Archive for the ‘RSS’ Category

Extensible Markup Language or XML is a series of encoding the documents in an electronic approach. These rules have been defined and can be found in the XML 1.0 Specification, which is provided by W3C. The structure of XML has been designed for the users to experience simple, general and usable functions over the Internet. The data are in textual format and supports all the languages of planet with the use of Unicode. Even though the XML design is more on for the documents, this is widely utilized for the depiction of random data system. An example of this is the structure in web services. Now, there are a lot of programming interfaces that are being use by the software developers in order for them to access their XML data. There are also numerous scheme systems that have been produced to help the representation of the languages that are XML based. These include the RSS, SOAP, Atom and the XHTML. This format is also used by default on different tools such as OpenDocument from OpenOffice.org, iWork from Apple and Office Open XML from Microsoft Office.

If you would like to perform an XML comparison for your XML files, this is easy especially for those who are using UNIX as their operating system. This is because one of the featured tools for comparing to different files is the diff command. This can be exploited to see the differences and the similarities for the XML files as well as the other types of files that you have that you want to compare. The diff command can help the users to pinpoint the changes and the updates between the program source files or any type of data. This is a great tool that is often utilized today because of the fact that most of the data files that are present nowadays are in XML.

However, this is not applicable in all instances. One of the reasons for this is that the diff command only compares text. This means that it will compare everything character by character. Apparently, it is unaware of the XML file structure. It will completely neglect the intrinsic hierarchy in making the XML comparison. Therefore, if you would like to successfully compare your XML files, you will need to make use of a tool that has been designed for such purpose.

There are too many utilities that can differentiate two or even more files. They are readily accessible today and all you need to do in order for you to obtain them is to download and install them into your computer. That may sound easy but of course, you want to make sure that the utility that you have chosen is indeed useful and functional. Before you download or purchase the program, you will need to check on its features. You can look for a tool that will allow you to make an XML comparison and can also combine or merge them. It should be able to work with files that have or do not have DTD or document type definition.

If you are interested in XML comparison, check this web-site to learn more about xml files.

Author: Sam Miller
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

You probably won’t know what a ‘power user’ is unless you are (or at least consider yourself) one. You could be a power user of a particular software application, particular online service, or particular hardware platform – the requirements are more or less the same. Power users don’t just ‘use’ a tool – they wring it dry for every drop of utility possible. They know the ins and outs of every function, option, shortcut, menu and can achieve things using it that even the designer of the tool considers impossible. They are seriously clever geeks.

What does it take to become a power user? The hard way is to read, study, practice, learn and explore over a period of months, if not years. The blagger’s approach I’m suggesting is a lot more efficient: master the few core concepts and techniques that underpin most, if not all, systems and you’ll be prepared to become a power user in days, not months. And that goes for any new tool they care to throw at you, from mail apps to GTD apps to fully blown enterprise management apps.

Web 2.0 has given Non-9-to-5′ers the holy grail of technology: on-demand, go anywhere, be anywhere software. There are hundreds of online tools you can use to solve just about any business (or personal) problem and they can all be accessed from your iPhone whilst you’re up a mountain. But new technology brings new concepts, and where before you might have been a power user if you knew that ‘Ctrl+S’ would magically save your document without you having to touch the mouse, times have moved on.

The most useful web apps now demand that you now understand tags, feeds, mashups, APIs, social and search and how all these concepts interact. I’ll take application x. Pretty much any modern, cloud app. Click on the search field. Define a custom tag-based search using proprietary syntax. Save it. Publish the results as an RSS field. Design a widget to render the feed XML wrapped in CSS. Then hook the widget onto my blog’s sidebar.

Clear? Thought not. Now’s the time to look at some software ‘power user’ concepts that will take you beyond “I know how to put pictures in an excel spreadsheet”.

Author: Jonathan Pincas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cool mobile gadgets

The Microsoft Office 2007 is so far the most powerful, comprehensive series of applications that Microsoft’s ever released. Here are my top 10 reasons why you should upgrade to Office 2007.

1. Straight Forward System Requirements

The minimum requirements to install Office 2007 are not high, normal Pentium III PC with Windows XP SP 2, Server 2003 SP1, or Vista; at least 256 MB RAM and 2 GB hard drive space can be use to install Office 2007.

2. Amazing 8 Microsoft Office 2007 Suites

These included Microsoft Office Enterprise, Professional Plus, Ultimate, Professional, Small Business, Standard, Home & Student and Basic 2007 for you to choose from.

3. The Price is Comparable with Office 2003

The price structure for Office 2007 maps pretty closely to Office 2003. If you are upgrade from the existing version, just add a little penny to get the rich features of Office 2007.

