Thank you to all of our competition participants this week but there can only be one prize winner. After voting Sam Rudge won with this photo caption “Even after just a few months, Bob began to regret not buying the $10 cable tidy set from Target”. Keep checking back for our next competition.
Although internet has seen drastic changes since its inception, some of its basic standards have remained the same that is hindering its acceptance in some areas. Internet Domain Names Addressing has always followed the same pattern with Latin based naming and an ending with ‘.com’(or others). This restriction of domain names hindered the extension of the internet to languages that are not derived from Latin alphabets, thus forcing a large portion of world’s population to be aware of the language in order to get access to the internet.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the domain naming standards and has recently approved the usage of non-Latin web addresses. This will enable the countries with non-Latin languages to make domain names using their native alphabets. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are the first three countries whose Arabic IDN ccTLDs has been approved in this program, and we can see the early adopters following this new standard emerging.
This new standard also supports languages which are written from right to left, as is the case with Arabic. Now you can visit http:// مصر . وزارة-الأتصالات .موقع which follows the new standard, however it displays correctly only on Apple’s Safari browser for now. According to ICANN, applications from 11 other languages are awaiting approval that includes Chinese, Russian, Thai, Tamil and Sinhalese. TE Data, Vodafone Data and Link Registrar are among the first few companies that have been authorized to sell the Arabic based domain names for now.
This new feature will certainly bring the web content to a large community, and we can see Internet to extend further in the coming years with more content in non-Latin based languages. We expect this change to be adopted by all web browsers soon.
Wanna know how fast Google Chrome is? Check out the video above and get the answer…
We love the hilarious Photo Captions you have been giving us – so we are doing another! Join us on Facebook and give us your best photo caption for this image.The favorite wins $25. Good luck!
Android is now the only real competitor to the popular iPhone OS that comes in trendy smartphones and is backed by Google and HTC. Google has confirmed native support of the Adobe Flash in the upcoming revision 2.2 of the open-source Android OS. This capability will result in a richer web experience on the smartphones and mobile devices running Android.
Apple is always criticized for not providing support for the Flash in its iPhone OS that comes with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. The company is now backing HTML5 as an alternative to Flash that will be able to support streaming media and ads for the iPhone OS.
However most of the streaming content available today is based on Adobe’s flash that includes popular media websites such as YouTube and Hulu. As the smart devices have become faster and now support popular browsers, the mobile web traffic has now become a significant part of the internet and the support for flash playback is now a much needed feature in these smartphones. After Apple’s refusal to support flash in their iPhone OS, Google team has taken a move to provide full support of the flash playback in the Android 2.2.
This was revealed by Andrew Robin, VP Engineering Google during an interview describing the project code named ‘Froyo’ that will provide native support for Flash Player 10.1. This update will be available soon on latest Android based smartphones including Google Nexus One and provide compatibility with flash games, flash based streaming media and ads.
It’s been a great journey but it’s all over now. Read the full story here.
It’s competition time again for our Facebook Fans. Join us this week to test your vintage gaming knowledge or purhaps just show your age! Either way there is $$$ for the first correct answer. Good luck!
Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking platforms which register thousands of new users daily. However as other social platforms like Facebook, it’s facing the problem of identity theft due to stolen passwords or accounts. This is mainly due to a simple and basic authentication system in place which lets users to sign-in through the web applications or third-party clients through a simple procedure.
Twitter is now preparing OAuthcalypse that will be released by the end of June this year. Twitter will replace the basic authentication system with OAuth to connect to third party apps. Thus users will no longer have to provide their authentication details (username and password) after 30th June while using programs made on Twitter API.
The announcement was made through the Twitter API’s Google group which called the developers to start making applications that will utilize OAuth instead of the current system. However, the streaming API will enable the applications to get access to real-time twitter feeds will still use the basic authentication procedure.
This move is welcomed by users and developers alike as the new system will reduce the events of identity theft. We hope other social media platforms also establish such procedures for authentication to make it safer and easier for the users in general.
Twitter has also launched the OAuth countdown clock as a reminder to the developers to shift to the new specifications by this time.
It’s competition time and we want to tickle your funny bone. Join us on our Facebook Fansite and give us your best punchline to the posted joke. We’ve got cash for the winner so good luck!
Since ancient times, we have been using a printer attached to our PC with some troubling drivers to print our documents. In order to share this printer across multiple PCs, each system needs to have a copy of the driver. This whole system does not welcome a new system or device without the copy of the required drivers and software.
Google is working on its cloud printing platform that will make it simple and easy to connect and share printers with multiple devices. What’s more is that the new setup will run on any device capable of running a web browser including smartphones and tablets. The driver of the printer installs one-time on this cloud and every new computer or mobile device connected to the cloud can get access to this printer.
Google is working with Industry leaders to establish protocols and software necessary for this integration. Besides built-in support with the new “cloud aware” printers, Google is also trying to bring this innovation to the already existing printers that require a driver to setup by using proxies. A small software client will be installed on the host PC that is directly connected to the cloud service. This software communicates the printing jobs between cloud service and the host computer.
Some other benefits of this setup include high-level security, easy-of-access and printing from highly mobile locations such as printing a photo from a home printer through smartphone over large distances. This will virtually connect every printer with every device across the world. The new system will be transparent from any operating system running on your device resolving any compatibility issue.
However this project is still in development stage and the new system will be part of the upcoming Chromium OS. Google has released the initial code and documentation of the project on Google Code. The setup will require “cloud aware” printers which do not exist today but might become a standard soon.