Facebook's new look

Those of you desperate to see the new-look Facebook (you know - it's that social networking site we glued to six months ago) can do so now - the test site is at new.facebook.com.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg is to officially announce the site's redesign at its second annual F8 developers' conference on July 23, but if you login at the normal site and then go to the new site, you'll see how it will look.
The visual changes are modest - a slightly more spaced out layout and news feed, more emphasis on the navigation tabs and (weirdly) no ads, which goes a long way to explaining the space. I'm quite sure that won't stay that way though.
The sidebar stays fixed when you navigate between your photos, newsfeed, profile and apps (which they have decided to call 'boxes' so as not to deter non-techies?). Supposedly you'll be able to customise your own tabs eventually, but this version is still in beta at the moment so expect more features to come. Photos are given much more prominence, which is great.
Facebook has an advantage in redesigning its site - in that it was pretty good to start with. Few social networking sites have dealt with such a stream of updates and features in such an uncluttered way and the simplicity of the site is one of its most compelling features. (Privacy settings notwithstanding - those are stupidly complex...)
Verdict?
• Update: Some people have had trouble getting to the new site. Log in in at the old facebook.com and then go to to www.new.facebook.com to see the changes. If that still doesn't work, @okihumus below suggested adding the Facebook developer application and trying again. And if that still doesn't work, give up and wait until July 23...

Social Wars! Google Unveils Facebook Competitor Google+

Has Google just launched its most ambitious project yet?

After years of rumors and hints, Google Tuesday launched a trial of its Facebook competitor, a social network called The Google+ Project. And the company clearly isn't shy about it.

In a blog post announcing the launch of The Google+ Project, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Engineering for the company, argued that the subtlety of real world interactions are lost online due to the rigidity of today's tools. Google, he said, could succeed where other services have failed.

"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Gundotra said. The service launched in a limited beta Tuesday afternoon. And getting it live was a massive, lengthy struggle, explained Wired's Steven Levy.

"Developed under the codename Emerald Sea, it is a result of a lengthy and urgent effort involving almost all of the company’s products," Levy wrote. "Hundreds of engineers were involved in the effort. It has been a key focus for new CEO Larry Page."

To set Google+ apart from Facebook, which some recent reports have pegged at 750 million users, Google is claiming to have a better approach to privacy, taking on the hot-button issue that has burned both companies before.

"For us, privacy isn't buried six panels deep," Google vice president of product management Bradley Horowitz told Reuters.

Google's social network revolves around Circles -- long rumored to be the project's name -- which helps you segment the people you know into, well, circles: friends, family, coworkers and so on. Create as many as you want, and then drag a picture of a person into one of them to add them.

"Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said, adding a not-so-subtle dig at Facebook: "Today’s online services turn friendship into fast food -- wrapping everyone in “friend” paper -- and sharing really suffers."

The Google+ service consists of several linked components: a continuous news feed similar to Facebook's called “the Stream” and a second, related component called “Sparks” that reveals posts related to one’s specified interests.

Other elements of the new service include Hangouts, a video chat; Huddle, for group chats; and Sparks, a personalized recommendation service. Once logged into the Google network, nearly all Google sites will feature a special toolbar that runs across the top of the page, reminding you that you're logged into Google+.

But will it be enough to get those hundreds of millions to switch? Gundotra told Reuters that wasn't necessarily the goal.

"People today use multiple tools. I think what we're offering here offers some very distinct advantages around some basic needs," he said.

What is Email Phishing

Phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically, the messages appear to come from well known and trustworthy Web sites. Web sites that are frequently spoofed by phishers include PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, BestBuy, and America Online. A phishing expedition, like the fishing expedition it's named for, is a speculative venture: the phisher puts the lure hoping to fool at least a few of the prey that encounter the bait.

links. If recipients clicked on the "AOL Billing Center" link, however, they were taken to a spoofed AOL Web page that asked for personal information, including credit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PINs), social security numbers, banking numbers, and passwords. This information was used for identity theft.

Phishers use a number of different social engineering and e-mail spoofing ploys to try to trick their victims. In one fairly typical case before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a 17-year-old male sent out messages purporting to be from America Online that said there had been a billing problem with recipients' AOL accounts. The perpetrator's e-mail used AOL logos and contained legitimate

5 Operating Systems(OS) you've never heard of

We're going to look at 10 of the most intriguing open-source operating systems in this brave new world. In most cases these are available as CD ISO images that you can burn to CD-Rs and boot up for testing if you fancy it.

