Category Archives: Facebook

Google, Facebook promise new IPv6 services after successful trial

Google leaves IPv6 on for YouTube; Facebook adds IPv6 to developers’ site; Yahoo sees ‘minimal risk’ to IPv6
One day after completing a successful 24-hour trial of IPv6, Facebook, Google and Yahoo said at a joint press conference that they would begin permanently supporting this upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol on some of their key websites.

 

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Joined by two content delivery networks — Akamai and Limelight, which also pledged their commitment to IPv6 deployment — these popular websites proclaimed the World IPv6 Day trial to be a resounding success. All three companies said they had handled a significant increase in IPv6 traffic on June 8 without suffering serious technical glitches.

IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme, so it can handle vastly more devices connected directly to the Internet than its predecessor called IPv4. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means website operators have to upgrade their network equipment and software to support IPv6 traffic.

Google said it has decided to leave its main YouTube website enabled for IPv6 for the time being. Since 2008, Google has supported IPv6 on separate websites — such as www.ipv6.google.com — rather than on its main websites.

“We saw 65% growth in our IPv6 traffic on World IPv6 Day,” said Lorenzo Colitti, IPv6 Software Engineer at Google, who pointed out that Google added IPv6 support to several new services including Orkut for the trial. “This event has really been successful in galvanizing the community.”

“At Facebook, we saw over 1 million of our users reach us over IPv6,” said Don Lee, senior network engineer at Facebook. “There were no technical glitches in this 24-hour period. We were encouraged by the many positive comments on our blog. … It is really interesting to see how passionate people were about IPv6 around the world.”

Because of the positive results from World IPv6 Day, Facebook has decided to support IPv6 on its Website for developers, which is www.developers.facebook.com.

“We will continue to adapt our entire code base to support IPv6,” Lee added. “IPv6 will allow the Internet to continue its amazing development.”

BY THE NUMBERS: IPv6 traffic surges at launch of World IPv6 Day

World IPv6 Day was held yesterday and was sponsored by the Internet Society. The event attracted 400-plus corporate, government and university participants that deployed IPv6 on more than 1,000 websites for the day.

Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer for the Internet Society, said World IPv6 Day was designed to motivate service providers, website operators, hardware makers and software suppliers to test-drive IPv6 and to identify any remaining technical issues that need to be resolved with this emerging technology.

“It was perceived to be quite a successful day,” Daigle said. “It was an amazing display of cross-industry participation. … It’s an important step in the Internet’s progress. We are running out of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 is definitely the way to move forward to make sure the Internet is a platform for innovation.”

Office 365 Beta Testers Run into Mobile, Mac Issues and Other Headaches

It’s been two days since the public release of Office 365 beta and Microsoft forums are lively to say the least. On the Office 365 community forum there are heaps of technical questions and complaints around some very specific problems that beta testers are encountering, as well as a smattering of compliments about the service.

 



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The majority of complaints—the threads with 10 or more posts; focus on issues with Sharepoint Online, Lync interoperability with Mac, and Exchange mobile syncing.

Microsoft beta testers seem to be having a hard time, especially with SharePoint Online. Several posters reported that their initial setup of Office 365 hangs during the SharePoint portion of setup:

“We are doing the standard setup of Office 365 and the SharePoint is hanging.”

“I am having the same issue, seeing ‘..this may take a few minutes’ on the sharepoint online site creation, now waiting for appox. 48 hours.”

“Two days later the sharepoint site has successfully been created. It just seems to take much more than a ‘few minutes’, but otherwise is fine now.”

Another big SharePoint issue, one that is generating multiple threat posts, is a problem with SharePoint sites:

“[The]SharePoint site doesn’t seem to exist. When I login, it either goes into a loop between windows live login and sharepoint.com…”

“None of the user accounts I created can access the sharepoint public or team sites.”

Some of the SharePoint access issues are actually problems with DNS records and not specifically with Office 365.

The majority of beta testers are technology professionals. Many of them have existing Exchange on-premise servers or are currently Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) customers. BPOS users have no choice but to adopt Office 365 since Microsoft is requiring them to transition within 12 months. One poster complained about a problem he encountered after migrating from BPOS, and that he can no longer send email from an external source to Office 365 after adding his company’s domain to the service.

There is an interesting post from a user experiencing problems setting up an Android phone with Exchange online. The user writes that he followed Microsoft’s instructions for configuring the device to sync with mail, calendar, and contacts. After doing so, he got only the cryptic error, “Failed to create the account, Please try again later.” The user noted that the same phone was previously able to sync with an on-premise Exchange 2007 server. A moderator on the forum, presumably from Microsoft, suggested the device be set to accept all SSL certificates and also suggested testing the validity of the connection to the online Exchange server. No response yet from the user if the suggestions worked.

