UK newspaper, The Register sources close to Microsoft, this week confirmed the rumors that circulated during the month of June where customer’s data were being striped between the pair. By the process of striping, the data accessing speed is increased and there is no need to rely on a single device or service. Sources say, that, in order to reduce the risk of depending on one single supplier, Apple has selected two providers since it already suffered from unpleasant online services from a single external service provider. It has to be noted that the level of maturity and services differ a lot when a comparison is done between Amazon and Microsoft.

A cost of approximately $1 billion would be required to build the infrastructure of cloud services. At present, Apple doesn’t have a bunch of high speed and high density servers. However, with a massive data center under construction in North Carolina, that is worth $500 million, a part of the cloud service could be taken over here. Still it surprises me, why Amazon and Microsoft are apparently mum on this subject.

In the present scenario, Apple’s technology is not well suited for a cloud type system. It is flexibility and provisioning that separates ‘Cloud’ from a just of bunch of servers. For instance, if you take a normal server host, you can get a server in a fairly short order, in case you need a bunch, you’ll have to wait for some time till the hardwares are ordered and you have to pay regardless of usage. With Amazon’s Elastic Cloud server is available in minutes and you have the option to pay more based on usage since idle resources don’t have to take up resources. Now, this is possible because it is all virtual.

They may even fix it since there was a time when they liked AIX or they may even build a data centre with someone else`s technology. This will take a lot of time and only Microsoft and Amazon are the big ones which can deliver it. So, this can be a reason for them to use Microsoft and Amazon.

Another possibility is that using AWS and Azure, they can develop a CDN (content-delivery network) since it has already used Akamai and Limelight as CDN’s in the past. This allows developers to deliver high-bandwidth content more quickly and efficiently by placing delivery points closer to users; this will essentially speed up all sorts of data transfer that go through their CDN.

When Microsoft was questioned regarding this, they replied stating that they don’t reveal the customer details. But, when it comes to ‘Cloud’ privacy is always in question. Sometimes, it baffles me where I think that since Apple runs on beta version currently and the service appears to only run in iMessage on Azure; is Apple still deciding its host platform?

Let us know, if you think differently.

The news site is smarter when compared to the RSS reader. The news is refreshed for every 60 seconds. Comunitee has promised a writer regarding this. The greatest advantage in this site is, that, there is no need to connect to a Twitter or Facebook account to share what you read. The site quotes, “Click follow, share and tweet for every story you find interesting. Oh, yeah, we don’t choose new topics for you. Your news is always your news“.

Backed by $170K in angel funding and led by serial entrepreneur Dan Daszkowiski, who founded BusinessMart, Inc told VatorNews, that, he is not looking forward to replace Facebook and Twitter. He insisted on news that gets directly into real-time and people can people can be additionally influenced by others who have similar interests. Though it is available on your web browser right now, the site has planned for the launch of a mobile web application in the HTML5 version in the coming months. At present, the New York based company is looking into ways so that it allows users to import their RSS feeds in such a manner that the users of future will solely depend on Comunitee for the pleasure of reading.

Comunitee is unique because of three reasons, which are -

• Explore, discover and share specific topics which people have as their common interest.
• The site is organic. That is the news that you care is brought to you. The more you read and add people you add, there is a fine-tune of search that takes place.
• The non-intrusive nature where in there is no need to pause the reading in order to vote or check five to six social media buttons, the site lets you to read news in real-time and there is no need to be dependant on friends to share the information you read.

Daszkowiski has always been obsessed with the thought of changing the way the way people consume news. To make online news, he says it has to be -

• Less fragmented
• More fun
• More social
• Less work for the user

Consolidating everything Comunitee has been developed with organization like the Google+ circles and frictionless sharing. Though some feel that this site is similar to StumbleUpon where the content is organized based on your taste.

Though the concept is interesting, the different aspects of social web may make it more complicated. Let us know, what you think!

