Hidden Spyware : Ignorance is not a bliss

According to the WebSense press release:

92 Percent of Organizations with at Least 100 Employees Have Been Contaminated With Spyware, Yet Only Six Percent of Employees Believe They Have Been Infected


Forty percent of IT managers report the number of spyware-infected workstations has increased in past year, according to Websense survey


According to Websense’s fifth annual Web@Work survey conducted by Harris Interactive®, there is a major discrepancy between employees’ knowledge and understanding of spyware versus IT managements’ findings on the number of corporate workstations that are actually infected. For example, one-third of employees either do not believe, or are unsure, that their computers could be infected with spyware. However, IT management reported that spyware was on the rise—of those that acknowledged they had a spyware infection, forty percent believe that the number of spyware-infected workstations at their organization has increased.


One of the most common ways for an employee to download spyware is by using a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application such as KaZaa or Morpheus. Many P2P users do not realize that by downloading a seemingly harmless mp3 file, it may be accompanied by a spyware application. By connecting users directly to each other to download or swap files, P2P networks bypass normal security barriers and can be easily exploited by hackers to spread spyware.


"Employees are typically exposed to spyware as a parasitic program that is attached to something useful they've intentionally downloaded from the Internet, or been tricked into downloading, or it is surreptitiously loaded by a malicious hacker," said Peter Firstbrook, program manger at META Group. "Most employees don't even know they are infected; however, spyware can be merely a nuisance, clogging the network with advertising traffic or pestering the user with pop up ads; or it can be an invasion of privacy and collect what sites they've been browsing on; or less often, a security threat that records keystrokes or screenshots that reveal confidential corporate information and potentially create backdoors by revealing passwords and user names."

Related Links:

* What is spyware?

* For a list of software tools that can help you detect and remove spyware applications, click here

* How To Remove Spyware From Your Computer

* Fighting back against spyware

* Latest Spyware News on Google News

Made in India Mobile

Neha Kaushik & Gaurav Raghuvanshi write in Hindu about how the Mobile Manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, LG, etc are wooing india with the Made in India or Made for India concepts. The mobile and the mobile phone features are becoming more 'desi'.

LARA Croft in Tomb Raider may not cut much ice with your cell-phone toting neighbourhood delivery boy even if his handset were to sport it. To the growing tribe of Indian mobile phone users, playing `Makhan Chor' on the mobile would make more sense.



Recognising the importance of going local to appeal to Indian consumers, multinational mobile manufacturers are going beyond the patriotic or Bollywood-centric ring tones and have started introducing special "made for India" features. These include local language menu and messaging, games that click with the masses and features to suit local conditions.

Made in India Mobile

Neha Kaushik & Gaurav Raghuvanshi write in Hindu about how the Mobile Manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, LG, etc are wooing india with the Made in India or Made for India concepts. The mobile and the mobile phone features are becoming more 'desi'.

LARA Croft in Tomb Raider may not cut much ice with your cell-phone toting neighbourhood delivery boy even if his handset were to sport it. To the growing tribe of Indian mobile phone users, playing `Makhan Chor' on the mobile would make more sense.



Recognising the importance of going local to appeal to Indian consumers, multinational mobile manufacturers are going beyond the patriotic or Bollywood-centric ring tones and have started introducing special "made for India" features. These include local language menu and messaging, games that click with the masses and features to suit local conditions.

JPG Patent ???

p2pnet.net reports:

Forgent Networks owns Compression Labs which in turn owns the patent on .jpg and now Compression Labs is suing a whole raft of companies for infringing the patent.


Forgent "has initiated litigation against 31 companies for infringement of United States Patent No. 4,698,672 (the '672 Patent) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division," it says on its web site

Related Links :

* Made a JPEG Image? You're getting Sued!"

* Forgent Networks Sues 31 Companies for Patent Infringement

Multiply.com Offers Social Networking between Family and Freinds

Via PRNewsWire: Multiply, Inc. has launched Multiply (http://multiply.com), a web site that combines web publishing tools with a new type of messaging application powered by social networks.

Other social networking sites exist so you can build your social network, while Multiply exists so you can use it," says Michael Gersh, Multiply's co-founder. "By integrating applications such as photo sharing, blogging and a marketplace with a new messaging concept, we've created a much more compelling social networking tool. People use Multiply on an ongoing basis to see what others are saying about their content, and what new information is being shared with them."

