Is Big 'G' Planning for Mobile domination?

Anyone can get the Web on their cellphone these days. But now it seems Google is interested in so much more than that. It has reportedly approached the Federal Communications Commission recently about obtaining wireless spectrum, the base upon which mobile-phone networks are built, in the U.S. agency's next auction.

Never mind the potential buyout of Bell Canada Inc. or Apple Inc.'s much-hyped introduction of the iPhone yesterday, there's a much larger, game-changing force in telecommunications lurking just around the corner.

Search engine giant Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones.More>>

ILoveIM.com

ILoveIM.com is less sophisticated than many of the other Web-based IM apps I tested. From its advertising-heavy home page to its limited features, this service lacks broad appeal.
You can login ILoveIM.com
ILoveIM provides the service for the following a/c's,

• MSN
• OLD MSN
• Yahoo
• AOL
• GTalk

When you log on to ILoveIM, the service informs you that you may have to wait as long as 30 seconds to access your information. That may not seem like a long time, but it's significantly longer than for other services we tested. Once you're logged on, you learn that you may have to wait another 15 seconds for your buddy list to appear.

ILoveIM.com is a bare-bones service that you could use to access your IM account in a pinch. More>>

How to setup Virtual Hosting with Apache

Web servers are hosts that deliver files to applications or web pages to browsers via the HTTP protocol. The interaction of the web server with the browser is termed as host-client relationship. If the web server is used only to host a single site it is called a dedicated server. Dedicated servers are used for hosting big websites which handle a large amount of traffic.More>>

Server Side Includes in Apache

Server Side Includes (SSI) directives are a type of HTML comment that instructs the web server to generate data dynamically for the web page or the client when it is requested. SSI directive is an effective method in case of adding small amount of dynamic contents to HTML pages.More>>

Introduction to Spring MVC Web Framework - Web Tier

The Spring MVC provides rich functionality for building robust Web Applications and it is available as a separate module in the Distribution. As a pre-requisite, readers are advised to go through the introductory article on Spring Framework http://spring.javabeat.net/articles/2007/06/introduction-spring-web-framework. The Spring MVC Framework is architected and designed in such a way that every piece of logic and functionality is highly configurable. Also Spring can integrate effortlessly with other popular Web Frameworks like Struts, WebWork, Java Server Faces and Tapestry.More>>

100 Top MBA employers

1	Google
2	McKinsey & Company
3	Goldman Sachs
4	Bain & Company
5	Boston Consulting Group
6	Apple
7	Microsoft
8	General Electric
9	Nike
10	Bank of America

See the Full List Here>>

HCL Info, Wipro for dealerships with iPhone

Friday 6 pm U.S time. As the world gets ready for this deadline to grab one of the most sought after handsets - the iPhone - two Indian companies are also getting ready to register gains from this revolutionary offering of Apple Inc., the makers of Macintosh computer (popularly called Mac) and the iPod.

Noida-based HCL Infosystems and Bangalore-based Wipro Technologies are close to becoming the exclusive Indian distributors of the iPhone. Analysts are expecting 1-3 million handsets to hit the shelves on Friday.

A luxury product costing $499 for 4 gigabytes memory and $599 for 8 gigabytes memory, iPhone will have a large touch screen minus the conventional keypad. It will also double up as an iPod, video player and will come equipped with a digital camera.

Despite some of its flaws, the iPhone has bagged rare reviews and is being branded as a 'breakthrough handheld computer' as it automatically syncs all contacts from a PC, a MAC or internet service.

The good response is seen helping Apple Inc's head, Steve Jobs, to meet his goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008. Such sales will automatically catapult iPhone to third major revenue garner for Apple along with Mac and the iPod. More>>

Lots of new features in Firefox 3

Mozilla has started to leak snippets of information about what new features will be included in Firefox 3 , which is due sometime in the autumn.

An entirely new graphics engine that can handle more feature-rich web pages will be added to Firefox 3, according to Mozilla . So will better options to upscale and downscale images, and the ability to zoom in and out on web pages

Another major addition is SQL Lite, which makes it possible to 'tag' your favourite websites instead of bookmarking them. Similar tagging features can already be found in Gmail and Google Reader. The most frequently visited websites will automatically be accessible at the top of the web browser window.More>>

Infosys could bid for Capgemini

Shares in Paris-based consultancy Capgemini and Indian software firm Infosys Technologies have jumped on reports of a possible merger.

Infosys declined to comment on "market speculation" that it planned to bid for the European group, bolstering its position in the technology market.

But investors chased the Bangalore firm's shares up 2.5% in India. Shares in Capgemini rose 4.61% in Europe.