Let us check the new changes brought in to convert YouTube into a more user friendly online media -

The new changes termed as mini makeover deliver first change in the form of appearance of a ‘new video end screen’ which flashes at the end of the current playing video. The improvised playlist bar comes with back and forward buttons of large size and will also display a video of large size. The new design will let you explore new videos in an effortless manner by removing earlier hiccups. Now, you will be able to find most sought after videos like ‘Do it yourself’, ‘how to’, etc. by using various filters and categories.

Another interesting feature is that users will be more hands on at video editing. The cloud based “WeVideo” allows you explore more options to fine tune your videos. Updated video charts page lets you keep track with the latest and most popular videos. The new feature will let you discover the top rated videos of all time. You can also find videos which got more user hits by month-wise, week-wise and day-wise. You can also find the videos that are hot in discussion and being shared at a rapid pace. Those who are serious in promoting their products or services can get an insight of the performance of videos in niche categories. This will help prospective YouTube promoters to come out with a most suitable video presentation that can be a sure bet for success.

As YouTube’s popularity is spreading globally, YouTube takes forward this revolution by extending its hands in the form of localization of its service. With the current new addition of Kenya, Philippines and Singapore; YouTube’s localization expands to 35 countries. Location based service lets users find the most popular videos in their region or country by opting for the required location which is located at the bottom of the YouTube page. Localization takes new heights with the inclusion of 51 vernacular languages in which the YouTube interface will appear.

The “Smart Subscribe Button” will let you subscribe to the video channel that you are watching. The button will appear automatically on the YouTube page prompting you to subscribe for the service if you are not yet subscribed.

Ever since Google’s Buzz has died down because of its failure to match up to Facebook and Twitter, Google has been scratching its forehead, trying to come up with something that will still elevate its status in the networking world. The +1 button lets users ‘like’ the website they have searched for or followed links to, and recommend it to those in their social circle. Website operators can add +1 buttons to their own sites and partner with Google to increase their visibility. Programmer Evan Gilbert in his blog post writes, “With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article, or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts, and the rest of the world. The next time your connections search, they could see your +1′s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful“.

Google has partnered with Add This, Mashable, The Huffington Post, Rotten Tomatoes, Nordstrom, O’Reilly, Reuters, The Washington Post, Best Buy, Tech Crunch, Bloomberg et al. It has also launched +1 buttons on Androids, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube. With just one click on the +1 you can recommend that jacket, that bag or that zippo lighter or even movies, contacts to the rest of the world or your own community. The next time your social circle searches something on Google, they will see your +1’s directly in their search results, letting them know what is recommended.

The button is available if you activate it. You can enable the +1 button for your account via the Experiments Page. Now along with the Facebook and Twitter links on every page, there will be +1 links as well. Thus adding to Google’s image and including a familiar figure for the users. Writing on the Google blog, Product Manager Rob Spiro said the new facility would be beneficial to web users, as it would be directly relevant to their specific search requirements at any given time.

“You get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results)“, he explained. Google is also planning to extend the service to news publishers so that they can integrate +1 on story pages.

With the ever developing social networking world, it is not surprising that Google has joined the race and woken up from its slumber. The success of this button will depend on its ability to match up to the popularity of Facebook ‘like’, but it is certainly a step in the positive direction.

I so wish you could have +1′ed this post now !!

The following are a series of tips to keep in mind when you are choosing a web hosting solution:

Amount of Space

Although quality is very important, the amount of space is also essential. The best hosting is one that will provide you with significant space so that your website can be accommodated. There are numerous companies that provide unlimited disk space, unlimited hard disk, and unlimited bandwidth for a price of no more than $10 per month. This is particularly important when the traffic that visits the site increases over time.

FTP Access

The best hosting solution will permit you to have access to your website via FTP with a FTP client application or a FTP manager.

Speed of the Site

The world is quickly becoming increasingly advanced and individuals who visit websites do not want to wait for pages to load. Additionally, search engines will also consider the speed of the site when they are ranking websites. The host should ensure that your site moves as fast as it can and has very little downtime.

Control Panel

Many people do not consider this when they are choosing a web host. However, a good control panel which is web-based will allow users to login as well as check numerous aspects of their site including mail and statistics along with any number of other factors. This is particularly essential for people you are new to being webmasters.

