Bhashantek, Dhaka Cantonment, Dhaka-1206, BD.

Facebook Swahili version launched

2009-06-15T23:56:00.001-07:00

Swahili is the second African language after Afrikaans to be on Facebook

The social-networking website Facebook has launched in Swahili, targeting more than 110m speakers of the language.

A group of Swahili scholars launched the new version with the permission of the California-based internet firm.

Facebook use has spread over the past five years in East and Central Africa, where most Swahili-speakers live.

Analysts say a Hausa version could be launched next in West Africa and in Zulu in southern Africa. Facebook already exists in Afrikaans.

Symon Wanda, one of the project's initiators, said they wanted to launch a Swahili version to safeguard the future of the language.

"The youth, the future generation, if you look at the biggest percentage of users on Facebook, they are the youth," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"They can easily navigate through when it's maybe a language they understand, which makes it easier to use the Swahili than to use the English."

The BBC's Ruth Nesoba, in Nairobi, says more than 60% of Facebook users in East Africa are already using the Swahili version.

The bulk of Swahili-speakers live in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, parts of the Horn of Africa, Malawi, Mozambique and the Indian Ocean islands.

Facebook already exists in some 50 language versions.

BBC licence fee 'could be shared'

2009-06-15T23:55:00.001-07:00

Lord Carter began work on the Digital Britain report last October

The BBC could be made to share part of the television licence fee with commercial rivals under government plans to be announced later.

The Digital Britain report will suggest ways to help companies like Channel 4 cope with the impact of the internet.

It is also expected to include plans to tackle illegal file-sharing and to bring broadband to the whole country.

Gordon Brown said fast internet was now "an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water".

In October 2008, Minister for Communications Lord Carter began work on a plan aimed at securing the UK's place at the head of the new media age.

Among 22 specific actions announced in his interim report in January was a commitment to establishing a universal broadband service for every home and business by 2012.

Writing in the Times newspaper on Tuesday, the prime minister reaffirmed his commitment to that "transformation".

We also need to help Channel 4 to secure its future

Prime Minister Gordon Brown

At a glance: Digital Britain

"Digital Britain cannot be a two-tier Britain - with those who can take full advantage of being online and those who can't," he said.

'No monopoly'

As well as looking at opportunities, the Digital Britain report will also try to tackle threats presented by new technology.

Local newspapers and television stations have both suffered significant losses in revenue thanks to the internet, but Mr Brown insisted their journalism must be protected.

"We cannot allow a monopoly to take root," he wrote.

"We also need to help Channel 4 to secure its future... it now requires long-term stability to develop as a truly global player."

The BBC's media correspondent Torin Douglas said Lord Carter believed the licence fee could be a possible answer to the woes of commercial broadcasters.

At present, more than £100m a year is earmarked to help the elderly switch to digital TV and any left over could help pay for wider broadband access or local news on ITV, our correspondent added.

But the BBC Trust has said that if any money is left over from the digital switchover, it might be better returned to licence-payers.

US PC makers in 'stolen code' row

2009-06-15T23:54:00.001-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Computer makers that don't install Green Dam face possible penalties

A California company is considering legal action to prevent computers being shipped to China with what it says is stolen internet blocking software.

Solid Oak said it found pieces of its CyberSitter programme in China's Green Dam Youth Escort screening software.

China has mandated that all new PCs contain filters to protect children from offensive material on the net.

The Chinese firm that made Green Dam, Jinhui Computer System Engineering Inc, denies any wrongdoing.

But Solid Oak's Brian Milburn said "We're contacting Dell, HP and others to stop compromised material being shipped."

"If China had gotten hold of free pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows and told Dell and HP to put this on all computers you ship, you would hear a loud outcry. China has a very loose interpretation of what is intellectual property," said Mr Milburn.

He told the BBC that as far as he was aware, the compromised software containing code from CyberSitter has already been installed on 9 million computers in China.

The Chinese government has required that all new computers made or shipped by 1 July have Green Dam pre-installed.

The government's controls over what its citizens can see online is often referred to as the "Great Firewall of China."

Review

Mr Millburn, whose company is based in Santa Barbara, said US computer manufacturers were being put in the middle of a row not of their making.

The system reportedly blocks legitimate as well as banned content

"It's not their fault and I don't want to sound like that. They are stuck in the middle. I want to do the right thing and maybe it will give them an opportunity to get out of distributing machines with this software."

Critics say the software will be used to prevent China's 250 million internet users from searching for politically sensitive information. Green Dam filters words and images as well as web addresses.

"While the justification may be pitched as protecting children and mostly concerning pornography, once the architecture is set up it can be used for broader purposes, such as the filtering of political ideas," Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard's Berkman Centre told the BBC last week.

A report by the OpenNet Initiative has found that Green Dam can monitor activities outside of web browsing and can terminate applications.

Dell, the world's second biggest PC seller, said no machines had been shipped containing Green Dam.

"We are aware of the policy from China and along with the rest of the industry are reviewing it," said spokesman David Frink.

It has been estimated that in the next two years China's PC market will be the world's largest with 50 million units shipped annually by 2012.

"Honest mistake"

Solid Oak's founder Mr Milburn said he was first alerted there was a problem on Friday when he received an email from someone claiming to be from the Chinese Communist Party.

Cybersitter is aimed at helping parents control what their children see online

"At first I thought it was a prank and didn't pay much attention to it," Mr Milburn told the BBC.

"One of our employees researched it and came back to me and said I might want to look at it more closely. We then found actual proprietary code from CyberSitter within the Green Dam programme that is only available in an encrypted format.

"I spent a good deal of the weekend with another engineer trying to find if it was an honest mistake. But someone made a 100% conscious effort to do this. This is not some accident," stated Mr Milburn.

A report by the University of Michigan has also accused the Chinese vendor of using material from Solid Oak Software's product.

Added to that the study found serious vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to hijack PCs running the Chinese software.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered the problem be fixed.

Legal action

The Chinese company that made the filtering software told China Daily that it has been wrongly accused.

Every new computer in China will have the software installed

"That's impossible. We didn't steal their programming code, " said Bryan Zhang of Jinhui Computer System Engineering Inc.

Mr Milburn said even though legal action against the Chinese developer is one thing he is looking at, he is not sure it will be worth the effort.

"We are just a little company and trying to take on China is an impossible task. We don't want to turn into a litigation company."

Mr Milburn said Solid Oak will also file a complaint with the FBI's Computer Crime Task Force.

Online surveys conducted by some of China's most popular web portals like sina.com and shou.com showed that four out of five netizens will not use the Green Dam software or have it installed.

Creating & Customising Keyboard Shortcuts in Microsoft Word

2009-06-13T21:11:00.001-07:00

Is there no keyboard shortcut for a particular action in Word, or is the current keyboard shortcut convoluted and difficult to remember? Recent versions of Word actually allow you to assign your own keyboard shortcuts to all sorts of commands and hidden features. You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to your own Macro scripts, a very powerful way of making Word more accessible.

The following example shows how to make a keyboard shortcut that changes the font colour to red. You can currently accomplish this through the keyboard in two manners but both of these are rather long-winded:

Press ALT to access the File menu
Press CTRL + TAB until the formatting toolbar is highlighted
Press the right arrow until the font colour dialog is highlighted
Press the down arrow to open up the colour selection box
Use the arrow keys to highlight red
Press Enter to select

Alternatively:

Press ALT + O to open the Format menu
Press Enter to open the Font dialog
Press ALT + C to open up the colour selection box
Use the arrow keys to highlight red
Press Enter to select
Press CTRL + TAB to move the focus towards the OK button
Press Enter to close the dialog

Either of these routes take quite a long time so if you're going to change font to any given colour more than a few times it might be worth adding your own shortcut. You only need to do this the once and It doesn't take long and here's how to accomplish it:

Open the Customize dialog box by selecting Customize from the Tools menu

ALT, T, C

Select the Commands tab at the top of the dialog

CTRL + TAB

Press the Keyboard button

ALT + K

Up pops the Customize Keyboard dialog.

Using the Categories and Commands lists you can select any command available in Microsoft Word. Select the Format Category and then the 'Color:' command.

F , TAB, C (until 'Color:' is highlighted)

Now go to the Color list and select Red.

ALT + SHIFT + : , R

Now it's time to select a suitable keyboard shortcut. This can actually be a little tricky as Word has already taken most of the good ones. Fortunately Word does let you know when a keyboard shortcut is already assigned to another command . Also you can replace existing shortcuts if you feel you can live without them. In this example I want to assign CTRL+ALT+R to change the font colour to Red (it's easy enough to remember).Unfortunately this shortcut has already been taken by the Registered Trademark symbol, but I feel I can live without this shortcut.

Click inside the New shortcut key box and press CTRL+ALT+R. You'll see that this is already taken but if you don't mind replacing the current command simply click the Assign button. Click Close on both dialogs and try it out!

ALT + N , ( CTRL + ALT + R )

TAB , ALT + A , ESC , ESC

Intel Investment Preps Japan for July WiMAX Launch - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

2009-06-12T02:16:00.001-07:00

by Mark Hachman

Intel has invested $43 million into UQ Communications, part of the initial deployment of WiMAX throughout Japan.

Toshiba, Panasonic, and Onkyo also said they would begin shipping PCs for the Japanese market that contains Intel's Centrino technology and WiMAX receiver module. Dell has done the same in the United States, although the technology is an option.

Although Clearwire has struggled to roll out WiMAX within the United States, the technology is slowly being deployed elsewhere in the world. By the end of 2012, UQ estimated, over 90 percent of Japan will be covered by the technology.

The UQ service will formally launch on July 1, the companies said.

"We are glad to welcome this major milestone," said Takashi Tanaka, president of UQ Communications, in a statement. "Working with Intel, we are on the road to full mobile broadband access, and, remarkably, in just 18 months since UQ Communications obtained a Mobile WiMAX license. A feature of Mobile WiMAX is that its infrastructure is open, both to people who want to use WiMAX, and to businesses that want to enter the WiMAX market. In collaboration with PC makers, MVNOs, and various other industries, we will enable true mobile broadband access, with UQ constructing a high-speed, advanced WiMAX network, while Intel enables WiMAX modules to be built into all kinds of devices."

According to Intel, WiMAX will serve 800 million people by 2010, Intel said in February.

Intel also said Tuesday that Beceem, GCT Semiconductor, Sequans and UQ will enter the Open Patent Alliance as associate members,, a patent-sharing consortium around WiMAX, joining current OPA members Acer, Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Cisco, Clearwire, Huawei Technologies, Intel, and Samsung Electronics.

'Millionth English word' declared

2009-06-12T02:15:00.005-07:00

Words in the mental cupboard

A US web monitoring firm has declared the millionth English word to be Web 2.0, a term for the latest generation of web products and services.

Global Language Monitor (GLM) searches the internet for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used 25,000 times, it recognises it.

GLM said Web 2.0 beat out the terms Jai ho, N00b and slumdog to take top spot.

However, traditional dictionary makers are casting doubt on the claim and the methods behind it.

GLM, based in Texas, makes its money telling organisations how often they are mentioned in new media, such as the internet, but it can also track new words and expressions.

Once a word has been used 25,000 times on social networking and other sites, GLM declares it be a new word.

The terms Jai ho and slumdog originate from the hit movie Slumdog Millionaire, about India's slum dwellers.

But N00b comes from the gaming community, the company said, explaining that it is used as a disparaging term to describe a neophyte in a particular game.

It is also the "only mainstream English word that contains within itself two numerals", GLM said in a statement posted on its website.

US set for TV digital switchover

2009-06-12T02:15:00.003-07:00

Analogue TVs won't work after Friday

More than two million households in the United States will be faced with blank television screens when stations switch off their analogue signal for good.

The nationwide transition to digital services has seen a last-minute rush to buy converter boxes and TVs.

In total the US authorities have spent $2bn to smooth the transition.

But, according to the Federal Communications Commission, there are still 2.2 million households which have made no preparations.

US television viewers have been bombarded with a series of adverts over recent weeks, warning them that the analogue signal would be switched off on Friday and urging them to buy set top converter boxes if they didn't want to lose reception.

No IE onboard Windows 7 in Europe

2009-06-12T02:15:00.001-07:00

Microsoft said it would be easy to install its browser

European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.

Bowing to European competition rules, Microsoft Windows 7 will ship without Internet Explorer.

The company said it would make it easy for PC makers and users to get at and install the web browsing program.

In response Brussels expressed scepticism over the move and whether it went far enough to ally accusations of it abusing its market position.

Abusive behaviour

"We're committed to making Windows 7 available in Europe at the same time that it launches in the rest of the world," Dave Heiner, said Microsoft deputy general counsel in a statement, "but we also must comply with European competition law as we launch the product."

"We believe that this new approach, while not our first choice, is the best path forward given the ongoing legal case in Europe," he added.

In response the European Commission said "It would also have to consider whether this initial step of technical separation of IE from Windows could be negated by other actions by Microsoft."

In early 2008, Microsoft was fined 899m euros (£765m) by the European Commission for anti-competitive behaviour over bundling in the media player and browser into Windows.

In January 2009, Brussels reached a "preliminary view" that Microsoft was denting the chance for true competition by bundling its browser software in with its operating system.

Microsoft is due to defend itself against the charges in a hearing.

If Microsoft fails to convince the Commission that it is not harming competition could mean more fines and enforced changes to the way it does business.

"We're committed to launching Windows 7 on time in Europe, so we need to address the legal realities in Europe, including the risk of large fines," said Mr Heiner.

Windows 7 is due to be released worldwide on 22 October.

"In terms of potential remedies, if the Commission were to find that Microsoft had committed an abuse, the Commission has suggested that consumers should be offered a choice of browser not that Windows should be supplied without a browser at all," said the Commission in a statement responding to Microsoft's announcement.

It said Microsoft's approach of offering the program to computer manufacturers "may potentially be more positive" in terms of remedying its alleged abusive behaviour.

It added that if Microsoft were found to be abusing its position, the Commission would have to work out if the uncoupling of IE offset that behaviour.

Facebook usernames to be released

2009-06-10T23:18:00.001-07:00

New Facebook usernames will be available from 5am on Saturday

Social networking site Facebook is giving users the chance to create their own, personalised web address.

From Saturday morning, anyone using Facebook will be able to sign up for a username using their name and surname.

The changes will be available to members from 5am on 13 June but users will have to get up early as it'll be on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The company says the new Facebook URLs will make it easier for people to search for common names on the site.

Facebook users have always used their real names for profiles within the social networking site, but this is the first time URLs will contain the same information.

Instead of a jumble of numbers at the end of a user's URL it will read, for example, www.facebook.com/joe.bloggs.

The social networking site says usernames will still have the same privacy settings as profile names when using the site's search tool.

If users signed up for a Facebook page after 31 May this year or a user profile after Wednesday at 8pm, they may not be able to sign up for a username immediately.

That's to stop abuse or "squatting" on names.

A Facebook blog on the username changes said: "We're planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you.

"When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser.

"This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you.

"We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

"Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the web."

China defends screening software

2009-06-10T23:17:00.001-07:00

By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing

Every new computer in China will have the software installed

China has defended the use of new screening software that has to be installed on all computers.

Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the software would filter out pornographic or violent material.

Critics have complained that it could also be used to stop Chinese internet users searching for politically sensitive information.

But Mr Qin, speaking at a regular press briefing, said China promoted the healthy development of the internet.

All computers sold in China - even those that are imported - will have to be pre-installed with the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software.

'Poisoned minds'

The news came in a directive from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the new regulations will come into force on 1 July.

The directive says the newest version of the software has to be pre-installed on Chinese-made computers before they leave the factory.

Imported computers must contain the software before they are sold.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE

Twitter hype punctured by study

2009-06-10T23:16:00.001-07:00

Twitter is being used as a broadcast medium, the study says

Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research.

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network.

However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.

And most people only ever "tweet" once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

"Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it," said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard Business School who carried out the work.

On a typical online social network, he said, the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production.

"This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network," the team wrote in a blog post.

Silent crowds

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of up to 140 characters - known as tweets - that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed.

Its growth has been described as "explosive" and it has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly among media companies.

Recent figures from research firm Nielsen Online show that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million, between February 2008 and February 2009. It is thought to have grown beyond 10 million in the past 4 months.

By comparison, Facebook - one of the most popular social networking sites by number of visitors - has 200 million active users and grew by 228% during the same period.

Research by Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return.

Earlier this year, the firm found that more than 60% of US Twitter users failed to return the following month.

"The Harvard data says very, very few people tweet and the Nielsen data says very, very few people listen consistently," Mr Heil told BBC News.

'Super user'

The Harvard study took a snapshot of 300,542 users in May 2009. As well as usage patterns it looked in detail at gender differences.

For example, it found that men had 15% more followers than women despite there being slightly more females users of Twitter than males.

It also showed that an average man was almost twice as likely to follow another man than a woman, despite the reverse being true on other social networks.

"The sort of content that drives men to look at women on other social networks does not exist on Twitter," said Mr Heil.

"By that I mean pictures, extended articles and biographical information."

However, said Mr Heil, the most striking result was that so few people used the service to publish information, preferring instead to be passive consumers.

For example, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.

"Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends," he said.

"It looks like a few people are creating content for a few people to read and share."

Some "super users" can have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.

Currently, the most popular person to follow on Twitter is the movie star Ashton Kutcher who has more than two million followers.

However, the service bills itself as a way to "communicate and stay connected" with "friends, family and co-workers".