4. The Advantages of the New File Formats

Office 2007 introduces the XML file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These formats offer a number of advantages such as reduced file size and corruption chances, compatible and easy integration with the old versions Office files.

5. Interface Changes to Improve Productivity

Office 2007 programs replace the menu structure with the ribbon. Each tab in the ribbon corresponds to a task. Groups are units of related commands (buttons, menus, drop-down lists, etc.) Those interface changes can improve working efficiency with most of the features are still the same.

6. Additional Features for Office Ultimate, Professional Plus and Enterprise 2007

These features support: Implement Enterprise Content Management, Support and automate processes using forms and workflow and Protect documents with persistent security.

7. New Tools and Features that You Can’t Miss…
These features include SmartArt to lets you create slick graphics to convey all kinds of information; themes to lets you develop a standard look and feel across all your documents; and other application specific changes such as Excel charting, functions, richer conditional formatting, Word gallery of building blocks, PowerPoint custom layouts, etc.

8. Numerous Deployment Options

To install Office 2007 on one or even hundreds systems, just prepare disk images, deploy it on networks with limited bandwidth using precache technology, upgrade existing versions, or deploy it across an enterprise using Group Policy or Microsoft SMS 2003.

9. Application-specific Changes Add More Values to the Program

- Word 2007 offers an enhanced Document comparison and Document Inspector features; the prefab building blocks (like cover pages and sidebars) and you can create, publish, and update blog entries directly.
- Excel 2007 has expanded its spreadsheet rows and columns; charting is simplified; conditional formatting is easier to apply; formula AutoComplete; new tools make it easier to discover trends and variances in your data.
- PowerPoint 2007 lets you set up slide libraries on a SharePoint Server 2007 site; you can adds SmartArt and theme styles to transform the presentation appearance.
- Outlook 2007 offers a To-Do bar that shows you flagged e-mail and tasks; improved calendar sharing; adding an attachment previewer; and support for reading and managing RSS feeds.

10. Earlier versions of Office are Out of Date

Along the time, a lot of flaws and problems were worked around and users demanding more and more on the capabilities of the programs that expected to solves they daily tasks make the predecessors unable the fulfills the needs. Office 2007 is the ideal solution for this.

Author: Wong Hing
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty tariff

A user-driven approach to visualisation, modelling, and programming can improve software and ease it’s creation and maintenance. Translation then becomes posible from the user’s representation to a software representation, and from design to implementation.

For User Driven Programming, ‘user’ can mean individual and/or organisation. The technique can be applied soonest to modelling/programming problems that require calculation. E.g. scientific, engineering, and business problems. The basis of the technique is enabling the information to be represented in a structured format e.g. XML (eXtensible Markup Language), RDF (Resourece Description Framework), RSS (this can stand for 3 different things – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format), and OWL (Web Ontology Language). Visualisation and interaction with the information can be enabled in a standardised way because the information is structured. This enables diagrammatic editing for modelling/programming. Careful structuring of the information and models/programs simplifies the modelling/programming process. A translation process from abstract/domain models to code can then be provided using recursive techniques.

As the structure and design and editing process for these models/programs can be standardised this enables a common meta-programming based methodology. Visualisation of this methodology to allow User Driven participation could enable wider participation than is currently possible for open source development, which is limited to more technical users. Visualisation at different levels of abstraction from domain to software could enable end-users, designers, and software developers to communicate in a semi-structured way in order to establish procedures for ensuring software is produced that end-users want to use.

Author: Peter Hale
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Netbook, Tablets and Mobile Computing

Quintessential extracts of Open source Technology ……Do not roll up your sleeves before having sound knowledge about OOPs (Object Oriented Programming Language). Ruby on Rails is a proven tool and architecture for the fastest growing business solutions and investors are scaling up in developing nations with low cost resources, minimal investment and maximum throughput.

Ruby is an object oriented programming language that makes programming easy and interesting. It is amalgamation of Smalltalk’s concept, Python’s ease of use and learning concepts, Perl’s pragmatism. Ruby on rails, RoR, Rails all these terms are used interchangeably. Rails has revolutionized the web with its sagacity and provided programmers with tools to meliorate by effacing long coding techniques and augmenting ruby programming.

Rails is a full-stack, free, web application, open source ruby web framework for developing database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern that is optimized for sustainable productivity. From the Ajax in the view, to the request and response in the controller, to the domain model wrapping the database, Rails gives you a pure-Ruby development environment. To go live, all you need to add is a database and a web server. RoR uses Ruby programming language and Model view programming paradigm (multi-paradigm).

It follows principle of least surprise (POLS) and has lowered the barrier in entry to programming. Rails provides scaffolding programming (software application is built that is well supported by database and programmer has the flexibility to write about application database using model view controller framework) which helps to quickly and easily construct model views. Its effects are not confined to rails community but have also affected other communities globally.

