t e c h i e - t a l k s ::: technology at its best

Deaths at the hands of bananas, smelly socks and WD-40 are some of the unusual fates to have befallen innocent hard drives, according to a data recovery company that has released a list of the most remarkable cases of data loss witnessed this year. One customer left a banana on top of his hard drive, which then rotted and seeped through into the device. The circuits were ruined and the drive failed to work.

The banana was also ruined.

Get even. Here’s Silicon.com gallery on how to destroy a hard drive.

Another customer, failing to read the warning signs, managed to reformat his hard drive not once, not twice, but ten times before he realized there was some valuable information he needed. Another customer decided his broken hard drive could be packaged and sent to the company in a pair of dirty socks. The data recovery company–OnTrack–said the smelly clothing failed to provide the necessary protection during shipping, which resulted in more damage to the drive.

British comedian Dom Joly, presenter of Trigger Happy TV, thought the joke was on him when he dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive containing 5,000 photos, 6,000 songs, a book he was writing and all of his newspaper columns.

And a university professor appeared not-so-clever when he heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop and decided to open the case and spray in some WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, this was largely because he had also stopped the drive from working.

Employees of a global telecommunications company had a tall tale to tell their bosses after they dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco.

Also, OnTrack says it happens every year, but people continue to leave computers and hard drives in the path of moving vehicles. This year alone, the company recovered data from a laptop that was run over by a people-carrier at the airport, and several external hard drives stuffed in a backpack that was backed over by a truck.

After returning from the airport from his dream diving holiday in Barbados, one man discovered he couldn’t access any of the snorkeling photos he took on his new ‘waterproof’ digital camera. It seems the camera wasn’t as waterproof as advertised.

OnTrack claims it rescued the data in all cases. Jim Reinert, senior director of software and services for the company, said it pays to have your damaged hard drive or storage device evaluated because the chances of recovery are good.

Source: zdnet.com

The initial release of the Light Saber application for the Touch Diamond lacked graphics and animation. Well, the people from xda-developers got the end-users’ feedbacks and started on newer versions of the light saber application. Version 0.3 Beta saw an added animation to the newly developed application. A few days later, a newer version 0.4 is released.

These are the changes that can be found in the newer version:

0.4 Beta (2008/07/19)

• Different colors
• Vibration on/off
• Better performance, Sounds playing better
• Save settings

Click here to download the new version of the Light Saber application by markuz @ xda-developers.com.

Alternative download link (Rapidshare).

P.S. Have fun geeks/nerds! 

I’ve been waiting a while for someone to make this application for the HTC Touch Diamond. Something that binds all geeks (whether they are Windows fanboys, Apple fanboys or Linux fanboys) and nerds alike - The Force.

When I saw a developer thinking of making a saber-light program for the Touch Diamond, I couldn’t wait any longer. It’s like a dream come true! The iPhone and the earlier versions of smartphones already have them. It took a while before someone hacked into the motion sensor API of the Touch Diamond and they finally managed to come out with a fairly decent, virgin version of the Light Saber Application!

However, you’d probably need the newer version of the .Net framework (v3.5) on your Touch Diamond to get this application to work. Download it here.

• SaberLight Yoda.cab

• SaberLight Vador.cab

There are two versions with two different icons (currently version 0.2). Download the .cab files and install them from your Touch Diamond. Have fun irritating your colleagues, brothers/sisters or your friends!

Credit to markuz @ xda-developers

I haven’t been blogging much this week. I was busy fixing things around the house (fixing the water pressure, “hacking the old satellite network, etc) and hadn’t had time to find stuffs to blog. So it has been six days since my last post.

Gosh was I shock when I saw my awaiting moderation comments just now. I had 112 un-moderated comments! And out of the 112 comments, 104 of them are shit loads of SPAM.

Actually, it was quite a hassle determining whether a comment is a spam or not (no wonder it fooled the spam filters!). These SPAM-bots are getting smarter these days. For example, there were a few which had perfect English sentences which made sense. However, due to its common IP address and the “dubious website” left behind by the writer, I flagged it as a SPAM. I think I need a smarter SPAM filter.

Or maybe I should just employ the help of some human confirmation thingy that most sites have already done. Oh well, I’ll get it done when everything is settled here at home.

While its competitors languish, Google continues to rake in the money thanks to its hale advertising endeavors.

