What Is Green Power?

What Is Green Power?

With the continuing rise of utility costs many people are opening their minds to the concept of green power, a free, renewable and Earth friendly power source.

Many homeowners simply don't realize that they have options.  The days of being locked into a relationship with your monopoly of a utility company are over.

Thanks in large part to advances in technology there are viable sources of renewable energy available to any homeowner for little initial investment.

The old perception of energy sources such as solar panels, and wind turbines of being expensive, hard to maintain eyesores is simply not true.

Todays technology has made it possible for turbines and solar panels to come in many shapes and sizes and the maintenance and upkeep of these units is not more difficult that a 'traditional' heating and cooling unit.

While both wind and solar power are viable options, wind will be the better choice for many homeowners.  Not everyone lives in a sunny climate and even if you do there is still a little thing called 'night'.

But virtually every area has wind.  And wind power can be generated day or night. 

The only potential drawback of a wind turbine is that you will need a fairly open space.  But even if you have a lot of trees, it might still be possible to mount your turbine on your roof or on a tall column.

It is very easy and inexpensive to build your own turbine.  You can do it for less than $300.  You won't need any special parts or skills.  All the parts you will need can be found in any hardware store.

If you buy a turbine be aware that they don't produce more electricity than a home made turbine yet the initial investment is considerably more so it will take you much longer to get your money back.

All in all there are many excellent reasons for using green power.  If you thought it was out of reach, think again, you will be pleasantly surprised.

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Cara Daftar di extremetracking dari indonesia

Cara Daftar di extremetracking dari indonesia

Extremetracking merupakan penghitung statistik pengunjung website/blog, dan berasal dari manakah pengunjung tersebut, kata kunci yang di gunakan, dan lain lain. semua tersaji cukup lengkap disini, untuk versi gratisan extremetracking sangatlah bagus dan lengkap. banyak orang yang telah menggunakan penghitung statistik ini, namu sayangnya mereka tidak membuka yntuk orang indonesia. mengapa? saya juga tidak tahu kenapa mereka tidak memperbolehkan situs dari indonesia mendaftar. tapi tenang saja, hal tersebut bisa di akalin atau di curangi atau di bodohi.hehe.. extremetracking mendeteksi pengunjung dari IP address, dan mereka tahu jika kita berasal dari indonesia juga dari IP address oleh karena itu untuk menyamarkan asal kita, kita harus mempergunakan webproxy untuk pendaftaran. berikut ini adalah langakah langkah cara mendaftar di extremetracking untuk orang indonesia:

1. Gunakan webproxy seperti usestack.com

2. kemudian di kolom webproxy tuliskan www.extremetracking.com dan kemudian anda masuk ke halaman extremetracking.

3. Daftar di sana di free tracker, setelah daftar maka segera login dan copy paste code HTML ke web atau blog anda

4. selesai, setelah itu anda bisa melihat data pengunjung anda dari tombol kecil extremetracking, contohnya di sidebar kanan blog ini di bawah tulisan partner

Cukup mudah bukan? sekarang anda bisa mempunyai tracking yang cukup bagus untuk versi gratisan. banyak sekali yang menggunakan extremetracking baik dalam versi halal maupun haram, sayapun tidak tahu. kalo saya sih gunain cara yang haram.hehhe,,

selamat mencoba daftar di extremetracking untuk orang indonesia.

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Pilih Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 atau Opera 10.10..?

Pilih Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 atau Opera 10.10..?

Firefox 3.6 beta memang sudah dirilis beberapa minggu yang lalu, tapi dari rilis itu masih banyak kelemahan dan  kekurangan yang membuat Firefox mencoba memperbaiki segala kekurangan yang ada.

Kini versi perbaikan dari Firefox 3.6 beta 4 ini telah hadir dengan 100 lebih perbaikan yang diklaim telah dilakukan oleh pihak Firefox, termasuk perbaikan pada add-ons, yang merupakan salah satu value yang dipunyai Firefox yang menjadikannya salah satu browser terdepan bersaing dengan Internet Explorer yang ternyata usernya masih jauh lebih besar dibandingkan dengan browser lain.

Kini hampir 70% Add-ons yang sudah compatible dengan Firefox 3.6 beta 4. Beberapa kelebihan lain yang saya kutip dari blog resmi developer Mozilla yaitu:

• Dukungan untuk HTML5 File API (Baru dalam versi ini)
• Perubahan integrasi software dari pihak ketiga dengan Firefox untuk meningkatkan stabilitas
• Kemampuan untuk menjalankan scripts asynchronously untuk mempercepat load halaman
• Mekanisme baru untuk mencegah perangkat lunak yang tidak kompatibel crash dengan Firefox
• Dengan dukungan Personas yang di built in dalam browser, pengguna dapat mengubah tampilan browser mereka dengan satu klik
• Firefox 3,6 akan memberitahukan pengguna tentang plugin apa saja yang sudah tidak up date agar user tetap aman
• Membuka native video kini dapat ditampilkan dengan layar penuh, dan versi terbaru mendukung poster frames
• Support untuk format font WOFF
• Peningkatan kinerja JavaScript, browser secara keseluruhan respon dan waktu startup.
  Dukungan untuk CSS, DOM dan HTML5 teknologi web

Hampir bersamaan dengan perbaikan dari Firefox ini, Opera juga meluncurkan versi terbaru browser mereka Opera 10.10.

Browser ini menawarkan beberapa fungsi utama yaitu Opera Unite, penyatuan web browser dan web server
dalam satu aplikasi, Opera turbo, Opera Synchronize serta tampilan desain yang sangat futuristik, kalau bisa dibilang keren. Opera sendiri mengklaim bahwa dengan versi 10.10 ini mereka mencoba membuat sebuah terbosan untuk memperbarui cara pandang dan cara bekerja web.

Terus terang, yang pertama kali menarik saya untuk mencoba Opera 10.10 adalah tampilan desainnya yang fututistik itu. Gabungan warna abu-abu, hitam dan merah khas Opera membuat mata saya sedikit berbinar. Tapi setelah mencoba saya malah teringat salah satu web browser yang kini mulai ngetrend, yaitu Flock. Side bar serta beberapa aplikasi seperti up-load foto serta streaming dari social network, betul-betul mengingatkan saya pada Flock.

Beberapa keunggulan dari Opera 10.10 ini memang patut diperhatikan terus, terutama tentang web server dan Opera turbo, meski untuk web server, Opera akan berhadapan langsung dengan teknologi cloud yang kini berkembang terus. Opera turbo memungkinkan Opera secara otomatis mengkonversikan situs atau web yang kita buka dalam bentuk Lite, tentu masih ingat dengan Facebook Lite yang menjadi kabar gembira terutama untuk user internet di negara berkembang seperti Indonesia. Opera 10.10 memberikan 3 opsi aplikasi turbo ini.

Persaingan browser memang sama serunya dengan persaingan search engine dan juga persaingan operating system.

Dengan persiapan munculnya versi resmi Google Chrome extension, sepertinya menanti gebrakan apalagi yang akan dilakukan Firefox 3.6 yang masih dalam tahap beta serta Opera 10.10 yang baru diluncurkan akan membuat hari-hari berselancar di Internet akan semakin menarik. Internet Explorer dengan versi 8 mereka akan terus digempur oleh Chrome, Flock, Firefox, Opera, dan tentu saja Safari.

Jadi bagaimana pendapat anda? Firefox atau Opera, atau anda punya pilihan sendiri, tentu saya sangat penasaran dengan pendapat anda.

