On May 26, 2009, Yahoo has unveiled a Creative Commons license filter that allows net surfers to simply and quickly find images that are available for reuse. This feature will help people who are looking for a picture to pop into a presentation or illustrate a Web page.

On the Yahoo blog, Polly Ng and Anuj Sahai have commented on the filter as “We knew from our March blog post about the release of the Yahoo! Image Search filters that our community wanted an easy way to search for images that could be reused. By launching the Creative Commons license search with Flickr and making it available to all our Yahoo! Image Search users, we aim to promote reusable work and to be transparent about the guidelines issued by the creator of a particular image. We’re proud to be the first image search engine to offer this capability.”

You will see a checkbox for creative commons that allows you to choose filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or modified. Now it is easy to find CC-licensed images on Flickr for any occasion easily.

Google has released a new version of Chrome browser and call it as ‘Google Chrome 2′. In Google’s official blog, they declared that new version speed is increased about 30 %. On Beta news, Google said that “Our adjusted performance score for Chrome 2 on our new platform was 21.4% better than Chrome 1, relative to the performance of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on the same system.”

The main notable features in the new release are:

Increased speed: The main area of focus of the Google Chrome team is to increase the browser speed. They have achieved it in this new release through the usage of a new version of WebKit and updated JavaScript engine, V8.

Improved New Tab page – Users can remove thumbnails from the “most viewed pages” section.

Full Screen Mode – It is possible to watch videos in Google Chrome on full screen.

Form Autofill – Filling out information in forms is easy with ‘Autofill’ option. Google chrome 2 will show information that you have previously entered into the same form fields automatically. At any point you can clear that information using the tools menu.

Stability – Fixed over 300 bugs that caused crashes since launch.

On 18/05/2009, Microsoft said that the company has struck a deal to bring Netflix’s streaming movie service to Windows Media Center

Microsoft has also said in a statement, “We’re building on our broader vision to alleviate the need to jump from Web site to Web site to find TV shows, movies, sports and news. With Windows Media Center, (users) can now find it in one place.”

Just install Media Center plug-in MyNetfix and start watching videos directly through Windows Media center without going through your browser. Also you can tackle all your Netfix Management from the comfort of your couch.

Napster which was acquired by electronics retailer Best Buy for $121 million in September 2008, has slashed its music subscription price from $12.9 to $5.It is the first major strategic move after its acquisition by Best Buy, to take on Apple’s iTunes, the dominant digital music leader.

Now users can get unlimited access to stream music from its library of 7 million songs, and five free songs for download every month for a subscription fee of $5.

“We’ve worked very closely with our label partners to come up with a re-engineered economic structure that is a win-win for everyone starting with consumers,” said Chris Gorog, Napster’s chief executive. Also added that “Our partners recognize that the way we can all earn value from this is to substantially grow the paid subscription model. Nobody wins if it remains a niche product.”

Best Buy believes that this attempt will attract more users to offset the impact of declining CD sales which have fallen sharply as music fans turn in increasing numbers to digital downloads and MP3 players.

Sony released its three new entry level DSLRS which are often preferred by professional still photographers.  The alpha DSLR-A230, A330 and A380 priced at $550, $650 and $850, are revamped to replace A200, A300 and A350.

All these DSLRs come with beginner-friendly features. Both the A230 and 330 feature a 10.1 megapixel resolution whereas the A380 has a 14.2 megapixel resolution. These models have dual memory slots, SDHC cards and Sony’s proprietary memory stick duo.

Images can be previewed on an HDTV using HDMI video-out. The A330 model will be available in black or brown, whereas A230 and A380 will be only in black.

Sony promises to offer lighter weight and friendlier, more point-and-shoot-like guided operation for its customers. A new software interface in DSLRs will make it easier for beginners and inexperienced SLR users to understand and adjust camera settings.

As a bonus, along with the kits the 18-55 mm and 55 – 200 mm lenses are included. These lenses are designed specifically for the APS – Csize sensors in DSLRs. These advanced models are expected to reach the market in mid June.

Graham Hawkes maker of Deep Flight Super Falcon, explains it as “This one, instead of being a crab you drop to the bottom, is like a dolphin. It will fly off and move through the ocean with grace. It looks like a big animal moving and can do barrel rolls with whales,”

He calls it as “the most beautiful machine ever built” in the launching event of Falcon at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Already he had sold a Super Falcon to Mr. Tom Perkins who made his fortune as a venture capitalist backing companies like Google, Symantec and Genentech.

Mr. Perkins commented on Falcon as “I believe the Super Falcon is the future for underwater adventuring.”