Related Links :

* Social-networking Web sites growing in popularity

* Ask Jeeves Brings Search to Tickle

What Should a Documentary Filmmaker Ask About Offshoring? : Slashdot

Roblimo writes :

Philadelphia-area development economics and finance student Rachel Anderika and her associate, programmer/filmmaker Krishnan, are making a documentary about the effects of offshore outsourcing. Their "still under construction" Web site, Project Outsourced, gives you more information about their work. They're interviewing economists, bankers, anti-outsourcing advocacy groups, pro-outsourcing CEOs, columnists, and others. Where you come in is helping Rachel and Krishnan come up with good questions to ask. We'll forward 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones posted here (within the next 24 hours) to them. Expect summaries (and possibly audio or video clips) of the answers in late May, and news about the finished film this Fall.

The One Billion Indian Club

After Infosys & TCS, Wipro has joined the one billion dollar club:

Wipro Limited, India's third-largest software exporter, said Friday it crossed the $1-billion revenue mark during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004 on increased outsourcing from overseas companies.



In the full fiscal year 2003-04, total revenues were Rs.58.43 billion ($1.3 billion), representing a 36 percent increase over the corresponding period in the last year.



The Bangalore-based company's net profit in the year ended March 31, 2004 rose to Rs.10.32 billion ($235 million), representing an increase of 26 percent over net income for the year 2002-03.



Wipro joins Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter, and Infosys Technologies, the second biggest firm, in the premier club of IT companies who have crossed the $1 billion revenue mark.



The better-than-expected financial numbers for the fiscal year 2003-04 and January-March quarterly period unveiled by Wipro, promoted by India's richest man Azim Premji, boosted the share market sentiment.



Shares of Wipro, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, ended 1.7 percent higher at Rs.1,624.50 while the stock market benchmark 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index closed marginally high.

Related Links :

Vivek Paul amongst the best managers of 2003: BusinessWeek

Emergic Mailserv

On Emergic : CXOToday has put up a case study about FCB Ulka's deployment of our Linux-based messaging solution - Emergic MailServ- developed by Netcore

According to Kalpit Jain, CTO of Netcore, “The solution that runs only on Linux, has an anti-virus application, armed with a firewall, enhanced with load balancing features apart from bandwith management and monitoring. The mail server has been placed in the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone)- a server zone, which is accessible to the public as well as to the private network. In other words, it separates the internal network from the outside world.”



Commenting about the inherent benefits, Madbhavi cited reliability, flexibility coupled with ease of administration and simplicity. “However,” acknowledged Madbhavi, “Netcore was able to execute a high degree of customization primarily because the solution was built on open source.”




“Emergic Mailserv has been built with a judicious mix of certain open source components alongwith internally developed software,” affirmed Jain.




Spelling the minimum technical requirements, Jain stated that for 25 users a P III with a 64 MB RAM with 20 GB hard disk is needed.




Founded in 1998, Netcore Solutions Pvt Ltd. is an enterprise solutions company, focused on messaging, collaboration, and security software offering a range of enterprise products and hosted services. Among its several corporate customers using this solution are IDBI Bank and Raymonds.

The Public Domain

Do you really understood the meaning of Public Domain Content / Copyright , if not check this out!!!Public domain - Wikipedia

P2P : The Trust Factor

Andy Oram in continuation to his article : "From P2P to Web Services: Identification and Addressing" writes another article on XML.com, this time focussing on the "TRUST" aspect of Social Netwoking and hence named as : From P2P to Web Services: Trust
In this detailed two page article Andy talks about :


* Trust

* P2P Solution

* State-of-the-art Specifications

* Security Basic

* Future Trends

* The Modest and the Grand Promise

So, to sum up, what do I see in the near future? We need to do something about addressing. We need an easy system that assigns each person a persistent address that is useful for all applications; ideally the system would be distributed and resistant to attack or capture. Current Web Services specifications work on the problem of trust without solving the problem of addressing--that is, the problem as I've stated it, the problem of finding someone several hours later

Related :

The Next Level of Social Networking Red Herring (Registration Required)

8 Lessons From "The Apprentice"

Donald Trump host of the reality show The Apprentice gives us these Eight Lessons

1: Have a Strategy.

2: Find Out What the Boss/Client Wants and Give it to Them.

3: Deal With the Person in Charge.

4: Be Positive.

5: Have the Courage to Speak Your Mind.

6: Stand Up For Yourself.

7: Be Flexible.

8: There's Life After Being Fired.

