Poetro's blog: 2008

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Why do they call it the "Big Bang", if there's nothing to it

I really don't understand the huge thing around the "Big Bang" stories going up and down, because there is nothing to it, no threat.

One argument raised against doomsday fears was that collisions at energies equivalent to and higher than those of the LHC have been happening in nature for billions of years apparently without hazardous effects, as ultra-high-energy cosmic rays impact Earth's atmosphere and other bodies in the universe.

There are several reports from other science groups that there are no threat, like the American Physical Society (2nd largest physics organization):

The safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was studied in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, who concluded that they presented no danger. Here we review their 2003 analysis in light of additional experimental results and theoretical understanding, which enable us to confirm, update and extend the conclusions of the LHC Safety Study Group. The LHC reproduces in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, collisions at centre-of-mass energies less than those reached in the atmosphere by some of the cosmic rays that have been bombarding the Earth for billions of years.

In fact the goal of the whole project is quite important, and have nothing in connection with black holes:

Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?[14]

Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?

Do particles have supersymmetric ("SUSY") partners?[1]

Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?[1] See also CP-violation.

Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?

What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?[1]

Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?

Also note that the first collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October 2008.

end of the world?, the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC )

Large Hadron "Big Bang" Rap Video a Big Hit on Youtube

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Nokia buys out Symbian to create Google rival

With the change in the licensing of the Symbian operating system, something great is going to happen. Nokia has a huge userbase of the operating system, but it is not alone, by using this technology. Maybe some smaller competitors will have a chance to profit out of this change.

Nokia has announced plans to buy out its fellow shareholders in Symbian, the British mobile phone software developer, to create a free mobile phone operating system to compete with rivals such as Google
The Finnish mobile handset maker will pay €264 million (£209 million) for the 52.1 per cent stake in the London-based company it does not already own, buying out Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and Samsung.

In addition, Nokia said it will establish the Symbian Foundation, together with other technology and telecoms heavyweights from across the industry, to create one free, open mobile software platform.

Nigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, was one of the main speakers during the press conference. He stressed that Symbian is the most widely used mobile-software platform on the planet. "The first 100 million devices took eight years to ship," he told the press conference. "The second 100 million took just two years."
Asked why Symbian is going to give away its licences now, after 10 years, he said: "What we are doing is releasing the deluge that will come from an ecosystem here. In the past, phone makers had to think about which user interface and operating-system combination they would use, then there were developers who had been faced with licence arrangements. This is epoch-making and very different from anything that has happened before."

Of course the entire move is also a clever pre-emptive strike against (most prominently) Google's open source Android OS though it is also likely to rankle feathers at Apple and Microsoft. Ambitiously, the entire unified Symbian OS is also scheduled to go completely open source inside two years with "selective components" at launch.

Monday, June 23, 2008

What Privacy Policy?

I don't like, when my private data is shared with third party companies... How about You?

In response to a survey answered by 500 privacy and 900 marketing executives in industries ranging from health care to financial services, more than a third of marketing execs said they don't place any limits on the data they share with third parties, such as e-mail marketing agencies or online advertisers. By contrast, 75% of privacy officers believe that their companies limit the sharing of customer data.
More specifically, 80% of marketers said their organizations share e-mail addresses with third parties, compared with 47% of security and privacy officers. Other examples: 65% of marketers said they would distribute a customer's cellphone number, while 47% of privacy execs believe their companies banned the practice. Forty-five percent of marketers believe their companies shared credit card data, compared with 32% of privacy officers, and 29% of marketers believe their firms distribute social security numbers, compared with 7% of privacy professionals.

That disconnect may be one source of the annoying spam that plagues inboxes. Just 44% of marketers surveyed believe their organizations were in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act, a law that requires marketers to request permission to send email messages, disclose the messages' source and offer an opt-out function. Forty percent of marketing execs who responded weren't sure whether their companies followed the law.

Paul Bates, managing director of StrongMail UK, said: "Businesses have a moral, ethical obligation to keep private, personal customer data safe and secure.
"They should not be handing it out to third parties in the hope of making a fast buck. If they choose to do this, and then lose customer data, then they should at least be obliged to admit it."

