Clazh » Technology

Why Virtualization Is The Future

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:05:16 +0000

Intel and other chip makers are moving towards multi-core architectures which means you can run each OS on a single core. In the coming years most people won’t be satisfied with running a single OS, they would like to have the best of both worlds. As a web designer I need to check my website on different web browsers and platforms, virtualization gives me an easy way to deal with this. Another use of virtualization is that people can use the a virtual OS to surf and use the Internet or install and test out new softwares without worrying about cluttering and infecting their computers with spyware or viruses . Intel Capital took a $218.5 million stake in virtualization company VMWare. It will interesting to see what comes out of this. I run both Ubuntu and a trial version on Vista on Vmware, wish I could run MACOSX too (you can run a MACOSX on vmware but its illegal, google for OSX86 to find out more) Though thankfully Apple released Safari for windows recently. I guess by the time leopard is out Safari too will be out of beta for windows.

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Catergories: General, Software, Technology Tags: Software, Technology

Google Announces "Gears" Offline Support For Web Applications

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:08:25 +0000

Robert Scoble has the scoop. Google Developers day is in progress and on the first day Google has released a new technology called “Gears“ to enable offline support for web based applications. This is not a new technology it has been showcased before, it mostly based on JavaScript and Flash, now that Google has officially released a toolkit we can hope to see a wide spread adoption of offline support for other web applications.

What is Google Gears

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

Store and serve application resources locally

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

Run asynchronous JavaScript to improve application responsiveness

Gears works on Macs, Windows, Linux on IE, Firefox. Opera support isn’t finished yet and Safari support will be coming “later.”

They have also released a new version of Google Reader Today which has offline support enabled. You’ll need to install the Gears Extension for your browser to see it in action.

If you are a developer head over to the developers page to see some demos and documentation.

Google has also released a A new Mashup editor that is aimed at developers familiar with HTML and JavaScript. The Google Mashup Editor offers a simpler way to deploy AJAX user interface components atop existing feeds and Google Web Services. This is currently a limited beta, so you’ll have to sign up and wait for it.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: General, Google, Technology Tags: Google, Software, Technology

Breaking News Microsoft Announces Release Of Microsoft Surface.

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 30 May 2007 07:27:29 +0000

Micorosft just announced the the release of Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface™, the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp., turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.

How does Surface work?

At a high level, Surface uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and the result is displayed on the surface using rear projection.

What is surface computing?

Surface computing is a new way of working with computers that moves beyond the traditional mouse-and-keyboard experience. It is a natural user interface that allows people to interact with digital content the same way they have interacted with everyday items such as photos, paintbrushes and music their entire life: with their hands, with gestures and by putting real-world objects on the surface. Surface computing opens up a whole new category of products for users to interact with.

What are the key attributes of surface computing?

Surface computing has four key attributes:

Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
Multi-touch contact. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
Multi-user experience. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.

Microsoft Surface responds to touch, gestures and objects placed on the surface

Front view of Microsoft Surface

With Microsoft Surface, order a beverage during your meal with just the tap of a finger.

Microsoft Surface puts restaurants, hotels, shopping and theaters at your fingertips.

Use Microsoft Surface to quickly browse through music, dragging favourite songs onto a personal playlist.

View, sort, stack and organize photos with your hands on Microsoft Surface.

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Catergories: General, Microsoft, Technology Tags: Microsoft, Technology

Yahoo To Stop Email Spam Forever With DKIM

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 23 May 2007 02:13:18 +0000

The Yahoo blog has listed out how they plan to stop spammers, spoofers, and phishers everywhere.

We’ve just reached an important milestone in our battle against email scammers. Today, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has approved DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) as a proposed Internet standard — RFC 4871. That’s bad news for spammers, spoofers, and phishers everywhere.

DKIM is an email authentication framework that addresses the widespread
issue of email forgery, using cryptography to verify the domain of the
sender. It allows email providers to validate an email’s originating
domain, making use of blacklists and whitelists more effective. It also
makes phishing attacks easier to detect by helping to identify abusive
domains.

How DomainKeys Works

How it Works – Sending Servers

There are two steps to signing an email with DomainKeys:

Set up: The domain owner (typically the team running the email systems within a company or service provider) generates a public/private key pair to use for signing all outgoing messages (multiple key pairs are allowed). The public key is published in DNS, and the private key is made available to their DomainKey-enabled outbound email servers. This is step “A” in the diagram to the right.
Signing: When each email is sent by an authorized end-user within the domain, the DomainKey-enabled email system automatically uses the stored private key to generate a digital signature of the message. This signature is then pre-pended as a header to the email, and the email is sent on to the target recipient’s mail server. This is step “B” in the diagram to the right.

How it Works – Receiving Servers

There are three steps to verifying a signed email:

Preparing: The DomainKeys-enabled receiving email system extracts the signature and claimed From: domain from the email headers and fetches the public key from DNS for the claimed From: domain. This is step “C” in the diagram to the right.
Verifying: The public key from DNS is then used by the receiving mail system to verify that the signature was generated by the matching private key. This proves that the email was truly sent by, and with the permission of, the claimed sending From: domain and that its headers and content weren’t altered during transfer.
Delivering: The receiving email system applies local policies based on the results of the signature test. If the domain is verified and other anti-spam tests don’t catch it, the email can be delivered to the user’s inbox. If the signature fails to verify, or there isn’t one, the email can be dropped, flagged, or quarantined. This is step “D” in the diagram on the right.

In general, Yahoo! expects that DomainKeys will be verified by the receiving email servers. However, end-user mail clients could also be modified to verify signatures and take action on the results.

For more technical Details Head over to the yahoo antispam page

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Catergories: General, Internet, Technology Tags: Technology