PlayStations, Xboxes, high-spec PCs and computer games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops will be under many Christmas trees this year.

But gaming hardware – and the selling of games in physical format – could be made redundant by “cloud gaming”, the latest innovation quietly gaining a foothold in the market as higher speed internet connections become standard.

Services that allow games to be downloaded are already popular, but cloud gaming takes things further: It works by streaming games without having to buy expensive top-end computers or consoles. The games are run on huge server farms, rather than being rendered on the users’ own PCs and so don’t need powerful machines with fast graphics cards and quad-core processors that are needed to play sophisticated games offline.

In the vanguard are firms such as OnLive, which launched its service in the U.S. in June, giving owners of even the most basic netbooks and ageing computers the chance to play titles such as Batman: Arkham Asylum and Assassin’s Creed II. Next month OnLive is launching a “micro-console” for $99 that plugs into a television and an internet connection, allowing users to stream games to their HD TVs rather than a computer.

Another U.S. start-up, Gaikai is also offering a streaming games service. Its service allows games publishers to create and distribute playable clips of their latest games, making them available via gaming websites, mobile phones and social networking services. At this year’s E3 game expo in Los Angeles, Gaikai demonstrated the hugely popular multiplayer game World of Warcraft running through Facebook.

Gaikai founder David Perry said: “With one single click you could play Warcraft, which is a 14GB game. I mean, imagine, one minute you’re playing FarmVille and the next you’re playing Call of Duty.”

Cloud gaming is still in its infancy. The big console makers are not yet alarmed. Matt Martin, the editor of the games industry news site Gamesindustry.biz, said: “If you talk to the big TV manufacturers like Panasonic, they don’t make any money on selling televisions. The margins are peanuts.

“But everyone else takes advantage of their technology being in the home to make money. So the TV manufacturers are now talking to OnLive and Gaikai about running these services straight through the televisions. This might get PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox sweating a little bit.”

However, cloud gaming does require a reliable high speed broadband connection. OnLive requires a persistent connection of about 5mb to allow gamers to play without significant lag. Lag means a gap between pushing a button and an action taking place in the game – no good for shoot ‘em up or racing games requiring fast reactions.

Big publishers such as EA, Activision and Ubisoft are watching the cloud gaming industry with interest but aren’t yet ready to get involved.

“The industry is in a remarkable state of flux right now,” said industry insider Rob Crossley. “We don’t just have cloud gaming, we have social gaming, indie gaming, we have motion control. There’s so much going on that people just aren’t ready to think about another disruptive device.”

It is a matter of irony that the Indian software industry loses over $2 billion to piracy annually but many believe that software counterfeiting is beneficial for business and thus they accept it as a necessary evil.

Recently many studies have indicated that software privacy is on a decline in India, which some see as a proof that piracy will wither away in improved economic conditions.

Software piracy poses a serious threat to PC security for users, loss of income for the manufactures and loss of revenue for the government by means of legitimate taxes. The huge difference in price of the original software versus the pirated software is the main reason for software counterfeiting.

A study by Business Software Alliance and IDC reveals that Indians used 65 percent pirated software in 2009, which is 3 percent lower than the previous year. Installations of unlicensed software on personal computers in India fell from 68 percent in 2008 to 65 percent in 2009.

As per the study, India ranks 20 in global software piracy rankings.

A Microsoft survey reveals that 86 percent of Indians are ready to pay more for genuine software. Reducing India’s software piracy rate is likely to create over $4.6 billion over the next four years.

Software counterfeiting should be well understood to evaluate its serious implications. According to Nasscom, software piracy involves the use, reproduction or distribution of software without having received the expressed permission of the author. Software privacy is mainly of 4 kinds such as user piracy, hard disk loading, software counterfeiting and internet piracy.

Indian Copyright Act, 1957 protects the copyright of computer software in India.

It is not necessary that a software work has to be published to get the copyright protection. The copyright eligibility is that as soon as a piece of software is committed to a tangible medium, it automatically receives protection under Indian copyright law.

As per the Indian laws, software piracy is punishable under both civil and criminal law.

On the other hand, many are of the opinion that software counterfeiting is not always damaging to brands but can actually be leveraged to a brand’s advantage. A good number of professionals in the software industry have acknowledged this fact including many CEOs like Bharat Goenka, Managing Director, Tally Solutions.

For many beginners or new software manufactures, piracy is an easy way to gain access to new markets. The brand awareness will shoot up in such a way that there is a possibility that over time, the sales will migrate from pirated to original. As the brand grows in popularity, the manufacture will seek to find new innovative methods to protect and expand its products to be ahead of its imitators. It is a fact that one who buys a pirated version today due to his economic restraints, will go for the original when he can afford one.

The most frequently and commonly pirated software in 2010 are Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Nero 9, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 7, Magic Video Converter, Sony Vegas Pro and all antivirus like AVG, Kaspersky, Quick Heal, Norton, Net Protector etc.