Government "Strike Teams" Invade Homes, Harass Flood Victims

Perspective: How we went wrong on identity

Wii firmware update causes outrage

Nintendo's latest Wii firmware download has outraged buyers of Datel's Freeloader device after it was revealed that it renders the add-on useless.
Datel's Freeloader device, which sells for around £10, allows Wii users to play games from any region on any machine.
After Nintendo launched its latest 3.3 firmware update last week, news soon emerged that the download stops the add-on from working.

Digital Spy was told by a 'disgruntled gamer': "I have spent good money buying imported games to play on my Wii and this firmware update has now stopped me from playing any of them.
"I am furious with Nintendo for forcing me to stop playing games I have spent a lot of money on. Surely this is not the way they should be treating loyal followers of the Wii."

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

From the first time you lay eyes on Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4, it's tempting to take him as a metaphor for the game as a whole. Here we have an old warhorse taking one final outing, seemingly out of place in the new world, with a few new technologies at his disposal, but weighed down by aging parts and an awful lot of baggage. And its true that there will be times when MGS4 feels oddly antiquated, and times when you'll wish it could have left a few old, bad habits behind. Yet, all the same, that doesn't stop it being an exceptional game - one of the few must-have titles on PS3, and one of the finest on any platform so far this year.

Tags: Culture | game | platform | Metal Gear Solid

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Beyond Good & Evil returns - Xbox News at GameSpot

If you've ever played a good Action Adventure game, Beyond Good & Evil is one of those. The critics liked it very much, although this did not look on the selling. I liked the original game, it was funny, logical and had a great story. Now it looks as the story is going to continue. I was looking at uplay.com just a few hours before the Ubidays show started, but I unfortunately I missed the live version of it, but some sites have the trailer.

Earlier this month, Rayman creator Michel Ancel told French magazine JeuxVideo that he'd been in preproduction on a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil for a year, but the project had yet to receive a green light from Ubisoft. That go-ahead has apparently been given. The publisher capped off its Ubidays press event with a teaser trailer for Ancel's next project, and the clip featured the porcine sidekick of the original game, Pey'j.

Source: gamespot.com

Though no official announcement was made at Ubisoft's morning press conference, a video was shown designed to show off new advancements in graphics engine technology. It also barely concealed a hint that development has already begun on a sequel to the critically acclaimed Beyond Good and Evil.

Source: xbox360.gamespy.com

Tags: Culture | XBOX

Monday, May 26, 2008

Hop1800 phone that costs just $10

The Hop1800 from Hop-on the will come in two varieties; a dual-band 850/1900MHz and a 900/1800MHz for Europe and Asia. It will weigh 77 grams, offer 4 hours of talk time, 150 hours of standby time and polyphonic ring tones.
At a $10 price point in the US retail and convenient stores, the Hop1800 could be considered disposable, but the company offers a $5 rebate for returning the phone to encourage recycling the phone to “Keep it Green”.

The makers say that the phone will be able to be used with over 40 operators around the world including AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile in the US, as well as, through Hop-On’s own low cost Graffiti Wireless network.

Source: pocket-lint.co.uk

For your $10, Hop-on’ Hop 1800 brings the user the straightforwardness and simplicity of mobile calling. No display, no texting, only supports dual-band GSM, and ideal mobile phone for those that either do not understand all the tech stuff in today’s modern phone, or who just simple want to make a regular call. Hop-on is to make two variants of the disposable handset; one is to be GSM 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands for the US and the other will support 900/1800 MHz GSM for Europe and Asia.

Source: phonesreview.co.uk

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Hello Kitty phone is coming . . . your daughter will want one

Technology is combining with trends, so now your daughter is a target of mobile phones (if she is older then 9) or your girlfriend if she is in favour of the brand.

Mobile phones branded with the popular children’s character Hello Kitty are due to hit the high street in July, prompting parental fears over the marketing of phones at the youngest in society.
Health fears persist about mobile phone use by children, with an authoritative report in 2005 concluding that 9 to 14-year-olds should make only short, essential calls. The report by Sir William Stewart said that children under 8 should not use mobile phones at all.

Products with Hello Kitty cartoon cat images are aimed at children as young as five. Parenting experts said last night that children would pressurise adults to buy the phone, which can be bought online for $599 (£310), as a fashion accessory.

Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk via pgaliba

Oxford-based firm Comment Retail Service won the contract with manufacturer Sanrio for the exclusive licence to produce the phone in Britain and Ireland.

They said the phones would appeal to women in their 20s and 30s but child safety campaigners said the move was “exploiting children”.

Sue Palmer, author of advice book Detoxing Childhood, said: “A Hello Kitty phone would concern me considerably. The products are very pink and very attractive to young girls.

“It is very irresponsible. They need a new market and they are exploiting children.”

Source: telegraph.co.uk via pgaliba

Napster launches DRM-free download service

More and more music stores are finally turning away from DRM (Digital Rights Management), which is good for the customers, as they can listen to the music they bought on any devices they have and prefer to listen music on. DRM protected music may not be available in your home stereo or in your car, but nowadays you can use those too, and do not require to buy some fancy MP3 player, like an iPod, a Creative Zen, or a Zune to play those back.

Napster has become the first online music store in the UK to offer DRM-free downloads from all four major music labels.
The company has also switched focus from its monthly subscription model to concentrate on per-track downloads, although both options will be supported by the online service.

Over six million songs are available from the store at 79p each, and the removal of the "DRM cloud" will give customers more freedom to do as they please with their purchases, says Napster boss Chris Gorog.

Napster's monthly subscription model charges users $10 or $15 per month to access tracks for as long as their subscription remains active. DRM technology renders files unusable once this payment is canceled.

Source: pcpro.co.uk via pgaliba

The Napster store will compete directly with a similar service from Amazon, the only other online store with MP3s from all the major labels, and Apple's iTunes, which offers a limited number of MP3 tracks from EMI Records.
The move also shifts Napster away from its previous "all you can eat" music service, which let users access as much music as they wanted for a monthly subscription.

"We believe ultimately that consumers will be moving to an unlimited music model," said Mr Gorog, adding that Napster will continue to support its subscription service.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk via pgaliba

Friday, May 16, 2008

Hungarian Emfesz says to start building new plant

Hungarian gas wholesaler Emfesz said on Thursday that next year it would start building its planned gas-fuelled power plant which will have a total capacity of 2,400 megawatts.
The first two of the plant's six 400-MW units will be operational by 2011 and construction is expected to be completed by 2015, Emfesz said in a statement.

The plant will be built in northeast Hungary, near the border with Ukraine, at a total cost of 1.5 billion euros ($2.33 billion).

Source: uk.reuters.com via pgaliba

Nuclear energy in Hungary should play a role in the future and its contribution must be evaluated, the environment minister told MTI on Thursday.

Climate change dictates the use of alternative energy resources with relatively little or practically no carbon-dioxide emissions. One of these resources is nuclear energy, said Imre Szabo.

Szabo said he agreed with professor Istvan Lang, who was a key participant in drafting Hungary's climate change policy, that the role of nuclear energy had to be reconsidered.

Source: budapesttimes.hu via pgaliba

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV: the biggest and the best

The most eagerly awaited game of the year is finally here. Nick Cowen goes for a stroll through Liberty City
Source: telegraph.co.uk via pgaliba

This is a video game that offers such a degree of depth, it dwarfs the effort of all of its peers and predecessors.

The animation is superb: gone are the lobster hands and expressionless faces of the past – every single individual has fingers and skin tone.

The city itself is gorgeously rendered - with realistic light and textures, reflections in windows and windscreens – complete with its own weather system, and multi-cultural population.

You play Niko Bellic, a new arrival from an unnamed Eastern European “old country” with the American dream firmly in mind. It's never quite specified which country it is Niko hails from – except that it's not Russia.

Niko talks of a war and witnessing atrocities, but these only serve to highlight how different America is compared to where he's from.

This being the fourth (or eighth depending on how you look at it) instalment in the GTA series, the designers are evidently confident they can hold your attention as they develop the story.

Source: telegraph.co.uk via pgaliba

Even the New York Times lavished praise of a sort on the video game from Take-Two Interactive’s Rockstar studio: “‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.”

Though the vast majority of gamer blogs were even more emphatic in their love of the game, there were bound to be many naysayers if only because “GTA” deals with such edgy content, in this case an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and beats up prostitutes. The Parents Television Council thinks retailers shouldn’t carry the game according to Variety magazine.