Customer Support

This is particularly important if you are new to running a website. More likely than not, you will eventually run into problems or difficulties with your site that you will need help to fix. If you are unable to troubleshoot the issue yourself, the web hosting company will need to examine the problem and determine the appropriate solution. The best hosting company will be one that will provide you with customer service and support 24 hours a day and will fix the solution within no more than a day of the incident.

Before you sign up for a company, try sending an email or two to the support contact email. See how quickly they answer and how helpful they are. Try to determine their level of technical proficiency as well.

Avoid Companies that Oversell

Although it is tempting to choose a site that provides a large amount of disk space, bandwidth, as well as unlimited domains, this is not always the best choice. This is particularly true when the company attempts to sell these features for a very small price. As is the case with other things, you get what you pay for. So, if it seems like it is too good to be true, it probably is. These companies are often unable to keep up with customer support as well as the quality of their service.

Don’t Underpay

If you want to start and maintain a serious blog or website, you should certainly invest the necessary money to do so with a good hosting option. Although it might not be necessary to possess a dedicated server at the beginning, you should consider this option particularly if you expect or are receiving a lot of traffic to your site.

If you are currently searching for a web host that will fulfill all of your needs, the above are certainly great starting points for choosing the best option.

LinkedIn is the sole network that is making a name for itself in showing up as one of the first search results when you look for a person. Obviously, if you want to be discovered, you need to stay at the top of the search game. And this is why, I elaborate below, on five new additions to LinkedIn that are a must know if you wish to jump on the business networking bandwagon.

1. Go Visual – Yes, literally. LinkedIn now comes with a new option to upload a video. Have a skill you can show off? Want people to notice you? Want to be a model? Whatever may be the reason, one cannot understate the power of video-blogging (Vlog as nerds call it). To get you started, here’s a short tutorial on VideoBlog to learn how to get noticed.

2. Get Recommended – It sure helps to show off, when others can speak for how you are good at what you do. Anyone, within your network who thinks that you are a genius (or somewhere close to it) can now tell it to others by having them recommended on your profile. Them not being within your network is not a worry. Now, you can add a link to your webpage and have people recommend your services or products or anything you have that people are crazy about.

3. Add Value by using Blogspot – Now, you can let your followers know more about you or your company by directly writing blog posts in your profile. LinkedIn comes with a complete set of useful tools and statistical parameters. So each time you write a post, it shows up in your Overview page. And every time anyone visits the blog to read it, the analytics will let you know the traffic you have had to your page, as well as the clicks on your links, what people visit your profile often and which companies are interested in what you write. A great example of this is the L’Oreal page on LinkedIn.

4. Share Ideas – LinkedIn comes with an option to put a share button (ala Facebook) on blogs, posts, websites and anything that can embed HTML tags. So each time you think it’s worth sharing, you can share it on LinkedIn. And while a ‘Facebook Share’ lets your friends know, sharing on LinkedIn gives an added dimension to your profile without compromising on the professional touch.

5. InMaps – What if you could visualize how many people you know and where they are situated in a graphical manner? Cool, isn’t it? The InMaps feature now makes a very rich visual representation of your contacts in the form of groups and clusters, and also shows how your contacts are connected to each other. Best of all, you can share these Maps wherever you like.

Therefore, if you still don’t have a linkedin profile, it’s high time you get linked !!

Let us understand a little more on why one needs to own a mobile website. Firstly, mobile sites are very user-friendly and especially made for those mobile users who are always on the lookout for quick, fast and easy information. A website that is designed for mobile phones loads in 4 seconds which is far better than on a personal computer which easily takes more than 40 seconds sometimes. You have a few reasons why you need to go mobile as far as your site is concerned; now it is time to understand why Mofuse is a good platform to launch your mobile website. Here are some good reasons -

Prolific Brand Experience – With Mofuse, it is pretty much the user who takes control and care of the brand experience. Users do not need to worry about the plentiful mobile browsers to decide on the fate of his/ her site. The fate of a user’s site is in the combined hands of Mofuse and the user.

