WING LOON

Toshiba has officially announced on 19 February 2008 the end of HD DVD players and recorders after losing to Blu-ray Disc backed by Sony. The format war is over, Blu-ray Disc has won. But, Toshiba will continue to provide full product support and after sales service.

Having one format will definitely beneficial to consumers. The difference between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc is the capacity. A HD DVD holds 15GB on a single layer disc and 30GB on a dual layer disc while a Blu-ray Disc holds 25GB on a single layer disc and 50GB on a dual layer disc.

Are you one of the victim of HD DVD?

Source: Toshiba

In the past few days, I keep wondering why Google’s logo is being made up of LEGO brick…in case you have the same doubt as me, Google is celebrating 50th birthday of LEGO Brick. Google has LEGO brick art in their offices. A LEGO brick fan built a LEGO Google logo and Googler’s built Google LEGO logos too…

I am a big fan of LEGO brick when I was a little kid. I remember playing LEGO brick with my brother. It was fun to combine LEGO brick into any object. I will post some of my old LEGO brick work soon. Stay tune…

Source: Sean Kenney

I received an email last week from DivShare. They are changing the storage and bandwidth allowances on member accounts. Starting from 24 January 2008, all free accounts in DivShare will receive a 5 GB of storage space and 50 GB of downloads per month. This change won’t affect any files that are currently in your account. The new tracking system is lived.

If you are over the 5 GB limit, no files will be deleted or disabled. However, you won’t be able to upload new files unless you free up space in your account. Premium users will be able to upgrade to up to 10 times that amount for less than a dollar a day and premium users will have the advantage of ad-free pages, hotlinking, FTP uploading and more.

Need more storage space? Sign up with DivShare now with affordable price!

Source: DivShare

I am very excited about this news. WordPress Dot Com has increased its free blog hosting space from 50MB to 3GB. It is a 60 times increased of space. That’s a lot. This will certainly give pressure to TypePad (Six Apart) and Blogger (Google). This space upgrade is enabled by Amazon’s S3 storage service.

Source: WordPress

DiGi rewards its customers with DiGi’s Value For More promotion with McDonald’s enjoyable fulfilling indulgence for three (3) months. Join now to receive 7 free SMS daily and McDonald’s vouchers. There are 3 different McDonald’s vouchers offered when you send SMS during different time of the day. Subscribe to this promotion via DiGi OCS and subscription is free.

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gOS, the operating system (OS) built on top of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) uses lightweight Enlightenment E17 window manager allows web software to run inside your browser on the desktop. It was first appeared as a pre-installed OS on the Everex Green gPC TC2502 with VIA C7-D processor sold for $199.00 at Wal-Mart. This allows you to save work online and access it from anywhere anytime.

The web software includes Google Mail, Google News, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Products, Meebo, YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, Wikipedia, Box.net and Faqly. Not forgetting the desktop software. They includes OpenOffice, Rhythmbox, xine, GnomeBaker, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin and Skype allows you to create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations, connect to your iPods, play and burn mp3s, CDs, DVDs and even make real phone calls. The most important feature is free updates for life! gOS improvements are free and sent to your computer directly over the Internet.

I have downloaded the gOS version 1.0.1 via HTTP and you can also download a copy via BitTorrent. There is a copy of gOS virtual appliance available from VMware. I am looking forward to the next release of gOS version 2.0 codenamed “Rocket” that will be released at 2008 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) on 7 January 2008 in Las Vegas.

gOS 2.0 will features Google Gears which provides online/offline synchronization technology that allows users to use JavaScript APIs to create their own online applications that will maintain some functionality even when you’re not connected to the Internet. Dedicated applications dedicated shortcuts like Google Reader, Google Talk, Google Finance, and Google search are integrated into the desktop.

gOS 2.0 also features a new browser-based web camera application called gBooth. Ezonics is a perfect source to look for gPC peripherals for gCam which is designed to be a compatible web camera for gBooth.

Source: gOS

First of all, I would like to thank Jax about personally notifying me about Advertlets Dot Com issue via SMS. Many local bloggers who is using Advertlets is affected. Sad to say that my blog is affected too.

I did a whois on Advertlets Dot Com domain and noticed the expiry date is 4 Jan 2008. I also did a whois on Adverlets Dot Com which is also own by Josh. I wonder why they are so careless on forgetting to renew the domain. Or, the domain registration service provider forget to renew it. Don’t make our wild guess. Let’s wait for the explanation from Advertlets.

Whois result: Advertlets.Com

Whois result: Adverlets.Com

If you owned a HP laptop, please beware. Chances of your Microsoft Windows laptop got hijacked is pretty simple by luring you to a malicious website. A researcher, known as “porkythepig” discovered this vulnerability. He offers a web page that detects if your HP laptop is vulnerable (use it at your own risk).

According to Milw0rm.com post, the pwnage comes courtesy of “HP Info Center” which comes installed on most HP laptops. This is one of the ActiveX controls uses three insecure methods that leave users open to remote code execution and remote registry manipulation-based attacks. The file HPInfoDLL.dll is targeted for this exploit.

There is no patch available at the moment. To avoid this attack, do not click on suspicious link, install McAfee SiteAdvisor for Internet Explorer and use an alternative web browser, Mozilla Firefox with McAfee SiteAdvisor and NoScript.

Source: Ryan Naraine’s Zero Day Blog

Recently, I read a news article that surprise me. High speed broadband comes from underground via the sewers? A company from UK, H2O Networks has been in negotiations with water firms for the last five years and began rolling out its fibre-via-sewers network known as FS Focus System (Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer System) in 2003. Universities in UK like Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Bournemouth are enjoying high speed fibre connections with speeds of up to 20Gbps while council offices around the UK are also benefiting from this high speed broadband. H2O Networks plan to roll out its Focus next month to move to a new phase which could see it supplying high speed fibre networks to businesses and consumers around the UK.

Using the sewers for fibre is not new. Country like Japan has a fairly widespread sewer-based fibre networks. Laying fibre through sewers is an alternative good way to avoid digging up the road. The roll out of fibre through sewers will shorten the deployment time. There is also a huge cost of reduction in benefits. With this benefits, I hope consumer will get cheaper broadband.

Can Malaysia Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides cheaper and high speed broadband through sewers?

Source: H2O Networks Dark Fibre Solutions | BBC NEWS - Technology

I received the above mention title in my email today. I have been receiving a lot of spam emails originated from TM Net’s ADSL broadband dynamic IP addresses. I am glad that at last they have finally come out with a solution to lesson spam by blocking outbound SMTP traffic from its dynamic IP addresses. Hopefully this solution will not interfere with other customers which are using fixed IP addresses. Please see below screen shot for more info.