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Thursday, December 16, 2010

How much is your website worth?

BIZ Information
This is a free web-based valuation service, providing website information, visitor statistics and an estimated website value. Just enter a domain name into the box to view a full report. It tries best to provide accurate information, but this is not always guaranteed. Further research and confirmation of details is required.
According to BIZ Information

  • google.com.np -- Rs. 12.65 Million
  • ekantipur.com -- Rs. 4.22 Million
  • roshanbh.com.np -- Rs. 4.02 Million
  • nepalinews.com -- Rs. 2.80 Million
  • myrepublic.com -- Rs. 1.66 Million
  • cybersansar.com --Rs. 1.50 Million
  • ntc.net.np -- Rs. 1.29 Million
  • thehimalayantimes.com -- Rs. 1.18 Million
  • explorehimalaya.com -- Rs. 800,946.61
  • thikthak.com -- Rs. 694,596.84
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 1:51 PM 1 comments

Monday, November 29, 2010

Top Sites in Nepal


The sites in the top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month alexa traffic rank.
The 1 month rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

Posted by DigiT SanSar at 5:42 PM 0 comments
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Friday, October 15, 2010

America's Youngest Billionaires

Facebook catapults three 20-somethings onto the list, but the youngest isn't who you think it is.

The Facebook phenomenon strikes again, this time helping catapult two new 20-somethings into the ranks of America's richest for the first time and bringing down the average age of America's richest ever so slightly to 65.7. Only eight American billionaires are under the age of 40, and three of them cofounded Facebook.
The youngest? It isn't who you think it is. The world's youngest billionaire is now 26-year-old Dustin Moskovitz, who is 8 days younger than his former Harvard roommate and Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg. The social-networking site's first chief technology officer, Moskovitz left in 2008 and started Asana, a software company that allows individuals and small companies to better collaborate. The company has attracted several of the same early backers as Facebook and may one day be worth something. For now, though, Forbes estimates Moskovitz's entire $1.4 billion fortune comes from his 6% stake in Facebook.
Zuckerberg may no longer reign as the youngest member of the Forbes 400, but he has bragging rights as the year's biggest percentage gainer; his net worth jumped to $6.9 billion, up from $2 billion, making him worth nearly five times as much as Moskovitz and more than even Apple's Steve Jobs.
The third Facebook cofounder among the ranks is 28-year-old Eduardo Saverin who once owned a one-third stake in Facebook. When Zuckerberg and Moskovitz quit school to relocate to California, Saverin stayed behind to graduate. A year later Facebook sued him; he countersued. The parties settled with Saverin apparently getting a 5% stake and a cofounder bio on Facebook's site. Don't feel bad. We estimate that share makes him worth $1.15 billion.
Technology, and in particular, the Internet has long been the best bet for getting rich at a young age. Bill Gates made his debut on the list in 1986 at age 30 with a net worth of $315 million. Michael Dell debuted at age 26; 19 years later, he is still among the list's 20 youngest. So too Yahoo's ( YHOO - news - people ) David Filo and Jerry Yang, who first made the ranks a dozen years ago. Indeed half of the 20 youngest America billionaires have made their fortunes in the tech industry, most via the Internet.
Outside the world of the Internet, young rich list members have been able to cash in from a few other industries such as finance and sports. Hedge fund manager John Arnold, 36, got his start as an oil trader for Enron in 1995. He is said to have earned $750 million for the company in 2001. When Enron collapsed a year later, he went into business for himself founding Centaurus, a hedge fund focusing mostly on natural gas, energy trading.

Five of the 20 youngest inherited their fortunes, including Scott Duncan, the only billionaire in his 20s who didn't strike it rich with Facebook. He and his siblings assumed control of the family's $12.4 billion pipeline empire after their father Dan Duncan's death last March.
Worth noting about this bunch is not simply how quickly they've made their money but how they are choosing to spend it, not so much on luxury homes or expensive toys but on causes about which they are passionate. Google's Larry Page is buying up chunks of residential Palo Alto for a network of houses that use new types of fuel cells, geothermal energy, and rainwater capture. He also rides a Zero X electric dirt bike and an electric sports car from Tesla Motors, in which he and Sergey Brin are investors. EBay's  Pierre Omidyar has donated to everything from a company that designs solar powered lanters to a political satire show in Kenya. Moskovitz gave $70,000 in support of Proposition 19, which is seeking to legalize marijuana in California in November. John Arnold has agreed to take the Giving Pledge, making the commitment to give the majority of his wealth to charity.
As for Zuckerberg, he still lives in a relatively modest rental home in Palo Alto, Calif. So what's he doing with his wealth? Not much so far, given that most of it is tied up in non-public shares of Facebook. Still, the 26-year-old announced on The Oprah Winfrey Show in September that he is giving away $100 million to Newark's schools. The gift is the largest philanthropic act by a person his age in American history.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 4:28 PM 0 comments
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Friday, September 24, 2010

Create Shutdown Virus - Fake and harmless virus

How To Make A Shutdown Virus   In this presentation you will learn how to make a virus joke to your friends and shut down their computer. Replace one of their used icons on the desktop with a fake one . And when they try to open it, their computer will close. 