A tie-up would help Infosys prepare for an outsourcing slowdown, analysts said.

Outsourcing slowdown

Infosys has grown exponentially over the past five years, capitalising on the demand for IT outsourcing from India's large and well-trained English-speaking engineering workforce, whose wages are on average a fifth of those in the West.

Margins are very high in consulting business as compared to other commoditised business Infosys has Tejas Doshi, Sushil Finance

Infosys said its fourth quarter net profits leaped 70% to 11.4bn rupees ($267m; £134m) in the three months to 31 March, from 6.73bn rupees a year earlier.

But it recently said it expected earnings growth for the coming financial year to be more modest amid rising wage pressures and a strengthening rupee, which makes India a less attractive bet for outsourcing.More>>

How to setup PHP module into Apache server

Apache web server is an open source web server that can be freely downloaded from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi . A web server is a program that delivers files to the application or web pages to the browsers via HTTP protocol.

PHP, an acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a open source server-side scripting language that is designed for creating dynamic web pages. It can be freely downloaded from http://www.php.net/downloads.php. read full article

Introduction to Ajax4Jsf

Java Server Faces provided a Component Based Architecture for building User Interface Components for the Web Application. Ajax aims in providing Faster Response to the Client Applications by reloading only the needed Data. Wouldn't be nice to take the advantages of both Jsf and Ajax for developing Robust Web Applications. Ajax4Jsf provides solution for this. It is the integration of Java Server Faces with Ajax (which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and Xml), thereby providing Ajax Support to the Jsf UI Components. This article attempts to provide an overview of the Ajax4Jsf Framework which is now an open Source Project in the JBoss Community. read full article

First Release of Seam Plugin for NetBeans!

Petr Pisl of Sun has just released a first-look Seam Gen plugin for NetBeans. It allows you to generate complete Seam CRUD applications in NetBeans much the same way Red Hat Developer Studio allows you to do in Eclipse. I am extremely excited. So, here is a mini tutorial with some screen shots (taken from a Vista box — NetBeans look pretty good on Windows Vista).

Tutorial

1. Download and install the Seam module in NetBeans 5.5.1. We recommend you to install the Facelets support modules as well. Use “Tools -> Update Center -> Install Manually” to install those nbm files.

2. Install JBoss AS 4.0.5 with EJB3 support and set up a database with some existing data. Register the JBoss server and database connection in NetBeans. This is standard NetBeans stuff. If you are not familiar with that, read the Notes at the end of this post. You should see something like this in the Runtimes window after you are done. read full article

What is nofollow attribute?

Excerpt from Wikipeida

nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of spamdexing, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.

rel="nofollow" has come to be regarded as a microformat. Microformats reuse existing attributes but extend the standard values for the attribute. "nofollow" is a custom attribute value.

The concept for the specification of the attribute value nofollow was designed by Google’s head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen from Blogger.com in 2005

More>>

Apple's iPhone casts big shadow on cell industry

If the device—a melding of phone, Web browser and music and video player—is a hit, analysts say it will cut into market share of major phonemakers, including Schaumburg-based Motorola

As if struggling cell phone-maker Motorola Inc. doesn't have enough to worry about: Here comes the iPhone, heir to the mighty iPod, brainchild of tech golden boy Steve Jobs—and riding a tidal wave of hype to boot.

Due in U.S. stores Friday, the iPhone promises to stir up the mobile phone business. Apple Inc.'s first phone isn't expected to take much business from Schaumburg-based Motorola or anyone else in the short term, but it will change the industry landscape nonetheless, analysts say.

"It will not be a financial disrupter, but it will be a psychological disrupter, a research and development disrupter," said Roger Entner, senior vice president of IAG Research's communications sector. "That's because everybody will say [to competitors like Motorola], 'Why can't you do that?' " More>>

Do You Know Your Web 2.0?

Do you know your Web 2.0? Take the eWEEK Emerging Technology Web 2.0 quiz.

WEB 2.0 Quiz

Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks - Personal search is the next big phonomena

Eric’s talk begins now. “Search was, and is, and I suspect will be for many years, the killer application,” Eric says. “We have more engineers working at google on search than we do anything else.” And: “As the web gets bigger, you need a bigger index ... It’s like looking for more needles in larger haystacks.”

Personal search is the next big phonomena, Eric says. The best search is a personal search – one that we arrange, we control, etc. This is going to become the theme of Google as they move forward, Eric proclaims, stating that (and this surprises Eric) iGoogle is exploding in its use. Eric likens iGoogle to a ringtone as people love to personalize it. More>>

What is Second Life?

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 7,482,213 people from around the globe.

