Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years, the latest example of a US technology giant whose practices face a collision with European standards.
An advisory panel of data-protection chiefs from the 27 countries in the EU sent a letter last week to Google asking it to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, Frisco Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Union's justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said.
Privacy excerpts said the latter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in Europe, where the 400 million consumers outnumber those in US.
Any effort to impose limits on Google, which operates under US law, would be the latest in series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European Policy makers to rein in global technology companies. "Frattini called the working groups query to Google pertinent, appropriate and legitimate," Abbing said.
According to one member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorize to speak for the group, the panel is concerned that Google's retention period is too long and is intended to serve commercial interests.The data is often used to direct advertising to users.
"The discussion is only just beginning," said Christoph Gusy, a privacy law expert at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. "Pressure to regulate this type of business activity, which is still in its infancy, is building, and what you are seeing is beginning of a serious effort in Europe.
Google describe the committee's request as reasonable. It noted that the company itself raised the issue with European officials in March by announcing that it was shortening the retention of customer data, which had previously been unlimited, to up to two years.
Other large Search Engines like Yahoo and MSN Search have not disclossed how long they keep user data.
"There can be reasonable arguments for and against keeping server logs for this length of time," said Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel. "But we believe that between 18 and 24 months is a reasonable length of time to balance privacy issues with business concerns."
In a letter to be sent to the European Union panel, Google will argue that the retention periods are necessary to ward off hackers and prevent Internet advertising fraud, and to improve Google's search algorithm, Fleischer said. The panel plans to meet on June 19 in Brussels to consider Google's response.
The most prominent European case against a US technology giant focused on Microsoft, which the European Commission found in 2004 to have violated antitrust laws for using its de facto monopoly Windows Operating System to promote it's own server software and desktop media players.
The company settled a similar case with American antitrust regulators in 1994.
Microsoft is appealing the commission's decision. In the meantime, the commission and European competition officials have fined the company nearly $1 billion for failing to comply with the terms of its original order.
Source : TOI (NYTNS)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Google faces EU probe over data policy
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Samsung YH-925 Digital Music Player
Samsung YH-925 Digital Music Player is the latest release from Samsung YEPP series digital music player.
Its a very light (just 150gm) in respect of its large 20gb memory capacity. Its very trendy and sleek in looks with 61.5x106.8x16.6mm in dimension. Up gradation from YH-920 is its 1.8" 262K TFT Color screen making it easier to navigate the menus with music management system. You can record songs directly from any line in jack and also from its built-in stereo FM tuner. It can also work as mass storage device once you connect it to a PC with US 2.0 making it a lot easier to download songs from your PC.
You can listen up to 12 hours of uninterrupted music with its Li-ion battery.
Support for firmware up gradation, software and other is available from its vendor's site.
Features:
• 20GB Hard Disk Drive (1.8 inch)
• Motion JPEG / MP3 / WMA / Audible
• Voice Recording / Line-in Recording
• USB host
Thursday, May 10, 2007
HP iPAQ hw6965 Mobile Messenger - The Power in the Pocket
| • | The HP iPAQ hw6965 Mobile Messenger provides the features and solutions you need for an outstanding mobile e-mail and messaging experience |
| • | Having the ability to read, respond to, and manage e-mails while you're on the road or in long meetings, has a significant impact on your ability to stay productive |
| • | The HP iPAQ Mobile Messenger provides all the essentials to keep your business running when you are away from the office: phone, e-mail, and more secure access to business-critical information |
| • | Instant messaging allows you to communicate in real time to get answers or make decisions fast, and view the online and offline status of your contacts |
Microsoft® Outlook™ 2002 for Pocket PC. With large 3.0" 64K TFT touch screen and 416 MHz Intel® PXA270 Processor everything feels really good including PC like web browsing. It also has a Built-in SXGA, HP Photosmart 1.3 MP camera for capturing images up to 1280 x 1024 resolution. This marvelous gadget has Integrated quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, WLAN 802.11b, Bluetooth® 1.2, IrDA for seamless connectivity. Memory capacity is 64MB for SD-RAM with 45MB inbuilt memory can be extended up to 2GB with 4-bit miniSD memory card.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Sony HT-DDW1600 - The Superb High Power 6.2 Channel Home Theatre System
The Superb High Power
6.2 Channel Home Theatre System
- Total Output Power 1510 Watts
- HD Component Video Inputs x3,
- Subwoofer Pre-out Terminal x4,
- Digital Cinema Auto Calibration (D.C.A.C.),
- Portable Audio Enhancer
- Digital Cinema Sound
- X-Round System
Main Features :
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface)
HDMI is the abbreviated name for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It is an interface which transmits video and audio signals in digital format. With signals remaining in a pure digital state, you’ll be assured of the highest level of quality, enjoying displays with improved color reproduction and picture detail with supported image resolution up to 1080i. HDMI also offers convenient plug-and-play capability with a single cable connection, reducing the cable clutter usually found behind home entertainment centers. HDMI Pass Through* does not decrypt and encrypted HDMI signal, digital video and audio are not obtained. You can get the audio from AV receiver by connecting the digital audio from AV components to the receiver.