Once built, Used by many – Once the mobile site is built using Mofuse, as many as 5000 mobile devices will be able to access the site, given that Mofuse has such a large reach in terms of the number of mobile devices that can access Mofuse sites.

You manage your own Site – With regard to Mofuse, it is the user who will be the site manager with absolutely zero help rendered from a techie or a 3^rd party. All the interfaces are wizard driven and you just need to put in information in the right place to start creating and configuring your site.

Revenue Generation – Not only does one get better reach and quicker website loading, users also get to make easy money through web advertisements and sponsorships.

Apart from these amazing feature-led benefits, users are also endowed with an extremely simple way of registering and then launching their own website. All the user needs to do for registration is fill out a simple form, which by the way does not expect the credit card details to be fed, but then it would only be a free trial for about 14 days. The next step involves a simple input of the website details that the user wishes to go mobile with and then launch the website onto mobile phones. That is seriously very simple!

If one needs to upgrade the account, he/ she can do so by paying in the requisite amount and choose from a range of accounts. There are accounts are utlized for personal use and accounts for smaller businesses and large corporations as well. There would obviously be relevant number of features on provision to users based on the type of account he/she chooses. But the standard feature-led tabs that one can gain access to with their free trial include the account settings, launching of the website and a QR code management facility.

Well, this surely is quite a good bargain to launch your website on a mobile phone. However, Mofuse needs to see that there is more information furnished for users that can be easily accessed on how to use this service. Though the free trial is a fantastic promo option, there needs to be a little more done on eliciting people to use the service.

Instead of just getting the Google Suggest when you type in, you start getting search results which keep changing as you keep typing in your search query. It seems like a fast way to search, not to mention, the increase in adviews for Google, because even the ads change as you keep typing. Does it look like an irritating feature? Sites like LifeHacker has already given out instructions on how to disable it.

According to their blog post, here’s what Google says are the key features Google Instant.

• Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Don’t rush to check this out just as yet, they’re in the process of rolling this out and initially only signed in users from France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. using Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8 will see this new feature. For the unfortunate others like us, we get to watch videos like the one below to see how the search of the future will be.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Turn Off Google Instant Search [Google] (lifehacker.com)
• Three Tips on Using Google Instant (gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com)

• Detects Cross Site Scripting attacks (XSS)
• Detects Hidden Directories and Backup Files
• Looks for Known Security Vulnerabilities
• Searches for SQL Injection Vulnerabilities
• Automatically detects zero day bugs
• Performs Website Fingerprinting

Once the service finishes scanning your site for issues and vulnerabilities, it emails you a PDF with what they found for your site.

In order to prevent sensitive security reports like this going out to others, ZeroDay scan asks you to add a text file with some security text to be added to your site. This ensures you can scan only sites which you have control over.

Check out this service at www.zerodayscan.com

When you get a prepaid connection from BSNL, their initial 120 topup gives 25 MB download free. The call rates also seed reasonable. I was pretty impressed with the speeds I got on the mobile. Here’s the screenshot of the speed test on the N900′s browser:

That’s pretty decent speeds for general surfing, VOIP calls, and IM. Even Skype calls go through without any major breaks in the call. This kind of speeds after the ultra slow Edge speeds on Airtel GPRS was mindblowing.

Now the free usage was coming towards it’s end, and I had to look for ways to top up the balance.  After surfing around the unintuitive BSNL portal, I found that their portal shows data plans for prepaid and postpaid over at http://karnataka.bsnl.co.in/3G/dataplans.htm.

First stop’s their dealer

The dealer I got the connection from had no clue about how to get this done. The BSNL rep who was at the shop also was clueless about 3G data plans. He asked me to call the customer care folks to find out the details.

2nd stop: Customer Care Number

Customer care on the other end just want to end the call as fast as possible. The first time I called customer care, the person hardly heard what I was asking for and told me some instructions to get Blackberry service on the mobile and dropped the line. The next call I got through asked me to SMS some text to a number. When I did so, I just got a reply message that the option I messaged was wrong!

Still getting no where!

