Glimpse of Nish's world

Google may get a break from a federal judge in a lawsuit claiming the company's 3D Earth-mapping program violates patent rights.
In a preliminary order released last week, U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Massachusetts appeared to side with Google's interpretations of the patent in question, which could bode well for the search giant as the case moves on.
The legal spat began in May 2004 when a Virginia-based company called Skyline Software Systems filed a patent-infringement suit against Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital mapping company. Founded in 1997, Skyline makes a number of mapping products, including one called TerraExplorer, which, according to its Web site, "allows users to freely fly through 3D terrain and urban environments."
Google became part of the suit after it acquired Keyhole in October 2004. Keyhole made interactive, 3D mapping software based on terabytes of information and images taken from satellites and airplanes. That technology formed the basis for Google Earth, released last June.
Skyline says Keyhole's technology infringes on Patent No. 6,496,189, which it received in late 2002. The patent describes "a method of providing data blocks describing three-dimensional terrain to a renderer."
In January, Skyline requested a preliminary injunction that would shut down and prohibit sales of Google Earth pending resolution of the dispute.
In patent cases, the judge mediating the dispute first hears each side's interpretations of certain terms used in the language of the patent claim and then reconciles those often competing definitions. When Judge Woodlock offered the court's construction of about a dozen terms under dispute, he adopted three of Google's suggestions verbatim and appeared to be leaning toward their interpretations on two others.
In only two instances--for the definitions of the terms "communication link" and "processor"--did he take Skyline's definitions verbatim, and in those cases, Google had already acknowledged it had no problems with Skyline's suggested definitions.
But the dispute isn't over yet. Next comes the resolution of the real question: whether the Google-Keyhole software infringes on Skyline's patent. According to the court docket, the judge expects to hold a trial in mid-November or mid-December of this year.
Tags : google : google earth

Google may get a break from a federal judge in a lawsuit claiming the company's 3D Earth-mapping program violates patent rights.
In a preliminary order released last week, U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Massachusetts appeared to side with Google's interpretations of the patent in question, which could bode well for the search giant as the case moves on.
The legal spat began in May 2004 when a Virginia-based company called Skyline Software Systems filed a patent-infringement suit against Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital mapping company. Founded in 1997, Skyline makes a number of mapping products, including one called TerraExplorer, which, according to its Web site, "allows users to freely fly through 3D terrain and urban environments."
Google became part of the suit after it acquired Keyhole in October 2004. Keyhole made interactive, 3D mapping software based on terabytes of information and images taken from satellites and airplanes. That technology formed the basis for Google Earth, released last June.
Skyline says Keyhole's technology infringes on Patent No. 6,496,189, which it received in late 2002. The patent describes "a method of providing data blocks describing three-dimensional terrain to a renderer."
In January, Skyline requested a preliminary injunction that would shut down and prohibit sales of Google Earth pending resolution of the dispute.
In patent cases, the judge mediating the dispute first hears each side's interpretations of certain terms used in the language of the patent claim and then reconciles those often competing definitions. When Judge Woodlock offered the court's construction of about a dozen terms under dispute, he adopted three of Google's suggestions verbatim and appeared to be leaning toward their interpretations on two others.
In only two instances--for the definitions of the terms "communication link" and "processor"--did he take Skyline's definitions verbatim, and in those cases, Google had already acknowledged it had no problems with Skyline's suggested definitions.
But the dispute isn't over yet. Next comes the resolution of the real question: whether the Google-Keyhole software infringes on Skyline's patent. According to the court docket, the judge expects to hold a trial in mid-November or mid-December of this year.
Tags : google : google earth

