Yahoo and Infosys-Axon deal

The year 2008 must be one Yahoo will like to forget.
The year started with Microsoft proposing Yahoo $31 a share buyout. The bid is rejected by Yahoo board of directors saying it "substantially undervalues" the company. Yahoo reportedly explores alternative deals with News Corp, Google and Time Warner unit AOL. In May Microsoft revises its offer to $33 a share, which is gain rejected by Yahoo.

The chief executive Jerry Yang kept waiting for the software giant to offer a better price than $47.5 billion for Yahoo. It never happened. Instead, Yahoo's stock sagging and hits nearly five-year lows. Yahoo's plan 2, an advertising deal with Google too failed, after Google out of the deal fearing a court battle with the US Justice Department.

In November Yang steps down and Yahoo, in December, overhauled its severance plan which was apparently hiked to discourage Microsoft's acquisition plans.

Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock's had planned to name a new CEO before 2009; however, with 2009 almost on the doorsteps, it seems tough.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3896374.cms

Infosys-Axon deal
Infosys-Axon deal was hailed as the largest outbound acquisition by an Indian IT company. The analysts termed Axon as strategic fit for Infosys.

Then came the rumours that there was competition: a rival UK security firm has quoting a price higher by 7 pence per share to counter Infosys' offer.

But the software giant was confident. MD and CEO, S Gopalakrishnan said that the company can sail through the deal with its transaction advantage of a full cash deal offer.

However, it seems the Indian IT giant underestimated its rivals, tough competition was there, and closer home. In October, HCL Technologies makes a counter offer to Infosys' Axon bid by raising the value by 8.3 per cent to seal the biggest overseas deal by an Indian firm in this space. The deal got shareholder's nod in November.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3896462.cms

Separate personal and official IDs

The best way to avoid such a situation is to have two email IDs with separate and long passwords -- one official, the other for personal use. Not only it will leave you better organised, but is the easiest way to keep cyber criminals at bay.

Also, be sure of the password you use. Remember, while easy passwords leave little room for forgetting, they leave a lot of scope for tinkering by cyber hackers.

With Internet becoming an important repository of our personal information both financial and otherwise, the stakes can be high if the same is tampered with.

So try using some mixed combos that can secure your mail. Length is a huge advantage to memorise your password. And always remember your name, spouse name, children names or birthdays are a strict no no.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3956532.cms

5 tips to keep your inbox safe

Emails asking people to send money abroad so that they can collect lottery money are passe now. Latest is a new online scam with an all new modus operandi that has left even security experts clueless.

Recently a college student received an email from his friend asking for 1,200 pounds (Rs 85,000) as he had lost his wallet. It came from the account of someone she knew and even bore his digital signature. However, later she found out that his friend never wrote the email.



Few months back, a businessman approached the cyber crime cell after some of his friends received a mail from his Hotmail account requesting them to send him Rs 1.27 lakh.

And mind you, such incidents are on a rise, security experts have warned that cyber criminals are hacking mail accounts and sending mails to addresses in the contact list to extract money.

So, how can you make sure you don't become a victim of one? Here are five golden rules to follow to make sure you don't become a victim.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3956536.cms

Turn off window animation

Vista went overboard with window animation -- the almost slow -- motion visual effect that occurs when you minimise or maximise an application. Whether you think the animation is cool or not, it's indisputable that it slows you down -- or at least it seems to.

Luckily, turning off window animation is possible, and doing so will not affect other types of interface animation that you may enjoy in Vista. Open the Windows Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, Performance Information and Tools, Advanced Tools from the task pane at the left, and then click "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows". A user account control dialog box will prompt you, and you should click Continue. The Performance Options dialog box will open.

On the Visual Effects tab of the Performance Options dialog box, you have four choices: "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer", "Adjust for best appearance", "Adjust for best performance", and "Custom". "Custom" is followed by a list of individual check boxes that allow you to determine exactly which visual effects you would like to turn on or off.

To start, click "Custom", and then remove the check mark next to the "Animate windows when minimising and maximising". De-activating that option will make your applications and other windows snap into and out of view immediately rather than gradually. Changing this setting alone may be enough to make Vista feel snappier for you, and you could stop there and see how you like the change.
Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4097507.cms

How to boost Windows Vista speed

Windows 7 with its commendable performance improvements may be on the horizon. But for now, most of us have to live with Windows Vista, which can make even the fastest computer seem slow.

