Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 previewed by Engadget

As promised by Microsoft, Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 has been made available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers today and hopefully be available to the general public on 5th of May. Immediately upon it's availability, the guys at Engadget.com managed to post impressions, insights, and expectations of the most eagerly anticipated OS from Microsoft. They seem pretty impressed with the latest build and hope the new OS will address all the shortcomings and disappointments of Vista. According to Engadget, "this is a valiant effort from Microsoft and it shows that the company does understand it's burned some bridges throughout the last three years -- this is a big step for them both in technique and tone, and that's certainly not lost on us". Hit on the read link for the full preview and more pictures on Engadget.

Read - Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 impressions, insights, and expectations

Sixteen months of recession coming to an end?

OK, this is not tech related, but I thought I should share it with everybody. President Barack Obama's economic adviser Lawrence Summers , in a recent interview has stated that, "The sense of "unremitting freefall" in the U.S. economy has ended and the picture is no longer completely negative, but rather mixed". He has also stated that several banks in the U.S are well capitalized and the negotiations between Chrysler and Italian car maker Fiat would hopefully work out. "There are some negative indicators, to be sure. There are also some positive indicators. And no one knows what the next turn will be, but I think that sense of unremitting freefall that we had a month or two ago is not present today. And that's something we can take some encouragement from", he said. However he doesn't wants us to get our hopes too high by stating that, "We've got a long way to go. There are still serious problems in this economy". What does this all means to us? I agree that one man's thought cannot guarantee anything, but however it does provides a little "hope" for those who are badly in need of it! Hit on the read link for the full article from Reuters.com.

Read - Summers says U.S. economy's freefall has ended

Microsoft profits decline for the first time

In the battle between the Economy and the Tech Industries, looks like even the biggest warrior like Microsoft could not avoid the inevitable. With the sales of PCs steadily declining, it's very clear that Microsoft's profit should have also declined. What's shocking is that Microsoft has never seen a decline in profit for the past 23 years since it's establishment. That's right, for the first time in 23 years, Microsoft has posted a drop in sales and revenue. According to the press release, "Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.65 billion for the third quarter ended March 31, 2009, a 6% decline from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $4.44 billion, $2.98 billion and $0.33 per share, which represented an increase of 3% and declines of 32% and 30%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period". But Microsoft was aware of this result and several initiatives were carried out to handle the situation which includes a plan to reduce up to 5,000 positions. However, with it's upcoming products like Windows 7, Office 2010, Windows Mobile 7, Surface, etc, Microsoft is looking very strong to compete and gain in the industry. Hit on the read link for the official press release.

Read - Microsoft Reports Third-Quarter Results

Orcale acquires Sun Microsystems

It's a well known fact that IBM was trying to acquire Sun Microsystems and the negotiation failed due to resistance by Sun's board. Initially I was disappointed when IBM walked off on the SUN offer. I had a feeling that SUN's situation is going to end up like Yahoo. But after this news, I believe everyone in the tech industry should be shocked. If IBM really did acquire SUN, it would have only made an already strong company much more stronger. But now that Oracle has acquired SUN, things are going to be pretty interesting with a new competitor in the Server market. And the future of Java, Solaris and MySQL? Now that's going to be really interesting! According to the press release, "They have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt". Oracle has promised continued innovation and investment in both Java and Solaris, but the future of MySQL is still uncertain. Hit on the read link for the full official press release.

Read - Oracle Buys Sun

Ubuntu 9.04 now ready for download

For those who are unaware, Ubuntu is a Debian derived operating system based on GNU/Linux which provides an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on usability and ease of installation. Ubuntu has been rated as the most popular Linux distribution for the desktop. Since the product is Open Source, Ubuntu costs nothing to download or update. And now, the latest version of this famous OS is now ready and waiting for you to be downloaded. According to the press release, Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements such as boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment, suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation, intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments and so on. Ubuntu 9.04 also features OpenOffice 3.0 which gives users a complete office suite that is entirely compatible with Microsoft Office. Hit on the download link to download and test drive the greatest Linux based OS ever built.

Read - Official Ubuntu download page

Bluetooth 3.0 +HS specification officially announced

Bluetooth should have been very irritating for most of us with it's slow transfer speeds for the past 9 years since its introduction. Have you ever wished why can't files be transferred at blazing speeds similar to USB? Well, after almost a decade, Bluetooth is finally getting the upgrade what we always hoped for. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) on it's All Hands Meeting held on Tokyo this week, announced the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 3.0 High Speed (HS), or Bluetooth 3.0. According to the press release, "The inclusion of the 802.11 Protocol Adaptation Layer (PAL) provides increased throughput of data transfers at the approximate rate of 24 Mbps". Now that's a huge leap over the first generation and even the preceding 2.1 + EDR version. But don't get your hopes too high, according to the press release, "The Bluetooth SIG’s formal adoption of the specification is only the first step in the product lifecycle.........End products for consumers are expected to be in the market in 9 to 12 months" . Hit on the read link for the full press release.

Read - Bluetooth technology gets faster with Bluetooth 3.0

Google announces two new features

Looks like the engineers at the Google Labs never rest. Yesterday, they announced two new experimental features: Similar Images and Google News Timeline. Similar Images is an additional feature to the Google Image search, using which the user can now find images that look like an existing result simply by clicking on a link. Using visual similarity, you don't have to refine the text of your search, instead, you can just click the "Similar images" link to see more like it. This feature should be very useful to find the right image if you can't describe it in words.

