• Google Now Offers Over a Million Free Ebooks in EPUB Format #
• Microsoft cuts Xbox price by 25 percent #
• Asustek to launch e-book reader under Eee family #
• Confirmed: $29 Snow Leopard Installs Whether or Not You’ve Got Leopard #

Google Now Offers Over a Million Free Ebooks in EPUB Format

Google currently offers 1 million books in EPUB format through it’s Google Books portal. Many of these books are in the public domain, so many of them are pretty old. But old books can still be good. Source at Mashable.

Microsoft cuts Xbox price by 25 percent

Microsoft has intensified the price war with Sony by lowering the price of its XBOX360 by approximately 25%. The Elite model will be 100$ US cheaper, with its 299$ US price point. The Arcade remains the same at 249$ US. The middle model, called the Pro, will be discontinued. This leaves the consumer with a simplified choice, says Microsoft. As of now, Microsoft is the only console manufacturer with positive sales. Source at Reuters.

Asustek to launch e-book reader under Eee family

eBook-readers seem to be in vogue lately. Word goes round that Asus, maker of the EeePC, will also be manufacturing an eBook-reader to compete with Amazon and Sony. Source at DigiTimes.

Confirmed: $29 Snow Leopard Installs Whether or Not You’ve Got Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will cost Leopard-users $30, and Tiger users $169, because they are supposed to purchase the Box Set. This includes the new OS, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09. It has been confirmed that OS X 10.6 will also install whether or not you’re actually using 10.5. It turns out the so called upgrade disc doesn’t check for prior versions. If you’re still on Tiger, you can skip Leopard all together and save a lot of money, but you’ll be violating Apple’s EULA. Source at Lifehacker.

• Apple Opens Up on App Store Approvals #
• Remember Cuil? Now It’s a Real-Time Search Engine #
• GPU Computing and Windows 7 #
• Chromium popularity rising on Ubuntu, gains 64-bit support #
• More tech news on my FriendFeed

Apple Opens Up on App Store Approvals

In response to Apple rejecting Google Voice, the F.C.C. filed an inquiry to investigate Apple’s motives with the possible inclusion of AT&T colluding to ban all non-traditional voice traffic. Apple has responded to the F.C.C. stating AT&T has absolutely no part in the rejection of Google Voice. Its reason for the rejection is that it replicates too much of the iPhone’s phone, texting and voice-mail functionality. They’ve also stated they’re “still investigating” Google Voice and haven’t actually rejected it yet. Source at The New York Times.

Remember Cuil? Now It’s a Real-Time Search Engine

Cuil.com – the search engine engineered by two ex-Google employees launched last year – has added real-time search to their portfolio. While in the beginning the site knew a humongous surge of visitors, its unique visitor rate has been declining drastically ever since. The real-time search capabilities are a welcome addition, though not stellar and certainly not better than existing solutions. Source at Mashable.

GPU Computing and Windows 7

The Windows Blog discusses a new technology that will debut with the release of Windows 7. It’s called GPU Computing and will allow software to utilize the processing power inherent to modern GPU’s outside of graphics processing. By doing this, the main processor(s) can be relieved and address more processing power to other computational tasks. GPU Computing will require DirectX 11, which will be part of Windows 7. nVidia’s GPU’s already support GPU Computing fully. Source at The Windows Blog.

Chromium popularity rising on Ubuntu, gains 64-bit support

Chromium – the open source version that drives the Google Chrome browser – is gaining popularity like wildfire amongst the Linux community. It has recently gained full 64-bit support and is increasingly being seen as a viable competitor to Mozilla Firefox by Linux enthusiasts. Source at ArsTechnica.

• Mozilla makes much ado about nothing over browser ballot #
• Xmarks extension alpha for Chrome arrives #
• Archos soft launches own Android app store #
• Irish ISP to block The Pirate Bay #
• IT IS HERE: A Fully Functional Copy of The Pirate Bay #
• Microsoft offers cloud database previews #
• Like Vista, Windows 7 will grant 120 grace period #
• Check out my FriendFeed – uh, feed - for more tech news.

Mozilla makes much ado about nothing over browser ballot

I only recently blasted Opera for pushing its childish whims into the lap of the EU and now Mozilla – Firefox’ creator of which I didn’t expect this – also chimes in and is urging for even more strictness and regulation of Microsoft’s browser ballot screen. If you haven’t read my prior rant, I’ll reiterate: it’s preposterous that Microsoft is even buckling under the EU’s weight, let alone it even have to bolt the specifications of the ballot screen down even more (!). Mozilla spokesperson Anderson brings up issues like “Microsoft is causing inadvertent changing of the default browser in Windows and that’s not right” (which isn’t true, BTW) and other nonsense. Don’t be such a crybaby, Mozilla. Source at ArsTechnica.