Complaints are also being made about lack of support and the time it is taking to get an email invitation to test the service:

“This is IMO unacceptably slow service: ‘You will receive an email invitation from us as soon as your account is ready. We anticipate that the average wait for an account is approximately 2-4 weeks during the Beta period.'”

“I filed a support ticket…and got the answer to instead post my problem here in the forum.”

Questions abound about interoperability with Mac, particularly with Microsoft’s Lync client. A forum mod responded that while Lync 2010 is not supported on Mac, the Lync Web App—which can respond to Lync invites but not initiate them—can run on Safari and Firefox on Max OS 10.4.8+.

The comments are not all gloomy. One poster called Office 365 a “pretty great service” and another stated that “I’m pumped about being here and being part of the Beta, I also enjoy some of the challenges as I feel they keep your sharp.”

It’s important to note that Office 365 is still in beta and hopefully, Microsoft will have these issues worked out before final release. In the meantime, we have a request for comment out to Microsoft and will update this piece when they respond.

Facebook Fixes Spamming Glitch

Facebook has fixed a glitch that reversed selected email notifications for some users.

Typically, Facebook users can customize which emails or text notifications they receive, whether it’s for friend requests or new Facebook events. But on Tuesday, users began complaining that their selected email notifications had been reversed. For instance, those who had opted not to receive emails for events, were suddenly receiving emails about them, while those who’d checkmarked that box were not receiving emails at all.

 

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This prompted Facebook to post the problem on its “Known Issues on Facebook” page on Tuesday night: “Some people are suddenly receiving email notifications for settings they had turned off, and the checkboxes are now checked. We are currently working on a solution to this problem.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Facebook apologized and declared the problem resolved.

“Yesterday evening, we discovered a bug that caused a small number of people to start receiving notifications they had previously turned off. We have since resolved the issue and apologize for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson said.

Last Friday some Facebook users also reported seeing an error message when trying to access their “Notifications” menu, which Facebook said it resolved within 24 hours.

On Monday, U.K.-based security company Sophos published an open letter to Facebook on its blog, Naked Security, urging Facebook to improve its opt-in privacy schemes, vet app developers (where many phishing scams originate), and turn on a secure connection (HTTPS) standard.

Microsoft: Windows 7 Touch Pack for All [Multi-Touch]

Microsoft has released Touch Pack for Windows 7 for anyone with Windows Touch capable devices to download.

The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 was first introduced last May as a series of 6 applications that were designed to showcase Windows Touch in Windows 7 and to help people learn touch gestures. The features were limited to OEMs with devices having multitouch. But now the Touch pack allows users to use it with any 3rd party touchscreens.

 



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The Touch Pack is a set of six multi-touch consists of 3 casual games, and 3 Microsoft Surface applications that have been created for Windows 7.

Download: Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7

What’s Inside Touch Pack

1. Microsoft Surface Globe uses the Virtual Earth 3D engine to display a 3D  Earth. Using multi-touch, you can navigate to different regions, get local information, and “pin” your favorite locations. You can even “fly” around 3D models of buildings in some cities.
Microsoft Surface Globe

2. Microsoft Surface Collage: A photo collage app that arranges photos in the way you want.

Microsoft Surface Collage

3. Microsoft Surface LagoonMicrosoft Blackboard is a screensaver that you can interact with using multi-touch.

4. Microsoft Blackboard, A puzzle game of physics that uses nifty machine on a virtual blackboard. Use gestures to rotate and resize gears, fans, seesaws and more to move balloons and balls toward the light bulbs – and victory.

Other Games:

5. Microsoft Rebound

6. Microsoft Garden Pond

Microsoft ReboundMicrosoft Garden Pond

The apps gives you basic multitotuch experience on Windows 7 but clearly shows how immature this platform is as far as Multitouch is concerned when compared to a native device like iPad. This is the reason why HP’s Slate is a bad idea.

But would multitouch apps appear on Windows 7 Marketplace? We’ll have to wait to see it.

Windows 7 SP1 Leaked [Download]

Windows 7 is a sure hit for Microsoft, within months of the release, the Operating system managed to get 10% of the market OS share. And Today, the first Service Pack leaks to Torrents.

Windows 7 SP1 brings two big features– Dynamic Memory support and a more robust Remote Desktop client which uses RemoteFX. and the other part is the large number of Bug fixes.

 

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It’s been leaked and is freely available to anyone willing to download and install the update from a torrent site.

Though the update is legit, its hard to say what else is included in the update.
However, what’s good is that this build is very recent, with a compile date of March 27th.  The full build string is as follows:  6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053

After the update, the main build number has been incremented by one, so you now have Build 7601. (This is exactly like Vista SP1)

windows 7 sp1

The system was stable for the period I tested after the update. however, you can try it at your own risk.

