Google has one billion users

Every seventh person in the world uses Google and other websites the company owns, a media report said.

The landmark figure in May revealed by ComScore shows an 8.4 percent rise year-on-year. Over one billion people among the world's current population of 6.93 billion use Google and its other websites.

Microsoft remained the second most popular destination with 905 million unique visitors in May, the Daily Telegraph reported.

This was up approximately 15 percent over the year, but Facebook rose by 30 percent to 714 million unique users, it said.

Yahoo, which was overtaken by Facebook in October, saw an 11 percent yearly rise to 689 million users.

A "global measurement panel" of two million users helps ComScore to compile its estimates, and the data is then refined with page-view data it receives from more than 90 of the 100 publishers of web content, the report said.

Google is one of the few publishers that does not contribute. The company declined to comment.

When ComScore first measured traffic, in 2006, Google had slightly fewer than 500 million unique users per month, with Microsoft taking the top spot with 539 million, the Telegraph said.

The addition of users to Gmail and Google has also been helped by the company's purchase of video site YouTube.

Users, however, spend more time on Facebook than Google; the social network's users browsed the site for 250 billion minutes in May, compared to Google's 200 billion, according to the newspaper.

AMD launches Llano chips

AMD has recently launched a new set of chip product, the AMD Fusion A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APU), which can be called as Llano chips. The new chip combines up to four x86 CPU cores with 'discrete-level graphics.' This is basically a combination of combine a traditional CPU and discrete-level GPU. The APUs are now available as A4, A6 and A8 series. The new A-series processor is likely to compete with Intel's Sandy Bridge platform with various new features. Llano comes with 10.5 hours battery life. Llano will be available in more than 150 notebooks and desktops with the price rate between 22, 500 and 36,000 ($500 and $800).

It offers features like gestural interfaces, multi-monitor support, three-dimensional entertainment and image stabilization. Some other feature includes HDMI 1.4a, Display Port 1.1, and USB 3.0, as well as 3D gaming and 3D Blu-ray playback. Moreover it offers up to 400 gigaflops of performance for notebooks, and 500 gigaflops for desktops.

HP has already rolled out 11 new consumer and business notebooks that offers the new AMD A series. The other companies like Lenovo, Acer and Dell are also planning to use the Llano chip in their systems.

Cisco unveiled its new line of telepresence products

Cisco introduced a number of new telepresence products and enhancements as part of its collaboration portfolio designed to give customers new ways to simply, quickly and cost effectively scale telepresence throughout their organizations. The advancements also enhance 'any-to-any' interoperability between Cisco TelePresence endpoints and any standards-based devices, and make the telepresence experience even more intuitive with user-friendly features and capabilitiesCisco's previously announced medianet architecture advances Cisco's objective to unlock the power of video for its customers. Cisco is making video easier to use, helping customers rapidly deploy video everywhere, and putting people back in the center of collaboration.

To complement its portfolio of TelePresence offerings ranging from immersive systems to desktop solutions to PC and Mac software clients such as Movi, Cisco is introducing the Cisco TelePresence MX200. The MX200 is ideal for team meetings or personal offices and priced so that customers can telepresence-enable many rooms in their organization. The endpoint is easy to set up with auto-provisioning and can be up and running in as little as 15 minutes. The MX200 has a list price of $21,600 with pricing flexibility to the customer based on volume purchase agreements. The endpoint is scheduled to be available globally in July.

As more customers realize the benefits of telepresence, the desire to engage in more multiparty conferences often grows as do requests to meet 'on the fly.' While this behavior is great for collaboration, it can be problematic for administrators. How do they ensure that they always have enough conferencing ports to accommodate these requests? If there are not enough ports available, these meetings can be put in jeopardy. To solve this problem, Cisco is introducing the Cisco TelePresence Conductor. The Cisco TelePresence Conductor simplifies and scales multi-party conferencing by intelligently assigning meetings to the most appropriate conferencing unit for the best possible experience.

Additionally, TelePresence Conductor enables customers to provide their employees with virtual meeting room 'ID' numbers. Employees can provide these numbers to others and meet impromptu, which can help dramatically increase productivity. The Cisco TelePresence Conductor scales from small businesses to large enterprises. Anticipated global availability for the TelePresence Conductor is late second half of 2011.

With key enhancements to the endpoint software (TC5.0, CTS 1.8), Cisco broadens its multipoint interoperability support and products designed to deliver native point-to-point interoperability between all Cisco TelePresence endpoints and standards-based third party endpoints without requiring an additional hardware transcoding device. This innovation will dramatically increase the simplicity of connecting video calls across the Cisco TelePresence portfolio and between Cisco and endpoints made by other manufacturers

Fake antivirus scares Mozilla users

Cyber criminal are adopting fake antivirus as their latest tool to attack your PC. Sophos, the IT security firm has released that a fake antivirus which is a replica of Microsoft's security update, tricks users to install malicious software. This page comes only when the user uses the Mozilla's Firefox browser, whereas the authentic Microsoft update requires the use of the Internet Explorer.The fake antivirus comes with an alert on the window, as soon as the user opens the Mozilla Firefox, and a pop up window asks for the update of the antivirus. When the users install the security update, which actually contains worm, they end up installing the malicious software. Users, affected by this have complained about receiving an update notification which says "Update your Windows".

Sophos said that criminals are looking for most convincing way to increase their trap and make the users download fake antivirus.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said, "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. 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".

Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor of Sophos warned users, "You should only trust security alerts in your browser if you initiated a check with Microsoft, Adobe, Sophos, or any other vendor for updates to their software."

Tata Comm to deploy Cisco ASR 9000

The new platform will use Cisco's IOS XR modular software operating systemSAN JOSE, USA: Cisco announced that Tata Communications will deploy the telecom networking equipment vendor's Aggregation Services Router 9000 Series (ASR 9000) for the telecom service provider's Ethernet network service across the countryohn Hayduk, CTO, Tata Communications, said: "As we continue to advance our services across the region, the ASR 9000 will play a pivotal role in the continued delivery of world-class services to our customers. The ASR 9000 will help our global network deliver the capacity needed for expected bandwidth growth and the necessary performance from our Ethernet Network."

The new platform will use Cisco's IOS XR modular software operating system.However, how much has India been able to make a mark in this space and how vibrant is the Indian Ethernet or carrier Ethernet space? Not much, seems to be what industry bodies and experts have to say.

Although Metro Ethernet Foundation bets high on the huge business opportunity for carrier Ethernet in India, and Frost &Sullivan projects that the Indian Ethernet market will grow close to 40 per cent during the next five years, Indian Ethernet market is still a minuscule sand in the vast desert of carrier Ethernet market.

Let's hear what Anil Kumar Reddy, AGM, Business Development, RAD Data Communications India has to say about carrier Ethernet's scope in India. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is the kind of momentum that you see in the Indian market with regard to Ethernet?

Anil K. Reddy: Ethernet has a tremendous scope for growth in India owing to per megabit bandwidth availability.

It offers almost six times the bandwidth than a traditional network. This makes Ethernet more affordable for our market owing to its low cost per deployment, high scalability and quality of service and homologous nature.

With Ethernet, a business customer who has about 2 mbps of network capacity can scale up to 10 mbps, since bandwidth is already available in Ethernet pipes and all one has to do is provision the central site according to the need.

This process is otherwise very cumbersome in conventional networks. So I see a clear migration path wherein all vendors and service providers will go for Ethernet soon.

CIOL: What is driving this momentum? How aware is the Indian market with regard to carrier Ethernet?

Anil: Predominantly, customer experience is driving the demand for Ethernet. From an era when 256 mbps or 556 kbps bandwidth capacity were considered  luxury for residential users, these users have started experiencing high bandwidth applications, such as YouTube, online gaming, movies, video conferencing etc. They are open to spend more such applications.

Moreover, other factors such as online education, e-Hospital, e-business, e-commerce, and now UIDAI  have also started picking up in Indian market.

On the other hand, business customers, of late, have started considering Internet a very serious mode of business. Today business customers with 2 mbps of bandwidth will find more takers and users if they want to increase bandwidth because customers have realised that their bandwidth buying capacity is cheaper with Ethernet, along with better quality of service, reliability, performance, and resilience.

So this shift in customer perspective is forcing many to start deploying packet-based Ethernet network, also called carrier Ethernet network, or packet-based network.

Using Magnets to Help Prevent Heart Attacks

If a person's blood becomes too thick it can damage blood vessels and increase the risk of heart attacks. But a Temple University physicist has discovered that he can thin the human blood by subjecting it to a magnetic fieldRongjia Tao, professor and chair of physics at Temple University, has pioneered the use of electric or magnetic fields to decrease the viscosity of oil in engines and pipelines. Now, he is using the same magnetic fields to thin human blood in the circulation system.