Yahoo is facing reorganization of virtually its entire business, while Microsoft is seeking aimlessly about trying to develop a cohesive plan of attack to conquer the online world.  Meanwhile, Google is sitting back enjoying the view as it rakes in record profits.
Google’s cornerstone is its advertising business.  For all the popularity of its search engine, maps, email, and documents services, it’s advertising that pays the bills.  Fortunately for Google, it has one amazingly strong cornerstone.

When Google first acquired YouTube for $1.65B USD, the key question was how to make it profitable.  Google executives still struggle with this challenge to some extent as the logistics are rather appalling — 10 hours of content are uploaded for every hour in the real world.

However, according to analyst reports, Google has finally found a way to leverage YouTube’s massive traffic to yield a massive profit — video advertising.  According to Citigroup Investment Research’s Mark Mahaney between YouTube, Google Videos, Images, Maps, and Finance the site will make over $1B USD on display advertisements in 2009.

Mahaney goes on to boldly predict that Google will make $500M USD from video advertisements on YouTube alone.  He pegs Google Images, Maps, Video, and Finances will help contribute another $265M USD in revenue.  Finally, he believes that Google’s acquisition, DoubleClick will bring in $280M USD more.

Citi has released broader estimates that by 2010, in the U.S. alone display ads will bring in revenues of $11.2B USD.  Surprisingly, the lucrative display advertising is one thing that Yahoo is currently doing well on.  It currently controls a leading 20 percent of the market, while Google only holds 5 percent.  However analysts predict that this balance will shift dramatically as Google ramps up its YouTube advertising efforts, with graphics heavy advertisements such overlays.

Using MySpace as a basis for his estimates, Mahaney analyzed the average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and found it to be about $1.13 on MySpace.  Given the 483 billion page views this year, and projecting a growth of 50 percent for 2009, gives 725 billion page views, which when monetized would equate to $820M USD in gross revenue.

As growth isn’t free, Mahaney applied a 40 percent traffic acquisition cost rate to the gross profit to come to the final figure.  Figures for the other Google sites were similarly reached.  The complete picture painted is of a much more financially sound Google in years to come.

With Google buying data centers for cloud computing and its SAAS (software as a service) at a frantic pace, Google already looks to be in good shape.  With the rosy outlook for Google’s ad business, it appears, if the analysts’ predictions hold true, that happy times are ahead for the Silicon Valley search giant.

Source: Dailytech.com

Move away Second Life. Now, you can sell your “non-virtual life” for cash online! This includes everything that belongs to you (your entire life possession, friends, job, wife?) and it’s relatively easy! However, selling your life does not mean that you’ll be dead after the auction is over. Instead, it is meant for one who is looking for a fresh start in his/her life. Everything that is sold will go to the highest auction bidder, similar to what 44-year-old Usher is doing. Usher is hoping to raise $500, 000 to start a new life.

44-year-old Usher has set up a website, alife4sale.com, to detail everything you get in the auction.  On the front page he assures buyers, “No, I’m not contemplating suicide, I am going to sell my life!”
Ok, so what exactly do you get?  First off there is a 3-bedroom/2-bathroom house in Perth that’s been appraised at approximately $400,000.  The house is fully furnished and you get everything inside.  “All that is in the house, absolutely everything, is included in the auction,” says Usher.

You also get an assortment of vehicles like a 1989 Mazda 979, 1996 Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R motorcycle, a Kawasaki jet-ski and a bicycle.  You also get an assortment of skydiving and surfing gear along with a spa and home entertainment system.

But perhaps the wackiest ‘items’ to be auctioned are Usher’s job as a rug store assistant at a local mom and pop store and his assortment of friends.  The job starts off as a two-week trial period and then extends into a full-time gig.  Unfortunately, Usher isn’t publishing a picture of his friends so you might be in for a shock if you actually win this auction.

So far the website has received a fair amount of traffic and more than 2600 people have left comments in the guestbook – most have been fairly positive and congratulate Usher on the auction.  And it certainly seems like Usher is serious about the whole thing.

“I have had enough of my life! I don’t want it any more! You can have it if you like!,” he says.

The eBay auction begins on June 22 and will last one week.  Usher says there will be a modest reserve price.  But there’s two things you don’t get, Usher plans on keeping his wallet and passport.

Source: tgdaily.com

FRANKFURT–One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues’ salary details, personal emails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

U.S. information security company Cyber-Ark surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, and found that one-third admitted to secretly snooping, while 47 percent said they had accessed information that was not relevant to their role.

