The new version of Opera is enriched with many features; an improved user interface design, customizable speed dial, web integration, Opera Turbo, built-in spell-checker and many more; you can find them at the Opera page.

One of the notable features that is loved by most net users is Opera Turbo. It is a compression technology which is designed to significantly improve browsing speeds over limited bandwidth connections. Hence people accessing the net with a crowded Wi-Fi, can experience high speed like never before.

When a web browser crashes, the total web pages that were browsed so far will be closed and lost. Where as the Automated Crash Reporting feature of Opera is designed to restart and recover all your tabs if a crash occurs. Also, you can send a crash report to the Opera team to fix the bug.

My favorite feature of Opera 10 is Speed Dial your way with which users can choose about 25 favorite web sites for quick access, and add a custom background as well to customize their browser.

The improved version of Dragonfly, a cross device, cross platform debugging environment for the Opera browser enables web developers to edit the DOM and inspect HTTP headers.

Particle a new start up shop which produce several tiny applications, has released a brand new and massively tiny application called Robo.to.

The application did not look too convincing or to be taken too seriously initially, but as more research was put into the it, the GIF-esque Flash avatar which was present on the home page slowly unraveled little delights. The application had been created for users to enjoy what they were doing while social networking while not having to think too much about it. So in short the application was created to simplify processes and create user friendly technology served on a platter!

The flashy avatar that appears on the front page contains a badge that appears in a narrow, mobile-friendly form and links to a page with any pointers one can choose to direct visitors to other online homes. This application also helps you record videos  which you can post on Facebook, Twitter and all the other networking sites, the only hitch here being the vidoes are soundless.Considering it’s a tiny application and is fresh into the market is has been found to be delightful making it very simple for users to make use of it.

Just like any new application, once released ,it has to compete with all the bigger sharks in the ocean(namely Facebook and Twitter) if it has to survive. Even though it has user friendly technology and has simplified step wise links and also seems like glittery eye candy, the question of revenue comes into play. Primarily not many users are aware of the tiny applications like Robo.to and moreover if all they get to record are soundless videos they might not want to come back. Moreover the software does not have any distinctive features that make it more desirable than the other bigger products and users may not even remember it! And finally with upcoming new softwares that users would rather log into the newer tiny applications usually get demolished due to lack of revenue.

All these facts considered Robo.to seems an interestingly delightful application today in the market, but the question of its survival can only be defined with time.

On Monday, 20/08/2009, Toshiba, one of the world’s leading vendors of consumer electronics and the creator of the HD DVD optical disc format unveiled its plan to release its own Blu-ray Disc player before the end of the year 2009.

A recent report from the Digital Entertainment Group, indicates that Blu-ray sales in the first quarter of 2009 were double that of the previous year. This report has anticipated Toshiba to ignore its idea of developing a next-generation technology that would supersede the Blu-ray format, and enter the Blu-ray market.

Toshiba said: “In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association). Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.”

Cyber attacks are growing vigorously in the internet world. Recently hackers attacked a popular social networking site, Twitter ,where users can post 140 character messages to their friends, resulting in the shutdown of Twitter for two hours on Thursday (06/08/2009) morning and caused glitches in world’s popular social networking site Facebook.

Twitter and Face book users were not able to access the networking sites for several hours on the day. Even after the Twitter site come back online, many site users continuously encountered some problems. The site users were worried that the sites were not working properly.

“We are trying to defend ourselves and recover from this attack,” the message from the company says. After a lot of discussions, Facebook, Twitter and Google worked together to resolve issues in a fairly short period of time. Users are now posting their messages to their followers without any difficulty.

“It is very difficult to identify hackers and when they will attack as they could be anywhere in the world” said John Harrison, a researcher with the Web security firm Symantec. So it is better to update an anti-virus software on your computer frequently, and create password that is difficult to crack and stay away from the cyber attack problems, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness agency advices.

Tweetblocker is a free tool that comes from Hashrocket Labs as a boon for Twitter users and application developers, to block spammers from their Twitter account. It uses highly advanced filtering technique to catalog and rank the top spammers on Twitter, thereby allowing users to quickly and easily find spammers.

All you have to do is go to the TweetBlocker site and register in it. Once you handle your Twitter account details, Tweetblocker examines your followers based on their age, rate of activity and ratio of friends and followers, and applies Bayesian spam filtering algorithms to analyze a user’s Twitter stream.

Based on the analysis, it grades them with a score of A to F, where F being highly likely spammers and A being fine. You can unfollow and block users from the TweetBlocker dashboard.

In a summary, Tweetblocker is really a great tool for Twitters to safeguard their account from spammers.

eBay revealed its plan of developing an alternative backend for Skype in its 10-Q regulatory filing on July 30, 2009. Skype uses Joltid’s software to make its P2P connections on the backend. Recently, Joltid’s creators Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom turned against Skype and told that Skype can’t use, possess or modify certain source code as part of the license agreement.

