Category Archives: Tech News

Google Voice Is Now Truly Mobile

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Google Voice

Google Voice

Google Voice, the invitation only service launched by Google a while ago has now been ported to Android and Blackberry. The service basically lets you have one “Google Voice” number which is connected to your other numbers such as your Office, Home and Mobile Number. You can choose which of the phones you want ringing when someone calls.

One of the features it boasts is caller groups, with restricted access to certain phones. For instance, friends can have access to all three numbers while your pesky neighbor can be allowed to bug you only when you are at home.

The best part is that people only have to remember a single number. The number stays with you for life, so even if you change your other numbers it doesn’t make a difference. Simply update the new numbers with the service. Google Voice also gives you other services such as voice mail and automated transcripts of the same.

With the newly released Google Voice Mobile Application for Blackberry and Android, placing outgoing calls from a Google Voice number has become easier, said a blog post from Google. The app is fully integrated with contacts on the phone. For the thousands of people who don’t have an Android or Blackberry device, Google has a mobile web version which can be accessed by typing m.google.com/voice into your mobile phone’s browser. The blog post also says that “Currently, Google Voice is only available in the U.S.” Let’s hope it comes to our stores soon.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Networking? Beware of Koobface

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If you have been getting tempting messages with video links in your accounts in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo, Friendster and Hi5, beware. Any attempt to download the video will make you another victim of Koobface, a worm that may steal critical and personal data from your computer.

KoobfaceThe ICER Team has warned that Koobface, a play on the name of social networking site Facebook, comes with an enticing tag line and spreads by spamming the contacts of the victim on networking sites. With more than 3 million members of Facebook alone in India, Koobface’s potential for wreaking havoc on the country’s computer systems is immense — a fact that has prompted the government to issue the alert.

Typically, Koobface victims get a message from one of their contacts inviting them to click on a video link. The link leads you to a site mimicking the video sharing site, YouTube. Once there, you are asked whether you want to download a software needed to watch the video.

If you click ‘yes’, the worm gets activated, leaving your computer vulnerable. The worm not only disrupts your internet experience by sending your searches on engines like Google elsewhere and returning garbled replies, it also steals data that may have been left in your computer’s memory.

If you have already been Koobfaced, the only way to protect your machine is to delete all files and registry keys that have been added by the worm. Internet users have also been advised to install and maintain updated anti-virus software in computers and block ports that aren’t required.

While you may not be able to notice the worm rummaging through your electronic files searching for personal data, including passwords, the visible signs of the worm would show up on your internet browsing where you would get abnormal results to your searches.

Soure

Popularity: 1% [?]

10,000 GB on DVD in 5 years

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While doing the hard disk test last month, we were wondering whatever happened to the sci-fi like holographic storage medium that was supposed to be just around the corner. Now it seems there is a DVD being developed that based on Nano Technology dubbed ultra-DVD that can store 10TB in a single disk.

Currently, Blue-ray disk that hold 50GB are not even close to projected capacity of these ultra DVDs. Scientists working on the project say the DVD could be available to consumers as early as five years from now. It will surely change the way we view & even perceive digital data, & even entertainment. Its outcome could include things such as three dimensional video & some ultra-HD viewing. The scientists working on the project say that nano-structured material can be incorporated on to a disc to increasing the size of the disk.

dvd

Meanwhile, another study is also under way in Australia that is looking at developing five dimensional DVDs. researchers have already designed a five dimensional DVD that can store 1.6 TB of data on a standard size DVD. That is as much as 30 Blue-ray disks!

Unlike normal DVDs that have two layers of stacked data these disk have an additional 3 layers- one data & two for reading wave length & polarization. The layers will be made of thin glass films & will be coated with gold nano rods with three different sizes. To record data on the disc a laser is focused on the nano rods.each nano rod melts at different wavelengths into spheres.

This change of state denotes the change from 1 to 0.The researches are currently working with Samsung to make the technology commercially viable but it could take anywhere between 5 to 10 years.

The challenge is that since the data is so densely packed, reading it at high speeds will pose a problem, Also currently a very large & not to mention expensive titanium-sapphire femto-second laser is being used in the study. A cheaper laser will have to be developed.

Popularity: 4% [?]