Why Rails?? Every developer wants to speed up the development process at the same reducing error occurrence. Rails provide fast and easy development with quality results. If quality is retained but the speed is increased multifold you don’t need to think over it but just go for it, here comes RoR. With Ruby programming language you need to write few lines of code in comparison to other programming language to reach the same result. ‘Convention over configuration’ is the RoR mantra i.e. with less software usage or consumption you generate more codes efficiently. The aim is to speed up development of web applications and database driven websites by providing programming convention and eliminating verbose xml configuration files.

System Requirement – Ruby and Rail Framework software; Database (e.g. MySQL, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server GUI client for Windows OS, differ for Linux, Macintosh); Joyent is the official RoR host; Web Server – Apache is most common

Ruby on Rails CMS is also becoming popular these days admin section can be focused to target design sites, it is easy to define new page elements – RSS, Atom, Tag clouds, overlay, file management, API are very common features. RoR CMS provides very flexible solutions, final output depends on user choice no pre-format is mandatory, image cropping, resizing, multi-language support, excellent usability, sort able tree-based admin interface, layout editor, scaffold template is created. Rails applications are Tailor made to perfection for an individual or an enterprise and best fit for all kind of web application. Rails architecture is used and most preferred for development of cms, e-commerce, portals, collaboration, and community.

Let’s obliterate local boundaries and create world community by congregating Rails and other communities with smearing RoR, escalated web development solutions. Offshore outsourcing business model has helped SMEs to keep pace in spirit of the IT advancement and day to day competition. Growing online communities are stronger driving workforce as they get going by sharing their knowledge and are most privilege to be a contributing member of the community and share a common direction; they are traveling on the thrust of each other.

With India as an offshore development centre RoR development companies are mushrooming and the rise of regional blogs, social networking websites has created a common linking hub for everyone. Standing on the front wave of ubiquitous connectivity, I can say that RoR will dominate the web application development web world with its killer instinct. Indian Rails developers are harnessing existing and emerging opportunities and creating vast investment potentials for Indians to walk hand in hand with giant players. With landing of Indian Economy and globalization more offshore and big companies are setting up their development centers in India and outsource their software development, ruby on rails development to India. Outsourcing has become indispensable part of offshoring trades.

Author: Rakhee Chowdhary
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Beading Necklace

The future of software development is about good craftsmen. With infrastructure like Amazon Web Services and an abundance of basic libraries, it no longer takes a village to build a good piece of software.

These days, a couple of engineers who know what they are doing can deliver complete systems. In this post, we discuss the top 10 concepts software engineers should know to achieve that.
A successful software engineer knows and uses design patterns, actively refactors code, writes unit tests and religiously seeks simplicity. Beyond the basic methods, there are concepts that good software engineers know about. These transcend programming languages and projects – they are not design patterns, but rather broad areas that you need to be familiar with. The top 10 concepts are:

1. Interfaces
2. Conventions and Templates
3. Layering
4. Algorithmic Complexity
5. Hashing
6. Caching
7. Concurrency
8. Cloud Computing
9. Security
10. Relational Databases

1.INTERFACE:

The most important concept in software is interface. Any good software is a model of a real (or imaginary) system. Understanding how to model the problem in terms of correct and simple interfaces is crucial. Lots of systems suffer from the extremes: clumped, lengthy code with little abstractions, or an overly designed system with unnecessary complexity and unused code.

Among the many books, Agile Programming by Dr Robert Martin stands out because of focus on modeling correct interfaces.

2.CONVENTIONS AND TEMPLATES:

Naming conventions and basic templates are the most overlooked software patterns, yet probably the most powerful.

Naming conventions enable software automation. For example, Java Beans framework is based on a simple naming convention for getters and setters. And canonical URLs in del.icio.us: del.icio.us/tag/software take the user to the page that has all items tagged software.

Many social software utilise naming conventions in a similar way. For example, if your user name is johnsmith then likely your avatar is johnsmith.jpg and your rss feed is johnsmith.xml.

Naming conventions are also used in testing, for example JUnit automatically recognizes all the methods in the class that start with prefix test.The templates are not C++ or Java language constructs. We’re talking about template files that contain variables and then allow binding of objects, resolution, and rendering the result for the client.

3.LAYERING:

Layering is probably the simplest way to discuss software architecture. It first got serious attention when John Lakos published his book about Large-scale C++ systems. Lakos argued that software consists of layers. The book introduced the concept of layering. The method is this. For each software component, count the number of other components it relies on. That is the metric of how complex the component is.