• From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
  
  
• You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.
  
  
• The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.

View Second Life

Introduction to Spring Web Framework

Today, the Principle of Inversion of Control has gained much popularity and Spring is a Light-Weight Framework that adopts this principle extensively for Building Java or J2ee Applications. In most of the times an Application never wants to gain access to all the services provided by the heavy-weight J2ee Container, but still will use it. In such a case, an Application can depend on the light-weight services provided by the Spring Framework/Container. How this is possible is detailed in brief in this article. Anyway Spring is not a complete replacment for J2ee Container. This article provides an Introduction over the Core features of the Spring Framework like how to Declare and Initialize Beans Declaratively, how to establish Dependencies among Beans etc. The later part of the article explores more on the various stuff available within the Bean Xml Configuration File along with plenty of sample snippets. read full article

Go, Go, Google Hybrid!

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has been known to shake things up in the transportation realm. There's the indispensable Google Maps, and the much-ballyhooed carpool system the company offers its employees. But these initiatives are small potatoes compared to the search giant's latest aspirations.

Through its nonprofit arm, Google.org, the company is taking up the cause of electric vehicles. Appropriately enough, its approach is two-pronged. Google is pursuing both plug-in hybrid technology, which lets you charge your car from a wall socket, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which sends energy generated within your car back into the electrical grid. The company has pledged $10 million in grants, and it's stocking its corporate fleet with plug-in hybrid vehicles to demonstrate the technology's effectiveness.

Plug-in hybrids aren't quite like the technology found in vehicles like the Toyota (NYSE: TM) Prius or the Ford (NYSE: F) Escape Hybrid. In those cars, advanced battery technology boosts the efficiency of a gasoline engines, but the car's a closed system; power can't get in or out. It's still not like the way we power, say, our Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) MacBooks or our iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT) Roombas. It might just take an industry outsider like Google to really revolutionize the nation's transportation system.

I can see both great benefits and challenges to tying together our power and transportation systems. On the plus side, electric car owners would never have to drive to the Chevron (NYSE: CVX) station to refuel; in addition, all those parked cars feeding electricity back into the grid during the daytime would help smooth out power delivery during periods of peak demand.

However, such a system would also make our vehicles dependent upon electrical networks that, in some regions, are strained enough at it is. A world running on plug-in hybrids could even compound the damaging effects of blackouts on the economy. If Google's aiming to change the way we use our cars, perhaps they can overhaul the electric grid while they're at it.

Unified Expression Language in Java Server Faces(JSF)

One of these is the UI component framework, JavaServer Faces technology. To support its powerful features, this framework needed its own expression language (EL). However, this EL presented some problems when used with some JSP tags. Therefore, the specification writers and expert groups of the Java webtier technologies collaborated on a new, unified expression language to help align these technologies by adopting the features offered by the JavaServer Faces expression language. These features include the ability to use expressions to set the value of external object properties as well as get data from them and to invoke methods. At the same time, the webtier team made the language pluggable and extensible so that advanced developers can add custom resolvers able to evaluate expressions not already supported by the expression language.read full article

Introduction to JBoss Seam

Yet another Web Application Framework! This time it is from JBoss Community. JBoss provides a new Web Application Framework called "JBoss Seam" which combines the advantages from the two rapidly growing technologies Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 and Java Server Faces. JBoss Seam, by sitting on top of J2EE provides a nice way of integration between JSF and EJB Components with other great functionalities.read full article

Google Stares Down Microsoft And Wins

Microsoft has agreed to make changes to Vista in response to a complaint by Google alleging that Vista’s inbuilt search functionality competed unfairly with Google Desktop Search.

According to a NY Times report, Google’s complaint was made confidentially in line with rules established as part of a previous settlement over anti-competitive behaviour by Microsoft. The settlement between state prosecutors, the Justice Department and Microsoft will avert the prospect of litigation over the matter.

The changes Microsoft will make to Vista have not yet been made public.More>>

Semel out as Yahoo! CEO

Yahoo!, the No. 2 search firm that has struggled in its battle with Google, said Monday that Terry Semel was out as chief executive officer, to be succeeded by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

Susan Decker, who heads a relatively new group that deals with the company's advertisers and publishers, and until recently was also chief financial officer, was promoted to president.

Shares of Yahoo surged 3 percent in heavy trading on Nasdaq Monday as speculation mounted that Semel might step down - and the stock rallied another 4 percent in after-hours trading.

Wall Street seemed to welcome the promotion of Yang since he is viewed as being far more tech-savvy than Semel, who had a background in traditional media before joining Yahoo.