== Code Details

@echo off
color 1a (Changes the colour)
echo (Displays a text)
echo: (leaves a line)
ping -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul (pings your localhost - nothing much)
shutdown.exe (shutdown) ==

Preparing the Virus

  1. Read and understand the warnings!
  2. Open Notepad in Windows. You can do this by navigating to Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad, or simply by entering "Notepad" under Start > Run.
  3. Copy and Paste the Code of the "virus" into Notepad.
  4. Click File > Save as.
  5. Decide for a location to save the virus. You should chose a location where the user won't find the file, so saving it on the desktop would be a bad idea!
  6. Change ".txt" to "All files" in the file type drop-down menu.
  7. Chose a harmless filename. Replace the ".txt" at the with ".bat"
  8. Click on save and close Notepad.

Making a fake Icon

Now that we have the virus saved, we should prepare a decoy:
  1. Right click on the desktop and go over to "new" then click "short cut".
  2. For the location of the short cut chose our Virus.
  3. Click next.
  4. Give the shortcut a name that your victim will click on. ("Music for free", "My Documents", "Critical Windows-Update" "Get Free Cinema-Tickets" or "Internet Explorer").
  5. Click on "Finish".
  6. Right click on the shortcut you have just made and chose "properties". Now click on the "chose icon" button and scroll through the list of icons.
  7. Decide for one of the icons that fits well to the name, chose it by clicking on it and hit OK twice.

Shock your Victim

This Website will harm you.It will infect your computer form Deadly Virus.
By : Virus Department 2010

Abort Shutdown-Countdown

Sometimes it might be necessary to stop the countdown before the computer shuts down. Here's how to do it:
  1. Open the start menu.
  2. Click Run
  3. Type "shutdown.exe -a"
  4. Or go to Run
  5. Type CMD
  6. And then type "shutdown -a" and press enter.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 9:40 AM 1 comments
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Monday, September 20, 2010

Facebook wannabe Diaspora hit on security issues

Testers of an early version of the source code say it's full of holes

The open-source project called Diaspora is being pitched as a secure and more privacy-friendly alternative to Facebook, but it is already running into early criticism over security issues by those who say they have tested it.

The team behind Diaspora this week released a pre-Alpha version of their source code on the open-source hosting site GitHub. The code is designed to spur development activity around the platform.
The code release was accompanied by a warning that it is by no means bug free. "We know there are security holes and bugs, and your data is not yet fully exportable," Diaspora said in announcing the Alpha release.
Even with that caveat, though, early reviewers have been unsparing in their criticism of Diaspora's security features -- or lack thereof.
"Basically, the code is really, really bad," Steve Klabnik, CTO of CloudFab, wrote in his blog. "I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but there are really, really bad security holes" in the code.
Diaspora was born earlier this year largely in response to privacy issues related to Facebook's data collection and usage practices. The effort is being spearheaded by four New York University students: Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy.
In the months since the effort began, it has attracted growing interest from Internet users and more than $200,000 in donations on sites such as Kickstarter. It has also received considerable attention from mainstream media such as the New York Times which ran a lengthy profile soon after Diaspora was launched.
The basic premise behind Diaspora is that it will allow users to have social networking functionality similar to that offered by Facebook, but with far greater control over personal data.
According to a description on the project's Web site, Diaspora will allow users to set up 'seeds' or personal servers, that they can use to store their personal data and share it directly with their friends instead of routing it through a centralized hub as with Facebook. "Friend another seed and the two of you can synchronize over a direct and secure connection instead of through a superfluous hub," the site says. "Our real social lives do not have central managers, and our virtual lives do not need them."
But initial reviews and comments on sites such as GitHub, Y-Combinator and Slashdot suggest that many are disappointed over the quality of the code released so far.
Klabnik himself described security errors in the code as the sort that a professional programmer would not make. In an interview, Klabnik said the sort of errors he discovered are of the sort that allows anyone to change another user's name, password, profile, images and other details easily. "There's nothing you can't do to someone else's account," he said.
While it's natural to expect some errors in pre-release code, the sort of flaws present in Diaspora, and the sheer number of them, is unusual, he said. "The whole point of this is Facebook doesn't protect privacy. If that's the goal, people have a reasonable expectation that this would be better."
Meanwhile, Patrick McKenzie, a blogger and software developer based in Japan, has been using Twitter to warn users to stay away from early versions of Diaspora because it is "screamingly unsafe." McKenzie said he has so far discovered at least five major vulnerabilities, with the first one found less than five minutes after he downloaded the source code.
The sort of security issues he discovered include cross-site scripting flaws, code injection vulnerabilities as well as authentication and authorization flaws. The fact that the code is freely available to anyone on the Internet means that many people will install and use it without being aware of the security issues, he said.
On GitHub, reviewers have so far raised more than 140 issues, several of them dealing with security concerns such as cross-site scripting errors and code-injection errors.
Diaspora did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment. However, the project has its share of supporters. Many of those commenting on the release of the Alpha code said that bugs being uncovered in code at this stage are not all that uncommon.
"This code was released to developers as an incomplete preview," cilantro said on Y-Combinator. "I'm not sure why people are holding it to the same standards as a finished product that's being released to end users. Seems like a pretext to talk trash."
Read more about Web 2.0 and Web Apps in Computerworld's Web 2.0 and Web Apps Topic Center.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 10:31 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, September 2, 2010

