Google has finally unveiled Google+, the company's top secret social layer that turns all of the search engine into one giant social network. Google+, which begins rolling out a very limited field test on Tuesday, is the culmination of a year-long project led by Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of social. The project, which has been delayed several times, constitutes Google's answer to Facebook. The search giant's new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice. At its core, Google+ is a social network. The first thing users are introduced to is the Stream. It's much like the Facebook News Feed, allowing users to share photos, videos, links or their location with friends. Visit us at FastFind
A free service launched called PrivateSky lets Internet users shield email, Facebook updates, and other online exchanges from hackers or other unwanted snoops. The service from startup CertiVox comes as hackers appear to be rampaging through the Internet, cracking defenses at companies, attacking public websites, and tricking their way into email accounts to spy on contents. PrivateSky works with Internet Explorer (IE) browsers to provide encryption for whatever people type into message boxes and decodes it only for those they chose. Users highlight blog posts, Facebook updates, email messages or other text then indicate who should be allowed to read them. Missives are decrypted only for intended recipients. "It is literally one click encryption and decryption," said CertiVox founder and chief executive Brian Spector. Internet security firm Trend Micro warned this month that cyberattackers have attempted to infiltrate Web-based email services run by Microsoft and Yahoo! as well as Google. "There has been a variety of recent attacks on popular Webmail platforms," Trend Micro senior threat researcher Nart Villeneuve said in an online post. "In addition to Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail have also been targeted". Trend Micro released the news after Google said a cyber spying campaign originating in China had targeted Gmail accounts of US officials, military personnel, journalists, Chinese political activists, and officials in several Asian countries, mainly in South Korea. 
Google is retiring two influential projects: Google Health and PowerMeter. Neither project attracted enough users to make it worthwhile supporting them, the company said. Google Health, a free service that stores your personal health information, will end January 1, 2012. All its data available for download for a year following the shutdown. PowerMeter, another free tool that helps monitor your home energy usage, will end September 16, 2011. The company says it will attempt to make it simple for people to gather their data stored on these services and transition to other, similar services. Currently, users can grab their Google Health data as a PDF, HTML file, ZIP file or in one of several formats. Also, Google will soon allow users to "directly transfer your health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange." PowerMeter data will be available only as a CSV file for current PowerMeter users. "While they didn't scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it's traditionally been difficult," wrote Aaron Brown, Google senior project manager, in an officialblog post. "By helping people make more informed decisions through greater access to more information, we believe Google Health and PowerMeter have been trailblazers in their respective categories," Brown added. "Ultimately though, we want to satisfy the most pressing needs for the greatest number of people. In the case of these two products, our inability to scale has led us to focus our priorities elsewhere." 
Three leading incumbent mobile phone companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and BSNL - have all lost revenue market share in FY11, an analysis of the data submitted to sector regulator TRAI by all telcos has revealed. These telcos recorded over 1% decline in their revenue market share, with BSNL showing the maximum dip, capping a series of dismal results for the state-owned telco in the last four years that saw the erstwhile monopoly being reduced to a bit player in the fast-growing market. But other incumbents have made significant strides over the last fiscal. Idea Cellular, Vodafone Essar, Aircel and Tata Teleservices have all increased their revenue market share by 60 to 80 basis points during the last 12 months. These operators also enjoyed significant gains in their overall revenues in FY11 – Aircel's revenues from mobile services for the 12-month ended March 2011 surged 36% to Rs 5,620 crore, while Tata Teleservices recorded a 22.2% jump to Rs 10,006 crore. Idea Cellular's sales were up by 19.4% and Vodafone by 15%, as per data released by TRAI. Bharti Airtel, albeit on a higher base, recorded a 7.2% increase in mobile services revenues in FY11 to Rs 37,534 crore. But the market grew at a faster rate at 12%, as per the telecom regulator. "This is an indicator that mid-cap mobile companies are gaining at the expense of some of the larger players. But the big picture in the telecom sector has not changed. 
