The Technology Cafe :: Technology News and Reviews Daily

China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest internet market as measured by number of users, consulting and research firm BDA (http://www.bdaconnect.com/) confirmed today. Data released earlier this year by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) indicate China’s internet users totaled 210 million at year-end 2007. Nielsen/NetRatings put the United States internet population at 216 million for the READ MORE...

Microsoft is running out of time to make its mid-March deadline for pumping out Vista service pack one (SP1) for general release as a manual download. Meanwhile, it looks like the software giant has failed to fix a key pre-requisite update in time, meaning that if SP1 does indeed arrive this week, an unspecified number of customers could be shut out from updating their operating system until the firm provides a solution. Microsoft had pinpointed READ MORE...

I recieved an email from DoubleClick this morning about the EC approval of purchase of the ineternet Ginat advertisor DoubleClick by our own Google. Here is the Mail Google’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of online ad network DoubleClick has been given the go-ahead by European regulators. The European Commission (EC) said today the $3.1bn deal won’t impede competition, despite the READ MORE...

Internet Explorer (IE) 8, a first beta of which Microsoft is showed off at its Mix ‘08 conference previous week, includes a number of new features, including WebSlices and Activities.Microsoft is touting the two new technologies on an IE 8 Beta 1 Welcome page that was visible on the Web on March 8.This is how Microsoft describes WebSlices, a feature allowing Web sites to connect to their users by subscribing to READ MORE...

It’s quite brilliant, quite good, and most of all Time Saving. Yesterday, Google blogged about this new feature, calling it “a tale of teleportation.” When you key the name of a website into Google and Google links you to that site, Google thinks science fiction: Have you ever forgotten the exact address of a site that you wanted to visit? Not a problem – just type the name of the site into the Google search box and hopefully READ MORE...

Bill Gates is no longer the richest man on the planet. Investment guru Warren Buffett has knocked him off the number one spot for the first time in over a decade. Gates has been at the top of the annual Forbes rich list for the past 13 years. Buffett now has a personal fortune of about $62bn – ahead of Gates’ cash pile of $58bn. Gates was pushed into third place on the preposterously prosperous list because Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos READ MORE...

Web storage newcomer ADrive seems up to the challenge. The host serves up a whopping 50GB of storage for free, with the only bandwidth limitations being in the size of the files you can upload, which are capped at a reasonable 2GB. The free “beta” accounts are supplemented with ads (hence the AD in the name), which show up on the top and bottom of your file explorer. While lacking some of the graphical beauty and familiarity of other READ MORE...

Intel announced yesterday that its upcoming low-cost/low-power CPUs code-named Silverthorne and Diamondville will be sold under a single brand once the products launch. The MID-centric product family will hereafter be known as “Atom.” Consumers are obviously meant to associate the Atom brand with objects of very small size, though Intel “Quark” would have a certain ring to it. The Atom architecture is intended to give Intel a READ MORE...

Microsoft already has said it will port its Silverlight competitor to Adobe Flash to Windows Mobile phones. But it also is working on a Silverlight port to phones from cellphone market leader Nokia. Microsoft said with the help of Nokia, it has begun porting Silverlight to the S60s running the Symbian operating system. Microsoft’s press release says that Nolia’s S60 had more than 53 percent of worldwise market share for “converged device READ MORE...

Finally, Some Real Innovation by Microsoft! The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending READ MORE...

Earlier this month, Microsoft blog sites erupted with the news that Bill Gates had cancelled his Facebook account after The Sun ran a story saying that Gates made the move because he was “getting more than 8,000 friend requests a DAY.” Speculation ranging from Gates having a secret profile to someone else controlling his account quickly began to surface. Despite many rumors of Microsoft buying Facebook in September of last year, READ MORE...

Well it’s been two year ssince IE7 came into the market, and rather painfully is being overshadowed by Google’s own funded Firefox. This year Microsoft passed the ACID test on the IE8 standards, and now its giving many beta testers to try out the upcoming release which it says will change the way people browse with functionalities beyond imagination. Till yet I see no difference as the same install screen remains that of the IE7, the only READ MORE...

It willbe much better in terms ofcompatibility and Standards Microsoft is planning updates to the .NET Framework 3.5 later this year to improve installation and performance of applications running on Windows Vista.This summer will see changes to the setup framework, the Common Language Runtime (CLR), and Windows Programming Framework (WPF). It’s hoped that these changes will speed application start up and optimize performance in areas like READ MORE...

Cheap Enough Now!!! Microsoft is knocking $80 off the price of the US edition of Windows Vista Ultimate from $399 to $319, and the Home Premium edition falls $30 from $159 to $129.Price cuts in the rest of the world are expected to follow real soon.Vista has been on the market for about a year now, so a price cut is unsurprising.This cut only affects the boxed edition of Vista – more than 90 percent of Vista sales come pre-installed on new PCs READ MORE...