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.”