Nine months after the launch of New Twitter, the social media company is letting users know that the old version of Twitter will be completely eliminated "very, very soon." The old version of Twitter always asked users to switch to the new version of Twitter, but today the message was changed, and it's more urgent. "You will automatically be upgraded to New Twitter very, very soon," the top of Old Twitter now reads. The color of the top bar has also been changed to yellow as an alert to users. It is not sure what Twitter means by "very,very soon" — it could be days or even weeks until Twitter flips the switch. However, it's clear that Twitter is finally ready to eliminate the old version of Twitter altogether and bring everybody into the new design. Some users are complaining about the change, but it seems to be a very small minority of Twitters 100+ million users. Frankly, it is surprising that it took Twitter this long to make the switch permanent. The social media company launched the new version of Twitter more than nine months ago though. That's more than enough time to introduce users to a new interface. It could be a technical issue, though; the social website did revert to the old interface after a bad code commit forced the company to take down New Twitter for several hours. 
Social network Facebook will launch a new music service on its website in partnership with other online music services, a media report said. The launch is likely to be announced at a conference in August, Xinhua reported citing US media. Technology blog GigaOM said users will find a new tab called Music in the left-hand column on their pages, right where Facebook lists Photos, Friends, Deals etc., and clicking on the new tab will open a page called Music Dashboard . The dashboard will feature friends' recommended songs, top songs, top albums and a happening now " ticker that shows songs friends are playing. The blog said Facebook had reached a partnership with European music streaming service Spotify, which is gearing up to enter the US market. 
Just three months after the release of Firefox 4, Mozilla has pushed out Firefox 5 for the desktop and Android devices. That's a big change from the two years it took to move from Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 4. Firefox 5 is part of Mozilla's new rapid release development cycle. This cycle, which is more akin to what Google does with its Chrome browser, promises faster, more iterative updates. With any luck, Mozilla expects Firefox to hit version 7 by the end of the year. Visually, Firefox 5 looks identical to Firefox 4. Everything we said in our Firefox 4 review applies to this release. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Mozilla has added better support for web standards, fixed some bugs, made performance enhancements and added a few additional code touches. The big new features, courtesy of the release notes include: 
WordPress.org is forcing users to reset their passwords after several popular plugins were compromised by hackers. "Earlier today the WordPress team noticed suspicious commits to several popular plugins containing cleverly disguised backdoors," Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said in a blog post. "We determined the commits were not from the authors, rolled them back, pushed updates to the plugins, and shut down access to the plugin repository while we looked for anything else unsavory." Mullenweg says that AddThis, WPtouch and W3 Total Cache were the plugins that were compromised in the attacks. As a precautionary measure, WordPress.org is force-resetting all passwords on WordPress.org. This doesn't affect WordPress-powered blogs, but does affect WordPress.org forums, trac and code commits to plugins or themes. This isn't the first time WordPress has been targeted by hackers; WordPress.com (owned by Automattic and separate from WordPress.org) was the victim of a low-level root access breach in April. 
Google has added support for five Indic languages to its Google Translate service: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Adding support for these language was quite a challenge, as they are very different from English. Google describes some of the efforts that went into this project on its blog. Google also warns the translations for these new alpha languages will likely "be less fluent and include many more untranslated words." Still, this is a very important step for the service, which now supports 63 languages. Bengali is spoken by some 300 million people, and Tamil is the official language in parts of India as well as Sri Lanka and Singapore. The service has supported the most commonly spoken Indic language, Hindi, since 2008. The support for these new languages is now live on 
A handful of not very descriptive top-level domains, such as .com, .net, .org, as well as country-specific TLDs are what the web is currently made of, but this is about to change drastically. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the international authority over top-level domain names, has approved the expansion of generic TLDs which will allow companies and organizations to create domains for their brands (such as .coke) or simply create generic names (such as .car or .green). The option won't come cheap, though: The application fee alone is $185,000, and the annual fee is $25,000. Still, we can imagine large corporations spending millions on these very soon. If you're in the business of making phones, owning a ".phone" TLD sounds like a great idea — if you can afford outbidding other phone manufacturers. "ICANN has opened the Internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN. "No one can predict where this historic decision will take us." 