Lakos contended a good software follows the shape of a pyramid; i.e., there’s a progressive increase in the cumulative complexity of each component, but not in the immediate complexity. Put differently, a good software system consists of small, reusable building blocks, each carrying its own responsibility. In a good system, no cyclic dependencies between components are present and the whole system is a stack of layers of functionality, forming a pyramid.

Lakos’s work was a precursor to many developments in software engineering, most notably Refactoring. The idea behind refactoring is continuously sculpting the software to ensure it’is structurally sound and flexible. Another major contribution was by Dr Robert Martin from Object Mentor, who wrote about dependencies and acyclic architectures

Among tools that help engineers deal with system architecture are Structure 101 developed by Headway software, and SA4J developed by my former company, Information Laboratory, and now available from IBM.

4.ALGORITHMIC COMPLEXITY:

There are just a handful of things engineers must know about algorithmic complexity. First is big O notation. If something takes O(n) it’s linear in the size of data. O(n^2) is quadratic. Using this notation, you should know that search through a list is O(n) and binary search (through a sorted list) is log(n). And sorting of n items would take n*log(n) time.

Your code should (almost) never have multiple nested loops (a loop inside a loop inside a loop). Most of the code written today should use Hashtables, simple lists and singly nested loops.Due to abundance of excellent libraries, we are not as focused on efficiency these days. That’s fine, as tuning can happen later on, after you get the design right.Elegant algorithms and performance is something you shouldn’t ignore. Writing compact and readable code helps ensure your algorithms are clean and simple.

5.HASHING:

The idea behind hashing is fast access to data. If the data is stored sequentially, the time to find the item is proportional to the size of the list. For each element, a hash function calculates a number, which is used as an index into the table. Given a good hash function that uniformly spreads data along the table, the look-up time is constant. Perfecting hashing is difficult and to deal with that hashtable implementations support collision resolution.

Beyond the basic storage of data, hashes are also important in distributed systems. The so-called uniform hash is used to evenly allocate data among computers in a cloud database. A flavor of this technique is part of Google’s indexing service; each URL is hashed to particular computer. Memcached similarly uses a hash function.Hash functions can be complex and sophisticated, but modern libraries have good defaults. The important thing is how hashes work and how to tune them for maximum performance benefit.

6.CACHING:

No modern web system runs without a cache, which is an in-memory store that holds a subset of information typically stored in the database. The need for cache comes from the fact that generating results based on the database is costly. For example, if you have a website that lists books that were popular last week, you’d want to compute this information once and place it into cache. User requests fetch data from the cache instead of hitting the database and regenerating the same information.

Caching comes with a cost. Only some subsets of information can be stored in memory. The most common data pruning strategy is to evict items that are least recently used (LRU). The prunning needs to be efficient, not to slow down the application.A lot of modern web applications, including Facebook, rely on a distributed caching system called Memcached, developed by Brad Firzpatrick when working on LiveJournal. The idea was to create a caching system that utilises spare memory capacity on the network. Today, there are Memcached libraries for many popular languages, including Java and PHP.

7.CONCURRENCY:

Concurrency is one topic engineers notoriously get wrong, and understandibly so, because the brain does juggle many things at a time and in schools linear thinking is emphasized. Yet concurrency is important in any modern system.Concurrency is about parallelism, but inside the application. Most modern languages have an in-built concept of concurrency; in Java, it’s implemented using Threads.

A classic concurrency example is the producer/consumer, where the producer generates data or tasks, and places it for worker threads to consume and execute. The complexity in concurrency programming stems from the fact Threads often needs to operate on the common data. Each Thread has its own sequence of execution, but accesses common data. One of the most sophisticated concurrency libraries has been developed by Doug Lea and is now part of core Java.

8.CLOUD COMPUTING:

In our recent post Reaching For The Sky Through Compute Clouds we talked about how commodity cloud computing is changing the way we deliver large-scale web applications. Massively parallel, cheap cloud computing reduces both costs and time to market.Cloud computing grew out of parallel computing, a concept that many problems can be solved faster by running the computations in parallel.

After parallel algorithms came grid computing, which ran parallel computations on idle desktops. One of the first examples was SETI@home project out of Berkley, which used spare CPU cycles to crunch data coming from space. Grid computing is widely adopted by financial companies, which run massive risk calculations. The concept of under-utilized resources, together with the rise of J2EE platform, gave rise to the precursor of cloud computing: application server virtualization. The idea was to run applications on demand and change what is available depending on the time of day and user activity.

Today’s most vivid example of cloud computing is Amazon Web Services, a package available via API. Amazon’s offering includes a cloud service (EC2), a database for storing and serving large media files (S3), an indexing service (SimpleDB), and the Queue service (SQS). These first blocks already empower an unprecedented way of doing large-scale computing, and surely the best is yet to come.

