Google SketchUp

SketchUp is a 3D modelling program designed for professional architects, civil engineers, filmmakers, game developers, and related professions. It was designed to be more intuitive, flexible, and easy-to-use than other 3D modelling programs, which often have steep learning curves.[1] Several features allow designers to "play" with their designs, unlike what is possible in other 3D CAD programs. It is marketed as an easy-to-use conceptual tool with a simple interface.

http://www.sketchup.com/

Some of its key features include:

• A smart drawing cursor (inference) system that allows users to draw 3D objects using a 2D screen and mouse.
• Simple massing study capability via "push-pull".
  
• An interactive Heliodon, or sun angle simulator.
• A fast, easy way to animate camera and sun movements.
• Models can be individually colored with an assortment of solid colors, textures and materials.

SketchUp was developed by startup company @Last Software, Boulder, Colorado which was formed in 1999.[2] SketchUp was first released in August 2000[3] as a general purpose 3D content creation tool. It won a Community Choice Award at its first tradeshow in 2000.(A/E/C SYSTEMS Fall 2000)[4] It quickly found a market in architecture and building design industries, however, and was revised to suit the needs of working professionals. The key to its early success was in its fast learning curve, allowing for a shorter learning period than other commercially available 3D tools.

As of SketchUp 5, features were added to allow the user to extrude and widen as well as the ability for a face to "follow" the cursor around an object.

On March 14, 2006, Google acquired @Last Software,[5] attracted by their plugin for Google Earth.

On January 9, 2007 SketchUp 6 was released, featuring a handful of new tools as well as a beta version of Google SketchUp LayOut. LayOut includes a handful of 2D vector tools, as well as page layout tools making it easier for professionals to create presentations without jumping to a third-party presentation program.

Twittering with Google Talk

What are you doing right now? It's a pretty simple question. Me? I'm writing this post. Maybe you're "eating a magnolia cupcake," or "at work, but shopping online." Or maybe you're "thinking of how to use the word of the day in a sentence: polypropolene."

Twitter is a site that makes it easy to let the world know what you're doing, and see what other people are up to in a fun, social environment. You can think of it as low-effort mini-blogging. And you can update your status with even less effort by using Google Talk. Just add twitter@twitter.com to your contact list and shoot off an IM to it about how you're "cooking up some spicy chicken jambalaya" or "walking the cat." (Cats can go on walks, too.)


You can also use Talk with Twitter on a mobile device. Using the RIM Blackberry Google Talk Client you can quickly and easily send status updates to Twitter, and we'll all know how you're shoveling yourself out of a foot of snow. Advanced apologies to our NYC office, we've got sun here in Mountain View.

Add twitter@twitter.com to your Google Talk contacts to check it out.

Clam AntiVirus proves to be prosperous in the battle against email attacks

One Blaster worm can ruin your whole day -- but Clam AntiVirus is free, fast, and can save the day. Clam AntiVirus is an antivirus toolkit for Unix, specializing in email scanning on mail gateways. Product features include a multi-threaded daemon, command-line scanner and automatic virus database updates. ClamAV detects more than 116,000 viruses, worms and Trojans, including Microsoft Office macro viruses and mobile malware.

When a new worm spreads, the development team usually releases a database update in less than an hour. Users can develop their own signatures, and submit them -- or suspect files -- to the developers. Updates work either in an interactive mode (on demand from the command line) or as a daemon (updating silently in the background). All virus updates are digitally signed to validate proof of authenticity.
Clam AntiVirus is capable of scanning files and directories, including recursive directories. Its multi-threaded execution makes use of the numerous CPU processors found in most contemporary machines. ClamAV also protects against malware hidden within archives by scanning inside
compressed files. ClamAV supports ZIP, RAR, SFX, TAR, GZIP, MS cabinet (CAB) files, CHM (compiled HTML), BinHex and more. The product is also capable of examining several special file formats, including HTML, RTF, PDF, uuencode, TNEF (winmail.dat) and JPEG files looking for hidden exploits.
In addition to scanning files and folders, Clam AntiVirus scans data streams for viruses that may attempt to traverse the network. ClamAV is also extensible and supports added functionality via third-party add-on modules, such as the phishing module that blocks SSL mismatches in URLs to prevent users from being redirected to phony look-alike identity-theft sites. SpamAssassin users may appreciate the third-party plug-in for SpamAssassin, which calls ClamAV and adds a score based on the result of ClamAV's scan.
Clam AntiVirus is an active open source project licensed under the General Public License (GNU). Most popular Unix-based operating systems are supported, including Linux, Solaris, BSD and Mac OS X. There is also a ClamAV Windows port offered at w32.clamav.net. ClamAV excels at flagging malware, though falls short in its ability to auto-block active threats. Nonetheless Clam AntiVirus is a worthy arrow in your security quiver.