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10 Great Photoshop Tutorial Websites

10 Great Photoshop Tutorial Websites

Imagining present times without Adobe Photoshop can be quite difficult. Not only does this extremely versatile software let you fix that grainy picture you want to use as your new Facebook profile picture but you can also use it to create your own digital artwork.

However, using Photoshop, and by that I mean using it properly to its full potential, is hardly a cakewalk! To say that almost everyone who is new to Photoshop finds himself or herself a little confused is an understatement. So, to make your foray into digital art and photography a little easier, I will share 10 Great Photoshop Tutorial Websites with you.

Psdtuts+ is a great Photoshop tutorial website which updates its content regularly. Also, this a great website if you take a fancy to a wide variety of photo-manipulations. From tutorials on Applying Textures to uneven surfaces to Creating an original pin-up girl, Psdtuts+ not only has a vast range of Photoshop tutorials, but also explains these lessons in a friendly manner that is easily understood by all. Although complete access to all the material that can be downloaded, including all PSD files of tutorials is accessible only to paying members, the instructions can be seen by all visitors to the website.

Another great website for Photoshop tutorials is Tutorial9. All the Photoshop tutorials provided by this website are created by experienced teachers and are completely free. Tutorial9 also has an excellent stock of Photoshop tutorials. Some of the interesting lessons include those on how to Design an Epic Fantasy Scene with Photoshop, Create a Clean and Colorful Web Layout in Photoshop and How To Create An Abstract Floral Explosion in Photoshop among others.

PS Hero also offers great Photoshop tutorials for free. If you are starting out with Photoshop, this would be a great place to look for lessons as there are tutorials on many simple image manipulations that can be used to great effect, for instance, learning to create A Scrap of Notebook Paper or Grunge Photo Edges.

PSD Learning is a relatively new Photoshop tutorial website which has a wonderful stock of tutorials that will suit the requirements of not only those seeking to perfect their digital art but also novices who are only starting out with their game.

Another excellent Photoshop tutorial website that has started out recently is 10Steps.SG. With friendly navigation and fantastic content organized into categories, this is another great website to turn to for Photoshop tutorials.

If you want to learn how to create Incredibly Realistic Water Text in Cinema 4D and Photoshop and other interesting image manipulations, then you would love Abduzeedo. Not only do you have extremely helpful Photoshop tutorials for a host of advanced Photoshop functions but you are also provided with design inspirations that you can make use of while coming up with your own creations.

However, if you would rather master the simpler tricks first then Photoshop Contest has extremely helpful lessons.

You could even head to Photoshop Tutorials for more tutorials on the various Photoshop techniques.

If you are looking for Photoshop tutorials on creating Wordpress layouts then you could visit PSD Vibe which has excellent tutorials for these among other lessons on interesting techniques.

Finally, in your quest for learning Photoshop skills, you could also try out the tutorials at Pxleyes.

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10 Places To Find Free Fonts For Windows And Mac OSX

10 Places To Find Free Fonts For Windows And Mac OSX

If you are designer you may frequently want to try and use different fonts in your designs, though there are 1000s of fonts available, not everyone of them are free. Though font usage and download is not just restricted to designers and many people use them in their day to day life too.

Here are some resources for you to find free fonts that you can use without having to pay any royalty for both Windows and Mac OSX. If you are not accustomed to installing fonts, we have a mini guide at the end of the post that will help you do it.

Fawnt – Fawnt is a font resource for designers, developers, and anyone that appreciates the web’s highest quality fonts. It currently has 9348 free fonts you can use and download for Windows and Max OSX.

Abstract Fonts – Abstract Fonts has a listing of 11849 free fonts in their database. The site has a nice navigation and user experience with proper categorization of fonts.

Free Fonts – Free fonts has over 12000 free fonts which you can download and use for Windows or Mac OSX. The site has a clean navigation making it easier to browse the fonts.

Dafont – dafont is another nice site to find free fonts, they list over 10000 fonts, most of which are free to use for personal use on Windows and Mac OSX. Licensing terms are clearly marked above the download buttons.

Urban Fonts – Another site which lists over 8000 free fonts. The fonts are segregated into different easy to find categories, and can also be alphabetically browsed.

Font Reactor – Font Reactor lists freeware fonts in graffiti, gothic font, old English fonts etc. Most of the fonts are freeware, but there is no clear indication before downloading, so this adds to a bit of hassle.

Daily Free Font – Daily Free Font is a site that has over 4500 freeware fonts listed in its directory. The licensing terms for font usage is clearly marked.

Font Freak – Font Freak has a database of 5000 free fonts, they store a mix of both free and commercial fonts, so check the licensing before you download the fonts.

Simply The Best Fonts – This site lists thousands of free fonts in well segregated categories, the licensing if clearly marked, telling you whether a font is free or not.

Free-Fonts – This site is more like a search engine for fonts and lists over 55000 fonts in their database, the only problem with the site is that, there is no option to browse the fonts and you need to remember the names of the font to search for it.

How to Install Fonts?

Unzip the files you have downloaded, then follow the instruction for your OS:

Windows Vista : Right-click on the font files > "Install"
Windows XP: Put the font files into C:\Windows\Fonts
Mac OS X: Double-click the font file > "Install font" button

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35 Amazing Softwares That Are Free

35 Amazing Softwares That Are Free

Many good softwares are either too costly or simply unaffordable, but that does not mean every good software out there requires you to shell out absurd amounts of money. There are 100s and 1000s of softwares that are completely free and perform as good as if not better than their paid counterparts.

This is the 700th post for us and we thought to make it worthwhile for you. In this post we will look at more than 35 amazing softwares that can be used for different purposes and are absolutely free to use.  These softwares provide you solutions that make your computing life much better without costing you a penny.

Productivity Suites

OpenOffice.org

One of the best alternatives available for Microsoft Office Suite, OpenOffice.org has not only received several awards and accolades, it is one of the best alternatives to managing your document, spreadsheets, presentations and more.

With Open Office you can do everything you can with Microsoft Office and with the software being open source you can expect 100s and 1000s of cool software engineers contributing to make it better.

Download OpenOffice.org | Learn more about OpenOffice.org

Other worthwhile mentions

• Zoho


• Google Docs 

Thunderbird

Maintaining several email accounts in a single place has always been a forte associated with Microsoft Outlook. Thunderbird on the other hand is a alternative which is as good as Outlook if not better, providing you with the many of the same features to manage multiple email accounts at no cost at all.

Thunderbird lets you manage your POP and IMAP accounts with ease. Thunderbird also allows you to extend the basic functionality by allowing you to add useful add-ons and extensions making it just too good to resist.

Download Thunderbird | Learn more about Thunderbird

Dia

A good software is always conceptualized by defining the exact way in which it should work with process diagrams and flowcharts. If you have been paying out of your pocket for Microsoft Visio it is high time you switched to Dia a open source software that allows you to create structured diagrams and flowcharts for free.

Download Dia for Windows | Learn more about Dia

Sunbird

Though not one of the most talked about product, Sunbird definitely is a great alternative to managing your appointments and events without having to use Microsoft Outlook.

And if you would frown about having to use two different applications to manage emails and calendars you should definitely try out Lightning that combines Thunderbird with Sunbird to create a great productivity application.

Download and learn more about Sunbird

Browsers, Instant Messengers, Remote File Management, Shell and Linux Emulation

Firefox

Firefox is not only the best open source browser available today, it also provides you with a much safer and faster browsing experience. It is really much better than Internet Explorer and not many would say otherwise.

