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Microsoft: Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 Framework Upgrades

Microsoft has just made available for download Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 Framework Upgrades plus other associated products. Below you will see what Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 delivers.

First up is the Visual Studio 2008 SP1, the new upgrade will give you Improved WPF designers, SQL Server 2008 support, ADO.NET Entity Designer, Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’), Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008 and Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements.

Next up is what the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 will deliver, it will deliver Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code, WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services, Streamlined installation experience for client applications and Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features.

All developers can download these new service packs, for Visual Studio 2008 download please visit here and for the updated .NET 3.5 Framework visit here.

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Whole Foods Market recall creates change

Whole Food Market have to tighten their oversight of suppliers, this has been done to keep substandard products out of stores. The recalling of ground beef recently had made customers sick in two U.S. States.

It seems that this recall has forced Whole Foods Market in to creating a change in the hope of winning back customer confidence.

The ground beef recall had a huge effect on the chain’s reputation; it seems that they are now trying to regain control of that fallout.

Since Coleman Natural came under new ownership, they started to use a slaughterhouse in Omaha. That slaughterhouse had received a number of citations, as well as having a long battle with the Agriculture Department. The Government had blamed this site for the source of the beef that made people sick.

Read the full article at NY Times

Read more new on recalls here

Pensioners say no to bowls but yes to Nintendo Wii

Looks like the pensioners are here to battle it out with the younger generation and fair play to them, pensioners and teenagers love the Nintendo Wii because is mimics real life motion plus it keeps you active.

Well whilst visiting Times Online they have some interesting news that we thought you show read, pensioners are basically saying no to bowls and yes to Nintendo Wii, they talk about Doris who is 91 who loves playing Nintendo Wii games.

In a small town in Tenbury Wells, near Leominster in Herefordshire pensioners attend the Age Concern afternoon in a Scout hut where normally it used to be tea and biscuits, but now they have this gaming console. The pensioners play the games under the watchful eyes of a couple of teenagers (Brave they must be).

So it looks like gaming consoles are not just for the young but indeed for the older generation too, maybe we should all have a teenager versus pensioners gaming contest.

Italy ban Pirate Bay: what will geek underworld do now?

The Italian government has banned the daddy of illegal torrent sites, Pirate Bay. For those honest people out there, this is a good move. However it seems as if the Italian government might have to face the geek underworld, as they are not happy about this.

It seems that those government officials in Italy have woken a beast, one that will not give up without a fight. If you visit the home page of The Bay, you will see a heated letter from the owners of the site.

In the letter the owners are venting their anger at the court of Italian Supremo Silvio Berlusconi; they have labeled him a fascist. They also go on to say that he is part of a corrupt dictatorship that is intent on quashing the Internet’s right to remain free of censorship.

At the end of the letter, it explains to wannabe Italian downloader’s how to get around this block. Pirate Bay is also asking fans of their site to complain to their ISP. They say that they should demand that the site be reinstated.

What Pirate Bay has to realize is, that this is a legal issue one that the ISP’s will not want to get involved in.

Source

Credit Crunch has hit cinema giant IMAX

Imax, the Canadian company we know for the giant-screen movie theatre systems reported a second quarter loss. The company said that this is mainly due to the investments it has made in the new digital technology.

Three AMC Entertainment theaters had digital projection systems delivered and installed by Imax based in Ontario. The systems were to be installed in the Ikast Quarter but this didn’t happen.

The company lost $12.2 million which is 29 cents on a share, in the period ending the 30th June, for the same period last year the loss was at $4.5 million down 11 cents a share.

Imax reported revenue decreased from $27.1 million down to $21.2 million.

As the credit crunch effects us all, people just can’t afford to go to the cinema regularly anymore, they have to miss out on the 3D experience in a bid to look after their finances.

Imax hinted that as lot of their success was down to the Spiderman 3 last year, which made a huge impact on its Q2 2007 figures, with last year’s figures looking so good it in turn has made this year’s figures look low.

But with the release of “The Dark Knight” the new Batman film they are hoping this will push the revenue up this quarter.

Imax said that they will still be looking to install around 50 digital systems by the end of 2008 and they are on track to do so.

