The Tech Mantra

Back To Blogging…Oracle’s Acquisition Of Sun Is Nearly Final

2009-08-21T20:36:00.001+02:00

So, did any one ask what the hell happened to that guy who was blogging about tech stuff? I bet the whole world was shaken. For all sorts of media out there, I’m back at the keyboard and giving my fingers the green light.

A long while ago we heard of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun for about 14. something billion dollars, I can’t remember what the number was. Anyway, that acquisition is still in Courts.
US Department of Justice is looking into that, it’s overseeing how the acquisition affect Java and the database stuff at Sun. Because both are free and widely used.

The deal is finalized between the two companies, it should take some time to get across Justice. Antitrust and these things play a huge role in today’s acquisitions, so Securities are trying to avoid any hassles.

Search categorized, and in spreadsheet-like boxes. Welcome Google Squared…

2009-06-04T18:26:00.001+03:00

Google’s recent service, Squared, went live today. It’s out for public testing, but it’s still just a project in Labs. However, we had our hands on this service and we’re here to tell you about the experience.

First. Results:

Results are pretty good actually. We Squared, instead of Googled, roller coasters and it returned some helpful results. We Squared “egyptian scientists” and the results were actually way better than we expected. But the thing is, you can’t use this service for a “search,” it’s actually more helpful if you’re doing a “research.” It shows categorized results which you can really narrow down to what you exactly want.

But in some queries we haven’t been successful in getting any results back. Such as the one when we tried to Square for fellow blog BoyGeniusReport.com. It didn’t return any results.

Speed:

It loads extremely quickly, even though each result has an image next to it and a preview option. It still loads very, very fast.

So, that was it guys. In the end it’s still one of many projects in Google Labs.

By the way, we have a potential new spot for our blog, Click Here to see it. Tell us what you think in the comments, Please!

Microsoft to fight against Wii’s controller

2009-06-03T02:58:00.001+03:00

Microsoft announced at the E3 conference it’s latest trial for the fight to Game Console domination. The Redmond folks showed off Project Natal, which is a motions detection system for Xbox 360. It’s aimed right at the area where Nintendo’s Wii excel.

But to be clear on this point, Project Natal is very different from Wii’s motion sensor. You don’t have to hold any kind of controllers to play, you just move and the camera mounted above, or below, your TV will detect your motion. Moreover, it has a voice recognition feature. But the one that really stands out is that you can roll out menus with just moving your hands. I kinda remember where I’ve seen that, something that had Tom Cruise in it. Ahhh! Minority Report.

Tell us what you think in the comments

Win7 release date confirmed, October 22nd

2009-06-03T02:39:00.001+03:00

Microsoft has confirmed the official release date for its flagship OS, Windows 7. We should see the new OS on the 22nd of October. The date was announced at Microsoft’s Computex keynote in Taiwan.

While this is the date on which you’ll find Win7 in a retail store, you might be able to get it earlier than that if you are a subscriber of TechNet or MSDN, or you are a customer with a “Volume License” agreement with these networks.

Microsoft has labeled this date as General Availability date. And GA means that you’ll buy a laptop or desktop on that date, or after it, with Win7 installed as a default.

For most people, this is a rescue from Vista’s hell. And that’s for myself too. I installed Vista when it first came out for like 2 days and couldn’t bear it, I just went back to my lovely XP and I’m still running it. But you can’t doubt it, Beta and RC1 releases of Win7 show great progress from Microsoft and also show their determination to save users from Vista.

We’ll be updating you soon whenever something comes out about Win7.

Twitter, Bing, Blogger and a couple more are blocked in China

2009-06-02T15:43:00.001+03:00

We all know it, China has a big history in blocking websites and web services. It blocked YouTube and Wikipedia for a while. But now, things have gone worse.

Authorities blocked today Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and a couple more sites. It’s so known for China to be so controlling on what citizens can see.

While users are complaining about these sudden, but a little expected, blockings, Twitter seems to come back at times and die at other times.

A Chinese Twitter-er and entrepreneur has been updating us on this. MissXu tries to Tweet whenever she can to keep the people updated on what’s happening now, and what sites are coming back.

C’mon China, it’s not that bad…Let your people TWEET!

Future of Twitter

2009-06-02T13:01:00.001+03:00

Steve Rubel demonstrated a mind map he made, at the TWTRCON conference on Sunday.
The fellow blog TechCrunch posted it with permission from Steve himself.

This mind map visualizes Twitter in the near future, it branches out to two directions. One “Twitter and the Ecosystem,” and “Twitter as an OS.”
In the Twitter and the Ecosystem, Steve shows some of the opportunities that Twitter has to grow bigger. And the threats that might face Twitter in the upcoming months and years. Like who may buy Twitter, who may Twitter buy, or who may Twitter partner with to help it grow and widen its popularity.