"The Twitter management need to decide if this is a problem," said Mr Heil.

"And if they decide it is, how they will tweak Twitter to become more acceptable to the average user?"

HP test mobile social network

2009-06-10T23:15:00.001-07:00

The network runs on Windows Mobile and Google Android handsets

An intelligent, mobile-phone-based social network is being tested by researchers at Hewlett Packard.

Friendlee analyses calls and messages to build up a picture of a person's closest correspondents.

Regular contacts are displayed more prominently so that users do not have to wade through a phonebook to find them.

The system also analyses which firms a person uses to generate recommendations to other people in their network.

"It builds a network of people that you communicate with," explained Bernardo Huberman, director of the social computing lab at the firm's Palo Alto research centre.

"If you stop communicating with those people or you begin to communicate [with them] less they keep dropping down to the bottom of your list."

The application is currently undergoing laboratory testing before it is shown off at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany, in September.

'Intimate network'

It has been developed, in part, as a response to research done by HP into how people use social networks.

Last year, for example, Professor Huberman's group analysed the relationships on Twitter.

"We were able to tease out information from the service," explained Professor Huberman.

It concluded that many relationships on Twitter were "meaningless from an interaction point of view."

"A link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them," the team wrote.

Instead, most people using the service tend to interact with very few people, even though they may follow many.

Studies of Facebook and YouTube show a similar pattern, he said.

"Social networks that truly matter - those ones where you are actually communicated in a human sense - happen to be much smaller than the circle of followers," said Professor Huberman.

Friendlee has been created to address this issue.

It constructs what the researchers call an "intimate social network".

"The idea of a social network that deals with reciprocity - I call you, you call me, we interact and so on - is much more meaningful than a listing like your whole Rolodex of everyone you've ever met," explained Professor Huberman.

The application constructs the list by analysing the user's call and messaging history to identify the people they are closest to.

"By using phone conversations as an indicator of close social interaction, Friendlee trims the user's large casual social network into a core intimate one," the researchers wrote in the paper to be presented in Bonn.

The system also contains functions similar to services such as Google Latitude and BrightKite that allow a user to share their whereabouts with friends. However, Friendlee will also share other "situational data", such as local time and weather, as well as allowing people to browse the friend lists of close connections.

Another function trawls phone records to draw up a list of preferred businesses, which can also be shared with friends.

"Close friends and colleagues remain among our most influential sources of practical advice and recommendations about services, such as health insurance and restaurants, as well as about people, in both social and professional," the researchers write.

Users will be able to control which of their friends has access to different information.

The applications currently runs on both Windows Mobile and Google Android handsets. A prototype for Blackberry users was also been shown off at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in May.

"We can make it run on anything," said Professor Huberman.

The application will be shown off at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany between 15-18 September.

It has been developed by Professor Huberman along with Anupriya Ankolekar and Gabor Szabo.

Free broadband won't entice all

2009-06-10T23:14:00.001-07:00

Some people access the internet at public centres

Some 43% of adults who currently do not have internet access would remain disconnected even if they were given a free PC and broadband connection.

The statistic, part of research conducted by regulator Ofcom will make depressing reading for some.

But it is not all bad news. Ofcom's survey found that one in five adults who don't have the internet plan to go online in the next six months.

17 million Britons - 30% of the population - are currently offline.

The government is keen to get more people online, as it moves more of its services on to the web.

Self-excluded

Next week sees the publication of the Digital Britain report, which will lay out the government's plans for broadband for the next decade or so.

A key part of it will be a commitment to get a minimum of 2Mbps (megabits per second) broadband to every home in the UK by 2012.

The Ofcom research identified two main groups of people without access to the net - the self-excluded and those who are staying offline for financial reasons.

Not all older people are silver surfers

Some 42% of adults said that they had no interest or need for the internet. This so-called self-excluded group tended to be older or retired, with 61% confessing to never having used a computer.

For 30% of those currently offline the main reasons given for that choice was financial or lack of skills.

Half-price computers and discounted monthly tariffs may not be the way forward though.

When asked what would change their minds about going online, only 9% said cheaper deals would be an incentive. Free training was identified by 11% with the majority (58%) choosing "not interested" or "don't know".

One in five adults those said they would sign up for some form of internet service in the next six months.

Essential utility

"Broadband is becoming increasingly important to people's ability to participate in the economy and society," said Ofcom's market development partner Peter Phillips.

"The report shows that some creativity will be required if we wish to capture the imaginations of those who have yet to engage with the benefits the internet may bring," he said.

A report from market research firm SQW Consulting estimated that the average UK household could make savings of up to £70 a month by shopping online.

The Communications Consumer Panel, which advises Ofcom on broadband issues, recently conducted research among 2,000 people, both on and offline.

It found that 73% described broadband as essential a utility as water or electricity.

Ofcom estimates that internet penetration in the UK stands at 70%. Of this, 65% have broadband with 2% still using dial-up and 3% using mobile broadband.

China's computers at hacking risk

2009-06-10T23:13:00.001-07:00

The system reportedly blocks legitimate as well as banned content

Every PC in China could be at risk of being taken over by malicious hackers because of flaws in compulsory government software.

The potential faults were brought to light by Chinese computer experts who said the flaw could lead to a "large-scale disaster".

The Chinese government has mandated that all computers in the country must have the screening software installed.

It is intended to filter out offensive material from the net.

The Chinese government said that the Green Dam Youth Escort software, as it is known, was intended to push forward the "healthy development of the internet" and "effectively manage harmful material for the public and prevent it from being spread."

"We found a series of software flaws," explained Isaac Mao, a blogger and social entrepreneur in China, as well as a research fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

For example, he said, tests had shown that communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted.

Mr Mao told BBC News that this could allow hackers to "steal people's private information" or "place malicious script" on computers in the network to "affect [a] large scale disaster."

For example, a hacker could use malicious code to take control of PCs using the software.

"Then you have every computer in China potentially as part of a botnet," Colin Maclay, also of Harvard, told BBC News.

A botnet is the name given to a network of hijacked computers that can then be used to pump out spam or launch concerted attacks on commercial or government websites.

No one from Jinhui Computer System Engineering, the company that developed Green Dam, was available for comment.

'Naked pig'

The software has also caused a backlash amongst privacy experts, academics and some Chinese citizens. It has also raised the scorn of the blogosphere inside the country who feel the system is no match for tech-savvy teenagers.

Every new computer in China will have the software installed

One blogger posted a screenshot of the software purportedly blocking an attempt to visit a porn site using Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

But, he said, there was no problem accessing the site using the Firefox web browser.

Others have reported that the system only runs on Microsoft Windows, allowing Mac and Linux users to bypass the software.

It is thought that at least 3m computer users have already downloaded the software, opening them up to potential security problems.

Another formal study by the Open Network Initiative into the risks posed by the software is expected soon. However, many people in China who have been forced to use the software are already reporting other problems.

For example, the system reportedly blocks legitimate as well as banned content. For example, it designed to identify the proportion of skin colour in a picture to determine whether it is pornography.

But comments on a bulletin board run by the software company that designed the system, suggest the system does not work perfectly.

"I went on the internet to check out some animal photos. A lovely little naked pig was sent onto the black list. Pitiful little pig!," read one comment.

"I was curious, so I looked up some photos of naked African women. Oh, they were not censored!"

Another message read: "We were ordered to install the software. So I have to come to this website and curse. After we installed the software, many normal websites are banned."

The forum was taken down after it was seemingly flooded with complaints. A message on the site said says it is being "upgraded".

Mr Mao told BBC News that they believed there was a new guideline from the country's central propaganda department "to comb all media and online forums to block critics and discussion over the issue."

Firewall flaw

The government may be keen to shut down discussion to quell rumours that the system could be used to monitor its citizens.

"Once you've got government-mandated software installed on each machine, the software has the keys to the kingdom - anything can be logged or affected," said Professor Jonathan Zittrain, also of Harvard's Berkman Center.

Virtual police patrol China web

In particular, the system could be used to report citizens' web habits.

"It creates log file of all of the pages that the users tries to access," Mr Maclay told BBC News.

"At the moment it's unclear whether that is reported back, but it could be."

A twitter user in China claims that the software transmits reports to Jinhui - the maker of the software - when the user tries to access blacklisted websites.

However, Zhang Chenmin, general manager of the developer of Green Dam, told the China Daily newspaper last year: "Our software is simply not capable of spying on internet users, it is only a filter."

Although many countries around the world routinely block and filter net content, China's regime is regarded as particularly severe.

"There is no transparency about what they are blocking," said Mr Maclay.

Free speech campaigners are concerned that the list could be tweaked to suits the government's aims.

Recently, there has been a web black out across China in advance of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Website such as Twitter and the photo-sharing site Flickr were blocked in an attempt by the government to prevent online discussion on the subject.

However, some users were able to bypass the filters to distribute pictures and commentary including links to photos of plain-clothes policemen blocking the lenses of foreign journalists with their umbrellas.

The country is able to take action like this because it already has a sophisticated censorship regime, including the so-called Great Firewall of China. However, it is known to have some flaws.

A 2007 study by US researchers showed that the system was much more porous than previously thought.

It found that the technology often failed to block content banned by the Chinese government, allowing web users to browse unencumbered at least some of the time.

Filtering and blocking was "particularly erratic", they said, when large numbers of people were online in China.

Despite the failures, the researchers said, the idea of the firewall was more effective than the technology at discouraging talk about banned subjects.

This kind of social pressure was also key to another tactic used by the Chinese government to make sure its citizens only use sanitised portions of the web.

In 2007, the government introduced virtual policemen that pop-up onscreen when web surfers visit many of China's popular website to remind them to stay away from illicit content.

In addition, the government expects internet service providers in China to actively monitor and censor published content, such as blogs.

Experiments have suggested that this approach is hit-and-miss, with some organisations more proactive than others.

However, these systems, combined with the new software, will allow the Chinese government to sanitise the web for most of the 300m of China's population of 1.3bn have access to the net.

"I think this is intended as a sort of belt-and-braces approach, said Professor Zittrain.

Free website hosting, free domain, Bangladesh

2009-05-30T09:37:00.001-07:00

f you do not want to register a domain name and buy a hosting service, you can still build and run a website for free. However, there are some limitation with the free websites. The free service provider may put advertisement in your pages and you would not get many facilities. The bandwidth and storage space would be smaller and you have to use their subdomain name. Some of the popular free web hosting providers are:

Cheap and good domain name registration

2009-05-30T09:35:00.001-07:00

Domain name search is increasing tremendously because of the cheap domain names and cheap web hosting services. Now anyone can register domain names for one year by paying only about $10 and cheap web hosting services made it possible to host unlimited domains by only about $60 per year. Even some hosting company will offer you to register domain names for free if you buy their hosting service. Available domain names are decreasing in a massive rate because almost every business are looking for online presence and many people prefer to have their own website for various reasons. Registering a domain name is highly recommended for business purposes. But the good news is you can have a personal website for free. There are some limitation and drawbacks of the free websites, such as, you cannot use your desired domain name, you have to get a subdomain name from the hosting companies domain name, but no one can ask more for free.



	Separately registering domain names may cost you more money because many hosting service providers would allow you to register domain names for free if you buy their hosting service. So it is better to buy a hosting service that would provide you the opportunity to register domain name for free. Now the question is how you can find a good domain hosting service provider or domain host? There are literally thousands of domain hosts and you can get tons of references in the internet. I have searched extensively in Google and made a short list for me. You can check these and other providers to host your own brand new website. My short list of domain hosting service providers are:

	1. Easy CGI 2. Start Logic Hosting 3. Host I Can 4. Wiz Web Host 5. Dream Host 6. Globat 7. Host Monster 8. Lunar Pages 9. Host Gator 10. Go Daddy

	Domain name search or domain name check for available domain name is the next step after you have decided about your best hosting service provider. Domain name search is a tiring process because it is difficult to find a common available domain name for the .com domains. If you cannot find a suitable available domain name for the .com domains, you may find available domain names in the .org, .info, or .biz domains. If you choose to register a domain name in the .com field, you may try to add hyphens in the name. For example, if you cannot find banglamusic.com, you can search for available domain names by using bangla-music.com. After buying the domain hosting service and choosing you domain name, you can start building you own website. There are many WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editors which would allow you to make a nice looking website without any knowledge of html. Some of which are Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage etc. We will soon set up a page for beginners on how to start developing a website with WYSIWYG html editors following some easy steps.

Translate text or websites for free, website translation, free translation

2009-05-30T09:34:00.001-07:00

Bangladeshi students studying in a non-English speaking country such as Japan often faces language problems. You can use text or website translation services to translate many languages into English. However, until now none of these free services support Bengali. You can translate most of the major languages into English by using these websites. Just click on any link below and try their translation service. Choose by yourself which one works best for your source language. We recommend Altavista Babel Fish and Google Language Tools.

Free translation sites:

Altavista Babel Fish

Google Language Tools

Unit Converters

2009-05-30T09:33:00.001-07:00

You can use our free online unit converters to convert between different units of measurement within a moment. Please click on the unit converter that you want to use from the list below. You can bookmark this page so that you can find it easily for future references.

	Unit Converters Angle Converter - convert degree, radian, grad, minute, second, sign etc. Area Converter - convert acre, hectare, square foot, square meter, square mile, square kilometer etc. Currency Converter - convert most popular currencies such as US Dollar, British Pound, Euro, Australian Dollar, etc. Data Storage Unit Converter - convert bit, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, CD, DVD etc. Energy Converter - convert calorie, foot-pound, joule, btu, kilocalorie, kilowatt-hour, newton meter, explosive ton etc. Force Converter - convert dyne, newton, pound, poundal, joule/meter, ton-force etc.

		Fuel Consumption Converter - convert kilometer/gallon, kilometer/liter, mile/gallon, mile/liter, nautical mile/liter etc. Length Converter - convert inch, centimeter, foot, meter, kilometer, mile, micron, etc. Number Unit Converter - convert binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal and base-2 to base-36 numbers Power Converter - convert watt, kilowatt, megawatt, horsepower, joule/hour, newton meter/second etc. Prefix Converter - convert yotta, zetta, exa, peta, tera, giga, mega, kilo, hecto, deka, deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto and yocto. Pressure Converter - convert bar, pascal, torr, centimeter mercury, foot water, millimeter mercury etc.

	Temperature Converter - convert celsius, fahrenheit, kelvin, rankine, reaumur, triple point of water etc. Time Converter - convert second, minute, hour, day, week, fortnight, month, year, decade, century etc. Velocity Converter - convert foot/second, kilometer/hour, knot, meter/second, mile/hour, velocity of light, velocity of sound etc. Volume Converter - convert liter, gallon, cc, cubic meter, tablespoon, teaspoon, cubic feet etc. Weight Converter - convert gram, ounce, kilogram, pound, ton, microgram etc.

Health tips, Health care

2009-05-30T09:32:00.001-07:00

	Some useful Health related pages are listed below. Please click on the links below go to the pages.
	Calculate your BMI and check your health for Free. You can take blood from which Blood Groups? What should be your Ideal Body Weight for your height? How much Calorie do you need to maintain your current body weight?



	Do you need advice for any disease for free? Some expert doctors from all around the world provide free advice through some websites. Some of them are listed below. Please click on the links below to go to the websites.

			eMedicineHealth HealthAtoZ MayoClinic RX List WebMD

	Call for Articles: We cordially invite Doctors, Medical Students, Biochemists, Microbiologist and other health care professionals to submit health related articles in this website. Both English and Bangla articles are welcome. However, if you write in Bangla, please use Unicode Bengali and include a short Summary of your article in English. Please include a photograph (in .gif or .jpg format) of you with your patients, colleagues, peers in your hospital / medical college / institute. We will publish your photograph, your name and your institution and faculty name with your article. Please inform us about your intention to submit an article. We will send you detail instruction on how to submit the article. Thank you and we look forward to great articles from health care professionals.

Free online games and free games for kids

2009-05-30T09:31:00.001-07:00

You can play free games in the following websites. Some websites allow completely free downloading and there is no string attached. You can play these games for unlimited time. Some games are "free to try", that means can download them and play for a limited amount of time. After the trial period expires you can either buy the game or remove it from your computer.

	Free Games to play: Arcade Town Directory of Free Games FreeOnlineGames MiniClip Net-Games Riddler Shockwave online Yahoo Games

		Free Games to Download: DFG Download-game.com Free Games Fun Free-Games-Net Games World iWin Unlimited Game Downloads World of Free Games

	Free Games for Kids: Curiosoft DFG - Kids Kids' Game House Shockwave for Kids Show Me Squigly's Games The Kidz Page Yahoo Kids
	PSP For Sale: Buy new and used psp consoles, psp games, psp accesoires, psp skins and much more !

Tracking EMS, EMS tracking all over the world

2009-05-30T09:29:00.001-07:00

	Do you want to confirm whether your EMS reached its destination? If it was reached safely, you would be able to know the time when it reached and who signed to receive the EMS. Click on the name of the country (listed below) where you sent the EMS (NOT the sending country, it should be the receiving country) and put the EMS tracking number that the sending post-office has given you. The tracking number should be something like: EE 10057512 6BD. Any questions? Contact us.

	Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Bangladesh Belarus Brazil Bolivia Bulgaria Canada China Costa Rica Croatia Cyprus Czech Post Denmark Egypt Faroe Islands Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Greenland Hongkong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Korea Lebanon Lithuania Malaysia Malta Mexico Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway Pakistan Peru Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Tunisia Turkey UK Ukraine United Arab Emirates USA (USPS) Vietnam

Free anti virus protection, internet security softwares and anti spam softwares

2009-05-30T09:26:00.001-07:00

Free Anti Virus Protection:
Some good anti virus softwares are listed below.
Click on the names to go to the websites to download them.
These excellent anti virus softwares are completely free of charge.

AVG Anti-Virus

Avast-Home Edition

BitDefender

Avira Personal Edition

Free Spyware Removal -
Free Adware Removal:

Spybot - Search & Destroy

Ad-Aware 2007 Free

Spywareterminator

CWShredder

Free Anti Spam Software -
Free Spam blocker:
Protect your email from Spams.

POPFile - Free Spam Filter

Spamato

Spamihilator

K-9

Free Firewall Software:
A Firewall software is necessary to protect your computer from internet threats. Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Firewall is a very good and award wining software. Please note that only ZoneAlarm Firewall is free of charge. ZoneAlarm anti virus is not free. For a free anti virus software please see above.

How to fit 300 DVDs on one disc

2009-05-30T07:06:00.001-07:00

The different colours and polarisations of light access different images

A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports.

The researchers say this could see a whopping 1.6 terabytes of information fit on a DVD-sized disc.

They describe their method as "five-dimensional" optical recording and say it could be commercialised.

The technique employs nanometre-scale particles of gold as a recording medium.

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have exploited the particular properties of these gold "nano-rods" by manipulating the light pointed at them.

The team members described what they did as adding three "dimensions" to the two spatial dimensions that DVD and CD discs already have.

They say they were able to introduce a spectral - or colour - dimension and a polarisation dimension, as well as recording information in 10 layers of the nano-rod films, adding a third spatial dimension.

The scientists used the nanoparticles to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location. This is a major improvement over traditional DVDs, which are recorded in a single colour wavelength with a laser.

Also, the amount of incoming laser light absorbed by the nanoparticles depends on its polarisation. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

The researchers thus refer to the approach as 5-D recording. Previous research has demonstrated recording techniques based on colour or polarisation, but this is the first work that shows the integration of both.

As a result, the scientists say they have achieved unprecedented data density.

Their approach used 10-layer stacks composed of thin glass plates as the recording medium. If scaled up to a DVD-sized disk, the team would be able to record 1.6 terabytes - that is, 1,600 gigabytes - or over 300 times the quantity stored on a standard DVD.

Significant improvements could be made by thinning the spacer layers and using more than two polarisation angles - pushing the limits to 10 terabytes per disc and beyond, the researchers say.

Bit by bit

Recent efforts based on holography have shown that up to 500 Gb could potentially be stored on standard DVD-sized disks.

Holographic methods take all of the information to be recorded and encode it in the form of a graph showing how often certain frequencies arise in it.

That means that the recording process is a complex, all-at-once, all-or-nothing approach that would be difficult to implement on an industrial scale.

By contrast, 5-D recording is "bit-by-bit", like current CD and DVD writing processes in that each piece of information is read sequentially.

That is likely to mean that recording and read speeds would be comparatively slow, but the approach would be easier to integrate with existing technology.

"The optical system to record and read 5-D is very similar to the current DVD system," says James Chon, a co-author on the research.

"Therefore, industrial scale production of the compact system is possible."

DVD surfaces now are "2-D": just the position on the disc matters

Now that the method has been demonstrated in custom-made multi-layer stacks, the team is working in conjunction with Samsung to develop a drive that can record and read onto a DVD-sized disc.

Dr Chon says that the material cost of a disc would be less than $0.05 (£0.03), but there are a number of advantages in moving to silver nano-rods that would bring that cost down by a factor of 100.

For optical data storage expert Tom Milster, at the University of Arizona, the beauty of the approach is in its simplicity.

"It's not just elegant - there are a lot of experiments that are elegant - it's relatively straightforward," he told BBC News.

For the moment, Dr Milster says, the equipment needed to write the data would make a commercial system expensive. However, that has not stopped the development of optical storage solutions in the past.

"For example, a Blu-ray player is not an easy system to realise; they've got some wonderful optics in there," Dr Milster said. "People thought that would be pretty difficult to do, but others managed to do it."

Seven million 'use illegal files'

2009-05-30T07:05:00.003-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Seven million 'use illegal files'

Faster broadband allows 200 MP3s to be downloaded in just five minutes

Around seven million people in the UK are involved in illegal downloads, costing the economy tens of billions of pounds, government advisers say.

Researchers found 1.3m people using one file-sharing network on one weekday and estimated that over a year they had free access to material worth £12bn.

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) warned it may be hard to change attitudes.

The government says work must be done internationally to tackle the problem.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

But he added: "This is not an issue confined by national boundaries and I am sure that other [EU] member states and their copyright industries will find this report of use in the development of policy."

HAVE YOUR SAY

Many people do not even realise that what they are doing is illegal

Ralph Cook, Barking, UK

Send us your comments

An alliance of nine UK bodies representing the creative industries recently joined trades unions in calling on the government to force internet service providers to cut off persistent illegal file-sharers.

They said more than half of net traffic in the UK was illegal content.

The Open Rights Group - a UK based group that works on digital rights and freedoms - said the study illustrated the sheer size of the market.

"We need a compelling 'all you can eat' music service to reduce illicit file sharing," the groups executive director, Jim Killock, told the BBC.

"But [we need] to remember that extreme enforcement measures would probably be very unfair and make people angry."

Copyright confusion

Internet service providers say it is not their job to police the web.

The latest report for the SABIP, said the new generation of broadband access at 50Mbps could deliver 200 MP3 files in five minutes, a DVD in three and the complete digitised works of Charles Dickens in less than 10.

It said the seven million people who access files illegally could not all be students and that many of them were uncertain about what was illegal.

The fact that so much on the internet is free only added to the confusion, it said.

Dame Lynne Brindley, SABIP Board member, said: "This report gives us some baseline evidence from which we can develop a clear research strategy to support policy development in this fast moving area."

Websites 'keeping deleted photos'

2009-05-30T07:05:00.001-07:00

Facebook says images are removed from its servers immediately.

User photographs can still be found on many social networking sites even after people have deleted them, Cambridge University researchers have said.

They put photos on 16 popular websites - noting the web addresses where the images were stored - and deleted them.

The team said it was able to find them on seven sites - including Facebook - using the direct addresses, even after the photos appeared to have gone.

Facebook says deleted photos are removed from its servers "immediately".

The Cambridge University researchers said special photo-sharing sites, such as Flickr and Google's Picasa, did better and Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces removed the photos instantly.

To perform their experiment, the researchers uploaded photos to each of the sites, then deleted them, but kept a note of direct URLs to the photos from the sites' content delivery networks.

When they checked 30 days later, these links continued to work for seven of the sites even though a typical user might think the photos had been removed.

Lazy approach

Joseph Bonneau, one of the PhD students who carried out the study, said: "This demonstrates how social networking sites often take a lazy approach to user privacy, doing what's simpler rather than what is correct.

"It's imperative to view privacy as a design constraint, not a legal add-on."

But a Facebook spokesman defended the company's approach saying; "When a user deletes a photograph from Facebook it is removed from our servers immediately.

"However, URLs to photographs may continue to exist on the Content Delivery Network (CDN) after users delete them from Facebook, until they are overwritten.

"Overwriting usually happens after a short period of time."

Users of Facebook staged a revolt recently over rules which would have given the site permanent ownership of their data.

Pornographic videos flood YouTube

2009-05-30T07:04:00.001-07:00

Interactive reporter, BBC News

The BBC's Interactive reporter Siobhan Courtney talks about the investigation into the 'video attack'.

Video-sharing website YouTube has removed hundreds of pornographic videos which were uploaded in what is believed to be a planned attack.

The material was uploaded under names of famous teenage celebrities such as Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers.

Many started with footage of children's videos before groups of adults

performing graphic sex acts appeared on screen.

YouTube owner Google said it was aware and addressing the problem.

Disturbing videos

The BBC was made aware that scores of sexually explicit and inappropriate material was uploaded.

In one video titled Jonas Brother Live On Stage, a user posted a comment saying: "I'm 12 years old and what is this?"

Under other uploaded videos, online users posted comments such as: "Take the tags off, you'll get us caught." Another said: "Your gonna kill us all!"

As the disturbing videos were being uploaded, many viewers added them to their favourites and rated them highly.

One user believed to have uploaded some of the pornographic material videos is Flonty, whose profile states that he is 21 and from Germany.

He told the BBC: "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."

4Chan is a bulletin board focusing on Japanese manga and anime but some of its more extreme sections have been described on online messageboards as "sick" and "horrifying stuff".

"Anything and everything can, and usually does, happen here. We have our very own unique culture, and there is no group quite like us anywhere out there".

Community guidelines

When asked if he was concerned that children can freely watch such inappropriate material on YouTube, Flonty replied: "Children will find inappropriate material around the internet anyway.

"This kind of raid showed how easy it is to upload porn to a website that millions of people browse on a daily basis".

Google spokesman Scott Rubin told BBC News: "We are aware of the slew of pornographic videos that were uploaded.

"We are addressing them as we would any video that violates our community guidelines.

"In addition, any account we discover that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube will be disabled."

Ofcom to look into mobile charges

2009-05-30T07:03:00.001-07:00

Ofcom says lower termination rates are likely to mean reduced prices

Telecoms watchdog Ofcom is to begin reviewing charges made by mobile phone operators - which it says may lead to cheaper calls for customers.

It is to probe mobile termination rates - the fees operators charge for connecting to one another's networks.

In 2007 Ofcom set a programme for these rates to fall by about 25% by 2011. Its latest consultation will examine the charges from 2011 to 2015.

Termination rates make up 14 pence in every £1 spent on calls to mobiles.

Ofcom says there are "radical alternatives" to the current system.

"Lower termination rates are likely to mean that mobile operators have more flexibility in designing competitive call packages, and pass these benefits and any reduced prices on to customers," Ofcom said in a statement.

Controversial rates

It added that the consultation, which set out six options, would offer "consumers and industry an opportunity to debate the fundamental questions".

Options include maintaining the current system, which has reduced rates year on year, deregulating termination charges, and cutting termination rates so much that they are effectively set at zero.

"The role of termination rates in mobile services has attracted enormous controversy. That is why we are determined to examine them from first principles," said Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom.

Separately, Ofcom said that customers who complain about their mobile operators will have their disputes handled more quickly.

Currently customers have to give their operator 12 weeks to resolve the issue before they can go to an independent resolution service.

From 1 September that time will be cut to eight weeks.

Craigslist boss in counter-claim

2009-05-30T07:02:00.003-07:00

South Carolina's attorney general welcomed the Craigslist claim

In the latest twist to a long-running dispute, US classifieds ads website Craigslist is filing a claim against South Carolina's attorney general.

Henry McMaster had threatened to sue Craigslist for continuing to have "advertisements for prostitution and pornographic material".

The claim seeks "declaratory relief" against the attorney general's office.

Henry McMaster called it a "victory", saying Craigslist is "taking the matter seriously for the first time".

Craigslist boss Jim Buckmaster said he was being "publicly condemned" by the South Carolina's attorney general's office and the threats of further action had left him little option other than to sue.

In documents filed in South Carolina's district court, Craigslist claimed: "Despite Craigslist's legal immunity from criminal or civil liability under state law for unlawful third-party content on its website, and despite the numerous good-faith actions that Craigslist has voluntarily taken to deter abuse of its service by third parties … McMaster has persisted in threats to criminally prosecute Craigslist on the basis of third-party content appearing on the Craigslist website".

Timeline

In early May, the firm said it would remove its erotic services category following claims it promotes prostitution.

Law enforcement officials said prostitutes and clients use the site for illegal sexual encounters.

Craigslist recently toppled MySpace as the most visited site

The firm says it will put a new adult services section in place that will be loosely monitored.

Sheriff Thomas Dart said that move was "a major step in the right direction" by Craigslist.

Last November, Craigslist announced a deal with 40 state attorney generals that said it would charge for erotic services ads and require advertisers to use a credit card for payment. This was seen as a way for authorities to track the advertisers down.

Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specialises in freedom of speech and civil liberties law, said Craigslist was not legally obliged to regulate content on the site. He said: "Federal law states that no website operator can be held responsible for content provided by third parties."

Craigslist was started in 1995 as a hobby by founder Craig Newmark, who put together an e-mail list of events happening in San Francisco.

Today, the firm employs 28 people in San Francisco, although Buckmaster says his priority is making users' lives easier, not making money.

Forty million adverts are posted on Craigslist each month.

Tech Know - Arduino for all

2009-05-30T07:02:00.001-07:00

Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

When is the pot half full? Ellie Gibson finds out at the Arduino developers' central London headquarters.

The Albion Bakery in Shoreditch, London, is becoming something of a maker shrine.

Not just because its scones, cupcakes and croissants are favourites of anyone with a hankering for tinkering but because of a device fixed to one of the walls in its kitchen.

Called BakerTweet, the device lets the Albion announce, via micro-blogging service Twitter, exactly when its freshly baked goods have just come out of the oven.

"BakerTweet was completely self-driven," said Andrew Zolty, senior interaction designer at design firm Poke London, which happens to have its office across the street from the Albion.

Mr Zolty said the staff at Poke wanted to get their baked goods hot and it made sense to turn to technology to let everyone know.

Inquiries

Three weeks' work turned a cardboard box prototype into the BakerTweet.

Beneath its simple exterior lies a maker's delight.

At its heart is an Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller that links to an onboard wi-fi adapter. The device can be used in-store by dialling the knob on the front to find the right pastry or bread and then pressing a button to send a Tweet. Alternatively it can be updated, and its followers told, via the web.

The idea has proved very successful and, said Mr Zolty, Poke has had 60-70 inquiries from other organisations about using a similar device themselves.

"It's for places where computers cannot really go," he said. "You could not really have Twitter in the kitchen."

When the buns and cakes are ready, BakerTweet lets folks know

Using an Arduino made it much easier for Mr Zolty to get a working prototype up and running.

"Without the Arduino, BakerTweet would not exist," he said. The microcontroller, and others like it, with their array of inputs and outputs, are fast finding favour with makers and hackers of all stripes.

The Arduino can be linked up to any number of sensors and links the information it gets from them to an action. Some have used it to work out when their plants are getting dry so the board switches on a watering system.

For Mr Zolty, using an Arduino cut down on the things he had to know.

"I have always been heavily into coding, design and the creative part but I personally wanted to get into physical devices," he said, "and that's exactly what it is for.

"It's for people that do not have the background in anything physical."

The Arduino lets coders express themselves but also gives them a link to physical stuff and for those happier with a soldering iron in their hand it simplifies the job of writing code to get their gadget running.

Bridging the gap

Thom Shannon, co-organiser of the Howduino festival in Liverpool that revolves around folk tinkering with an Arduino, says the gadget is at its best when helping bridge the gap between the web and the real world.

"All this data is becoming available online," he said. "The whole web 2.0 is about linking people together and now people are linking objects together.

"There are quite a few people working on projects with government data feeds as well as data from BBC and Guardian."

The Arduino board helps to link the web and the real world

For instance, said Mr Shannon, one maker is looking at ways to use an Arduino as an early warning system for cyclists. Public data sources exist of accident black spots and warnings about these could be fed when an on-board Arduino-based gadget notices the rider is fast approaching one.

These "low-tension" computing projects are cropping up all over the place, said Mr Shannon.

Another project is a clock that has a hand for each family member and, in place of numbers, has the names of locations set around the circumference of the dial. Each member automatically reports where they are so whoever is at home knows where everyone is at any time.

"It's that ubiquitous computing stuff that you are always subconsciously aware of and doesn't require firing up the PC to find out," he said. "It's just something in the room with you."

Arduino was dreamed up with the aim of helping people to get on with building what they have dreamed up, rather than simply dreaming, said Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, co-founder of the industrial design agency Tinker.it, which, among many other things, runs training courses teaching people how to use the Arduino.

"It's good for rapid prototyping," she said, "and that's more to do with how fast you get results and how quickly you can establish whether the result is good."

Too often, she said, designers and engineers did not talk because they had so little common ground. The Arduino helps both sides get on with the tinkering rather than just the talking. And, she said, that was true whether the two sides were professionals, interested amateurs or schoolchildren.

Hackers' choice

"You have something to talk about right there that everyone understands to the same degree," she said. "It makes multi-disciplinary work much easier."

She added that the Arduino, like many of the tools that hackers and makers are turning to, was about getting control back.

"It tries to get people thinking about technologies outside of those they are just given," she said.

"If you have bought something there's probably ways in which you can fix or use it to make it more relevant to you. It's about learning by doing."

Every maker can appreciate that.

Spotify streams for music lovers

2009-05-30T07:01:00.003-07:00

Spotify streams for music lovers

The founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, talks about the future for Spotify

Music streaming service Spotify is only a few months old but it has already attracted much attention from music lovers.

The site allows its members to create and listen to heir own playlists of songs streamed to them online.

The same peer-to-peer technology as found in file-sharing is used to deliver near-CD quality and tracks that playback almost instantly.

The service is free for listeners willing to hear audio and on-screen adverts (which appear between roughly every five songs), although users can otherwise pay £10 per month for a premium service which enables them to listen to songs without adverts.

Mobile streams

Spotify founder Daniel Ek has persuaded big record companies that it is possible to finance this service via adverts and subscriptions.