6 useful Wi-Fi tools for Windows

Free or cheap apps can help troubleshoot your wireless network, turn your laptop into a hot spot and more

We live in a mobile world; if you have a laptop (and who doesn't?), that means constantly connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi. You most likely use Wi-Fi not just when you're on the road at cafés, airports or hotels, but to connect to your home network too. You might even connect to a wireless network at the office. Here's the problem: Windows doesn't do a particularly good job of providing Wi-Fi tools. Yes, it will let you search for and connect to nearby networks, but that's about the extent of it. What if you want to get detailed information about every Wi-Fi network within range, troubleshoot your network, turn your laptop into a portable Wi-Fi hot spot or keep yourself safe at public hot spots? Windows is no help.
That's why we've rounded up these six downloads. They'll do all these things and more. Five out of the six are free; the other is inexpensive and lets you try it out first.

InSSIDer

MetaGeek's InSSIDer is a great tool for finding Wi-Fi networks within range of your computer and gathering a great deal of information about each. It's also useful for troubleshooting problems with your own Wi-Fi network.
For every Wi-Fi network InSSIDer finds, it shows you the MAC address of the router, the router manufacturer (if it can detect it -- it usually does), the channel it's using, the service set identifier (SSID) or public name of the network, what kind of security is in place, the speed of the network and more. In addition, it displays the current signal strength of the network, as well as its signal strength over time.
InSSIDer
InSSIDer finds a great deal of information about nearby wireless networks and reports on what it finds.
How would you use the software to troubleshoot your wireless network? If you see that your network uses the same channel as nearby networks with strong signals, you'll know that you should change the channel your network transmits over and thereby cut down on potential conflicts. (Most routers have a settings screen that lets you do this.)
You can also use the software to detect "dead zones" that don't get a strong Wi-Fi connection. Walk around your home or office with InSSIDer installed on your laptop to see where signal strength drops. You can either avoid using a computer in those spots or else try repositioning the wireless router to see if it helps with coverage.
Whether you need to troubleshoot a network or find Wi-Fi hot spots to which you want to connect -- or you're just plain curious -- this is one app you'll want to download and try.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32- and 64-bit)
Download InSSIDer

Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

This is another excellent program that sniffs out Wi-Fi networks and shares pertinent information about them, such as how close or far away they are. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector shows any nearby hot spots on a radar-like display. A separate pane offers detailed information about every hot spot it finds, including signal strength, the kind of network (802.11n, for example), the router vendor, the channel on which the network transmits and whether it's an access point or an ad hoc network.
In a pane next to the radar, Wi-Fi Inspector shows you even more detailed information about the network to which you're currently connected, including your internal IP address, external IP address, DNS and gateway information, and so on.
Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector
Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector uses a radar-like interface to show you information about nearby hot spots.
Why use Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector rather than MetaGeek's InSSIDer? Wi-Fi Inspector's simpler, cleaner layout makes it easier to see information about all of the hot spots at a glance. It also shows the relative physical distance between you and each hot spot on its display. And there's no denying the overall coolness factor of a radar-like display.
However, if you want more detailed information, including the relative signal strengths of all nearby wireless networks, InSSIDer is a better bet.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP SP2+, Vista and 7
Download Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

Connectify

This very nifty piece of free software lets you turn a Windows 7 PC (it only works with Windows 7) into a Wi-Fi hot spot that can be used by nearby devices -- your smartphone, for example, or devices that your co-workers are using in the same location.
Connectify
Connectify turns your laptop into a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot.
The PC on which you install it will, of course, need to be connected to the Internet itself and have Wi-Fi capability so it can provide access to other devices. The computer doesn't necessarily need a wired connection to the Internet (although it won't hurt to have one); its Wi-Fi card can perform double-duty as Wi-Fi signal receiver and transmitter.
Setting up a hot spot is simple: Once you have a connection, run Connectify on your PC and give your hot spot a name and password. Your computer's Wi-Fi card will begin broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal that other devices can connect to, in the same way they can connect to any other hot spot. (Your PC card will broadcast in whatever Wi-Fi protocol it was built for. It also should support devices that use earlier protocols -- for example, an 802.11n signal should allow 802.11b/g/n devices to connect.)
Since your hot spot is password-protected, only people who know the password can use it; the signal is secured with WPA2-PSK encryption.
You can even use Connectify to set up a local network without an external Internet connection. Run it as a hot spot, and nearby devices can connect to each other in a network, even though there's no Internet access. You can use this for sharing files in a workgroup or setting up a network for multiplayer games.
Note that I had problems connecting my Mac to a Windows 7 machine running a Connectify-created hot spot, but I was able to make the connection with other PCs and devices.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows 7
Download Connectify