Google is well-known for starting all kinds of projects, some of which, like Google Earth, turn out to be incredibly useful, while others, like Google Video, stumble out of the gate. The company's executives take a light-hearted approach to their blue-sky ambitions, even showing off whiteboard scribbles of "Google moon bases" and "Google space elevators" in a recent Time magazine interview.
However, behind the humor is a real push at Google to find a business, other than search engine advertising, that generates significant amounts of revenue. This frantic search is driven by the need to keep Google's stock price at or above current levels. The latest rumor involves the possibility of Google TV, a project that could involve the search engine company getting into television advertising, or even a full-blown Google interactive TV service.
The rumors started when Google posted job ads for "an Interactive TV Product Manager in Mountain View, as well as Software Engineers with experience in 'emerging TV standards' and 'deploying robust, high-volume applications for consumer devices'" in both their Mountain View and London offices.
While Google denies that they are working on a television project, the company is definitely interested in expanding out of Internet advertising into more traditional markets. So far, their efforts have met with limited success. Google attempted to sell advertising in magazines, but after six months the results were incredibly lackluster, with 8 out of 10 participating advertisers saying they probably wouldn't buy print ads through Google again.
Google has already branched out into the world of video, and even put a toe into the waters of broadcasting by hosting an episode of Everybody Hates Chris. (Ironically, I was unable to view that episode online at the time due to unknown technical problems, but fortunately my Media Center PC caught it and recorded it for me a few days later). Could Google be interested in becoming a sort of "online DVR"? If the quality of the Google Video service is anything to go by, it would have a hard time competing with MCE PCs and other hardware-based DVR products.
"Googlespotting" may be a pleasant pastime, but there is always the danger of rampant speculation. The company is clearly trying its hand at a large number of projects, however, and at least some of them are bound to see the light of day. Aside from looking for an "Interactive TV Product Manager," the company has posted a bevy of engineering positions for mobile application developers. If Google isn't coming to your TV set, perhaps it's already on the way to your cell phone.

I know for sure that every one of you have recieved atleast dozen of emails offering some microsoft give-awayas..or an inviations for helping to releasing properties in Nigeria, or some form of chain letters..some times they seems genuine and you wanted to send someone you know, finally causing even your legitimate email also going in to spam folder.
How do you know for sure that an email is a hoax or not..Here is a good site about hoaxes. http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/

Colombo, 31 March, (Asiantribune.com): Reports reveal that the situation in the East of Sri Lanka especially in the Batticaloa – Amparai districts are fastly deteriorating and the high command of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has ordered the Eastern commanders to take adequate precautionary measures to safeguard their cadres from any blitzkrieg by the rival Tamil group.

It is learnt that a couple of hundred LTTE cadres have already deserted the LTTE bases. They have run away, fearing a sudden attack on the LTTE camps, at any time by rival group – TamilEeala Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal – Colonel Karuna faction.

It seems that MR's (JR of our time) UPFA has secured 'land-slide' victory over RW's , KJ's and SB's Joint venture UNF. And is this the start of downward trend of JVP? who knows?

Another useless poll is over. It is reported that voters turnover is very low. Its is aparent that peoples interest for elections is diminishing fast. Anyway I like elections for one reason. I can have fully paid two days leave to cast my vote(Whether I cast my vote or not ;))..
This time both the UNP (some say this is UNF, but I dont know why they call is UNF, because UNF was formed when SB and Mahinda Chap joined UNP and they formed a coalition - but now all those people have gotten the membership of UNP, hence no coalition, no UNF) and SLFP (even some say this is UPFA - but I dont see a point there when you call them UPFA, without JVP) lost thier strongholds without contest. Thats a good thing in the country's perspective. Because it is always good to change the power spacially in the politics.

Google, which revolutionized Web surfing through its innovative and effective search technologies, seems to be securely crowned as the King of Search Engines. However, hope springs eternal, and there are still some upstart companies out there that are attempting to knock Google off its throne. The latest to give it a shot is called Accoona. Founded in February 2004, Accoona announced its official introduction on March 8, 2006. The New York City announcement took place at the United Nations, and in this case, the location was apt. Accoona has strong ties to China: The China Daily Information Company (CDIC), which describes itself as an official Chinese government agency, and its Web site, ChinaDaily.com.cn, hold a significant equity stake in Accoona Corp.

That being said, Accoona looks, at first glance, not much different than other search engines — including Google itself. Its bare-bones initial interface follows the same design: A central search field with buttons that let you search the entire Web or confine your search to news or business sources.

Searching On Scott
I started with a general Web search on "Scott Joplin" on Accoona and Google, and found quite a bit of disparity in the results (112,393 for Accoona and 4,130,000 for Google). When I did a search on the phrase "mp3 players," I got similar results: Accoona came up with 6,031,343 results, while Google boasted 187,000,000.

Quite frankly, while I appreciated Google's higher numbers, that alone wouldn't have made Google my preferred search engine — how many people go past the fifth page of results, anyway? There was also some variation in which sites came up in what order, but again, there were no really important differences.

