Google launches own Memetracker

Google has introduced a new home page for its Blog Search that resembles the popular news aggregator Techmeme's interface. The aim is the same – top stories from across various topics are displayed as soon as they are up on blogs/websites – worldwide.

For those who are not too well-versed with memetrackers, this Wikipedia write up should help. To put it shortly, memetrackers are the most popular and usually the best way to keep a track of breaking news stories around the world. They are designed to monitor multitudes of news sources at once from multiple sources and aggregate them under one common banner.

As for how successful the latest Google venture might turn out to be, well that depends on how well the service performs. New York times too had jumped into the memetracker bandwagon back in 2007 – with uninspiring results. The service known as Blogrunner has been largely ignored owing to the popularity and quickness of Techmeme. For Google to make any impact in this segment, they ought to play smart and the tool should be able to at-least offer everything what Techmeme does and probably, even more. Check out the new service here

Via: Tech Crunch

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Nokia Xpress Music 5800 Unveiled!

Nokia today launched its first Series 60 5th Edition touch screeen device, the much awaited Nokia Xpress Music 5800.

As usual folks at Engadget did a scoop "first look" at the device and they do not seem to be much impressed. Although pretty well-stacked up on the features front, it's far from an iPhone killer as most Nokia fans had made it out to be. Infact, it's the same good ol' S60 repackeaged into a touchscreen format. The old style menus and familiar S60 stuff are still there. Whats new with it is (obviously) the touch screen input and something called the "bars" that Nokia has introduced. There is a contact bar, a media bar and god knows what for quick access to your application of choice.

Specs wise, it's a pretty decent show. GPS, 3.5mm standard audio jack, TV-out and a microSD card slot are all standard.

More details as coming soon!

Nokia Phones & Feature Pack [FP1 / FP2 Confusion Cleared]

We all have heard that "Some of the functions may not work on pre-FP1 devices" OR "Fp2 required for application to work" OR "Older S60-smartphones without Feature Pack 1 or 2 (FP1 and FP2) cannot access the music-player buttons because of technical restrictions."

What exactly is this Feature Pack is not my topic for dissection here. Rather, general public should be made aware of the Nokia Models which fall under the:

a) Nokia S60 3rd Edition, Initial Release without FP

b) Nokia S60 3rd Edition, FP1

c) Nokia S60 3rd Edition, FP2

Click on the links given above to know under which category the vendor can easily throw you out citing: "Your phone does not have FP" Another one of the gimmicks adopted by NOKIA to wriggle out of obligations towards customer who pay hard-earned money (Well most of them!!) to get a grossly over-priced phone owing to word-of-mouth publicity.

By-the-way Nokia N73 is "Initial Release without FP" & Nokia n73 Music Edition is "FP1"

Windows 7: Optimized for parallel processing

The upcoming Windows 7 OS from Microsoft is slated to be the replacement for the Vista. The lucky few who got to see some of the early build versions have focused mainly on the UI tweaks incorporated. However, the differences are more than skin deep. Apparently, there has been a slight tweaking of the new OS’ core to better support parallel processing. However, to ensure application and driver compatibility, most of these under the hood tweaks have been kept to minimal levels. With the Windows core, Win32 being dismissed as being unsuitable for asynchronous, concurrent computing, Microsoft is facing a dilemma of sorts – whether to go for an all-out change ground up, or take the slower path to evolution where they will eventually “phase out” the good ol’ win32. The former however seems unlikely in the near future – thanks to the Vista debacle and fears of another backlash owing to the dreaded “non compatibility” ghost that has been hounding Microsoft ever since the mis-adventure that was Vista.

That said, for long term plans, Microsoft is inching ahead to find a way of dissociating Windows from Win 32 – albeit gradually and replace it with managed code which will add the much needed full fledged parallel processing support. Managed code here refers to a set of programming interfaces optimized for handling parallel processing tasks spanning multiple processors. Many incubation projects including RedHawk and Midori are already heading in this direction.

If things go as planned, the run of the mill Windows which is bound to struggle with future computers that could run on processors having as many as 8, 16 or 32 cores, will get a new lease of life. It remains to be seen what optimization techniques Windows 7 and sibling Windows Server 2008 R2 incorporates prior to the early release expected very soon!

Via: Zdnet

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YouTube gets uploader upgrade, file size boost

In spite of being the market leader, YouTube had some glaring omissions in the form of missing features. This included multiple file uploads and the file size cap of 100 MB per video. Competing services like Vimeo and Viddler , although not as popular had better features than Youtube.

Not any longer. YouTube seems to be in a full fledged revamp mode with the company making its erstwhile closed Beta multiple file uploader as an option for all users. With the new uploader, apart from uploading multiple videos simultaneously, users can also add metadata like the the clips name and tags while uploading the Video.

The Video file size limit too has been increased to 1GB – although some users had the option introduced back in 2007 November. Check the new uploader here

Via: TechCrunch

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