WeFi

Tools like InSSIDer and Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector are great for finding hot spots that are currently in range of your laptop. But if you want to find hot spots in other locations -- a part of town that you'll be in later in the day, for example, or a city you'll be visiting next week -- you'll want to give WeFi a try.
Like other Wi-Fi sniffing tools, WeFi uses your Wi-Fi card to find your current location and show you nearby hot spots. You can click on a link to see a particular hot spot on a map, along with its address. (Note, however, that in practice I found it was not always accurate.)
But you can also type in a different location to see hot spots near that location. Click the Wi-Fi Maps tab and enter an address; a map of that location will appear on Google Maps and you'll be provided with various details about nearby hot spots, such as type (municipal, hotel, café and so on), distance from the location and whether there's an access fee.
WeFi
WeFi helps you find hot spots both near your computer and in other locations.
WeFi also helps you manage how to connect to hot spots. It can, for example, automatically connect you only to your favorite hot spots or only to hot spots that have been discovered by other WeFi members.
The basic version of WeFi is free, but there's also a version called WeFi Premium that you have to pay for. WeFi Premium finds and connects you to paid hot spots. The amount you pay for WeFi Premium varies depending on whether you want to pay an hourly rate, prepay for a certain number of minutes and so on. You'd be better off skipping WeFi Premium; it's much easier to find paid hot spots on your own.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7
Download WeFi

Hotspot Shield

When you connect to the Internet via a public hot spot, you put yourself at risk because someone might try to sniff your packets or otherwise snoop on what you're doing online. Hotspot Shield, a free, lightweight piece of software from AnchorFree, promises to keep you safe by creating a secure VPN connection and encrypting all of your communications.
Hotspot Shield
Hotspot Shield lets you use a VPN to protect yourself while using a public hot spot.
As you connect to a hot spot, simply run Hotspot Shield, and it will begin protecting you using the HTTP Secure (HTTPS) protocol. It launches a tab to show you that you're connected; to disconnect, click the Disconnect button on the tab. To connect again, click the Connect button. You can also connect and disconnect by right-clicking the program's icon in the System Tray.
You'll need to take some care when you first install Hotspot Shield. If you don't want its toolbar installed in your browser, uncheck the box next to "Include the Hotspot Shield Community Toolbar." Also, make sure to uncheck the boxes for setting Hotspot Shield Private Search as your default search, setting your home page to the Hotspot Shield Private Search page, fixing "Page Not Found" errors, and enabling you to get instant alerts from the software -- those options won't do you much good and will likely annoy you.
A few caveats: When you run the software, it will open a browser tab to the product's home page, which has ads on it. You can close that tab if you want; the program works fine without it open. Also, according to a page on the Hotspot Shield Web site, you might see targeted ads appear above Web pages you visit. That hasn't happened to me, although I've seen complaints elsewhere around the Web about intrusive ads. Finally, some people who have downloaded the program have complained that it is unstable, or they were unable to uninstall it. In my tests I didn't run across those problems, but be forewarned that others have reported them.
While AnchorFree offers Hotspot Shield for free, other companies sell similar VPN software products to protect you at public hot spots. ConnectInPrivate, for example, offers software and a service that costs $14.99 per month.
Price: Free
Compatible with: Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 (also Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6)
Download Hotspot Shield

Plug and Browse

If you use your laptop to connect to more than one wireless or wired network, you might be spending more time than you'd like switching network settings.
For example, if you're a typical notebook user, at work you might have a static IP address, a default network printer, a set of scripts that need to be run, proxy servers for security and a set of mapped network drives. At home, you might have a DHCP-assigned network address on a wireless network as well as a home printer, and you might use Windows Firewall but no proxy servers. And then there's that coffee shop hot spot that you visit regularly with its own set of requirements, such as a DHCP-assigned network address.
Each time you switch networks, chances are that you have to tweak settings such as your default printer, mapped network drives, proxy servers and so on.
Plug and Browse from Interactive Studios puts an end to all that manual configuration. It allows you to create profiles for all the networks you use, and then when you switch from one network to another, you simply choose the new network's profile. All your settings will be intact.
Plug and Browse
Plug and Browse makes it easy to switch among multiple networks, including Wi-Fi-based ones, without having to go through constant configurations.
A very nice touch is that you can tell Plug and Browse to automatically create a profile for you and it will grab all of your current settings for the network to which you're connected. You can still edit the settings after that if you need to.
Price: $39.99 (with 30-day free trial)
Compatible with: Windows XP, Vista and 7
Download Plug & Browse
Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld.com and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).
Read more about Wireless Networking in Computerworld's Wireless Networking Topic Center.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 9:37 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, August 8, 2010

HSEB RESULT 2067

with
MARKSHEET
Click on the link
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 7:01 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Know about Torrent

This is the original Bit Torrent logo
What is a torrent?

Torrent is a small file (around few kilobytes) with the suffix .torrent, which contains all the information needed to download a file the torrent was made for. That means it contains file names, their sizes, where to download from and so on. You can get torrents for almost anything on lots of web sites and torrent search engines.

    Torrent is the most popular way of downloading large files, including movies and games (remember legality of downloading)

Downloading with a torrent is advantageous especially when downloading files, which are momentarily very popular and whitch lots of people are downloading. Because the more people download the file, the higher speed for everyone (see torrent principle).

    * torrent is a file
    * with torrents you can download almost everything on the net
    * every file (or set of files) need to have an unique torrent file to download it
    * to download anything through a torrent you need a torrent client

You probably already tried another ways of p2p sharing - torrent is just another method. The original BitTorrent client was written in Python and it has been made open-source. Thanks to that, we have a large variety of torrent clients today. Just choose which one you like.


How to download files with a torrent?