Fundamental issues with open source software development by Michelle Levesque

This Slashdot Story points to the article by Michelle Levesque where she points out the five fundamental problems with the current Open Source software development trend, explores why these issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions that might help overcome these problems. The problems discussed are :

1) User interface design

2) Documentation

3) Feature–centric development

4) Programming for the self

5) Religious blindness



Who is Michelle Levesque ?

Michelle Levesque is a researcher for the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies and a student at the University of Toronto’s Computer Science department. Her job includes designing and implementing programs to enumerate and circumvent state–imposed Internet content filtering. This past summer she and two colleagues traveled to Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico to study how computer technology — especially Open Source technology — can be used to benefit civil society in developing nations. The trip has been made into a documentary entitled Hacktivista.

The Open Source Society

Jay Layman Writes :

FreeGeek (motto: "Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the third millennium") of Portland, Ore., is well-known in the area as a positive resource for transforming toxic IT trash into tech bootstraps for the less privileged and groups that serve them. The group's Collaborative Technologies effort takes it to another level by seeking out open source, free, and old software to use along with the tossed and rejuvenated tech gear. The group provides consulting for all of its clients, but only some of the more affluent nonprofits have to actually pay.

India may become global R&D hub

Via Sify:

Delivering the Convocation address at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) here, the Director-General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr Mashelkar, said the real and unique opportunities that India offers for becoming a true global R&D platform were enormous. He said the cost of doing R&D is fraction of that in the developed world as the entire spend of India's R&D last year was $5 billion, less than the R&D budget of a company like Pfizer alone.

Related Links:

* India to emerge as knowledge power: Dr Mashelkar

Citigroup Ready To Acquire E-serve

Citigroup is paying about $126 million to take full control of Indian IT services company e-Serve International. About e-Serve...

e-Serve International Ltd., formerly known as Citicorp Securities & Investments Ltd., is an established provider of IT-enabled services. Having begun this activity in 1992, e-Serve focuses on providing sophisticated IT-enabled solutions to the Financial Services industry, supported by cutting-edge technology and robust infrastructure.


e-Serve IT Enabled Services represent a comprehensive suite of Transaction Processing solutions, Customer Care solutions and Technology Services that are offered to companies engaged in Banking, Insurance, Capital Markets, Mutual Funds & e-Markets.


e-Serve's clientele is global, and Citigroup entities from several countries feature prominently in the list.

Via CBS Marketwatch

"This indicates that multinational companies are turning aggressive on the Indian outsourcing sector and they see huge growth," said Apurva Shah, technology analyst at domestic brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher.

SIP : Session Initiation Protocol : 5 Myths

What is SIP ? :
SIP is a text-based protocol, similar to HTTP andn SMTP, for initiating interactive communication sessions between users.Such sessions include voice, video, chat, interactive games, and virtual reality. SIP was developed within the IETF MMUSIC (Multiparty Multimedia Session Control) working group, with work proceeding since September 1999 in the IETF SIP working group.



The Myths: According to Olle Westerberg, CEO of Ingate Systems a leader in next generation firewall technology

* Myth #1: I have to replace the entire network.

* Myth #2: I can SIP-enable my current enterprise firewall, can’t I?

* Myth #3: Traversing the firewall is impossible for SIP-based communications

* Myth #4: My network will never be secure if I use SIP.

* Myth #5: Configuring a SIP-capable firewall will be next to impossible.

Related Links :

* SIP Info @ Columbia Univ

* SIP page on IETF.org

* Will regulation burst the VoIP bubble?

* Test Drive telic.net's Hosted SIP Phone Solution

Is Linux Safe and Secure ?

An article on Slashdot provides discussion on "is the closed code here being held to a higher standard than its open-source equivalent, and does this change the 'security through obscurity' argument?"


Comment # 1 (it's open source honey)

"Open Source is actually more secure than closed source proprietary software because the oversight of technology content is broader and deeper. Instead of just one company monitoring its own contributions — or potentially hiding security holes and exploits — a worldwide community of interested parties actually oversees Linux to make it strong and secure. That's why the NSA — the most security-conscious organization in the world — chose to standardize on Linux, and even supplies its own version of secure Linux."

Another Comment (It's on my PC and used by Military Too ???)

"Frankly, even as a faithful Linux user, I still have to agree with him. Our missile defense systems should not be running the same software as my home PC whether it is a commercial or open-source product."

Read more on Slashdot : Embedded RTOS Maker Raises Linux Security Issues....