In the Twitter as an OS part, Steve imagines Twitter as a Social OS integrated in apps and websites. And, also, pictures Twitter as a Marketing OS, which is already happening, with powerful tools for Businesses to market themselves to millions of users.

We’ll just wait and see.

Microsoft rolls out Bing to User Previews

2009-06-02T00:23:00.001+03:00

Following rumors and unofficial date releases and all the buzz that was created around the all-new Microsoft search engine, Bing. It’s finally out, they didn’t release it under Beta as almost every other company, they preferred to label it with “Preview.”

This is going to be a long review about Bing…So you might wanna grab a cup of coffee and read along.

So, first things first. The search engine itself.
We have to say it performs pretty good, results are great. The criteria we followed was to type in some simple queries like “wonders of the world” and “wonders of the modern world”, then we moved on to other stuff. Like, imagine that someone told you about a great blog, but you don’t remember the name or the URL. You kinda can recall it was something like geniusboy.com, geniusrepot.com. But you can’t remember. So, we typed in a couple of these queries and each one Bing was able to get the right thing. Ahh, that! BoyGeniusReport.com! Bing could get that!

Image Search:

Then, we moved on to Image search. For a while now, I’ve been looking for ways to improve my workspace, so I thought why not look at some using Bing’s Image search.

And I gotta say, also the Image search returned really good stuff. I’ll be working on my own workspace after I get finished with this review. We searched some Formula 1 pictures.
Actually, found one pitfall. The Similar Images features doesn’t work really good. It does returns an image or two which are actually similar but the rest are….You can guess that. Microsoft didn’t do this one good.

But one thing you won’t find in any other search engine, the image search loads images so, so fast.

Video Search:

When you go to the Video tab, you find some videos that might be of interest. You can find the Featured TV Shows section, some NCIS, The O.C. and The Daily Show.

There is also, Music Videos and they’re classified by the genre, on the right.
Also, News, Sports and at the bottom there’s the section of the Most Watched videos.

Shopping:

This one really looks great and the CashBack thing is really worth it, but we couldn’t really test it, because we’re in Egypt and there aren’t stores in Egypt that Microsoft had bonded with.

Maps:

Well, this one is really not that great. In fact, it doesn’t have anything to brag about against Google Maps.

We, however, gave it a try and went to some cool spots.

Extras:

You’ll find here, the Preferences in case you want to change something in the search criteria, the CashBack account and the Blogs, which you’ll find Channel 9 so you can check Microsoft’s news.

But what we should really point out here, the “Webmaster Center” link. Which is something like Google Analytics, but I found it much easier to use and configure.

Summary:

In a nutshell, Microsoft had done a great, great job on that search engine. It looks cool, the main page changes pictures everyday and those pics hold some knowledge. The Image search is great. The Video search is the most adorable of all.

It’s fast, good looking and intuitive. I loved it!

YouTube on Chrome

2009-04-16T10:41:00.000+02:00

I was trying to check my YouTube account this morning, like I do almost everyday, to see if there are some interesting videos that are worth watching.
I use Google Chrome as my default Web browser, everything sounds normal so far. But what happened when YouTube’s Home Page loaded, it looked so bizarre.
It looked as if some beginner was messing it up. So corrupt that I had to close the tab instantly. Take a look

This is what used to be on the side. And as you may notice, the link that said YouTube EDU is gone.

Now, it only looks like that on Chrome, the browser of the owner of YouTube, IE8 opened it successfully and the page looked pretty normal.

Hope Google takes care of that issue quickly.

Academic Earth is Officially Launched

2009-04-13T16:11:00.000+02:00

It’s finally out of Beta. The educational-videos dedicated site is now officially launched.
It’s something like YouTube’s EDU, but less popular. I think it’s a great website, it has lots of videos and it will grow.

I love the websites design. It’s simple yet expressive and fits with the educational website idea.

Visit it and tell us what you think. www.academicearth.org

Google Voice, When To Be Available

2009-04-09T22:44:00.000+02:00

Something that bothered me a lot when I was surfing the internet and went to see if Google Voice had become available.
Well, it didn’t. Still that stupid message is showing up “Will be available in a matter of weeks.” I’ve been seeing this message for more than a month now.
We really want to get our hands on this new app.

RC1 Is Available, Thanks Leaks

2009-04-09T22:39:00.000+02:00

The all-new Microsoft OS, Windows 7, is in RC1 and is leaked on torrent sites.
There was a blog post here, a while back, which featured a report about Microsoft handing the RC1 to some “selected testers” but it doesn’t seem that they have protected it from being leaked to torrent uploaders.