Well if you have been reading us for sometime you may already know how much we love Firefox. You can definitely check out the ultimate list of tips and tricks for firefox 3 and while your at it don’t forget to see the Firefox extensions we have put up for you.

Download Firefox 3 | Learn more about Firefox

Other worthwhile mentions

• Flock


• Maxthon


• Opera


• Avant Browser

Digsby

Digsby is much more than just a just a multi-protocol IM client. With Digsby you can communicate with your friends over AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk and more without having to install separate clients, as well as check your emails from multiple providers.

If that was not enough you can also use Digsby to update your social networking statues in Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Download Digsby | Learn more about Digsby

Other worthwhile mentions

• 8hands


• Meebo


• Pigdin


• Miranda IM

WinSCP

Remote file management is always a challenge and though there are several softwares out there our preferred one is WinSCP, a incredible and versatile software that makes file management quite a breeze.

WinSCP is not only allows you to transfer files but they do it by providing you a way to securely do them, using the SFTP protocol instead of the regular FTP protocol.

Download WinSCP | Learn more about WinSCP

Other worthwhile mentions

• Filezilla

uTorrent

If you are looking to download files using torrents, look no farther than uTorrent, one of the best softwares to manage torrents. Not only is it lightweight it also can be managed using the browser by accessing the uTorrent site and the best part is it runs out of the box without requiring any installations.

Download uTorrent | Learn more about uTorrent

Other worthwhile mentions

• Vuze

Free Download Manager

Managing your downloads with browsers have never been that easy and download managers definitely allow you to download files in a much better way. Free Download Manager allows you to download files from multiple sources, accelerating your download process, along with allowing you to pause and resume them.

Free Download Manager makes your download management much better and also comes with inbuilt support to download torrent files.

Download Free Download Manager | Learn more about Free Download Manager

Other worthwhile mentions

• Internet Download Manager


• FlashGet

Putty

Ever wanted to manage Linux servers from your Windows machine using shell. Putty is one of the best way to access shell environment. As far as we know there is not competition to Putty.

If you have been using Putty, don’t forget to check out how you can manage your putty sessions in a database and work in a tabbed interface or minimize it to a tray so that you are not overwhelmed with the number of open windows.

Download Putty | Learn more about Putty

Cygwin

Ever wanted to emulate a Linux system on your Windows PC or just wanted to practice few skills before you actually installed Linux as you main system? Cygwin is one of the best Linux emulator you will ever find using which you can get your hands dirty without worrying about screwing up a actual operating system.

Download Cygwin | Installation Instructions | Learn more about Cygwin

System Management, File Management, System Maintenance, Anti-virus, Anti-spyware and Firewalls

Having paid for a software like Windows does not mean that you get the best of everything, there are several pieces of softwares that help you maintain your system so that it runs properly for a long time and is optimized to the T.

AVG Free Anti-virus

Symantec no doubt has a huge market in the anti-virus industry with Norton, with support from computer manufacturers who bundle the trial version of Norton in factory shipped desktops and laptops, that obliviouslydoes not mean it is the best.

Norton has had huge complaints of considerably slowing down PCs and using considerable system resources. AVG on the other hand is a real good alternative which is free and does not tax you system as much as Norton does. The latest version of AVG also comes with several new features such as Anti-spyware, Anti-rootkit and more.

Download AVG 8 | Learn more about AVG

Other worthwhile mentions

• Avast
• Comodo
• ThreatFire

CCleaner

Your PC accumulates several temporary files and traces that are not useful to you. These temporary files and traces slows down the PC along with taking up unwanted disk space.

CCleaner is a cleaning robot for your computer, which is smart enough to know which places to look for unwanted files and traces. CCleaner can also cleanup several applications along cleaning temporary and unwanted files created by Windows.

Download CCleaner | Learn more about CCleaner

Defraggler

Your PC is not the smartest thing in the world and it has a tendency to spread fragments of files all over the place. Defraggler allows you to sort out the mess and make your PC run faster and much better. The good thing about defraggler is that it allows you to choose the files you want to defrag making the process much more easier and faster.

Download Defraggler | Learn more about Defraggler

Comodo Firewall Pro

Windows inbuilt Firewall is good but not really one of the best things around, there are several alternatives which you can definitely try out but our personal favorite is Comodo

which packs in all the features of a professional version as a free software.

Download Comodo Firewall Pro | Learn more about Comodo Firewall Pro

Other worthwhile mentions

• ZoneAlarm
• PC Tools Firewall Plus

 
Recuva

“Oops I deleted that important file” is a statement many users have right after using Shift + Delete option for a file.If you thought that you could never recover the deleted file you are in for a surprise. There are several softwares that will allow you to recover deleted files.

Recuva is one of the best alternative that is available today, not only is it very reliable, you will not have to spend a penny for it as it is completely free.

Download Recuva | Learn more about Recuva

Imaging Tools, Graphics, 3D Software, Image Managers

Gimp

Gimp is undoubtedly the best alternative available for Photoshop. Edit your images with ease without having to worry about paying a fortune for Photoshop. Gimp also can be used in conjunction with plugins bringing a host of new features to the core software.

Download Gimp | Learn more about Gimp

Other worthwhile mentions

• Paint.net

Blender

Creating 3D applications is not that easy but even more harder is spending thousands of dollars to get a software that allows you to create 3D animations.

Blender is a great application to work with 3D modeling with a great interface at a unmatchable price, Free.

Download Blender | Learn more about Blender

Picasa

Picasa is definitely one of the best tools available for managing your photos. With Picasa you can import your pictures from your camera and edit them to change contrast, remove red eyes and more. You can also upload your pictures to your online album and share them with family and friends without having to upload each and every file individually.

Download Picasa | Learn more about Picasa

Other worthwhile mentions

• IrfanView
• Windows Live Photo Gallery

Video Softwares, Audio Softwares, 3D Softwares

VLC Player

VLC Player is one of the best video softwares available to view different files and formats. VLC player supports multiple codecs out of the the box allowing you to play almost all kinds of file formats without having to install any additional softwares or codecs.

Download VLC Player | Learn more about VLC Player

Miro

Miro allows you to convert your PC into a Internet TV. You can use it to watch Internet video channels and play any video file. You can play files from YouTube and more and you can play almost any types of file with it including HD videos.

Download Miro | Learn more about Miro

PicLens

PicLens is a Firefox add-on that transforms your browser into full screen 3D browser allowing you to browse images and videos in full screen.

Learn more and download PicLens

Audacity

Audacity is one of the best free tools available for audio editing and recording for several operating systems.

You can record live audio, convert tapes into digital recordings, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together and more.

Download Audacity | Learn more about Audacity

Development Tools, Editors

Eclipse

Eclipse is one of the best development IDE available for building robust enterprise applications, embedded software development and more with support for several languages.

The Eclipse project has been supported by several well know companies and also has a very large open source community to help develop and test the product.

Learn more and download Eclipse

Other worthwhile mentions

• Apatna Studio Community Edition

Notepad++

Notepad++ is not just a mere notepad replacement, it will allow you to modify several file types and has been getting better by the day with new features like auto complete and more.

If you are stuck with notepad this is definitely one software you should give a try.

Learn more and download Notepad++

Other worthwhile mentions

• Notepad2
• Programmer’s Notepad

CD / DVD Writing Softwares, DVD Ripping, Virtual CD / DVD

Handbrake

Handbrake is a DVD Ripper that will allow you to rip DVD files and convert them to MPEG-4 format for Mac OS, Linux and Windows.

Download and learn more about Handbrake

CDBurnerXP

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface.