Spotify founder Daniel Ek believes in working with the music fans

"But it's not really just about monetising through adverts, or through getting subscribers. The fact is they might buy the occasional ticket or merchandise," he said.

The site is not yet making any money in the fierce music market, but it has signed a deal to sell music downloads via online music store 7digital.

It also plans to launch on mobiles and expand to the US by the end of the year.

"The ability to take the music with you is definitely something we are looking at doing," confirmed Mr Ek. But he said he wants to make sure the site gets this "right" from the outset.

'On the offensive'

We7 is another ad-supported streaming and downloading service that grafts a 10-second advertisement on the front of a downloaded song.

Co-founder and former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel has said that keeping labels, advertisers and users satisfied is a real challenge.

But digital music has come a long way over the last decade since the days of Napster being the main file-sharing host on the net.

All you can eat music streaming on the go could be the future

The music industry's initial response was to cry foul over illicit downloading and to go on the offensive against a new generation of file-sharers.

Changing models

A recent landmark court case saw the men behind The Pirate Bay sentenced to a year in jail after being found guilty of breaking copyright law.

They were ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

While file-sharing site Kazaa agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry following a series of high-profile legal battles. The peer-to-peer network has now become a legal music download service.

Napster has also launched the world's largest online music store offering tracks from all of the major record labels and independents.

But record labels too are experimenting with innovative business models by offering their music free of charge online and making money from touring instead.

In 2007, Radiohead allowed fans to pay what they thought the band's album In Rainbows was worth for a limited time.

While Groove Armada fans were able to receive the first track of their EP for free, with the offer of additional tracks the more songs they shared.

Kidnapped son' found on Facebook

2009-05-30T07:01:00.001-07:00

Kidnapped son' found on Facebook

Gavin Paros had not seen his mother Avril for 27 years

A mother has been reunited with her son, 27 years after she claims he was kidnapped, after her sister saw him on the social networking site Facebook.

Avril Grube, 62, who lives in Poole, Dorset, says she was given custody of her son Gavin Paros after her marriage to a Hungarian man broke down in 1982.

His father, who died in 2006, had visiting rights but took him to Hungary and Ms Grube has not seen him since.

But Mr Paros, 29, met his mother this week after being found on Facebook.

Ms Grube, who was only discharged from hospital a week ago, said: "I would love it so much to have Gavin back living in Britain."

She and her sister Beryl Wilson, 59, who lives in Liverpool, had spent years trying to trace their relative, even contacting the Hungarian Embassy and taking their case to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Ms Wilson told BBC Radio Solent: "[Mr Paros' father] had visitation rights, he said he was going to the zoo or somewhere and when he didn't arrive back we found out he had taken him back to Hungary.

"My sister was devastated, her health suffered.

"I tried everything... but no-one wanted to know."

In March, Ms Wilson typed her nephew's name into an internet search engine and could not believe it when his Facebook profile came up correctly showing he had been born in Liverpool and naming his mother.

"I was so relieved, it took me 27 years but I never gave up," Ms Wilson said.

'On cloud nine'

He had not logged into the site since October last year and did not respond to initial emails, but after Ms Wilson messaged his children Mr Paros emailed back.

Ms Wilson said: "My sister would phone him on a Sunday and speak to him through an interpreter.

"She is just absolutely on cloud nine.

"They have been hugging, really, really happy.

"At Christmas my sister had a stroke, she suffers from angina, diabetes and chronic nose bleeds... but it is very important that now is the time she spends with her son because she is not a well lady."

Plasterer Gavin, who turns 30 on Saturday, is now married with three children and had also been trying to trace his family for the past five years.

Hi-tech aims to improve lifestyle

2009-05-30T07:00:00.001-07:00

Technology Correspondent, BBC News

The project will give feedback about activity levels

Facebook, mobile phones, and energy meters are helping to see if people can be nudged into living healthier lives.

The three-year project will see how people react when data is fed back to them about their energy use and activity levels.

While it has been established that such feedback can alter behaviour, the researchers want to unpick the mechanisms of such change.

About 800 people will be recruited to the project which starts in September.

Normal life

The research, called the Charm Project, builds on the work of academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein which implies that the way people are told about poor lifestyle choices influences how they react.

Instead of simply telling people to stop, it has been shown that it is more effective to reveal how one person's behaviour ranks against their peers.

Adopting a less confrontational style can, claim Thaler and Sunstein, "nudge" people towards better choices.

"It's about influencing behaviour by telling people what other people do," said Dr Ruth Rettie, head of the Charm Project and a reader in marketing at Kingston University.

"There's quite a lot of evidence that we can influence, not just by nudging, but by informing them about social norms," said Dr Rettie.

Social norms are the broadly accepted ways that people conduct themselves and encompass such things as manners, cleanliness, and behaviour.

However, said Dr Rettie, norms can differ from person to person and many people follow a set of norms without much thought about why they do so, or whether they are choosing wisely when living by them.

Via three separate investigations, Dr Rettie and her colleagues will gather data about consumption or usage behaviour related to sustainability, feed information about it back to the subjects, and see how that "social proof" changes behaviour.

The project will not dictate norms to people. Instead it will find out what people do and then tell everyone involved about that activity.

Three trials

One investigation revolves around mobile phones that have software installed on them to measure how active their owners are.

200 people will take part in this trial, said Dr Parisa Eslambolchilar, a lecturer in human-computer interaction at the University of Swansea who is developing the phone application.

By monitoring power, people will be nudged toward lower use.

"We're looking at how often people take exercise, or do they prefer to walk to work, or their office, or do they prefer driving?" said Dr Eslambolchilar.

Participants will be given feedback about their activity and whether they are more or less active than the others in the group. Data from accelerometers in smartphones and PDAs will be analysed to work out how far people are walking. GPS will be used for those that cycle, to work out their average speed and distance travelled.

Still to be decided is the way that information about activity will be fed back. One idea is to represent individuals as flowers in a garden with the more active participants growing taller over the course of the investigation.

Household energy use will be monitored as another of the Charm Project investigations. This will see small energy meters placed in the homes of 400 people recruited for the project.

"The monitor clamps around the cable, it does not interfere or use home power," said Dr Matthew Studley, a senior researcher in robotics at the University of the West of England who has developed the device.

Information about energy use will be sent to the researchers, who will then inform participants of how much they used and how that compares to others in the trial.

Feedback

Information might be fed back through text message, a project website, or a letter in the post, said Dr Studley.

"We are not particularly interested in the amount of energy that they are using, it's the change in their behaviour as a result of the feedback," he said.

"We expect that most will reduce their consumption in response to feedback on their own and other people's usage," said Dr Studley. "What we do not want to happen is that people using far less than everybody else increase their usage of energy."

The third investigation will revolve around social networking site Facebook and will investigate how friends influence each other and see what it takes to nudge people towards more "sustainable" ways of life.

Dr Rettie said the Charm Project aimed to get a better understanding of why people make the choices they do and what can influence them.

"There has been a tendency in academic circles to think that choices are made on a rational and conscious basis," she said. "We find out their attitudes, consider their intentions, and that will give you their behaviour."

But, she said, research shows that many of the things people do are not based on rational choice.

Finding out what informs choices and how to influence them was likely to become far more important as the need to live more sustainable lifestyles becomes pressing, she said.

"If we are going to change and make lifestyles more sustainable, then changing this process is very important," she said.

New rate for music digital stream

2009-05-30T06:59:00.001-07:00

All forms of music streaming will pay a lower charge from July 2009

Music collection society PRS has unveiled a new pricing plan it hopes may entice YouTube and Pandora back to the UK market.

From 1 July, firms will have to pay 0.085p for each track streamed, down from the previous rate of 0.22p.

PRS for Music says the new plan will "enable the digital market to grow".

Earlier this year, YouTube started removing premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the PRS.

Companies wishing to play or stream music over the internet are legally obliged to pay royalties to songwriters and performers. However, many companies said the old rate was prohibitive.

The radio streaming service Pandora ended its UK stream at the start of 2008 and YouTube announced in March 2009 that it was removing all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the PRS.

It remains to be seen if the new rate will entice Pandora back to the UK

The PRS, which distributes royalties to songwriters, collected a record £117 million in the first three months of 2009.

Steve Purdham, head of the music streaming service We7, told BBC News he welcomed the new charges.

"It's brilliant. Not so much the rates but the realisation by the PRS that things have to change in the digital world.

"Till now it's felt like they were not listening," he said.

The PRS's managing director, Andrew Shaw, told the BBC that its hands had been somewhat tied by a previous tribunal ruling.

"You need to understand the background. In 2007 we published the proposed rates and there were a number of services who objected and so it went to the tribunal, who fixed the rates for a two year period.

"That said, we are not a commercial organisation; we're a not-for-profit organisation owned by its members and they control what we do," he said.

"Back then our members were uncertain whether streaming services were viable and had spent millions on a tribunal and, at the time, were not minded to throw it all away."

The PRS hope the new rates will enable digital music to reach a wider audience.

Mr Purdham said it remained to be seen if it would be enough to lure YouTube and Pandora back to the UK market.

"They [the PRS] are getting in touch with the reality of the digital world," he said.

"It's a big step and a good indicator that YouTube and Pandora may come back. The PRS have shown that it is no longer a one sided argument any more."

Mr Shaw said it was now down to firms to respond.

"We've laid our stall out and listened to everyone who would engage with us. We've consulted with the 25 firms that represent 97% of our revenue over the past six months and have been given opinions from many others.

"We need to ensure the music artists are paid for their work, but we also wanted to make sure that the framework was in place to enable the digital market to grow," he said.

YouTube issued a statement that said: "We welcome any efforts to make licensing costs more realistic, but as we're still in discussions with the PRS to agree license terms for YouTube we're unable to comment further."

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Indian air force gets Awacs plane

2009-05-30T06:58:00.001-07:00

India is the first country in South Asia to operate an Awacs aircraft

India has officially taken delivery of an Awacs early-warning surveillance aircraft, part of a $1bn (£600m) defence deal with Israel.

The plane, Russian-made but packed with Israeli radar, is expected to reinforce India's maritime security following the attacks on Mumbai last year.

Only a few non-Nato countries have Awacs and critics say it is a bad omen for the arms race in South Asia.

India has ordered another two AWACS as it upgrades its military capabilities.

The Ilyushin-76 - which arrived in India on Monday - gives India the capability to track hundreds of aircraft and potential threats at sea and on the ground, at considerable distances.

Air dominance

India is the first country in South Asia to own an Awacs (Airborne Warning and Control System) plane, popularly nicknamed the "eye in the sky". The second and third aircraft are expected to be handed over next year.

AK Antony (left) is concerned about the plane's late delivery

Analysts say the purchase, part of a 2004 deal involving India, Israel and Russia, is part of India's efforts to achieve air dominance over its rival, Pakistan. Russia and Israel are India's two largest military suppliers.

India's defence procurement is expected to rise to about $100bn over the next ten years.

Delhi recently signed contracts with Israel for medium range surface-to-air missiles, and with Russia for the design and development of fighter aircraft.

Other foreign defence companies, including those from the Americas, Europe and Asia, are also lining up to do business with India.

Indian Defence Minister AK Antony, who attended the Awacs handing-over ceremony at Jamnagar air base, complained about the late delivery of defence equipment ordered by India from a number of countries.

He pointed out that the Awacs should have been delivered 18 months ago.

UK broadband 'notspots' revealed

2009-05-30T06:57:00.001-07:00

Technology reporter, BBC News website

Rory Cellan-Jones discovers a broadband boost for Cumbria

About three million homes in the UK have broadband speeds of less than two megabits per second (2Mbps) according to research commissioned by the BBC.

The government has promised to provide all homes in the UK with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.

The research revealed that so-called notspots are not limited to rural communities, with many in suburban areas and even streets in major towns.

The government has pledged a range of technologies to fill the gaps.

"We had assumed that these notspots were in remote parts of the countryside. That may be where the most vocal campaigners are but there is a high incidence of them in commuter belts," said Alex Salter, co-founder of broadband website SamKnows.

No Twittering

The SamKnows map offers an insight into where the homes are that the government needs to reach out to and connect to faster broadband.

A TALE OF TWO VILLAGES

Case study: Cumbria

In graphics: The need for speed

It was created by comparing a sample of UK postcodes with a database of information about which providers offered services in the 5,500 telephone exchanges around the UK.

By working out how far properties were from a particular exchange, a picture of the speed of services can be determined as line length is a crucial factor in determining how fast broadband services will operate.

To get speeds of 2Mbps or more homes need to be 4km or less from an exchange.

Microsoft promises 'search 2.0'

2009-05-30T06:56:00.001-07:00

Technology editor, BBC News website

Microsoft Live Search is changing

Microsoft is re-launching its search engine, promising to make search simpler, and aiming to overhaul Yahoo.

Re-named and re-branded Bing.com, the search engine will go live first in the US and launch in beta elsewhere.

Google has more than 64% of the search market in the US, followed by Yahoo at 20% and Microsoft at 8.2%.

Bing offers to make search more relevant by understanding the intention of searches, and grouping more related information to the original query.

For example, searches for a product will also bring links to reviews, accessories, and online shops, as well as information about the item.

Searches for flight information will pull schedules and times from websites, as well as linking to hotels and weather.

Microsoft wants to reduce the amount of clicking a user has to do to find specific and related information.

Paul Stoddart, Microsoft UK search lead, "Forty percent of search queries go unanswered. There is something missing here and a big consumer need."

He added: "We can see it in the logs [of searches]. When searching using existing search engines I have to keep re-querying things - adding more words, clicking on a site, going back because it is not the right site, and ultimately abandoning their queries."

He added: "We are pulling information that we know people use every day."

He said Microsoft was hoping to build an "emotional connection" between users and its search engines, as well as brand loyalty.

Bing has a much softer, less clinical feel than previous Microsoft search engines and rivals, with a daily changing backdrop image.

"Google haven't been able to innovate a lot of the UI (user interface) because they have to display their ads as that's how they make their revenue. We can try things a bit differently," said Mr Stoddart.

Users are also able to save their searches to avoid having to remember on which site they found a particular piece of information.

Microsoft is forming partnership with a host of different online services which Bing can then trawl to aggregate specific information around searches - such as flight deals, reviews and holidays.

Mr Stoddart said the UK version of Bing was launching later than the US because Microsoft was busy finding the "best of breed" in web services specific to the UK that it could add into search engine results.

"People keep building global search engines but doing something for the UK is important," he said.

He denied that Microsoft's goal of overtaking Yahoo lacked ambition.

"Second place would be a great place. And once we're in second place we will go for first place.

"Microsoft has a great tradition of coming from behind."

Sky puts content on Xbox console

2009-05-30T06:54:00.001-07:00

Technology editor, BBC News website

The Xbox 360 controller has not changed since it launched in 2005

British broadcaster Sky has struck a deal with Microsoft that will see live football, TV and film content brought to the Xbox 360.

The deal marks the Xbox's first move into live linear broadcast TV.

Rival consoles, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, can access catch-up TV content via the BBC's iPlayer.

Sky's channels will be available on the Xbox 360 from the autumn, but no specific line-up or pricing details have been given.

Users of Microsoft's Xbox Live online service on the 360 in the UK and the Irish Republic will be able to watch Sky's live sport, programmes, catch-up TV and on demand films, without the need for a satellite dish or set-top box, or being an existing Sky customer.

Reduced cost?

Sky's commercial group director Stephen Nuttall hinted there could be deals for some current Sky subscribers.

Sky customers who have subscribed to premium content packages, or have multiple set-top boxes or one of the bigger broadband packages could get content via their Xbox at a reduced cost.

Neil Thompson, head of Xbox for UK and the Irish Republic, said: "The entertainment world is changing immensely, with consumers looking for choice, flexibility and convenience.

"They also want to experience community elements."

The line-up of channels and content available via the Xbox would be similar to the existing Sky Player service, available on PCs and Macs, said Mr Nuttall.

Virtual personas

Xbox Live users will also be able to watch Sky content together virtually, chatting over the broadband connection, and sending messages via their avatars, or virtual personas.

The community viewing aspect will start with sport broadcasts, and could potentially roll out to other live TV content as well.

Mr Nuttall said Sky on Xbox was an "extra convenience, a choice; it's a complement and alternative to the existing methods of experiencing Sky's content".

Currently, users can get content via a satellite service, a PC service and a mobile service, either separately or in combination.

Sky has 9.3 million subscribers in the UK, and the firm said "hundreds of thousands of people" were using its online Sky Player regularly.

Microsoft would not say how many Xbox 360 users it had in the UK, or how many Xbox Live subscribers.

The video content from Sky will be streamed in standard definition, "DVD quality" and will require at least a one megabit per second connection.

Mr Thompson said the deal with Sky did not rule out the BBC's iPlayer ever appearing on the Xbox 360.

Mr Nuttall said putting content on the 360 did not signal the end of the set-top box.

He said: "It's about the expansion of choice. The Sky Plus HD box has got a lot of distinct features that distinguish it from any sort of competition, including the Xbox 360."

US President Barack Obama has announced plans for securing American computer networks against cyber attacks.

2009-05-30T06:53:00.001-07:00

He said that from now on, America's digital infrastructure would be treated as a strategic national asset.

He announced the creation of a cyber security office in the White House, and said he would personally appoint a "cyber tsar".

Both US government and military bodies have reported repeated interference from hackers in recent years.

