Clazh » Software

Google Chrome OS All About it – Breaking News

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:59:52 +0000

We all knew Google has been secretly work on an Operating System called the Google Chrome OS, Google has now officially announced the Google Chrome OS. The best part is they have open sourced the whole code. Could this be the operating system that everyone been waiting for? Not really here are a couple of reasons why, read about it after the Video.

What? How? Who? Etc about the Google Chrome OS in Brief

Will be Open Source.
Speed, Simplicity, and Security are the pillars of Chrome OS
Cloud based OS, which means all your data will be stored online not on the hardisk.
Here is the funny part it will be a paid ?
Support the latest Web Standards HTML 5 CSS 3.0 etc
Not meant to be your Primary OS.
Can be run in a Virtual Machine.
Main targets are netbooks, since the use of netbooks have been growing at an exponential rate.
7 Second boot time. Everything is flash-memory-based–no hard drive.
Will run only web applications no native applications.
Chrome OS looks very much like Chrome browser

Here is a video of a prototype of the Chrome OS

What is the Google Chrome OS Video In Brief?

Watch this video which explains it in brief. After the video I have listed out all the technical details.

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Catergories: Google, Open Source, Software Tags:

Why Apple Is Good at User Experience And Design

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:05:07 +0000

The first two point from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, Presentation at SXSW caught my attention.

Pixel Perfect Mockups

Most companies or designers are pretty ok with creating wireframes or paper prototypes. Apple on the other hand spends a huge amount of time and effort on making pixel perfect mockups. This gives a clear focus to what the application does and looks like.

10 to 3 to 1

Apple designer have come up with 10 completly different designs. A huge amount of creative energy is spent in coming up with the designs. Heck I have trouble coming with more than 2-3 designs and tend to get brain dead if I try too hard. Out of the ten designs, only three are selected. Then more time is spent on those three mockups. At the final stage they nail down the best design out of the three.

Read More about Apples Design process at Businessweek.

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Catergories: Apple, Software Tags: Mac, Mac OSX, UX

Free Online Virus Scan Using Multiple Anti-Virus Tools

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:41:46 +0000

Have you ever come across a suspicious looking file and you wished you could scan with multiple anti-virus tools. VirusTotal is one such tool which you can use to scan a file with a huge number of anti-virus tools and programs. It can even scan a zip file if it is not password protected. Etremely useful if you want to check suspicious looking attachments that people send.

AhnLab (V3)
Aladdin (eSafe)
ALWIL (Avast! Antivirus)
Authentium (Command Antivirus)
Avira (AntiVir)
Bit9 (FileAdvisor)
Cat Computer Services (Quick Heal)
ClamAV (ClamAV)
CA Inc. (Vet)
Doctor Web, Ltd. (DrWeb)
Eset Software (ESET NOD32)
ewido networks (ewido anti-malware)
Fortinet (Fortinet)
FRISK Software (F-Prot)
F-Secure (F-Secure)
AVG Technologies (AVG)
Hacksoft (The Hacker)
Ikarus Software (Ikarus)
Kaspersky Lab (AVP)
McAfee (VirusScan)
Microsoft (Malware Protection)
Norman (Norman Antivirus)
Panda Security (Panda Platinum)
Prevx (Prevx1)
Rising Antivirus (Rising)
Secure Computing (Webwasher)
Softwin (BitDefender)
Sophos (SAV)
Sunbelt Software (Antivirus)
Symantec (Norton Antivirus)
VirusBlokAda (VBA32)
VirusBuster (VirusBuster)

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Software, Web Tags: Anti-Virus, Repair, Security

IE 8 Is Going To Kick Every Browsers Butt

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:57:20 +0000

Damn just when I was going to do a blog post predicting that the reason why Microsoft is so quiet about IE 8 is because they want to surprise everyone and I was right. This is going to make Opera look really bad. The IE blog latest post says that IE 8 has passed the ACID2 Test. I predict that other than ACID2 the IE team has a bunch of other tricks up their sleeves. Opera forced them to play one of their Aces. In case you don’t know what ACID2 is.

Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It has been written to help browser vendors make sure their products correctly support features that web designers would like to use. These features are part of existing standards but havenâ€™t been interoperably supported by major browsers. Acid2 tries to change this by challenging browsers to render Acid2 correctly before shipping.

