Microsoft to takeover Yahoo

Posted on May 4, 2007 by vrreddy

Microsoft is looking to acquire a majority stake in Yahoo according to a report published in New York Post. After the loss of DoubleClick to Google Microsoft is in talks with Yahoo to negotiate the deal. The two companies have held talks over the years for a possible merger, the latest talks indicate urgency from Microsoft the paper reported.

The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago, sources said. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!.

25 things that changed the internet

Posted on May 3, 2007 by vrreddy

USAToday on its silver jubilee year celebrating with 25 lists for 25 weeks that have influenced us one way or the other. In this series this week they have come with 25 things that changed the internet. This is quite an interesting list, it includes Google, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Myspace, Youtube etc. Check the complete list here.

The top position is occupied by World Wide Web, followed by Email, Graphical User Interface, AOL, Broadband and Google.

Bloggers also featured in this list at 22nd position, see below for bloggers description of USAToday

The more than 75 million Web logs have changed how the world gets its news. Bloggers have challenged the traditional media, lobbied for and against wars, started debates, and posted far too many pictures of their pets.

Other popular things part of this list are Yahoo, Youtube and MySpace

Yahoo introduces a new class for unrelated content

Posted on May 3, 2007 by vrreddy

Yahoo introduced a new class for unrelated content on websites like header, footer and navigational links. Webmasters have to add “robots-nocontent” as a CSS class tag to <div>, <span> or <p> in their pages, this will tell Yahoo crawler that the information in this part is unrelated to the main content.

Excerpts from Yahoo Search Blog

This tag is really about our crawler focusing on the main content of your page and targeting the right pages on your site for specific search queries. Since a particular source is limited to the number of times it appears in the top ten, it’s important that the proper matching and targeting occur in order to increase both the traffic as well as the conversion on your site. It also improves the abstracts for your pages in results by omitting unrelated text from search result summaries.

To do this, webmasters can now mark parts of a page with a ‘robots-nocontent’ tag which will indicate to our crawler what parts of a page are unrelated to the main content and are only useful for visitors. We won’t use the terms contained in these special tagged sections as information for finding the page or for the abstract in the search results.

Last time when “nofollow” tag was added major search engines supported the move and it became useful to fight link spam, now this time it is only Yahoo who is introducing this tag. I am not sure how Google handles this unrelated content, if Google can handle it without adding a tag then Yahoo should be able to do it.

How to add this tag:

Some examples on how to add this class attribute

<div class=”robots-nocontent”>unrelated content goes here</div>

<span class=”robots-nocontent”>unrelated content goes here</span>

<p class=”robots-nocontent”>unrelated content goes here</p>

<div class=”robots-nocontent”>unrelated content goes here</div>

Browser Version of Yahoo Messenger

Posted on May 3, 2007 by vrreddy

Web Yahoo Messenger came for all of us who can’t use messenger in their offices, it can be accessed from http://webmessenger.yahoo.com or from shorter url http://web.im. The Interface built with flash and visually appealing. Not all of the desktop messenger features available but important features like emoticons and avatars are supported.

Webmessenger can be used in both Windows and Mac, it supports IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera and Safari. International versions of web messenger available for United States, Brazil, India, Philippines, Malaysia Vietnam.

Is this is the end for other web IMs like Meebo and eBuddy, I dont think so, still i like Meebo, what makes meebo a winner is its ability to connect to different IMs and different yahoo Ids. But if they can add VOIP to web version then it would be really useful.

Push Email for Indian Mobile Users

Posted on May 2, 2007 by vrreddy

Push is a mobile application which will allow users to access 5 emails in one mobile phone. Push is a product of Consilient, it adds Blackberry type functionality to normal mobile phones. With push one can access Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Email and POP3 or IMAP accounts.

Consilient Push uses open standards (LEMONADE/P-IMAP). If you want to give it a try, just go to push site and register yourself, they will send a download for the application to your mobile phone via SMS, follow the link to download Push application. Now you can access all your emails from your mobile phone.