Mr Obama pointed out that al-Qaeda and other groups had threatened computer warfare.

Acts of terror today, he said, could come "not only from a few extremists in suicide vests, but from a few key strokes of a computer - a weapon of mass disruption."

The president said the United States was particularly dependent on its computer networks and therefore particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

In 2007 alone the Pentagon reported nearly 44,000 incidents of what it called malicious cyber activity carried out by foreign militaries, intelligence agencies and individual hackers.

Security priority

Mr Obama said that protecting America's digital infrastructure, the networks and computers everyone depended on every day, would be "a national security priority".

"It is now clear," he said, "this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

He said the United States had failed to invest in its digital infrastructure. "We are not as prepared as we should be," he said.

In the past, no one US department was responsible for cyber-security, resulting in poor communication and co-ordination, he said.

The new cyber-security office will be a multi-billion dollar effort designed to restrict access to government computers and to protect systems - such as those that run the stock exchange and air traffic control - that keep the country going.

But Mr Obama emphasised that it would also help protect individual Americans, adding: "Millions... have been victimised: their privacy violated, their identities stolen, their lives upended, and their wallets emptied."

He pointed out that according to one survey, cyber crime cost Americans more than $8bn over the last two years. Worldwide, it was estimated that cyber criminals stole intellectual property from businesses worth up to $1 trillion.

"In short, America's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cyber-security," he said.

The Obama administration is also expected to create a new cyber command at the Pentagon with the dual task of eradicating potential vulnerabilities in America's sensitive computer networks, while simultaneously creating ways to exploit them in the systems of potential enemies.

An influential study published last year suggested that having an offensive computer warfare capability would have a deterrent effect against would-be attackers.

Evolution of Blogger 1999 - 2009

2009-05-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

Blogger has always been one of the greatest (if not the best) Free Blogging platforms available on net with so many features like unlimited bandwidth, lot of templates, multi image uploading,etc.
Its always nice and interesting to know how Blogger looks like in the past. So, in this post, we attempt to bring you back in time to look at how blogger look like in the past and then scan through it's history with images.....

Blogger was created by Pyra Labs and was launched on August 23, 1999. It was one of the earliest blog publishing tools and it is credited for helping popularize the format.
Here is it's design then..

Blogger.com in 1999

Blogger.com in 2000

Later, Blogger was acquired by Google Inc in the year 2003 and changed their design in 2004 and also added some cool features like Image uploading (via Picasa) , comments, drag and drop widgets, individual archieve pages for posts,etc.

Blogger.com from 2004 - Now

And also Blogger supports Google Adsense which generates revenue for the webmasters.

Here is how adsense website look like in the past.. (year 1998)

Is Blogger going in the right direction..? Share your thoughts!

how to submit blogger sitemap to google-useful tip for new bloggers

2009-05-26T14:18:00.001-07:00

This tip explains how to generate and submit blogger sitemap to google webmaster tools:
Before doing this,let me say what are sitemaps and how they will help us.The reason we use them is,they will help google bot to crawl,index pages of your site and tell you if there are any problems when they try to index it.It also helps you to know,how many pages exactly are indexed,and what people searched in the search engine to visit your site.
Let me explain the detailed procedure on how to submit your blogger sitemap to google.
1.First,go to google webmaster tools and sign in with your gmail account.
2.After you logged in, you will see this asking you to add a site.

Add your blog url(ex:kranthitips.blogspot.com).Don't add with http or www.

3.Next,it asks you to verify your site.It is just to confirm whether you are the owner or not.

CLICK on the 'verify your site' link.

Next,

4.There are two ways to verify your ownership but, there is only one way for the blogger users to add a metatag.

5.Copy the metatag.

Now,sign into your blogger account>click the layout button>Edit html and paste the metatag just after the head tag and save the changes.

and click the verify button in the google webmaster tools and there will be a confirmation message saying that you have sucessfully verified.

Now,you have to submit a sitemap for google to crawl your site.Go back to the google webmaster dashboard or (home) and click the 'Add' link which is next to your blog name and in the Sitemaps column.Then,you see this,

Choose 'Add general web sitemap' from the dropdown menu and type rss.xml or atom.xml next to your blog address as shown below

and click the 'Add General Web Sitemap' button.

6.That's it.Now your sitemap is successfully submitted to google.Check 2 or 3 days after and you will see the detailed statistics of your blog(indexed pages,any errors,etc.)

If you have any questions regarding this,you can ask here via your comments

Submit blogger sitemap to yahoo to index your web pages

2009-05-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

This post explains how to submit your blogger sitemap to Yahoo.By submitting your sitemap to yahoo, they will index your web pages in yahoo search engine and provide you with detailed information related to your blog like which pages are linking to yours,popular pages in your site and you can submit and track feeds for your sites.
Also,you have the choice to delete any urls of your blog if you won't want to index certain pages of your site.
Submitting your site to yahoo is easy and give your web pages more exposure.
All you need is a YAHOO ACCOUNT(ID).However,you don't need an yahoo ID to know the information like how many pages are indexed,etc.But,if your blog is a new one or no pages in your blog are indexed(type your blog url in yahoo search and see to check whether your web pages are indexed or not), then you want Yahoo id to submit your sites,feeds,etc.
Let't see how to make yahoo index your webpages by submitting your blog sitemap.
1.Go to Yahoo Site Explorer

2.Click on the 'Sign in' link which is at the top of the page,see the screenshot below(If you don't have a Yahoo id, you can get one here) and sign into your accoutnt.

3.Type your blog url in the box provided as shown in the below screenshot.Don't forget to replace the 'yourblogurl' with the original url of your blog and click on the 'Add My Site'

4.After adding your site,you need to Authenticate(Verify your ownership).
There are two ways to verify your ownership.One is to upload a file to the root directory of your site which can't be possible in blogger.

Another one is to 'adding a metatag' which is possible and the only way to verify ownership for bloggers.First,copy the metatag..
Next,sign in to your blogger account>Edit html and paste the metatag below the head tag and SAVE THE CHANGES,look at the screenshot below.

Next,you will get a message saying that 'Your site is pending authentication'

Note:Don't remove the metatag,they will revalidate your ownership by checking your ownership regularly.

5.Next,go back to the 'Site explorer home', and check the box next to your blog url and click on the Manage button.

6.Type rss.xml or atom.xml in the box provided.It helps yahoo to discover more of your site content via your rss or atom feeds and to index your blog pages quickly whenever your blog is updated.Next,click on the add feed button.

That's it.Now,you have sucessfully submitted your blog sitemap to yahoo.Check your account after a couple of days and you will see your blog indexed in yahoo search engine.

Meanwhile,if you didn't submitted your blog sitemap to google,please read this about

Add Blogger 'Share on Facebook' Code

2009-05-26T13:59:00.001-07:00

If you have a blogger blog, and want your visitors to easily share your posts with their facebook friends, you can make blogger automatically place a 'share on facebook' link at the end of each post. Add this code after the body of the post:

for layouts (in the "Edit HTML" pane with the "Expand Widget Templates" check box checked):

<b:if cond='data:post.url'> <br/>share <a expr:href='data:post.url' title='permanent link'>this</a>: <a expr:href='"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=" + data:post.url'>facebook</a> </b:if>

for classic templates:

share <a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" title="permanent link">this</a>: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">facebook</a>

and you'll also have a permalink before the 'share on facebook' link. You can make facebook sharing look good: specify the picture, title and description facebook will use.

You can also add a link for sharing and saving for other social networking and social bookmarking sites too. If you'd like the code for that, please leave a comment.

How to Create Drop Down Navigation Menu With Sub Menu in Blogger

2009-05-26T13:05:00.001-07:00

Somedays ago, someone ask me about how to create dropdown navigation menu with sub menu like on this blog. To create dropdown navigation menu with sub menu on your template is not too difficult, but because each template is different, whether it is the size of template, Widget placing technique, or anything else, you will need a little adjustment to the code or script given. To make it easy, I use my own source code in this tutorial. You just need to follow the description below and make a little adjustment:

Click Layout

Click on Edit HTML

Before you edit your template, I suggest to download it first to anticipate if you make a mistake when editing your template code.

Search For : ]]></b:skin> and add these Css codes. You may need to adjust the width, color, and the url image with yours because the character of each template is different.

/* -----   NAVBAR MENU   ----- */
#NavbarMenu {

 width: 980px;
height: 35px;
background:#99C9FF url(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_FnaS8cIU2Yw/Sfx5s4I_f9I/AAAAAAAAACc/z5BMLSJUVlQ/s800/navbar.gif) repeat-x top;
   color: #3D81EE
margin: 0 auto 0;
padding: 0;
font: bold 11px Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
 border-top: 1px solid #AFAFAF;
   border-bottom: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
}
#NavbarMenuleft {
width: 680px;
float: left;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#nav {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#nav ul {
float: left;
list-style: none;
  margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#nav li {
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#nav li a, #nav li a:link, #nav li a:visited {
color: #3D81EE;
display: block;
text-transform: capitalize;
  margin: 0;
padding: 9px 15px 8px;
font: normal 15px Georgia, Times New Roman;
}
#nav li a:hover, #nav li a:active {
  background:#99C9FF;
color: #3D81EE;
margin: 0;
padding: 9px 15px 8px;
text-decoration: none;
}
#nav li li a, #nav li li a:link, #nav li li a:visited {
 background: #3D81EE url(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_FnaS8cIU2Yw/Sfx5s4I_f9I/AAAAAAAAACc/z5BMLSJUVlQ/s800/navbar.gif) repeat-x top;
  width: 150px;
color: #000;
text-transform: lowercase;
float: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 7px 10px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #99C9FF;
border-left: 1px solid #99C9FF;
border-right: 1px solid #99C9FF;
  font: normal 14px Georgia, Times New Roman;
  }

#nav li li a:hover, #nav li li a:active {
 background: #99C9FF;
color: #3D81EE;
padding: 7px 10px;
}
#nav li {
float: left;
padding: 0;
}
#nav li ul {
z-index: 9999;
position: absolute;
  left: -999em;
height: auto;
width: 170px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#nav li ul a {
width: 140px;
}
#nav li ul ul {
margin: -32px 0 0 171px;
}
#nav li:hover ul ul, #nav li:hover ul ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul ul {
  left: -999em;
}
#nav li:hover ul, #nav li li:hover ul, #nav li li li:hover ul, #nav li.sfhover ul, #nav li li.sfhover ul, #nav li li li.sfhover ul {
left: auto;
}
#nav li:hover, #nav li.sfhover {
position: static;
  }

After that, search for this codes

<div id='header-wrapper'>
  <b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'>
  <b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='Your Blog Title (Header)' type='Header'/>
  </b:section>
</div>

<div id='NavbarMenu'>
   <div id='NavbarMenuleft'>
  <ul id='nav'>
   <li><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a></li>
  <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/News'>News</a></li>
    <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/All%20Software'>Software</a>
      <ul>
      <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Anti%20Virus%20Software'>Antivirus</a></li>
        <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Audio%20and%20Video%20Software'>Audio and Video</a></li>
        <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Desktop%20Enhancements'>Desktop Enhancements</a></li>
        <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Graphic%20and%20Web%20Design'>Graphic and Web Design</a></li>
        <li><a href='#'>Internet</a>
        <ul>
           <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Dial-up%20and%20Connectivity'>Dial-Up n Connectivity</a></li>
             <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security%20and%20Spyware'>Security and Spyware</a></li>
             <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Utilities'>Utilities</a></li>
          </ul>
      </li>
      <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/System%20Utilities'>System Tools</a></li>
        <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Tools%20and%20Utilities'>Others</a></li>
      </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Free%20Blogger%20Template'>Template</a>
       <ul>
        <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/New%20Blogger%20Template'>New Blogger Template</a></li>
          <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/Classic%20Blogger%20Template'>Classic Blogger Template</a></li>
       </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href='http://hyperjadulz.blogspot.com/search/label/TiPs%20and%20TriCk'>Tips and Trick</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

</div> <!-- end navbar -->

Click Preview and Save Template if its working fine. That's it.

Don't forget to change the names and links with yours in above codes.I hope you would like this navigation menu for sure. If you have any question about it, just leave a comments below.

How to Show Most Viewed posts of Today

2009-05-26T12:48:00.002-07:00

This shows all most of posts being viewed in the current day (today) only. It's very easy to install this widget in your blog, This widget will display a list of your popular articles, ranked by the number of views of the day.

How to Install this Widget >>

1) Go to blogger > Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML/JavaScript

2) Copy the Following code and paste this code in HTML/ Javascript section.

Code >>

<script type="text/javascript">

topviewstoday_limit = 10;

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://vishalgkr.googlepages.com/topviewstoday_v10.js"></script>

<br/>

<span style="gt;I got this Widget from <a href="http://dacoolhunter.blogspot.com"><b>Blogger Tips & Tricks</b></a></span>

To limit the number of displayed post, you must change number "10" with your own.

The showing time in this widget is the international time zone, not in any country.

Screenshot >>

If you want to Install "ALLTIME MOST VIEWED POSTS WIDGET" then you can Install it from HERE

How to Disable and Enable USB Storage Devices

2009-05-26T12:48:00.001-07:00

It's very simple to disable the USB ports in windows in order to prevent and forbid computer user from using USB removable flash drive or mass storage device to copy and transfer data and files. Use the following tricks to stop access to the USB Mass Storage Device and follow the simple steps to re-enable access to this devices again.

Follow the simple steps :

Disable the access to USB port:

Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate, and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

In the right pane, double-click Start.
In the Value data box, type 4, click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.

Exit from Registry Editor.

Re-enable the Disabled port :

Click Start, and then click Run.

In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate, and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

In the right pane, double-click Start.
In the Value data box, type 3, click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.

Exit from Registry Editor.

Screenshot :

Download Google Earth Pro Gold Edition 2009

2009-05-26T12:46:00.001-07:00

Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips. Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in. Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions. Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings. Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

Google Earth lets you do smooth sailing flybyes of the entire Earth. You can easily fly to any spot on the globe, by entering any associated data, like street addresses, place names or lat/long coordinates. There are overlays that put additional information on the map, like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, any number of interesting stuff. You can do Local searches in the program, with icons on the map and a display on the side showing your results.

You can leave notes, called "placemarks" all over the map, so you can remember where all sorts of places are. Searches and placemarks can be saved as bookmarks in "My Places". Everything can be output in an XML format called KML, that will allow the vast popularity of Google Maps to continue in Earth. You can also email a JPEG of the map, or send a KMZ file if you know the recipient has Earth installed.

Features:

Sophisticated streaming technology delivers the data to you as you need it.
Imagery and 3D data depict the entire earth - Terabytes of aerial and satellite imagery depict cities around the world in high-resolution detail.
Local search lets you search for restaurants, hotels, and even driving directions. Results show in your 3D earth view. Easy to layer multiple searches, save results to folders, and share with others.
Layers show parks, schools, hospitals, airports, retail, and more.
Overlays – import site plans, design sketches and even scanned blueprints.
Annotate the view with lines and polygons.
Spreadsheet import - ingest up to 2,500 locations by address or lat/lon.
KML – data exchange format let your share useful annotations.

Use it for:

Planning a trip.
Getting driving directions.
Finding a house or apartment.
Finding a local business.
Exploring the world.

Recommended configuration:

Operating system: Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista
CPU speed: Intel® Pentium® P4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
System memory (RAM): 512MB
2GB hard-disk space
3D graphics card: 3D-capable video card with 32MB VRAM or greater
1280x1024, 32-bit true color screen
Network speed: 128 kbps ("Broadband/Cable Internet")

Links : Download Google Earth 5.0.11337.1968 (Portable)

Most Viewed Posts Widget for Blogger

2009-05-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

In this post, I am going to share with you how to install the Most Viewed posts widget for Blogger. This widget will display a list of your popular articles, ranked by the number of views.Most Viewed Posts is a essential widget for all bloggers. It's very useful to emphasize the hot topics on your blog. After creating this widget, all your viewed posts by readers will be counted immediately.

The unadvantage of this widget is, it sometimes slows your loading speed of your blog. Don't panic, it's not happening all the time.

HOW TO INSTALL >>

1) Go to blogger > Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML/JavaScript

2) Copy the Following code and paste this code in HTML/ Javascript section.

Code >>

<script type="text/javascript">

start_views_num = 500;

limit = 7;

</script>

<script src="http://www.tricksmachine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/mostviewposts.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

3) Change start_view_num (Start viewed number for each post), and limit (number of displayed posts in widget) options.

4) Enjoy....

Screenshots :

How to Remove Label Number Count in Blogger/Blogspot!

2009-05-26T12:36:00.001-07:00

Everyone always want to make his/her blog look like professional. For this i am posting a simple trick which will help you. By default, the Labels will have an automatic count of the number of posts. You can remove those counts. To remove label counts in blogger, just follow the step by step instructions below.

Follow the simple steps >>

Step 1 : Backup your template first.

Step 2 : Login to your dashboard, go to Layout -> Edit HTML > Click Expand Widget templates

Step 3: Search the following code

<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>

Step 4: Scroll down until you find this code (<data:label.count/>) and delete it.

Step 5 : Save your template. DONE.

Screenshots :

Question: Why i can't find <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'> in my Edit Template HTML section?

Answer: You probably have not install Label widget in your Page Elements. You need install Label widget first before you can remove the Label number count.

To install Label widget, Go to Page Elements, Add a Gadget and add Labels (under basic tab) and click Save.