Related Links :

* Linux Security

* Joint statement about GNU/Linux security

* Windows Vs . Linux Security : Depends On Who You Ask

* Linux Vendors Question Forrester Security Report

IIT Incubator :KReSIT

Venkatesh Hariharan writes on TR : Can India Plug Its Brain Drain? : IIT Bombay is using its technology incubator to counter the exodus of its brightest graduates to the West


About KReSIT:

The Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology (KReSIT) aims at moulding the future leaders of the Indian IT industry by imparting world class IT education to them. The school formally started operations with the first batch of M.Tech students on July 19, 1999.

Background :

The Indian IT industry is expanding rapidly and is expected to grow tremendously over the next few years. While the current education in India has been producing high quality 'workers' for the IT industry, there is a distinct lack of people who are trained to be leaders in this industry: people who will shape its future. There is also the disturbing trend of extreme compartmentalization that has gradually crept into the engineering sciences, especially in academic circles. While this may promote research in each of those fields themselves, it must be acknowledged that there are hardly any real problems that can be dealt with in isolation by any one 'compartment' of engineering. These were some of the issues noticed by Prof. D.B. Phatak (the current head of the school) and others, and a proposal was made in March 1998 to start a School of IT in IIT Bombay. The focus of the school was to be a close interaction with the industry, research with focus on integration of the various 'compartments', and entrepreneurship. The proposal was accepted and funding for starting the School came from two alumni of IIT Bombay, Nandan Nilekhani and Kanwal Rekhi, both of whom made generous contributions. Read more on this here.

The successful companies who have now moved out of the incubation are :



* Herald Logic : Develops products in enterprise information, rule-based engines.

* Voyager2 Infotech : Raised USD 250K, built a .creative ideas. portal, and was bought out by Purple Yogi in an all-stock deal.

* Myzus : Raised USD 600K, develops products and services in the areas of wireless gateways and connectivity bridges. It moved out into its own premises and is looking for a second round of funding.

* eInfinitus :Raised Rupees 1.2 crore, develops products in network operations: real-time bandwidth provisioning and specialized router software.


Related Links :

* Turning IITians from workers to leaders

* What does KReSIT Offer

* How to be a part of Business Incubator

* Companies currenlty at KReSIT

PC for RS.5000

Rajesh Jain on Emergic writes about the need for low cost computers in India.

To take computing to the masses in India, we need to rethink the design of the personal computer. In the late 1970s and early 1980s when the PC was architected, networks did not exist. The PC was, in effect, a standalone device. This is no longer the case now. Local area networks and broadband networks offer high-speed, always-on connectivity. In addition, the continuous progress in semiconductors has ensured that processing power is available quite inexpensively. As a result, it is possible to think of a “thin client” with processing and storage taking place on a “thick server.” This disruptive innovation is the Rs 5,000 PC (5KPC).

The need....

* 1 million schools need 10 computers each for enabling primary and secondary education

* 100,000 colleges need 100 computers each to ensure digitally literate graduates

* 3 million small- and medium-sized enterprises need to computer-enable their 30 million information-driven workforce

* 40 million urban and semi-urban families need a computer

* 5 million staff in government need computers to build the foundation for electronic and efficient governance

* 5,000 hubs in rural India need 1,000 computers each to provide newer opportunities beyond agriculture and provide a foundation for transforming Bharat

Rural Infrastucture & Services Commons (RISC)

Antanu Day writes : RISC, Deeshaa, and Rajesh Jain -- The story so far on Deesha.org an entrepreneurial institution, which aims to transform the rural Indian economy and contribute to India's economic development. He throws some light on Rural Infrastucture & Services Commons (RISC) which is an economic model & has the potential for achieving the multi-faceted goals of sustainable economic development through more efficient utilization of available resources.

I had been thinking about the problem of India's economic development for a long time. Even though my undergraduate work was in mechanical engineering, and my postgraduate work in computer sciences, I decided to study economics primarily because I wanted to understand how economic growth could be catalysed. Around 1998, I started converging to the idea that urbanization is both a cause and consequence of development. But rural India was huge. Massive rural to urban migration is not an option for India. So I started thinking of some way of "urbanizing" rural India in rural India itself. RISC was born.