The main principle behind Falcon is use of downward lift on the wings to fly down to depth. It is the first aqua machine to operate on the same principles as flight. One more advantage of Falcon is the reduction of the internal volume of the pressure hull.

Falcon is powered by a set of Lithium polymer batteries. The cabin pressure is maintained at one atmosphere, hence there is no issue with crew or passengers suffering from the so-called bends or their pressure related illness.

The next mission of Mr Hawkes is to turn Super Falcon into an “ambassador of the seas.”

Mathematica inventor Stephen Wolfram is ready to launch a computational engine ‘Wolfram Alpha’ on this Friday. It has created a great buzz among net surfers even before its launch. Most of them have visualized Alpha as ‘Google Killer’. But it is not like Google which returns documents according to search query, instead Alpha computes the answers to a wide range of questions.

Alpha uses built-in models of fields of knowledge to compute the answers to questions. For instance, if you type in “San Francisco to Tokyo”, it will fetch you data on how many miles apart they are, the projected flight path, and current local times. It sounds very interesting to watch the Alpha results as it displays graphs, images and other data related to the questions.

Are you eagerly for its launch? You can also view its launch live on Justin.tv. The company will be live broadcasting its launch starting at 8pm ET using video streaming service Justin.tv.

In a press event called searchology held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Google unveiled its four more search tools. Marissa Mayer who is the vice president of search products and user experience, showcased four new search products that she said would give users a “different way to look at the web.”

Google Squared

Google Squared will extract data from Web pages, and display them in a spreadsheet in ’split seconds’. During the session, they typed in a query “small dog” in the search box. The result popped up in seconds, showing breed name, dogs’ image, their origin, weight and height of small dogs in a clear and simple table layout.

Refine, filter and view

This search tool will allow users to drill down into the results by offering an option for different genres like product reviews, forum posts or videos at the sidebar.

Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets feature returns more information in every search result. For example, users looking for reviews of a new restaurant might get a “rich snippet” of average review scores, number of reviews and the restaurant’s price range.

Sky Map

Sky Map is an Andriod application. By using the smart phone’s GPS capability, it offers the user a dynamic star map that knows where they are standing and which way they are pointing

The dream of controlling TV channels with thoughts will soon come true. Not only TV channels, you can control light switches, door and any households in a smart home through thoughts. No more hassle of lost keys and remotes, thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology which was being developed in Europe. BCI technology lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.

“The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,” explains Christoph Guger, the CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application.

g.tec has teamed up with a group of international universities and research institutes as part of the EU-funded Presenccia project to incorporate its BCI technology into virtual environments. “A virtual environment could be used to train a disabled person to control an electric wheelchair through a brain-computer interface,” explains Mel Slater, the coordinator of the Presenccia project. “It is much safer for them to learn in Virtual reality than in the real world, where mistakes could have physical consequences.”

This project could offer liberating possibilities for disabled people. The BCI technology will gain ground in medical applications for the disabled and for rehabilitation. The g.tec CEO says that g.tec’s smart home application will soon be deployed in a real smart home.

Mobile phones have made keeping in touch with people around the globe so easy. Mobile phones have become an inherent part of everyone’s life. Most people have moved from the heavy cordless phones of the 1980’s, to the latest smart phones which are compact, light-weight and filled with great features like games, videos, radio and so much more.

Third Generation (3G) mobiles, which deliver data speed from 384 kbps to 2mbps, and over wireless interfaces such as GSM, TDMA AND CDMA, are the most popular ones today. The other wireless technology platforms that attract mobile users are GPRS, WAP and EDGE.

GPRS is a packet oriented mobile data service available to users of the 2G cellular communication systems, GSM and 3G systems. It is an enhancement to GSM and IP technology, and provides high speed net connection.

WAP is an open international standard for application layer network communications in a wireless communication environment. Its main use is to enable access to the Mobile Web from a mobile phone. The WAP browser is necessary to display web content on a cell phone. The latest smart phones come with WAP and GPRS technology integrated into them.

EDGE is specially designed to meet the bandwidth needs of 3G, and offers high-speed data transfer over GSM networks. Nokia N97, Samsung’s Iconic 3G HSDPA Music phone, Apple iphone 3G 8GB, Sony Ericsson W850i, Z610i, LG Shine, U400, U300 and Motorola RAZR V3xx are some of the handsets integrated with 3G technology.

Due to the tough competition among handset manufacturers, they offer some more attractive features to stay ahead. One such attractive feature in the Nokia N97 allows users to automatically update and share their location with friends and popular social networks.