Telecom giants Bharti Airtel and Vodafone added 2.45 million subscribers each in May. The month saw a net addition of 9.53 million GSM subscribers in the country. The total number of GSM subscribers in Indiacrossed 590.2 million in May as against 580.67 million in April, according to the data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Bharti Airtel now has a market share of 28.31 percent, with 167 million subscribers. Vodafone follows with a 23.62 percent market share, at a total subscriber base of 139.43 million. Idea Cellular added 1.8 million subscribers in May to take its total subscriber base to 93.75 million. State-run telecom operators Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) added 471,243 and 20,604 customers respectively, taking their total user base to 87.62 million and 5.23 million. Uninor added 1.14 million users for a total of 25.39 million subscribers. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, there are 826.93 cellular subscribers in India, inclusive of CDMA subscribers. 
A new version of Google's JavaScript rendering engine and security fixes land in Google Chrome 14.0.794.0 dev today, available for 
Google is taking HTTPS issues quite seriously and has taken steps to address mixed secure site scripting conditions in Chrome 14 dev. Just after announcing that Gmail will always load in HTTPS, the company has ensured that mixed secure site scripting conditions are blocked by default in Chrome 14 dev. The first is a command line flag that actually landed in Chrome 13 dev called --no-running-insecure-content for advan 
The open-source home theater software developer said it signed onboard because of a "shared vision for open technology" that would move their Internet-focused experience. They hoped to reach an "even larger audience" on different products, platforms, and services, hinting it wouldn't necessarily be limited to Android.The takeover has angered some users since it has already pulled its store and most other links aside from the company forums, making it difficult to get a copy of SageTV itself. Google hasn't commented on what its intentions would be, although most already suspect the company is being bought to improve the struggling Google TV platform. A revival of the platform is already planned with an Android 3.1 upgrade that will give it heavily requested third-party app support along with new hardware from Samsung and Vizio. SageTV's experience in the field, particularly with DVR-like recording, may signal an intent to add recording to Google TV and work it into cable and satellite set-top boxes, not just stand-alone hardware that needs a separate set-top to integrate with regular TV. While game consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have often been considered the leaders in media hubs just through their ubiquity, the newer Apple TV has often trumped Google TV at stores with over a million sold in its first three months and likely many more since. Its $99 price and emphasis on readily available Internet content have made it a faster seller than the frequently $299-plus Google TV hardware. Logitech, one of the two core Google TV partners, has had to admit falling short of expectations and is counting on the reboot of the platform in the fall to get back in shape. 
Google's Chrome notebook officially went on sale as the web search giant hopes to lure users away from computers running full-fledged operating systems to lightweight machines that perform all their operations on the internet. The Chromebooks, which aim to compete with rivals like Apple's iPad, are made by Samsung and Acer and range in price from $350 to $500 in the US. Google said they also went on sale in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
After hitting the roadblock for over six months, the Indian government backed ambitious low-cost tablet project is finally set to take off. According to latest media reports, the low-cost $35 tablet codenamed 'Sakshat' is expected to launch by the end of this month. The country's answer to the $100 laptops developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be powered by Linux OS and is made by HCL Technologies. As for the specs, the 7-inch touchscreen tablet will come with inbuilt keyboard, video conferencing facility, multimedia content, Wi-Fi, USB port, 32GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. The tablet will support Open Office, SciLab and Internet browsing. According to reports, government has decided that 10,000 Sakshat tablets will be delivered to IIT Rajasthan in late June. Also, over the next four months more than 90,000 tablet units will be ready for launch and will come at a price of Rs 2,200. Reports claim that the government later plans to further subsidise the cost by 50 per cent which means the device may cost somewhere around Rs 1,100. 
All arrangements are in place for IT blue chip Oracle to open its operations in Kerala at the Technopark campus here a top official said. It would be a soft opening, Technopark official said. "To start with, they have taken space at our Park Centre which can seat around 100. Initially they are going to train their new staff here and by the end of the year they will be moving into their own new space at the Leela Infotech campus here. By that time, the seating strength will be above 500," Official told. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Oracle Corporation specializes in developing and marketing enterprise software products - particularly database management systems. Oracle worldwide currently employs more than 100,000 professionals. Oracle has taken up 36,000 square feet in the Leela Infotech campus situated in the Technopark campus for nine years, besides also reserving two floors. Leela Infotech has built up IT space at the Technopark and Kochi Infopark campus and has now become the single largest private infrastructure builder with over 1.7 million square feet of space. The Technopark campus has more than 200 companies that employ more than 30,000 professionals. 