Don't Forget to drop your comments here

Meta Tags For Blogger / Blogspot

2009-05-26T12:09:00.001-07:00

Meta Tags are HTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page. Such tags are placed in the head section of an HTML document
We can also add meta tags to Blogger Blogs.But the problem is that having the same meta tags for all pages in your blog is not a good practice.So it would be better if you could add meta tags on your home page only.Just find out the appropriate keywords and description for your site

Now copy out the following code into a text file

Make the following Replacements
1.Replace Your_Email_Address with your Email Address.
2.Replace Your keywords separated by commas with your site's keywords.
3.Replace Your Site Description with a good description of your site.
4.Replace Your_Name with your Name

I would suggest you to take into consideration the following character limits
a.The maximum size of the title tag should be 60 characters
b.The maximum size of your site description should be 150 characters
c.it would be better to limit the keyword size to 200 characters
you might use this character count tool.. Now copy out the edited code and place it within the head section of your blogger template.. It would be appropriate to place it below the title tag

If you are using my SEO Title Tag hack, then you will have to place the meta tags after the whole of the title tag hack that is below

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

When you use this meta format, the keyword description meta tags will appear on your blogs home page only thus avoiding duplicate meta tags on blog pages..

Now if you wish to add meta tags for a particular post page you can do that also..In that case you will have to follow the following format..here is the code that i have used for implementing meta tags on this post page.

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2008/06/meta-tags-for-blogger-blogspot.html"'>
<meta content='optimize blogger,optimize blogspot,meta tags for blogger' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='Adding Meta tags to blogger blog is very useful. Here is a tutorial on Optimizing blogger by using appropriate meta tags on homepage and post pages.' name='description'/>
</b:if>

You should replace the post url,the keyword and description tags appropriately and place them in the head section of your template.

Get better search rankings using META tags | Add meta tag in blogspot tamplate

2009-05-26T12:06:00.001-07:00

If you search any thing using search engines like google, yahoo or msn, they look at the 'META' data of the webpage to find contents you are looking for. Meta data's are the part of your website's HTML code and this way search engines know that what your site is all about.

If you want to target a keyword for your blog, you have to write lots of contents related to that keyword. Like if you want to get better placements in the search engines for the keyword, 'Computers' -then you have to write lots of articles using pc, computer, tech, laptop, desktop keywords.

Most of the time your hardwork may not work and another blog with less quality articles can get the better places. If you use META tags in your blog, there is a big chance to get better rankings in search engines.

About META description & keywords
Each blog has a title and a short description but blogger blogs don't show the description on google's search term. If you search for 'blogkori' in google, the main pages of my site will not show the actual description. Google will show some random text from my blog to fill up the gap.

It is not a good strategy because when a new person will search google, he will not know what blogkori.com is all about? This is why meta description is needed.

On the picture, you can see the search result of my other blog, tamalanwar.com. The short description is being pulled out from meta description and this way a new visitor from google will know that what my blog is all about.

At the same way, you can add relavent keywords in meta keywords to let the search engine know what keyword you are targeting.

Add the code in your blog
Log in to your blog and open the blog's HTML file. Blogger users go to Dashboard > Layout > Edit HTML.

You have to add the code before the HEAD tag. It is better to add it after HEAD so that search engines will find it in the beginning.

Add these codes after the tag,

<meta content='text/html; charset=utf-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/> <meta content='THE DESCRIPTION' name='description'/> <meta content='ALL KEYWORDS' name='keywords'/>

Description: Replace the red part of the code using a simple description of your blog. Make it short within 25-30 words.

Keywords: Replace the red part of the code using relevant keywords of your blog. If you are blogging about jobs then you could add, jobs, job, money, salary, my job, company, part time etc.

Separate all of the keywords using coma's (,)
You can repeat the same keywords up to 5 times
You can add unlimited keywords
Don't put irrelevant keywords!

Click 'Save template' and withing few days, you will see the difference in google search.

PS: Don't expect overnight results/ traffic, because search traffic takes time to apply changes. Meta tags are just another optimization, not a super technique.

How to add META tags into your blog

2009-05-26T12:04:00.001-07:00

Do you want to improve your blog value, get more hits, and ranked high on search engines? Then you must optimize how your blog is indexed in a search engine.

While there are lots of factors involved in building quality blogs that can draw huge traffic in, having simple things right in the beginning is as important. One of this simple thing is getting your blog indexed properly with the right description & keywords to optimize search engine rankings (known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO).

To get information, search engines use automated software agents called spiders, crawlers, robots, or bots to collect the a few words from a site or blog (typically the URLs, blog name, and blog description, and maybe some words in the early part of sentences or paragraphs) that will later be used as keywords to index the blog.

Because you cannot be certain which words are taken as keywords pertaining to your blog, it's most likely that your blog won't be indexed properly in search engines - in the worst case, your highly relevant keywords might not even be used to index your blog. When this happen, searches on keywords relevant to your blog may have your blog buried at the far end of the list of thousands and millions of pages. What a waste!

To have a control of what is read by crawlers on your blog to be indexed, you have to build what is called a META tag - basically a bunch of words that makes up the most relevant description and keywords of your blog. If the META tag exist, this is what the crawlers will read and index and get displayed on any searches related to your keywords.

Here's what a search on my blog looks like on Google. The description is exactly the one I have written in the META tag. The 1st search on the list shows the new META tag description that was made a few seconds before the snap. The old META tag is shown beneath it (22 hours ago).

There are basically 2 parts to a META tag: first is the META description and second is the META keywords. The description are what appears on a search. As you can see, if the description is too long, it'll be cropped as search engines only uses a few lines to describe the blog. An optimum number of characters to use for META description is 150 (including spaces and dots).

For META keywords, you can use as many words as you want, but don't repeat the same word too many times (more than 5) to avoid keyword spam. Crawlers can identify keyword spamming easily - which won't make it good either for SEO.

To create a META tag, simply copy the code below and rewrite your META description and keywords (the red text):

<meta content='text/html; charset=utf-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/> <meta content='Write your META description here. Keep it less than 150 characters.' name='description'/> <meta content='Write your META keywords here as many as you want separated with commas. Keep word repetition less than 5 to avoid keyword spamming.' name='keywords'/>

Then, place it in between the <head> ..... </head> section near the top part of your template XML code. It's best to put it just below the <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> code.

For more details:
Go to this Free META Tag Builder tool. It directs you easily to build a META tag, create the HTML or XHTML code, and guides to paste it into your blog template XML code.

Just for the fun of it, you can analyze your blog's original description and keywords by submitting your blog URL at the Free META TAG Analyzer before placing the new META tags in your blog - so that you can compare how it is indexed before and after the change.

Adding meta tags to blogger(blogspot) blogs,websites-SEO

2009-05-26T12:03:00.001-07:00

If you don't know what meta tags are, and what is the importance of adding meta tags, here is the detailed description on how to add them to your blogger(blogspot) blogs or any website.

Do you know adding meta tags is so important if you want to get more traffic from search engines like google,yahoo,msn,etc,especially the meta description is the most important one.

If you don't know what meta tags are,Meta tags are the tags which describes your site and tells the search engines what your site is all about.Adding meta tags is an important factor in SEO.(Search Engine Optimisation).Meta tags allows search engines to index your web pages more accurately. In other words,Meta tags communicate with the search engines and tells more information about your site and make it index correctly and accurately.
Here is an example.This is what I got when I typed 'Kranthi tips' in the Google Search Engine.

As you can observe.'Tips and tricks............' is the meta tags description which I added to my site.

We have to add two meta tags to the head section of the template.One is the Meta description which describes your site and another one is Meta Keywords which tells about your site keywords(what your site is all about)

Here is how to add meta tags to your blogger(blogspot) blog:

1.Sign in to your blogger dashboard>click the 'layout' button[see the screenshot below]

2.Click on the 'Edit html' tab

Here is the code you have to add

DESCRIPTION HERE:Write your blog description
KEYWORDS:Write the keywords of your blog
AUTHOR NAME:Write the author's name(Your name)

3.Add the above code just after this [Look at the below screenshot]

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

Don't forget to add description and keywords.
and save the changes.

IMPORTANT:

Several people were filling with just the keywords in the description.DON'T DO THAT.Google and other search engines will ban your site from the search engines list if you did so.And also,don't repeat the keyword more than 3 times.

That's it!You have sucessfully added the metatags to your blogger(blogpsot) blog.If you want to check whether you added the meta tags correctly or not,just type 'meta tags analyzer tool' in the google and you will find so many sites which can check whether you have added the tags correctly or not.

Free Rapidshare Downloader-CryptLoad 1.9

2009-05-26T03:21:00.001-07:00

New CryptLoad 1.9

Cyptload is a hand made custom program enabling
you to bypass RapidShare.com RapidShare.de
Megaupload.com time and download limits. It has
a download manager interface and featured with
plugins to add more features and services. It has a
interface to automatically restart and assign new
IP address for the routers. Automatically Recognizes
the Captcha verification Images and identify them.
It can integrate with other Popular programs to
enhance the Captcha capture function.

Free Rapidshare Accounts

2009-05-26T03:20:00.001-07:00

USE THIS PROGRAM TO DOWNLOAD FILES FROM RAPIDSHARE.COM WITH NO WAIT AND DOWNLOAD MULTIPLE FILES AT A TIME!!!! 100% VIRUS FREE!

Download Link:

http://uploading.com/files/4WZGRBKL/RP.rar.html

How to download from rapidshare with out premium account

2009-05-25T23:29:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends
Download this software. It can help u to download from rapidshare no need premium account. U download this software nd all the information r included in this file. How it work all the information r including. When u use this software ip has been changed automaticly. No need extra software to change ur ip address.
Check ur ip address from these sites.

When use this software den u can download multi files just like premium account but u can't pause the files download this software from below link

http://rapidshare.com/files/150322890/vidalia-bundle-0.2.1.5_-_0.1.9_by_bivrat_change_ur_ip_.zip

IP users only not PPPoE user. Use this below tricks

If show error to download from rapidshare then

1. Go start menu nd click the run program
2. Type ipconfig /release nd Enter
3. U see just flash a black screen then
4. Go to My Network Place nd
5. View Network Connection
6. Local Area Network here u click right button nd go to propertise
7. Internet Protocol click here double nd
8. Any ip address what u need or alreay u have the ip address then change it 111.111.111.111 or what u want nd then Subnet mask is automaticly select.
9. Then ok or apply
10. Then go to error page nd refresh this page i hope it must be work

genuinesoft.blogspot . 1st a www. nd last aaa .com diaaa typre koren

Windows Shortcut Keys

2009-05-25T05:33:00.001-07:00

- Windows key + D - shows the desktop
- Windows key + M - minimizes all open windows
- Windows key + Shift + M - maximizes all open windows
- Windows key + E - Runs Windows Explorer
- Windows key + R - shows the RUN dialog
- Windows key + F - shows Search window
- Windows key + Break - shows System Properties box
- Windows key + TAB - Go through taskbar applications
- Windows key + PAUSE Display the System Properties dialog box
- Windows key + U Open Utility Manager
- ALT + TAB - Cycle through opened applications
- Hold down CTRL while dragging an item to Copy it
- CTRL + ESC Display the Start menu
- ALT + ENTER View the properties for the selected item
- F4 key Display the Address bar list in My Computer

CTRL+C (Copy)
CTRL+X (Cut)
CTRL+V (Paste)
CTRL+Z (Undo)
DELETE (Delete)
SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing
the item in the Recycle Bin)
CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected
item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the
next word)
CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the
previous word)
CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the
next paragraph)
CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the
previous paragraph)
CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than one item in a
window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
CTRL+A (Select all)
F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
CTRL+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable you to
have multiple documents open simultaneously)
ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the
desktop)
F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows
Explorer)
SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding
menu)
Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the
corresponding command)
F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
RIGHT ARROW (Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu)
LEFT ARROW (Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu)
F5 key (Update the active window)
BACKSPACE (View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows
Explorer)
ESC (Cancel the current task)
SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-
ROM from automatically playing)
Dialog Box Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL+TAB (Move forward through the tabs)
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the tabs)
TAB (Move forward through the options)
SHIFT+TAB (Move backward through the options)
ALT+Underlined letter (Perform the corresponding command or select
the corresponding option)
ENTER (Perform the command for the active option or button)
SPACEBAR (Select or clear the check box if the active option is a
check box)
Arrow keys (Select a button if the active option is a group of
option buttons)
F1 key (Display Help)
F4 key (Display the items in the active list)
BACKSPACE (Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the
Save As or Open dialog box)
m*cro$oft Natural Keyboard Shortcuts
Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)
Accessibility Keyboard Shortcuts
Right SHIFT for eight seconds (Switch FilterKeys either on or off)
Left ALT+left SHIFT+PRINT SCREEN (Switch High Contrast either on or
off)
Left ALT+left SHIFT+NUM LOCK (Switch the MouseKeys either on or off)
SHIFT five times (Switch the StickyKeys either on or off)
NUM LOCK for five seconds (Switch the ToggleKeys either on or off)
Windows Logo +U (Open Utility Manager)
Windows Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
END (Display the bottom of the active window)
HOME (Display the top of the active window)
NUM LOCK+Asterisk sign (*) (Display all of the subfolders that are
under the selected folder)
NUM LOCK+Plus sign (+) (Display the contents of the selected folder)
NUM LOCK+Minus sign (-) (Collapse the selected folder)
LEFT ARROW (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or
select the parent folder)
RIGHT ARROW (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or
select the first subfolder)
Shortcut Keys for Character Map
After you double-click a character on the grid of characters, you
can move through the grid by using the keyboard shortcuts:
RIGHT ARROW (Move to the right or to the beginning of the next line)
LEFT ARROW (Move to the left or to the end of the previous line)
UP ARROW (Move up one row)
DOWN ARROW (Move down one row)
PAGE UP (Move up one screen at a time)
PAGE DOWN (Move down one screen at a time)
HOME (Move to the beginning of the line)
END (Move to the end of the line)
CTRL+HOME (Move to the first character)
CTRL+END (Move to the last character)
SPACEBAR (Switch between Enlarged and Normal mode when a character
is selected)
m*cro$oft Management Console (MMC) Main Window Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL+O (Open a saved console)
CTRL+N (Open a new console)
CTRL+S (Save the open console)
CTRL+M (Add or remove a console item)
CTRL+W (Open a new window)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the MMC window menu)
ALT+F4 (Close the console)
ALT+A (Display the Action menu)
ALT+V (Display the View menu)
ALT+F (Display the File menu)
ALT+O (Display the Favorites menu)
MMC Console Window Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL+P (Print the current page or active pane)
ALT+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console
window)
SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the
selected item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only
one console window, this shortcut closes the console)
Remote Desktop Connection Navigation
CTRL+ALT+END (Open the m*cro$oft Windows NT Security dialog box)
ALT+PAGE UP (Switch between programs from left to right)
ALT+PAGE DOWN (Switch between programs from right to left)
ALT+INSERT (Cycle through the programs in most recently used order)
ALT+HOME (Display the Start menu)
CTRL+ALT+BREAK (Switch the client computer between a window and a
full screen)
ALT+DELETE (Display the Windows menu)
CTRL+ALT+Minus sign (-) (Place a snapshot of the active window in
the client on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same
functionality as pressing PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
CTRL+ALT+Plus sign (+) (Place a snapshot of the entire client window
area on the Terminal server clipboard and provide the same
functionality as pressing ALT+PRINT SCREEN on a local computer.)
m*cro$oft Internet Explorer Navigation
CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favorites dialog box)
CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web
address)
CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box, the same as CTRL+L)
CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
CTRL+R (Update the current Web page)
CTRL+W (Close the current window)

How to change the default location of program installation

2009-05-25T05:12:00.000-07:00

You might want to change the location of your system default folder (C:\Program Files) from C drive to another system drives (D or E drive). By default software setup will attempt to install program in C:\Program Files directory. It is good practice to make the backup of the installed programs, if you installed all your programs in other than C drive. If you have little knowledge about editing windows registry then you can configure your computer for this purpose.

Follow the given steps to configure windows registry:

First click on Start button then type Regedit in Run option.

Here locate the location to:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Here in right side panel, double click on ProgramFileDir and here its default value is

C:\Program Files.

Now modify the value to any other drive (for example D:\Program Files).

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Digital Bangladesh & Digital Dream

2009-05-24T10:18:00.001-07:00

For a Successful Bangladesh Pleas Work Together For a New Digital Bangladesh. We Wish Our all Dream will be Success if we Work Together.

Bangladesh AL makes a dream with the target of achieving a digital Bangladesh. On election days, AL, one of the major political parties, first declared vision 2021 with the aim to develop Bangladesh into a digital country by that the next decade. A country goes digital means it will be an e-state means all its activities of governance, commerce, education, agriculture all sector will be powered by computer network with internet.

It is easy to speak such a dream, but are we committed to achieve this dream? One of the reasons why our country didn't become digital by this time is because of lack of commitment on the part of our political leaders. It's a great way for us. If we work together, we will success our dreams. A big population is a big problem for us to make a digital Bangladesh. If we able to reach our big population in the digital world and try to everybody access all digital program with together. Its will be possible. A first step for Digital Bangladesh would be to spread the ICT education throughout the country.