Xmarks extension alpha for Chrome arrives

In response to Google’s own bookmark syncing feature for Google Chrome, Xmarks – the maker of password and bookmark syncing add-ons for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari – put out its alpha version of their add-on for Google Chrome. Source at CNET.

Archos launches own Android app store

Archos has launched its own Android application store, in response to Apple and RIM. The apps in this store, however, won’t only work with Android-enabled Archos devices, but will be available to any compatible device. Source at TechRadar.

Irish ISP to block The Pirate Bay

Eircom, an Irish ISP, agreed to cut off customers that illegally downloaded music or movies – after an out-of-court settlement with the entertainment industry. Now, Eircom will also be preventing its customers from viewing The Pirate Bay. Source at IrishTimes.

IT IS HERE: A Fully Functional Copy of The Pirate Bay

Speaking of TPB: after a torrent was put out containing the whole Pirate Bay repository, people were wondering what to do with it. Today, btarena.net has brought a nearly exact replica of the whole Pirate Bay site online, including downloads, tracking and searching. The site is also capable of hosting new torrents, although its creator insists that this must remain to be a mere backup, for now. Source at Mashable.

Microsoft offers cloud database previews

SQL Server 2008 R2 and – more importantly – SQL Azure came out for developers to preview and use with their web applications. SQL Azure is Microsoft’s hosted relational database which developers can rent for a monthly fee. Prices vary between $9.99 US for 1GB to $99.99 US for 10 GB. With SQL Azure, Microsoft provides pay-as-you-go storage and promises graceful scaling – if necessary. Source at ReadWriteWeb.

Like Vista, Windows 7 will grant 120 grace period

Windows 7′s predecessor, Vista,  allowed a user to prolong his 30-day trial to 120 days by using the ‘rearm’ run command at the end each trial period. This was possible up to three times, after which you were supposed to purchase a license key to continue using Windows. As it turns out, Windows 7 – now in final form – will also support this behavior. Moreover, it has been confirmed by Microsoft as not violating the license agreement.

So basically, one can do the 120-day thing, re-install Windows and go at it again – endlessly, without ever needing to pay for Windows 7…

• How The Pirate Bay will be legalized #
• Sony unveils slim PS3, price-drops #
• Blogger “strike” in Italy #
• Office Web Applications will support mobile browsers #
• Opinion: Why AT&T killed Google Voice #
• More on my FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/aceontech

How The Pirate Bay will be legalized

GGF – the company which is to acquire The Pirate Bay – has laid out its plan on how it thinks it will be able to legalize the notorious torrent sharing site. It proposes, as it had stated before, to start charging for the use of the site. Use of TBP would include downloading as well as uploading (sharing) of files. It’s not yet set in stone how steep the subscription fee will be, but GGF has stated it would grant copyright holders two options if they object to the free sharing of a certain file. The way they hope to ‘legalize’ TBP is to offer either a financial contribution with each download or pull down certain torrents at request. If copyright holders collectively go for the latter, I imagine TBP won’t continue to exist much longer. Also GGF hopes to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry and possibly start offering ‘official’ paid torrents. Source at TorrentFreak.

Sony unveils slim PS3, price-drops

True to Sony’s track-record and business cycle, it will be putting out a slimmer version of the PS3 somewhere in September. It will allegedly take up 33% less space and suck 34% less power. Sony’s also offering the console at lower prices, near to $300 US for the lower-end model and $400 US for the higher end model. Source at NewsWeek.

Blogger “strike” in Italy

Because of the impending Italian laws that could cause independent bloggers and content creators to have to pay fees if they refuse to pull down content, bloggers decided to have a strike to counter it. The Italian blogosphere went quiet for one day, but one might wonder, is this the way to achieve something? One would rather think it would be more efficient to make more of a raucous instead of plainly shutting up… Source at TechDirt.

Office Web Applications will support mobile browsers

Microsoft’s release of Office 2010 will bring along version 1 of Office Web Applications, the full Office suite for the web, for free. Features will be limited, of course. For only so many features are useful for the web. The surprise here will be that not only all major browsers will be supported, but that mobile browser will also get full support. Microsoft is essentially giving Office away for free to millions of users, including Linux and Mac users alike. Source at ArsTechnica.

