Navtej Kohli IT Blog

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. Navtej Kohli IT Blog features the latest updates:

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for web browser Firefox 3.0 took place in June.
"The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen," said marketing head Paul Kim.
Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it "an extremely impressive accomplishment".
The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted.
Mr Kim told the BBC News: "The notion of going for a world record, as... nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea.
"It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world."
Marketing manager Mary Colvig said no party was planned to celebrate the record until the actual certificate was presented by Guinness World Records in London next week.
"Here at Mozilla headquarters (in Mountain View) I think most of us are just going to try and get to bed early now that we have the confirmation. We are all tired."

Another boost for the open source browser comes with the announcement that it has increased its market share to more than 19% making it the second most popular browser after Microsoft's Internet Explorer

Navtej Kohli IT blog stumbled upon this news on Washington Business Journal:

Focus LLC has formed an Information Technology Group to target investments in the software and technology services sectors.

D.C.-based Focus, an investment banking firm providing merger, acquisition and corporate finance services nationwide, has recruited a handful of its investment bankers to focus on software, information technology services and transaction processing companies.

The new group, will be led by George Shea, managing partner based in Atlanta. D.C.-based bankers in the Information Technology Group include Brad Balow, Marshall Graham and Manan Shah.

“In the past three years, almost half of Focus’ business derived from clients in this industry and we continue to execute an increasing number of cross-border transactions in today’s market,” said Shea.

Navtej Kohli has a Good news for all PS3 users. Sony's PS3 run-game service release is just around the corner.

Sony is preparing a non-game service for its PlayStation 3 console that at first glance is similar to one available on Nintendo's Wii.

Called "Life with PlayStation," the service will launch with news and weather information channels but is set to be considerably expanded in the future, said Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment.

The basic interface was a globe of the Earth that could be spun to reveal the different regions of the world. Major cities were marked on the globe along with the current weather conditions and news headlines pertaining to the city were listed in the corner of the screen. As you browse, background music from the hard-disk in the PlayStation 3 can be played either as a user-defined playlist or one chosen by the console.

The interface is similar to the news and weather channels on the Nintendo Wii, which are navigated through a globe and offer similar news and weather information.

It is different from the news and weather channels on the Nintendo Wii in terms of graphics - the PlayStation 3 graphics have higher resolution and the globe isn't a simple map of the world but a weather satellite image showing the cloud patterns above the planet.

The news and weather channels are just some initial features, later many other state-of-the-art features will be added to it. Plans are to build a system that can visually present stored photos and movies according to their recorded time and place, allowing users with their friends and family to enjoy the visuals in chronological order," said Hirai.

Release date is not yet fixed and will be announced soon anytime later.

Navtej Kohli IT Blog, celebrates the Sixtieth Birthday of First Digital Computer, 'The Baby'. It turned sixty on 20th June, 2008.

The world’s first modern Digital Computer celebrates its 60th anniversary.

Built by the late Tom Kilburn and the late Freddie Williams at the University of Manchester, it was named "The Baby" in jest. It weighs almost one ton and occupies an entire lab at the institute.

The Baby marked a new epoch in the history of modern computers. It started a new genre of modern computers, iPods, mobile phones, the internet, and all the other gadgets that are alpha and omega to us today.

The Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), as it is known technically, executed its first program on June 21 1948.

A number of special events took place, including a video link with the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester complete with live demonstration of the Baby replica housed there, plus a Computer Science magic show.

And hundreds of school pupils from across the UK arrived on campus to see the winners of the UK Schools Computer Animation Competition announced.

An awards ceremony and drinks reception later saw the surviving pioneers from the Baby design and development team each awarded The University of Manchester's Medal of Honour.

They also received a Medal of Honour from The British Computer Society.

The ceremony was followed by the inaugural Kilburn Lecture, delivered by Professor Steve Furber CBE from The School of Computer Science on the topic of The Relentless March of the Microchip.

Microsoft has reissued a critical Windows security patch, saying that the fix didn't initially work on the most recent versions of Windows XP. Navtej Kohli IT Blog features the complete report under its News in IT Section.

Microsoft spokesman wrote in a blog posting. "Our investigation found that while the other security updates were providing protections for the issues discussed in the bulletin, the Windows XP SP2 and SP3 updates were not"

The aforesaid patch fixes a flaw in the way Windows uses the Bluetooth networking protocol, used to connect peripheral devices like headsets to the PC. An attacker who got close enough to the Windows system to make a Bluetooth connection could theoretically send malicious packets to the PC and take complete control of a victim's computer.

According to security experts that as Bluetooth devices need to be within a few yards of a computer to connect, the flaw wouldn't be used in a widespread attack. However, this doesn’t decrease its potential threat.

Microsoft is now pushing out a new, working version of the patch through its automatic update mechanisms.

Navtej Kohli IT Blog keeps a constant track of latest developments in Information Technology sector.

The recent Google/Yahoo partnership has mostly focused on the two companies' search advertising plans, but the deal has implications for instant messaging, too. According to the company’s press release Yahoo and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.

So far, exactly what that means is anyone's guess. But the IM market could certainly benefit from a little more interoperability. Despite the fact that IM use is on the rise among home users and businesses alike, each separate IM network remains a walled garden, independent of all the others. Getting them to work together -- similar to how e-mail works - would benefit everyone.

There are a number of IM clients available that can connect to multiple networks at the same time, including Adium, Pidgin, and Trillian. But these clients still require you to have your own account on each network in order to talk to other people on that network. What would be better would be the ability to talk to anyone on any network from a single account.

For its part, Google has already demonstrated an interest in IM interoperability. Its own Google Talk IM network is built on an open, standards-based IM protocol called XMPP, which in theory allows communication between IM servers, although that feature hasn't been used so far. Connecting the Google Talk servers with Yahoo's own messaging servers would be a great first step.

Unfortunately, in light of all the other talk surrounding Google and Yahoo's partnership, few details have emerged to explain exactly what form the proposed IM interoperability might take. In other words, we'll have to wait and see. But any way you slice it, this is encouraging news for the increasingly commoditized IM market

For more news on IT industry, keep reading Navtej Kohli IT blog.

Motorola Inc, the No. 3 mobile phone maker, said it would roughly halve the size of its research labs to about 300 people as it plans to halt some projects and move at least 180 people to other units.

The loss-making company, which is planning to spin off its cell phone business amid huge market share losses and sharp criticism of its phone designs, said 180 research labs workers would be moved to its three business units, effective July 1.

Motorola has a network equipment and set top boxes unit and a government and public safety business as well as its mobile phone business, which ceded its No. 2 global ranking to Samsung Electronics Co last year.

To reduce costs, another 150 Motorola research positions will be cut worldwide as Motorola stops some research projects, according to spokeswoman Maya Komadina, who did not disclose which projects would end or in which countries.

She said Motorola, which had 66,000 employees at the end of 2007, was looking for opportunities in other parts of the company for eligible workers affected by the cutbacks.

The spokeswoman said that moving researchers to the business groups they support would help focus research investment on projects that deliver the greatest value.

The remaining research organization's roughly will be renamed the Applied Research & Technology Center and focus on longer-term technologies. Its roughly 300 workers will be under Dan Moloney, head of Motorola's networks and set-top box unit.

Motorola, which has been losing ground in the cell phone market after failing to come up with a strong successor to its once-lauded Razr phone, is expected to spin off its mobile devices business in 2009.