Alternatively, a simpler approach is to use a PC emulator such as VirtualBox or Qemu. With these and similar tools you can use '.iso' image files (or '.flp' floppy disc images) as virtual drives, so there's no need to write any physical media. 

1. React OS
Goal: Run Windows apps on an open-source OS
Web: www.reactos.org

Out of all the operating systems we looked at, ReactOS is the one most likely to have Steve Ballmer tossing chairs. Originally named FreeWin95, the developers' original goal was to create a completely open-source clone of, you guessed it, Windows 95.

As time went on, however, there was little serious code to show and it was clear that the NT code base was the future for Microsoft. In 1998, ReactOS rose out of the ashes of FreeWin95.

Early progress was slow, but in 2004 version 0.2.0 arrived with a usable desktop and respectable, albeit very limited, Windows compatibility. Today, ReactOS is based around a home-grown kernel, but the project makes heavy use of the WINE libraries that are popular for running Windows applications on Linux.

ReactOS is available as a Live CD or as an installable OS. Right now, it looks and feels much like Windows 2000. Chunky widgets abound, and the Start menu, taskbar, window buttons and so forth are where you'd expect to see them.

So, is it compatible? Chasing Microsoft's vast APIs is no easy job, especially with so many undocumented calls to fathom out, but ReactOS does an impressive job. Firefox (with Flash), MSN Messenger, OpenOffice.org, StarCraft, Diablo 2, Quake III arena and many more apps run acceptably well, albeit with the occasional crash. Newer versions of MS Office and Visual Basic have troubles, though.

It's an ongoing job. At this point you may be asking: 'Why would Microsoft be worried about an OS that still needs a lot more work?'

Sure, right now ReactOS is no threat to Redmond. But for the tens of millions of people on the planet who use Windows as a springboard for a web browser, word processor and Solitaire, ReactOS could one day be a completely free drop-in replacement. If the project receives commercial backing in the future, Microsoft's response will be interesting to watch.

2. Haiku OS
Goal: Be a free reincarnation of BeOS
Web: www.haiku-os.org

Sadly, BeOS never made the mainstream desktop impact that its supporters so passionately hoped for. This multimedia-focused operating system peaked in the late 1990s, but Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop prevented it from attaining anything more than relative obscurity.

Those days are gone, but the spirit of BeOS lives on. Haiku is named after BeOS's error messages, many of which were quaintly fashioned in Japanese poetry format.

Like BeOS, Haiku aims to be compatible with the small range of native BeOS programs. It's available in raw hard drive image format, suitable for Qemu; CD-based versions are due out in the coming months.

Haiku's interface is refreshingly minimal. Window title bars are reduced to small yellow tabs with a single close button, while the leaf button at the top-right of the desktop opens up a pseudo Start menu containing applications and settings. Even in an emulator, it runs at an impressive speed – see how many GLTeaPot demos you can run before the OS starts to stutter.

Even in its pre-alpha state, Haiku is shaping up well, with a wide range of included applications and utilities for desktop usage. When you open up a command line you may be surprised to find the Bash shell, although Haiku is in no way a Unix flavour.

Of all the alternative OSes currently undergoing development, Haiku is the closest to achieving a stable, fully featured 1.0 release, although that day may still be a way off .

3. AR OS
Goal: Recreate the glory days of AmigaOS
Web: http://aros.sourceforge.net

Astoundingly, AmigaOS lives on, despite Commodore's bankruptcy 15 years ago. To its fans, the Amiga was revolutionary, offering graphics and sound in the late 1980s that put PCs to shame.

It wasn't without its problems, though: the lack of memory protection resulted in colossal crashes when a single app misbehaved. 'Guru meditation' error messages still haunt the memories of many.

AROS's aim is to provide an lightweight Amiga compatible OS for modern machines, with source code compatibility with AmigaOS 3.1: in other words, if you have the source code for an old Amiga app, you can recompile it to run natively on AROS on an x86 chip.

Many versions of AROS are available, and you can even run it from inside Linux. For the best experience, though, grab the 'pc-i386-boot-iso' CD-R image and boot it.

If you're a former Amiga fan, you'll probably well up when Wanderer, the Workbench replacement, loads up: aside from the modern lick of paint, it feels just like the glory days of AmigaOS. The filesystem layout is the same, right-clicking activates the menu at the top, and in the Extras/Demos folder you'll find heaps of toys.

While AROS is undoubtedly attractive to those who pine after the great days of the Amiga, it's an impressively swift and polished desktop OS in its own right. We don't expect it to become massive overnight, but it'll always have a hardcore army of fans.