LG Electronics, has recently introduced a series of new monitors which include a 3D Cinema Monitor, IPS monitor and what the company claims to be the world's slimmest LED monitor - E90. Mr. Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Product Head-IT, said, "LG always strives to provide the best to its consumers and we are positive that this new innovation from the house of LG will enhance the leadership in monitor category. The launch of new range of monitor series has set a benchmark and we expect good response within next quarter. With the launch of 3D monitor and world slimmest LG is all set to provide more fun and entertainment for its consumers than ever before. Presently we have 33.7% (Standalone Monitor market share and we target to achieve 42% by end of 2011." Built with FPR technology, the LG 3D Cinema Monitor offers brighter display and clearer images. The LG E90, at 7.2mm, comes with a Super Resolution feature that supposedly enhances dull images. The monitor is also built with LG Image Booster software that LG claims enhances the quality of steaming content from various video sites. 
Windows users are being warned about a new fake virus attack, which tricks users into installing malicious software, by posing as a Microsoft security update. Affected users will see an almost exact replica of the real Microsoft update page - the only difference being that the bogus page appears while surfing with third party browser, whereas the genuine Microsoft update site requires Internet Explorer. The report by Sophos, makes an observation that such fake anti-virus attacks have become more professional in approach and appearance which leads to people getting tricked easily. The use of the Microsoft update disguise takes advantage of the monthly 'Patch Tuesday' security updates that Microsoft regularly issues, and that users are encouraged to install to defend their computers. "Users need to be more vigilant than ever before as bogus security alerts pop-up in their browsers. Fake anti-virus attacks are big business for cybercriminals and they are investing time and effort into making them as convincing as possible," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos. "Malicious hackers are using smart social engineering tricks more and more often, and the risk is that users will be scared by a phoney warning into handing over money to fix problems that never existed in the first place." 
Nokia and Apple have just announced that they signed a patent license agreement, which settles all the patent litigation between the companies. Apple will make a one-time payment to Nokia and on-going royalties for the term of the agreement and both sides will withdraw their patent complaints. After several months of court battles and several lawsuits filled by the parties it all ended with a settlement, rather than a court order. Obviously it was Nokia that had the stronger arguments in their favor as Apple has agreed to make pay an undisclosed amount upfront as well as on-going royalties to the Finnish company. Unfortunately, given the confidential nature of the agreement we'll probably never learn the actual numbers. Here is the relevant part of the official Nokia press release: The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple and on-going royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia for the term of the agreement. The specific terms of the contract are confidential. "We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees," said Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Nokia. "This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market." 
Nokia has lost initiative in smartphone market to Apple's iPhone & Google Inc's Android devices. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd will become the world's largest smartphone maker this quarter, overtaking struggling Nokia which has lead the market since 1996, Nomura said on Monday. In the next quarter Nomura also sees also Apple Inc overtaking Nokia, pushing the Finnish company to No. 3 in the rankings. "Nokia looks set to relinquish its smartphone crown to Samsung and Apple," Nomura analysts said in a research note. "Further emphasising the shift in power to Asia is our forecast for HTC to almost match Nokia during 2012." Research firms Gartner and Canalys both said they saw Nokia - which created the smartphone market with its 1996 launch of the Communicator model - losing smartphone volume leadership later this year. "If Nokia's new phones are not well received in the third quarter and (with) the Galaxy S2 ramping up, Samsung might overtake them and become the smartphone leader in Q3," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. Nokia has lost initiative in the smartphone market to Apple's iPhone and Google Inc's Android devices, and at the lower end to more nimble Asian rivals. Overall, Nokia still makes more cellphones than Samsung due to its strong position in basic cellphones and its wider distribution network in emerging countries. The company is switching to Microsoft Corp's software from its own Symbian platform as part of an overhaul of its phone business set out in February by new Chief Executive Stephen Elop. 