Download CDBurnerXP | Learn more about CDBurnerXP

MagicDisc

Several softwares and games can be downloaded as image files like ISO, BIN etc. If you do not have a CD / DVD writer those files may be practically useless to you. With MagicDisc you can easily mount those image files as Virtual CD / DVDs and install the software, copy them and do more.

Download MagicDisc | Learn more about MagicDisc

Utilities

Foxit PDF Reader

Foxit PDF Reader is no doubt one of the best alternative to the Adobe PDF reader. It is much more faster and robust than the reader provided by Adobe.

There are several features that you make you completely ditch Adobe PDF reader, if you have not already done that.

Download Foxit PDF Reader | Learn more about Foxit PDF Reader

7Zip

7Zip is one of the best open source software which allows you to manage several types of archives with simplicity and ease. 7Zip supports all the popular archive formats such as zip, rar, gzip, tar and more.

It is by far a much better alternative to the dominating WinZip and WinRar softwares that require you to purchase licenses.

xPlorer2 Lite

Windows explorer is definitely not the best to manage files, with you have to open several windows just to perform a simple task of copying and pasting files.

xPlorer2 Lite is a very handy utility when it comes to managing files in Windows. The tabbed interface saves you lot of times and hassles simplifying the task of managing files.

Download xPlorer2 Lite | Learn more about xPlorer2 Lite

 

Launchy

Loading applications has never been more easier than it is with Launchy. This is probably one of the best software that makes your life much more easier when it comes to opening applications without having to go through the pain of creating a desktop shortcut or searching for them.

Download and learn more about Launchy

Google Desktop

If you thought Google only worked online then you are in for a surprise. Google Desktop

is one of the best indexing and desktop search tools for your PC with results as accurate as their web based search.

With Google Desktop Search you can search your files, emails, chat conversations and more. The handy sidebar also allows you to add gadgets so that you can access information quickly and easily.

Download and learn more about Google Desktop

Windows Live Writer

One of the best tools to manage your blogs offline, Windows Live Writer has grown to become one of the most loved applications from Microsoft.

You can manage multiple weblogs and post to them with ease, save drafts online and offline, edit images, add watermarks to them and more.

Download and learn more about Windows Live Writer

 

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Social Networking Untuk Para Traveler

Social Networking Untuk Para Traveler

Ditengah pertumbuhan internet yang masif, social networking tentu menempati posisi yang cukup krusial, kemarin saya mereview salah satu social networking di Indonesia, kini saya juga akan bercerita tentang social networking yang baru saja meluncurkan versi beta mereka. Another social networking ?

Jika pertanyaan itu muncul dari anda, tenang, mungkin anda belum meilihat bentuk dan aplikasi social networking yang merupakan partner AirAsia ini, dia adalah Koolred.

Nuansa niche terasa sekali di social networking ini, sepertinya strategi melayani niche tertentu dalam social networking akan semakin besar, Koolred adalah social networking untuk para traveler, kenapa demikian?

Koolred memiliki hampir semua aplikasi standar yang dimiliki oleh social networking, seperti blog, foto, video, music, group, forum dan event, kegunaannya juga untuk berjejaring dengan para user yang mempunyai minat sama, berbagi informasi dan membentuk komunitas.

Keunikan pertama dari situs ini adalah pendekatan demografi user. Koolred memposisikan sebagai ASEAN’s premier social networking site, dan memfokuskan pada para user di sekitar ASEAN, meski juga membuka peluang untuk para user dari negara lain.

Keunikan kedua yaitu pendekatan travel sebagai unsur utama dalam social networking ini. Koolred menyediakan beberapa fungsi yang akan memanjakan para traveler, seperti travel advisor yang sesuai namanya memberikan sebuah tempat dinama user bisa saling memberikan saran atau mendapat saran tenang tempat tujuan wisata atau detail yng diperlukan dalam melakukan perjalanan ke suatu tempat tertentu.

Kemudian ada travel host, dimana user bisa menemukan voulenter untuk dijadikan guide dalam berwisata, dan siapa tau bisa juga menyediakan tempat untuk menginap, dan ada juga travel buddy, dimana user bisa menemukan tidak hanya teman dunia maya, tapi juga teman untuk berwisata. Selain itu ada kolom travel reviews serta travel destination sebagai penampung informasi untuk para user sebelum melakukan trip.

Bisa jadi ini mengingatkan kita akan Dopplr, sebuah situs yang juga memudahkan para traveler dalam melakukan trip. Fokus user Asean mungkin yang membedakan dua situs ini.

Ditengah bertumbuhnya social networking, apakah kita membutuhkan social networking baru?

Kalau melihat dari keunikan serta ceruk pasar user yang disasar, serta partnership yang dilakukan situs ini dengan AirAsia, rasanya itu sudah cukup menjelaskan visi situs ini, mengingat traveling kini menjadi trend, dan ASEAN adalah salah satu tujuan travel yang paling asik.

Dengan peluncuran versi beta tanggal 18 November kemarin, kita tinggal menunggu, perkembangan jumlah user serta kerjasama lain seperti apa yang akan dilakukan Koolred.

Anda suka travel? Atau punya pendapat tentang artikel ini, jangan lupa untuk share di kolom komentar.

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Kehebatan Google Chrome OS

Kehebatan Google Chrome OS

Minggu ini Google telah meluncurkan sistem operasi berbasis open source bernama Chrome. OS ini akan segera menyambangi pasar pada musim liburan 2010 mendatang.

Sayang, Chrome OS hanya akan berjalan pada piranti keras yang memang ada kerjasama dengan pihak Google. Tentunya piranti yang cocok adalah sebuah netbook.

"Mungkin piranti yang cocok adalah sebuah netbook, yang memiliki SSD, konektifitas WiFi, serta full size keyboard," ujar Sundar Pichai, Vice President Google untuk manajemen produk, seperti dikutip detikINET dari PC World, Selasa (24/11/2009).

Lebih lanjut, Pichai membeberkan 5 keuntungan memakai Chrome OS:

1. Booting yang Cepat
Pichai menyebutkan bahwa Chrome OS sama seperti sebuah televisi saat dinyalakan. Tidak memiliki jeda waktu booting yang lama, karena tak memiliki aplikasi lokal yang membatasi ruang gerak hardware.

2. Masalah Keamanan
OS ini diintegrasikan dengan Chrome browser. Dengan demikian maka selayaknya browser, OS ini akan langsung mengupdate sistem keamanannya secara default. Hal ini masih ditambah lagi dengan penyimpanan data secara fisik dalam storage yang kini dirancang minimalis. Pasalnya semua data dapat disimpan secara online.

3. Dukung Arsitektur X86 dan ARM
Google berjanji untuk mengaplikasikan baik arsitektur X86, ARM dan code-code populer bagi netbook lainnya.

4. Menu Aplikasi
Sebuah aplikasi web yang baru kini dapat ditemui dalam menu aplikasi secara permanen pada Chrome OS ini. Hal ini akan membantu pengguna untuk mencari sebuah aplikasi baru langsung secara online. Selain memudahkan pengguna menu aplikasi ini juga menguntungkan pihak pengembang.

5. Akur dengan Microsoft Office
Walau Microsoft dengan Windows-nya merupakan pesaing berat mereka, namun Chrome OS ini ternyata juga mendukung dijalankannya dokumen office. Saat peluncuran Chorme OS, Pichai juga mendemokan bahwa Chrome dapat membuka sebuah dokumen via Microsoft office live. Microsoft office live adalah sebuah aplikasi web gratis bagi pengguna Windows live.