4. Aranym OS
Goal: Keep the Atari ST/TT/Falcon alive
Web: http://aranym.sourceforge.net

Atari ST fans have their own equivalent in Aranym. It's a virtual machine that emulates a 68040 CPU and various Atari hardware components, on top of which sits AFROS, an open-source version of the TOS/GEM operating system.

You can download it as a program that runs on top of your normal operating system, or alternatively grab the Live CD. AFROS is – to be blunt – supremely ugly, but then GEM was never known for its looks. Nevertheless, it's a sprightly performer, and Atari users will have no problem finding their way around.

A Windows-esque program menu has been shoe-horned into the bottom side of the screen, and on the whole it faithfully recreates Atari's 16-bit machines: if you were an Atari fan in the '90s and still have some old floppies lying around, you might be able to get your old apps running.

5. Syllable OS 
Goal: Provide a user-friendly desktop OS
Web: www.syllable.org

Thus far, all of the OSes we've looked at have been based on other OSes. Syllable, however, has been engineered from the ground up as a unique OS, with some inspiration from BeOS and AmigaOS.

Originally known as AtheOS, the project development was forked after the lead developer effectively abandoned his work, and Syllable was born.

After booting from the Live CD, you can log in as the user 'root' with password 'root'. The desktop is playfully colourful and clean: click the 'S' button at the top left to peruse the installed software. T

here's the usual collection of desktop utilities, including a media player and WebKit based browser. It's impressively fast and has the potential to be an excellent desktop OS for breathing new life into older machines.At version 0.6.6, Syllable is one of the most advanced alternative OSes around. Unfortunately, though, there's a distinct lack of native software, and development on the project has slowed down in the last couple of years.

Run Chrome OS From a USB Stick or as a Virtual Machine

Chrome OS notebooks from Acer and Samsung are expected to launch next month at $349 and $429, respectively. The fact that you can get a more powerful netbook with Windows 7 pre-installed for roughly the same price, or even less, is already putting some people off. But that doesn't mean you should disregard Google's operating system without so much as giving it a try -- especially since it's available as a free download for you to test on your own hardware.

Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what the Google Chrome browser is to Chromium. It's essentially Chrome OS's open source brother, used primarily by developers, with code that is available for anyone to checkout, modify, and build.

While you'd normally have to build Chromium OS from source to try it out on your computer, several developers have released installable builds that will save you the trouble. Over at chromeos.hexxeh.net, builds are automatically generated each day at around 6PM GMT from the latest Chromium source code, and made available in either bootable USB, VirtualBox or VMWare format. We'll cover both methods in this article while highlighting their pros and cons.

Virtualization Through VirtualBox

Although Hexxeh recommends USB images for the best experience, the easiest way to try out Chromium OS without even rebooting your computer is running it as a virtual machine. More importantly, since Chromium OS will not run on all hardware, this is the way to go if you've got an incompatible machine and just want to give it a quick look.

1. To get started download and install VirtualBox, then head to this page and get the latest VirtualBox build (for this example we are using version 0.13.526.r8fce2546, built on May 17 2011).
2. Extract the image file using an application like 7-Zip or WinRAR, so you get a .vdi file.
3. Open VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine using any name you like. Under OS Type, select Linux as the operating system and leave Ubuntu as the operating system version.
4. Next you'll have to set the amount of memory that will be allocated for the virtual machine. For our test we just left it at 512MB, which seemed adequate, but you can ramp it up a little if wanted.
5. In the next screen choose "use existing hard drive" and click on the explore folder to the right. Select the .vdi file extracted on step 2, then click next through the rest of the screens and you're done. You can start the virtual machine and begin using Chromium OS right away.

 

If you'd rather use VMWare the process should be pretty similar, just make sure to download the appropriate image file.

The disadvantage of running Chromium OS as a virtual machine is that there's no graphical acceleration and it simply won't be as fast as the operating system is designed to be. On the other hand, as mentioned before, it will load on your computer and be usable even if your hardware is not listed as compatible on the Chromium OS website.

If for some reason Chromium OS won't load you can simply download a previous build instead. It's not a common occurrence but Hexxeh's repository keeps an archive of daily builds going back up to a month.

