Not shutting down google notebook. Google Notebook will be available for users

Google: They are going to Stop adding features, Not shutting down google notebook. Google Notebook will be available for users.

At Google, we're constantly working to innovate and improve our products so people can easily find and manage information. At times though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run.

Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means we'll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But don't fret, we'll continue to maintain service for those of you who've already signed up. As part of this plan, however, 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 at http://www.google.com/notebook.

If you haven't used Notebook in the past, we invite you to explore the other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality

 

Google:

 

First, since we're maintaining the service via http://www.google.com/notebook, every single notebook and all the existing features of the web interface will still be available. Those of you that already use the web interface should see no change in how the product behaves. Second, we guarantee that you will always have access to and control of your notebooks; we completely appreciate the effort and knowledge that your data represents and are committed to making sure you don't lose it. Finally, if you're looking for a way to easily export your information out of the product, the feature already exists. In the upper right corner of the web interface, under the "Tools" menu, there are two export options: "Export to Google Docs", and "Export as HTML".

Solar Eclipse "Ring" Seen Over Indonesia

 

January 26, 2009--The dark disk of the moon creeps across the setting sun during the first solar eclipse of 2009, as seen on Monday from Manila Bay in the Philippines.

People viewing from the southern Indian Ocean were among the few to see the full annular eclipse, so called because at its peak the eclipse is surrounded by an annulus, or ring, of fiery light.

Because the moon's orbit is elliptical, its distance from Earth--and thus its apparent size--varies over time. Annular eclipses happen when the moon looks too small to completely cover the sun, an event that occurs about 66 times a century.

A sequence of photos shows the moon passing between Earth and the sun before, during, and after an annular eclipse, as seen on January 26, 2009, from Bandar Lampung in Indonesia.

The path of the full annular eclipse crossed mostly open ocean in the southern part of the globe, starting about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Africa and not reaching land until it crossed Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean (see map).

Still, observers in southern Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and Southeast Asia were able to watch a partial eclipse.

AWS Wins 2008 Crunchie Award for Best Enterprise Startup

Amazon.com CTO Dr. Werner Vogels was honored to accept on behalf of Amazon Web Services the award for Best Enterprise Startup during TechCrunch’s 2nd annual Crunchie awards ceremony at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on January 9, 2009.

 

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Air New Zealan on Biofuel

December 31, 2008

 

Air New Zealand says a test flight Tuesday was the first commercial-jet journey to use a fuel that is equal parts biofuel and standard jet fuel. Fuel extracted from a plum sized fruit called jatropha.

 

Happy New Year 2009

Google's What's New - Take a tour of iGoogle's new features

 

 A note on the recent changes to iGoogle

Recently we rolled out some new iGoogle features, including full-screen gadgets and a left-side navigation bar. We've gotten a lot of feedback since then, not all of it positive, and we've been listening. We appreciate how passionate many of you are about your iGoogle homepage, and your opinions matter a lot. So we'd like to explain more fully what changes we've made, why we've made them, and why we hope that over time most of you will agree that they improve the iGoogle experience.

Full-screen gadgets

Up until now, iGoogle has been focused on quick, at-a-glance access to the information you care about, and smaller gadgets fit that philosophy. But we recognize that sometimes quick updates aren't all you're looking for, so we've created a feature that lets you expand all your gadgets to full screen, or "canvas view," and thus experience much more, and much richer, content.

Now, for instance, you can do a quick email check in your Gmail gadget, or open it to canvas view to write and respond to emails from within iGoogle. You can check the temperature in your weather gadget or expand it to get a detailed forecast for a weekend trip. You can watch videos, play games and use countless more rich applications, all in full screen, and all from inside iGoogle. (Here are some examples of gadgets you might want to check out.)

Expanding and minimizing your gadgets

Expand your gadget to full-screen by clicking its name on the left-side navigation bar or the maximize button on the gadget itself. Click the button or gadget name to return to your regular iGoogle view.

Similarly, your RSS gadgets now offer both a quick glance at a given topic and a full-screen multimedia view of material you want to explore more fully, including inline videos and photos. If you have Google Reader, you can also keep track of what you've read and star your favorite feeds.

Left navigation bar

All this new gadget functionality made it important to look more closely at how we help you find and use content on iGoogle. Based on your feedback, it's clear that the new left-hand navigation bar is the most controversial change we've made.

The new left nav shows you all your subject tabs (for Sports, News, Music, etc), neatly organized with the gadgets for each tab listed underneath. We think this new format makes it much easier to find specific gadgets (especially as your number of collected gadgets grows) and quickly click them in and out of canvas view.

But this new navigation also reflects our belief that, over time, the web in general and iGoogle in particular will become more personalized but also more social -- more focused on connecting us with our friends through shared online activities. We're working on a number of new features that address this mission. For instance, we're planning on integrating a chat feature into iGoogle, and we think you'll want to have easy, persistent access to it, just like you have on your Gmail page today.

In short, we want iGoogle to grow right along with the web. The newest iteration of this evolution may seem jarring to some people today, but we believe that over time, a better-organized and more socially connected iGoogle homepage will be essential to helping us all make the most of all that the web has to offer.

We hope this page has helped to explain the thinking behind iGoogle's new features and offered some useful ideas on how to make the most of your web content. Thanks again for your feedback; it's a crucial aspect of our product development process, and we'll always take your views into account as we continue to work to improve iGoogle as much as possible.

Cheers,

The iGoogle Team

©2008 Google

Serious security flaw found in IE

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified.

Browser bait

"In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did," said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. "This is never a good thing."

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

"What we've seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it's inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals," he said. "It's just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs."

Said Mr Ferguson: "If users can find an alternative browser, then that's good mitigation against the threat."

But Microsoft counselled against taking such action.

"I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw," said John Curran, head of Microsoft UK's Windows group.

He added: "We're trying to get this resolved as soon as possible.

"At present, this exploit only seems to affect 0.02% of internet sites," said Mr Curran. "In terms of vulnerability, it only seems to be affecting IE7 users at the moment, but could well encompass other versions in time."

Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam body The Spamhaus Project and an expert on privacy and cyber security, echoed Trend Micro's warning.

"It won't be long before someone reverse engineers this exploit for more fraudulent purposes. Trend Mico's advice [of switching to an alternative web browser] is very sensible," he said.

PC Pro magazine's security editor, Darien Graham-Smith, said that there was a virtual arms race going on, with hackers always on the look out for new vulnerabilities.

"The message needs to get out that this malicious code can be planted on any web site, so simple careful browsing isn't enough."

"It's a shame Microsoft have not been able to fix this more quickly, but letting people know about this flaw was the right thing to do. If you keep flaws like this quiet, people are put at risk without knowing it."

"Every browser is susceptible to vulnerabilities from time to time. It's fine to say 'don't use Internet Explorer' for now, but other browsers may well find themselves in a similar situation," he added.