO assures between 28kbps to 48 kbps speed and that should be enough to do with checking emails, searching, tweeting etc.

Countdown begins for Oceansat-2 launch

The countdown for the launch of Oceansat-2 satellite that would help identify potential fishing zones and in coastal zone studies from Sriharikota.

The 970-kg satellite would be shot into space on September 23 by Indian Space Research Organisation's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) along with six European nano spacecrafts.

A set of two Rubin nano and four cubeats would also ride piggyback, accompanying Oceansat-2, on the homegrown PSLV rocket that will blast off from the Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Apart from two Rubin nano satellites from Germany, the four cubesats lined up for the mission are: Beesat, built by Technical University Berlin, UWE-2 (University of Wuerzburg Germany), ITU-pSat (Istanbul Technical University Turkey) and SwissCube-1 (Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland).

Windows 7 to be upgraded at ‘NO-COST’

As of last Friday, individual customers who purchase Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate will be able to get a corresponding version of Windows 7 at little or no cost, according to a blog post by Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc.

But what has not been widely publicized, is that there is 25-unit limitation on upgrades for business customers.

Many feel that Microsoft should not be charging Vista customers a cent to upgrade from that troubled OS.

Silver says enterprise customers should demand an upgrade option from their hardware vendors, some of whom have the latitude to expand the 25-machine limit for their customers.

But if you're not an enterprise customer, you can "obtain rights for best value?"

Bing - Can it give a bang to google?

Microsoft launched Bing about two weeks ago . The early results are impressive.

Microsoft increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during June 2-6, according to comScore. The research firm concluded this is an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft's share of search-result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.

Meanwhile, StatCounter is reporting that Bing has overtaken Yahoo to secure the number-two spot in the search market. StatCounter said Bing grabbed market share from Google. StatCounter's analysis reveals that in the U.S., Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place with 16.28 percent. Yahoo had 10.22 percent. Google still dominates the U.S. search market with 71.47 percent.

Google will take a competitor like Microsoft very seriously because they have the capacity to invest millions of dollars into search.

Yahoo needs to continue developing its product and make sure it's competitive. Otherwise, Yahoo could wake up and find themselves in third place at some point in the next 12 to 18 months .

Windowa 7 RC1 now available

The Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) (build 7100) is now available to the public for download. The beta keys Microsoft gave out during the public beta will work just fine with this build. The RC is available in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

This is different from the beta, which was available in English (32-bit and 64-bit), German (32-bit and 64-bit), Japanese (32-bit and 64-bit), Arabic (32-bit and 64-bit), and Hindi (32-bit). If you are already on the beta, Microsoft recommends a clean install of the RC build: the upgrade path is not supported.

It will be available at least through June 30, 2009, with no limits on the number of downloads or product keys available. So you don't need rush to make sure you get your copy. When you're ready to download the RC, it'll be waiting for you. So Microsoft is trying to deter the huge stampede of Internet users looking for Windows 7.

Here are the system requirements:

• 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher driver

So what's new in this build anyway? The Engineering 7 Blog has three separate posts detailing some of the changes. Overall, it is faster and has a ton of bugs fixed. We'll have a post that goes deeper into the changes in the near future. 

DVD of 500 GB ready to be rolled out

General Electric Global Research says it has figured out a way to put up to 500GB of data on a regular-sized DVD disc under laboratory conditions. GE says its breakthrough was achieved by writing 3-dimensional patterns that represent data onto a disc made of highly reflective material.

The disc then acts as a mirror for making a laser to pick up the entire piece of data. GE's process doesn't just put information onto the surface of the disc -- as DVDs and CDs do -- but etches the micro-holographic patterns below the surface of the disc as well.

Holographic disc-based storage is a long ways off from consumers, but its potential has many in the storage community excited. Experts see micro-holographic players and discs over time have the potential of becoming a low-cost storage alternative to DVDs and Blu-ray discs. By comparison, the highest capacity Blu-ray discs can store up to 50GB of data, while the most common type of DVD holds less than 9GB of information. GE's eventual goal is to store up to 1 TB of data on the new disc format. GE says its micro-holographic technology is backward compatible -- able to read CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

GE says it is eager to take its micro-holographic technology out of the lab and put it on store shelves. GE says its first step in that direction is to target data-intensive business customers like movie studios and medical researchers, but the eventual goal is to put micro-holographic players in the home.

Windows 7 to have XPmode?