Saat pengguna membuka sebuah dokumen berekstensi .xls, Chorme OS akan langsung membuka Excel via Microsoft Office Live secara online. ( fw / faw )

Sumber : http://www.detikinet.com/read/2009/11/24/090822/1247513/317/5-kehebatan-google-chrome-os?topnews

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Alternatif Search Engine

Alternatif Search Engine

Banyak hal menarik yang terjadi jika kita mengamati persaingan antara bing dan Google, perbandingan dua mesin pencari ini terus diperbincangakan, meski secara kuota hasil pencarian Google masih jauh unggul, tetapi Bing selalu disebut sebagai salah satu pesaing terkuat Google.

Tapi jika anda bosan menggunakan dua mesin pencari ini, anda bisa mencoba beberapa mesin pencari lain. Yang satu mesin pencari yang membandingkan hasil pencarian Bing dan Google secara langsung, yang satu lagi memperlihatkan hasil pencarian dari berbagai mesin pencari, bahkan dari berbagai situs foto, bahkan e-tailers. Dua situs itu adalah bing-vs-google serta Panbee.

Situs pertama: bing-vs-google

Situs ini dibuat oleh Domagoj Pavlesic seorang web developer dan IT journalist dari Kroasia. Dalam sebuah artikel di Techcrunch, disebutkan bahwa Domagoj membuat situs ini dalam waktu kurang dari 6 jam. Antara takjub dan ragu, karena bisa jadi dengan waktu yang cukup singkat, situs yang dibuat tidak terlalu sempurna.

Situs ini pada intinya adalah membandingkan hasil pencarian dua search engine dalam satu kesempatan atau secara sederhana dalam satu tampilan sehingga kita bisa langsung membandingkan hasil pencarian dari dua search engine ini. Tampilannya bisa dirubah secara horisontal maupun vertikal.

Situs kedua: Panabee.

Secara tampilan Panabee jauh lebih baik, dengan warna yang kalem serta icon panda, situs ini lebih berpeluang untuk menarik user betah berlama-lama.

Panabee juga membandingkan kemampuan dua mesin pencari, Bing dan Google dalam satu halaman. Tampilannya seperti kolom koran, bisa diatur untuk tampilan hanya Bing saja atau hanya Google saja.
Tapi Panabee juga dilengkapi hasil pencarian dari beberapa situs pupoler lain, seperti Twitter, Wikipedia serta Yahoo dengan hanya sekali klik. Selain itu Panabee juga menyediakan aplikasi search yang clustered, dimana jika anda mencari barang di penjual internet, misalkan anda akan mencari barang elektronik dan memilih aplikasi e-tailers, maka hasil pencarian bisa dilakukan di Amazon, e-bay, buy.com, Zappos dll.

Intinya situs ini memang untuk membandingkan hasil pencarian di beberapa mesin pencari, e-tailer, penyedia foto, video, dll, serta kemudahan pencarian dengan sekali klik, untuk membandingkan hasil pencarian dari berbagai situs itu.

Search engine masih menjadi lahan pertarungan dari beberapa perusahaan besar di internet. Meski keakuratan hasil pencarian masih memegang peran paling penting dalam pertarungan, tapi pengalaman user dalam melakukan pencarian juga menjadi bagian penting dalam mengelola user experience. Tampilan dengan warna menarik, hasil pencarian dari berbagai sumber, bisa menjadi pilihan lain dalam melakukan pencarian.

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Google Rilis Chrome Untuk Mac Dan Linux

Google Rilis Chrome Untuk Mac Dan Linux

Google baru saja mengumumkan rilis beta dari produk browsernya Google Chrome untuk platform Mac dan Linux. Namun sayangnya rilis engine Chromium ini ditujukan untuk para developer di Google Code dan bukan untuk end-user.

Hal ini disebabkan Google Chrome (dan Chromium) di versi Mac dan Linux masih belum sempurna dan masih dalam tahap pengembangan dan testing. Bahkan Google juga menyarankan kepada pengguna agar jangan dulu mengunduh dan menggunakan Google Chrome kecuali sudah siap untuk kecewa. Bahkan plugin Adobe Flash saja belum berjalan dengan baik.

Dengan dirilisnya kode Chromium ini ke publik (open source) maka setidaknya penantian untuk rilis Chrome di Mac dan linux tidak akan lama lagi. Meskipun masih banyak hal yang harus dikerjakan untuk Chrome, namun pengembangan untuk versi Mac dan Linux ini direncanakan memiliki beberapa fitur tambahan juga.

Juru bicara dari Google juga menyatakan bahwa pihaknya tidak ingin ada end-user yang mengalami crash atau efek lain dari versi unstable ini, namun jika anda tertarik untuk membantu mencoba Google Chrome dan juga siap menghadapi crash sana-sini, silahkan unduh dan coba.

Saya sih sudah mengunduhnya dan menginstallnya di Ubuntu Jaunty saya, dan untungnya sampai saat ini belum ada crash sama sekali. Masalahnya ya karena belum support Flash jadi agak repot kalau ingin menonton YouTube :D Saya sudah mencoba menggunakan Chrome di Gmail dan Twitter dan beberapa situs lain dengan extensive Javascript execution dan semuanya berjalan dengan lancar, bahkan postingan ini saya tulis diatas browser Chrome juga.

Dan seperti di versi Windows, Chrome ini memang salah satu browser paling cepat dan juga ringan. Namun ya saya baru menggunakan Chrome ini kurang lebih 1 jam, jadi mungkin belum bisa terlihat bug-bug itu di komputer saya.

Untuk anda yang ingin mencobanya silahkan unduh disini, install di Linux anda dan sampaikan pendapat anda di kolom komentar.

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Membuat Status windows live messenger dengan PHP

Membuat Status windows live messenger dengan PHP

kali ini saya akan membahas bagaimana cara memasang
status windows live messenger di websitenya dengan menggunakan icon buatan sendiri menggunakan PHP.

Untuk mendapatkan kode HTML untuk Windows Live Messenger IM Control,
login ke
http://settings.messenger.live.com/applications/websettings.aspx dengan
Windows Live ID Anda.

1.centang pada checbox "Allow anyine the internet ......"



2. pilih menu create HTML



3. copy user ID



ini adalah contoh source yang sangat simple :

download here..

keterangan:

untuk memasang source status skype di atas, terlebih dahulu anda harus
membuat image aim_on.png dan aim_off.png (nama image bisa anda ganti
sesuai keinginan anda), dan $UserId= "58fdde940555fb62"; ganti dengan ID anda.

mudah - mudahan ini bisa mambantu....

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performance remains an uphill battle

performance remains an uphill battle

Firefox 3.5 has arrived, and according to Mozilla Foundation developers, its major advantage is speed. The new version of the open source Web browser is the first generally available release to include the TraceMonkey accelerated JavaScript engine, which previously had been found only in the 3.1 betas.

This move is the latest volley in the rejuvenated browser wars, as browser vendors shift their focus toward improving the performance of Web-based applications. Google set the pace when it shipped Chrome with a high-performance JavaScript engine last year. Since then, Opera and Apple have both announced new JavaScript engines for their respective browsers, and even Microsoft has grudgingly worked to optimize IE8.

[ See also: Google seeks faster Web | Keep up with app dev issues and trends. Check out InfoWorld's Developer World channel and Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]

But browser performance isn't everything. Users experienced delays browsing major news sites in the wake of the death of pop star Michael Jackson last week, but the problem there wasn't slow browsers or even overloaded servers. According to Web monitoring company Keynote Systems, in many cases site slowdowns were caused by ad networks and other third-party content providers, whose own networks couldn't handle the increased traffic.