9.SECURITY:

With the rise of hacking and data sensitivity, the security is paramount. Security is a broad topic that includes authentication, authorization, and information transmission.Authentication is about verifying user identity. A typical website prompts for a password. The authentication typically happens over SSL (secure socket layer), a way to transmit encrypted information over HTTP. Authorization is about permissions and is important in corporate systems, particularly those that define workflows. The recently developed OAuth protocol helps web services to enable users to open access to their private information. This is how Flickr permits access to individual photos or data sets.

Another security area is network protection. This concerns operating systems, configuration and monitoring to thwart hackers. Not only network is vulnerable, any piece of software is. Firefox browser, marketed as the most secure, has to patch the code continuously. To write secure code for your system requires understanding specifics and potential problems.

10.RELATIONAL DATABASES:

Relational Databases have recently been getting a bad name because they cannot scale well to support massive web services. Yet this was one of the most fundamental achievements in computing that has carried us for two decades and will remain for a long time. Relational databases are excellent for order management systems, corporate databases and P&L data.

At the core of the relational database is the concept of representing information in records. Each record is added to a table, which defines the type of information. The database offers a way to search the records using a query language, nowadays SQL. The database offers a way to correlate information from multiple tables.The technique of data normalization is about correct ways of partitioning the data among tables to minimize data redundancy and maximize the speed of retrieval.

Author: Krishnam Raju
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Times

In this article we’re going to go over some HTML editors, some very popular and some not so popular.

There are more editors made to create web pages than Carter has liver pills. If you’re the typical non professional user then you are probably familiar with the more popular ones and have absolutely NO clue about some of the obscure ones that are available. We’ll cover a few of each.

Probably the most popular HTML editor is Microsoft’s Front Page. The first version of Front Page came out in the mid 90′s. If you’re interested you can actually find an article online that talks about the first Front Page beta. You can find the article at [http://www.byte.com/art/9607/sec13/art10.htm]. The first Front Page had limited functionality and needed a server extension to work it. Today, Front Page has come a long way. It is one of the most powerful editors you can get and can do just about anything. It is also probably the one used by more people than any other.

Of course users of Macromedia’s Dream Weaver would say that Front Page is not anywhere near as good. The company and the software haven’t been around quite as long as Microsoft but what it lacks in a track record it makes up for in functionality. Supporters of Dream Weaver will claim that the interface is more user friendly and that those who have limited HTML experience can get more out of it than with Front Page. Technically, Dream Weaver doesn’t do anything that Front Page can’t do. Some functions are handled differently and of course if you’ve been using one and try to go to the other you’re going to get lost when it comes to the hidden functions. The help index alone of each is massive. With great power, which both have, comes a big learning curve. There is just no way around that.

But what if you don’t need all that functionality and only want to design simple web pages that don’t require extensive Java and PHP capabilities? Fortunately, there are plenty of simple HTML editors out there and most of them can be downloaded free right off the Internet.

One of the most popular ones today is HTML – Kit. To date, this editor has over 1.7 million downloads. Obviously they must be doing something right. And the editor itself does have some neat little features that you might not expect in a free download like the ability to convert RSS and XML files to HTML. And it does have some limited functionality by way of plug ins to handle ASP, PHP, SQL and other scripting languages. Not too shabby for a free download.

Even America Online, probably the largest ISP, has their own HTML editor called AOLPress. Now this is what you call a bare bones editor. It doesn’t do too much. Just your standard creation of tables, lists, insert images, etc. If you’re looking for anything serious then you can forget about this thing. But for somebody who just wants to put up a page with photos of their wife, kid and dog in a table layout, AOLPress will work just fine.

This is just the tip of a huge iceberg. The list of HTML editors includes the likes of Hot Dog PageWiz, Hot Dog Professional, Tidy, Web Notepad, Ultra Edit, BBEdit and the list goes on and on. There are as many editors as there are companies that make them. Some are good and some are not so good. The only way to really know is to download one and try it. That alone should keep you busy for a very long time.

Author: Michael Russell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty

Features

Additionally, Vista will include many other new features.

Aero

Vista will include a completely re-designed user interface, code-named Aero. The new interface is intended to be cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than previous Windows interfaces. The most visible addition to the interface is the sidebar (however this feature has been removed in the last alpha release), an area at the side of the screen consisting of tiles which display dynamic information about whatever window is currently in the foreground, which is essentially an extension of the “system tray” on the Windows task bar.