Because red blood cells contain iron, Tao has been able to reduce a person's blood viscosity by 20-30 percent by subjecting it to a magnetic field of 1.3 Telsa (about the same as an MRI) for about one minute.

Tao and his collaborator tested numerous blood samples in a Temple lab and found that the magnetic field polarizes the red blood cells causing them to link together in short chains, streamlining the movement of the blood. Because these chains are larger than the single blood cells, they flow down the center, reducing the friction against the walls of the blood vessels. The combined effects reduce the viscosity of the blood, helping it to flow more freely.

When the magnetic field was taken away, the blood's original viscosity state slowly returned, but over a period of several hours.

"By selecting a suitable magnetic field strength and pulse duration, we will be able to control the size of the aggregated red-cell chains, hence to control the blood's viscosity," said Tao. "This method of magneto-rheology provides an effective way to control the blood viscosity within a selected range."

Currently, the only method for thinning blood is through drugs such as aspirin; however, these drugs often produce unwanted side effects. Tao said that the magnetic field method is not only safer, it is repeatable. The magnetic fields may be reapplied and the viscosity reduced again. He also added that the viscosity reduction does not affect the red blood cells' normal function.

Tao said that further studies are needed and that he hopes to ultimately develop this technology into an acceptable therapy to prevent heart disease.

Tao and his former graduate student, Ke "Colin" Huang, now a medical physics resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan, are publishing their findings in the journal Physical Review E.

Windows 8 unveiled for your tablet

Microsoft unveiled its windows 8 for tablets in D9 conference assuring the fact that they are a strong contender in the tablet market.

Microsoft displayed a demo of windows 8 through a video which showed that this next generation operating system will be a user and touch-friendly experience that will work seamlessly on tablets, desktops, and laptops. It also added that it will also respond to keyboards and mouse if they are attached. The rapidly evolving PC world has forced Microsoft to evolve new mechanism and hence Windows 8 file-sharing tools will be much to the friendlier, touch-tacular mobile interface will be more advance. One can tap locally stored and networked photos to select them in a glance and also add them to your albums. This similarly will work the same for documents, videos, and music.

One of the interesting revelation that was made by Microsoft in the event was that developers will be provided with application programming interfaces (APIs) and a software development kit (SDK) that will allow them to create Windows 8 tablet applications in HTML and/or JavaScript. Windows 8 is expected to work in the new version of Internet Explorer 10; however, it was not cleared if the Internet Explorer 10 browser will support the Silverlight plug-in.

One question that remained unclear as to who's support will Microsoft opt for - Intel x86 or ARM versions of Windows 8 PCs and tablets. However Microsoft said it has no plan to add any kind of compatibility layer to enable legacy Windows apps to run on ARM-based PCs and tablets.

CEO Steve Ballmer indicated last week that Microsoft is planning to release Windows 8 in 2012 but the event did not announce the date on which the operating system will be available in the market for consumers. Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface (GUI) for its own operating system (MS-DOS), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The product line has changed from a GUI product to a modern operating system over two families of design, each with its own codebase and default file system.

The 3.x and 4.x family includes Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 achieved the breakthrough from 16- to 32-bit networking and 32-bit disk access. Windows 95 completed the migration to 32-bit code and started an entirely new user interface, most of which is still used today.

Windows NT family started with NT 3.1 in 1993. Modern Windows operating system versions are based on the newer Windows NT kernel that was originally intended for OS/2. Windows runs on IA-32, x86-64, and Itanium processors. Earlier versions also ran on the i860, Alpha, MIPS, Fairchild Clipper, and PowerPC architectures. Some work was done to port it to the SPARC architecture. The NT kernel borrows many techniques from VMS. With NT4.0 in 1996 the shell changed from Program Manager to Explorer. CPU support included PowerPC, MIPS, and DEC Alpha for earlier versions of NT, but focuses on Itanium, 386, 486, and x64 today.The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on 20 November 1985, achieved little popularity. It was originally going to be called "Interface Manager" but Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to consumers. Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an "operating environment" that extended MS-DOS, and shared the latter's inherent flaws and problems.

The first version of Microsoft Windows included a simple graphics painting program called Windows Paint; Windows Write, a simple word processor; an appointment "calendar"; a "cardfiler"; a "notepad"; a "clock"; a "control panel"; a "computer terminal"; "Clipboard"; and RAM driver. It also included the MS-DOS Executive and a game called Reversi.