Subwoofer Pre out Terminal x4
The new design of Muteki provided extraordinary 4 subwoofer pre-out terminal ready for you to boom out the extreme powerful bass volume through the newly designed 25cm subwoofer. You can connect another two optional subwoofer (SA-WP1600), from 6.2 to 6.4ch to produce extremely powerful deep and clear loud bass performance, a perfect match for your favorites movie, music and games.
Portable Audio Enhancer
A sophisticated digital signal processing technology that improves the clarity and depth of compressed digital formats, such as ATRAC, MP3, WMA. By restoring the sound data removed in the encoding/ripping process, playback sound quality is improved, delivering a rich, dynamic listening experience.
Speaker System
The new design of Muteki Speaker System, delivered total powerful with full bass reflect sound to you feel like no other. All speakers designed in perfect matched with modern color, such as high glossy piano finishing with MDF (Medium Density Fiber) finishing for front panel speaker and metallic dark gray speaker cabinet. It consists of high quality speaker unit and new design Horn Tweeter. The surround speakers give you high realistic and virtual surround sound for movie and music entertainment.
The new design of 25cm active subwoofer, reproduce deep and loud bass with low distortion sound, deliver perfect powerful bass quality.
The combination of speakers and subwoofer, deliver you an outstanding sound performance like no other.
DCS (Digital Cinema Sound)
DCS (Digital Cinema Sound) is a unique reproduction technology for home theatre developed by Sony, in cooperation with Sony Pictures Entertainment, for enjoying the exciting and powerful sound of movie theatre at home. DCS uses an advanced Digital Processor that decodes embedded DVD sound for exciting cinema-quality performance. From the bone-jarring crashes of action movies to the delicate whispers of tearjerkers, everything gets better with DCS. Virtual Multi Dimension even adds virtual speakers, for amazing cinema sound that truly surrounds.
X-Round System
Special sound effect created by manipulating the volume of 6 channel speaker sound. Consists of 3 core special effects: WAVE, FADER and BALANCE. Speed of each effect can be adjust separately
DCAC (Digital Cinema Auto Calibration)
Monday, May 07, 2007
Winsnap : Review
Don't like a screenshot and wish you could make that one
change to make it look better? WinSnap is the soluton. The
453 KB screen capture utility lets you create screenshots of
non- rectangular windows and applications using a back-
ground of your choice. One can just capture the foreground
images. It even worksn on keyboards without the "print scrreen"
option, as one can copy at the click of a mouse with the help
of its auto- copy and auto- save features. It enhances the pic
with a smooth drop shadow effect. One can and a watermark,
or even change the colours. It also allows canvas transforma-
tions in photoshop style. It supports avariety of image
formats.
Download It Here
Trial Limitation : 30 day trial. Watermark added to captures.
Price : 19.95
Back In Time
Who invented the windshield
wiper? Mary Anderson, on a
rainy road trip from Alabama
to New York in 1903,realised
how cumbersome it was for
drivers to stop every few
minutes to wipe moisture off
the windscreen. Mary in-
vented a swinging arm de-
vice with a rubber blade that
the driver could operate from
inside the vehicle via a lever.
Snow, rain, sleet or hail, it
could clean anything with a
swing and a swish. Mary got
this wiper patented in No-
vember 1903. By 1916, it
had become standard equip-
ment on all American cars.
Fun on the Go - Phlips Portable mp3 Player (SA Series)
Portable is in. Philips cashes in on the trend with four new portable audio/video players.The Go Gear range offers a host of features-MP3 and WNA playback, voice recording, more music with Digital FM Radio (10 station presets), 1.8" colour screen for easy navigation and photo viewing, video file support for to QQVGA (160x128 pixels) resolution,1-2 GB memory and battery life of 10 hours.
Price: SA1355, Rs 2,999; SA3115, Rs 3,999; SA3125, Rs 4,999; SA6025 (video viewing capability, 2.2" screen), Rs 6,999
Wireles Music - Enjoy The Freedom
Tired of being glued to your TV or music system to enjoy quality sound?
Sennheiser lets you enjoy your favourite music with the RS 130 RF wireless headphone.Its nois reduction feature and switchable surround sound feature allow you to enjoy the music only.
You can plug it into your TV, computer or any music device. It has a range of up to 150 m and can work for 22 hours on one charge.
Price: Rs 10,900
The French
goverment has
imposed a sound limit
of 100 decibels on all
hearing
impairment
Rock With Motorokr E6
This is the toy taht's got Abhishek rocking.Motorokr e6 from Motorola is an out-and-out entartainment phon.With an expandable memory of up to 2GP, what more can one ask for? The phone has a 2.0 mega pixel camera with 8x digital zoom and CIF and QVGA video capture for up ti 5 hours with full screen video playback.There are also built-in MP3 player and FM radio, and dedicated music keys.The phone doubles up as a PDA too, capable of reading business cards, accessing e-mails and viewing documents and PDF files. All this comes in a stylish 14.5mm casing with a 2.4" 240x320 TFT touch screen.
Price: Handset, Rs 17,990; with wireless headset, Rs 22,450
Friday, May 04, 2007
Nokia N76 is hiting the market. - Features and Review
Nokia, the leading mobile phone manufacturer of the world lately joined the race of making the slimmest flap phones.
They finally lunched the Nokia N76 with Symbian OS 9.1.
It is an intelligently designed phone has all the ingredients to be accepted by the high-end mobile users. This sleek phone is bound to create some ripples among the high-end mobile enthusiasts worldwide.
Nokia N76 has some cool features like shortcut key which allow playing of music and taking pictures without opening the phone. (See the picture right).
It also has a 2 megapixel camera with 20x digital zoom for taking up to 1600X1200 pixels high clarity pictures.
It also has an integrated Flash. Video calling and video sharing are two of the exciting features of Nokia N76. It can also be effectively used for video streaming, storing and downloading. Videos are captured in QVGA resolution camera and can playback up to 15 fps with up to 4X digital zoom. This makes taking videos a sheer pleasure.
It has a internal memory of 26MB and can be extended up to 2GB with a miniSD memory card.
With a large 262K color display and EDGE facility you can surf the web faster with Desktop like features.
The phone is equipped with integrated FM radio, Music Player which supports mp3, wav and aac files and also has a Real Player for playing rm and 3gp files. The wide screen of the phone enables the users to view the downloaded and recorded video clips in larger size. This enhances the viewing pleasure of the users.
Nokia N 76 support various email protocols such as SMTP, IMAP4, and POP3. This is apart from the regular features such as Chatting, MMS, Picture messaging etc. Other common Nokia features include calculator, voice recorder, Bluetooth, integrated hands free speakers etc. With Nokia N76, it is also possible to video conference. It is also possible to use software like Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. Nokia N76 has a talk time of up to 2.75 hours and a standby time of up to 8.5 days. It comes with a standard Li-ion 700 mAh battery.
Nokia N76 is expected to maintain the popularity of the Nokia N Series mobile phones. It is stunning looking phone loaded with tremendous features.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
On Sharing your iPod
The iPod, while standing as a technological marvel, perhaps will ultimately claim its place in history as a connector of societies and people. Yes, everyone knows and appreciates the fact that the iPod, or one of the other versions of the iPod, such as the iPod Nano can store, list and play hundreds, if not thousands of songs. And while that is to be admired, perhaps the iPod's greatest trick is how it can, in some instances and circumstances, bring people together. No, the iPod isn't going to solve all of the worlds problems and ails, but it can bring two people together to share their personal style who would otherwise never have met, even if they bumped into each other in a crowded square.
When an iPod user sees another iPod user, a bond is created. Those ubiquitous white earbuds are more than just something that delivers music from the player to the listener. Rather, they are a symbol of the revolution that the iPod started when it was first released. There is something about the iPod, and iPod users that isn't really explainable, or that can't really be translated into other forms of portable technology.
The iPod is both personal and shared; everyone has an iPod story, or they accessorize their iPod in a certain manner. And, most important of all, many iPod owners and users are dying to either share the music on their iPod with a fellow iPod user, or is interested in listening to what's on someone else's iPod.
There are cases of iPod strangers becoming friends, simply by coming up to each other ans asking the simple question "what's on your iPod?" For some reason, the iPod has a cache that isn't really inherent in other items like the Walkman, Discman or Blackberry. Nobody would really walk up to a fellow Blackberry user and ask who's in your phone list, now would they? Granted, a phone list is to be more protected than a music playlist, but song selection is much more personal than the phone number of your hairstylist.
Seeing someone else with an iPod can sometimes create a sense of comraderie. The iPod Nano is the most popular portable digital music player in the world today. However, even though it has and enjoys tremendous popularity, not everyone has an iPod. And those who want to own an iPod don't really understand the iPod culture and family until they have one.
The music, the portability, the look, the accessories, the style - there are no other MP3 players like the iPod in the world. And once you are part of the iPod family, you literally want to meet every member that's out there and experience and listen to what's on their iPod. Just as important, you want to say to someone else with an iPod "hey, you have to listen to THIS."
Will the iPod open the lines of communication around the world and get people talking, listening and sharing? No, it won't do that, unfortunately. But, what it can do is that it can introduce iPod listener A to iPod listener B and exchange music, ideas, and maybe even an email address or two. Think about it: if you were in a foreign country, and wanted to know what was popular among the youth of said country, the best way to do so would be to listen to the music of the land. And, depending on your demeanour, most people with an Apple iPod Nano would be receptive to sharing their music with you. That doesn't mean running up to someone like a madman, trying to shove your earbuds into their skull. Rather, simply introduce youself and your purpose, and you may find someone who is on the same mission as you!
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder
FFDSHOW is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project for video decompression, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.
Features:
- various compression methods:
· MPEG 4 compatible (Xvid, DivX 4, DivX 5) using libavcodec or XviD
· Divx 3 compatible, MSMPEG4v2, MSMPEG4v1
· WMV1/7, WMV2/8
· H263, H263+, H264
· HuffYUV in YV12 colorspace
· MJPEG
· MPEG 1
· Theora (not for regular use, format isn't stabilized yet)
· MPEG 2 by using mpeg2enc code from MJPEGtools project
· all Windows Media Video 9 supported encoders with output to asf/
- all common encoding modes: constant bitrate, fixed quantizer, fixed quality, two pass encoding (depends on compressor features)
- for libavcodec and XviD detailed selection of motion estimation method
- minimum and maximum I frames interval
- minimum and maximum quantizer selection, quantizer type and trellis quantization selection for libavcodec
- adaptive quantization (aka. masking) for libavcodec and XviD, single coefficient elimination
- selectable compression of starting and ending credits
- two curve compression algorithms for second pass of two pass encoding - thanks to XviD developers
- second pass simulation: although not very precise, still helpful for tweaking advanced curve compression parameters
- ability to use libavcodec internal two pass code
- image preprocessing with ffdshow image filters (latest ffdshow version must be installed)
- graph during encoding: if your encoding program doesn't provide one
- B frames support: from one to eight consecutive B frames
- support for MPEG 4 quarterpel and GMC
- selectable interlaced encoding
- decompression
Download FFDShow from here