Search

Vista will feature a new search engine that will allow for instant display of results for a given search. This is in contrast to the search engine of Windows XP, which can take several minutes to display results. The Vista search will allow you to add multiple filters to continually refine your search (Such as “File contains the word ‘example’”). There will also be saved searches that will act as Virtual Folders, where opening a folder will execute a specific search automatically and display the results as a normal folder. The search will also feature other usability improvements. The Vista search is actually built on an expanded and improved version of the indexing service for the search in Windows XP. This feature is similar to Apple Spotlight.

Metro

Metro is the codename for Microsoft’s next generation document format, which is based on XML. It is similar in many ways to Adobe Systems’ PDF. Metro is intended to allow users to view, print, and archive files without the original program that created it. The name Metro also refers to the print path in Vista. With Metro, documents can remain in the same format from the time they are created to the time they are printed. Microsoft states that Metro will provide better fidelity to the original document by using a consistent format for both screen and print output.

While many analysts suspect Metro is intended to be a “PDF-killer”, Microsoft insists that they are not attempting to duplicate all the functionality of the PDF. For example, at the time of this writing, Metro is not planned to have the capabilities for dynamic documents.

Shell

The new shell is a significant change from previous versions of Windows. Combined with the new desktop searching feature, the shell gives users the ability to find and organize their files in new ways. Apart from the typical file organization practice of using folders to contain files, a new collection known as Lists let you organize files from multiple locations in a single place.

A new type of folder known as a Shadow Folder enables the ability to revert its entire contents to any arbitrary point in the past.

Additionally, the shell contains significant advancements in the visualization of files on a computer. Previous versions of the Windows Shell would display thumbnails to represent different files on your computer. In Windows Vista the thumbnail concept is taken further by overlaying different imagery to communicate more information about the particular file such as a picture frame around the thumbnail of an image file, or a filmstrip on a video file. Windows Vista helps the user identify the file easily by more intelligently generating the thumbnails. Using algorithmic analysis, images are cropped around their likely subject, and interesting key frames are automatically chosen from a video file. Also, the ability to zoom the thumbnails in the shell greatly increases their usefulness.

Networking

Windows Vista is expected to have a brand new networking stack. A significant change is a more complete implementation of IPv6 which is now supported by all networking components, services, and the user interface. Vista also takes advantage of P2P technology to provide a new type of domain-like networking setup known as a Castle. Castles make it possible for user credentials to propagate across networked computers without a centralized server making them more suitable for a home network.

The ability to assist the user in diagnosing a network problem is expected to be a major new networking feature. Using technologies such as UPnP, Windows Vista has a greater awareness of the network topology the host computer is in. With this new network awareness technology it can provide help to the user in fixing network issues or simply provide a graphical view of the perceived network configuration.

Other features

Full support for the “NX” (No-Execute) feature of processors. This feature, present in AMD’s AMD64 architecture, as well as Intel’s EM64T Architecture, can flag certain parts of memory as containing data instead of executable code, which prevents overflow errors from resulting in arbitrary code execution. This should not be confused with trusted computing facilities provided by a so-called Fritz-chip.

Built-in DVD recording capabilities, including Mt. Rainier support.
A new installation program that will install Vista in about 15 minutes (which is present in alpha build 4074 of Windows Vista).
Native Raw Image support (a format used by most professional digital cameras).

Native, embedded RSS support, with developer API.
A new level of file encryption support from that available in Windows XP, which will make it easier and more automatic to prevent unauthorized viewing of files on stolen laptops/hard drives.

Monad. A new command-line interface called MSH, and codenamed Monad will not be fully implemented in Vista, but will exist in it to some extent. It plans to combine the Unix pipes and filters philosophy with that of object-oriented programming.

The “My” prefixes will be dropped, so “My Documents” will just be “Documents”, “My Computer” will just be “Computer”, etc.
Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a built in benchmarking tool which analyzes the different subsystems (graphics, memory, etc), and uses the results to allow for comparison to other Vista systems, and for software optimizations. The optimizations can be made by both windows and third-party software. Tom’s Hardware Overview

File Virtualization, when an individual program’s permissions are restricted, allows that program to use its own ‘fake’ set of certain files so modifications to those files from said program does not alter the original files.
Transactional File Transfers, prevents a half updated set of files from being created during updates for example, which can cause stability problems.
InfoCard, a user interface to the Identity Metasystem.

Features and technologies delayed until future releases
WinFS (short for either Windows Future Storage or Windows File System): a combined relational database and filesystem, based on the next version of SQL Server (codenamed Yukon). Working on top of NTFS, it will provide abilities to represent objects and their relationships, rather than just a hierarchy of files and folders. The removal of WinFS from Windows Vista was announced in August 2004, and is expected to be released as an update to Vista, entering beta stages at about the same time as Vista is released. Microsoft’s promotion of this technology has spurred the recent trend towards desktop search tools.
Full implementation of Monad.