Microsoft on Friday night released a user guide entitled "Windows 7 Product Update: Key Changes Included in the Release Candidate." Among the new features outlined in the guide was Windows XP mode, which lets users with Windows 7 run apps in a Window XP environment. The feature will be made available as a free download for Windows 7 users.

The feature was noted as part of the Windows 7 Product Update user guide:

"The Release Candidate provides you the flexibility to run many older Windows XP applications in a virtual Windows XP environment on a Windows 7-based PC," Microsoft says. "Called Windows XP Mode, this new feature requires an additional download."

A similar feature will be offered for enterprises. The Release Candidate extends virtualization technologies to end users, as well as small and medium businesses through a new feature called Windows XP Mode. "Windows XP Mode, together with virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC, provides a virtual Windows XP environment in which you can run many existing Windows XP applications on a Windows 7-based PC," Microsoft said. "Windows XP Mode is included in Windows 7 and is available either through pre-installation by your PC manufacturer or via a no cost download."

GPS enabled asthma inhalers

We'll soon be able to track (and hopefully eliminate) recurring asthma attack outbreaks. Van Sickle, a scholar in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is working with students in the biomedical engineering program to create an asthma inhaler with a built-in GPS receiver.

The project is still in its early stages, but David's goal is to eventually map out danger zones that could be life-threatening to those stricken with the lung disease. He already has it all mapped out: "rescue inhalers" will pinpoint the location of each asthmatic attack and cross-reference it with other devices, attempting to detect new locations and trends that previously flew under the radar undetected by asthma researchers. Van Sickle envisions a time when his technology can help researchers discover exactly why people suffer from asthma.

"It will allow us to better target public-health interventions to the places and times when people are really suffering," Van Sickle said.

Asthmatics interested in participating in the trials should be at least 18 years old, and can call 608-261-1036 or e-mail asthmap@mailplus.wisc.edu for more information.

Airtel Launches 16 Mbps Broadband

Bharti Airtel has launched 16 Mbps broadband in the country.

This service, powered by Airtel's Carrier Ethernet Network, will be initially available in Delhi NCR, Chennai and Bangalore with phased roll-out in Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and Kolkata.

K Srinivas, Joint President, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel said, "Airtel has constantly strived to innovate and deliver high quality products to its broadband customers. We are the leading private broadband service provider in the country and pioneered 8 Mbps broadband. It gives us great pleasure now to be able to introduce the fastest, wired broadband service on DSL. We will be able to offer 16 Mbps broadband to 70% of the households in the 3 cities of Delhi NCR, Chennai and Bangalore."

Airtel delivers its broadband service to customers through a fibre backbone of Carrier Ethernet Network with last mile delivery on copper using ADSL2+ technology. This technology enables ultra high-speed broadband which is scalable and affordable.

Customers have 2 tariff plans to choose from -

- Speed Combo 2999 - receive 16 Mbps broadband speed with monthly data transfer limit of 20 GB along with a fixed line connection at Rs. 2999 per month.

- Speed Combo 4999 - receive 16 Mbps broadband speed with monthly data transfer limit of 50 GB along with a fixed line connection at Rs. 4999 per month.

Talk to the web: A new tech from IBM

IT major IBM recently developed a telecom web browsing technology that would allow users to talk to the web and create voice sites using mobile phones.

According to IBM Research's website, Telecom Web Browser would enable browsing the Web of voice applications through an ordinary phone while providing similar experience as is available on the World Wide Web.

With a purpose of interconnecting the web and voice, IBM has developed a new protocol - Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) - analogous to HTTP, that provides a mechanism to connect telephony voice applications with each other. The new protocol would enable voice-driven transactions that can span multiple cross-enterprise voice applications thus providing a seamless browsing experience to the telephony user, added IBM's research site.

People will talk to the web and the web will respond. The research technology is analogous to the Internet. Unlike personal computers it will work on mobile phones where people can simply create their voice sites. The spoken web is a network of voice sites or interconnected voice. The company got in some pilot projects in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

SSD drives for india from Transcend

Transcend has released its all-new 2.5-inch 192GB high-speed Solid State Drive (SSD) in India. The SSD is made of NAND flash memory which has no moving parts. The drive is free from mechanical failure resulting from vibration, shock, or heat are eliminated. It provides a sustained read/write speeds of up to 150MB/90MB per second regardless of file size.

It also features integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) to ensure accurate data transfer, as well as built-in wear leveling technology, which guarantees an ultra-long storage lifespan and long-term reliability. With a latency of about 0.2ms, the overall improvement is produced system responsiveness.