Boot Chrome OS from a USB drive

If you've got the right hardware, you can also run Chromium OS natively on your computer from a USB stick. For the most part, any relatively modern x86-powered laptop or Atom netbook should work, but in some cases you might encounter some compatibility problems with certain components. Here's a list of what's been tested to work so far -- and a separatedesktop and laptop list by Hexxeh. The process is even simpler with this method:

1. Get the latest USB build and use a program like WinRAR or 7-Zip to extract until you get the IMG file.
2. Insert a blank, 2GB or larger USB thumb drive and launch your preferred disk imaging software.
3. Hexxeh uses Image Writer for Windows but you can use whatever suits you. Simply launch the program, select the image extracted in the first step, and write it to the USB drive.
4. Once the image is copied to the drive, close the program and you can then boot from your USB stick.

If you are really committed to Chromium OS you could potentially follow the same process to install it into a partition on your hard drive and dual-boot alongside your main operating system. For now at least I'm happy just test driving Google's operating system without making it a permanent resident on my machine.

 

If all goes well you'll be presented with a very straightforward setup wizard, where you can configure language and network settings, then enter your Google credentials and pick an avatar. That's it! Next thing you'll see is a plain Chrome window, which will be very familiar if you've already been using Google's browser on Windows or any other platform. You can start browsing right away or add applications from the Chrome Web Store to have one-click access to them.

 

Keep in mind that while Chrome OS is based off Chromium OS they are not exactly the same thing. Features like Verified Boot and Easy Recovery are not available in the latter, nor is the built-in PDF reader, although you can still access PDF files through Google Docs. Other than that you'll get a pretty close experience to the real thing, with no programs loading on startup, no need for software updates or virus protection, and everything running on the cloud.

Google Plus begins climb up steep social mountain

Google Plus hopes to take on popular social services like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr and LinkedIn.

By now, you've probably heard about Google's new Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr-killing social service, Google Plus. But trying to figure out where the new network fits into your online life - if it does at all - might leave you a bit … nonplussed.

Do you really need another social site to keep up with? Google has made Plus its top priority - even tying 25 percent of employees' annual bonuses to its success. They are serious about this and want to make Plus your end-all-be-all social destination.

Early adopters have been overwhelmingly positive in their feedback. Official numbers for the first two weeks of the service see more than 10 million users, and outside estimates show current numbers more than double that.

Google Plus is shiny, new and full of potential. Facebook's seven-year head start and 750 million users put it at an obvious advantage. Does Google Plus have enough to entice users to switch?

What Google Plus offers

Circles: You place your online contacts into groups called circles. You can create circles for family, friends, acquaintances, work - the possibilities are endless - and share your personal information and posts with only the circles you choose. Facebook offers similar functionality, but Google's intuitive interface is a grand slam.

Hangout: The video chat service is like Skype on steroids. Up to 10 participants can be in a hangout at any given time, and video windows arrange themselves based on who is speaking.

Sparks: This is a baked-in recommendation engine. Create Sparks for topics that interest you, and Google will cull the Web's best content and tailor fit a feed for you. When you find something cool, you're one click away from sharing it with your circles.

Huddle: This is a free group messaging service that incorporates your individual contacts or circles. This feature is only available on mobile devices via the Google Plus app or SMS.

One-stop shop: Google knows it's near impossible to make it through your day without using one of their services. Google Plus takes advantage of this with an ever-present navigation bar that displays all your notifications and even lets you share posts or update your status.

What Google Plus needs

Groups: Google has offered a groups service for many years, but it hasn't been integrated into Google Plus.

Events: Google has a terrific calendar service but no integration with Google Plus. Also missing are birthday notifications.

Entity pages: Pages for businesses, organizations, bands and more are coming soon.

An API: An application programming interface is the underlying framework for a service that allows other entities to incorporate features of that service into their own applications and websites. Facebook's API, for example, allows its login credentials to be used to sign in to other sites.

Aunt Maggie: Google developers can innovate all they want, but until you can find and connect with everybody in the real world (Facebook is more than 700 million users closer), Google Plus will have trouble dethroning the current social king.

Google promises new features are on the way but, so far, there are many things that Facebook simply does better.

How To Enable Right Click Function In Firefox ?

Some of the website or blog protected their image and content by using a Javascript that disables right click function.Most of the visitors go to your site just for find some information,only a small percentage of the visitors with intention stealing the content of the blog and website.If you using Firefox,i can show you a trick how to enable back the right click function without install any software or add-on.

1.Open up Firefox web Browser,Choose ‘Tool’ –> ‘Option’.

2.Select ‘Content’ –> ‘Advanced’.

3.In Advanced Javascript setting wizard,uncheck ‘Disable or replace context menu’ and click ‘OK’.Then close all the wizard.

Now try your Firefox in the website that disable right click and see what is the result ?