Graphics hardware requirements

Vista’s graphics requirements are defined in relation to the different desktop experiences.

Aero Glass

This graphics mode adds support for 3D graphics, animation and visual special effects in addition to the features offered by Aero Express.

Intended for mainstream and high-end graphics cards.

At least 64 MB of graphics memory, 128 MB recommended, or 256 MB for 1600×1200+.

At least 32 bits per pixel.

3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9.

A memory bandwidth of 2 GB / second.

Capable of drawing ~1.5M triangles / second, one window being ~150 triangles.

A graphics card that uses AGP 4X or PCI Express 8-lane bus.

It is likely that such a configuration will be entry-level or lower by Vista’s release in 2006.

Aero Diamond
A graphics mode customized for the Vista Media Center Edition, and will not be made available in the other editions. Not much information is currently available, but it appears that it will be the most advanced level of graphics in Vista, requiring hardware at the same level or greater than the Aero Glass visual style.

Aero Express

The lesser Aero visual experience offering only the basic visual improvements introduced by Vista, such as composition based DPI scaling.

Intended for mainstream or lower-end graphics cards.

Uses the Avalon Desktop Composition window manager.

A Vista Driver Display Model (LDDM) driver is a requirement.

Some graphics cards already support LDDM. In some Vista builds (4074, 5048), LDDM is already supported to run Aero Glass.

To Go

The new Vista look & feel without any visual special effects, similar to the visual style Luna of Windows XP in that it resembles merely an application skin. As with Luna, no additional hardware requirements compared to the classic Windows interface.

A simple option for consumer upgrades, and mobile / low-cost devices.
No additional requirements compared to the lesser Classic mode.
Fallback mode in case the hardware requirements for Aero aren’t met.

Classic

The most basic user interface offered by Vista, which is also seen in Windows 2000, or Windows XP with its visual style Luna deactivated.

An option for corporate deployments and upgrades.

Requires Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) or LDDM drivers.
No graphics card hardware requirements exceeding those of Windows XP.

Naming considerations

Vista means “the visual percept of a region”, with these synonyms: aspect, panorama, prospect, scene and view. Translated from Spanish and Italian, vista means: sight, vision, ability to see; look, glimpse; spectacle; viewfinder; range of view; point of view.

In Latvian, however, vista means ‘hen’ (grown-up female of a bird, [2]) and ‘chicken’ (as in food), and may also connote something or someone not particularly agile or clever.

Windows Vista has been unofficially abbreviated to Windows VI, staying with the traditional 2 character motif, as in 95, 98, Me, NT, XP. VI is also the number 6 in Roman numerals, and Windows Vista will carry the version number 6.0 (Windows 2000 and Windows XP being Windows NT versions 5.0 and 5.1, respectively).

Windows Vista sound like “bosta” in Argentinian culture.

In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Vista is a part of the atmosphere that surrounds the world of Arda before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. Vista forms the inner layer of normal air: above it is Ilmen, and above that Vaiya.

Author: Adam Fletcher
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Excise Tax

Imagine being Tom Cruise in Minority Report, sifting through volumes of data with the flick of your fingers on a huge virtual screen to arrive at the precise information that could save the world? Quintura’s see and find visual search engine is a first significant step in that right direction.

You first encounter a bunch of tags (which they call cloud) akin to a visual map when you start the search process. Each comes with a sub-list of keywords and phrases, to help broaden or narrow down your search as the case may be! The right hand side (like all right brains) behaves in a conventional search engine way, displaying lists of search results. The further you delve into the cloud, the search engine adds the selected words to the query to narrow down and refine your search results. The search process is also aided by Auto-refine results and Coverage options.

Despite the clutch of web 2.0 companies, Quintura has no trouble standing out.

Quintura is the first search engine that helps visually find web pages, images, and video content. The new search experience is based on See & Find concept where users can see and refine their searches within an interactive tag cloud and instantly find relevant information. Read More

Does it live up to it? For example, typing in the term “California” generates a map with words like department, find, home, hotel, United States, etc. Click on hotel and you get more keywords associated with both “california” and “hotel.” One can add or remove words from the cloud to make the query more specific. On a lark, I double-clicked the visual map to add “song” to my query. Success!