Related Links :

* Microfinance outfits resemble Silicon Valley companies | Business World

* Anatanu Dey's Bio

Low Cost Open Source ERP Solution

CXOToday : Parle Tablet Tools Pvt. Ltd (Mumbai) has deployed ERPWEB, a unique Open Source, web-based low-cost ERP developed by ASIC Infotech Pvt Ltd. ERPWEB is an Open Source, customizable web-based ERP III, built with the aid of SoftRobot Codeless Technology, a zero code technology also innovated by ASIC.

Elaborating the benefits, Prajapati said, 'ERPWEB is an integrated database with a one time entry, offering considerable reduction in workload, with no client-side installation. In addition to being platform and device independent, all it needs is a browser to work. The option of Open Source gives us the right to even modify the source if needed. The multi-lingual solution is built-in with BPR and 6 Sigma, although we haven't yet implemented it.'

Related Links :

* Open source database improvements grow

* IT Execs Present Open Source Wish Lists

* Linux Platforms Begin To Replace Unix Systems In Public And ...

Which Search Engine You Are Using Today ?

If you think GOOGLe is the last name in web searching , check out this news article on reuters by Lisa Baertlein about few other exiting places on the net:

http://extremesearcher.com

http://www.altavista.com

http://www.teoma.com

http://www.search.yahoo.com

http://www.searchengineshowdown.com

http://www.dogpile.com

http://www.vivisimo.com

http://www.grokker.com

http://www.kartoo.com

http://www.bartleby.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

Yahoo To Start Social Networking

In response to Microsoft's interest in Social Networking and Google's testing of Orkut, Yahoo is also expressing its interest in starting its own social netwoking site.



Related Links :

* An experiment with online social networking

* Social Networking: My People Know Your People

* Web Sites Make Social Networking Easy

* Online "social networking" not for everyone

* Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies

From Waste To CleanerTable Top Power

Via Sify: West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency is looking towards a solution for converting waste into a clean power.

This solution may soon come your way through a micro-turbine power generator. A high-speed small turbine engine similar to that of an aircraft, which can rotate at a speed of about 96,000 revolutions per minute and generate between 40 KW and 600 KW of power.

The device, which is a new concept in green power generation, can be mounted on a table and runs on compressed biogas (say cow dung) or solid waste.

IBM & Daksh : The BPO Buyout

IBM acquies Gurgaon-based BPO firm Daksh e-Services at $160 million & it is one of the significant buys for IBM in India.

Talking about the deal, the IBM press release further said that the acquisition will enhance IBM's business transformation capabilities in key areas including customer relationship management (CRM) and financial management services in key industries such as banking, insurance, retail, technology, telecommunications, travel and transportation.



Besides, the initiative is also expected to increase the scope of IBM's global network of 22 business transformation delivery centers, adding capabilities in India and the Philippines. This network, which includes centers in the US and 12 other countries, already serves hundreds of clients globally. The deal also brings along Daksh’s experienced, strong management team to IBM in India.



"India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and an important marketplace for IBM. This investment is indicative of our commitment to supporting our clients in this region and leveraging local capabilities to extend our leadership position in the rapidly growing business transformation services marketplace," said IBM India, General Manager, Abraham Thomas.

Related Links :

* Daksh

* Daksh buy to boost IBM's low-cost offers

* Daksh's Agarwal to get Rs 750 cr

How India is saving Capitalism! (Offshoring, India & Slashdot)

alphakappa a.k.a anil writes this story on Slashdot : How India is Saving Capitalism

alphakappa writes "Salon goes onsite to Chennai (Madras) in India to investigate the whole offshoring phenemenon (free daypass) and comes up with an interesting series of stories. Katharine Mieszkowski starts with a company CollabNet which creates collaboration software for teams to work together on projects from locations all over the globe, and has centers in Brisbane (CA,US) and Chennai (India) - a company that would not exist if they didn't have access to engineers from India. She makes the case that in most cases, it is the necessity to survive, rather than greed that has fed the offshoring process. As Behlendorf from CollabNet puts it - 'We saved the jobs of the people who are employed in San Francisco by hiring people here [in India],' he says. 'I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?'"

More on Anil's Blog


Related :

Salon : How India is saving capitalism
[Subscription / Free Day Pass]

CIOL : Outsourcing : Offshoring- India’s pride, others’ envy

The Rise of IP Telephony

Internet phone company Skype Technologies said on Tuesday it has developed a version of its free calling software for handheld computers, a move that could undercut existing mobile-phone carriers.