This incident underscores an issue of growing concern to Web developers. Modern Web apps typically draw from multiple content sources, data stores, and services, and growing interest in cloud computing will only accelerate this trend. But given all these interdependencies, can Web developers really guarantee fast, responsive user experiences? Or as the complexity of our applications continues to grow, is application performance gradually slipping out of our fingers? Are we all just throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Internet?

Web developers' cloud conundrum
Making Web pages is easy, but building efficient Web applications can be deceptively tricky. Desktop software is tangible; as a developer, you can get your hands around it. To optimize its performance, you do things like eliminating memory leaks and improving the efficiency of disk access. None of this applies to Web apps, however, where developers rely on browsers to handle local resources efficiently.

Instead, Web developers are confronted with the vagaries of the network. If a user accesses a Web page that draws images from a third-party provider, the overall user experience depends on the user's browser, the user's data connection, the outgoing pipe from the Web server, the Web application software, the pipe between the Web server and the image provider, and the image provider's server software. A Web application developer is in a position to optimize only one of these.

Consider what else developers take for granted in this distributed, cloud-based model. How can you be sure that the third-party image provider takes security seriously? How can you be sure that its systems are sufficiently redundant, and that it makes backups regularly, so you won't be blindsided by any unexpected outage? You can ask, of course.

A more immediate problem lies in the ways in which external services integrate with Web pages. Most of them rely on external JavaScript, iframes, or both. Either of these techniques can block a page's onLoad event, a major factor in the user's perception site slowness. This bottleneck happens before the JavaScript code executes, so the speed of the browser's JavaScript engine makes little difference. Combine this design with an overburdened network, and it's not just third-party content but your entire application that suffers.

Increased complexity leads to increased risk for Web apps
The Web community is working on ways to mitigate these problems. For example, modern browsers load other content elements while they're waiting for JavaScript to execute, and developers have come up with various clever techniques to eliminate script bottlenecks. But these one-sided optimizations can only get you so far, and they're difficult to do right.

"Think about it," says Steve Souter, a performance evangelist at Google and author of the books "High Performance Web Sites" and "Even Faster Web Sites." He adds, "We're taking a chunk of HTML that might also include CSS, JavaScript, and Flash, and stuffing it into another page ... It's not surprising that they can, and do, significantly degrade the performance of Web pages, and in some cases can cause a Web site to fail entirely."

Part of the problem lies in the fact that such content-integration efforts often lack cohesive management and oversight. "Integrating third-party content into a Web page would be a complex project to pull off for two teams working in the same company," Souter says. "In the case of ads, the two teams work at two different companies. In fact, the developers creating the ad probably never interact with the team building the main Web site."

That's not to say that everyone will share the responsibility for site slowdowns, however. Rest assured that when site performance degrades, the user will place the blame squarely on the site's own brand: The external content providers will remain virtually anonymous.

Baby steps toward the Web as a first-class app platform
For now, Web application developers and architects should be sure to educate themselves about the potential bottlenecks and other pitfalls inherent in distributed, cloud-like Web applications. Souter's books are a good place to start, and Google has recently launched a Web site dedicated to developing best practices for JavaScript performance.

In the long run, however, Web services providers and consumers will need to work together to develop standards of practice for the cloud-based Internet. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has formed a working group and offers best practices for ad providers to improve load times. This is a good start, but clearly there's still much more work to be done.

One of the more troubling aspects of the current situation is that it tends to favor larger customers. Wal-Mart or a major sports league might be in a position to demand comprehensive SLAs and developer accountability of their external content providers, but a struggling newspaper publisher might not -- to say nothing of even smaller clients.

That's why it's of critical importance that the Web community work to increase not just browser performance, but the performance of cross-organizational Web development teams. As sites and services become increasingly interconnected, we need to come up with new ways to communicate, collaborate, and cooperate to make distributed, cross-site development efforts run more smoothly. Only in this way will the cloud-based Web flourish into a reliable, first-class application development platform.

from : infoworld.com

Read More...

Microsoft Silverlight 3 unveiled

Microsoft Silverlight 3 unveiled

Seeking an edge in the crowded rich Internet application technology space, Microsoft on Friday officially launched its Silverlight 3 platform, championing the technology at a launch event in San Francisco that also featured partners such as NBC Sports and Continental Airlines.

The plug-in technology features offline capabilities for running applications outside of a browser, as well as 3-D capabilities and advanced streaming via Smooth Streaming, in which a Silverlight client is paired with Microsoft's Internet Information Services on the back end.

[ Yesterday, Microsoft and IBM discussed software development advances. ]

The company also launched its Expression 3 platform for application design, featuring the Expression Studio 3 suite of tools. Silverlight and its accompanying software development kit actually were made available earlier this week, while Expression 3 tools ship within 30 days.

"We've got more than 300 partners delivering Silverlight applications today," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft developer division. "This is the fastest-growing plugin ever." Silverlight initially launched in September 2007.

NBC Sports, which has used Silverlight in the 2008 Olympics, announced intentions to use Silverlight for online video delivery across its sporting franchises, including the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Microsoft had streamed content via Silverlight at the Beijing Olympics last year.

"In these 22 months [since the technology's introduction], Silverlight is enabling NBC Sports to go ahead and deliver full, HD broadcast-quality video to our users and our advertisers," said Eric Black, of NBC Sports.

Silverlight, though, must compete with the more established Adobe Flash platform, as well as with Sun Microsystems JavaFX technology. Complicating this field are HTML technologies that could eventually eliminate the need for plug-ins such as Silverlight, Flash, and JavaFX.

With Silverlight and Flash leading the field, competition between the two is "getting to be like Honda and Toyota," said analyst Ray Valdes, vice president of Web services at garnter.

"I think the key difference is the .Net compatibility and alignment [for Silverlight] and that will be a positive for some and a negative for others," Valdes said.

Microsoft said adoption of Silverlight has accelerated, with more than one in three Internet devices having installed the earlier Silverlight 2 release since its release about nine months ago. Silverlight customers being announced on Friday included the MGM "SGU: Stargate Universe" TV show and Continental Airlines, which plans to use Silverlight in a call center reservation system. MGM will allow Web users to zoom in on parts of a new show set via a Deep Zoom capability introduced in Silverlight 2.

Silverlight is a free runtime; monetizing it involves selling related products such as the Expression line and Windows Server. Microsoft is offering its Visual Studio Professional Edition and Expression Studio 3 together for $999. Featured in the Studio package is SketchFlow, for rapid prototyping of applications. SketchFlow presents "the idea that you can actually start a project without knowing what the final bits are going to look like," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .Net develoiper platform at Microsoft. SketchFlow is an interactive tool that can incorporate pen and paper sketches.

Expression 3 features the $599 Expression Studio 3 suite, with tools including Expression Blend, for interactive design and including SketchFlow; Expression Web, for Web design and supporting CSS and the soon-to-be-discontinued XHTML standard; Expression Encoder, for video encoding; and Expression Design, for illustration and design.

from : infoworld.com

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Cloud computing made real

Cloud computing made real

Chrome OS must be a dream come true for Google-versus-Microsoft fanboys. Rumors that Google would ship a desktop OS first flew back in 2006, but the project in question turned out to be for internal use only. Then came Android, and reports that Google's smartphone OS would soon make the leap to more traditional PCs set the market abuzz again -- although many remained skeptical. Now the announcement of Chrome OS should brush any lingering doubts aside.