But you don't have to put up with Vista's sluggishness without a fight. In fact, most of what ails Vista when it comes to performance can be remedied by adjusting some settings and eliminating some features.

And the good news: The whole process need not take more than half an hour. Afterwards, you'll be rewarded a computer that feels a lot faster.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4097511.cms

Google Notebook

Google has also halted further active development on Google Notebook, the free online application that lets users save and organise clips of information while conducting research online. Though the web giant will continue to maintain the service for current users, it will no longer add features nor will accept any new users.

The service lets users write notes, and to clip text, images, and links from pages during browsing. These are saved to an online "notebook" with sharing and collaboration features. Google Notebook works as an interactive scratch pad for any visited web pages, offering to collect web findings within the browser window.

Google in its blog wrote, "We will no longer support the Notebook Extension, but as always users who have already signed up will continue to have access to their data via the web interface. However, existing users won’t be able to use the browser extension, which makes the service significantly less useful. Among Google’s suggestions for replacements are SearchWiki, Google Docs, Tasks (Gmail), and Google Bookmarks."

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4124279.cms

Google Catalog

Google Catalog too faces axe. The service it launched in 2001 that made it possible to search the full text of hundreds and thousands of product catalogs. This was Google's first big effort to make offline information available online.

Catalogs helped to scan and make the full text of books available online. The search shown catalogs with pages that contain users search terms. Each listing shows the cover of the catalog, an image of the catalog page where the terms were found, and a close-up of the section of the page containing the terms.

The announcement was made by Ounit Soni, Google product manager, on the Inside Google Book Search blog. The posting said that Google's Catalog Search helped the search giant develop other key initiatives like Google Book Search, as well as learn about how users read scanned documents online.

Read the farewell note: “It was a great experiment.” Accepting that the service was not a great success the blog goes, “Nonetheless, in recent years, Catalog Search hasn't been as popular as some of our other products. So from (January 15), we're bidding it a fond farewell and focusing our efforts to bring more and more types of offline information such as magazines, newspapers and of course, books, online.”

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4124283.cms

Google Video Uploading

The web search giant bid farewell to its Google Video service last month, a free video sharing website and also a video search engine that allows users to upload video clips.

Though Google is not removing any content hosted on Google Video but users will no longer be able to upload new content to the service. The videos that are already in users account will remain hosted on Google Video. Users will have access to all the existing management tools for them.

The web giant in its blog post wrote, "In a few months, we will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4124289.cms

Dodgeball

Dodgeball was a company that Google acquired in May 2005. The location-based meeting service allowed users to share their current locations using SMS messages. Come January 2009, the company announces that Dodgeball will be shut down "in the next couple of months."

Here goes the closure announcemet: "Google has decided to shut down dodgeball. I know this is kind of a bummer, but the site has been in maintenance mode for a while now, and it's just time to shut it down for good."

"We're planning on doing this in two stages. Everything will continue to function as-is until the end of February (can anyone say shutdown party?). At that point, we'll turn off the SMS service and the site will enter read-only mode. We'll leave it like that for about a month giving you time to save or export any of your data that you might want to keep. Sometime around the beginning of April we'll shut the site down for good, delete all the user accounts, and the associated data."

Incidentally, Dodgeball founders quit Google in April 2007. Both were reportedly unhappy with the way Google was handling the service and blamed Google of apathy.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4124297.cms

Google Lively

In July 2008 Google launched Google Lively, a 3D virtual reality service, with much fanfare. Four months, and Internet giant's take on Second Life ran out of fuel. Google announced that it is discontinuing Lively by the end of the year.

The shut down reflected Lively's inability to stand out from the rest of the virtual reality crowd. Lively was Web-based and allowed anyone to set up virtual spaces, such as rooms, that could be embedded onto blogs or Facebook pages.

Google management concluded that it needed to sharpen its focus on its primary business of Internet search and advertising as the company's revenue growth showed signs of a deteriorating economy.

"We've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritise our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business," Google wrote in a blog post.

According to the blog, the employees working on Lively were reassigned other jobs after the service shut down. The pack of virtual worlds is led by Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to pursue digital fantasies.

Article Source:- http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/4124300.cms