Downloading with a torrent is actually very simple. You just need a rightly set torrent client (setting your connection speed is usually all you need to set). Then you open the torrent file inside your client, set a place where you want to download desired files and then just wait till it's downloaded. Downloading with a torrent is no more complicated than using any other p2p application, but even simpler.

    Newest client versions:
    uTorrent - 1.7.7(220 KB)
    Azureus - 3.0.5.0(7,5 MB)

 Download your copy of bitTorrent or uTorrent
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 10:10 PM 0 comments
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Monday, July 19, 2010

Google now selling its last shipment of Nexus Ones

The phones will still be available through some carriers and to developers

Google, which broke mobile industry practice by offering the Nexus One smartphone for sale exclusively on its website, has received its last shipment of the device for online sale.
Once the fresh inventory is sold out, the Nexus One won't be available anymore from Google, though it will still be sold by some mobile operator partners, according to a post on the official Nexus One blog on Friday.


The phone will still be sold by some carrier partners, including Vodafone in Europe and KT in South Korea, and Google will continue to provide support for existing devices, the blog post said. Developers will still be able to buy a Nexus One by logging into Google's Android Market Publisher site and going through a partner company, Google said.
Google introduced the Nexus One on Jan. 5, calling it a showcase for the Android software it was developing. Made in close partnership with Taiwan-based hardware vendor HTC, it featured a 3.7-inch OLED display, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and the Android 2.1 operating system.
But possibly the most innovative thing about the Nexus One was how it was to be sold. Google offered it unlocked for US$530 or with a T-Mobile USA service contract for $179. Either way, customers could only buy it online, without being able to touch or try out the phone in a store. They had to have a Google login and use Google Checkout to buy the Nexus One.
Soon after the phone went on sale, Google's support forums were hit with numerous complaints from buyers who said they hadn't been able to get prompt assistance from Google, T-Mobile, or HTC when they had problems with the phone. Complaints also cropped up about the cost of getting out of the T-Mobile contract early. The terms of service listed early termination fees imposed by both Google and the carrier, adding up to as much as $550. In the first weeks after the introduction, Google began responding to more customer complaints, and the company later reduced its termination fee.
Versions of the Nexus One also became available for other mobile operators, including AT&T, Vodafone, and South Korea's KT. But on May 14, Google said it would shut down the e-commerce functions of the Nexus One site because sales had fallen short of expectations. "It's clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone," and more service plan options, Google Vice President Andy Rubin wrote in a blog post then. The company said it would expand retail availability of the phone through partners.

 

Posted by DigiT SanSar at 12:29 AM 0 comments
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PHP development comes to Google Android

Spanish open source venture provides tools and documentation for PHP developers who want to create Android apps

Developers at an open source company in Spain are leading an effort to boost PHP application development for Android-based phones.
Called PHP for Android (PFA), the project supports Google's Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A) project, formerly called Android Scripting Environment (ASE).

"PFA aims to make PHP development in Android not only possible but also feasible [by] providing tools and documentation," said PFA founder and developer Ivan Mosquera Paulo, a software engineer at Irontec, near Bilbao, Spain, in an email on Friday. More information and releases are found at PFA's website.
PHP support would follow the availability of Android interpreters for Python, Lua, and JavaScript, Mosquera Paulo said.
"I thought that there was no reason why PHP support couldn't be added, so I started to work on it with my team at Irontec. We were really interested in achieving this because we had already worked in Android development (in a project for Vodafone) but our favorite tool is PHP," said Mosquera Paulo. "We thought that it would be great having PHP available.
"We thought that this project would be really interesting for any PHP developer. And we have had far more than 10,000 unique visits, so this proves that we were right. We want this project to be a chance for a lot of people for whom there was a huge development wall: Java," Mosquera Paulo said. The Java language is the primary means of authoring Android applications.
Currently, it is possible to run PHP scripts on Android via PFA's unofficial ASE build or its PhpForAndroid application.

"Our current APK (Android app) provides support to SL4A," Mosquera Paulo said. "Thanks to this, PHP developers can run scripts and test their PHP code on their Android phone or emulator. Our APK installs a PHP version compiled for Android phones and a few extra needed files."
Soon, it will be possible to distribute that PHP code as an Android application.
"We're working on this, and this will mean that PHP developers will be able to sell their apps like Java developers do," said Mosquera Paulo.
The success of the project depends on community feedback and support, Mosquera Paulo said: "We have seen a lot of interest, so we hope that more and more people get involved."
SL4A brings scripting languages to Android by allowing developers to edit and execute scripts and interactive interpreters directly on the Android device, according to Google Labs.

 

Posted by DigiT SanSar at 12:27 AM 2 comments
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Mozilla raises bounty for security bugs to $3,000

The reward for finding eligible security vulnerabilities will increase from $500, and the program extended to cover more Mozilla software

Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox Web browser, has upped the amount it will pay security researchers for information on security bugs in its products from $500 to $3,000.
The change is part of what Mozilla calls a refresh of its Security Bug Bounty Program, which launched in 2004.