Source: pocket-lint.co.uk

Microsoft 60GB Xbox 360 UK release August 15

New details not long in shows that Microsoft are release the 60GB Xbox 360 in the UK on August 15, the 60GB edition of the Xbox 360 gaming console has been mentioned a few times but now it is indeed true that it will be releasing in the UK on the date giving above.

It will retail at the same price as the phased-out 20GB edition for only £199 GBP, both the Xbox 360 Arcade that sells for £159.99 and Elite version that sells at £259.99 GBP will not be affected what so ever by this brand new model.

Many gamers knows that the Xbox 360 can deliver and now with the stunning 60GB we know this will be much appreciated, gamers are always crying about more space without the need for an external option.

Will you be buying the Microsoft 60GB Xbox 360 when it releases in the UK?

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Will the Internet break-down due to strain of Olympics?

We like this one that you are about to read, CNET has reported about a test that could prove something. They are basically reporting the latest to find out of the Internet can or indeed will break down under the immense strain of mass consumption of streaming video, and yes we are talking about the Olympics.

This is an opinion set by Brick Eksten who is the president and CEO of Digital Rapids, he says:

“We’re going to find out whether the Internet is going to melt under the weight of video in a couple days,’’ he told Between The Lines this morning.

Based in Markham, Ontario, Eksten’s company is providing encoding, streaming and management systems to provide live streaming of the 2008 Olympic Games to Internet audiences in China, working for CCTV; you can see where we are going with this. NBC has plans on streaming 2,200 hours of live competition in 25 sports.

Read the full story here.

So basically with all this heavy streaming to do with the Olympics, will the Internet break down?

Video of ‘I am Rich’ app in action

A YouTube user has posted a video which lets the world see exactly what is contained within the ‘I am Rich’ iPhone application which costs $1000 to buy, and the answer is, not a lot.

For those of you who are unaware, Apple recently launched its App store in release with its 3G iPhone which lets users download third party apps and in the mean time, lets developers sell the applications they’ve created.

Contained in the video is nothing more than an image of a glowing red gemstone. Pressing the info button reveals the following words:

“I am rich
I deserv it
I am good,
Healthy &
Successful”

And that for $1000 folks is it! Amazingly enough… There have been reports of 8 people buying this app from developer Armin Heinrich, which has prompted Apple to remove the App from its store. Check out the video for your own enjoyment below.

Source: Read
Or: Read

Exxon Mobil did not authorize activities on Twitter

The latest news which first appeared in Computerworld’s print edition where Exxon Mobile made its way to Twitter unwittingly is very interesting indeed, well for some anyway.

Someone claiming the be an Exxon Mobil Corp employee and user of Twitter microblogging site decided to create a page on Twitter on July 28 with the firm’s name and part of its logo and even photos of the an Exxon gas station, this page had over 400 users sign up to this group that was created to receive messages being posted on the Janet at ExxonMobil.

Well apparently and according to Computer World “Exxon Mobil” did not authorize these activities on Twitter and doe’s not know who Janet is or even if she or he really does work at the company.

Alan Jeffers, Exxon Mobil spokesman said:

Whoever is posting the messages “is not an authorized person to speak on behalf of the company,” he also added Exxon Mobil hasn’t officially started using any social networking sites to communicate with customers.

Jeffers said that after he became aware of this page was created on Twitter by Janet, Exxon Mobil contacted officials at Twitter Inc and asked them if they could reserve this for company use and any potential account names associated with its various business brands, of course Twitter agreed to this.

The unauthorized page was still live on Friday and Janet started to post new messages after being absent for two days. Analyst Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research Inc said that companies need to keep track on Twitter and other Web 2.0 sites to make sure they do not get brand-jacked.

Read the full article here.

Verizon avoids union workers strike: 10.5 percent wage increase

Verizon has managed to avert a strike with union workers after agreeing a new three-year deal. In the new deal workers will get a 10.5 percent wage increase over the next three years.

This new pay deal has come to the relief of thousands of phone customers in Long Island, as the strike could have disrupted their service.

Verizon and the Communications Workers of America were working hard to avert this strike for two days, as talks between the two sides had stalled. The two sides could not agree on subcontracting jobs and organizing nonunion workers.