Google Book Search becomes more comprehensive

Google Book Search allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digitized books, but we thought that wasn't quite enough. Now when you search you'll get both digitized book results as well as records for millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world.

When you view these new added book records, you can often read reviews, a summary, or see what other people had to say about the book around the web. Since these books haven't been digitally indexed yet, you can't preview the text online, but if you've discovered something great, we offer links to buy the book or find it in a library near you.

We're doing this because we want to offer users the most comprehensive book search in the world - whether it's a book you can read online now, preview samples, see a few snippets, or just read what others have written about the book. We're still very busy digitizing millions more books, but want to make as much discoverable as possible today.


To find out more, check out our post on Inside Google Book Search।
Source - http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Red Hat to build 'Global Desktop'

Red Hat is preparing to release a new 'Global Desktop' that over time will grow into an online desktop which integrates online services into a client desktop platform.

The platform will allow users to access online and local data in a unified way.

Red Hat has teamed up with Intel for the platform. Local PC manufacturers will build the actual systems.

The computers will target small businesses and governments in emerging economies, and the software will be made available on Intel's Classmate PC, a low cost notebook computer for students.

The software borrows from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, with about 95 per cent of the code overlapping.

The OLPC uses an adapted version of Red Hat's Fedora Linux. The Global Desktop won't share the OLPC's 'Sugar' user interface, but will come bundled with applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.

The first version of the software is due out in June and will use a traditional user interface.

Subsequent updates will move to a model where traditional applications are integrated with online services, said Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens.

"It will take online services and integrate them richly into a client desktop, and make them first class citizens with the traditional applications," Stevens said in a keynote at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

Integrating online services with local data is required for the next-generation desktop, he argued. Data will be pulled onto the client using service oriented architectures (SOAs).

"To the user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users," Stevens added.

"Users aren't sitting in isolation anymore. The Windows paradigm doesn't have anything to add to the experience of the user."

Stevens also unveiled a project that attempts to put a user's operating system on a USB stick. The software will execute as in a virtual compartment.

Red Hat chief executive Matt Szulik stressed in his opening keynote at the event that reinventing the desktop was crucial for the company to enter the desktop market. If it merely copied Windows, the project would fail, he argued.

"Trying to become the appendage on the existing incumbent would become a failing solution. The landscape is littered with people that tried to subscribe into becoming a component of that infrastructure and that infrastructure," Szulik said.

What To Do When AdSense Serves The Wrong Ads

The most common frustrations among AdSense publishers are 1) Google serving inappropriate ads on their web pages, 2) low click-through rates and 3) low payouts per click।

This article discusses the first frustration, which is highly correlated with the other issues, and discusses what webmasters can do to combat it.

To begin, it is important to understand how Google determines what ads to serve via the AdSense program. This explanation goes back to April 2003 when Google acquired Santa Monica, CA-based Applied Semantics. Applied Semantics' products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is that it allows Google to, without human intervention, understand the key themes on web pages in order to deliver relevant and targeted advertisements.

However, the CIRCA technology is not always accurate or appropriate to the page. For example, in a general web page about health topics, AdSense is currently serving ads for insulin even though only two words in one paragraph relate to insulin. Rather, the site is much more focused on dieting.

LinksManager manages reciprocal links, and helps increase website traffic through linking with other like-minded quality sites -> more info

One explanation may be that the CIRCA technology is tied to keyword pricing and inventory (e.g., AdWords advertiser daily budgets), and that AdSense serves ads that it hopes to maximize revenues. However, this often violates a critical AdSense rule - if the ads do not relate to the topic discussed on the web page, visitors will not click on them. Likewise, TopPayingKeywords.com always tells clients never to try and trick AdSense. That is, if customers are coming to your page from a link or advertisement for one topic (e.g., hair styles), never try to create a page about an unrelated topic (e.g., mortgages), just because that unrelated topic is an expensive keyword. While you will be serving expensive ads, because the topics are not correlated, visitors are unlikely to click on them.

Getting AdSense to serve the correct ads is a trial-and-error process. In the health page example above, all it took to get AdSense to remove the insulin ads was to remove the paragraph in the text that mentioned insulin. Fortunately, AdSense often updates itself within just a few hours, so it's easy to keep modifying your site until the most relevant, and hopefully most expensive, ads are served.

Windows Server 2008 (Longhorn): A look inside the new features for Active Directory

Interest in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (code-name Longhorn), the newest member of the Windows Server family, took a dramatic turn two weeks ago when Microsoft released beta 3 to the public. It certainly is big news within the Active Directory community, as a plethora of new features and changes have been included. While there is certainly plenty to talk about, now seems like a good time to review a few of the major points regarding Longhorn and Active Directory.