Related :

FEATURE-Wanted: High-tech gadgets for new Internet protocol

Google To Block Scarping

Via TheSocialSoftwareWeblog : I was thinking of making some great news pages by Scraping Google News for my new portal site. But since Google is trying to become the Microsoft of Information, I would have love-hate relationship with it. Though sites like Topix.net and Newstrove.com exist with RSS support and RSS seemed to be the biggest information exchange tool, the reason why Google doesn't like it is unknown .

Google : Trying To Become Microsoft Of Information

Rajesh Jain comments on Google that it is trying to be Microsoft of Information over the web. Recently Google launched a test with about 1,000 invited guests set to try out a new e-mail service called "Gmail." Gmails's highlights are as follows :

Search: Built on Google search technology, Gmail enables people to quickly search every email they've ever sent or received. Using keywords or advanced search features, Gmail users can find what they need, when they need it.



Storage: Google believes people should be able to hold onto their mail forever. That's why Gmail comes with 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of free storage – more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer.



Speed: Gmail makes using email faster and more efficient by eliminating the need to file messages into folders, and by automatically organizing individual emails into meaningful "conversations" that show messages in the context of all the replies sent in response to them. And it turns annoying spam e-mail messages into the equivalent of canned meat.

Before you start considering this as a joke John Battelle's Searchblog has an unconfirmed response from Yahoo!. Whatever it may be I M LOVIN IT .

Free Publicity Through Outsourcing Backlash

According to Gaurav Raghuvanshi & Vipin V. Nair 's article in Business Line, US-based companies that hadn't considered sending work offshore are now thinking about India. The backlash in the US against this practice is actually giving India much-needed, but free, publicity.

Pacenet's Cable on IP

Broadband provider Pacenet India is planning to launch its set top box Home Genie which uses royalty free open standard conditional access technology for an internet environment called Secura. Priced at Rs. 5000, it wil have a 40bps downstream pipe along with a 100mbps two way interactive pipe. It also has a peoplemeter built in to it. In this way Pacenet can work out promotional deals with broadcasters as they will have an exact idea of how much their channels are being watched. Unlike Reliance the company did not have to worry about laying fibre optic cables throughout the country thanks to the recent tie up with Ipstar. This is the worlds first two way satellite system and provides a two way IP link. This will allow Pacenet to reach any part of the country. But according to Pacenet they are aiming to provide Cable on IP and not Video on Demand like Reliance which offers everything (various data services) on the Ethernet. Pacenet further adds that Reliance project requires more maturity in the market. Let's see whos gonna rule the indian broadband world and when will have my connection.

The Shift In Linux Loyalty

Daniel Lyons writes on Forbes.com about 'Once Upon A Time Linux Fan ' Rick Carey when he was a chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch. Carey now holds a different view altogether due to changing policies of Red Hat w.r.t to pricing and licensing.

Carey says one reason he embraced Linux was its lower cost. But if Linux becomes almost as expensive as Windows, why not go with Windows, and benefit from the work of thousands of Microsoft engineers and programmers? Carey talks about "the innovation premium"--meaning the price you pay to get the latest and greatest.



"Most open source is imitation," Carey says. "Linux is an imitation of an operating system. If these [Linux] companies are going to create a price point that is significant enough that they are approaching the same pricing model as the innovation premium, why pay a premium for imitation when I can pay a premium and get innovation?"

Google Made Simple = Soople

Soople (Easy Expert Search) is a simple query interface to google.com which has various hacks besides just generating answers to simple queries. Google can find definitions, calculate, work as yellow pages, suggest products, can search a specific domain or a university or can search particular type of document or topic. Accessing these features requires a particular syntaxed query, soople makes it easy for you , basically it provides pre-formatted search boxes for various options instead of typing a special syntaxed query.

Soople is an early English dialect, which means 'to soften, make supple'.



That's exactly what I envisioned for this site ; a site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers. Initially I made this site for my mother, who, though computer-savvy, still didn't know about all the possibilities Google offers. This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'!



For instance, one can specify a search by one particuliar site or filetype ( word, excel, powerpoint and pdf) or an imagesearch by size and type.



Furthermore there are many useful tools Google offers; search in the latest news, look up definitions or use Google as a phonebook.



And last but not least, the Calculator. This amazing tool let's you do all kind of (very advanced) calculations. Soople has added the unit-converter, which is based on this calculator, for the conversion of all the commmon units/measures (meters<--->yards). Quite supple, if you ask me.



Of course, there are always many more supple ideas out there, so don't hesitate to mail us! Have a lot of Google-fun



Soople is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Google