Google has purchased Admeld, a yield optimization firm, in a move to simplify the process of buying display ads. The acquisition, which had been rumored last week, was confirmed on The Official Google Blog on Monday. In the post, Neal Mohan, Google's vice president of display advertising, explained the purchase as a way for Google to become more of a one-stop-shop for advertisers. "We often hear from major website publishers that ad management today is still mind-numbingly complicated and inefficient," Mohan wrote. "We've been investing in our publisher tools to try and improve this landscape and have made great progress, but we think we can do even better." Mohan goes on to explain that there are a few different ways for publishers to sell ads — directly, indirectly via an ad network, or via an ad exchange or technology platform. The three options lead some publishers to hire a yield optimization provider like Admeld. Such firms supply technology "to select ads from across these many indirect options, while providing personalized service and support." The goal of the Admeld buy, Mohan writes, is to make display advertising simpler and more efficient. Google's pending purchase comes as the display ad business is booming. The company, which just got into the business in 2009, has already surpassed Yahoo in market share, according to IDC. But, the Admeld purchase, which was reported to be in the $400 million range (Google did not confirm the figure), is likely to undergo heavy scrutiny from government regulators since Google is already dominant in search advertising. 
According to the Spanish police Twitter feed, the hackers were arrested in Spanish cities of Barcelona, Alicante and Almeria and a server hosted in Gijon was seized, as well. They also claim that they have dismantled the Anonymous hacker group in Spain who were responsible for attacking the PlayStation Store. The police said that these individuals have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks. They also claim that the group has the ability to coordinate DDoS attacks to collapse Web sites around the world and are considered a threat by NATO. According to a report, these arrests were made after investigation which began in October 2010. The Spanish police say that the arrests were made after going through millions of lines of chat logs to discover who was behind the group's activity. The report goes on to say that some of the attacks made by the group's members used a web based tool called Loic to fill the targeted sites with the required data. 
Facebook said it is dabbling with a Twitter-like feature that alerts members in real time to what their friends are up to on thesocial network. The feature, reportedly called "Happening Now," is being tried by a "fraction of a percent" of Facebook's more than 600 million members, according to the world's leading online social network. "We are currently testing a feature within News Feed that gives people the ability to see what their friends are commenting on and 'liking,' as these actions are being taken on Facebook," the California company said in an email reply to an AFP inquiry. "In the coming weeks, as we learn more from this test, we'll keep making improvements and may expand it to more people." The feature was seen by some as a potential challenge to global microblogging service Twitter, which lets people share what they are thinking, doing, or seeing instantly in messages of 140 or fewer characters. The new Facebook feature for now apparently alerts people to what friends are doing at the social network. 
According to the Hacker News, Anonymous posted an image on the website with their logo along with a statement to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that this time they speak to the government of India through the NIC homepage and sub-domains. The post also goes on to say that there was no use trying to secure the websites or the need to get in forensics to help resolve the situation. The last line seems like a direct taunt at the government with the image saying that they do not like to talk too much and that it was their world, so expect them.
According to their Twitter posts, the group hacked the website in retaliation to the attacks on Baba Ramdev and to awaken the government. They have also started a movement on Twitter account named OperationIndia and have also started a group on Facebook -http://www.facebook.com/OperationIndia. Anonymous have even issued a press release stating their cause and their intentions to fight against the removal of corruption in India in all its forms. They also stress on their support to Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev and other individuals who support the Jan Lokpal Bill. One of their requests included the request for severe punishment to be doled out to corrupt officials. Anonymous warned the government through their press release that until the above demands were met the 
Google Chrome 12 is now the stable release of Google's web browser, bringing several improvements in security, privacy and graphics capabilities. Chrome now checks downloaded files for malware, and Google claims it has designed the feature in such a way that it doesn't have to know which URLs you visited or which files you downloaded to be able to detect malicious files. You can now also fine tune the data that websites store on your computer, including Flash Player's Local Shared Objects (also known as Flash cookies), directly from Chrome. On the graphics front, Chrome 12 includes support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, which enables some nifty effects such as rotating and scaling videos. Try this 