While I could write hundreds of pages on all the new features in Windows Server 2008, I have singled out two very significant features that will probably relate to most Active Directory deployments: the read-only domain controller (RODC) and server roles.

Note: Server roles incorporate a lot of the new features in Longhorn, so this is a pretty good list of those features.

Read-only domain controller (RODC)

This is perhaps the marquee feature for Active Directory in Windows Server 2008. In Microsoft's continuing effort to improve the branch office scenario, this will be a giant step forward.

The RODC hosts a read-only copy of the Active Directory database. In addition, the administrator can determine which accounts will be replicated to the DC, and replication is unidirectional. This solves a lot of security issues at remote sites since it will minimize accounts exposed at the site (presumably not any admin accounts), and anything compromised at the site will not make it out of the site. Combined with the new BitLocker technology, RODC will allow deployment of DCs at smaller sites where it was not feasible before.

Server Core

Microsoft said at TechEd 2006 that Server Core was developed as a response to customer requests to provide a lean server operating system that would permit specific server functions to run without all the overhead of the GUI. That's right -- a Windows OS without a GUI! Well … almost. After logon, you will be presented with a desktop with no start menu, taskbar or icons, and two command windows. Installation of roles such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), DNS, file services and print server will be done completely from the command line.

So why don't we just boot into a command environment and do away with the whole GUI thing? Because this environment will still allow you to open applications such as Event Viewer, notepad and others.

In addition to making the server better defined for administrative purposes and reducing the hardware resources required, Server Core also permits better security at remote sites, allowing a smaller footprint of exposure.

The core roles available include:

Active Directory Domain Services

* Auditing -- Allows auditing of "Directory Service Changes" to better track changes to Active Directory objects and attributes.

* Fine-Grained Password Policies (FGPP) -- Allows a more granular password policy to be applied to specific sets of users that will trump the policy set in the domain level Group Policy. FGPP is defined as an attribute in the AD and not implemented through Group Policy. (Should be a lot of fun to troubleshoot!)

* Read-only domain controller

* Restartable Active Directory Domain Services -- How cool will it be to simply turn off the AD, perform tasks like offline database defragmenting, then turn it back on without a reboot?

* Snapshot Viewer -- Think of this as a staged object recovery. It allows you to view a deleted object in multiple disk snapshots and determine which one to restore.

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) -- There are many new features added in AD CS from Windows Server 2003.

Active Directory Lightweight Domain Services (AD LDS) -- This is the new version of the Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) product.

Active Directory Rights Management Service -- The old Windows Rights management product gets new features such as delegation of administration, a new MMC interface, integration with AD Federated Services and, of course, it can be installed as a server role.

DHCP server

DNS server

File Services -- This role includes Services for Network File System (NFS), some new NTFS features and the new Windows Server Backup, replacing the old NT Backup. Note that this new backup program does not support tape devices. However, the tape drivers are still available and can be used by third-party tape devices, including Microsoft's Data Protection Manager.

Network Policy and Access Services -- This role includes network services such as VPN, RADIUS and dial up servers as well as routers and 802.11 wireless access. Network Access Protection (NAP) deployment is also included in this role.

Print Server

Streaming Media Services -- This role can be used to deploy streaming digital media content and manage Windows Media servers.

Application Server -- This role provides an environment that allows applications to run. Features include IIS, .NET Framework v 3.0 and 2.0, ASP.NET, COM+, Message Queuing and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

As you can see, that is quite a list, but it still doesn't cover everything. There are a lot of other features and improvements, such as the new Terminal Services Gateway and BitLocker drive encryption. These are some interesting features that you owe it to yourself and your company to explore.

I'd also like to point out that according to Microsoft's upgrade roadmap, Longhorn will include all of the features in the Windows Server 2003 R2 release. This includes the important Distributed File System (DFS) improvements with the new DFS replication engine, plus the incorporation of Windows Services for Unix features such as NFS. Note that although R2 is not a required upgrade for Windows Server 2003 or Longhorn Server, it does allow the uses of new components that will be incorporated in Longhorn.

You can download the Longhorn Beta 3 bits from Microsoft. If you don't have a lot of spare hardware hanging around that will support Windows Server 2008, use Microsoft's free Virtual Server, VMware Server or Workstation. All these virtualization products allow you to build a Longhorn environment or a mixed mode Longhorn-Windows 2003 environment without risking hardware. Then again, I don't need to tell you all the virtues of virtualization.

So with that, I encourage you to get the downloads, start exploring and watch for future articles in this space.