Interestingly, I found Accoona's results page easier to read; Google has added so much advertising — plus news links — on top of its listing that it's gotten a bit difficult to find where my actual results begin. Accoona's results page was much cleaner; the results were headed only by a "Tell me about Mp3 players" link that led to a definitions page. Of course, when/if Accoona succeeds in attracting advertising, that could change radically.

However, simplicity shouldn't be substituted for complete information. For some reason, Accoona's listing shows only the initial domain name of each site — in other words, http://www.lsjunction.com/people/joplin.htm is shown as http://www.lsjunction.com. This is not only unnecessary, it is a hassle, especially when you get two results from the same domain and need to see differences between the URLs.

Biographical Facts
Most search engines now offer immediate information, such as addresses and biographies, when they are appropriate to your search. On my initial results page for Scott Joplin, both Accoona and Google headed their lists with links to biographical info. Google's informational approach proved more useful than Accoona's barebones strategy: It gave me a photo of Joplin on the results page, while Accoona did not.

However, Google's more commercial approach has its drawbacks. When I clicked on the site's biography link, Google just gave me a rundown of albums with Joplin's music, but no other immediate biographical info. Accoona's link provided a biography from the All Media Guide (that, based on his music's association with The Sting, classified Joplin as an actor instead of a composer); it was followed with more accurate entries from a variety of sources, including the American Heritage Dictionary, the Columbia University Press Encyclopedia, and Wikipedia.

One of Accoona's major selling points is a feature called, rather awkwardly, "SuperTarget Your Search." This filtering tool offers a handy way to allow users to focus searches, concentrating more on what they're looking for.
It works this way: When you do a news or a business search, the results page includes, on the right side of the listing, a series of drop-down menus that let you filter according to frequently used data-search categories. For example, a news search on "Scott Joplin" initially pulled 379 results (there is apparently a lot of Joplin music being performed these days). The first drop-down list allows you to "Refine Your Search" by emphasizing one or all of the words — for example, I could emphasize Scott over Joplin (which brought some articles by a writer named Scott Meeker from Joplin, MO, to the top of the results list). Other available filters included When Published (with choices ranging from within the last hour to over 30 days ago), Publisher, Relevant Company (it turned out that MetLife Inc. had recently sponsored a concert), Country, State ("State" being a rather imprecise term, since cities like Tel Aviv apparently come under that heading), and People Mentioned.

How useful are these filters? It's hard to say. Aside from the "Refine Your Search" box, which I found nice to have when searching on several words, there was nothing in the filters that search-savvy users couldn't find by simply adjusting their search terms. However, it could be a handy tool for many Web researchers.

Accoona has also touted its partnership with Dun & Bradstreet, which lets it offer users access to a database of business information via the Business search button. For example, when I did a Business search on CMP (the parent company of this publication), each company listed in the search results was accompanied by a small D&B icon. Clicking on the icon offered some basic information, such as the contact info for the CEO, the address of the company headquarters, the general company size, sales volume, and other company locations. If I wanted any more information, I was invited to purchase D&B reports for anywhere from $4 to $129.

Conclusions
I'm all in favor of alternative search engines, especially ones that do their own Web crawling. However, if Accoona is going to really distinguish itself as a Google alternative, it has quite a bit of catch-up to do. For one thing, it's going to have to take care of some serious formatting glitches — for example, when I changed my News search from Scott Joplin to CMP, the first line of the results listing stretched across the screen and pushed the SuperTarget boxes past the right margin. In addition, while the SuperTarget filtering is a nice start, it isn't enough to motivate me — or, I suspect, a lot of other users — to switch.
Tags : Google : Accoona: Search Engines

Cell phones are getting so smart,why not let them pay the bills? That's PayPal's reasoning with an upcoming service that will let its customers use text messaging on their phones to make payments.
PayPal Mobile, now in testing with a planned U.S. launch within several weeks, will let people transfer funds from their PayPal accounts to another person. The payer will text message PayPal the transaction amount and the recipient's phone number, and then PayPal will contact the recipient with details on how to claim the payment. If a recipient isn't a PayPal member, he or she would have to create an account to receive the money.
The eBay subsidiary says it's also working with some merchants on a new system that will let customers make purchases by mobile phone. Merchants will place codes on product advertisements that might appear on a bus or billboard or in a magazine; the buyer will make the purchase by text messaging the product code to a phone number on the ad. The merchant ships the product to the buyer's address on record with PayPal.