Bob Morrow, executive vice president of CWA local 1108 had said “There definitely would have been service interruptions, but thank God it didn’t get to that.”

Verizon executive Marc Reed had said that this new deal will allow the company to compete for customers while they are still able to continue to provide their employees with a package of competitive wages and benefits.

Morrow has now praised the work of the negotiators for brokering this pay deal. The deal will also, reclassify hundreds of temporary workers as full-time employees. Hundreds more nonunion workers will now become part of the Communications Workers of America.

The new deal will also allow workers to keep their fully paid health benefits for both active and retired worker of Verizon. However; workers hired after August 2 will have to contribute to their retirement health care.

Source

BBC sorry after around 250 children’s details lost

It’s no small thing when children’s personal details go missing in any situation and just this happened with around 250 children’s details when they took part in a BBC TV show.

The BBC has now apologized after the children’s details were thought to be stolen from a computer memory stick. This was left in a vehicle belonging to the firm that is making the show (Objective Productions).

The new show was called Gastronuts; it’s being made for eight to 12-year-olds and the details stolen were from children who applied to take part in the TV show.

The parents of these children were informed by Richard Deverell (BBC children’s controller) that dates of birth, mobile phone numbers, addresses and names had gone missing.

Richard Deverell had this to say, “I offer you my sincere apologies and my assurances that we are taking all action possible to mitigate the consequences of this.”

Source: Read

Google starts DoubleClick Integration with AdSense

Just months after Google had purchased DoubleClick; the search engine giant has already started the integration process. Those that will benefit from the technology will be Google’s AdSense content network; frequency capping and view-through conversion reporting will be the first step.

Once DoubleClick has been fully integrated into AdSense, users will then have the option to opt-out of ad serving from DoubleClick and their content network.

Google have a long road ahead of them as they are planning a huge number of improvements, all designed to give the user more functionality. Some of Google’s other planned additions are frequency capping, view-through conversion measurement capabilities as well as frequency reporting.

None of this advancements are available yet and do not expect them within the next few months. One thing is certain though, Google are showing publishers and advertisers that they are now working at incorporating DoubleClick into its ad operation.

Google has been changing a number of features on AdSense, both for publishers and advertisers. Google hope that they are improving AdSense, but only time will tell if this is true or not.

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Should Apple be aloud to kill your iPhone Apps

Following on from Dan’s post yesterday that Apple has a kill switch for the iPhone; this means that the company is able to wipe out malicious or unauthorized iPhone apps. It does not matter if you have paid for the application and have installed it on your handset.

Apple might have been hoping to keep this little gem secret, but this has now started of a huge debate over secrecy and why Apple feels the need to have this feature. There has already been a huge response to this in a short amount of time; it seems that people have mixed opinions over the iPhone kill switch.

Some say that this is a perfect weapon which will be able to quickly kill potential malware and viruses that are sometimes hidden in legitimate applications. Apple have a tough approval process in place on their AppStore, this has been designed to create a high quality place for us to shop for our iPhone apps.

We have all known this for some time now but what we did not know was Apple has additional hidden tools. This means that if an application is misbehaving badly, then the app can be blacklisted.

The reason that we know this is because Apple has an online location which contains a list of unauthorized applications. This suggests that this is where Apple will store blacklist unauthorized or malicious iPhone applications.

Do you think Apple is right to be able to kill your iPhone app?

SlingPlayer 2.0 public beta goes live

The public beta for SlingPlayer 2.0 is finally released and gives you a chance to get to grips with it. This will be welcome news for eager fans ever since it was announced last year at CES 2007, but the player will be without one of its big features, Clip+ Sing.

I guess not all features will make it into the beta after all, so it looks like only the local DVR features are present, so you’ll be able to test out the new 60-minute buffer and EPG which is still exciting.

Other minor changes to the player include a tweaked UI, and the removal of Slingbox Finder Ids in exchange for user accounts, Skin supported has also been dropped.

At the moment, it only runs on Windows, but expect more announcements on this software soon. To read more details on SlingPlayer and view a video of it in action, follow the link below.

Source: Read

Nokia enjoys 43% of UK market share

Research firm CSS has revealed that Nokia is currently enjoying a 43% market share in the UK, which is double what one of their closest competitors, Samsung is achieving at the moment.