"Hopefully, Jerry still has much of his entrepreneurial zeal. He is much geekier and you really need to be that rare combination of a technologist and a marketer. Is it the perfect choice? I don't know if it's a perfect choice but it's a good choice," said Kevin Lee, executive chairman of Did-it.com a search marketing firm based in New York.

Last week, Semel faced questions from several disappointed investors at the company's annual shareholder meeting about the Yahoo's strategy as well as the fact that Semel, despite only receiving a salary of $1 last year, had a compensation package worth more than $70 million due to stock grants.More>>

Spring IDE 2.0 RC2 released

An excerpt from the Spring Blog,

Before we all head into the week of SpringOne, we are pleased to announce that the second and last release candidate of Spring IDE 2.0 is available. As usual the release is available immediately form our developer update site.

Please don’t forget: This is our last chance to get things straight before we are going Final. Therefore take some time for testing and provide feedback on any errors, bugs or problems you might find.More

No wonder so many people are afraid of Windows Vista

A colleague from across the hall came into Tech Talk's offices one recent day to blow off steam. He said he had to unload on someone about his maddening experience with Vista, Microsoft Corp.'s new PC operating system.

He picked us because he somehow got it into his head that we have the slightest clue about computers, and Vista in particular.

This colleague admits below-average tech shrewdness. And he's not adventurous, purchasing gadgets only after they lose their cachet.

Nonetheless, about a month ago he decided to buy a fancy new laptop outfitted with Vista.

Most laptops in stores these days have one of Vista's nine editions already installed, so he had little choice. Our colleague bought a device containing Windows Vista Home Premium, the multimedia-friendly edition Microsoft wants most home PC users to have.

Three malfunctioning laptops later, our esteemed colleague is back where he started: shopping for a new computer. This time, he wants one without Vista.More>>

Introduction to Groovy - Scripting Language

Groovy is an Object Oriented Scripting Language which provides Dynamic, Easy-to-use and Integration capabilities to the Java Virutual Machine. It absorbs most of the syntax from Java and it is much powerful in terms of funtionalities which is manifiested in the form Closures, Dynamic Typing, Builders etc. Groovy also provides simplified API for accessing Databases and XML. Groovy language is large in terms of functionalities and concepts and this article provides only the basic Introduction and Information about Groovy. The first section of the article concentrates on the very basic concepts and theories of Groovy like Declaring Variables, Flow Control and Looping Structures. Then the next section focusses on Declaring Classes, Objects, Methods and the different ways of accessing them in Groovy. Covered in depth are the most exiting Groovy Closures. Finally the article explored the Groovy Distribution along with the various available Utilities.read full article

Five things you didn’t know about Google search

Google continues to have a strong focus on search

All the time I hear things like “If Google doesn’t pay attention to search…” or “If Google loses its focus on search.” That’s not likely to happen, but let me explain why people might worry that Google will lose our focus on search.

- Something like Street View is splashy, cool, and easy to understand, so launches like that tend to get more coverage. It’s much easier for someone to write about a new product or feature than about how Google has improved its semantic understanding of the web, or when we get better at scoring documents. I love Street view, Google Gears, and mobile Calendar, by the way. I’m just using them as examples because they’re easy to understand and recent.
- We don’t always talk a ton about core search quality. Part of the reason is that some reporters are less interested in changes that can’t even be seen (”Google’s search just got a little better in Thai. You can’t see it, but it did!”). Sometimes core search is hard to get other people excited about — kinda like it’s hard to make a picture of someone working on a computer exciting. And sometimes as a business you don’t want to give hints to competitors about how you do things. I’ve got a funny story about “url.host” that I’ll tell someday. Maybe someone will ask me about it in the Q&A tomorrow at the conference.

What happens when you put these two trends together? People see media coverage on neat/wild/fun things that Google does, and they don’t read many stories about core search quality. From those two facts, they extrapolate to what seems like a reasonable conclusion: Google is focusing less on search. But that’s just not true. Hundreds of engineers pay attention to our search quality in ways big and small. Google is practically designed from the ground up so that we can’t lose that search focus. It’s natural to combine these two trends and come to the wrong conclusion. By giving a glimpse at what our search quality engineers do on a daily basis, this article dispels that misconception. read full article

Launch of Powerlabs, Plus More Powerset Screenshots

Lately there's been a swirl of buzz about Powerset, a stealth natural language processing search engine. Last week they released their first "Query of the week". Today we discovered that Powerset is launching Powerlabs (screenshot below), plus we got our hands on a second query. read full article

Google Takes Over the World by 2050

Davide Casaleggio sent a tip to Read/WriteWeb about a video his company produced exploring the future of media. It is a very cool 6-minute video, which takes some educated (and imaginative) guesses at how the Web and media will evolve over the next 40-50 years. In the short movie, Google, Amazon.com and Second Life are the big winners - with Google buying Microsoft, Amazon buying Yahoo, and Second Life becoming the dominant virtual world.