Control Windows 7 with Kinect

Xbox Kinect is the ultimate hack machine, and that’s it the most popular gadget of the year 2010. Kinect has often been hacked to work with a large number of hobby electronics to attain Gesture based control for systems. It has been hacked to control Widnows  7 PC a number of times, but it was never done and sold like a regular software bundle.

 

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Win&I is the first fully useful commercial software that let’s you control your windows 7 PC with a Kinect controller using gestures alone.

You can control Windows 7 and thousands of applications with this natural user interface. WIN&I software replaces the computer mouse by tracking simple gestures from users up to several meters from the screen using the power of the Kinect depth-sensor.

You just have to Connect your Kinect with your PC and run the WIN&I control session to control windows 7, And leave the rest for Kinect to manipulate.

Checkout the Video demo below:

Tutorial: Using Kinect with Windows 7:

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Evolve Maestro Tablet triple-boots Android, MeeGo, Windows 7, Gives upto 16h of Battery backup

Can’t decide which tablet you should go for? Get the one that boots all 3 popular Tablet OSes.

Evolve III Maestro has built world’s first tablet that Triple boots Android, Windows 7 and MeeGo. The tablet has a 1.83GHz Atom N475 DualCore CPU based on OakTrail processor.

 

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With Windows 7, you would be able to attain 8 hours of battery & 16hours of battery with Android, not bad for a Tablet that weighs less than 2 pounds.

The tablet features a large 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 32GB of solid state storage, 3G and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and 2 USB ports.

What Evolve Three hopes will make this device stand out is the fact that it’ll ship with Android, MeeGo and Windows 7 out of the box. Although a custom layer for Windows was in the works – imagine a mash-up of Windows Phone 7 and Android – it was MeeGo that had the developers really excited. A virtualised version was running on the device, and while the combo of pre-release software and hardware were still a little rough around the edges, it certainly seemed like it would make for a finger friendly consumption focussed interface.

The device is set for launch in Q2 2011 and at a price of $500, it could be a steal.

Unfortunately, there’ll be no quick way to switch between the different operating environments.

Stay tuned for more  on Windows Phone, Android, iPhone, Programming and Tech news via @taranfx on Twitter or:

Prevent, Fix Windows Explorer Crashes

Windows 7 has sold more than 30 Million copies, as per Microsoft. Its evident that it had been a big success bringing great improvements over windows XP.

Glitches would never go away till it’s a software. And they can be annoying at times, but there are ways you can minimize the annoyances and prevent havocs. One such problem is with Windows Explorer who like to act weird with its “Windows Explorer has stopped responding” “Windows explorer has misbehaved and needs to be closed”, blah blah.

 

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You can always force close it but The Explorer process runs a lot of important things in Windows, and when it crashes, it can really slow you down.

But there is a solution to minimize the damage by sandboxing its process, so that when next time one crashes, others don’t in the fission.

The Solution to windows Explorer crashes

Windows Folder options actually let you create a separate process for the taskbar and desktop from the other open Explorer windows in two different explorer.exe processes (that you see in task manager). This comes handy when one of them crashes.

HowTo: Go to any Windows Explorer (say my computer), Alt+T  > Tools > Folder Options > View > “Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process”.

windows-7-explorer-crash

If you look more closely, its something that powers Google Chrome browser, new process for every Tab. Instead, there are just two processes. Of course it would be slightly more CPU intensive, but that’s definitely worth it.

Control Windows 7 with Kinect

Xbox Kinect is the ultimate hack machine, and that’s it the most popular gadget of the year 2010. Kinect has often been hacked to work with a large number of hobby electronics to attain Gesture based control for systems. It has been hacked to control Widnows  7 PC a number of times, but it was never done and sold like a regular software bundle.

 

Microsoft MCTS Certification, MCITP Certification and over 2000+ Exams at Actualkey.com


Win&I is the first fully useful commercial software that let’s you control your windows 7 PC with a Kinect controller using gestures alone.

You can control Windows 7 and thousands of applications with this natural user interface. WIN&I software replaces the computer mouse by tracking simple gestures from users up to several meters from the screen using the power of the Kinect depth-sensor.

You just have to Connect your Kinect with your PC and run the WIN&I control session to control windows 7, And leave the rest for Kinect to manipulate.

Android tablet on the cheap: Acer Iconia A500 is the XOOM “Light”

Acer’s Iconia A500 tablet features the same exact hardware specifications as Motorola’s XOOM, but with half the flash storage and $150 cheaper.