Not everyone is impressed with the search giant's latest move, however. My colleague Randall Kennedy says Chrome OS has "an ice cube's chance in Hell" of competing successfully with Windows or Mac OS X, citing the overwhelming effort needed to duplicate the full range of device drivers and applications available on those platforms today. Randall just doesn't see that happening, and for that matter neither do I.

[ Find out what InfoWorld contributors Randall Kennedy and Savio Rodrigues think of Google's newly announced OS ]

But Chrome OS isn't meant to be a pound-for-pound competitor to Windows. Though it's built on the Linux kernel, it's really something brand new. In fact, when we look back 10 years from now, the debut of Google's Chrome OS may well mark the moment when cloud computing finally became real.

Chrome OS: Custom-built for the cloud
It's particularly telling that Chrome OS will ship with support for both Intel and ARM processors. Google reps say the OS will initially target netbooks, and low-powered ARM chips are expected to play an increasing role in that market.

Even more interesting, however, is the revelation that the heart of the Chrome OS user experience is Google's Chrome browser -- and that booting a Chrome OS device should get you "onto the Web in seconds," according to the search giant's press release. In fact, the browser may be the only traditional application that runs on Chrome OS. Quoth the release: "For application developers, the Web is the platform" (emphasis mine).

This sounds an awful lot like the type of device I've talked about before, which I've dubbed "the Invisible PC." Rather than the traditional desktop model of applications running on a monolithic OS, in this new mode of computing the PC will all but disappear, leaving little more than a window to the Web. Desktop applications will be replaced by Web-based services, with computation and storage handled in the cloud.

It's fair to be skeptical, but don't underestimate the extent to which Web applications have already supplanted desktop software. Enterprises have been slow to adopt Web-based alternatives (and with good reason), but individual users have embraced them wholeheartedly. Remember when you had to install a special client program to read your e-mail? My mom doesn't. To her, e-mail is synonymous with Web-based services such as Gmail, MSN, and Yahoo Mail. Expect more categories of applications to go this way as Web technologies continue to mature.

Google isn't alone in pursuing the Invisible PC market, either. You could argue that devices like Nokia's Internet Tablet and the iPod Touch were the pioneers in this category, and Palm's WebOS shares Google's philosophy of Web-based application development. But Chrome OS promises a number of advantages that make it an ideal fit for today's lightweight netbooks and beyond.

The engine beneath the Chrome
For starters, Chrome is arguably the most technologically advanced browser in the world. Its multiprocess design, where each session exists independently from the others, more closely resembles a traditional OS than it does any other current browser, and its security model can't be beat. What's more, Chrome includes support for Google Gears, which gives it an advantage when Internet access is spotty.

As I mentioned before, Chrome OS runs on a Linux kernel, but that will hardly be relevant to application developers. Apps will be Web-based, but because the Chrome browser was designed with desktop PCs in mind, developers won't be limited to the stripped-down capabilities available in most smartphones and other devices. Google is one of the biggest advocates of the forthcoming HTML 5 specification, portions of which have already made their way into current-generation browsers, including Chrome. (And if you want to get an idea of the kind of applications made possible by HTML 5, look no further than Mozilla Bespin.)

Because Chrome OS is based on the open source Linux kernel, however -- and Google plans to open source the higher-level bits later this year -- the community will be free to lend a hand patching bugs and fixing security vulnerabilities as they appear.

Death to the desktop?
And there's more. Between the kernel and the Chrome interface, Google says it has developed "a new window manager" to handle rendering the GUI. Details are still scant, but from the sound of it, Google has opted to skip Gnome and KDE, and possibly even toss out the venerable X Window Manager itself. If so, Chrome OS is definitely not just another desktop Linux distro. In fact, it might not even qualify as a desktop OS at all.

How so? Consider how bloated mainstream desktops have become over the years. Whether your choice is Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, your desktop greets you with countless menus, configuration panels, and applications, ranging from simple Internet clients to full-blown multimedia suites. Google's vision is different. "Google Chrome OS," Google's press release explains, "is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web." If that's the case, then an old-style desktop is total overkill.

If your applications are Web-based, you don't need a software installer. Similarly, if all your data is stored in the cloud, the need for a full-featured file manager diminishes significantly, and you certainly won't need one of those fancy desktop search engines that are so much in vogue lately. You also won't need a backup manager, a disk defragmenter, a virus scanner, or a file-compression program. In fact, you probably don't need a desktop at all. What you'd really want is a lean, fast, responsive, simple UI -- something like you'd expect in a consumer electronics device -- and if Google is thinking like I'm thinking, expect Chrome OS to deliver just that.

Of course, we won't know what Chrome OS is really like until more details emerge later this year. But if it really is all that I think it could be, Chrome OS will bring changes to the PC market that have been a long time coming. We have a name for that: evolution.

from : infoworld.com

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performance remains an uphill battle

performance remains an uphill battle

Firefox 3.5 has arrived, and according to Mozilla Foundation developers, its major advantage is speed. The new version of the open source Web browser is the first generally available release to include the TraceMonkey accelerated JavaScript engine, which previously had been found only in the 3.1 betas.

This move is the latest volley in the rejuvenated browser wars, as browser vendors shift their focus toward improving the performance of Web-based applications. Google set the pace when it shipped Chrome with a high-performance JavaScript engine last year. Since then, Opera and Apple have both announced new JavaScript engines for their respective browsers, and even Microsoft has grudgingly worked to optimize IE8.

[ See also: Google seeks faster Web | Keep up with app dev issues and trends. Check out InfoWorld's Developer World channel and Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]

But browser performance isn't everything. Users experienced delays browsing major news sites in the wake of the death of pop star Michael Jackson last week, but the problem there wasn't slow browsers or even overloaded servers. According to Web monitoring company Keynote Systems, in many cases site slowdowns were caused by ad networks and other third-party content providers, whose own networks couldn't handle the increased traffic.

This incident underscores an issue of growing concern to Web developers. Modern Web apps typically draw from multiple content sources, data stores, and services, and growing interest in cloud computing will only accelerate this trend. But given all these interdependencies, can Web developers really guarantee fast, responsive user experiences? Or as the complexity of our applications continues to grow, is application performance gradually slipping out of our fingers? Are we all just throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Internet?

Web developers' cloud conundrum
Making Web pages is easy, but building efficient Web applications can be deceptively tricky. Desktop software is tangible; as a developer, you can get your hands around it. To optimize its performance, you do things like eliminating memory leaks and improving the efficiency of disk access. None of this applies to Web apps, however, where developers rely on browsers to handle local resources efficiently.

Instead, Web developers are confronted with the vagaries of the network. If a user accesses a Web page that draws images from a third-party provider, the overall user experience depends on the user's browser, the user's data connection, the outgoing pipe from the Web server, the Web application software, the pipe between the Web server and the image provider, and the image provider's server software. A Web application developer is in a position to optimize only one of these.

Consider what else developers take for granted in this distributed, cloud-based model. How can you be sure that the third-party image provider takes security seriously? How can you be sure that its systems are sufficiently redundant, and that it makes backups regularly, so you won't be blindsided by any unexpected outage? You can ask, of course.

A more immediate problem lies in the ways in which external services integrate with Web pages. Most of them rely on external JavaScript, iframes, or both. Either of these techniques can block a page's onLoad event, a major factor in the user's perception site slowness. This bottleneck happens before the JavaScript code executes, so the speed of the browser's JavaScript engine makes little difference. Combine this design with an overburdened network, and it's not just third-party content but your entire application that suffers.