“All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you’re privy to everything that’s going on within your company,” Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark’s UK director, said in a statement released along with the survey results on Thursday.

“For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems. To those ‘in the know’ they are the keys to the kingdom,” he added.

Cyber-Ark said privileged passwords get changed far less frequently than user passwords, with 30 percent being changed every quarter and 9 percent never changed at all, meaning that IT staff who have left an organization could still gain access.

It added that seven out of 10 companies rely on outdated and insecure methods to exchange sensitive data, with 35 percent choosing email and 35 percent using couriers, while 4 percent still relied on the postal system.

Source: ZDnet.com

“Never let go”

Yahoo is treading on dangerous waters. Amidst a hostile takeover attempt by Carl Icahn, CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo’s board struggle with the ramifications of their campaign to keep their company from Microsoft at all costs. Their decisions may in the end have sealed their own departures from the company and have sent company shares sliding downwards, approaching pre-merger-speculation levels.
Now it has been announced that some key executives are jumping ship from Yahoo. Leading the way are Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, the husband-wife team that founded the photo-sharing service Flickr, a current Yahoo property. Yahoo spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten announced the departure Wednesday, commenting only that they would be pursuing “another opportunity”.

Only a year after creating Flickr, the pair sold it in 2005 to Yahoo for a reported $35 million. Because of their site’s loyal following, Butterfield and Fake were included in the 2006 list of Time magazine’s list of the world’s most important people. The move was not a major surprise as Fake had already moved to another Yahoo division and Butterfield was taking a lengthy paternity leave. With the departures, Kakul Srivastava who became general manager of the Flickr team in April will continue his leadership position.

While the departure of Butterfield and Fake might not be particularly alarming, three other recent departures came as a bit more of a surprise. Two Yahoo executive vice presidents, Jeff Weiner and Dr. Usama Fayyad put in their resignations in the last month. Yahoo has kept relatively silent about these resignations, which has lead to whispering in the internet community over whether the failure of the Microsoft deal could have been their motivation to leave.

Weiner headed Yahoo’s search engine and e-mail services. He is now an “executive in residence” at two venture capital businesses, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Dr. Fayyad was the head of Yahoo’s data mining and user data analysis efforts, which aided ad targeting. Dr. Fayyad has not announced his official plans.

To top it off, Jeremy Zawodny another Yahoo veteran executive who helped found the Yahoo developer network and push Yahoo towards open source, is leaving. He posted the news on his blog. He asserted that he was leaving to pursue another opportunity, not because of Yahoo’s struggles.

Executive turnover rates in tech companies are extremely high. Even Google, perhaps the most successful tech company for its size is not immune to leadership losses. And the titan of the tech industry — Microsoft — has lost some of its own, with the departure of founder Bill Gates and the impending departure of Steve Ballmer 10 years from now.

Thus it is likely unjustified to jump to conclusion that Yahoo’s losses are directly attributable to its trials and tribulations. However, one salient point to consider is that regardless of the reason behind the departures, leadership losses can shake even a company in a very stable financial position. Given Yahoo’s tenuous grip on its business niche, these losses, though perhaps unavoidable, may take a greater toll on the already floundering company.

Source: Dailytech.com

Firefox’s 3 much heralded launch campaign appears to have worked, with the company reporting that in the first few hours of release 14,000 people were downloading the software every minute.

With each copy of Firefox 3 clocking in at 7MB, that means the company’s servers were dealing with a staggering 13 gigabits of data every second. It’s unsurprising then, that the success came at a cost, with Mozilla.com being knocked offline for almost two hours as servers struggled to cope with initial demand.

“The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!)”, the company noted on its blog. “Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live. The 24 hours period will be clocked from that moment. Thanks for your continued support.”

With the servers now up and running, Mozilla currently estimates that it is “serving almost 9,000 downloads a minute, which puts Mozilla on track to achieve five to seven million downloads the first day of general availability.”

Source: PCpro.co.uk

As you guys have already known, Google loves “dressing up” on particular occasions. For example, they had a Christmas Theme, Halloween themed search page and many more. This upcoming week will be Gay Pride Week. Hence, Google has already dressed up some of their pages to commemorate the occasion.

Try Google-ing “gay” and you’ll be greeted with the gay pride, rainbow flag at the corner of it’s search pages. The 6-coloured rainbow flag is a globally recognized gay symbol and all the more appropriate to commemorate the occasion with.