Now, to the main point, what has the RC1 version to offer. Well, I haven’t checked myself, but it offers an improved Start Menu. That’s not much of course and we’re still looking forward for other improvements to get on the way in future releases.

I’m not planning to download the new version when it only offers one minor improvement. That’d be a waste of time. But if anyone is planning to install the OS, tell us what you think about it in the comments.

The Only Browser Standing in Pwn2Own, Chrome

2009-03-21T17:31:00.000+02:00

The Pwn2Own Competition challenges security experts to exploit web browsers to stand against their exploitation. On the first day of the competition, the only browser that could stand the attacks was Google’s new Chrome. While Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer fell one after the other.

In fact, Apple’s Safari was the first one to seize under the hackers’ attacks. Reportedly, Safari was exploited after a matter of seconds.

So, what makes Chrome so good. According to the former Pwn2Own champ, Charlie Miller:
As for Chrome, he says that he has identified a security bug in Google's browser but has been unable to exploit it because the browser's sandboxing feature and the operating system's security measures together pose a formidable challenge.

Google brought this one home, while the browser experts like Mozilla and Microsoft, their browsers couldn’t hold up and brought them, to say, a shame.

Score one for the Chrome folks.

IE8 to be available to public today

2009-03-19T11:57:00.000+02:00

Source: ComputerWorld.com

Microsoft has announced, in MIX’09, that the final code of its newest browser will be available today at 9 am PT, beating its rival, Mozilla, in the race towards final code.
The new browser will be available to manual download through the company’s website.

“We’ll be launching IE8 RTM (release to manufacturing) in 25 languages for Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008.” says James Pratt, a senior product manager of the IE development team.

The sad thing is, Windows 7 users, most of the them are using the once-publicly available Beta, won’t see the final IE8 until the next publicly available version of the OS is released.

Microsoft’s browser contender, Mozilla welcomed the release of the final IE8. “We’re happy to see that Microsoft isn’t standing still.” Said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox. “But we’re not standing still either. Browser makers have to keep up [because] people expect more of the web today.”

With Mozilla delaying the release of its browser 3.5, formerly named 3.1, which Mozilla have been delaying for 8 months. Microsoft has won the round this time, but can they keep up on the same pace, or the Firefox and Chrome guys will catch up.

Google Voice

2009-03-19T11:37:00.000+02:00

After it acquired GrandCentral last year, Google launched its Beta version of Google Voice.
With the most of the features of GrandCentral, Google also added some cool features of its own.

Although, the service isn’t available to the public yet, Lifhacker.com managed to get a sneak peek at this awesome service.

If you don’t know what Google Voice is, read this carefully.
Google Voice is a service that gathers all your voicemail, SMS, and Missed Calls in one place with one phone number. Instead of having a couple of voicemails and phone numbers to check, Google makes this easier for us to stay updated with anyone calls us or sends us and SMS, on the go.

I personally can’t wait to get my Google Voice account. But Google says it’ll be a matter of weeks before it launches the service publicly.

Computer Science majors increased, a US report happily claims

2009-03-19T00:01:00.000+02:00

Source: NetworkWorld.com

When they thought that CS is no longer interesting for American students. After a couple of years of declination in CS enrollment rates. It was cracked up a notch last year, with a good 6.2%.
US high-powered authorities were trying there best to get students to take CS as a major and they’ve been pursuing universities to develop more interesting curricula to get students enrolled. And it seems to have paid off last year when that little, but fair, increase in enrollment rate occurred.

This should be reminding us to look around and see what students in Egypt and Arab World are thinking about CS, and try to get more of them to take CS as their majors. Because simply, it’s the future.

PC sales increased, while Mac’s decreased

2009-03-18T15:43:00.000+02:00

The NPD Group released it’s numbers on Monday, and it doesn’t seem to be flourishing for Mac.
Microsoft PC sales have increased 22 percent from last year’s Feb rates to this year’s Feb rates. Microsoft, also, enjoyed a 1.4 percent growth in revenue. Meanwhile, Mac sales went down by a hard 16.7 percent and revenue dropped off a big chunk of percents, that’s a 23 percent. Although Apple renewed it’s lineup of laptops, it didn’t pay off.

It’s not that bizarre to see these numbers, the average Microsoft PC sells for about $500 but the average price of an out-of-factory Mac is $1500.

Can We Make It

2009-03-17T16:41:00.000+02:00

Dear all, this post isn’t tech-related, it’s just a thought that crossed my mind when I was surfing the Internet.
I was checking one of the blogs that I like to read and there was a story about the blog itself, the blog won the Best Computer or Technology Bloggie award at the SXSW ’09. My imagination went crazy and I was imagining my blog having a couple thousand visitors, winning awards and receiving so much appreciation. Maybe I’m not a professional blogger but I blogging for something I love.

