Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Yahoo Messenger 10 beta: A legitimate Skype rival?
September 1st, 2009 | 
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It seems like just yesterday that Yahoo’s Messenger team rolled out version 9 (it was a little less than a year ago, in fact.) The upgrade was so dramatic and overdue that it’s a little surprising Yahoo has already tweaked its chat client, now parading Yahoo Messenger 10 beta to beta testers and curious chatters. We’re glad they did. Even though the changes may not please everyone uniformly, nor should they incite ire. The features build off Yahoo Messenger 9 and emphasize social networking and improved video calling.
You’ll be able to learn more about the social networking aspects from the gallery above. This post will focus on the video features.
VoIP and PC-to-landline calls aren’t new to Yahoo Messenger, but the icon that calls out video chats is. Most of the major IM clients support voice-over-Internet calls with Web cams. It is Yahoo’s attention to video quality makes this build a closer competitor to Skype for Windows, which is a VoIP client first, enriched by chatting, file sharing, emoticons, and games. Yahoo Messenger (and Windows Live Messenger, etc. for that matter,) are chat apps at the core that have layered on other P2P features.
Skype is still ahead in terms of total features, like screen sharing, its most recent contribution to the VoIP community. However, the Web chatting experience was good enough on Yahoo Messenger 10 beta in our tests that we might prefer to use it to start a casual video call if the app is already running, rather than fire up Skype. Admittedly, our tests were limited by the callers’ proximity to each other, fast data connections, and strong computing configurations. We’ll need to keep up the calling with a cross-section of international users to get a more accurate litmus. Since the improved video calling only works with other Yahoo Messenger 10 beta users, we may have to wait for further adoption to test these theories.
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10322729-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Report: eBay has deal to sell Skype
eBay is expected to announce Tuesday that it has reached a deal to sell its Internet telephone service, Skype, to a group of private investors, The New York Times reported late Monday.
The investment group will reportedly include Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital group launched in July by Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and co-founder of Opsware, and Ben Horowitz, also co-founder of Opsware. A price was not revealed, but previous reports put eBay’s asking price for Skype at about $2 billion.
eBay representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Online auction giant eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005 with the plans to offer customers the ability to discuss their transactions in real-time. But over the course of the four years, eBay apparently found that its acquisition failed to provide the synergies it sought.
In 2007, eBay said it would take a $900 million so-called impairment write-down against the value of Skype, meaning that eBay had been forced to reassess the value of the Internet telephony company relative to its overall business. By recording a charge, the company essentially announced it had taken a loss on its original investment.
When eBay announced John Donahoe as its new CEO in 2008, Donahoe indicated that the company would take a year to evaluate the future of its online phone and video-conferencing service.
In April, eBay announced plans to spin off Skype, with an IPO in the first half of next year.
Meanwhile, reports surfaced that Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were interested in repurchasing the company, with the aid of private equity firms KKR, Warburg Pincus, Elevation Partners, and Providence.
Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10322833-94.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Communication, eBay, Internet, Tech | 
Tags: eBay, Skype, The New York Times | 
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Opera 10 browser is here
The Opera 10 browser is now ready to download for Windows, Linux, and Mac three months after the beta first emerged (hands-on Opera 10 beta review).
If you’ve been keeping up with the beta updates, the final build of the cross-platform browser shouldn’t surprise you. Opera Turbo, the browser’s much-publicized compression engine for slow-poke connections, remains a feature highlight. Opera claims that Opera Turbo runs the browser up to eight times faster on suffering connections than do competing browsers.
The refreshed user interface is also noteworthy. Joining the new default skin (changed from version 9.6), are changes to tab bar behavior. The conventional tabs double as thumbnail images. Double-click the thin gray bar below the tabs (indicated by dots) or click and drag to expand open tabs into preview windows that you can navigate by clicking among them.
Other enhancements include an expanded Speed Dial (a feature that has later been adopted and adapted in Google’s Chrome browser) that shows more commonly visited Web pages than in previous Opera browsers. You’re also able to customize it with a background picture. You’ll see that spell check will be applicable to any text field (for 51 languages), and that Opera’s incorporated e-mail client takes a page from Google’s books by threading e-mail conversations.
Developers get access to a newer version of Opera Dragonfly, the publisher’s online development tools, but everyone can benefit from the speedier rendering engine that, according to Opera, makes version 10 up to 40 percent faster than version 9.6–before switching on Turbo’s compression.
Despite all the additions that Opera hopes will keep Opera 10 competitive, there are still two notable omissions for this final release. The first is Opera Unite, which uses your browser as a Web server for sharing your content with others. The second is the Carakan JavaScript engine that promises to process JavaScript about 2.5 times as fast as the engine used in Opera 10 alpha.
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10320478-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
ZoneAlarm’s 2010 suites include encryption
Best known for its ZoneAlarm firewall, Check Point Software has announced updates for ZoneAlarm’s more full-featured security suites. Available in two versions, ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2010 gives users a robust firewall, antivirus and antispyware, and parental control package for $50, while ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2010 adds Web browsing protection, system tune-up tools, backup options, and anti-phishing technology for $70.
ZoneAlarm is still best known for its firewall, but it currently offers users much more than that. See what’s available in ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2010, which is similar to but has more features than ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2010.
Posted in antivirus, Internet, security, Tech |
Tags: antimalware, antispyware, antivirus, firewall, security, ZoneAlarm |
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Automatically translate documents into 42 different languages right in Google Docs
Translate documents: sharing across languages and generations
My cousin is in first grade and sometimes she writes short stories for class. I try to share the stories with her grandparents, but because Japanese is their first language and they don’t speak English very well, it’s been tough. Today we’re releasing a feature for Google Docs to make this kind of multi-lingual sharing easier — you can now automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.
So for my cousin’s latest story, I helped her type it up in Google Docs and then clicked “Translate document” from the “Tools” menu. In a matter of seconds, Google Docs has translated the whole story into Japanese using Google Translate’s technology.
You can replace the original document with the translation or make a new translated version. I like keeping an English version for friends here and creating a separate Japanese version for her grandparents. All the formatting and layout is preserved no matter what language it’s in — translations aren’t perfect, but we are continuously working on improving translation quality over time. We hope this new feature helps you more easily share information without worrying about language barriers.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/translate-documents-sharing-across.html