The core future media concept is the Agav - an Agent-Avatar, which "finds information, people, places in the virtual worlds". Here's where it gets interesting. In 2022 Google launches Prometeus, the Agav standard interface, and Amazon creates 'Place' - a company that replicates reality. Then in 2027 Second Life evolves into 'Spirit', where people can become who they want to, via avatars. And then finally, the 'Google overloads' moment - when Prometeus buys Place and Spirit! By 2050 virtual life is the world's biggest market and Google/Prometeus reigns supreme.Of course it may turn out different, but the video does make you think about where the Web is headed. Check it out...

New Features in Java Server Faces 1.2

This Article provides a summary of new features added in JavaServer faces 1.2 Technology. Alignment with the JSP framework is one of the more important achievements of JavaServer Faces 1.2 technology, developed through JSR 252. In addition to these changes, JavaServer Faces technology contributes a host of other significant ease-of-use features.read full article

Introduction to Java Server Faces(JSF) Core Tags Library

This article introduces about the various Core Tags that are available in JSF. Tags represent some set of Actions that will be executed in the Server. This article assumes the reader to have a fair bit of knowlege in Java Server Faces. If not, then they can visit the Introductory Article in JSF in javabeat. For more information and resources about Java Server Faces, readers can also Jsf Articles Page visit here. This article will start off with the Major Classification of Core JSF Tags and then will explain in depth about the various different types of Tags that are available in each category. Wherever and whenever possible, Code Snippets are given to make the understanding of the Tags much clearer.read full article

Mapping Java Objects and XML Documents using JAXB - Java 6.0

JAXB (Java API for XML Binding) technology which was included as part of JWSDP (Java Web Services Developer Pack) before, is now included with the Mustang Distribution. Simply put, it is a Mapping Technology for Java and XML Documents. Using JAXB, one can Generate XML Documents from Java Objects and also they can Construct Java Objects from one or more XML Documents. In JAXB terms, Marshalling refers to the process of converting a Java Object to a XML Document and Un-Marshalling is the reverse of Marshalling which is simply getting a Java Object from one or more XML Documents. read full article

Streaming API for XML - Java 6.0

Streaming API for XML, simply called StaX, is an API for reading and writing XML Documents. Why need another XML Parsing API when we already have SAX (Simple API for XML Parsing) and DOM (Document Object Model)? Both SAX and DOM parsers have their own advantages and disadvantages and StaX provides a solution for the disadvantages that are found in both SAX and DOM. It is not that StaX replaces SAX and DOM. read full article

Pluggable Annotation Processing API - Java 6.0

Annotations have been there in the Java World from Java 5.0. Java Annotations are a result of the JSR 175 which aimed in providing a Meta-Data Facility to the Java Programming Language. It can be greatly used by the Build-time Tools and Run-time Environments to do a bunch of useful tasks like Code Generation, Validation and other valuable stuffs. Java 6 has introduced a new JSR called JSR 269, which is the Pluggable Annotation Processing API. With this API, now it is possible for the Application Developers to write a Customized Annotation Processor which can be plugged-in to the code to operate on the set of Annotations that appear in a Source File.read full article

Including Ajax Functionality in a Custom JavaServer Faces Component

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) is a technique for making the user interfaces (UI) of web applications more responsive and interactive. Because of its flexible and pluggable UI component model, JavaServer Faces technology is the perfect framework to use when adding Ajax functionality to your applications. With the DOJO JavaScript toolkit, it's even easier for component developers to add this functionality. This tutorial describes how to add the power of Ajax to JavaServer Faces components with some help from the DOJO toolkit.read full article

Ajax support in struts 2.0

Ajax or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML was introduced by Jesse James Garrett in 2005. He is called the “Father of Ajax” .Ajax is a collection of concepts and technologies that allows richer and more interactive user interaction with the web applications. The Ajax engine allows the user’s interaction with the application to happen asynchronously — independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something.read full article

Introduction to Java 6.0 New Features, Part–I

This article covers the various new features of Java 6, also known as Mustang. This article assumes that readers have sufficient knowledge over the concepts and terminologies in Java 5.0. For more information on Java 5.0, readers can vist the resources available in javabeat here. Though there is no significant changes at the Language Level, though Mustang comes with a bunch of enhancements in the other areas like Core, XML and Desktop. Most of the features are applicable both to J2SE and J2EE Platforms.read full article