But overall, software piracy remains to be a serious threat to the industry. Adequate awareness programs should be carried out to make people understand the seriousness of intellectual property theft. The risks and dangers of using pirated software should be conveyed to the common public.

Computer scientists have developed a software that quickly edits “extreme resolution imagery,” huge photographs containing billions to hundreds of billions of pixels or dot-like picture elements.

Until now, it took hours to process these “gigapixel” images. The new software needs only seconds to produce preview images useful to doctors, intelligence analysts, photographers, artists, engineers and others.

By sampling only a fraction of the pixels in a massive image – for example, a satellite photo or a panorama made of hundreds of individual photos - the software can produce good approximations or previews of what the fully processed image would look like, reported computer graphics journal, ACM Transactions on Graphics.

That allows someone to interactively edit and analyse massive images – pictures larger than a gigapixel (billion pixels) – in seconds rather than hours, said Valerio Pascucci, associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah in the US.

Pascucci defines massive imagery as images containing more than one gigapixel – which is equal to 100 photos from a 10-megapixel (10 million pixel) digital camera.

“You can go anywhere you want in the image,” he said. “You can zoom in, go left, right. From your perspective, it is as if the full ‘solved’ image has been computed.” He compares the photo-editing software with public opinion polling: “You ask a few people and get the answer as if you asked everyone. It’s exactly the same thing.”

The new software – Visualisation Streams for Ultimate Scalability, or ViSUS – allows gigapixel images stored on an external server or drive to be edited from a large computer, a desktop or laptop computer, or even a smart phone, Pascucci said.

“The same software runs very well on an iPhone or a large computer,” he added.

"Hack U" @ IIT Bombay on Oct 8-10, 2010

Close to 150 students participated in ‘Hack U‘ — the University Hack Day event for IIT Mumbai students held recently at the Powai campus.

At the outset, let it be noted that one is not talking about hacks of the writerly kind. Or the kind who break into e-mail ids or cellphones… The hacks referred to here are geeks who drool over the inner workings of computers.

Hack U is a novel concept where students get the opportunity to work on product ideas, develop working prototypes in a 24-hour ‘Hackathon’ and eventually have a chance to win cool prizes.

Conceptualised along the lines of Yahoo’s Open Hack Day, the three-day event provides a platform for the student community to develop, build applications using Yahoo!’s Open APIs (Application Programming Interface) like YQL, YAP, or create a new product concept itself.

Hack U kicked off with a series of hack-related presentations, followed by a non-stop 24-hour hacking session by the students. Technology experts also conducted technical talks on Yahoo!’s Open Platforms like YUI, OAuth, YAP and YQL during the event.

Hari Vasudev, Vice President, Cloud Platform Group, Yahoo India R&D, delivered the keynote address stressing the need for hacks to deliver personally meaningful experiences to users on the Web.

It encouraged participation from students for hack ideas and innovative concepts on shared research interests such as information extraction, parallel/distributed programming and more. Students got to interact with Yahoo! web experts, received hacking tips and lessons, and hands-on exposure to cutting-edge applications and technologies.

Neha Jatav, student researcher, at IIT Mumbai was thrilled to see “such enthusiastic mentors to help around all the time during Hack U. It was an experience that CSE junta should experience to learn what it is like to code without the fear of grades and deadlines just for the sake of your happiness, just for accomplishing your own targets.”

Mayank Singhal, IV Year Dual Degree Student of Computer Science and Engineering said, “Hack U is probably the fastest way to learn how it works in the real world of geeks; and that too while having a lot of fun. Interacting with Yahoo! engineers is even more fun, they are in my opinion the friendliest techies I have met. In short, Hack U is far too awesome to miss.”

Professor S. Sudarshan, Computer Science and Engineering Department, IIT Mumbai, recalled Yahoo! Hack U was held for the first time in India at IIT Mumbai in February 2009, allowing students to interact with top-notch programmers, such as Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP. Students were introduced to some of the APIs provided by Yahoo! which allowed creation of many interesting applications.

Open Hack Days started as an internal event that brought Yahoo! developers together around the globe. The annual event has developer workshops and progresses to an overnight Hack Camp, concluding with demos, judging and award presentations.

With a rich pool of iPhone apps developers, India is developing innovative iPhone apps that are at par with their western counterpart.

The market for mobile apps is at its peak today and the ever growing opportunities in this field have led the Indian app developers to unlock their creative potentials. Combined with an attractive business model, many of these apps have turned out be great success in the iPhone app market. Here are the top five iPhone apps by Indian developers that have found much traction in the world of iPhone apps…

1) SAS Survival - GuideRanked among the top 20 iPhone apps in over 60 countries globally, SAS Survival Guide has also hit the No.1 Lifestyle Application in almost every geographic location. It tries to bundle content into a richer experience with videos, photos and micro apps in an entirely new format. Developed by a Bangalore based software company called Trellisys founded by Arun Benty, SAS Survival Guide brings users the elite training techniques of Britain’s toughest fighting force. Now the users can take the original set of world-class survival skills with them anywhere in the world. The application is available at $6.99.