Following this action, Skye filed a claim with the English High Court of Justice in March 2009 asking for declaratory relief. The trial won’t take place until June 2010. Hence, e-bay has decided to develop a new backend for Skype before spinning off the VoIP service next year.

“Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation, there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation,” the company wrote in its 10-Q. “If Skype was to lose the right to use the Joltid software as the result of the litigation, and if alternative software was not available, Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.”

Gliffy is an online diagramming tool that helps users create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online without installing any additional software. Gliffy has released the API using which bloggers on the Wordpress can easily add diagrams and flowcharts to their posts, and a backup script that lets users to backup their Gliffy documents to local machines.

All you need to run Gliffy is just a web browser with Macromedia Flash 7 or better, and a Gliffy account which may be basic or premium account according to user requirements. The API comes with OAuth support for third party applications.

“We pioneered this market nearly four years ago,” said Chris Kohlhart, founder and CEO, Gliffy. “We’ve done it again by resetting the criteria needed to compete not only against our leading online platform, but against legacy, platform-restricted competitors like Visio and OmniGraffle.”

In order to support developers in building a new products and services using the powerful diagramming and flowchart features, the company has a growing developer community, forum and a public issue tracker that provides answers for developers at any time.

After a struggle for 18-months, Microsoft has finally persuaded Yahoo to surrender its search engine Yahoo search to Microsoft search engine Bing. As per the 10-year deal, Microsoft’s technology will power Yahoo’s search results, while Yahoo will handle ad-selling duties for both companies’ search sites.

“I am very enthusiastic,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO said in an interview. “This is what I have basically been saying for the past 18 months: The world will be better served for consumers, advertisers and publishers, and there will be more competition for Google, if we can somehow figure out how to get Microsoft and Yahoo together in search.”

According to the research firm ComScore Inc, it is expected that Bing’s U.S. market share would instantly increase to 28 % which is triple that of current rate, whereas, Google holds 65% of U.S. searches. In the share market, the share of Yahoo Inc is dropped by 12 percent, while the share of Microsoft Corp is increased by 33 cents to $23.80.

IDC analyst Al Hilwa commented on the deal as “It’s ‘unfortunate’ that there will now be one fewer major search player because it will weaken the competitive landscape. In their quest to catch up with Google, both Yahoo and Microsoft were doing interesting and innovative things in search. That has been good for the industry”. And added that “With this deal, Microsoft is likely to feel less urgency to innovate and “move the needle”.

Google is looking at the deal as good one for net surfers, “There has traditionally been a lot of competition online, and our experience is that competition brings about great things for users,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said. “We’re interested to learn more about the deal.”

Globalfoundries is a California-based joint venture of microprocessor manufacturer AMD and financial investor ATIC (an investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi). STMicroelectronics has become first true outside customer of Globalfoundries.

Today, an official contract is signed by the two companies, to make low-power chips using a 40-nanometer process which will be ideal for the next generation of wireless applications, handheld devices, and consumer electronics. Whereas, Intel pioneer in the chip manufacturing company manufactures flash memory chips at the 34-nanometer level.

“To ensure ample capacity for our customer/partners at the leading-edge of low-power design, ST needs an agile and high-performance manufacturing partner that can adapt to our changing needs,” said Jean-Marc Chery, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, STMicroelectronics. “With a strong commitment to manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading-edge, we believe Globalfoundries is an excellent partner to collaborate on low-power design innovation in 2010 and beyond.”

Globalfoundries has planned to extend its structure by building a wafer manufacturing facility at the cost of $4.2B in Malta, N.Y. Once complete, the additional facility is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor foundry in the world.

Adobe Flash Player which delivers high-impact, rich Web content, has attracted millions of internet users towards it by offering a rich web experience. In the starting of July, it is found that the security flaws in Adobe have paved way for hackers to get access to user’s computer easily. They just email PDF files with corrupted Flash video clips to hack websites and implant their malicious code in user’s computer.

When user clicks on the received clip, malicious codes get loaded in the program and start controlling the computer. They steal data, draw off cash from online financial accounts, spread spam and trigger promotions to sell fake anti-virus programs from the victim’s computer.

Adobe has taken enough measures to issue security patches once a quarter. It scrambles to develop an emergency patch by this Friday as they suspect the number of attacks could soar this week.

“The volume of cybercrime has been increasing, so we’ve stepped up our efforts to supply best-in-class security,” says Rob Tarkoff, Adobe’s senior vice president and general manager of business productivity.

Computer users were given reminders every seven days about software updates by Adobe; they were advised to install it immediately to safeguard their system.