India's largest mobile service provider Bharti Airtel has earned the dubious distinction of being the company facing the largest number of consumer complaints, according to latest government data. As per the latest data available with the National Consumer Helpline (NCH), as many as 2001 complaint calls were received against Bharti Airtel between March 2010 and February 2011. This was highest number of complaints against a single company, followed by state-owned telecom major BSNL (1986 complaints), PSU giant Indian Oil (1940), Anil Ambani-led telecom firm Reliance Communications (1792) and Nokia India (1616). Other companies in the top-ten list in terms of number of complaints included Samsung India (1560), SBI (912), BPCL (872), LIC (626) and ICICI Bank (569). NCH is a public service project of the Consumer Affairs Ministry run by Delhi University and has been functional since March 2005. It helps consumers in dealing with problems related to defective products, deficiency in services and unfair trade practices. There are as many as five telecom-related companies in the top ten. It also consists of five public sector firms. Out of total calls, the maximum complaints (21 per cent) were for defective products followed by telecom (17 per cent) and banking sector (7 per cent). "This list shows these companies have not been able to handle the issues being faced by their customers, which forces the customers to seek our guidance," NCH's Principal Investigator Sri Ram Khanna told PTI. It also sheds light on the management practices, especially customer redressal process of these companies, he added. This shows that these companies failed to solve the problems being faced by their customers, Khanna pointed out. NCH provides advice to consumers on a three tier model. In the firs 
If you're among the ones who're still stuck on loyally to your ageing browsers, you might have to do so at the cost of losing a handful of services that Google offers. The search giant has announced that those users who're still using the older, ageing versions of the popular browsers like IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 will not have access to a couple of Google's immensely popular features – Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, among others. Browser biggies have been issuing notices for a while asking users to switch over to the latest versions of their respective browsers which they keep rolling out at regular intervals. A recently report about Mozilla struggling to get 12 million of its users onto the latest versions of Firefox. Apparently, even though, Mozilla managed to post an attractive milestone with over 150 million downloads for its latest version of Firefox (Firefox 4), it was struggling in the truest sense of the term to get a good 12 million users to use its latest builds. Firefox, was quoted as being at the end of its tether with the unending patches that the ageing browsers need. Firefox isn't alone, other major browsers, too have this problem in common. The older browsers also lack compatibility with HTML 5 making it difficult for its engineers to incorporate any modern day changes, thus making the need to shift over to the newer versions all the more urgent. The cutting off of services by Google will take effect from August 1, this year; and StatCounter, the web stats provider states that this strong emotion by Google would have the much needed effect on over 17 per cent of the users. Meanwhile, Mozilla's campaign to initiate the migration from the older versions seems to have worked wonders for the browser. The numbers of users using the older versions 
The United Nations has declared Internet access a human right, and disconnecting people from it is against international law. The recent UN report explores the issues of Internet access in great detail, both on the infrastructural level and as a matter of access to content. "There should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in few, exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law," the report says. It recognizes that there are certain circumstances in which restricting the information flow on the Internet may be legitimate, such as cyber attacks. It also points out that states often misuse their power with this regard. "In many instances, states restrict, control, manipulate and censor content disseminated via the Internet without any legal basis, or on the basis of broad and ambiguous laws, without justifying the purpose of such actions. … such actions are clearly incompatible with states' obligatio ns under international human rights law, and often create a broader 'chilling effect' on the right to freedom of opinion and expression," the report says. The report also strongly recommends against disconnecting people from the Internet — often considered an anti-piracy measure, for example in France — under any circumstances. The report "considers cutting off users from Internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." The UN's report echoes a European Parliament directive from 2008, which asked individual countries to "avoid adopting measure 
Mozilla have recently announced their newest version of their email messaging client – Thunderbird 5 Beta. Like their Firefox browser, this client will also be a part of their rapid release schedule. Updates to the Thunderbird email client will be quick in keeping with their rapid release program. The last version was Thunderbird 3.3, so the version 4 was skipped altogether in order to sync the latest version easily with the Firefox web browser. The new improvements in the first beta version of Thunderbird 5 include new Add-ons Manager and extension management API, tabs can now be reordered and dragged to different windows, revised account creation wizard that offers improved set-up, attachment sizes now displayed along with attachments, new troubleshooting information page to aid supporting and diagnosing problems in Thunderbird and plug-ins can now be loaded in RSS feeds by default. The release notes for the Thunderbird 5 Beta also suggest that there is support for Mac 32/64 bit universal builds, as well as numerous other bug fixes. The latest version is available across Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. To download the latest version of the emailing client for desktops from Mozilla, click the link 
Yesterday, social engagement data startup PostRank announced it had been acquired by Google. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed. PostRank launched in 2007 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The PostRank staff will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the other Googlers at Google's main Mountain View campus. Last year, PostRank Analytics added Activity Streams, which the company called "a FriendFeed for content." The analytics service itself launched the year before as a way to track data on a large number of social media platforms, including Twitter, Digg, Delicious and more. PostRank CTO and founder Ilya Grigorik wrote today on the startup's blog, "We are extremely excited to join Google. We believe there is simply no better company on the web today that both understands the value of the engagement data we have been focusing on, and has the platform and reach to bring its benefits to the untold millions of daily, active Internet users." 
