AD105 was the year paper was invented by the Chinese. AD 2009 and beyond it is on its way out, thanks to e-Readers which plan on its ouster. One of the best of its kind is the Amazon Kindle which is now shipping internationally. This device will work in about 100 countries around 19th October 2009. The company has also slashed its price by $30 in the US from $259 to $229 only to increase sales ahead of the holidays. However, elsewhere it is going to cost around $279. Amazon took a head start in this sphere and is now perhaps the leader.

The only downside is that e-books form other vendors do not work with it, you have to buy books from Amazon to read them on the Kindle. The Kindle by the way does not support WLAN and works via 3G technology. This means countries that are devoid of 3G networks will not be able to have this facility. The decision by Amazon is good news for travelers who previously could not access Amazon while being outside the US. The device measures 7.5″ x 5.3″ x 0.7″ in size and weighs just 10.3 ounces (Kindle I and II have slight variations).

Users can shop for books with this device from Amazon.com, it has a search facility for finding words or phrases in the vast library, a keyboard to type in the required information, a built-in dictionary, bookmarks, variable text size viewing and a good battery life. Best of all there are around 350,000 titles to choose from including books, newspapers, magazines etc.

Yahoo has finally decided to give the deadline for closing down GeoCities, October 26th 2009 is the day when GeoCities will no longer exist. Users have been asked by Yahoo to download their files, pictures and any data that they may have on their websites and save it elsewhere or upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting. This will cost users a crisp $4.99 per month for the first year and thereafter $9.95 per month. And no Yahoo is not archiving these millions of users websites, so don’t expect miracles to happen. Instead this time the Internet Archive is doing this job as a public service. The good news is that it has already been archiving these pages for years and chances are that someone’s pages might already be there.  However, users can go to the Internet Archive for GeoCities to get their websites archived. They can also check if their website has been archived or not and in the latter case get it indexed by giving their URL.  More information is available at the Yahoo Help Pages.

Google has now made it easy for users to view formatted PDF documents in the browser. This news was published on Google’s official Blog. The documents now carry a “Qucik View” link which when clicked opens the document in the browser (See captured screenshot below). However, minor losses to formatting, pictures/graphics and tables are to be expected. This is better than opening a PDF application inside or outside the browser for simple viewing of the intended files. Google has previously been giving an option for users to view PDF files as HTML, this is now the reverse. It is pretty much the same thing which has been built in to Google Docs and Gmail for similar purposes. The company plans to include this feature for even more file types for viewing. The viewing option is presently available in a little more than 50 % of the PDFs indexed by Google.

Is it a coincidence, Windows & and Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) both being released in the month of October 2009? I wonder if there is any competition between the two, well Ubuntu has been garnering more support since a couple of years. The 9.10 is coming out on 29th Of October 2009. The guys at Canonical have been striving hard to put Ubuntu on Netbooks, Notebooks, (Mobile) Internet Devices and even Cloud systems. Ladies and gentlemen the popularity graph of this Linux distro has been growing since day one, and why shouldn’t it. Just see what all they offer for free, besides the much needed stability and the support (which is simply phenomenal). The newer version promises to speed up boot time, something all OS vendors are trying to achieve. The new thinking is to have an OS that boots or starts up pretty much like a TV or a CD Player.

Also included is an integrated Software Store in the system Menu. The list is quite long but some of the new features are updated packages, latest GNOME, Kubuntu (the first Netbook release), Linux kernel 2.6.31, Ubuntu One file sharing, iSCSI installation, GRUB 2, ext4 file system etc. More information is available at the Ubuntu website.

Twitter is one of my most favorite social networking site (after facebook and Digg) that allows micro blogging service to everyone. Also being a powerful marketing tool for bloggers, hoteliers, technology geeks and who not, Twitter has managed to gain enormous popularity on the web. Today i was looking for some nice twitter themes to personalize my page and was surprised to know how much variety we have over the internet. I have combined some really nice and soft themes from the http://www.twittergallery.com that you will all love. They are absolutely free and you can install them easily by entering you username and password of Twitter.  So as you tweet, enjoy a new theme for everyday! Also do let me know which one you like the most. Am sure all girls out there will love them!

