Amazon launches 7" Android-powered tablet called Kindle Fire. This is a WiFi only model, priced $199. The operating system of this tablet is a customized version of Google’s Android, so it will not be like a normal android tablet. You might not be able to install apps from android market place etc. Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011.

Main features

• 7" vibrant color touchscreen that delivers 16 million colors in high resolution.
• Fast, Dual-Core Processor
• Magazines in Rich Color
• Over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases and your favorite TV shows, are available to stream or download, purchase or rent – all just one tap away. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows.
• Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, The Weather Channel and more, plus a great paid app for free every day.
• Web browsing using Amazon Silk browser
• The Kindle Store offers over 1 million books, including 800,000 titles
• Kindle Fire gives you free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud.
• Built-in email app
• Document reader(Text, DOC, PDF etc.)

Technical Specification

Watch demo || More Details

The Windows Developer Preview is a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers. It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. The features and functionality in the prerelease software may not appear in the final version.

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)

DOWNLOAD (4.8 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 6FE9352FB59F6D0789AF35D1001BD4E4E81E42AF

All of the following come on a disk image file (.iso), you can burn it to a DVD using a DVD Burn software.

64-bit Windows Developer Preview

• Windows SDK for Metro style apps
• Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview
• Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview
• 28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app

Windows Developer Preview English, 64-bit (x64)

DOWNLOAD (3.6 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 79DBF235FD49F5C1C8F8C04E24BDE6E1D04DA1E9

Includes a disk image file (.iso) to install the Windows Developer Preview and Metro style apps on a 64-bit PC.

Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit (x86)

DOWNLOAD (2.8 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 4E0698BBABE01ED27582C9FC16AD21C4422913CC

Includes a disk image file (.iso) to install the Windows Developer Preview and Metro style apps on a 32-bit PC.

System Requirements

Windows Developer Preview works great on the same hardware that powers Windows Vista and Windows 7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch

Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

Steve Jobs Resignation Letter

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve

The official release date of Mozilla Firefox 5 is on June 21, but the Mozilla has posted final builds for Firefox 5.

Firefox 5 has no major changes in the user interface. Main changes are

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updateshas been removed

You can download the latest build from

• Windows (32-bit)
• Linux (32-bit) or Linux (64-bit)
• Mac OS X

I have downloaded it from http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/

Download Paths

• Download Windows – US English or for other languages - http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/win32/
• Download Mac Version – US English or for other languages http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/mac/
• Download Linux Version – US English or for other languages http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/linux-x86_64

Main Features of Firefox 4

• Firefox 4 includes an updated interface for all platforms that’s sleeker and easier to use.
• Firefox 4 contains huge performance enhancements, including our brand new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine. From faster start up times and graphics rendering to improved page load speed, you’ll notice the difference instantly.
• WebM and HD Video : As pioneers of HTML5 video standards, Firefox also supports the WebM format so you can watch open HD quality video.
• Protecting Your Privacy : Firefox puts your privacy first, fixing flaws in some web standards that allow bad guys to snoop around and expose your browser history.
• New JS values: Changes to the C++ representation of JavaScript values allow Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code more efficiently, resulting in cleaner graphics and a better browsing experience.
• Multi-touch Support: Firefox now integrates multi-touch support for Windows 7, enabling you to interact with your browser in a whole new way.
• 3D on the Web: WebGL brings 3D graphics to Firefox, opening the door for developers to create vivid games and new kinds of visualizations and experiences for the Web.
• Audio API: Firefox is changing the way media is integrated on the web: exposing the raw audio data housed within the <video> and <audio> elements in HTML5 makes it easy for developers to use JS to read and write audio data.
• Retained layers: Experience super fast scrolling on complex web pages. Simply awesome.
• XPCOM: Firefox starts up even faster thanks to XPCOM module improvements that pave the way to a better extensions framework.
• Styling Pages with CSS3: Support for new CSS3 features like Transitions and Transformations makes it easy to add elegant animations to Web pages. Learn more
• Fabulous Fonts: Firefox 4’s OpenType font features gives designers and developers more control over a variety of font features—like kerning or ligatures—to create gorgeous websites.
• Upgrading Forms: Firefox integrated Form features like list attributes and HTML5 validation provide the tools to make annoying form implementation development a thing of the past.
• HTML5 Support: A new HTML5 parser and full support for web video, audio, drag & drop, and file handling means Firefox 4 is ready to run the best web apps of both today and tomorrow.
• Web Console: With this experimental analysis tool for modern sites, Firefox allows you to peek under the hood of dynamic web pages.
• JetPack SDK (Making Add-on Development Easier): Add-ons can be installed without restarting the browser, and can be developed more easily using the new JetPack SDK and js-ctypes
• Full Hardware Acceleration: Experience super-fast graphics acceleration with Direct2D and Direct3D on Windows, XRender on Linux and OpenGL on Mac, now enabled by default, on all supported hardware.
• SVG as Images: SVG files can now be used as images and backgrounds in Firefox, meaning that developers and designers can have stunning, performance-conscious websites with lighter, resolution-independent image files.
• Compartments: Firefox can now better manage JavaScript objects with Compartments, offering improved cache utilization and garbage collection mechanisms for better security, memory management and overall performance.
• Crash Protection: Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing for Windows, Linux, and now Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these commonly-used plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Instead, you can simply reload the page to restart the plugin and try again. Learn more about plugins.
• HSTS: Sites can now keep attackers from intercepting sensitive data while accessing the site by telling Firefox to automatically establish secure connections to their servers (https).