This 192GB SSD incorporates an industry-standard SATA II interface 2.5-inch form factor that allows easy installation in most notebook computers and mainstream PCs.

A lite weight PDF reader

Foxit PDF Reader is an alternative viewer/reader for PDF documents. Foxit PDF Reader is less than 1MB to download and doesn't need lengthy installation (just download, unzip, and run). It works with all types of PDF documents you might have, with high display quality. Supports different languages including most Asian languages. You can zoom in/zoom out or rotate page display, copy text information to other application, search text in PDF document, and print PDF documents. Adobe reader is monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 2.0 omits these widgets and throws in some neat features, such as annotation tools, while still allowing you to read PDF documents.

Download your free foxit reader here.

World's highest-density memory chip

Hynix despite current economic slow down, it is ready to launch the highest-density memory chip this year.

The new Hynix "DDR3 DRAM (dynamic random access memory)" chip adopts a technology that allows circuits inside to be just 40 nanometres apart -- a fifth thinner than at present. A nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. The thinner the process is, the more cutting-edge the technology is for making the chips, which are widely used in computers and other electronic devices. The new product is 50 per cent more productive than existing chips as it requires less energy and costs less to produce than existing ones, Hynix said. Mass production begins in the third quarter of this year, it said. "Hynix has become the world's first to apply the 40-nanometre-class technology to the DDR3 DRAM chip successfully," Hynix spokesman Park Hyun said. "The new chip development will help the company continue to lead the fast-changing memory chip market." The memory chip industry has been hard hit by the global economic downturn, with Japan's Toshiba slashing production and key Taiwanese firms turning to the island's government for help as demand worldwide slumps.

Be ready for LG Arena KM900

The series of touch screen mobiles widens. LG is ready to roll out its new Arena KM900. Its feature rich. And will be surely upto the expectations of the users.

• 3-inch 262K color, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display
• 3G and Wi-Fi support
• Bluetooth
• USB
• 5 megapixel camera (DVD quality recording)
• GPS (A-GPS support)
• DivX playback
• 105.9 x 55.3 x 11.95mm dimensions
• 1000 mAh battery
• New S-Class UI

Access Gmail Offline

By enabling offline access, Gmail will load in your browser even if you don't have an Internet connection. You can read messages, star, label and archive them, compose new mail and messages ready to be sent will wait in your Outbox until you're online again.It's built on the Gears platform, which has already been used to offline-enable Google Docs, Google Reader, and other third-party web applications.

To get started with offline Gmail -- Sign in to Gmail and click 'Settings'.- Click the 'Labs' tab and select 'Enable' next to 'Offline Gmail'.- Click 'Save Changes.'- In the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new 'Offline' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.Standard Edition users can follow these instructions immediately, while Premier and Education Edition users will first need their domain admins to enable Gmail Labs from the Google Apps admin control panel.

Prevent viruses from getting in through pen drives

Simple steps to get it done.
1. Go to run and type gpedit.msc
2. Go to administrative templates
3. Choose system.
4. U could see list of cutomisable setting in ur right side pane
5. Choose turn off autoplay.
6. A window pops up. Select all drives, select enabled and click apply.

Now its done.. no more worry of virus when u insert ur pen drive.

Find Product Keys for Installed Software

When you needed to find the product keys for various programs I was planning to reinstall. Easier said than done. A sweet utility that saves hours of rummaging through boxes. Magical Jelly Bean's Keyfinder quickly and efficiently finds the product keys for installed programs, then lets you print them for safekeeping.
It's compatible with all versions of Windows and can dig up the keys for your operating system, Office apps, and various other programs.
Keyfinder is fast, free, and incredibly handy. It doesn't even require installation. I recommend it not just for those migrating to new PCs, but for anyone who wants to keep a hardcopy of important product keys.
Click to download.

Nokia Announces N79 Eco Edition

Recently Nokia announced their N79 Active edition and now they’ve announced another variant of the N79 called the Eco. The handset is available in Petrol Black and is sold without the charger to reduce space that will in turn reduce boxing material, create more space to ship more and so on and so forth.

The Eco edition will be available with 3 Express-on rear panels and Nokia has promised to donate Four Pounds, that’s about Rs. 285, to WWF (World Wildlife Fund) for every box that sells. Since the N79 has support for a standard Nokia charger it’s not a big deal to simply use an old one.