"A lot has changed in the six years since the Mozilla program was announced, and we believe that one of the best ways to keep our users safe is to make it economically sustainable for security researchers to do the right thing when disclosing information," wrote Lucas Adamski, director of security engineering, in a blog post.
Mozilla has also expanded the scope of the reward program, which will continue to apply to Firefox and the Thunderbird email client, and also to the Firefox mobile browser and other services the products rely on. Release and beta products are also eligible.
"These are products we have traditionally paid bounties for in a discretionary basis anyway, but we wanted to make that explicit," Adamski wrote.
Mozilla can deny a reward to a researcher, however, if the organization deems the person has not acted in the best interests of users, Adamski wrote.
Other parts of the program will be retained, however. A reward will still be paid even if a researcher has published information on the vulnerability or if the researcher doesn't have time to work closely with Mozilla's security team.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 12:23 AM 0 comments
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How to use HTML5 on your website today

Don't wait for the Flash-iPhone war to end: InfoWorld's hands-on guide tells you how to get your websites ready for HTML5 now

 There's been lots written about the politics and process of the emerging HTML5 specification (see "What to expect from HTML5" and "How HTML5 will change the Web," as just two examples), but what working Web developers primarily want to know is: What can I do with HTML5, and when can I start using it? The good news is that there's a lot you can do with HTML5. The better news is that there's a lot that you can do with HTML5 today.

But first, one major caveat: You need to know your audience, though, of course, this is true whether or not you want to start using HTML5. If the majority of your site's visitors still use Internet Explorer 6, then you have no reason to rush. On the other hand, if your site is primarily for mobile browsers on iPhones and iPads, what are you waiting for? But if your site falls somewhere in the middle -- as most do -- here are some handy guidelines to ramping up to HTML5.

What HTML5 features you can use now
Although the HTML5 specification is still a draft being worked on by a standard committee, significant portions are already deployed in Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox (with more to come in Firefox 4), and Opera -- and the forthcoming Microsoft IE9 is expected to adopt much of the draft HTML5 specification as well. The When Can I Use site is a great resource, providing detailed breakdowns of what each major browser supports for HTML5 and related emerging Web standards.
Another site, The HTML5 Test, displays compatibility scores, based on the number of supported HTML5 capabilities (out of 300), for each browser (you need to visit the site in each browser you want scored). As of June 12, 2010, the scores were:
  • Apple Safari 5.0: 208
  • Google Chrome 5.03: 197
  • Microsoft IE7: 12
  • Microsoft IE8: 27
  • Mozilla Firefox 3.66: 139
  • Opera 10.6: 159
There's clearly a core of HTML5 features that all the major non-IE browsers do support, which could allow "draft HTML5" websites to be deployed to a large segment of the Web-using population.

Starting from the top. You can use HTML5's doctype now; there's no reason not to. You can even do a mass find and replace throughout your site, looking for (for instance):

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Which can be turned into:

Isn't that considerably clearer and more straightforward? If browsers rendered your pages as standards-compliant before, they will still do so afterward.
Get moving with video. Much of the press about HTML5's video tag has been about the current format battles. There are four competitors -- Flash, H.264, Ogg, and WebM -- all of which hope to be the format of the future, and none of which play in all browsers on all platforms. Sadly, it doesn't appear that browser vendors will agree on a common future format any time soon.
Given that news, it's perfectly reasonable to jump to the conclusion that the video tag isn't ready for prime time. But wait: The bright folks behind HTML5 foresaw this and made video format-independent. In fact, because video can contain multiple source tags, it ends up working out rather well. If your browser doesn't support the first option, it tries again with the second, then again with the third, and so on. It's even valid to fall back to Flash and again to a single image.
The HTML needed to handle this can be found at Video for Everybody, an open source project to support Web-based video using no JavaScript and no browser sniffing.
Semantically speaking. One of the biggest changes coming in HTML5 is semantically meaningful tags. Chances are, your site is full of tags like
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 12:20 AM 0 comments
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Saturday, July 10, 2010

Five reasons why China will rule tech

Recent development points to growing concern in Washington about China's tech moves, but here's why it may be unstoppable

China's focus on science and technology is relentless, and it's occurring at all levels of its society. Its labor pool is becoming increasingly sophisticated, its leadership is focused on innovation, and the country is adopting policies designed to pressure U.S. firms to transfer their technology.

The trend is causing increasing worry in Washington, but there are five reasons why China may yet succeed in its goal to achieve world dominance in technology.

1. China's leadership understands engineering
In China, eight of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, including the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, have engineering degrees; one has a degree in geology.

Of the 15 U.S. cabinet members, six have law degrees. Only one cabinet member has a hard-science degree -- Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, has a doctorate in physics. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have law degrees.

2. China's leadership wants to out-innovate the U.S.

China's political leadership has made technological innovation a leading goal in everything from supercomputers to nanotech. One highlight of this is China's investment in clean energy technologies.

In March, the Pew Charitable Trusts reported that China led the U.S. in clean energy investments. Last year, the country invested $34.6 billion in clean energy, nearly double the U.S. total of $16.8 billion, Pew said.

"It's very sad that Americans spend more on potato chips than we do on investment in clean energy R&D," said John Doerr, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, at a forum in June with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. He warned of a threat to U.S. future if the country doesn't increase its contribution to clean energy research.

3. China's science and technical talent pool is vast

The technical labor pool in China is so large that Shanghai-based offshore outsourcing company Bleum Inc. can use an IQ test to screen applicants, with a cutoff score for new computer science graduates in China of 140. Less than 1% of the population has a score that high.