Increased complexity leads to increased risk for Web apps
The Web community is working on ways to mitigate these problems. For example, modern browsers load other content elements while they're waiting for JavaScript to execute, and developers have come up with various clever techniques to eliminate script bottlenecks. But these one-sided optimizations can only get you so far, and they're difficult to do right.

"Think about it," says Steve Souter, a performance evangelist at Google and author of the books "High Performance Web Sites" and "Even Faster Web Sites." He adds, "We're taking a chunk of HTML that might also include CSS, JavaScript, and Flash, and stuffing it into another page ... It's not surprising that they can, and do, significantly degrade the performance of Web pages, and in some cases can cause a Web site to fail entirely."

Part of the problem lies in the fact that such content-integration efforts often lack cohesive management and oversight. "Integrating third-party content into a Web page would be a complex project to pull off for two teams working in the same company," Souter says. "In the case of ads, the two teams work at two different companies. In fact, the developers creating the ad probably never interact with the team building the main Web site."

That's not to say that everyone will share the responsibility for site slowdowns, however. Rest assured that when site performance degrades, the user will place the blame squarely on the site's own brand: The external content providers will remain virtually anonymous.

Baby steps toward the Web as a first-class app platform
For now, Web application developers and architects should be sure to educate themselves about the potential bottlenecks and other pitfalls inherent in distributed, cloud-like Web applications. Souter's books are a good place to start, and Google has recently launched a Web site dedicated to developing best practices for JavaScript performance.

In the long run, however, Web services providers and consumers will need to work together to develop standards of practice for the cloud-based Internet. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has formed a working group and offers best practices for ad providers to improve load times. This is a good start, but clearly there's still much more work to be done.

One of the more troubling aspects of the current situation is that it tends to favor larger customers. Wal-Mart or a major sports league might be in a position to demand comprehensive SLAs and developer accountability of their external content providers, but a struggling newspaper publisher might not -- to say nothing of even smaller clients.

That's why it's of critical importance that the Web community work to increase not just browser performance, but the performance of cross-organizational Web development teams. As sites and services become increasingly interconnected, we need to come up with new ways to communicate, collaborate, and cooperate to make distributed, cross-site development efforts run more smoothly. Only in this way will the cloud-based Web flourish into a reliable, first-class application development platform.

from : infoworld.com

Read More...

Cloud computing made real

Cloud computing made real

Chrome OS must be a dream come true for Google-versus-Microsoft fanboys. Rumors that Google would ship a desktop OS first flew back in 2006, but the project in question turned out to be for internal use only. Then came Android, and reports that Google's smartphone OS would soon make the leap to more traditional PCs set the market abuzz again -- although many remained skeptical. Now the announcement of Chrome OS should brush any lingering doubts aside.

Not everyone is impressed with the search giant's latest move, however. My colleague Randall Kennedy says Chrome OS has "an ice cube's chance in Hell" of competing successfully with Windows or Mac OS X, citing the overwhelming effort needed to duplicate the full range of device drivers and applications available on those platforms today. Randall just doesn't see that happening, and for that matter neither do I.

[ Find out what InfoWorld contributors Randall Kennedy and Savio Rodrigues think of Google's newly announced OS ]

But Chrome OS isn't meant to be a pound-for-pound competitor to Windows. Though it's built on the Linux kernel, it's really something brand new. In fact, when we look back 10 years from now, the debut of Google's Chrome OS may well mark the moment when cloud computing finally became real.

Chrome OS: Custom-built for the cloud
It's particularly telling that Chrome OS will ship with support for both Intel and ARM processors. Google reps say the OS will initially target netbooks, and low-powered ARM chips are expected to play an increasing role in that market.

Even more interesting, however, is the revelation that the heart of the Chrome OS user experience is Google's Chrome browser -- and that booting a Chrome OS device should get you "onto the Web in seconds," according to the search giant's press release. In fact, the browser may be the only traditional application that runs on Chrome OS. Quoth the release: "For application developers, the Web is the platform" (emphasis mine).

This sounds an awful lot like the type of device I've talked about before, which I've dubbed "the Invisible PC." Rather than the traditional desktop model of applications running on a monolithic OS, in this new mode of computing the PC will all but disappear, leaving little more than a window to the Web. Desktop applications will be replaced by Web-based services, with computation and storage handled in the cloud.

It's fair to be skeptical, but don't underestimate the extent to which Web applications have already supplanted desktop software. Enterprises have been slow to adopt Web-based alternatives (and with good reason), but individual users have embraced them wholeheartedly. Remember when you had to install a special client program to read your e-mail? My mom doesn't. To her, e-mail is synonymous with Web-based services such as Gmail, MSN, and Yahoo Mail. Expect more categories of applications to go this way as Web technologies continue to mature.

Google isn't alone in pursuing the Invisible PC market, either. You could argue that devices like Nokia's Internet Tablet and the iPod Touch were the pioneers in this category, and Palm's WebOS shares Google's philosophy of Web-based application development. But Chrome OS promises a number of advantages that make it an ideal fit for today's lightweight netbooks and beyond.

The engine beneath the Chrome
For starters, Chrome is arguably the most technologically advanced browser in the world. Its multiprocess design, where each session exists independently from the others, more closely resembles a traditional OS than it does any other current browser, and its security model can't be beat. What's more, Chrome includes support for Google Gears, which gives it an advantage when Internet access is spotty.

As I mentioned before, Chrome OS runs on a Linux kernel, but that will hardly be relevant to application developers. Apps will be Web-based, but because the Chrome browser was designed with desktop PCs in mind, developers won't be limited to the stripped-down capabilities available in most smartphones and other devices. Google is one of the biggest advocates of the forthcoming HTML 5 specification, portions of which have already made their way into current-generation browsers, including Chrome. (And if you want to get an idea of the kind of applications made possible by HTML 5, look no further than Mozilla Bespin.)

Because Chrome OS is based on the open source Linux kernel, however -- and Google plans to open source the higher-level bits later this year -- the community will be free to lend a hand patching bugs and fixing security vulnerabilities as they appear.

Death to the desktop?
And there's more. Between the kernel and the Chrome interface, Google says it has developed "a new window manager" to handle rendering the GUI. Details are still scant, but from the sound of it, Google has opted to skip Gnome and KDE, and possibly even toss out the venerable X Window Manager itself. If so, Chrome OS is definitely not just another desktop Linux distro. In fact, it might not even qualify as a desktop OS at all.

How so? Consider how bloated mainstream desktops have become over the years. Whether your choice is Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, your desktop greets you with countless menus, configuration panels, and applications, ranging from simple Internet clients to full-blown multimedia suites. Google's vision is different. "Google Chrome OS," Google's press release explains, "is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web." If that's the case, then an old-style desktop is total overkill.

If your applications are Web-based, you don't need a software installer. Similarly, if all your data is stored in the cloud, the need for a full-featured file manager diminishes significantly, and you certainly won't need one of those fancy desktop search engines that are so much in vogue lately. You also won't need a backup manager, a disk defragmenter, a virus scanner, or a file-compression program. In fact, you probably don't need a desktop at all. What you'd really want is a lean, fast, responsive, simple UI -- something like you'd expect in a consumer electronics device -- and if Google is thinking like I'm thinking, expect Chrome OS to deliver just that.

Of course, we won't know what Chrome OS is really like until more details emerge later this year. But if it really is all that I think it could be, Chrome OS will bring changes to the PC market that have been a long time coming. We have a name for that: evolution.

from : infoworld.com

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