Also, read Paul Thurrott’s preview of Office Web Applications 2010.

Opinion: Why AT&T killed Google Voice

Andy Kessler from WSJ writes: “Telecom operators are yesterday’s business. It’s time for a national data policy that encourages innovation” and opines why AT&T pulled Google Voice for the iPhone. The article also broadens its spectrum (pun) and calls for unifying voice traffic and  cable distribution to become mere data traffic – making matters more neutral and ultimately cheaper. Source at WSJ.

Keeping track of your paper administration can be a pain. Well, I know it is to me. Most countries’ laws force you to archive your paper administration pieces like invoices and tax-related papers for up to 10 years. Aside from the legal requirements, it’s important to archive in an orderly fashion, so you can retrieve a given piece easily and quickly.

There are obviously several ways to do this; you could get a shoebox and let everything pile up, or you could go with something more organized like a bunch of [real life] folders in which you divide sections with tabs. This is a fine methodology, but it tends to get rather voluminous after a couple of years. And along with added volume comes greater difficulty at finding what you need when the occasion proposes itself.

To accommodate this issue, I started scanning and digitally storing the most important pieces for a while now. While you could come up with a virtual folder system for local storage, it soon also becomes unpleasant to retrieve something – even with Windows’ Search or Mac OS X’ Spotlight. There are some proprietary database archiving systems out there that let you automate this, but I dislike my data being stuck in a closed box.

Google to the rescue

Recently, I noticed that Google added PDF-support to it’s online productivity suite Google Docs. While I don’t think Google Docs is very suitable for day-to-day word processing/spreadsheet-work, the PDF-support can be of particular use when dealing with administration and the like.

This is how I do things to keep track of my administration:

1. I keep paper copies of everything in physical folders as described above.
2. I scan the important stuff and export it to PDF.
3. I upload the PDFs to Google Docs, archived into a particular directory structure. Just rudimentary folders suffice, e.g. ‘Invoices’, ‘Taxes’, ‘Contracts’, etc.
4. That’s it.

While this system works for me, it may not for you. Also, consider your privacy when uploading PDFs to Google Docs. It’s not proven that any physical persons have access to the contents of your account, it’s generally known that Google has software scanning for keywords in order for them to offer contextual text-based advertisements. I acknowledge this is a genuine concern to be taken into account, this doesn’t particularly bother me.

Harnessing Google Search

I keep paper copies of everything because it’s compulsory where I live. The real handiness of putting everything online is the Google Search functionality embedded into Google Docs. This will only work if you enabled OCR when scanning of course (but most scanners do this by default). So whenever I need a given invoice or other document, I can just start typing any string I can remember into the search box and I’ll be sure to find the appropriate document reasonably fast.

I talked about me not liking closed ecosystems, but isn’t Google just that? The short answer to that question is a clear ‘yes’. Google’s solutions are mostly proprietary and thus entirely closed. On the other hand, Google is pretty reliable and offers its services for the best price around – free. All things considered, it’s just as easy to get things into Google as it is to get stuff out of it. At any time, you can download the original PDF back to your computer. There’s no straightforward way to get all of your documents out at once, however (another thing to consider).

A nicety about Google Docs is that it allows for online sharing similar to how Google Docs handles sharing with text documents, presentations and spreadsheets. When you hit the share button associated with any given PDF you’re presented with a form on which you can enter your friends’/coworkers’ e-mail addresses. Once they accept the invite, they’ll get read-only access to the chosen document. The catch: your correspondent must have an active Google Account in order for this to work. You could just as well attach the PDF to an e-mail, while you’re at it, then.

Concluding note

Moving my administration to the cloud was one of the last steps in my digitized ‘getting things done’-effort. Incidentally or not, I ended up entrusting all of my data to Google. The future will point out whether it was a wise choice. For now, Google’s services are pretty darn reliable considering their price (free). As a testament to that, I also have my e-mail, calendars and todo-lists up in the cloud with Google.

Short note to Google: you’ve completely suckered me into your services.

Browsers, much like everything else in the computer software business, started to evolve into something much more sophisticated and complex than first envisioned. It seems to me that while Firefox 3.0 was vast improvement over its predecessor, it has lost a lot of its attractiveness, a direct consequence of its increasingly intricate nature.

For a while now, I had been trying out alternatives like IE7, Opera and Apple Safari for Windows. Yet, none of them were able to haul me over. Except for the recently released Google Chrome, that is.