Acid2 is a complex web page. It uses features that are not in common use yet, because of lack of support, and it crams many tests into one page. The aim has been to make it simple for developers and users to check if a browser passes the test. If it does, the smiley face on the left will appear. If something is wrong, the face will be distorted and/or shown partly in red.

Here are a couple of things I predict about IE 8.

A Much faster rendering engine for Both JavaScript and Web Pages.
Cooler, Skinnable and Better User Interface.
Better Extensibility like Firefox.
Will use lesser memory.
More Security Features.

This comment on DIGG says it all.

Wow, a story about Microsoft and Internet Explorrer and most all of the comments in here are positive? I Never thought I’d see that!

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

Did Someone Say Macs Are More Secure Than Windows?

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:07:23 +0000

George Ou who writes for the security column at ZDNET did an analysis of security for Mac OS and Windows using data from impartial Secunia. The Results maybe pretty surprising depending on what your views are regarding MAC Vs PC. I am personally not surprised but I certainly didn’t expect such a big difference. I have never had any viruses or significant crashes with windows in the past 1 year that I running windows XP with Service pack 2 and the latest updates.

This shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious. Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isnâ€™t even close.

Also noteworthy is that while Windows Vista shows fewer flaws than Windows XP and has more mitigating factors against exploitation, the addition of Windows Defender and Sidebar added 4 highly critical flaws to Vista that werenâ€™t present in Windows XP. Sidebar accounted for three of those additional vulnerabilities and itâ€™s something I am glad I donâ€™t use. The lone Defender critical vulnerability that was supposed to defend Windows Vista was ironically the first critical vulnerability for Windows Vista.

Source CybernetNews

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Catergories: Apple, Software, Windows Tags: Mac, Security

Opera Sucks, At Least Some People Have Sense

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:47:36 +0000

Everybody loves to hate Microsoft. If you don’t thrash talk about Microsoft or IE you are not considered a Uber Web Geek. Opera took upon it self to sue Microsoft by complaining to the European Commission and force them to follow web standards. And its the lamest thing they could do. At least some people have sense and are not taking sides.

Today we have taken a stand. Opera has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in its Web browser, Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft has harmed Web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft often participates in creating Web standards, promoting them, and even promising to implement them. Despite their talent, however, they refuse to support Web standards correctly. For example, Internet Explorer is the only modern Web browser that does not support Acid2.

Sure IE 7 doesn’t have the best support for Web Standards but at least Microsoft is trying. Hey I am web designer and I hate IE. But lets not forget that IE was at one time the most advanced and sophisticated Browser heck IE was the first to implement the concept of AJAX.

The XMLHttpRequest concept was originally developed by Microsoft as part of Outlook Web Access 2000, as a server side API call. At the time, it was not a standards-based web client feature; however, de facto support for it was implemented by many major web browsers. The Microsoft implementation is called XMLHTTP. It has been available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0[5] and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers.

I like it how Peter-Paul Koch, puts it.

Nonetheless, I have to point out the potentially disastrous consequences of “asking the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.”

Opera is begging a political body to take control of web standards.

Also I find Eric Meyers Response pretty awesome.

Look, the time to file this motion and make this appeal was in 2005, when Internet Explorer had been dead in the water for years and it was genuinely holding back web design. Then thereâ€™d have been a case to make. When IE7 came out in late 2006, it wasnâ€™t a great leap forward for web development, but it did bring IE more or less in line with where browsers were at the timeâ€”which was, frankly, a pretty large leap. After all, they were doing five years of catch-up with a pretty small team. Now we have IE8 in development, and there is a real chance that it could push standards support forward in a significant way.

Its pretty clear Opera has a clear conflict of interest.

As has been widely reported, software developer Opera, has filed an antitrust complaint with the EU to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer and to carry alternative browsers pre-installed on Windows. What has not yet been discussed is the devastating and destabilizing effect that this will undoubtably have on the development of future CSS.

Following Opera’s action, today I am calling on Bert Bos, chairman of the CSS Working Group, and those higher up within the W3C including Sir Tim Berners Lee, to immediately disband the CSS Working Group in its current form. I am asking for immediate action to be taken on the formulation of a replacement CSS Working Group that will include new members who are not the representatives of browser vendors. Instead the new CSS Working Group should consist of people, including some who already serve on the group, who are committed to seeing the development of CSS3 succeed because that is central to the success of our profession. This new group need not start from scratch, but should instead build uponn the significant advances and hard work of the current CSS Working Group.