Push free servics is ad supported, if you are concerned about ads you can opt for premium version for $5/month subscription. It can be used on Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson etc. In windows mobile devices only one email will work. Check your mobile compatibility here
Continue reading →

Community revolt at Digg

Posted on May 2, 2007 by vrreddy

What happened yesterday at Digg is a community revolt, the story behind the revolt is someone posted a key to crack HD-DVD content protection. The story got 50,000 diggs and the digg management took off the story from the front page, some user accounts are also banned for submitting related stories. Digg community broke in for the censorship and started voting for the stories related to HD-DVD key and at times the front page is full of these stories.

Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg finally gave an explanation to this issue and posted himself key on the digg page. excerpts from Kevin’s post

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Techcrunch says even Digg didn’t fully understand the power of its community to determine what is “news.�

Wakoopa: Track your Desktop Applications

Posted on May 2, 2007 by vrreddy

Wakoopa has gone live today, i received a mail from them now to try wakoopa. Wakoopa is a social media tool which tracks what desktop applications you use. Its a small application tracker which sits on your system and tracks what software you use and sends the information to the wakoopa server. This information is tagged and presented on wakoopa site with your profile.

Wakoopa tracker updates your profile with software you use once in every 15 min. Apart from this what wakoopa does is it allows you to connect to people who use similar software same like other social media. Wakoopa advises you about new releases if any for the software you use.

Wakoopa idea is nice and the interface is really good, it was designed by 2 geeks from Netherlands. You can see what software others are using and you can explore new software.
Continue reading →

Loki: Location based Search

Posted on May 2, 2007 by vrreddy

lokiLoki is a location based search tool, which helps in finding where you are in a new place and deliver the information like local news, local businesses, weather forecasts etc. To use loki you need to install their toolbar and hit the button to find your location and then you can search for local information.

Loki functionality is based on Skyhook Wireless WiFi Positioning System (WPS) which uses WiFi access points to triangulate a user’s location.

With WPS operating to determine and publish the user’s latitude/longitude, street, address, zip code, city, state or general geographic area, the Loki users can efficiently and effectively use that location to quickly find the most and accurate information.

Loki Works on IE and Firefox, download the toolbar here

Apple fixes Quick Time flaw

Posted on May 1, 2007 by vrreddy

Quick TimeApple released a patch for the flaw in Quick Time used to hack a Mac book at a security conference. The vulnerability lies in Quick Time Java and can be triggered to hack the computer when the computer user visits a malicious website.

Apple Patch for QuickTime 7.1.6

An implementation issue exists in QuickTime for Java, which may allow reading or writing out of the bounds of the allocated heap. By enticing a user to visit a web page containing a maliciously-crafted Java applet, an attacker can trigger the issue which may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional bounds checking when creating QTPointerRef objects. Credit to Dino Dai Zovi working with TippingPoint and the Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.

This will effect both windows and mac running quick time with a java enabled browser.

iGoogle and Gadget Maker

Posted on May 1, 2007 by vrreddy

Google renamed personalized home page google/ig to iGoogle. With iGoogle it is now possible to make your own gadgets. Gadgets look simple and very easy to create, you dont have to be a programmer to make gadgets.

Once you create the gadget it will be added to your home page, you can invite your friends to see the gadgets. You have the option to inlude your gadgets in the directory for public use, if you dont want to include them in the directory they will not appear public.

Gadget Categories

1. Photo album: share up to 7 photos with friends and family. Photos can be rotated once a day or on refresh
2. GoogleGram: Send Flowers or Candies with personal message to someone special’s home page. Up to 7 messages can be added, message changes every day.
3. Daily Me : Share what you are doing today with loved ones
4. Freeform: Display your creativity with this all-purpose gadget that lets you meld text and image in any way.
5. YouTube Channel – Create a video channel for your friends, up to 10 videos can be added.
6. Personal list Use it as to do list, music list or whatever
7. Countdown : Countdown for an event

Links: Google Blog