PayPal isn't the first to think of cell phones as wallets. Visa recently launched a pilot program at Atlanta's Philips Arena, home of the National Basketball Association's Hawks and the National Hoc- key League's Thrashers, that lets its credit-card customers with specially equipped Nokia phones buy food and drinks by waving their phones near a reader. (See story, "Visa Expands Contactless Card Efforts").

PayPal is the king of person-to-person online payments, with a stringent verification process already in place. Bill Ho, an analyst at Current Analysis, expects Google will soon get its fingers into the mobile payment business, and so will cellular carriers seeking new revenue streams.

PayPal says it's working through some of the security challenges by requiring people to provide a PIN when they're making purchases. Poor cellular coverage and interrupted transactions may not be so easy to overcome.

Tags : Online Payment : Pay Pal

IBM is planning to launch a new worm-detection solution on Monday that takes the "honeypot" (define) technique of fighting worms to a new level, internetnews.com has learned.

The project, code-named "Billy Goat," assigns a server a large number of unused and unadvertised addresses, according to a document seen by internetnews.com.

Most traditional virus-fighting tools depend on signature-based technology. The problem now, according to Amrit Williams, research director for information security at Gartner, is that threats are becoming more difficult to detect.

"Traditional signature-based anti-viruses don't protect anyone anymore," Williams told internetnews.com.

The purpose of honeypot-type solutions is to lure new forms of malware so they can be identified and then disabled.

"A honeypot doesn't protect anything," said Williams. "It's like having a safe that's easily cracked and putting fake jewels to see how someone might crack the safe."

The feature responds to requests sent to unused IP addresses, presenting what looks like a network full of machines and services to the worm or virus. By feigning a whole network environment and recording connection attempts, however, the Billy Goat tricks worms into revealing their identities.

But the project is expected to offer more than features found in honeypots, a term referring to an Internet-attached server that acts as a decoy by luring in hackers and monitoring their activity.

Details are sketchy, but the feature is expected to offer more of the worm-fighting features "on demand" in how it entices a worm to attack by creating a virtual environment and then isolating the offending virus or worm.

According to the IBM document, the most important property of any intrusion-detection system is the ability to ignore false alarms.

According to the document, Billy Goat minimizes false alarms through the use of a novel architecture that combines an extensive view of the network and spoofed service interaction with potential attackers. The system focuses on detecting automated attacks.

The technology was developed by IBM's On Demand Innovation Services (ODIS), a partnership between IBM Research and Business Consulting Services (BCS).

Tags : Online Security : Worms

Microsoft is warning users of its Internet Explorer browser to use caution on the web, after the disclosure of an unpatched bug that could allow attackers to seize control of a PC running the browser software.

The bug, disclosed Wednesday, relates to the way that IE processes information using the createTextRange() method. By presenting the browser with specially crafted code, attackers could corrupt the system's memory and trick it into running unauthorised software.

"We’re still investigating, but we have confirmed this vulnerability and I am writing a Microsoft Security Advisory on this," writes Lennart Wistrand, security program manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center, in a blog posting. "We will address it in a security update."


Microsoft's next scheduled set of security updates are due April 11, but Wistrand did not say whether the TextRange() bug would be patched then. Microsoft executives were not immediately available to comment for this story.

Wistrand offered IE users a work-around to avoid the problem. "Our initial investigation has revealed that if you turn off Active Scripting, that will prevent the attack," he writes.

IE users with the latest refresh of the IE7 Beta 2 Preview software, announced this week are "not affected" by the problem, Wistrand says. Outlook and Outlook Express users are not at risk either, he adds.

This is the third IE bug to be reported in recent days. The other bug, disclosed Tuesday, is also considered critical because it could also be used to seize control of a system. A third flaw, made public last Thursday, is considered less severe, but it can cause IE to crash.