A recent report by Kaspersky Lab has announced that India and Brazil continued to lead the pack in dissemination of spam via the internet in April. India accounts for 12.76% and Brazil 7.15% of the total spam volume. The reports seem to be in favour of spam as; compared to the last month the amount of spam in email traffic increased by 1.2%Â and averaged 80.8 %. Two malicious programs that hit PC's across the world in April were Packed.Win32.Katusha.n and Trojan-Downloader.Win32.FraudLoad.hxv. Both malicious programmes are linked to fake Antivirus programs, the former is used to pack them while the latter downloads them to users' computers. PayPal was on top of the table in websites that were hit by spam, closely followed by Facebook and Satander. 
Global online traffic will quadruple by 2015 as the number of gadgets linked to the Internet climbs to 15 billion, according to a forecast by networking colossus Cisco. Cisco's fifth annual Visual Networking Index Forecast, released on Wednesday, predicted that nearly three billion people, more than 40 percent of the expected world population, will be using the Internet by the year 2015. 'The explosive growth in Internet data traffic, especially video, creates an opportunity in the years ahead for optimizing and monetizing visual, virtual and mobile Internet experiences,' said Cisco vice president Suraj Shetty. Personal computers generated 97 percent of consumer Internet traffic last year, but the share will drop to 87 percent in the next four years as more people turn to smartphones, tablets, and Web-enabled televisions, Cisco said. Online video traffic, including data rich 3-D and high-definition transmissions, was projected to be 14 times greater in 2015 compared to last year. 
The promise of high-end phone services by mobile firms through the much-hyped third generation (3G) telecom technology seems to have hit a roadblock as customers complain of frequent call drops and inconsistent internet speeds. Experts say it could take between six and nine months for the service to stabilise. Among the nine-million odd people who are estimated to have opted for 3G services in the country, there are many who are facing similar problems with their services across the country. The private telecom operators who shelled out billions for buying spectrum claim that every new technology needed some time for maturing and becoming consistent. According to them it was a matter of time for consumers to experience the promised quality of 3G. But Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( TRAI) Chairman J S. Sarma does not agree with the claims of operators. 'It is high time customers start getting quality services for the money they are paying. You cannot go on saying that the problems are caused due to initial phase launch for so long. Such excuses can be accepted for a week or so,' Sarma told IANS. 'We also need to look into what kind of investments these people are making,' Sarma said and added that the telecom watchdog was looking into the matter and would come out with a quality check very soon. 
Mobile phones may cause brain cancer in humans, a World Health Organisation agency said, citing a review of studies. Exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields from handsets is greater than that from phone towers and base stations, Robert Baan , the senior scientist in charge of the International Agency for Research on Cancer report on the subject, said on a conference call with reporters. The fields are 'possibly' carcinogenic, the same category as diesel fuel, chloroform and working as a firefighter, according to the IARC, based in Lyon, France, which classifies cancer risks. This is the first time an agency working group has surveyed research on radiofrequency electromagnetic fields to make a definitive classification, the IARC said yesterday. The agency didn't issue guidelines for cell-phone use and said more study is needed after finding some evidence for an increased risk of glioma, or brain cancer. 'It's not at the moment clearly established that the use of mobile phones does in fact cause cancer,' said Kurt Straif , head of the IARC Monographs Program , adding that the research points to ways in which risks may be lowered. 'For example, the highest exposure is from voice calls. If you use text messaging or headsets, this will lower the exposure.' Concerns have risen in recent years that cellphones might be harmful to the health of people who use them, according to the WHO agency, which said there are 5 billion wireless subscriptions worldwide. The US Federal Communication Commission has said devices with a specific absorption rate, the amount of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body, within a set limit are safe. The IARC considers studies in its reviews that may have flawed data, John Walls , vice president