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Catergories: Software, Web Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

Microsoft’s Secret Run Office 2007 in any Browser And Kill Google Docs, Zoho

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 01:48:25 +0000

Did you know you can test drive Office 2007(Excel,word, IE 7.0 etc) from the comfort of your browser. All you required to have is JAVA and install a small Java Plugin take a look here. Unfortunately this works only in IE, but believe me it can work on any Browser that supports Java. I know this because a while back I accidentally managed to get it to run on FireFox when I realised that it was a Java Applet and that the Plugin is not really required, but a few months back Microsoft closed this loophole and made it mandatory to install the Plugin so that it works only on IE(typical of Microsoft).

(Note: you require to have Java installed also in case you are testing the office 2007 demo you’ll need to install the plugin)

But I managed to get hold of another demo of Office 2003 which runs on any browser with support for java. These are not web based application think of them as remote desktop on a browser to access these applications with minimal overhead in terms of Bandwidth and memory (Considering that office 2007 is so huge and requires a lot of memory).

Below is the full Office 2007 suite running in IE 6.0. (You can even see IE 7.0 right at the back)

Office 2003 Outlook and PowerPoint Running inside FireFox on Ubuntu.

I am sure you have heard of desktop Virtualization (Vmware, Parallels, Virtual PC 2007, XEN source, Virtual Box) using which you can run a whole Operating System in a virtual environment on your computer. I already mentioned a year back that Virtualization is the future. Its one reason why Macs have started to become more popular since you can easily run multiple OS without the need to reboot the system.The full Ubuntu Linux OS running inside a window(Vmware Player) on Windows XP.

Application Virtualization

The Company called CITRIX is behind this technology. The company was started by an Ex-IBM developer there product called the CitrixÂ® Presentation Serverâ„¢ enables Applications Virtualization. This is the same company that recently acquire XenSource.

They are currently building XenDesktop which will take application Virtualization main stream.

I can think of a couple of reasons why Microsoft doesn’t want to put too much emphasis on this technology right now.

Its based on Java and Open Source Technologies.
Microsoft does not own this technology.
Scalability and performance Issues.
The Technology is too commercialized and only one company holds a monopoly over it.
Cost

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Catergories: Microsoft, Software Tags: Microsoft, Web 2.0

FastCGI for IIS is Released, PHP On IIS Faster Than On Apache

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:10:46 +0000

Microsoft has released FastCGI for IIS. Also did you know that PHP on IIS is about 10-15% faster than on Apache(Linux). Here a list of guides to installing Popular Open Source Php Applications on IIS. You can install IIS only If You have Windows XP Professional version. Here is a guide to installing WordPress on IIS, there don’t seem to be any extra steps involved in getting it to run and install successfully. Looks like Apache is in for some tough competition, it has been steadly losing market share to IIS this year and there are other web servers that run PHP faster.

With Microsoftâ€™s implementation of the FastCGI open standard, IT Professionals will be able to host PHP applications on Windows ServerÂ® 2003 and IIS 6 with increased reliability, scalability, and security. Customers also know that they will be able to count on Microsoft to stand by and service the Microsoft FastCGI Extension. By supporting the open standard, Microsoft has made it possible for PHP and other CGI compliant languages to be hosted efficiently and effectively on Windows Server 2003 and IIS.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: General, Microsoft, Open Source, Software Tags: Web-Hosting, Windows

Get A Mac Ad: Choose A Vista

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:31:07 +0000

One of the very few apple ads that I completely agree with. One of the Biggest screw ups with Vista are the various different version.

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Catergories: Apple, Software, Windows Tags: Apple, Mac, Videos

Flock 1.0 Released

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 06:14:28 +0000

Flock 1.0 has been officially released. For those of you who don’t know what Flock is, it is basically a Firefox based web browser. However, it has some amazing features that Firefox don’t have. Much of what makes Flock so special is it’s social networking tools. Some of the features of Flock are:

Instantly publish blog posts
Connect with your friends across multiple networks
Easily share your photos, videos and favourite links
Create your own world so you are also informed
Inbuilt RSS feed reader
Instantly find media form Youtube, Flickr, Photobucket and Facebook
Grab your favourite photos, text and links
Instantly upload photos Flickr, Photobucket, Piczo and Facebook

To download Flock, click HERE

Post published by Michael, find more about me HERE

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Catergories: Open Source, Software Tags: FireFox, Photos, Social-Networks, Software