2) Snakes and Ladders Pro - Snakes and Ladders Pro brings the classic game of Snakes and Ladders to the iPhone with simple dice rolling gameplay with support for upto 4 players. The graphics are decent and the background music is nice. Developed by Harikumar P., who quit his job as an engineer with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to start Trivandrum based software firm Travancore Analytics, the game has achieved more than 250,000 downloads within a short span of time after its launch. Anyone who has an iPhone or an iTouch can log on to iTunes website and download the game for free.

3) Pulse - Pulse is an elegant news reading application for iPhone, iPad and Android devices that aggregates news from numerous websites and is one of the top-selling news apps for the iPad and iPhone. It provides a way to browse and discover good news sources that you didn’t know about. The application has been developed by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta, two young Indian grads from Stanford University who co-founded Alphonso Labs. Pulse costs $1.99 for the iPhone.

4) 360 Panorama – Instead of capturing multiple still shots and stitching them together afterwards, 360 Panorama is able to build the image in real-time thanks to an advanced vision-based system that analyzes images as they are pushed through. It allows 360 degree panoramic photography. The application has been developed by an Indian company named Occipital, 360 Panorama also sports a few new features, including the ability to change the background color to white or black, stereoscopic panoramas and the ability to share your creations via email. It is available in the App Store for $2.99.

5) YuppTV app - YuppTV app provides access to a wide range of live Indian TV channels on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Users can access different language channels like Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, English and Kannada. Launched by Yupp TV, provider of Live TV and VOD on mobiles, PC and Internet TV, by Global Takeoff, the application can be downloaded from iTunes by the global audience. The YuppTV app is the first application to place overlay advertisements on live streams, claims Udaynandan Reddy, CEO and Founder, Global Takeoff.

Now, people can be identified from their images posted on the internet, as a software firm named Face.com has developed a facial recognition technology. The software, which is yet to be released, can help identify people on social networking sites and online galleries by comparing their images against known pictures of them The software works by creating an algorithm of the face, which is a measurement of the arrangement of features including the eyes, nose and mouth, according to the developers. The company further claimed that while scanning typical images which appear on social networking sites, the software is 90 percent accurate.

According to Gil Hirsch, Chief Executive of Face.com, the company has launched a service that allows developers to take its facial recognition technology and apply it to their own applications. The technology is already being used by 5,000 developers, Hirsch added.

Supporters of the software, including the Red Cross, have said it could be used to track people lost in humanitarian disasters. However, there are some negative concerns too. According to Simon Davies, Director of Privacy International, the technology will make people uneasy by affecting their privacy on the Internet.

New Delhi: Support for Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP will be seen last on July 13 as the paid support, support assistance and security updates for these versions will be discontinued.

The support for online self help which includes Microsoft online Knowledge Base articles, FAQs and troubleshooting tools, will continue for another year, reports Times of India.

Windows 2000 users will have to switch to a more recent version of Windows and Windows XP SP2 or earlier version users can upgrade to Windows XP SP3, which can be done through Internet Explorer’s Update utility. For the time being, Microsoft is offering support for its products for five years and extended support for another five years.

We all have been using Gmail for quite a few years and by now have a huge collection of emails….

BUT

…Have you any backup of those emails??? What if Gmail crashes one fine day…after all its all electronics and can breakdown, let alone be hacked!

I believe some of us do backup the emails – have set up a email client tool with POP3 or IMAP and maintaining a local copy. But there are thousands of us who access Gmail via the browser only, me being one of them (I do not have any local  backup)

I was just wondering and did a Google and found a nice little free, yes FREE tool which did backup Gmail accounts….

GMail Backup tool

Visit the developer’s website for details. Do read the download page carefully.

The AVG Rescue CD is a powerful must-have toolkit for the rescue and repair of infected machines. It provides essential utilities for system administrators and other IT professionals and includes the following features:

• Comprehensive administration toolkit
• System recovery from virus and spyware infections
• Suitable for recovering MS Windows and Linux operating systems (FAT32 and NTFS file systems)
• Ability to perform a clean boot from CD or USB stick
• Free support and service for paid license holders of any AVG product
• FAQ and Free Forum self-help support for AVG Free users

Download Rescue CD (for CD creation)

Download Rescue CD (for USB stick)

Hear the Azan five times a day at each prayer time.

The Athan (Azan) software plays automatic Athan five times a day at every prayer time. It covers more than six million cities, towns, and villages all over the world. It includes the Calculation Methods, Hijri-Gregorian date conversion and Qiblah direction. The Athan sounds from Makkah, Madina, Egypt and Al-Aqsa are available in the software. It supports multilingual languages including Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Russian Languages.

Click here to download from cnet.com.