WoW may go free-to-play in China

According to a news story on RedlineChina, The9 -- publisher of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft in China -- is currently in talks with Blizzard to offer WoW as a free-to-play game in China. This is rather surprising news to hear, especially after The9's Q3 sales report where the company had net revenue of $42.2m -- due almost entirely to World of Warcraft. That said, the company is also barely scraping by on profits because of increasing operating costs for the game. The increased costs are primarily due to the use of high-quality HP server farms to support its popularity in China.

curse.com

Microsoft sends out Windows Live Messenger 9.0 beta invites

No sooner has the Windows Live Wave 2 suite been released than the first Wave 3 beta begins - Windows Live Messenger v9. Unlike the betas that have just finished, the Messenger v9 beta is being run from Microsoft Connect as a private beta, meaning that, for the moment at least, unless you receive an invite, you won't be able to participate.

For the moment it looks like most previous Windows Live testers are getting invites, so stay tuned to your inbox. With such a popular beta like this, you better sign up quick.

So what's new? While the goodies aren't yet available, we've heard about Multiple Points Of Presence (MPOP) support, which allows you to sign in from multiple devices, ie be online at two places at once.

Best Chat Client - Open Source and lightweight - Miranda IM

I have been using Miranda IM since 6 to 8 months or so. It is the best open source chat IM client. Its very light weight and supports many facilities.

It supports AIM, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber (XMPP protocol means gmail will work and any local LAN chat also works).

Basic architecture is plug in based. You can add different kinds of plug ins as per your needs.I will show here which plug ins you must have after installing it so it looks good and gives some good functions.

The most basic plug in is 'send/receive messages' which is in built and supports simple sending and receiving of messages. All protocol plug ins are also provided with the setup.You need to find more plug ins from add ons from Miranda site.

TabSRMM
This is very good plugin.
It supports

• tabbed message windows for multiple IMs.
• Log/history view of previous chat in the IM.
• Send message to multiple users at once.
  
• And many other cool things which are not in srmm.

This plug ins is very advanced version of SRMM you can say.I am suggesting this one only because with this, you can use it like any other. You can also find smilyadd plug in to add basic smilies to your chat. But this one is most needed.

History++ (History plus plus)
This is very advanced version of basic log viewer for all previous chat.
Basic log viewer shows all chat in listbox view. Means you need to select particular datetime to see the chat.

History++ will show you whole chat done for particular contact to till date in one view all text! isn't it great?You can also search in that log view.See the image below.

I will provide more good plug ins which may be of interest because of their usefulness. I generally avoid skinny things used for UI changes only :)

Please provide if you also find some new plug ins for it as i am not doing it now. This is what i am using and must have once.

so please leave comments and give your favorite plug ins.

Addons site for Miranda

AMD Phenom X4 processor pricing update

Different to a report unveiled earlier this month, a new pricing scheme for Phenom X4 processors would mean that AMD is ready to undercut similar Intel "Penryn" quad core processors when they are released next Monday.

The new Phenom processors are based on the K10 micro-architecture and will be aimed directly towards Intel's Core 2 family. On launch date you can expect three models to be available, all Phenom X4s which means they will carry four cores and a 2+2MB L2/L3 Cache: the 9700 (2.4GHz), 9600 (2.3GHz), and 9500 (2.2GHz).

According to sources close to AMD distribution channels we got word that volume pricing for these processors would look like this next Monday:
Phenom X4 9700 / 2400MHz / 4MB Cache / 2000MHz HT / 125W - $279
Phenom X4 9600 / 2300MHz / 4MB Cache / 1800MHz HT / 95W - $269
Phenom X4 9500 / 2200MHz / 4MB Cache / 1800MHz HT / 95W - $239

TechSpot.com

Spring Framework upgrade set for November

Technologists building the Spring Framework for Java application development are mapping out improvements to the platform as well as determining which versions of Java will no longer be supported by upgrades to the framework. Version 2.5 of the open-source framework for is set for release on November 19. Key improvements include greater use of annotations and metadata. The metadata is information that supplements Java code by providing extra information that can tell the Spring container how to process a class or a method.

"Many of the new features in Spring 2.5 concern really making extensive use of the new language features in Java 5 and also Java 6," said Rod Johnson, founder of the framework and CEO of Interface21. Java 5 features, for example, more options to add metadata inside Java source code, he said. With version 2.5, greater use of annotations is offered for configurations. Also, developers with version 2.5 can define components using XML outside Java or define components using source-level metadata, Johnson said. By maintaining metadata outside of Java, developers can change the configuration of an application without recompiling Java code.

InfoWorld

Google got shortest domain name!

Google has purchased the shortest possible domain name to make it easier for Chinese users to find Google: g.cn. Interestingly, "g.com," along with most other single-letter and single-digit domain names are reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The IANA is the master arbiter of domain names and addresses on the Internet. There are a few one-letter domain names out there, though: Z.com is owned by Nissan, Q.com by Qwest, and X.com is owned by PayPal. There was a proposal floated a few years ago to auction off the one-letter domain names, but nothing has come of it.

Google phone plans to be announced Monday

While it had been suggested that an announcement would come November 13th at the earliest, the Journal's sources say that it will mostly likely happen Monday, November 5th, and with different carriers. T-Mobile is still involved, but the other main party is said to be Sprint. Foreign carriers may be included, but have not been mentioned.

Google is again said to be working with cellular networks and phone makers to promote an "open" application platform, courting companies such as HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. With T-Mobile Google is claimed to be going even further, cooperating directly on building phones using its software. When the efforts of any of these collaborations might bear fruit remains unknown, but Journal proposes that the earliest date for sale of a Google-ready phone would be mid-2008.

Blogs.wsj.com