Google Docs & Microsoft Office Live With 'Gears'

Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline.
Google said users of its Google Docs word processing application can use Google Gears to save and then edit documents without being connected to the Internet.

"Cloud computing is great, but you need the cloud to make it work,"

Philip Tucker, software engineer, Google Docs, wrote in a Google blog.

"On an airplane, on the shuttle commuting to work, or at home when my cable modem goes down, I want to work on my documents. And, until now, that usually meant saving a copy and editing on the desktop.Now there's a better solution. With Google Docs offline, I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go,"

Tucker added.

"Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents."

The editing feature, Google Gears, is an application programming interface introduced by Google more than a year ago to application developers to create Web applications that can run offline.

Microsoft Launches Windows Mobile 6.1

At CTIA Wireless 2008, Robbie Bach unveiled new features for an update to Windows Mobile, which includes enhanced features for socializing like threaded text messaging and features for simpler navigation. He also announced Microsoft’s plans to bring desktop-grade Web browsing experience to the Windows Mobile phone with an upcoming version of Internet Explorer Mobile.

Updates and new phones are expected to be available beginning in the second quarter of 2008. IE Mobile will be available to mobile phone partners in the third quarter of 2008 with the first Windows Mobile phones using the new version to be available by the end of 2008.

For Windows Mobile phones used in businesses, System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 is now available.

The Microsoft Mobile Services Plan (MMSP) was also announced today in partnership with AT&T, O2, Orange, TaTa Teleservices Ltd. and Verizon Wireless. The plan will help businesses with:

• Securing Windows Mobile phones with the same ease and flexibility as Windows-based PCs and providing access to information behind a company’s firewall.
• Helping businesses meet their mobile device management needs through mobile operators with the MMSP.
• Managing and securing phones with Exchange Server 2007 SP1 advanced mobile policies while enabling people to find, share, and use information no matter where they are

Press Release

Inkscape 0.46 - open source vector graphics editor

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.

Note: Officially Inkscape 0.46 has been released on March 24, 2008. Package for the Windows platform, has become available just now.

Release Notes

Firefox 3, alpha 8 released

Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is an early developer milestone for Firefox 3 and the next generation of Mozilla’s layout engine, Gecko 1.9. Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and our testing community.

Some of the changes included with Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 are:

* Basic and unpolished UI for starring and tagging pages has been added, as well as a richer Location Bar autocomplete algorithm that matches against page title (see Places UI Plan for more details)
* Prompt for remembering passwords is no longer a modal dialog
* Built in malware protection (which you can test here)
* Basic and unpolished UI for indicating richer website identity information has been added
* Support for web-based protocol handlers, though it doesn’t work in all situations (see bug 394483).
* A new Applications preference panel for configuring handlers for various content types (see bug 377784) has replaced the Download Actions dialog and the Feeds preference panel
* All Firefox add-ons must now use a secure method for auto-updating (see bug 378216 and this guide for more details)
* Firefox now quits properly (instead of just being killed) when Windows is shut down or restarted (see bug 333907)
* Added support for document.elementFromPoint method (see bug 199692)
* DOMWillOpenModalDialog events are no longer fired by the nsIPrompt implementation (see bug 391100)
* TYPE_PLUGIN has been removed from the Extension Manager code (see bug 392140)
* You can also see the full list of all bugs fixed since Gran Paradiso Alpha 7

Gran Paradiso 1.9 Alpha 8 contains the following notable changes:

* Basic and unpolished UI for starring and tagging pages has been added, as well as a richer Location Bar autocomplete algorithm that matches against page title (see Places UI Plan for more details)
* Prompt for remembering passwords is no longer a modal dialog
* Built in malware protection (which you can test here)
* Basic and unpolished UI for indicating richer website identity information has been added
* Support for web-based protocol handlers, though it doesn't work in all situations (see bug 394483).
* A new Applications preference panel for configuring handlers for various content types (see bug 377784) has replaced the Download Actions dialog and the Feeds preference panel
* All Firefox add-ons must now use a secure method for auto-updating (see bug 378216 and this guide for more details)
* Firefox now quits properly (instead of just being killed) when Windows is shut down or restarted (see bug 333907)
* Added support for document.elementFromPoint method (see bug 199692)
* DOMWillOpenModalDialog events are no longer fired by the nsIPrompt implementation (see bug 391100)
* TYPE_PLUGIN has been removed from the Extension Manager code (see bug 392140)
* You can also see the full list of all bugs fixed since Gran Paradiso Alpha 7

Some of the changes in Alpha versions of Gecko 1.9 affect the web and platform compatibility of Gran Paradiso Alpha 8. For detailed information about changes in Gecko 1.9 and Gran Paradiso, please read these pages:

Gecko 1.9 Changes affecting websites
Firefox 3 for developers

Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is available for the following platforms:

Microsoft Windows 2000 or later
Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Linux

Sony BMG Sued for Software Piracy!

Sony BMG, a company known for enforcing its intellectual property rights, is now facing the other end of an Intellectual Property related lawsuit. A report (French) says the complaining company, PointDev, seized some of Sonys assets which revealed that the pirated software appeared on four of their servers.

PointDev, a small software company, mandated a bailiff to raid one of Sony BMGs owned building in January this year. The raid revealed that four of the Sony BMGs owned servers contained the pirated software.

It appears as though the company discovered this when an IT department employee requested assistance for the use of a product called Ideal Migration. When technical support looked into the case, they discovered that the key used to activate the software was a pirated version.

Essentially, the PointDev CEO says that the BSA has said that French Corporations have a software piracy rate of 47%. The CEO also says that piracy may even be a part of Sony's business policy - if you can't afford it, pirate it. It is said that Sony was in the process of merging with BMG when the pirating incident occurred.

An additional report (French) (Google Translation) says that the CEO of PointDev wants to make this piracy case an example.

Sony told La Province to not report on the ongoing investigation. Clearly, Sony is not happy that this case was made public at all.

via zeropaid.com

Dell's Blu-ray Laptop For Under $900 !

Dell is jumping on Sony's Blu-ray bandwagon by offering an optional Blu-ray disc drive on its Inspiron 1525 notebook, with a sale price starting at $879.

Dell has been a backer of Blu-ray from the beginning, and we've actually been offering Blu-ray notebooks for close to 18 months now.

said Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden.

The big news now is we are actually able to offer it at a price that puts it at a mainstream user's reach.

A company release said the disc drive is fully backwards compatible, and will play as well as burn traditional DVDs and CDs. The company is also offering consumers a Blu-ray burner drive, which Dell recommends for backing up and storing files like digital photos, videos, financial records. Blu-ray discs have a significant advantage over standard DVDs, with 50 GB of data available versus 8.5 GB available on a typical DVD disc.

CRN.com

Phase change memory (PCM) is coming...

Numonyx, the memory joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Intel, is already shipping samples of phase change memory (PCM) chips to customers and will start shipping PCM chips commercially later this year, CEO Brian Harrison said at a press conference Monday.

We expect to bring it to market this year and generate some revenue. It is one to two years before it becomes widely commercially available.

Hearing a CEO talk about existing samples and near-term commercial shipments, however, is a big deal for PCM. The technology has been stuck in the proverbial "a few years away" phase for a long time.

It could be cheaper than flash within a couple of years

analyst Richard Doherty in said in 2001, predicting the technology might hit the market in 2003.

Why will the world want PCM? Performance, says Numonyx CTO Ed Doller. PCM chips can survive tens of millions of read-write cycles, he said, or far more than flash. Reading data to PCM chips takes 70 to 100 nanoseconds, or as fast as NOR flash. Data can be written to the chips at a rate of 1 megabyte a second, or equivalent of NAND flash. There is also no erase cycle, making it similar to DRAM. You will have the best attributes of three different types of memory--plus, PCM will potentially use far less power.

news.com