Back in early March, I proposed that Motorola create a new SKU for their XOOM tablet with a slightly reduced feature set, which I tentatively called the “XOOM Light”.

 

 



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If you don’t remember the piece, here’s the crux of the argument:

If iSuppli’s BOM is to be believed to be within striking range of actual component costs, then Motorola can shave anywhere between 50 and 60 dollars off their manufacturing cost on the XOOM by slicing the flash storage in half to 16GB and going with less expensive camera parts, putting it closer on par with Apple’s iPad 2. This would allow the XOOM to retail for about $50-$80 less than the entry-level iPad 2, depending on how close the company wants to cut their margins.

The only way XOOM is going to be a repeat hit for Motorola Mobility in the same way the Droid was for their handset business is to undercut the iPad 2 on price. With a lower price and a similar feature set to the iPad 2, a large segment of consumers might be willing to overlook some of the shortcomings on Android 3’s current tablet app gap.

While this plea seems to be falling on deaf ears at Motorola, apparently this idea resonated with one of its competitors, the Taiwanese-based PC giant Acer, Inc.

Today the company along with channel partner Best Buy announced pre-orders for its Android 3-based iPad competitor, the Iconia A500, which has nearly identical specifications to the Wi-Fi only version of the Motorola XOOM.

See: Motorola XOOM Specifications

See: Acer Iconia A500 Specifications

The only significant difference? 16GB of flash memory instead of 32GB which lines up with the entry-level Wi-Fi iPad quite nicely. At $450.00, the 10.1″ tablet device costs $50 less than the entry-level iPad 2, and is $140-$150 less than the XOOM.

It seems that Acer didn’t even need to sacrifice the camera capabilities to make up for component costs on the BOM in order to compete with the iPad 2. It also has identically-specced 2MP front-facing and 5MP, LED flash rear-facing cameras as the XOOM.

In addition to identical SoC and PoP, memory, RAM, GPU, screen, cameras and ports, the device is also the same thickness of the XOOM, at 12.9mm, roughly half an inch.

Note to all Android and other would-be tablet manufacturers: The bar for 10.1″ full size, 16GB devices that are not carrier locked has now been lowered to $450.00. That means anything in the tablet market that is not Apple needs to cost this much or less, with similar specifications.

Oh and HP, regarding your WebOS 3 TouchPad, I’m also talking to you.

Today I pre-ordered one of the Iconia A500 devices, sight unseen. If it’s anywhere near as good a device as the XOOM as far as build quality is concerned, I’m willing to put up with some of the current shortcomings in Android 3 in order to keep a test Honeycomb device in house.

I’m not advocating that most consumers look at this device in lieu of the superior application ecosystem on the iPad 2, but this price point was enough for me to take action to meet my immediate requirements. For the same reason, Android developers will probably jump at the opportunity to buy one of these devices as well.

The question now remains of how Android 3 devices can actually differentiate at the $450.00 price point, and if it’s even possible to lower that price bar any further. I think the price bar can be lowered, but there’s only one company who I believe can accomplish this: Amazon.

As I mentioned in my November 2010 piece “Kindle’s Secret Sibling: Amazon’s Android Tablet” it is my belief that the online retailer and bookseller has a definitive plan to release such a device.

What the exact specs for this device are is left to the imagination and may be pure speculation, but certainly if you eliminate the need for Google licensing of the Android OS and the Android Market along with Google’s apps, replacing them with Amazon monetizing equivalents, the price of a similarly-specced tablet could easily be reduced another $50-$80.

An Amazon Android tablet using the Open Source, unlicensed version of Honeycomb, combined with Amazon Appstore for Android,  Kindle for Android, the Amazon MP3 service as well as Amazon Video and Amazon Cloud Player makes for a near-complete tablet OS and application stack, which would allow the company to monetize their properties on the device and take the “Give away the razor but sell the blades” approach.

All of this is dependent, of course, on Google actually releasing the source code to Honeycomb outside of their approved vendors list, a delay which currently has the Open Source community absolutely livid.

The only thing that would actually be missing from such a theoretical device is a native Android mail client to talk to GMail, Hotmail and other services including corporate Exchange email, along with the appropriate calendar sync services, mapping and integrated search engine apps.

Presumably the missing pieces could be coded in-house by Amazon, or purchased/licensed from a 3rd-party. I could certainly see Amazon partnering with someone like Microsoft to provide Bing search and mapping in lieu of Google, as well as a full license of Activesync and native Exchange client.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that Acer has just brought prices for iPad 2 competitors down to much more realistic and acceptable levels. Whether it will plunge any further in the immediate future remains to be seen.

Has Acer re-defined the pricing for the full-sized Android tablet space? Talk Back and Let Me Know.