I wish I can make it and see my blog as popular as those huge blogs, Gizmodo and others.

Share what do you think with me folks, I need some help and ideas.

Windows 7 RC is planned for May, a report says

2009-03-17T16:01:00.000+02:00

Source: InfoWorld.com

Microsoft is expected to deliver the RC version of it’s Windows 7 at the end May, according to a report published on a respected Windows website.

The RC (Release Candidate) version of the under-development platform is expected to be available publicly on the last week of May, the report says.While the Beta versions are still available for torrent download on sites like Mininova.org, there are also leaked copies of the unavailable versions like 7057.

Before that, an “escrow build” will be available to a group of selected testers, who will get their hands on the best of what Microsoft can offer, and put it to the test. In Microsoft terms, an “escrow build” is a post-development version given to testers as a final examination to the software, to avoid any embarrassing when showtime draws near.

Even though, Microsoft didn’t promise to offer the new RC edition publicly, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president in charge of the Windows engineering group, repeatedly hinted that Microsoft will do so.
At the moment, Microsoft declined to comment on the issue.

New Pics of the Lenovo Yoga

2009-03-16T20:28:00.000+02:00

Following the gossip about Lenovo’s Mini-Laptop, maybe we’d better say Micro, is over. The Chinese manufacture has released some pics of it's new Ultra-portable device.
Although, the specs are still unknown, but I have to say it appears to be a decent device, regardless of the short and wide screen. Which could be folded backwards and the device would be turned to a tablet with a stylus-operated touchscreen.

Take a look and have your say about this

It is designed very carefully and it’s very neat-looking.
Well, it fairly fits into one’s pocket, but I wouldn’t have something as expensive and carry it around like that!!!!!

IE8 to beat Chrome and FireFox, Microsoft Says

2009-03-15T21:52:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has released a new report with an attractive title which goes like “Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding issues in benchmarking and performance analysis.”

This report is about 14 pages long and it went over a number of things about limitations and benchmarking. Anyway, this test shows that Microsoft outperforms FireFox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0, which I’ve never seen, personally, on any other website on the Internet.

As you can see, IE8 beats the two third-party browsers in 12 website (I never thought IE was that fast, just see IE7 when running 4 tabs!!!), Chrome placed second with 9 websites, and FireFox fell last with only 4 websites. In case you missed that, IE loaded Mozilla’s website faster that FireFox does, and on the other hand FireFox gets done with Microsoft’s page faster than IE.

The report is available publicly at the Microsoft Download Center in PDF and XPS formats, so check it out if you have the time for reading through 14 pages.

The weird thing here, as if they didn’t mean to, Microsoft is releasing this report prior to the release of their browser which will be available at the end of this month.

Alright readers, let me now who will be switching to IE8 :)))

Symbian Announces Future Platform develompent Plan

2009-03-15T21:01:00.000+02:00

It doesn’t seem like we will se thos S60 and S30 naming to Symbian firmware. Symbian has announced it’s plans for developing it’s platform.

It looks like play time is over, the folks at Symbian announced their schedule, and, from what we’ve noticed, we’ll be looking at a new platform every six months. The naming of the versions will change from Symbian S60 Xth Edition to Symbian^N, where N is the version number.

The Symbian Foundation’s David Wood explains:

The simplest way to pronounce “Symbian^2″ is “Symbian two”… You can also view the ‘^’ as an upside down ‘v’. So we’re telling the world that, in a way, we are intending to turn versioning upside down - by opening up our roadmap discussions to the entire community.

A site dedicated to Assembly Language

2009-01-09T23:48:00.000+02:00

Here’s a great site that’s dedicated to Assembly Languages programmers. It offers a lot of tools to use in programming in Assembly along with a book about Compiler Theory.

Click H3r3

Microsoft Goes Open-Source

2009-01-09T17:34:00.000+02:00

Microsoft used to attach those open-source freaks who would put their efforts on the internet for free.
But things has changed now as Microsoft is going open-source.

Click Here to see what the folks at Microsoft are saying about open-source.

A Couple of Interesting Sites

2009-01-09T17:16:00.000+02:00

Here’s a couple of sites/blogs that you should consider checking out.

Mininova.org: www.mininova.org
Computer Philosophy: www.computerphilosophy.com

Specially Computer Philosophy, as it discusses a lot of stuff about Artificial Intelligence and other concepts.

First Post

2009-01-09T14:11:00.000+02:00

Hi all,

This blog is dedicated to all CS addicts like me. I so interested in programming. I’m thinking this blog will be a directory for all CS students and other people interested in such topics. I’m not a CS student though. I’m still in High School.

Hope to see you all around.

Ahmed