Source: blogs.reuters.com via pgaliba

The “Grand Theft Auto” series of open-world action games drill deeper into mainstream culture with each installment. The violent, stylized portrayal of thug life has earned “GTA” poster child status among political watchdogs for all that’s evil in video games.

It will be a great shame if the inevitable hubbub overshadows the epic, revolutionary nature of “GTA IV.” The developers, Rockstar Games, have crafted a wildly ambitious game world complete with an engrossing story of an immigrant's rise to power, unforgettable characters and expertly honed gameplay. It will be weeks, if not months, before I get my fill of “GTA IV.”

Source: msnbc.msn.com via pgaliba

Grand Theft Auto IV - Liberty City Slideshow HD

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Windows Vista SP1 Now An Automatic Download

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Thursday released the first major update for its Windows Vista operating system to its automated download service, meaning that Vista users could receive the update by default as early as today if they have the service turned on.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1, as the update is called, has been released in English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese versions, according to Microsoft.

There is a caveat, however.

Microsoft is dribbling out Vista SP1 to home users in small batches -- so it may not be available as an automatic update for some for several weeks. "We'll be distributing the service pack slowly so that we can help Windows users have a good experience," said Chris Flores, Microsoft's official Vista blogger, in a Thursday post.

Source: informationweek.com via pgaliba

SP1 is a rollout of software updates that fix bugs and glitches in Vista and is seen as a milestone that will inspire many customers -- especially those in the business market -- to adopt the OS. In fact, in a recent report, "Building the Business Case for Windows Vista," Forrester Research said more business customers plan to upgrade to Vista now that SP1 is available. This comes as no surprise, considering companies often wait for the first service pack after a major Windows release to update corporate desktops.

However, even SP1 will not guarantee that enterprises and business customers currently running XP or an earlier version of Windows will upgrade, as some have said they would skip the OS altogether. The same Forrester report said as much, although the research firm is recommending that companies don't skip Vista because they would not be well-positioned for future versions of Windows if they do.

Microsoft has acknowledged problems with application compatibility and lack of driver support, among others, that customers have had with Vista. It says SP1 and other updates that the company continues to make should remedy these problems. What the company hasn't said is why there were so many problems with the OS when the company had more than five years between the releases of Windows XP and Vista to ensure a smooth transition.

Source: pcworld.com via pgaliba

Microsoft unveils Windows Vista product lineup

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Liang sends Doherty crashing out

The Snooker World Championships is more interesting then ever. After the great battle yesterday between the Asian players Ding Junhui and Marco Fu, it was a real fast game.

Ken Doherty became the third former Crucible winner to exit the World Championships at the first hurdle after losing 10-5 to China's Liang Wenbo.

The damage was mainly done in the first session when Liang, 21, knocked in six half centuries to take a 7-2 lead.

Doherty lost the first frame of the evening session, but took the next two of the next three to keep his faint hopes alive at 9-4 behind.

A nervy final frame saw both players miss chances before Liang sealed it.

Doherty follows world champions Steve Davis and Graeme Dott by losing in the opening round in Sheffield.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk via pgaliba

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Sony and Microsoft battle it out for GTA IV sales

Stock scarce as pre-orders reach record-breaking levels
Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto IV has reached an all-time high as Sony and Microsoft battle it out to become the console of choice for GTA fans.

Certain retailers have been offering free Xbox Live points and Xbox Live membership in promotion of the 360 version of the game, whereas Sony is set to announce a special GTA IV PS3 bundle. However, retail opinion is divided over which format will emerge victorious.

Source: mcvuk.com via pgaliba

Reports are coming in thick and fast that an Xbox 360 bundle has appeared on several online retailers down under. Consisting of an Xbox 360 arcade console, Halo 3, GTA IV all for AU $499.95.

Sounds good, but why would Microsoft try and market this bundle when Microsoft own the exclusivity rights to downloadable content on the system, but the Xbox 360 arcade version is the basic pack WITHOUT a hard drive subsequently unable to support the highly anticipated DLC?