1- Bursts

Install now

In what can be described as the first case of its kind the British High Court has served injunction to an anonymous twitter user who was using a fake Id of a lawyer named Donal Blaney to spread conservative news. Now this is a strange case where the identity of the defendant was not known and so the court decided that Twitter would be the best service to issue the injunction! The injunction asks the impersonator to reveal his/her identity and stop defaming Donal Blaney who also happens to be an active blogger. Serving legal notices is a complicated process, there are countries where notices are served in person, then there are places where these are delivered by mail, but Twitter well this is different. Although court notices can be issued by fax or even email in the UK.  The web is changing our lives, it is changing the way we interact, socialize or even entertain ourselves.

Reading news over the web is a pastime and hobby most of us enjoy, primarily because leading news channels/agencies around the world offer free news via their websites. Have a look at BBC, CNN or even Fox ( if you want the contorted view of news), all these and more have dedicated websites offering traditional news in text and photographs, video, RSS and audio off course. CNN has now launched an iPhone application that allows iPhone users to view breaking news, receive live streaming videos and read traditional news using fast Internet, i.e, Wi-Fi or EDGE, for a fee, $2 to be exact. The application uses push technology to deliver on screen messages telling users of breaking news, headlines, and even live newscasts. The application also has built-in support for sharing news via leading social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Also included is the ability to read news offline, weather forecasting, photo/video uploading and a search facility. This is quite different from the traditional medium and method. This is something totally new. Is this the beginning of the end of print media which by the way is experiencing decreased readership since the birth of web? I think this is just the start and if other companies, I mean big companies follow suit then off course things are going to change.

Big brother is always watching and so it happened on Facebook, a poll generated by one user “Should Obama be killed” invited other users to join in the discussion which ultimately invited the attention of the feds. People it is said responded with “yes”, “no” and “yes if he cuts my healthcare”. The total count had reached a respectable 750 when it was reported to Facebook authorities who closed the poll. It is a crime to pose a threat to the President’s life, that perhaps was not known to the person who initiated the poll. The secret service is on the trail of the offender with close support being provided by Facebook. The interesting thing is that it wasn’t even a Facebook poll or application, it was actually a third party application that lets users create their own customized polls. The big question is why can’t such instances not be policed in the cyberspace before anyone abuses them? Words like “President”, “kill” or even “Obama” must already be on the watch list of the FBI and the Secret Service.  Talk about “Echelon”! The netizens on the other hand need to display a sense of responsibility, I mean look at the polls, people are asking simple, questions like “what should I eat today” and yet there are some who will take pleasure in doing such a stupid thing which might as well threaten others besides themselves, even if done for fun only. I guess no matter how much you police the net it is always evolving and changing and hence requires constant monitoring.

Google has been providing website translation for quite sometime now, but now thanks to a newer feature web publishers or website owners will be able to provide translation service to the visitors based on their native language. The tool is being provided by Google for free as usual, and can be tested here. Presently multinational companies have their websites in three or even more international languages for the convenience of visitors. The new service will detect visitors browser settings and offer them the translated version in that language. IN all 51 languages are supported and webmasters will have to paste a piece of code in their pages to avail this facility. The idea is to give the visitors a gist of the contents that are available on the page being visited. Impressive is all we can say, but will they include more languages?

Are you a concerned world citizen and want to see how the Global Warming is going to effect the world and especially your country in future, tap into the new Google Earth Plug-in ”Google Earth climate change 3D”. This plug-in loads new layers on top of Google Earth maps displaying the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emission scenario, possible throughout the century. This tools generates prediction of results for such scenarios for next 90 years based on the data provided by internal governmental Panel on Climate Change.