If you’re not familiar with StumbleUpon, it’s a toolbar for your web browser that allows you to rate web sites and to also view web sites which other StumbleUpon members have rated.
As a visitor, StumbleUpon can provide you with almost endless amusement as you are taken to web sites which you would not otherwise be able to find. As a webmaster, StumbleUpon can be an incredibly effective tool for building web traffic.
StumbleUpon Exchange is a web site where webmasters can trade “Stumbles” with each other, which will result in increased traffic to both web sites.
The Tech FAQ receives thousands of visitors from StumbleUpon every month. In fact, we receive more visitors from StumbleUpon than from more well-known sources like Digg or Slashdot.
If you’re a webmaster, I recommend that you check out Luke’s new site.
Recently Google has licensed Gmail to KDDI Corp, the second largest phone operator in Japan. The service will be branded by KDDI and will operate on their proprietary domain: auone.jp. But the backend will be provided by Google along with all functionality that Gmail accounts would normally have.
Although this might seem a little strange from Google’s part, it fits into place with recent similar actions Google has undertaken in Asia. For example: Google agreed to provide search results for a number of search engines in China.
This strategy allows Google to gain a share of markets in which it doesn’t have a solid position yet and at the same time make a name on the Asian market.
At last! The newest version of ColdFusion is finally released by Adobe. It was a much expected product for Internet developers, and everybody has reasons to be happy for it brings a staggering list of updates and improvements.
You can get the free trial here, but if you want to buy it you’ll have to pay US$1,299 for ColdFusion 8, US$649 if you’re upgrading from a previous version.
Here’s a list of the most important features in ColdFusion 8:
Server Monitor
See exactly what’s happening in your application to help identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance. ColdFusion 8 also features a Multiserver Monitor to gain insight on all servers in a cluster.
PDF features
ColdFusion 8 applications can dynamically generate and interact with PDF documents and forms for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.
Ajax features
ColdFusion 8 can easily provide data to existing Ajax applications and frameworks. You can use simple tags to access a large library of prebuilt Ajax user interface components such as rich text editors, data grids, tree controls, tab navigators, and more.
.NET integration
With ColdFusion 8, you can specify any .NET object — either local or remote — and use it in your ColdFusion application, just like any Java™ or other object resource.
Microsoft Exchange Server integration
Programmatically interact with a Microsoft Exchange server to perform common tasks such as reading, creating, and modifying calendar events, contacts, tasks, and e-mail.
Interactive debugger
ColdFusion 8 introduces an Eclipse™ plug-in debugger. Use it to set breakpoints, watch variables, and step through code, making it easier to debug all your application code.
After Sony’s price cut on the PS3 it seems logical that now it would be Xbox’s turn to get cheaper. It would be a somewhat predictable step on Microsoft’s part, but for now it’s all rumors.
The news are based on two ads, one seen at Wal-mart and the other at Toys R Us. The guys at Cheap Ass Gamers noticed them, and this is how it all started. But even if it would be so I’m not sure that a $50 will mean too much. But of course that’s for the buyers to decide. So it could be a hoax, but I seriously doubt it. Anyway we’ll wait and see.
So if you had a tablet PC that drove you crazy… What would you do with it? Cut it open with an electrical saw?
This is Dell marketing, folks. They’re promoting their Latitude XT tablet by sawing another one of their products in half, and the video below fully demonstrates it.
The old tablet didn’t survive the test, but it’s obvious that Latitude XT wouldn’t have either. But that’s not the point. The video is funny to watch, however. Enjoy
Here’s an interesting portable HDD from Western Digital. These guys have prepared a long time for this fancy piece of equipment. It’s USB powered and it has not less than 250GB of available storage space. By the looks, it’s ultra compact and comes with a pretty black casing.
If you run Windows, the drive has some Google software pre-installed that you can use to search your data. It also uses WD Sync to help you synchronize if that fits your needs, and 128-bit encryption software that helps in protecting your important data.
If you want to buy this gadget, it’ll cost you $184.99 and you can find it on Amazon (code WDXMS2500TN).
With such a big launch and so much media attention it’s only natural that the iPhone has drawn the eye of hackers of all sorts. And it didn’t took long until the first hacks were revealed for the iPhone.
For example if you remove the SIM preloaded in to the iPhone and replace it with an older, disabled SIM, you can use the iPhone as a WiFi device, without any need of being connected to a telephone network. Or even better take a look at this video that shows an iPhone that can make phone calls using a Australian Telstra SIM.
Even though buying YouTube was a good move for Google, the copyright issue was from the start an issue. Google had numerous lawsuits regarding copyrighted material posted on YouTube. And even though they tried to manage it by making deals with big media corporations, piracy is still a big problem.
It seems that the new lawsuit with Viacom has put some pressure on Google, as they declared the work is very intense on finishing their video recognition technology “hopefully in September”.
“We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by some time in the fall, but this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it’s difficult to forecast specific launch dates,”
The idea behind the technology in development by Google, is that copyright owners will provide a digital fingerprint that will be checked on YouTube after a movie is uploaded. It all sounds simple but the technology used is quite complex, Google representatives declaring it’s one of the most challenging technical problems they were confronted with.
For now the developers say they are happy with the progress and that tests are underway with big copyright owners in the media industry. If the system is ready this fall it could save Google a lot of money and trouble in the near future.
Rumors say that Firefox 3 will have the long expected full page zooming feature. It will be able to zoom in the images as well, just like you can do with Opera and IE7.
This specific feature request was originally suggested in Bugzilla, 8 years ago, but was delayed and eventually bypassed since it was not considered practical in today’s HTML rendering engine for Firefox (Gecko 1.8). Like I said above, this feature is scheduled for inclusion in Firefox 3 since the new version of Gecko (1.9) will also include a large number of significant improvements.
Even if the feature is fully implemented and functional, the regular interface does not show the functionality to the regular user.
In order to test it out, you have to use Firefox’s built-in JavaScript error console, and here’s the code sequence you need to validate:
This experimental code will zoom the current page you’re browsing to 3x. You can also experiment with different values so you can see different levels of zoom. For zooming out, use decimals like 0.5 for example.
This is yet another example of how brilliant Firefox 3 is.
Although it won’t launch until the fall, Microsoft’s Friday release to manufacturing of two key components of its VoIP strategy is probably causing some tinkling of champagne glasses in Redmond.
Office Communications Server 2007 and the Office Communicator client are now code complete, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, said Thursday at the vendor’s annual analyst meeting.
"We’re one step close to delivering the products that will establish Microsoft as a major force in communications," said Raikes, adding that Microsoft expects to be able to help organizations cut their enterprise telephony costs in half.