Source: totally360.com via pgaliba

Friday, April 18, 2008

Ricky Gervais to cameo in GTA IV for Sony PS3 and Xbox 360

One of the most anticipated games of the year has to be GTA IV, and will be a huge hit once it is released. The game has been written about to death now and we all assume we know all there is to know about the game however; there is one little gem that we did not know and that is Ricky Gervais is to make a cameo in the game.
The comedian will play himself in the game as he is a stand up act performing in the comedy club in Liberty City. Going into this comedy club might just be a welcome break while you hang out and have a rest, and you will also be able to watch Gervais as he performs some new material that he has written especially for Grand Theft Auto 4.

Source: product-reviews.net via pgaliba

"It's a first - which always interests me," he said. "It was shot in New York, my favourite place in the world, and I got to wear a tight lycra suit as part of the digital process. No, hold on, that wasn't so good," he says.

"Unfortunately they captured the whole horror, except I look slightly tougher. It is seriously a big deal, though. Games have outsold Hollywood for the past few years so it's nice to be a small part of that."

Source: blogs.independent.co.uk via pgaliba

Ricky isn't the only superstar to appear in the new Liberty City epic. Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld also makes his video game debut but you can put down those twitching baseball bats. Unfortunately, Karl will only be there in voice as DJ Karl on K109, the disco station.

Source: techdigest.tv via pgaliba

Friday, April 11, 2008

Fallout 3 Updated Impressions - Character Creation, Combat, and Canine Companions - PC News at GameSpot

More than 10 years ago, serious computer role-playing game fans fell in love with a postapocalyptic role-playing game called Fallout, a game that offered deep role playing, dark humor, and a memorable adventure that was worth replaying. More than 10 years later, an entirely different studio is now working on the next game in the series, trying to stay true to the original vision of the first Fallout game from 1997 while also including all the improvements and open-ended exploration of its last game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yes, Bethesda Softworks is working on Fallout 3. Yes, your adventure will take place in the postapocalyptic wasteland (in this case, the ruins of Washington DC); yes, you'll still start your adventure as a dweller in a vault (a colony living in a radiation shelter left over from the nuclear war); and yes, we had an opportunity to take an updated look at the game.
Source: gamespot.com via pgaliba

The game is currently still in an alpha state of development--content is still being added and taken away. According to a Bethesda representative, the primary game is shaping up to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 hours of gameplay, though it will offer dozens of hours of other stuff to do for players who enjoy exploring side quests and other types of content. For instance, you'll find multiple outcomes available to different quests as you side with different factions, and you may also receive random quests as you pick up communiques on your PipBoy, such as distress calls or new missions to perform.

In any case, the developer is focusing on having a clean interface that isn't cluttered with an overwhelming amount of information--various menus, such as your inventory and your character's current health levels (you can sustain crippling injuries to various parts of your body that may affect your weapon skills or your ability to run), will be kept separate, rather than kept on one crowded screen. While the game will still handle dialogue with other characters with a multiple-choice dialogue screen of the kind you've seen in such games as Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic, you'll receive most of your alerts, such as new quests, as brief text messages that fade away, similar to friends notifications on Xbox Live. The idea is to avoid having too many jarring messages that have to be individually clicked on and closed down to get back to the action.

Source: gamespot.com via pgaliba

Gartner Explains Why Windows Is Broken

Microsoft's operating system (OS) development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many apps and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office... well, it's just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft.
Source: pcworld.com via pgaliba

Mature markets have limited growth in terms of PC hardware. The computer hardware business is expected to grow only 2 percent to 8 percent between 2005 and 2011. The opportunities for PCs are higher in emerging markets, where the growth rate is 16-24 percent for PC hardware-but they're more price-sensitive so vendors and enterprises have to keep the price down. That means less memory and storage, for example-and Vista is not appropriate for that sort of memory model. Linux is the preferred OS on low end PCs including "one laptop per child" and certainly Microsoft doesn't want to see that happen. "All these things are in opposition to what we've seen with people expanding PC use year after year," MacDonald said.

Version compatibility is relevant in more than software development terms. For example, they said, iPhone's version of OS X is closer to the desktop version of the Mac OS than Windows Mobile is to Vista.

Servers are evolving in multiple and sometimes conflicting directions. Some industry trends imply that we need to scale up computing, such as single instance data stores and partitioning. Others are driving it down, such as grid and cloud computing, server farms and cluster computing. The result, they believe, is that enterprises will want we want to customize the OS based on the need.