Google Docs allows us to quickly view documents online without leaving your browser. You can also upload and share these files in Google Docs, so that anyone can view the content using their browser.

Now the Google Docs Viewer launch support for 12 new file types.

• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

In Gmail, these types of attachments will now show a “View” link, and clicking on this link will bring up the Google Docs Viewer.

Goto Google Docs Viewer

You will get your certificate of participation too. I got my certificate

Click here to Send your names to Mars

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated that from 1st Aug 2009 all online credit card transactions require an extra level of verification. Your credit card issuing banks are therefore, implementing a "Verified by VISA" or "MasterCard SecureCode" password.

You will need this password to continue transacting online from 1st Aug 2009.

What is the "Verified by VISA"/"MasterCard SecureCode" password?

This is the password that your credit card issuing Bank provides. For example – ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank, HSBC Bank, Axis Bank, SBI etc. This password is the additional layer of security for all your online transactions.

Benefits of "Verified by VISA"/"MasterCard SecureCode" password.

Even if you lose / misplace your credit card it cannot be misused online as the password is not present on the card.

How do I get this ‘extra password’?

All you have to do is log on to your bank’s website, register your card for Verified by Visa (or MasterCard SecureCode) and get your password. Each bank has its own process for card registration. So, hop on to your bank’s website and register now:

HDFC Bank
ICICI Bank
Citibank
HSBC Bank

Standard Chartered
State Bank of India
Axis Bank
ABN Amro

Deutsche Bank
Karur Vysya Bank

What if my bank does not support Verified by Visa / MasterCard SecureCode?

The RBI notification concerns cards issued within India only. If your card is issued outside India, your online transactions will go through even without this extra authentication step (unless your Card Issuer requires SecureCode/VbV authenrtication). If your card is issued in India, we suggest you look for a new bank!

What about American Express cards?

For Amex cards the ‘extra level of authentication’ will work slightly differently. On the payment step at Cleartrip, you will be asked to enter you billing address, which will be passed on to the bank. This will be checked against your billing address the bank has on its records. If the addresses don’t match your payment will be rejected. This technology is called AVS – Address Verification System. Please check your credit card statement if you don’t remember your exact billing address.

Installation

First thing I noticed is the graphics, a cool installer background image. From windows vista onwards, installation is not a big task, need to set few regional and account information and the partition (and GUI tool for managing partition).

Started installation at 1AM and got my desktop at 1.15. So installation took only 15mnts.

7 GB for windows 7 files

Booting and shutdown

I got my login screen in 32sec and then the desktop in 13sec. So the total booting time is 45sec. But this is without any additional applications. This will change when we install other applications. Shutdown time is around 13sec… Starting windows screen is a new animation screen showing windows and login screen got a new background image.
Other big change is in the taskbar, it can be compare with the dock in mac. It groups items and shows preview of all the items on mouse over. Windows media player can be controlled from the preview itself. We can control the system tray icons from the “Notification area icons” in control panel.

My computer properties

My system rating

Desktop

Design, Graphics & Other Improvements

Design and graphics have a significant change in windows 7. Up to windows vista, the 1st thing i do after installation is disabling all the animations and effects. Even though windows vista have aero theme, it is not much impressive especially in transparency and all. But in windows 7, animations and other screen effects are good. I am not feeling to disable those effects especially its transparency.
We can easily change the aero colour settings; new slide show enabled desktop background with some new background theme sets like Windows 7, Architecture, characters, scenes, nature etc..

Ms paint toolbar

Another change is in the MS paint, it got new ribbon style tool bar and some new additional tools.
I wonder why they are not updated the notepad, it is still the same
They have also added some new sound themes and in that my favorite theme is Raga.

New wallpaper themes

New sound themes

Speed, Stability & Compatibility

I am feeling a lot of speed change in windows 7 compared to Vista. Booting, application loading time are faster in Windows 7.
I have installed only few basic applications in windows 7, so i can’t talk much about Speed, Stability & Compatibility. I installed MS office, winzip, Acrobat reader, multimedia codec and other basic home applications. All those applications are working fine. I tried to install AVG free and Norton internet security 2009, both have known compatibility issues but Norton is running. I want to install and try other development applications when I get time.

Preview in taskbar

Controll panel- All items. Some new features added

Windows-7-RC2 Booting image

This is a basic review of Windows 7 RC or say first look. I didn’t get much time to review in deep so i didn’t get any bugs . I will try the new features and post it when i get time. Please share  you experience

It is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform((Gecko is the second most-popular layout engine on the World Wide Web Written in    C++,currently developed by Mozilla Corporation)). Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, performance improvements and user interface.

Features includes:

• Available in 70 languages.
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for the HTML 5 audio and video elements.
• Supports HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.
• The HTML 5 drag and drop API allows support for dragging and dropping items within and between web sites.
• Downloadable fonts support
• HTML 5 text API for canvas elements

Itz still beta and have many bugs. If you are ready to help them, download it and report the bugs .