Bleum has started hiring a U.S. workforce but sets an IQ score of 125 as a screening threshold because of the smaller labor pool. The company employs 1,000 people in China.

One data point to note: In 2005, the U.S. awarded 137,500 engineering degrees, while China awarded 351,500, according to a workforce study last year.

4. The U.S. is failing at science and math education

A stark assessment of the U.S. failure in science and math education was made by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas) at a Senate hearing in May, when she compared the performance of students in Texas to those in China.

"In my home state of Texas, only 41% of the high school graduates are ready for college-level math (algebra), and only 24% are ready for college-level science (biology)," said Hutchinson. "Furthermore, only 2% of all U.S. 9th-grade boys and 1% of girls will go on to attain an undergraduate science or engineering degree. In contrast to these troubling numbers, Mr. Chairman, 42% of all college undergraduates in China earn science or engineering degrees," she said.

5. China is getting U.S. technology, all of it

In 2008, Sony Corp. closed what was identified as the last television manufacturing plant in the U.S., in Westmoreland, Pa. It shifted work to an assembly plant in Mexico, but the vast majority of TVs' electronics components are made in Asia. (Dell sources $25 billion annually alone in components from China, for example).

One year prior to the television plant's shuttering, Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University and former adviser to the Clinton administration, told lawmakers at a congressional hearing that TV sets had become a commodity and that the loss of the manufacturing jobs was an indication of economic success, since it demonstrated that the U.S. had moved on to the production of higher-value goods.

"If we are to remain big exporters as the rest of the world advances, we must specialize in the sunrise industries, not the sunset ones," he said.

But Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, wrote in an article this month for Bloomberg that he believes Blinder got it wrong.

The loss of the TV manufacturing wasn't a success, Grove contended. "Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution," he wrote.

China's goal is not to just build TV sets and computer components. It has established what it calls an indigenous innovation policy, meaning it wants Chinese-origin technology that is owned by Chinese companies.

This policy, "designed to encourage technology transfer and force U.S. companies to transfer R&D operations to China, will force U.S. companies to transfer technology in exchange for access to its markets," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke testified at a Senate hearing in June.

China's indigenous innovation policy may be showing results.

One Chinese-owned company, Dawning Information Industry Co., which makes servers for China's market and some foreign markets, just built the world's second-fastest supercomputer. The company includes a photo on its Web site of President Hu Jintao during a visit, illustrating the attention China's government is giving to supercomputing.

China built this system, which it called Nebulae, using Intel chips, but China has its own developing chip technology, and if it follows through on its innovation policy, it's only a matter of time before a Chinese-origin chip is used in future supercomputers.  
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 9:28 AM 0 comments
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Google, China look for way to coexist after six months of public battles

With renewal of ICP license, Google can once more do business in China, but questions about privacy and censorship remain

The Beijing government's decision to renew Google's license to do business in China could be a big step in a long process of negotiations between Google and China to find a way to coexist.

Google announced Friday that China had renewed the company's Internet Content Provider (ICP) license, which enables the search giant to do business in the country. There was widespread speculation over whether the Chinese government would renew Google's license after the public battles the two have been have been waging over censorship and privacy in the past six or seven months.

[ For a less reverent view on Google-China relations, check out what InfoWorld's Robert X. Cringely has to say in "Google's Chinese troubles are over -- for now" | Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. ]

"This implies that relations are warming between [Google] and China," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "Actually I think this reflects concessions Google has probably made that we don't know of yet. China is historically very rigid ... Google will need to learn to cooperate with the country if they want to continue there."

According to Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell, Chinese authorities informed Google of its decision to renew the license early Friday. "We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license, and we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China," the company said in a blog post.

Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with market research firm IDC, said this step is another chess move in the back and forth of negotiations between the two superpowers.

"I think the Chinese authorities have shown that they are open to exercising some restraint when dealing with non-Chinese businesses," Reynolds said. "This will be an ongoing process, and this could be a short-term compromise from the Chinese perspective. The terms of Google's Internet Content Provider license give the Chinese multiple opportunities to revisit the terms of this relationship."

Google applied for renewal of its ICP license on June 29, a day before the cutoff for submission. The license expires in 2012 but must be renewed every year. Google cannot do business in China without the license.

Industry watchers have questioned whether China might drag its feet or even deny the license as part of its ongoing feud with Google.

The first salvos between China and Google were fired in January when Google threatened to halt its operations in China after contending that an attack on its network from inside China was aimed at exposing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. At the same time, Google said it was reconsidering its willingness to censor the search results of users in China as required by the government.
After several months of negotiations with Chinese officials, Google announced in March that it had stopped censoring search results in that country. Chinese users would be redirected to Google's Hong Kong-based site, where they could receive uncensored search results in simplified Chinese.

However, Google made a concession to China late last month when it announced just two days before the deadline for its license renewal submission that the company would no longer automatically redirect search traffic from China to its Hong Kong search engine. The company said it hoped the move would placate Chinese officials, who had threatened to revoke Google's ICP license if the company did not stop redirecting search requests from Chinese users.

It's not clear how much that compromise played a role in getting the license renewed.

Regardless, Enderle said the license renewal is great news for Google's financial end. Google may not be getting a big chunk of its revenue from the Chinese market today, but since the country is an economic and digital powerhouse, the company can't afford to be locked out of it.