The other new feature is called Google News Timeline. This feature simply organizes many different types of search results on a zoomable, graphical timeline. Though this may sound simple, it is very useful when you have to view your search results based on a timeline. Results from many caegories can be combined together such as, Google News, including headlines, quotes, photos from our Hosted News partners, YouTube partner videos, thousands of archival newspapers and magazines from Google News Archive Search and Google Book Search, blog search results, sports scores, information about books, music, movies, tv shows, video games, and even artists, to see how they've appeared over time. Hit on the read link for the post on "The Official Google Blog".

Read - Hard at play in Google Labs

LG's Viewty Smart, officially announced

LG's Viewty Smart is the successor to LG's most successful smartphone of all time, the Viewty. Measuring only 12.4 mm deep, Viewty smart is improved in every major area when compared with the original Viewty. The phone packs in an 8 megapixel sensor with sensitivity up to ISO 1600, 3-inch WVGA touch screen with 800 x 480 resolution, a more intelligent image processor and LG’s easy-to-use S-Class User Interface (UI). Viewty Smart adds several new camera features including Multi-Face Detection and DVD-quality D1 video recording. Other features include 7.2 Mbps HSDPA network and Wi-Fi compatibility, A-GPS based geotagging, 1.5 GB of internal memory or MicroSD cards support up to 32 GB. Both the design and specs seems to be pretty impressive. Looks like LG has created a worthy successor to the original Viewty. Check out the links below for the official press release and the demonstration video.

Read - LG's Viewty is Back and Better than Ever (Press Release)
View - LG's Viewty Smart demonstration video (YouTube.com)

Nokia E75 gets reviewed

GSMArena has posted a review of Nokia's latest E-series QWERTY slider, the E75. Design wise, the reviewers did not like the glossy plastic but i personally feel it makes the device look attractive. The slide-sliding QWERTY keypad seems to be comfortable and secure to use. Apart from the QWERTY slide out design, the reviewers feel that E75 is in no way different than the stunning Nokia E71. Though the pone features a few additional features like VGA video recording at 30FPS and 3.5mm standard audio jack, the phone could not convince the reviewers to recommend it as an upgrade to E75 but they did conclude it as the best alternative to consider. The only other phone compared in the review was HTC S740 which runs Windows Mobile which is identical to E75 in many ways except the OS. So which one is it going to be? E71 or E75 or HTC S740? Hit on the link for the full review and decide for yourself.

Read - Nokia E75 review (GSMArena.com)
Read - Nokia E75 Official Page (Nokia.com)

Surprising Q1 Results from various companies

It's April and therefore all those big players in the Tech industry are posting their Q1 results. Surprisingly, even despite the weak economy, many companies have posted a not so bad result and this recent data have provided faint hope of a comeback. That is some relieving news for Tech professionals across the globe, however economists say a recovery is probably still months away and high unemployment would stretch well into 2010. No matter what those economists say, I believe we all should be optimistic and hope all these will be over very soon. A small highlight of the Q1 results of a few companies:

• Sony Ericsson posted a pretax loss of 358 million euros in the first quarter, excluding restructuring charges, on Friday and said it would slash a further 2,000 jobs this year.

• Google reported revenues of $5.51 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a decrease of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.

• Nokia posted revenues in sales was 9.27 billion for the first quarter when compared with 12.66 billion euros in 2008.

• Intel has reported that it's revenue was $7.1 billion, down 26% from 2008. Its net profit for the quarter was $647 million, down 55% from last year.

• LG posted a net loss of 255 billion won ($191.1 million) for the first quarter ended March 31, from a net profit of 717 billion won a year earlier.

Kyocera unveils folding OLED mobile phone

Kyocera Corporation, a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan, was showing off a flexible folding phone concept at CTIA Wireless 2009 event. The device is pretty impressive with a lot of innovations. It can be folded to be used as a small wallet sized phone(pictured above) or it can be unfolded to reveal a widescreen display. The device incorporates "Shape Memory" which allows keys to morph up from its surface when needed and fade away when not in use. The device also has the capability to transform kinetic energy into electric energy which means, the more we use the device, the more we can use it without batteries. The device is still in early stages of development and the design teams are working hard on the possibilities of infusing some of the concept ideas into their near future lineup of phones and devices. Hit on the Read link for more images of the device.

Read

Microsoft announces it's next wave of Office products

Microsoft's Office 2007 which was made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007, is the industry leading document and productivity suite. While continuously facing the competition from Google Docs, Sun's OpenOffice and a few others, Microsoft yesterday announced its plans for their next version of Office productivity suite named as Office 2010. In an exclusive Q&A, Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Information Worker Product Management Group, shared the details about the upcoming release of Microsoft Exchange Server, Office, SharePoint Server, Visio and Project. According to him, Exchange 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009, Office 2010 including Office Web applications, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010. Many new features are expected to be added to the already feature rich Office productivity suite including, a Google Docs like web version, web based Exchange and more. Hit the read link below for the Q&A.

Read

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my new blog. Here i'll try to post as many useful news I come across the web. Mostly tech related. I welcome everybody to share their knowledge and give me suggestions.