Every primary and secondary student should have access to the computer and computer based education. Mid level education & short term training should be readily available throughout the country and higher level education on computer sciences should be qualitative. All teachers must be expert on ICT education and they need to make the dream how to place his student in the global market. All students try to develop his carrier for the global job market. Internet facilities should be made available to the remotest corner of the country and at a cheaper rate. There are countries where the use of internet is free. The speed of the internet must maximum to get the benefit of the time. A tremendous effort should have to be made and continued in application of the computer and internet by both private and public offices, institutions & organizations in the coming years.

Market is to be broadened in and outside the country in software, outsourcing and programming . Hardware plant is also needed to be established in our country. For this necessary contact with the international investment will be required to be made. This Government has tried to give the best support to the establishment of ICT in our country. We hope that the next governments would keep that trend continued. An ordinary citizen

Can Developing Countries Afford Wireless Broadband Technologies to Deliver Healthcare?

2009-05-24T10:14:00.001-07:00

While working recently on a paper on WiMAX healthcare applications in developing countries, one of the key questions faced was whether wireless and wireless broadband in particular can truly help rural and underserved communities - where people may subsist on less than a dollar a day, houses have no running water or electricity, and kids only have access to the most basic education.

Without doubt, wireless broadband, and more specifically, WiMAX can improve the quality of health care and access to services, and provide better training for the medical workers - but is this the best way to use the scarce resources available to hospitals, non-profit organizations or health care agencies? Wouldn't they be better off providing the basics of health care-vaccinations, drugs, more doctors in remote or poor areas? Would wireless broadband deliver high levels of care in the handful of villages selected for a trial, but be too expensive to benefit entire regions or countries?

Simply put, we do not know the answer to this question yet and, in most likelihood, different communities will develop a wide range of approaches, and some will be more successful than others. Right now, we are in the very initial phase of exploring the opportunities that wireless broadband brings and there is hardly any historical data to measure the impact of wireless broadband on health care in emerging markets.

However, the indications we have so far are extremely encouraging and fascinating. In developed countries we still think of wireless broadband as a luxury service mostly limited to the business users that afford a $60/month contract. In emerging countries, wireless broadband can address basic community needs and not just health care: education, ability to develop small businesses, access to government services can equally benefit-by making scarce resources available more widely and more efficiently. This is because wireless technologies are often the first communication technologies to reach the communities that need most assistance. In these communities, wireline connectivity is often not available, and people are often quite isolated as they do not own cars or live in villages only reachable by foot.

Emerging countries have shown to be extremely quick at adopting wireless technologies. Even in the most remote villages, cell phones are widely used, as they offer the only way to keep in touch with friends, relative or customers. In health care, SMS messaging to remind people to take their daily pills or to encourage them to get HIV testing have proven to deliver substantial results with little cost.

Wireless broadband provides the next step. For sure, developing countries have limited funding available for health care. But what they crucially lack are resources - there are few doctors and most of them do not want to work in remote or poor areas. They often do not even speak the same language as many of the people in these communities. To get care, people living in rural or poor areas have to spend huge amounts of time to travel to the hospital and wait to be seen by a doctor-and, because of this, they often postpone the trip to the hospital until it becomes much more expensive and difficult to treat the condition.

According to Dr. Manuel Dayrit, Director of the Department of Human Resources for Health at the World Health Organization, "even if you have the medicine, the vaccines, and the bed nets, you need the health workers to deliver the service. With the experience of the last few years, where you have had huge global funds move into an activity to provide resources. ...we've found that the bottleneck is really the delivery."

This is exactly where wireless broadband and WiMAX fit and where cellular technologies, powerful as they are for narrowband applications, are not sufficient. The ability to establish a data connection between visiting nurses in remote or underserved areas and doctors in urban hospitals brings affordable health care exactly where and when it is needed. A broadband connection allows the nurse, which has often very limited training, to get immediate answers from attending doctors and to avoid costly referrals. Basic tests can be done remotely and the data can be analyzed in real-time at the hospital. VoIP and video sessions allow doctors to interact directly with the patient and the nurse. Remote learning courses can be made available on-line to give additional training to nurses without taking them away from the community where they operate.

Wireless broadband applications encourage a shift from the still dominant urgent-care treatment that is often administered too late, to more effective preventive and early-stage treatment that reduces both the medical and social costs of health care.

These wireless broadband applications play are uniquely positioned to bring health care closer to the patient, where the need is strongest and the resources more scarce. This new approach has been recently championed by the World Health Organization to address the very basic needs that current health care systems struggle to meet. It is an approach that certainly requires some initial funding, but that also promises to deliver a more cost-effective, equitable and effective framework to provide primary health care services in emerging countries.

Countries with a critical shortage of health care workers. Source: World Health Organization. The World Health Report 2006

Bringing health care closer to the patient:
what are the gains?

Improved health levels among the population, translating into longer life expectancy, improved quality of life, and increased work productivity.

Reduction in waste of resources due to unnecessary referrals and hospitalization or to late intervention, in turn reducing funding needs.

Quicker and more effective response to epidemic outbreaks.

Increased trust in and reliance on the health care network by underserved communities, thanks to closer ties to health workers. According to a 2008 report by the World Health Organization, "Access to the same team of health-care providers over time fosters the development of a relationship of trust between the individual and their health-care provider."

More extensive access to preventive care for patients who do not require hospitalization or specialist visits.

Higher satisfaction on the part of mobile and remote health care workers who are empowered by increased responsibility and accountability, a closer integration into the medical community, more extensive learning opportunities, and the increased efficiency and visibility of their work.

Display More Than 5 Recent Posts in Blogger Sidebar

2009-05-23T06:43:00.001-07:00

Display More Than 5 Recent Posts in Blogger Sidebar

One method of helping new readers read more content from your blog is to add a "recent posts" widget to the sidebar. Blogger users can do this easily by adding a "feed widget" using the default feed URL (eg: http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). However, this will only return the 5 most recent posts at most; Blogger doesn't (yet) support the ability to display a greater number of entries.

Many Blogger users would prefer to display more than 5 recent posts in their sidebar, and indeed there have been requests for an article explaining how to do this on Blogging Tips and my own Blogger site.

So in this post I'll outline three different methods you could use to display more than 5 recent posts in your Blogger sidebar, so you can choose the method which seems most suitable for you.

Use Feedburner's BuzzBoost

If you burn your blog feeds through Feedburner, you can easily republish entries from your blog feed as HTML which can be displayed in a widget in your sidebar, like this:

Using BuzzBoost, you can choose to add any number of recent posts to your widget, include the favicon of your blog, a snippet of each post (a post summary), and also alter the date format.

To use BuzzBoost to add a recent posts widget to your Blogger sidebar, you must already use Feedburner to syndicate your Blogger feeds (here are four great reasons why Blogger users should do this). Then log into your Feedburner dashboard and select the blog for which you would like to activate BuzzBoost.

On this page, click on the "Publicize" tab which is near the top of the page, then look in the left sidebar to find the BuzzBoost link:

On the BuzzBoost page, you will see the many options you can use to configure your recent posts widget. These options are pretty self-explanatory, but the most important thing for you to do is activate your BuzzBoost widget by clicking on the appropriate button at the bottom of the page.

Once you have activated (or saved) the settings for your widget, you will notice a new code box appears which contains the JavaScript code used to display your recent posts; to use this, simply copy the code and paste this into an HTML/JavaScript widget in your Blogger layout page.

You could also choose to add this as a new widget in Blogger, which generates a simple widget installer and adds this automatically to your Blogger layout. This is by far the simplest method: simply choose Blogger from the options in the drop-down menu, and follow the prompts to add this to your layout.

In either case, the widget will display your recent posts widget to match any other list elements in your sidebar.

For example, if you use a dark background and pale text, your BuzzBoost widget will be styled accordingly.

Use Beautiful Beta's Recent Posts Widget

Hans of Beautiful Beta has developed "recent posts" widget which is easy to both configure and set-up.

Using this method, you can add a recent posts widget which features a short summary of your post, and can choose how many entries you would like to display.

To install the Beautiful Beta recent posts widget, head over to the widget installation page and click on the "Add Recent Posts" button.

A pop-up page will appear which includes all of the options you can choose to configure for your widget.

Alter the widget title and add your blog URL in the appropriate boxes. Then choose of you would prefer to display a summary of your posts (if so, the length in characters of the summary you wish to display).

Once you have finished setting your options, click on the "Customize" button (which saves your settings) then the "Add to my blog" button will be highlighted, which takes you to the widget installation page for your Blogger blog.

From here it's simply a matter of following the prompts, which will install this widget to your Blogger sidebar in literally seconds!

Make a Widgetbox Blidget

While "Blidget" may seem a rather silly name for a blog feature, this is actually a very useful tool!

A "Blidget" is similar to the above two methods as it republishes your Blogger feed as HTML and allows you to display recent entries within a sidebar widget, like this:

Of course, not many of you will choose to use a funky leopard-print background for your Blidget, but you can choose to add your blog's logo, customize the appearance and also include a summary of you choose…

To create your free Blidget, simply visit the Blidget creation page over at Widgetbox and enter your blog's URL (this doesn't need to be your feed URL). Then press "continue".

On the following page, Widgetbox will have parsed your blog page to discover the feed URL automatically. Then you can choose how you would like your widget to display, including the size, number of posts, and even whether to display the first image of each post inside the entry (which is craftily scaled to fit the width of your Blidget).

Once all the settings are to your preference, click on the Continue link near the bottom of the page. If you are already a member of Widgetbox, you will be prompted for your username and password. If you are not a member, here you can sign up for a free account there and then.

Once you're signed in, you will be able to click on the "Get Widget" link in the left sidebar. This will open up a pop-up page which contains JavaScript code you could add to an HTML/JavaScript widget in your Blogger layout.

Even simpler, you could simply click on the Blogger button on this page, which will take you through Blogger's simple widget installation system to add your Blidget automatically to your sidebar:

Using any of these three different methods you can add more than 5 recent posts to your Blogger sidebar, which may encourage new readers to read other articles you have written.

There are many other methods you could use to add a list of recent posts to your Blogger sidebar, but for me these are the most useful three. Do you use a different service to display a list of your most recent posts? If so, please let us know about this by leaving your comments below.

Speed up menu display

2009-05-20T10:34:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Windows XP uses many visual effects to provide a rich, friendly interface. One of these settings allows menus to fade into view when you open them. This visual effect is so smooth that you may never have noticed it; however, the effect does cause menus to take a little longer to appear.

On a fast computer, this shouldn't be an issue. But on a computer that isn't responding as quickly as you'd like, you can make menus display faster.

To speed up menu display

1.	Click Start. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2.	Click the Advanced tab. In the Performance area, click Settings.
3.	On the Visual Effects tab in the Performance Options dialog box, clear the Fade or slide menus into view check box.
4.	Click OK.
5.	In the System Properties dialog box, click OK.

Now when you click a menu, it will appear almost instantly.

"Missing Link" Human Skull Found in Africa, Scientists Say

2009-05-20T05:00:00.001-07:00

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

March 27, 2006

Scientists working in Africa have discovered a Stone Age skull that could be a link between the extinct Homo erectus species and modern humans.

The face and cranium of the fossil have features found in both early and modern human species. The skull is believed to be between 250,000 and 500,000 years old.

"[This skull] shows the continuity of the evolutionary record, so in that sense it is a link [between Homo erectus and modern humans]," said Scott Simpson, a paleontologist from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

Rare Find

Researchers discovered the skull five weeks ago at Gawis in Ethiopia's northeastern Afar region (map of Ethiopia). The area is rich in fossil and archaeological deposits ranging from 10,000 years to 5.6 million years in age.

An international group known as the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project began field research in the area in 1999.

Asahmed Humet, a local Afar tribesman working with project, found the early-human cranium in a small gully at the base of a steep slope of sediments.

The skull was missing a lower jaw but had a nearly intact cranium. Most early human fossils are found in many small pieces.

The scientists believe the skull comes from the middle Pleistocene era, about 600,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Homo erectus is thought to be an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens. H. erectus first appeared in Africa and lived from about 1.9 to 0.8 million years ago. (See photos and more from a recent H. erectus discovery in the republic of Georgia.)

The face and cranium of the fossil have characteristics similar to those of an early-human species, such as Homo erectus. But there is anatomical evidence that the fossil is part of modern humans' ancestry. Simpson says, for example, that the shape of the skull's dome, or vault, is similar to that of modern humans.

"If you look at Homo erectus, their vaults tend to be low, long, and angular," Simpson said. "This vault is very spherical, like modern humans'."

Iraq deal to revive gas pipeline

2009-05-17T10:43:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Business | Iraq deal to revive gas pipeline

Iraq deal to revive gas pipeline

Greater stability has helped Iraq to access its oil and gas reserves

A consortium of oil companies plans to revive a project to supply Europe with gas from northern Iraq.

Austria's OMV and Hungary's MOL have teamed up with two companies from the United Arab Emirates to extract the gas from fields in Iraq's Kurdish region.

They anticipate that supplies will be sufficient to feed the long-planned Nabucco pipeline, which proposes pumping gas to Austria via Turkey.

The pipeline would reduce Europe's dependency on gas from Russia.

The UAE's Crescent Petroleum and affiliate Dana Gas believe there is enough gas in the Khor Mor and Chemchemal gas fields they operate to supply the Nabucco pipeline after meeting immediate demand in northern Iraq and Turkey.

Competition

But Russia's Gazprom on Friday said it had signed agreements with a number of Balkan and southern European countries on the construction of a gas pipeline, South Stream, that will deliver gas to Central Europe and Italy via the Balkans.

See Nabucco and South Stream pipeline routes

The pipeline is in competition with Nabucco, backed by the European Union.

The proposed Nabucco route goes via Erzurum in Turkey and on through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary to Austria. Discussions first began on the project in 2002.

OMV said production could reach a level of 3bn cubic feet per day by 2015.

"These volumes will initially satisfy the requirements of local industry with substantial quantities available for export to destinations primarily Turkey and Europe via the planned Nabucco pipeline," it said.

Iraq has the world's tenth-largest gas reserves, and the world's third largest supply of crude oil.

OMV said it will pay $350m for a 10% stake in the regional operating unit handling of the project. MOL will also take a 10% stake in the company.

Spotify spells out expansion plan

2009-05-17T10:41:00.003-07:00

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Spotify spells out expansion plan

Spotify spells out expansion plan

By Ian Youngs
Music reporter, BBC News

Spotify has gained more than a million UK users since it launched in October

Online music service Spotify is hoping to launch a mobile version and expand to the US by the end of the year.

The streaming service, which lets fans listen to more than three million tracks legally and for free, has gained more than a million users in the UK.

Speaking about the plan to go mobile, Spotify founder Daniel Ek said: "We want to be everywhere. We won't only do one device."

But fans would have to pay to put Spotify in their pockets, he revealed.

The web-based service is currently free to users who accept adverts between their songs. A subscription option, which costs £9.99 a month in the UK, banishes the ads.

Speaking at The Great Escape music conference in Brighton, Mr Ek said the mobile offering would only be available to subscribers.

My hope and ambition is that we'll see something at the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year, in the US

Daniel Ek

"Portability is an important aspect, [as is] interoperability with other devices," he said.

"That's definitely something we think is a premium product that people are willing to pay for - being able to bring the music with you or being able to have it working on your stereo."

The company is working on an iPhone application, but also wants to make the service available on other handsets, he said.

"I definitely hope that it will be before the end of this year that we'll do something which allows people to bring the music with them."

As well as the UK and Sweden, where Spotify was created, the current service is also available in Norway, Finland, France and Spain.

It has become a huge hit with music lovers in the UK since launching in October, but the recession and resulting advertising downturn have slowed its global expansion plans, Mr Ek said.

Sound quality

But he added: "My hope and ambition is that we'll see something at the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year, in the US."

The 25-year-old entrepreneur launched the company in an attempt to provide a legal alternative to unlicensed file-sharing services, where artists, record labels and music publishers do not receive royalties.

He has not revealed how many users have paid to subscribe. But more extras will be added to tempt people to sign up for the monthly fee, he said.

Those will include better sound quality, the ability to listen to new releases before they hit shops, more social networking features, exclusive tracks and behind-the-scenes material from big-name artists.

In other money-spinning schemes, T-shirts, concert tickets and vinyl will be sold to fans as they are listening to their favourite bands.

Last.fm deal

The company is also expected to announce a deal with fellow streaming site Last.fm to provide song recommendations, making it easier for fans to find acts they like.

"We definitely want to have music recommendation," Mr Ek said. "I'd love to work with someone like Last.fm and I think in a couple of days you'll see some sort of announcement. Something will happen."

But video streams are unlikely to appear in the near future, Mr Ek said.

"It's something that we've considered but we're focusing right now on the audio side, and we're focusing on generating revenues.

"At the moment there are other features that are higher up in the priority list, but it's definitely not something that we've excluded."

EU proposal could 'stifle' games

2009-05-17T10:41:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | EU proposal could 'stifle' games

EU proposal could 'stifle' games

Tiga say the EU proposal could make developers 'overly cautious'

The future of games development has been called into question after the EU Commission suggested developers provide a two year guarantee.

Commissioners Viviane Reding and Meglena Kuneva want to expand the EU Sales and Guarantees Directive.

Dr Richard Wilson, head of the video games developers' association Tiga, said a balance between consumers and developers was needed.

"They have to be careful not to stifle new ideas," he told the BBC.

"Consumers need good quality products - that is only reasonable - but if the legislation is too heavy-handed it could make publishers and developers very cautious.