The TextRange() method bug is considered the most serious of the three, however, because it appears to be relatively easy to exploit.
Tags : Internet Explorer : Microsoft

EBay Inc. helped to shut down a Russian Web site this week that was offering to sell stolen customer account information for as little as $5 each.
Armed with an eBay customer's log-in and password, a fraudster could post items for sale, collect payments and then never deliver the goods. The site was also offering to sell a handful of PayPal accounts.
Security vendor Sunbelt Software detected the site Tuesday and reported it to eBay, which worked with the local ISP (Internet service provider) to have it taken off-line, an eBay spokeswoman confirmed. She couldn't say how many user accounts were offered for sale or whether any customers' accounts had been misused.
The site probably collected the information through phishing attacks or a Trojan horse virus that plants keylogging software on users' PCs, said Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt, in Clearwater, Fla.
Attempts to harvest and sell such information are fairly widespread, he said. "It would make the hair on your neck stand on end if you knew," he said.
The site, at ebayseller.cc, was inaccessible Friday morning, but Eckelberry posted screen captures in his blog that appeared to show account information for sale from customers in the U.K., Germany and Australia.
The site preferred accounts that were used infrequently, meaning a user would take longer to notice any suspicious activity, and asked a higher price for accounts with good feedback ratings. Prices ranged from $5 to $25 per account.
"We're in contact with law enforcement to track down the perpetrators and we're going to vigorously pursue this investigation to ensure they are prosecuted," the eBay spokeswoman said.
A check on the Whois database showed the Web site was registered on Dec. 2, 2005, allegedly to a company in Cypress, Calif. There was no reply Friday at the phone number provided, although the site's creator would be unlikely to use real contact information.
EBay reiterated its guidelines for customers to avoid having their data stolen: Be extremely wary of e-mail that ask you to update personal account information, download eBay's toolbar with software that detects fraudulent eBay and PayPal sites and report suspicious e-mail.

Tags : Online Security : ebay

This javascript class allows you to add window in an HTML page
This class is based on Prototype 1.4. The code is inspired of the powerful script.aculo.us library. You can even use all script.aculo.us effects to show and hide windows if you include effects.js file.
It has been tested on Safari, Camino, Firefox and IE6.

Demo and source-code can be found from http://blogus.xilinus.com/pages/javawin

Few minutes ago they have selected the winner of SSS, the Sri Lankan version of "American Idol". The Winner is Ajith Bandara , and the Runners-up is Malith Perera.
The SSS was very constroversial from the start, one time because of the way the judges' rude critics, one time about the misterious way of handling SMSs. I think Sirasa authorities didnt publish the votes because of the low turnout of the SMS they recieved. At last moment they live telecasted the pictures of the crew who worked with the computer system which handled the SMS, and one time I saw It was about 37 000+ for the winner, that is certainly a not good number to boast about.
Anyways..it was all about showing the media's ability to Make or Break a star.

Latest articles:
1. SSS final day photos.
2. SSS paper article (Heavily criticized)
3. Shihan Mihiranga Photos.

I still wonder how much can be achieved with flash, I never be able to see the limit except the limit of the imagination. Clever people always find a way to do what ever they wanted to do with Flash, always overcommng some limitation that flash inherents being a web based product.
Here is another very nice application done with flash which models human motion. You can select men/women, Body weight, and mood that effects to your motion (Walk cycle) and cleverly model the motion.
You can see it in action from here.(http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html)

Recently came across a nice article about reairing a damage (un-readable) CD. Hoped to share it with my blog readers.

That arclie can be found here. (http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?p=1506848)

Today I recieved an invitation for googlpages from google. Frankly this is as not smart as I expected at first glance. But I will update further comments when I further study it in a later time. Anyone interested..can visit my place at googlepages (Its still just a placeholder) by following this link http://nishanthe.googlepages.com/

Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Flash Player that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. A malicious SWF must be loaded in Flash Player by the user for an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities. Users are recommended to update to the most current version of Flash Player available for their platform.

Please update your flash player.

Safe Surfing!!!

Recently, after re-installing Win2000 server, I had to upgrade my IE for version 6. First I used google (That always happens intutively) for IE6 Download and clicked a link randomly (Which never ever should do..) and downloaded IE6. But the thing was, the copy I installed was tampered and included with several malwares.

My Advice is if you want to download a software, it is always better to get it from the original vendor.(In this case Microsoft)

happy surfing!!!

New studies say soda is the top cause of America’s obesity epidemic. The man-made sweetener in soda (high fructose corn syrup) leaves more calories and "bad" fats in you than natural sugar. The nation's single biggest "food" is soda. Scientists call for warning labels like those used on cigarettes.

Read Full Article

There is a nice application for GTalk with very nice flash RIA interface.
https://gtalkr.com

I am wondering about the limitaion of what is not possible with flash ???

happy talking :)