Source: pcworld.com via pgaliba

Although Microsoft has said it will not go as long before its next release of Windows as it did between XP and Vista, even the possible sped-up timetable hardly shows a product that can quickly adapt to change.

Meanwhile, while Apple was able to build the iPhone on OS X, Microsoft has had to extend another lifeline to Windows XP because its latest product can't even fit onto the cheap mini-laptops from HP, Asus, and others.

"Windows as we know it must be replaced," Gartner said in its presentation, again according to ComputerWorld. Meanwhile, the company faces other threats, such as a diminished role for the operating system in a world of hypervisors.

Source: news.com via pgaliba

Google App Engine: Cashing in on the user data

Google's announcement of its App Engine has naturally generated a lot of buzz, as well as some fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There is the concern that Google will corral even more user data via its App Engine, becoming a kind of 21st century data and advertising baron, as Microsoft has been the operating system and productivity software baron in the last three decades.
If you extrapolate from Google's growing share of search and advertising, and include a growing share of Web applications through its APIs and the fledgling App Engine, you could imagine a Google that becomes the dominant Internet operating system and infrastructure provider. It's still the early days of cloud computing, but the ground is shifting.

"It's funny that we waged the war to free ourselves of (the) shackles of Microsoft and Hailstorm (a failed attempt to manage personal data)," said David Young, CEO of cloud infrastructure provider and App Engine competitor Joyent. "Now, for some reason, the digerati are anxious to run into exact same thing with Google. It's not evil, but they are tracking users and clickstreams, which (are) the real currency of the Web, and most people don't care. If you can get all data, you can target ads and the user experience, such as showing a site in a different color, depending on user profile."

Source: news.com via pgaliba

Google noted that after hearing "some complaints from the developer community about it," it opted to remove the application from the Web.

Google launched the preview release of the App Engine on Monday, touting it as a way for developers to run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure. The development environment includes dynamic Web serving, persistent storage, automatic scaling and load-balancing Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail, according to Google

Source: computerworld.com via pgaliba

Thursday, April 10, 2008

This is some longer story title, to see how overflow is handled on member pages

Some text here just for fun. And even some more

Tags: test

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Google Previews App Engine Platform for Web Applications

Google last night launched a preview of its App Engine web application hosting service.App Engine provides a back-end platform, including a distributed Web server, database and storage, to run apps written with Google's SDK. As Google's App Engine Blog puts it, the service "gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications."
The preview period granted 10,000 developers a free account with 500mb of storage and enough processing power and bandwidth for about 5 million page views per month, according to Google. Not surprisingly, those accounts appear to have all been snapped up. But developers can still download the SDK and work on a non-hosted application.

For now, applications have to be written in the Python language. When it fully launches, Google says it will still offer free accounts with the same limitations as now, and that larger, more popular apps can purchase more resources. Applications can authenticate users with a Google account log-in.

Source: pcworld.com via pgaliba

"I believe that App Engine will make launching a startup easier than ever," said Matt Cutts, head of Google's Web spam team, in a blog post. "At this point, you could build up a pretty killer startup incorporating technologies as simple as Gmail or as powerful as App Engine."

Source: informationweek.com via pgaliba

At some point, when Google App Engine has been more thoroughly tested, usage beyond these limits will require a fee.

Amazon Web Services can be used separately, whereas Google App Engine is more of an integrated platform.

Other more or less comparable Web app platforms include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Bungee Labs' BungeeConnect, and Xcerion's icloud.

Source: informationweek.com via pgaliba

Microsoft says publishes more software information

Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it has posted online more than 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation for underlying software code in its software programs.
The underlying code, or protocols, are built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

In February, the world's biggest software maker, faced with regulatory concerns in Europe and customers struggling with complex computer systems, said it would publish information so rival programs can work better with Windows, Office and other major products.

Source: reuters.com via pgaliba

Tuesday, the company said it posted preliminary versions of technical documentation for protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Developers don't need to pay a fee or take a license to use the information.

"We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions," said Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft.

Source: bizjournals.com via pgaliba

Microsoft hits multiple Internet home runs

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