While Chrome was generally well received, despite it being extremely stripped-down, interest calmed though within a week. Consequently, the initial extra market-share it had stolen primarily from Firefox was lost again. It caught up with Opera and will likely stay above that mark.

Google’s promise is to become a driving force behind cloud computing by implementing the ‘best’ web browsing framework out there. To accomplish this, they based their work on the open-source project WebKit and developed their own JavaScript interpreter called V8.

For the time being, Google Chrome is a Windows-only application, with Mac and Linux versions coming down the pike soon.

Crisp UI

The user interface is very straightforward and exceptionally sparing on graphical elements. Every page in Chrome is a tab and each contains its own set of controls. The basic UI elements familiar from other browsers are present:

• Forward & back button
• Refresh button
• A bookmarking star
• URL/Search bar (a.k.a. the omnibox)

Unlike any other Windows application, Chrome completely lacks a traditional menu line (File, View, etc.) and substitutes it with two buttons containing all additional menus:

• Document drop-down
• Wrench drop-down

And that’s it. No bells, no whistles. As it should be, in my opinion. Unlike Mozilla Firefox, Chrome does look native on Windows, no matter which version of the OS you run. If you run Vista with Aero it’ll take advantage of the the transparent glass interface, but if you have transparency turned off, it’ll adapt and display a soothing blue-gray opaque frame. Windows XP users get the full candy-blue experience, while a bit sore on the eyes, it certainly fits right in to the XP atmosphere. I prefer the Vista-look.

Chrome is gorgeous-looking and makes me wonder why Mozilla didn’t pursue the similar plans it had for FF3.0. As a result, Firefox is less coherent, elegant and.. pretty. Alas. Furthermore, If you’re fond of Google’s web services Spartan look like, Chrome’s pristine user interface will most certainly make sense right away.

Lack of Bookmarking

To some this may come across as a flaw, to me it’s definitely a feature. Since I hate the hassle of bookmarking and all the management that comes along with it, I was delighted to see barely any provisions for it. I’ve grown to resent Firefox’ bookmark management system so much and tried a slew of online social bookmarking sites like Delicious.com and Digg – without result. It’s an annoying process and ultimately, I don’t believe we should be bothered by, since browsers [by default] keep track of your browsing history.

You can, however, create a bookmark by hitting the usual keystroke (CTRL+D) or click the well-known star-icon next to the omnibox (I’ll get to that in a minute). Google says they’re working on a more sophisticated system, but I’d encourage actually want to endorse the opposite. Just leave it out.

Speed

Chrome, like Apple Safari, incorporates the WebKit rendering engine, which makes it inherently faster than most other browsers out there. By having their in-house version of JavaScript built-in (“V8”), Google claims web apps will run significantly faster when compared to the competition. And I’m willing to vouch for that, although I lack a scientific way to measure this. I guess you’ll just have to take my unscientific word for it.

While it may cause some additional overhead at first, each tab is run in its own process. This sandboxes every pages and theoretically prevents one tab from causing another to crash or freeze up. Furthermore, RAM’s inherent fragmentation within processes is pretty much eliminated, since tabs don’t generally have a very long lifetime and are closed significantly sooner than the browser window itself. Browsers coming to a grinding halt due to memory fragmentation should be a thing of the past with this measure in place.

The only other browser that I know of that will be implementing a similar feature is Internet Explorer 8 Beta. I haven’t had the chance to look at it yet, though.

Compatibility

From what I’ve heard, Chrome is compatible with more web pages than Microsoft’s latest iteration of Internet Explorer, which is in its second beta right now. I personally haven’t noticed too many glitches from a rendering point of view, apart from YouTube videos not coming through right away. I’ll have to investigate IE8 first before I can make a definite verdict, however.

Incognito Mode

Similar to IE8′s InPrivate mode and Safari’s Private Browsing mode, Chrome also allows you to surf anonymously by means of ‘Incognito’, a specific window mode.

In order to make use of this, you will need to create a new Incognito Window by clicking the similarly-named option from the document-button in the upper right hand region. A spy-like icon will appear in the chrome on the left, further signifying that no traces are left as you scour the net. No passwords, history or caches will be retained after you decide to kill the window and resume your ‘on-the-record’ web surfing. Neat.

