Technology – Page 31

The Yahoo-Bing Vs Google Story

August 15, 2009 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

A new chapter in the Search Engine – Online Advertising Story

Some time ago, Microsoft unveiled it’s new search engine – Bing, which created a big buzz on the web world. Now, Google is working on a revamped version of it’s search engine, code named “Caffeine”. While Google has no plans to change the user interface like what Microsoft has done with Bing, it is said that Caffeine will change the way Google search indexes, crawls and ranks the search results, making it much better than it is now. Even though Google search enjoys a “virtual monopoly” in the world of search engines, it plans to maintain the fact by building the next version of Google search.

Bing is a lot better then Microsoft’s live search and easily comparable to Google. Bing features better & faster results, blocks explicit content (to a very good extent) and has an appealing UI. All this is OK. But, what does the 10 year Yahoo-Bing deal involve? Well, Yahoo will halt it’s own search engine for 10 years and which will be replaced by Bing. This means that the strategy will involve Microsoft to use Yahoo traffic to divert ad sales from Google. Microsoft will give Yahoo 88 percent of the search ad sales made on its Web site, above the usual commission of 70 to 80 percent. Yahoo will sit back and focus on generating more traffic and more money.

Is Your CD Feeling Itchy?

August 12, 2009 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

How to Burn and Maintain Your CD/DVD/BD/HD DVD

USB drives have replaced the way we deal with data portability. We all know that CD’s are delicate and prone to scratches. The only way to keep the CD’s in working condition for maximum amount of time is to handle them with “paranoia care”, something what i call. It’s almost like the CD’s are always itchy and will get scratched by somebody, someday or the other. Even though it’s zillion times rational to preserve data on CD’s rather than on the pathetic 1.4 floppy drives. Yes, even in the age of thumb sized terabyte capacity USB drivers, I’ve seen people still dealing with floppy drives with storage capacity of only 1.38 MB.

CD’s are used for many reasons and all of them serve a different purpose. But, when the CD’s are scratched, the chances of data loss increases and things can become difficult if the scratched CD’s are full of important data. In many cases the CD’s are non-readable because either the surface is damaged, stained or just full of finger impressions. The following are some basic tips that can and should be followed to ensure maximum data life,

CD Burning speed: Using good quality CD’s fir burning is essential for better data protection and storage life. One of the common mistakes made while burning CD’s is that the data is set to burn highest speed. If the CD’s are burnt at a very high speed, say 48x which increases the chances of bad data on the burnt disk. It is advisable to burn the CD’s at a least possible speed say 4x or 8x to ensure the data is burnt accurately. Why is it so? The answer can be found at Link 1 and Link 2.

Also, it is better to not multitask on a computer with average hardware configuration while burning CD’s. This because the CD burning process consumes a lot of RAM and is busy communicating with the data to be burnt and other concerned areas. If the user is performing some other task along with the burning process, it’s stresses the computer and may interrupt the burning process.

CD storage: It is advisable to store the CD’s in proper CD cases and in an area with a room temperature not less than 20°C (68°F) Greater than 4°C (39°F) to avoid any damages occurring due to incompatible temperatures. As recommended by: Archival Storage Facility—Recommendation for storing CD’s and DVD’s together.

Using Cologne for cleaning: If the CD surface is greased or stuffed with finger impressions, clean it with a soft cotton cloth with few drops of cologne. Make sure you apply the cologne on the cloth and wipe the disc “from the center to the outer surface” in single down motion. Rubbing the CD surface back and forth will successfully invite scratches.

Data Recovery Method: If your CD has reached a stage where you encounter “Cyclic redundancy error” a.k.a damaged enough to avoid you from accessing the data, it’s time to use a Data recovery application. ISO buster (Windows and Linux) is very good at recovering data from damaged disks CD/DVD/BD/HD DVD. There have been cases where i had successfully recovered all data from a bad CD. And sometimes, i could recover a part of the data. It all depends on to what extent the surface has been damaged. But, it’s better than just dumping the CD away with total data loss. Isn’t it?

The on going fight against piracy

July 29, 2009 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

It’s a Piracy Vs Anti-Piracy War

drawing of act finale — The Jolly Roger raised in an illustration for Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. Image Credit: Wikipedia

Few years ago Microsoft silently released a Tool via ‘Automatic Updates’ to check and notify the Windows user about the genuineness of the Operating System, an attempt to fight against piracy. It indeed created a chaos for Windows Users and as a result, numerous patches were available to get rid of the nagging notification within no time. The surprising thing is that the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Validation Tool is so poorly constructed or should I call it “lame” that any user can block and remove it with the help of tiny patching applications and even by manual efforts. I don’t know how many Windows users Microsoft has been able to scare enough and make them actually buy a original copy of Windows OS, it is indeed interesting to know the number.

I live in India and few weeks ago I was standing in a queue to renew my railway pass. We have a TV screen installed on the top of the railway ticket counter. It wasn’t for entertainment purposes but was actually an ad slot. What caught my attention was unusual and shocking! The commercials were setup to play from a computer using Windows XP and which was pirated too! During one of the commercials, a WGA window popped in and stated that ‘the installed copy of Windows is illegal and the user should buy an legitimate one.’ (These are not the actual words but something that I perceived). This proved to me that Microsoft or any other company in its pursuit to fight against piracy is way too far from killing the root of it.

Lars Ulrich form Metallica. Image Credit: Wikipedia

Piracy has become like a uncontrollable pandemic disease. Remember the shutting down of Napster? Lars Ulrich, a drummer from a heavy metal band – Metallica, filed a suit and brought down Napster, because one of their studio recordings they were working on was already available for free download on Napster P2P. But, what was the result? Thousands of fans protested against Metallica for their action and majority of them were users of Napster P2P. But, this did not scare the pirates at all and numerous other P2P sharing portals were established, soon after Napster was successfully shut down. Even the renowned P2P sharing portals like Demonoid and PirateBay have also “suffered and survived” form major law suits and recently, thirteen Hollywood production companies have filed a new lawsuit to try to get PirateBay.org shut down.

Practically, there is no end to the war and the best way to put an end to it is by doing what smart enemies would do. Teaming up and re-framing the strategies that they have been following. (Reminds me of the recent Microsoft-Yahoo deal) This is the smartest way to make things more productive for everyone. But, who knows what is brewing in the minds of the “big guys” ?

(Post updated as on 14th Aug, 2009)

Few years ago Microsoft silently released a Tool via ‘Automatic Updates’ to check and notify the Windows user about the genuineness of the Operating System, an attempt to fight against piracy. It indeed created a chaos for Windows Users and as a result, numerous patches were available to get rid of the nagging notification within no time. The surprising thing is that the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Validation Tool is so poorly constructed or should i call it “lame” that any user can block and remove it with the help of tiny patching applications and even by manual efforts. I don’t know how many Windows users Microsoft has been able to scare enough and make them actually buy a original copy of Windows OS, it is indeed interesting to know the number.