At present, licensed software is exempt from EU legislation that forces firms to offer "a minimum 2-year guarantee on tangible movable consumer goods".

"Games takes years to develop and software teams often have to predict what new technology will be in place when the game is actually finished," said Dr Wilson.

"If there is an onus on developers to have software that is 'near perfect' then it could stifle new ideas as people could end up just playing it safe," he said.

Meglena Kuneva is the European commissioner for consumer protection

Change

Helen Kearns, spokesperson for Meglena Kuneva, said the commissioners wanted to kick start a dialogue with the software industry.

"The current status quo, where licensed products are exempt from EU law, is unsatisfactory," she said.

At present, retailers are not obliged to give a refund on a video game that has a bug or glitch that prevents a user completing a game. If the proposals become law, this could change as users would have the right "to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions".

Ms Kearns accepted that this assumes honesty on the part of users and that the system could be abused by people playing the game for a few weeks and then taking it back with a fraudulent fault.

"On the one hand there is the risk of abuse, but on the other it's not a good enough reason to say basic consumer protection should not apply."

Not good

The Business Software Alliance, which represents many software firms, including Apple and Microsoft, said the proposals - in their current form - would not work.

In a written statement for the BBC, the BSA's director of public policy - Francisco Mingorance, said:

"Digital content is not a tangible good and should not be subject to the same liability rules as toasters. It is contractually licensed to consumers and not sold.

"These contracts are governed by civil law that provide consumers with multitude of remedies for breach of contract. We are not aware of any shortcomings of the legal frameworks with respect to digital content."

The proposals would also see an end to regional license agreements for software sold within the EU and "end the fragmentation of laws on 'private copying'".

Hackers 'destroy' flight sim site

2009-05-17T10:40:00.005-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Hackers 'destroy' flight sim site

Hackers 'destroy' flight sim site

By Daniel Emery
Technology reporter, BBC News

Avsim was one of the largest sites serving the flight sim community

Flight simulator site Avsim has been "destroyed" by malicious hackers.

The site, which launched in 1996, covered all aspects of flight simulation, although its main focus was on Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

The attack took down the site's two servers and the owners had not established an external backup system.

The site's founder, Tom Allensworth, said that the site would be down for the foreseeable future and was unsure if would ever go back up.

"The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from," Mr Allensworth said in a statement.

"AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. "

Backlash

The attack has shocked the flight sim community, with hundreds of blogs, posts and tweets. One user on the simflight.com website said that "there's a special place in hell for hackers who pull stunts like this".

Speaking to the BBC, Derek Davis, editor of PC Pilot magazine, said: "It looks like 13 years of hard work on Tom's part could have been wiped out.

"Avsim is an important site, because it services the whole community as a source of community developed terrains, skins, and mods - its contribution has been immeasurable," he said.

Mr Allensworth has set up a temporary forum for Avsim users while the future of the site is decided.

On it, he explained the site's backing-up process, although he did not explain why the firm had no external media storage.

"Some have asked whether or not we had back-ups. Yes, we dutifully backed up our servers every day. Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers.

"The hacker took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back-up to remedy the situation."

Mr Davis said he thought the site still had a future: "I'm sure Avsim will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and will be bigger and better than before."

Street View under fire in Japan

2009-05-17T10:40:00.003-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Street View under fire in Japan

Street View under fire in Japan

Residents say the Street View images let users see more than they should.

Google's Street View service suffered a second blow this week after numerous complaints in Japan forced the firm to start reshooting all the photos.

Cameras attached to the Street View car were "too high" for Japanese buildings, allowing them to see over walls into private areas.

Google said it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40cm (16in).

On 12 May, Greece's data protection agency ordered Google to stop filming because of privacy concerns.

In a statement, Google said it would make "locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience".

"We have lowered the height of the camera due to the unique characteristics of many Japanese roads; they tend to be narrow, without pavements and driveways, and houses are built close to the street," the statement said.

"We think the new camera height allows us to get a high-quality image of the street while respecting the privacy of homeowners."

The Street View service covers 12 cities in Japan, including Tokyo and Osaka.

Timeline

First launched in the US two years ago, Street View now covers nine countries including the United Kingdom, and Google wants to expand the service to cover all of Europe.

Users zoom in to a location in Google Maps, and then drag the "Pegman" icon above the zoom bar on to a given street.

A picture of that street appears, which users can control to get a 360-degree view of the area or to progress on street level, throughout the city.

Google says the service shows only imagery already visible from public thoroughfares.

However, it has come in for criticism from some quarters, being accused of an invasion of privacy.

Earlier this week, Greece's data protection agency banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending "additional information" from the firm.

Authorities want to know how long the images will be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.

In the UK, residents near Milton Keynes blocked the driver of a Google Street View car in April when he started taking photographs of their homes saying the service was "facilitating crime".

The Pentagon has also banned Google from filming near or inside its military bases, saying it posed a "potential threat" to security.

Pirated pop keeps stars popular

2009-05-17T10:40:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pirated pop keeps stars popular

Pirated pop keeps stars popular

The most pirated acts are likely to be the most popular, finds the study

File-sharing sites help make popular acts more popular, finds a study.

The research, by industry body PRS for Music, showed the most pirated pop songs tend to be those at the top of the music charts.

There was little evidence that file-sharing sites helped unsigned and new bands find an audience, it found.

It suggests file-sharing sites are becoming an alternative broadcast network comparable to radio stations as a way of hearing music.

Long tail

The study, carried out by Will Page, chief economist at the PRS, and Eric Garland, head of media tracking firm Big Champagne, looked at patterns of music usage among file-sharers.

It aimed to see if that pattern of use had any lessons for the way music is marketed and sold.

Many have claimed that the unprecedented amount of choice on the web would give rise to new models of music distribution.

This "Long Tail" argument, say the authors, claims: "If you offer people more choice, and help them make that choice, they will take that choice."

Action against pirate sites has not stopped swappers, said the study.

If true, this could mean that music makers should focus attention away from a few popular acts towards the mass of bands with smaller, dedicated followings.

However, found the pair, usage on file-sharing sites closely mirrors that on legitimate music sites. There was no evidence of the Long Tail operating.

The authors wrote: "Much of the volume (sales or swaps) is concentrated amongst a small proportion of the available tracks."

The reason for this, claim the authors, is that there is too much choice on file-sharing sites.

The breadth of music available means that people do not have time or do not want to search through it all or listen to it all for the tracks that they might like.

Instead their searches are constrained by what they see in the media, and what their friends are listening to.

They said: "After taking into account some geographic differences, the top of the many music charts, from licensed and unlicensed venues, are markedly similar."

They added that BigChampagne had never seen a big hit on the pirate networks that was not also a top seller in the licensed world.

Mr Page and Mr Garland suggest that file-sharing sites are reinforcing divisions in the music world and only making the popular more popular.

Despite this, the report said, the fact that music was free on file-sharing networks meant people did occasionally listen to bands they had never heard of before.

By contrast, on sites where people have to pay to listen they only download the tracks they know they want.

"If the sellers sell it, it might never be bought; but if the swappers offer it, at least one person will likely take it," said the study.

Given this, said the authors, it might be worth music companies regarding file-sharing sites as comparable to radio and TV as a broadcast network.

Craigslist ditches erotic adverts

2009-05-17T10:39:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Craigslist ditches erotic adverts

Craigslist ditches erotic adverts

Craigslist recently toppled MySpace as the most visited site

The US classified ads website Craigslist says it will remove its erotic services category following claims it promotes prostitution.

Law enforcement officials have said prostitutes and clients use the site for illegal sexual encounters.

In place will be a new adult services section that will be closely monitored.

"We are optimistic that the new balance struck will be an acceptable compromise," Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster said.

'Sued'

In recent months the spotlight has been turned on the San Francisco company, following a series of high-profile cases.

One that gained huge national attention involved Phillip Markoff, 23, who has been charged with killing a young woman who offered her services as a masseuse on Craigslist.

Julissa Brisman, 26, was found shot dead in a hotel room in Boston last month.

The case was widely covered in the media, with Mr Markoff being dubbed the Craigslist Killer.

Tom Dart said he will still keep a close eye on the site

Earlier in the year, the site attracted the attention of a number of law enforcement officers.

One of the most vocal critics of the erotic services adverts was an Illinois sheriff who sued the site in a federal court.

Sheriff Thomas Dart said Craigslist was failing to block offers to trade sex for money. He called the site "the single largest source of prostitution in the nation".

He said this latest move by the site was "a major step in the right direction".

Last week South Carolina's attorney general Henry McMaster threatened the management of Craigslist with prosecution if it did not remove the local erotic services posting within 10 days.

Last November Craigslist announced a deal with 40 state attorney generals that said it would charge for erotic services ads and require advertisers to use a credit card for payment.

This was seen as a way for authorities to track them down.

'Internet brothel'

Existing adverts in the erotic services section will remain for the next seven days.

The new adult services category has now opened for postings by "legal adult service providers".

The site is best known for selling bikes and finding places to rent

In a blog post, Craigslist said each post would be manually reviewed before appearing on the site to ensure compliance with the company's guidelines and terms of use.

Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specialises in freedom of speech and civil liberties law, said Craigslist acted voluntarily and was not legally obliged to regulate content on the site. He said: "Federal law states that no website operator can be held responsible for content provided by third parties."

Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan, who had called the section "nothing more than an internet brothel", said authorities would monitor these new ads.

"I'm encouraged Craigslist has agreed to fundamentally change how they operate and monitor their site," said Ms Madigan in a statement.

Relatively safe

Craigslist, which donated all of the profits from "erotic services" ads to charity, has insisted all along that the site is relatively safe.

"Contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we've seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of Craigslist classified is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole," said Mr Buckmaster.

The website's about-turn was hailed as a victory for common sense by Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal who headed up a multi-state attorney general task force on the matter.

Fans of the site reacted angrily to the announcement and said regulation went against the ethos of Craigslist.

Blumenthal said: "Craigslist is heeding our clear call for conscience and common sense, sending a strong signal that Internet sites must police themselves to protect others."

E-mail list

Craigslist was started in 1995 as a hobby by founder Craig Newmark, who put together an e-mail list of events happening in San Francisco.

A skeleton staff of 28 employees works out of a town house in San Francisco and Buckmaster has long said his priority is making users' lives easier, not making money.

Forty million adverts are posted on Craigslist each month.

While some users praised Craigslist's decision as responsible, others were appalled. Site user Martin Genev said: "This is just the beginning. The danger is that it gets so regulated that people don't find it useful anymore."

BT to shed a further 15,000 jobs

2009-05-17T10:38:00.002-07:00

BBC NEWS | Business | BT to shed a further 15,000 jobs

BT to shed a further 15,000 jobs

BT chief executive Ian Livingston: 'We have to reduce costs'

BT has said it will cut about 15,000 jobs this year, mostly in the UK, and has reported an annual loss of £134m.

The firm also said it had cut 15,000 jobs in the past year, which was 5,000 more than had been expected.

BT's woes centre on its global services unit, which handles the network systems of large firms. BT said it had taken a near £1.6bn charge at this unit.

BT said it would make £525m of pension contributions in each of the next three years to help cut the scheme's deficit.

BT's self-inflicted wounds aren't life threatening

Robert Peston, BBC business editor

Read Robert Peston's blog

It also cut its dividend sharply from 15.8 pence to 6.5p.

"Three out of four of BT's lines of business have performed well in spite of fierce competition and the global economic downturn," said BT chief executive Ian Livingston.

"However this achievement has been overshadowed by the unacceptable performance of BT Global Services and the resulting charges we have taken."

BBC business editor Robert Peston said the main problem at BT's global services division - whose customers include Microsoft, Reuters and the NHS - "is that costs have spiralled out of control".

Telecoms analyst Eddie Murphy of Priory Consulting said the unit was also being hit by multinationals seeking cheaper IT providers at a time of global recession.

Union talks

The latest 15,000 job cuts represent about 10% of the firm's current workforce. The previous cuts have reduced BT's total number of employees to about 147,000.

This has been a challenging year in which BT has had to tackle some significant issues

BT chairman Sir Mike Rake

BT said it hoped to remove the positions through natural wastage and voluntary redundancies, and added that it did not have plans for compulsory lay-offs.

"Our aim is to work closely with the unions to reduce BT's total labour cost, of both direct and indirect staff, as this is critical to the success of the company going forward," said a BT spokesman.

Andy Kerr, deputy general secretary at the Communication Workers' Union, told the BBC he hoped there would not be any compulsory redundancies.

"We have worked closely with the company over the last year to make sure there were no compulsory redundancies in the company," Mr Kerr told the BBC.

"We did it last year and the commitments have worked so far, as there's certainly no plans for compulsory redundancies for this year coming."

Pension worry

Robert Peston said the job cuts would be very bad news for BT's UK workforce.

BT GLOBAL SERVICES

Provides network solutions to multinational firms and large public sector bodies

Recent high profile contracts include overhaul of the NHS's computer systems in London

Currently employs 37,000 people across 53 countries

BT has been forced to write down almost £1.6bn from the value of its contracts

Made an annual loss of £2bn for the year to 31 March 2009

"Ian Livingston said the firm wants to minimise the number of BT permanent staff who would be going, but jobs are jobs," he said.

Looking head, our correspondent said BT's pension deficit was a major concern, despite BT's plans to pay in £525m in each of the next three years.

BT revealed that under international accounting standards, its final salary pension scheme moved sharply from surplus to deficit in the past year.

A year ago, at the end of March 2008, the surplus stood at £2.9bn, but a year on this had changed to a deficit of £3.8bn.

BT said this was due to an £8bn reduction in the value of the scheme's assets.

The company also revealed that the pensions regulator has taken the unusual step of intervening in the scheme's three-yearly valuation currently being undertaken by the pension fund's actuary.

BT said the regulator wanted to discuss "the underlying assumptions and basis of the valuation".

A spokesman for the pensions regulator said they were taking an interest in the BT scheme because of "its enormous size, it is the largest in the private sector".

He added: "We have a responsibility to ensure appropriate scheme funding arrangements are put in place for all pension funds we regulate."

To help plug the pension gap, BT reduced its final dividend to 1.1 pence to give a full-year dividend of 6.5 pence, which was 59% lower than last year.

Revenue growth

BT's overall group-wide revenues for the year to 31 March 2009 rose 3% to £21.4bn.

Annual revenues at its BT Retail unit, which provides phone lines and broadband to homes and smaller firms, fell very slightly to £8.47bn from £8.48bn a year earlier.

Revenues at its BT Wholesale unit, which runs its networks, declined 6% to £4.7bn.

"This has been a challenging year in which BT has had to tackle some significant issues," said BT chairman Sir Mike Rake.

Shares in the firm closed down 6 pence or 6.4% on Thursday.

Sony makes first loss in 14 years

2009-05-17T10:38:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | Business | Sony makes first loss in 14 years

Sony makes first loss in 14 years

Sony has seen weak demand for its products in the downturn

Electronics giant Sony has reported its first annual loss in 14 years, after being hit by a big drop in sales.

Sony reported a loss of 98.9bn yen ($1.04bn; £685m) for the year to the end of March, compared with a profit of 369.4bn yen the previous year.

The company blamed the global downturn and the strong yen for the loss. Worldwide sales were down 12.9%.

It had previously announced it would be cutting 8,000 of its 185,000 workforce and closing 10% of its factories.

However, the loss was not as bad as Sony had expected. It had forecast a loss of 150bn yen back in January.

Sony's shares closed down 6.8% at 2,400 yen ahead of the results.

Right now they have no 'Number One' products

Fujio Ando, Chibagin Asset Management

Several Japanese companies have said they have been hurt by the strong yen, which make exports more expensive.

On Tuesday, Hitachi announced an annual loss of 787.3bn yen - a record for a Japanese manufacturer.

'Gradual recovery'

Sony, which makes PlayStation games consoles and Vaio PCs, forecast a net loss for the current financial year of 120bn yen.

And it said it would carry on with its restructuring programme of closing plants and cutting jobs.

Analysts greeted Sony's results with cautious optimism.

"Their outlook gave me the impression that their business is heading for a gradual recovery," said Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management.

"But it would all depend on whether they would be able to start producing popular products, because right now they have no 'Number One' products."

Nintendo rivalry

Sales of the PS3 console rose from nine million units to 10 million

Sony has had to battle with the popularity of rival Nintendo's Wii console.

Sales in Sony's gaming division were down 18%, largely thanks to the falling popularity of its older PlayStation 2.

Sales of the PS2 console fell from 13.66m units the previous year to 7.91m, while sales of software for the PS2 decreased from 154m units to 83.5m.

The decline in PS2 sales outweighed a rise in sales of the newer and more powerful PS3.

In March, the PS3 outsold the Nintendo Wii in Japan for the first time in 16 months. However experts saw this as a temporary blip rather than a sign of the Wii's decline.

Earlier this month Nintendo said it made an annual profit of 279.1bn yen.

Management shake-up

Sony's president Ryoji Chubachi stepped down in April as part of a managerial reshuffle at the group.

Mr Chubachi had overseen Sony's electronics sector which is at the heart of the firm's woes.

Chairman and chief executive Howard Stringer took on the role of president.

Since then, Sony's shares have gained 43%.

Nobuo Kurahashi, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities called the move "a positive sign of how Sony is frantically moving forward toward change".

Mr Stringer, who was born in Wales but is a US citizen, is the first non-Japanese boss of Sony.

He has also promoted three relatively young executives to his managerial team under the reorganisation.