"Not being able to compete in China implied a weakness that Google could ill afford," Enderle said. "Being unable to compete in what may become the largest economy in the world would leave an impression of coming obsolescence that no company wants to create."

Augie Ray, an analyst with research firm Forrester, however, was quick to caution that too much shouldn't be read into China's renewing Google's license.

"I think too much could be made of China's actions here," he said. "The country certainly has not changed its stance on Internet control. And with Google's license requiring renewal every year, issues of censorship and control are still likely to be contentious ones in the future. China's actions are good news for Google and demonstrate a desire on the part of the country to work with foreign corporations, but this by no means resolves the many substantial discussion points that remain between China and Western companies."
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 9:22 AM 0 comments
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First look: Firefox 4 Beta 1 shines on HTML5

Sure, Firefox 4's new Chrome-like UI is nice, but the real story is under the hood
While it's impossible to sum up the thousands of enhancements and bug fixes both big and small, the Firefox 4 beta version brings the browser that much closer to taking over everything on the desktop. There are fewer reasons for anyone to interact with an extra plug-in or the operating system. Remember when people cared about whether a machine was Windows or Mac or a Commodore 64? Remember when software needed to be written in native code? Those days are fading away quickly as the browser is more able than ever before to deliver most of the content we might want.
You've no doubt heard about or even seen Firefox 4's new Chrome-like interface. More important are the many new features generally lumped together under the catchall standard HTML5, a specification that's still a draft but has become more of a rallying cry for AJAX, JavaScript, endless tags, and life beyond plug-ins.
[ Also on InfoWorld: HTML5 will spawn richer, more sophisticated websites while also easing development. Read about the nine ways HTML5's impact will be felt in "How HTML5 will change the Web." Learn how to take advantage of HTML5 in "What to expect from HTML5." ]
Many of the enticing new features open up new opportunities for AJAX and JavaScript programmers to add more razzle-dazzle and catch up with Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, and other plug-ins. The CSS transitions, still "partially supported" in Firefox 4 Beta 1, give programmers the chance to set up one model for changing the CSS parameters without writing a separate JavaScript function to do it. The browser just fades and tweaks the CSS parameters over time.
There are plenty of other little parts of HTML5 that have been slowly arriving in previous versions of Firefox but are now being more fully integerated. MathML and SVG data are now a bit easier to mix right in with old-fashioned text. The Canvas and optional WebGL layers can create custom images at the browser without waiting for a server to deliver a GIF. A handful of new tags like
and
offer a more document-centric approach, so the browser can present information more like the data on the printed page. The
tag can be matched with a
tag and the browser will keep the two together and try to put the results near the tag.
These are just some of the options that programmers can use to add more zip to static text. Firefox 4 also adds an implementation of the Websockets API, a tool for enabling the browser and the server to pass data back and forth as needed, making it unnecessary for the browser to keep asking the server if there's anything new to report. If there's a need to store some of this data locally, the JavaScript programmer now gets access to indexed databases. They're not exactly flat files, but they're useful if you want to store and index name/value pairs data.
Converting this information to the HTML tags is becoming more fluid. The Mozilla release notes, for instance, brag that Firefox 4's parser is 20 percent faster at interpreting the innerHTML calls generated by dynamic JavaScript. The frames are supposedly going to be evaluated in a lazy manner so that the page resembles its final form a bit sooner. And now plug-ins are running in separate threads, offering so-called Crash Protection against glitches.
Some of this is clearly paying off. Firefox 4 Beta 1 scored 3,573 on the Peacekeeper benchmark, much better than 2,470, the score produced by Firefox 3.6.4 on the same machine. These values, though, still lag behind the competition. Other browsers, including Chrome, Opera, and Safari, score between 5,000 and 7,000. There is a similar gap in the JavaScript-centric SunSpider benchmarks: 970ms for Firefox 4 Beta 1 versus 750ms for Chrome.
Are these differences notable during normal browsing? Not really. I felt like the latency of the Internet was the real bottleneck, not whether some complicated JavaScript loop was finishing 10 percent faster; after all, I don't see many complicated loops on the Web pages I visit. Most JavaScript does little more than dutifully fetch information and render it. The amount of memory in the computer is probably a bigger killjoy than the measured speed. Version 4.0 is just a beta, of course, and the best JavaScript engine still isn't included yet. Mozilla's release notes say that a better JIT (Just In Time) compiler for JavaScript and layered rendering engine are "coming soon."
There are areas in which Firefox still leads. Firefox's collection of extensions and plug-ins is still broader and more developed than any other. Firefox 4 nurtures this advantage by making it possible to turn the different extensions on and off without restarting. Firefox is also taking the lead by implementing Google's WebM video standard, a wise decision given that Firefox is largely supported by ad revenue from the Google search box. Chrome's own support for WebM is found through the early release version, but that should change soon.
Many people may come away from this beta feeling that Firefox is still catching up with the other browsers. The speed doesn't leapfrog the competition. The tabs are now arranged across the top of the window more like Chrome. Some of the buttons feel just like Opera's versions. It's clearly a competitive market these days, and the best innovations are quickly copied. The browser programmers are taking the best from each other, and this is competition at its finest.
Posted by DigiT SanSar at 9:18 AM 0 comments
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