Omnibox

Contrary to the convention, Chrome merges the URL-bar and search-bar into one, which is referred to internally as the omnibox. Besides being a two-in-one kind of thing, it also makes attempts at guessing what you’re about to type. To accomplish this, it combines Google Search with suggestions and does a surprisingly good job. Also, while you browse the web, it’ll remember every page you visit in case you decide to return to it at a later time. In that case, just typing the first few letters of either the URL or name of the website will suffice for Chrome to auto-complete your request. Nice.

Download Manager

Google’s take on an integrated download manager is — again — very minimal. Downloads are confined to their originating tabs and uses a visual cue to guide the eye to a bar that runs along the bottom of the window. As you click on files, downloads are queued in the download strip, your files are stored in your usual download folder. Like the tabs, these items can be dragged out of the Chrome frame onto your desktop or any other folder.

Home Tab / New Tab

Analogous to the omnibox, Google further tries to anticipate users’ next steps by introducing a non-empty ‘New Tab Page’, basing its content on your previous browsing habits. The Home Tab/New Tab
Page is a page on which your nine most visited websites are listed in a grid. On the right, Chrome lists recently closed tabs and recently bookmarked sites.

Admittedly, the Home Tab does takes getting used to, but it grows on you once you give it a chance. If you have a web-based homepage, like iGoogle or Live.com, there’s no need to leave it behind since it’ll most likely pop up on your Home Tab too.

If you despise this feature, you’re just a few click away of switching it off.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of good to stand up for in Chrome. So much so that Google was able to persuade me into using it full-time as my only browser. On the other hand, I’d be a complete zealot if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that Chrome, too, is far from perfect. Therefore I’ll be dedicating the second part to this review covering ‘The Bad’ side of Google browser.

Plastic Logic’s Reader is Thinner, Less Ugly than Kindle

BLOG.WIRED.COM — A new digital-book reader unveiled Monday is super thin and attractive – seemingly capitalizing on the flaws of Amazon’s bulky and hideous Kindle. Plastic Logic unveiled its digital reader Monday.

Read full story

Review: Intel’s new 80GB SSD is faster than the best HDD

COMPUTERWORLD.COM — Intel’s new solid-state disk drives for laptops are faster than the fastest hard disk drive counterpart and almost twice as fast as the next best SSD drive we’ve tested. Remarkably, Intel’s new SSD even matches the fastest hard disk drive in write times.

Read full story

Google issues first patches for Chrome

COMPUTERWORLD.COM — Less than a week after rolling out its new Web browser, Chrome, Google has now released an update to fix a critical vulnerability in the beta app.

Read full story

Google Turns 10

TECHNOLOGYEXPERT.BLOGSPOT.COM — Ten years ago today, Google was incorporated. Thus began the meteoric rise of a company that’s become so synonymous with the Internet that its own name has become a verb.

Read full story

Other interesting news stories can be found on my Google Reader Shared Items page. The stories above have also been bookmarked at Mixx.com. If you like what you read, please vote for them if you decide to join Mixx (it’s free & fun).

For a full listing of all of Google’s jokes, visit the Google Operating System Blog.

iGoogle from right to left

Today, I saw my iGoogle homepage shift everything to the right.

Gmail Custom Time

Gmail Custom Time is a feature in Gmail which lets you set how recipients of your mails will see the datestamp. Dates in the past will also be reflected in the recipients’ inbox. And older message will appear lower in the list than newer ones, making your friends believe they’ve just forgotten about your message, instead of you being late.

The catch is that you can’t set dates back before April 1st, 2004, Gmail’s launch-date.

Tagline: “Be on time. Every time”.

Every time, this time, means you can use the option up to 10 times before it disappears.

gDay

Google Australia gDay, a feature that lets you search the web of tomorrow today. It uses a special technique to forecast what websites will like look like and which content they’ll deliver.

Virgle: The First Permanent Human Colony on Mars

Vigle is a contraction of Virgin Airlines and Google and is a company that will make the first human settlement on Mars, announced by Google’s Main Blog. Here’s the video announcement:

Apart from it not being very believable, it also shows signs of bad acting. But who cares.

New Google Docs Option

The file menu on Google Docs now has a new entry, called ‘Create a new airplane’. It renders an image of an airplane. Well, sort of. It still needs to be folder and that task is up to you.

Happy April Fools’ Day everyone!

Broadcasters often fear that the utilization of this white space could cause interference with television broadcasts and wireless microphones.

Google handed the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) a proposal on Monday that promises an enhanced system to prevent wireless devices from causing serious interference.

The FCC is assessing the possibility of allowing two categories of uses for the spectrum:

• For low-power portable devices
• For fixed commercial services