I searched for other dealers on the way to office and dropped into one more place – they too were clueless about the 3G data recharge. Next stop, Customer Service centres. I hunted and found their CSC locations and phone numbers from their site. I tried the two locations closest to me, and tried calling up to find how to reach there. No replies on the numbers listed on the site!

Recharge online?

They advertise that you can recharge online on their portal portal.bsnl.in. Well you can, if you have the patience for the site to load up. My luck’s been so good this far, that when I try logging to recharge, I never get past the login screen. Luckily I found another service to recharge my talktime balance for BSNL. Unfortunately, neither BSNL or other recharge portals I’ve checked out, provide data recharges for BSNL’s 3G serviceUnfortunately the other recharge portals I’ve checked out don’t provide data recharges for BSNL’s 3G service.

Update: I did check out the BSNL portal after reading a comment from Uday, using Internet Explorer, the site did go through and I did see a data top-up option. But the payment options don’t include a credit card, you’ll need an account from one of the National Banks to pay on the site. The banks I have accounts in don’t seem to be on the list there.

I still have yet to get the data plan top-up done. If any of you know how to get this done, and a CSC/dealer where the people know how to do this, do let me know by commenting below!  BSNL’s service is good while it runs, when you need help, you’re on your own. Their service is like a do-it-yourself kit where the instructions are missing.

Just got an email from Amazon with their announcement of the beta release of the AWS Management Console. This helps users manage their EC2 resources though an easy to use web interface. No more third party browser addons and custom code to check the status of EC2 instances and playing around with Elastic IPs and EBS. I’m sure everyone’s been waiting a long time for this move from Amazon.

Their new interface is quite a help in getting the regular chores done and taking a look at the current activities on EC2. Here’s how the screen looks when you log in (click on the image for a larger version):

Looks like I’ll be using ElasticFox less after getting used to this clean interface. Here’s what you can do with this version of the console:

• AMI Management: browse and search AMIs, launch instances from AMIs, deregister and register AMIs
• Instance Management: launch, reboot, terminate, get console output, RDP/SSH help, etc.
• Security Group Management: create and delete security groups, add and remove permissions, configure firewall settings, open and close ports
• Elastic IP Management: create and release IP Addresses, associate IPs to instances
• Elastic Block Store: create, delete, attach and detach volumes. Take snapshots and manage snapshots.
• Key Pair management: create and delete public/private key pairs.

Though this initial version does provide all the basic interfaces for managing EC2, Amazon’s got a lot planned out for the AWS Management Console. Here’s what’s coming up in the future:

• Tagging – Label and group Amazon EC2 resources with your own custom metadata to make it easier to identify and manage your instances, volumes, and other EC2 resources.
• Monitoring, Load Balancing and Auto-scaling – View real-time monitoring of operational metrics within Amazon EC2, configure load balancing and auto-scaling rules through a web-based UI.
• Amazon S3 Support – Create and delete Amazon S3 buckets, upload and download objects through your browser, edit permissions, set log data, and manage URLs.
• Amazon SimpleDB Support – Construct SimpleDB queries through a point-and-click query expression builder and explore your data through a graphical dataset viewer.
• Amazon SQS Support – Manage your SQS queues, add and retrieve messages from you queues, test and build your applications with help from the AWS Management Console.
• CloudFront Support – Setup and administer content delivery distributions on Amazon CloudFront using a simple web-based tool on the AWS Management Console.

Links:

AWS Console
Amazon Web Services Blog: Manage Amazon EC2 With New Web-Based AWS Management Console

Looking for an easy way to provide social features on your site without having to go through all the hassels of creating login scripts and member databases? Google Friend Connect allows you to do that in a few simple steps. Just signup for an account, upload 2 html files and embed a javascript for the gadget you’d like to use – as simple as that !

Visitors can sign in using their Google, Yahoo, AIM or Open ID accounts, which makes it easier to pull in more interactions without having them to register on your site. Currently Friend Connect provides a few gadgets like the Wall and Review & Rate. You can also create custom gadgets if you’re up to it.

The Wall and Review gadgets can also be set in moderation mode where you get to choose what goes up on the site and delete unwanted posts.

Link: Google Friend Connect