Easy visual navigation and Intuition are two themes that jump out about the search process. We see the semantic relationships of words on the visual map, for example the size of a word shows its significance in relation to the query, Is this the end of my relationship with the “Next Page” buttons of Google and Yahoo ? What if I don’t have to retype various combinations of the same set of keywords to try and get my relevant results displayed on first couple of pages ? As you salivate at that possibility, why not ‘ Save it ‘ your search and ‘ Share it ‘ with a friend (Who wants to hang out at my cloud nine ?! )

We are not just members of the club, we want to be the President

For Extra Credit, we downloaded the more robust version 1.5 of Quintura Search. Quick to download and it easily installed on our PC, this is when you are really welcomed to the full potential of the engine. Now we are in the advanced search mode. We loved these additions:

* Choose search engine of our choice

* Scope** feature to virtually drill into a topic of choice by adding and removing query words at each level to set further directions of searching

* Functional Toolbar to Undo, Redo, Stop, Start, Update results and Save search

* Simple Visual map Context Menu to add, remove, exclude, edit query words

* Results Filter (*editor’s choice award winner* ) to display new links since last search, create Favorite links, Exclude selective links, Hide sites, Delete old links not relevant to modified scope

* Lucid help sections

So did other users from the sound of it!

Instead of a jungle of Web sites you have to ferret through in order to find what youre look ting for, it would be so much easier if you had a map where you could narrow down your search without having to click through dozens of pages of results! Read more.

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then kids are definitely from another dimension!

So thank Team Quintura, who are convinced that men, women and kids not only process information differently, but search for it differently as well! Quintura for kids, is a colorful, cartoony treat, sure to be highly appealing to kids. Plus, the site only has kid related material, so nothing taboo is going to come their way. On the cards is Quintura for women.

Quintura has raised monies through Mangrove Capital Partners of Luxembourg, an early-stage investor in Skype, ABRT Venture Fund and the partners of OpenView Venture Partners of Boston.

Though Google and Yahoo! are considered competition, serious rivals include Clusty.com, which has tied up with Wikipedia, to provide a search and info model. It all points to just one thing, its never quiet on the search engine front!

Quizzing Quintura our chat with them

As with most online companies, your company is pretty cool. Where did it come from?

The technology of Quintura is based on over a decade of the founders’ innovative research and development in the area of neural network and artificial intelligence. Quintura is privately held and has US offices in Alexandria, Virginia and Research & Development operations in the Moscow region of Russia.

What is the advantage of searches based on tags versus Boolean strings?

Visualization that is the main feature used in Quintura, becomes the center of the user experience, replacing antiquated listings and Boolean strings. Searches based on Boolean strings provide users with too many results, if your query is rather loose or, conversely, too few if your query parameters are too tight. With the tags, Quintura visual map shows the context of your query, those words and word combinations that are most closely connected with your search query. Quintura allows you to change your query at any step by clicking a tag and drill as deep as you need.

Your user interface has a great & unique layout, where did the idea come from?

Having in mind the idea of making web search easier and more intuitive we wanted to create a user- friendly interface. Quintura tag cloud ensures faster and easier results with fewer mouse clicks.

Will Quintura ever consider offering pay-per click advertising?

Quintura continues to distribute MIVAs Pay-Per-Click and Pay-Per-Call Ads on our downloadable version, giving users the choice of either clicking or calling through to relevant information. We are also planning to introduce search ads into our online services.

How does Quintura ability to index images & video differ from Google’s ability?

Again, it is currently powered by Yahoo!XML. However, we give our users additional benefit by allowing manipulating their query context and rearranging the list of found images or videos according with their needs.

Is there RSS feeds available with Quintura?

No, Quintura doesnt provide its users with RSS feeds. We plan to add this feature in the near future.

Author: J Carl Williams
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

The term Web 2.0 is thrown around by many in web communities, online chat circles, and online marketing areas, but seriously, does anybody actually have an understanding what this phrase is? Just as we have updated of software from 1 to v1.5 and followed by v2.0 for example, the previous idea is expressed to illustrate an “upgrade” of the World Wide Web. What, some may ask? This post actually will describe in a little more depth What Web 2.0 is, and also present more ways with how to leverage the concept with your own web initiatives.

When talking about performing of the web, professionals are certainly not talking about a new WWW upgrade, or a big-time networking change. Really we are explaining creatively about a creative and functionality refresh located at website programming table. Certainly it is a known fact that Web 2.0 websites feel increasingly UI friendly, increasingly intuitive, and increasingly accommodating to a user’s fashion of surfing / browsing the internet.

How can you get things rolling with the v2.0 interactions? Forget creating a cool website, the use coupling a technology such as XML and RSS will certainlycould indeed kick things off on the right foot. The solution is make your information of products and service items more attainable to the web user. By incorporation of a simple RSS feed for your content, this keeps users in the know with your online venture, as well as supplementing a webpage’s traffic as your customers and clients keep visiting to visit for potentially more.

Is there anything to lose? In the v2.0 world, the only answer is: nothing!not much at all. Try today and you might be surprised by the changes you can quickly conjure, with no need spending lots of cash!

Author: Anthony Schiffbauer
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker