Google typically withdraw from the market despite the risk of censorship in China, he wants to give up the steps was the largest in the history of. The company's bold steps, China has a very great interest among foreign companies is rare. While others remain skeptical about some of these human rights advocates said the decision whether to Google Google motif or additional work. Chinese authorities and companies always have a problem, but the last one years has increased. Turning point, the coordination of large-scale attack from China's, the country's infrastructure, Google's Gmail service, the company's direction and target of the attack part of a broad range of large U.S. companies a total of 20 days. Other reports put the figure more than 30 years.

Gmail's attack

"In mid December, we are the intellectual property theft in China results from Google's corporate infrastructure, we discovered a very sophisticated targeted attacks. But it's about something that at first glance simply a security incident - though significant - surely kkwaedoeeotda also "David Drummond, Google's corporate development, a senior vice president and chief legal officer, said. "First of all, Google is also attacking. As part of our investigation, we have a large number of companies at least two other companies - internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors, etc. - have found the same goal," he said.

According to the mail service, Gmail, Google primarily for the purpose of attacking a strong focus. The company's attack on China's human rights activists investigating the possibility of access to e-mail account, the purpose was found. Your "Atack can read a detailed description of the security". Google's success in achieving its target of any violation could not have been there only two small accounts, and used to attack using multiple mechanisms in the fight said the new measures. Nevertheless, attacks in China created a relationship with Google to reconsider.

Thick

"These attacks show they are monitoring - one years and more efforts on the Internet, with limited freedom of expression - a conclusion we should consider doing business in China has brought us. We no longer want to keep finding Google.cn Google Results of the screening, "Drummond said.

Google does eunhaji explicitly that he would put an end to censor search results in China, simply voluntarily prevents the use of it. Companies have to find a solution to the deadlock has reached China.

"We are what we can work without the filter in consultation with the Chinese government's basis in the coming weeks will be [D] faith, the search engine law, according to all of you. We understand that this also could mean closure Google.cn, potential service when we went to China, "Drummond said.

Nevertheless, it is important that China has been a repeat of Google, a measure of the country to run a free search engine is likely to disagree. At the same time, national and government policies related to foreign companies in Google's experts publicly expressed intent to do this way, the English version of the blog, but only the possibility to remove all forms of negotiation, China.

Seriously considering the possibility of companies in China, no negotiation, Google, and the result was decided to stop the screening, the most probable results that Google will suspend all operations in the country. If you are experiencing this problem, a clear rebuke of China, these policies and the adoption of the final position will be the first major company.

Google China

Google 4 years ago, the highly controversial at the time to enter the Chinese market. To start a local version of the search engine, Google to censor some results based on Chinese laws and regulations, agreed. It certainly critics, "a story about his motto," Do not be evil, called the company to the principles of its own economic interests, not morals is to continue walking. Companies, and the censorship policy for China's reluctance to more information about the benefits in at least two crimes must select a response. However, at the time, Google added that they are not ready to compromise with China has been monitoring the situation.

As one of many Google.cn third of the search market in China, not far beyond the local search engine Baidu dudo, holding at least two times. Between them, almost all of them by other players, all of the search space is less than 1%. However, Google lost market share in recent years and the trend showed no sign of reversal. Most analysts and Google over Baidu positioning, who closely with the government or the state of the effect of increasing market share, I think we have a real chance. At the same time, Google's revenue in China is estimated to be smaller, Google shared some 22 billion U.S. dollars of profits each year. The income level of the billion dollars it does not matter, but nothing to be optimistic about Google is that they can not live without.

Protection of human rights, or a smart business move

The success of Google in China proper, however, the company's sudden decision to some people about the reasons for doubting. Some out of China, Google is very little to lose but a lot to say, at least short-term increase. 338 million people online in China in the world's largest Internet market is expected to grow significantly in the near future. Foreign companies, especially for Internet companies to create a very attractive market, with China's economic growth is sustainable. Google, of course, you know, the reason why I agree with censorship in the first place.

However, companies rarely compete in national and regional progress by clearly preferred out. Close Google.cn, the company did not lose too much now, but may ultimately regret the next few years. At the same time, it increases the company's image will require a lot of violations in the past, you can get. This is especially now, under the company may be important in controlling the spread of the Internet has increased.

Google's financial losses resulting from China's great opportunity out of traffic and can not be balanced. Yet it is purely humanitarian, but Google has made this decision easy and the weight is not clear if all the factors, motivations, but it is not purely a business move. It will be interesting to see how China will evolve and how to respond if Google will actually become easier when a conclusion will be out.

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This is perhaps, HTML5 video that at least a week, but one day YouTube neunyi supports standard, announced that the number appears in the video, Vimeo did the same thing. In fact, his new players as an option HTML5 video of the site will be available at all raised as a bar, and it's actually better than the flash-based.

"We see with the parameters of quality," Andrew Pile, Vimeo, and vice president of product development, we are committed to providing customers. "We support the request of members we have heard a lot about HTML5. We hope this is a beta version of the test results.

"The players in the latest version of Safari-compatible Web browser, Chrome, and add 90% of videos uploaded to Vimeo last operation. Users of the player, including loading time. HTML5 standard benefits Vimeo Flash Player link below the player to enable HTML5 can be done fast, smooth video playback on supported browsers, "he added in a statement on Vimeo.

If you are Vimeo, Chrome or Safari browser if you are using is called HMTL5 each of the links at the bottom right of the video, "You can see the switch. Clicking on the link, but, but, clearly at a glance the actual impact Load the page again. flash-based player to look like exactly, is more than can be done uirago YouTube. Of course, minimalist look of the player to facilitate this task, but the team still was a great achievement Vimeo.

And it's just ideological HTML5 Vimeo players have a choice, too, sometimes more than one virus, Mac, or Flash Player for Linux, especially in the more unstable, more clearly the benefits will be better. Loading the player almost immediately, HTML million - or more to download any flash content that is much easier - and without buffering. Live video game, your connection to the Internet, and can go directly to each location continues to play well.

It's determined by the implementation of HTML5, and Vimeo really to do with the proposed performance standards for their own plug-in is ready to be a real alternative functions, when it comes to proving the contents of the information. In other words, this is only a beta, some limitations in your browser supports this feature is particularly early.

Vimeo is about 90% of the date of the last 1 years working with HTML5 video player and flash video, but only 35% was required. In addition, this feature corresponds to approximately 25% of users Vimeo, Chrome or Safari, which, surprisingly high number of control. Technically, the People for Internet Explorer, Chrome frame, but it's probably not much use to calculate the number. Finally, the movie does not play in full screen mode, the browser's limitations in the implementation.

Why are some of Firefox, the HTML5 features: 3.5 Last 3.6, the release has been denied a lot of support, such as YouTube might be wondering at eit. The reason, Firefox does not support a good H.264 video codec is available in a simple Vimeo YouTube. This conscious choice on the part of Mozilla, the open codecs, in particular, support for Theora has decided to implement. The theme topic of heated debate in the Web development community, an old mate has been reached so far.

HTML5 web for "almost all the threads are flamewar. This does not comment or interfere with the open-source codec, please recommend. We know only our job to know the conversation beonhaeya" Vimeo Brad Daugherty said. "H264 simple fact that we now have more opportunities to display on different devices, and many players have the same file. If the changes are, so we. That's all there, I'm thank you for your patience!

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The new 1 week 1 years Kaspersky great discounts on products has released has passed, KIS (Kaspersky Internet Security) and KAV (Kaspersky Anti-Virus). According to the company's status and tweeters, a simple, if you price yourself at $ 20 to $ 10 can go KAV KIS coupon code at an affordable price, and one of the two products mentioned above, add to your cart for shopping.

Looks pretty good so far, but before you decide to accept the generous offer are a few things to remember. Discounts available for first year is only in North America, Northern store on your computer for a 3 to 1 for the two-year license to purchase products can cost a bit, to $ 79.95 increases to $ KIS and KAV 59,95. Because of a computer, you typically pay for only one year in the price of the complete Internet security protection for 3 computers can still quite interesting, however, do not discount.

If you apply the coupon code 2010Twitter it cost, but soon, will be dropped immediately reduced. Once you have a subtotal of $ 30 and will be automatically rebated can purchase both products. Unfortunately, no information on the date of the last interest rate, but at the time of this writing, the code works like a charm.

We look at the product purchase page, the license of the extension as part of the Save the current game, is the same injury. And extend the same rules apply, there are 3 computers, 1 for one-year license, $ 20 off $ 10 discount with KAV KIS is retained only by the North.

Kaspersky malicious code, and high sustained - courtesy of a respected independent antivirus test lab has made in the fight against a solid reputation. Years won many awards, captured in the market-leading security products.

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One Laptop per Child (OLPC), their knowledge and modern forms of education as other children from around the world to provide access to locations closer to the announced target. OLPC since the 2010 release 3 of the 2012 roadmap for the creation of new notebook models announced. The XO computer only exceed the current performance is not configured, but should be at a reasonable price, too.

OLPC is the world's modern education accessible to all children is a non-profit organizations form to pursue. Therefore, XO laptop to fully meet these requirements, but also built a strong and powerful and water-resistant, or heat, and dry tropics rich lived. Thus, the 1,5 and 1,75 XO XO build the current design, while providing better performance and more were able to gain access to the targeted customer base. More XO 3.0, however, is to use a completely new design, far.

XO XO 1.5 is currently based on industrial design and March 10 will be available. This is the current one used by VIA, and AMD's processors will be replaced four times more than the double the speed of DRAM and Flash memory offers. The system for Linux and Windows operating systems can use the $ 200 cost.

OLPC second model of the ARM processor - XO based on the development of 1,75. It is no longer poor and rural communities will be able to access most of the cost of $ 175. ARM's processor 4 mabeleseo reduce power consumption during the first quarter to double the processing speed is set. External rubber bumpers, and be inside the screen is a 8.9-inch touch screen. 1,75 XO the x86 XO is designed to complement the 1.5.

Finally, OLPC is also working on an entirely new device, and UNESCO, much less the cost of $ 100 or more are expected. Developers using a flexible plastic sheet will focus on development.The goal, because the common security holes in the evidence unit to create a real environment, and conducted more than at least 1.75 x models will continue.

Child's "first version - Centric OLPC laptop in the XO, that the revolution at a lower cost. XO 140 of thousands children in 35 countries deployed in 25 languages, and low-power computers," Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman is one of one laptop per child. "At the corner of the planet to reach approximately 500 million children to complete our mission, OLPC innovator in the design and performance will continue. Because we are a non-profit organization, we hope that our industry will be copied."

End users have more links to the official website of the organization, planning, and the XO laptop, you may be familiar with.

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NVIDIA acquired PhysX, Ageia, when he bought in 2008. Because the manufacturer of the GPU was publicity of this technology, and showed that the benchmarks that indicate that the GPU performance is superior compared to the GPU in this area. In an interview with bit-tech.net, AMD developer relations manager worldwide, Richard Huddy, "has a pop-up" from NVIDIA, openly questioning the current state of PhysX and the lack of several basic optimizations.

"All of these processor cores, we used a lot, and I'll do another pop NVIDIA here. When purchased AGEIA, are very respectable multi-core application of PhysX. If you look now, most of which works primarily on one, or at least case, the two cores, "Huddy says.

"I wonder why Nvidia did this?" I wonder why Nvidia could not do everything in their spaceship on the things that I do not care - what's working effectively for processor cores - because the company cares about the consumer experience, which is concerned only more for you graphics card sales in consolidation of both the GPU is faster than the CPU. The old tricks that the Intel compiler, which used to do, Nvidia simply takes all the multi-core optimizations on PhysX.

Huddy even said that the CPU is actually the most capable of physics processing in games."While encrypted, the processor can solve most physical situations presented to him. The emphasis we see in physics from the GPU is the excessive emphasis that comes from a company that has a GPU ... Promoting PhysX physics as if it were God's answer to all problems of physics when it is actually more in finding solutions to problems. Huddy says.

NVIDIA is currently the most popular brand when it comes to playing with physics, but Advanced Micro Devices is working with companies to bring these products themselves. "We are working on two areas of physics, which are very important, as the three companies to integrate the physics of the GPU," Mr. actions Huddy.

In the same interview, Huddy talks about some of the company's plans for the current year. He said he did not expect, AMD, always have a fast card for 2010, but that will graphically wise, dominated most of the year.

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One laptop per Child (OLPC) has announced that it is moving closer to its goal of providing every child in the world with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. OLPC has revealed its roadmap for the creation of three new laptop models that will be released from 2010 through 2012. These computers are set not only to surpass the performance of the current XO but will have lower prices as well.

OLPC is a non-profit organization that aims to make modern forms of education accessible to all children in the world. As such, the XO laptops are designed powerful enough to meet these needs but are also built sturdy and resistant to the humidity and/or heat, which abounds in arid or tropical settlements. As such, the XO 1.5 and XO 1.75 will build upon the current design and will deliver better performance while becoming more accessible to the targeted consumer base. The more remote XO 3.0, however, will use an entirely new design.

The XO 1.5 will be based on the current XO industrial design and will become available by January 10. It will replace the currently used AMD processor with one from VIA and will also boast double the speed and four times more DRAM and FLASH memory. The system will be able to run both the Linux and the Windows operating systems and will cost about $200.


The second model OLPC is designing is the ARM processor-based XO 1.75. This will be more accessible to poor and rural communities, costing at most $175. The ARM chip from Marvell is set to double the processing speed while reducing power consumption to a quarter. The outside will be rubber-bumpered while the inside screen will be an 8.9-inch touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 is meant as a complement to the x86-based XO 1.5.

Lastly, OLPC is also working on an entirely new device which, the organization hopes, will cost much less than $100. The developers will focus on a design using a single sheet of flexible plastic. The goal is to create a device completely environment-proof, thanks to the total lack of holes, and will still deliver a performance at least as high as that of the X 1.75 model.

“The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, is a revolution in low-cost, low-power computing. The XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “To fulfill our mission of reaching 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet, OLPC will continue to innovate in design and performance. Because we are a non-profit, we hope that industry will copy us.”

End-users may become more acquainted with the organization, its plans and the XO laptop by following this link to the official website.

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Wireless carrier Vodafone Spain has recently announced the launch of a new device for its users, namely the SHOWWX pico projector. The carrier also added that the new innovative portable projector comes from Microvision Inc., a leading ultra-miniature projection display and image capture products provider all around the world.

The new SHOWWX pico projector has been designed to make use of revolutionary laser-based display technology, which enables it to deliver large, colorful and vivid images. Moreover, the device can project images that are in focus at all times, no matter the projection distance, the company announced. “We are proud that Vodafone Spain sells the SHOWWX for its customers. We believe that SHOWWX will provide a truly enhanced visual experience to Vodafone’s customers and greatly enhance functionality of their mobile devices,” Alexander Tokman, president and CEO of Microvision said.

The new device is a plug-n-play pico projector that offers users on the go the possibility to easily view and share various content, including mobile TV, movies, photos or presentations. The pocket-sized projector can be carried anywhere, plugged into portable media players, mobile phones or notebooks, or to any other mobile device that sports TV-Out or VGA functionality. The projected images can range from 12” to 150”, depending on the ambient light.

“The introduction of the Microvision SHOWWX laser pico projector in Spain presents a great opportunity for Vodafone to offer our customers new and exciting display capabilities to enhance the experience with their mobile devices,” explained Ignacio Roman, head of Terminals Spain and Portugal at Vodafone.

The new SHOWWX pico projector is available for Vodafone's customers from €289 (without vat). Moreover, users will be able to get it through the Points Program, which means that it will be cheaper. At the same time, the wireless carrier also noted that it will market the new device along with the Nokia N97 mini handset

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There are a lot of metrics for website traffic, unique visitors, user numbers, and the likes. Measuring a website's “influence” is a harder proposition though, it's not exactly something you can count. Some people beg to differ though and ://URLFAN aims to do just this, measure a website's influence by counting the number of mentions it gets on blogs. It's not the most objective metric out there, but it's probably as good as it gets and it's an interesting perspective.

The ReadWriteWeb blog put together a list of the top sites on the service and their standings a year ago. At this moment, despite the growing number of people predicting its demise, Wikipedia sits at the top as the most influential site on the planet. It's not much of a surprise this one, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia holds huge amounts of content and information which comes in handy when you're trying to put something in perspective or provide more background information.

Wikipedia is followed by YouTube and then Flickr, which have switched places since last year. Their presence is entirely expected, one being the most popular video site on the planet and the other being the most popular photo sharing site among bloggers, even if it's not the biggest in its category. Things only get interesting on fourth place where Twitter now resides up five places from last year. With the huge surge in popularity and users the microblogging site has seen this year, the rise is actually rather unspectacular, but the service was obviously a lot more popular with bloggers in 2008 than it was with the rest of the Internet population.

The other hyped up social media service of the moment, Facebook has also shot up quite a few places entering the top 10 at the seventh place. With 325 million users and a warmer attitude towards making content public, the social networking mammoth will probably only get more influential and it should be interesting to see how it will compete with Twitter in 2010. There certainly other ways of measuring online influence but ://URLFAN's is interesting as it puts more weight on people's opinions rather than just cold numbers.

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It appears that the recent reports on the Internet have been correct and that the Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices has now detailed its latest Radeon graphics card, the much-anticipated HD 5970, a dual-GPU monster designed to be the fastest graphics card in the world. Featuring full support for Microsoft's DirectX 11 and the company's recently introduced Eyefinity multi-display technology, this card is expected to deliver a noticeable performance boost over any other card that is currently available on the market.

“With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we’ve cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group. “With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers.”

Getting right down to the technical specifications of the new card, it looks like previous reports have been right on target, as it comes with a GPU clock speed of 725MHz and a processing power, for single precision, of 4.64 TeraFLOPS. The new Radeon card comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory that was clocked at 1GHz (with 4GHz data date), and 2 x 2.15 Billion transistors. There are 3200 Stream Processors, 160 Texture units and 64 ROPs, while the card's TDP has been specified at a maximum of 294W. Interestingly enough, according to AMD, it reaches 42W in idle mode, something that has been enabled by a unique feature that will disable one of the GPUs, when the PC is in Idle.

One thing you should keep in mind is that, this is a monster of a card, by all definitions. It's design might lead to some modifications of your ATX chassis, as this card is 13.3-inches long, which could raise some problems, even for owners of full-tower cases.

With those specs and the fact that NVIDIA currently has nothing on the market that could beat the Radeon HD 5970, expect prices to be high. In fact, according to the world's second largest chip maker, these cards will be available for a MSRP of US$599. The prices are likely to go down when NVIDIA launches its Fermi-based cards, or by the time the 40nm yields at TSMC would improve.

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Google's most hotly anticipated project, the brand-new, web-based operating system Chrome OS, is about to become a reality if rumors about its impending launch as soon as next week turn out to be true. When it first announced the project, Google said that the first public release should come this fall so this wouldn't be too much of a surprise. There's not much info aside from the fact that it will be launched and any type of details about Chrome OS have been scarce so far, so there's plenty of anticipation in the tech crowd to see just what Google cooked up.

The rumor comes from the TechCrunch blog which has been on somewhat of a roll lately with rumors about Google. Adding the fact that we already knew that Chrome OS would hit at around this date, the info seems solid enough. But don't get your hopes up yet, just because Google is launching the OS doesn't exactly mean that you'll be able to pop it into any computer or laptop and run it. It's likely that it's at a pretty unpolished state and Google previously said that Chrome OS wouldn't be ready for the market at least until the second half of 2010.

Hardware support is one of the biggest issues at this point. Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel so, in theory, at the low level, it should have some very good driver support. It's unclear though what kind of changes Google has made and how far along the other components of the OS are to take advantage of the hardware capabilities. Google is building Chrome OS with netbooks in mind, so chances are that some of the more popular machines like Asus' Eee PC will probably work right off the bat.

But even if you can install it and run it, it doesn't mean that there will bemuch to look at, from a user's view point, Chrome OS will most likely be very lacking at this point. This release is meant to get developers familiar with the platform and give hardware manufacturers enough time to get used to it, before presumably starting to ship machines with Chrome OS. Anyway, even so there's plenty to be excited about, we'll finally get a look at the mysterious GUI Google has been working on and see how the company has adapted the more system-oriented tasks to an OS designed for the cloud. There have been some clues already, but the speculation should end soon enough.

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The chatter is once again picking up around FriendFeed, the real-time social aggregator Facebook acquired a couple of months ago. At the time of the deal many were left wondering about the fate of the service which, despite not becoming as successful as hoped, managed to secure a core of loyal users and to stay ahead in the innovation department. Not much has been said since, and despite claims that the service won't be shut down, users have mostly abandoned it.

Now FriendFeed cofounder Paul Bucheit has decided to come out with some clarifications though the future of the service is as vague as ever. “There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge,” Bucheit wrote in a FriendFeed post.

The message tries to be reassuring but ends up confirming the rather bleak future that awaits FriendFeed in its current form. A couple of preeminent bloggers, both great supporters of FriendFeed, raised concerns about the future of the service and the fact that the activity on the site died down after the news of the acquisition. Everything is still there, in terms of features and functionality, but nobody wants to invest in a dead service.


At the time of the acquisition, many argued that Facebook bought FriendFeed for its talent, as the service was backed by a small but all-star team of engineers. The four cofounders are all ex-googlers and were behind products like Gmail and Google Maps. Facebook is no doubt at work integrating some of FriendFeed's best features but it may be a while until the social network can be seen as a proper replacement if ever. The project may very well be open-sourced – an underlying component has already been released as an open-source project – but this won't help save FriendFeed either. Something may still pop up but as time passes the service is losing even more users.

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Microsoft is not only hard at work cooking the next iteration of the Office System for Windows users, but also the next version of Office for Mac. In this regard, the Redmond-based company has announced that the successor of Office 2008 for Mac will be offered to customers next year, ahead of the holiday season. Office 2010 for Windows is also planned for release in 2010, however, ahead of the general availability of the next iteration of Office for Mac, namely in the first half of the coming year. With the successor of Office 2008 for Mac, Microsoft will kill the Entourage for Mac email client, which will be replaced with Outlook for Mac.

“It is an exciting time for the MacBU [Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit] with updates to our current products and the first public announcement about the next version of Office for Mac. For several years we have focused on providing the best Microsoft Exchange client for the Mac, and the Web Services Edition delivers that today for Entourage users,” revealed Eric Wilfrid, general manager for the MacBU at Microsoft. “Outlook for Mac will bring features our customers have long requested — such as Information Rights Management — that make working across platforms even easier. I think people will see that this move to Outlook for Mac is more than just a name change.”

In a move designed to simplify the Office for Mac SKU lineup, MacBU informed that it would introduce the Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition on top of the current offering of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition. The software giant explained that Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition would be available for purchase come September 15, 2009, with customers being able to pre-order it on August 18. The new SKU will cost $399.95 and $239.95 for Version Upgrade. For current Entourage users, the Redmond-based company is already offering Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition today.

“Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server have been a cornerstone of communications and collaboration for our enterprise customers,” added Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the Office product management group at Microsoft. “Today’s release of the Web Services Edition strengthens Exchange connectivity for Entourage customers and sets the stage for the move to the new application — Outlook for Mac. These updates continue Microsoft and the MacBU’s tradition of delivering the most complete solution to help customers manage their time, and better share their information and collaborate with others.”

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With the Iran protests still going and social media platforms getting a lot of attention in the process Google has decided to add the Persian (Farsi) language to its Google Translate service. The company rushed the Persian language support because of the unfolding events in Iran so there may still be problems with the service.

“We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone's access to information,” wrote Franz Och, principal scientist, on the Google blog. “As with all machine translation, it's not perfect yet. And we're launching this service quickly, so it may perform slowly at times. We'll keep a close watch and if it breaks, we'll restore service as quickly as we can.”

Social media tools, especially Twitter, have played a big role in the Iran protests by keeping the outside world informed or at least focused on the events. But with all the traditional and social media attention much of the reports have been conflicting and confusing so a tool like Google Translate may prove very useful in getting information in and out of the country. The Mountain View-based company warns that the translations are far from perfect and that currently the service is only optimized for English-Persian translations but it is working on adding support for all the 40 languages available in Google Translate.

“The web provides many new channels of communication that enable us to see events unfold in real-time around the world. We hope that Google Translate helps make all that information accessible to you — no matter what language you speak. So please visit Google Translate and try it out,” Och ended.

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