This is clearly a step in the right direction for Nokia as they hope to dominate the UK market for many months to come. Elsewhere in the charts, LG are in fourth place after some positive sales, while Samsung’s growth rate slowed causing them to remain in second. Sony Ericsson however have showed the biggest decline in net profit.

Here is a statement from CSS Insight Analyst Ben Wood commenting on Nokia’s current dominance,

“Nokia is still head and shoulders above the rest. It is not just leading the market but controlling it. Sony Ericsson has really been put under pressure by Nokia’s new mid-range handsets and has struggled as a result. Samsung is the clear number two in the market, while LG has established itself in the big time. It has hit a sweet spot with a lot of its handsets recently.”

Read the full article over at Mobile Today

When is Google Music Onebox coming to other countries?

Today Alan reported the news about the all new Google Music Onebox service that is free and legal for downloading music in mainland China that are also supported by advertising, but our question is “When is Google Music Onebox coming to other countries?

Now we know this will never come to any other country for the simple fact China has no copyright laws, Music Onebox will route users to Top100.cn which is a website that already has licensing agreements with about 100 music labels and allows Chinese wibblers to download or stream tunes free of charge. Yes you know what are about to say now, all internet users outside China will indeed be blocked from accessing Top100.cn

Google come on, you have the money and the resources to give all other countries what they need and yes you know that you will earn all the money you desire through advertisements.

Read Alan’s full article here.

Toyota Profit hits five year low: Down 28 percent

Toyota Motor Corp. has seen a huge drop in their profit, the biggest in five years. The world’s second-largest carmaker has blamed poor sales of sport-utility vehicles and trucks, due to high fuel prices.

Toyota has reported that their net income has fallen by 28 percent to 353.7 billion yen or $3.2 billion, shares are now just 112.28 yen a share. The year earlier net income was 491.5 billion yen, or 153.89 yen per share.

According to Bloomberg, Toyota’s operating profit in North America feel by 57 percent, as we mentioned it is the sale of larger vehicles that have seen the biggest drop. Katsuaki Watanabe, President of Toyota Motor Corp. has had to halt the production of Tundra pickups and Sequoia SUVs for three months as a result of high oil prices.

Toyota has always been known for their larger vehicles, where Honda seems to produce smaller and fuel-efficient cars. This has seen an 8.1 percent gain for the automaker.

It is not just Toyota who is being hit with huge profit losses; Ford and GM are two more to add to that list. Automakers are now facing a fork in the road; they now have some tough decisions to make. One thing is certain; they will all have to think about producing smaller fuel-efficient cars.

Black Hat security conference highlights DNS Flaw

It seems as though 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies have had to patch their networks, this fix was a direct result of a security flaw. The flaw allowed cyber criminals to redirect visitors to counterfeit or malicious Web sites. This patch still leaves Internet users vulnerable to a large number of infrastructure providers who have yet to fix this security risk.

This data has been highlighted at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, it was Dan Kaminsky, the Seattle based IOActive researcher who first discovered the risk. Kaminsky said that bad guys would be able to corrupt records that they could find in the domain name system (DNS). They will then be able to fill them in with inaccurate information.

It was on July 8 that a number of companies that included Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems along with a dozen others had to ship software updates to fix this fault in the DNS design.

DNS is the communication standard, it acts as what could only be described as a phonebook for the Internet.

Kaminsky said that while some 120 million which is about 42 percent of broadband users are now protected by this patch, just half of the DNS servers are now protected by this patch. In his time on the floor at the Black Hat conference Kaminsky described the many ways that a bad guy was able to steal your personal and financial data from the Internet.

For a full report on this visit: The Washington Post

Children evading Facebook, Bebo and MySpace age restrictions

It has been reported that almost a quarter of children aged between eight and twelve have been evading the age restrictions that have been put in place from social networking sites. Those sites that children have managed to evade are Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.

These result were taking from a poll which was commissioned by Garlik, it shows that over 75,000 children are illicitly using the sites. The alarming fact shows that children are allowing themselves to become exposed to communicate with strangers. This news is a little alarming.

Parents have been doing their utmost to try and stop this from happening, many have been secretly logging on to their children’s social networking pages to see if they have been doing anything reckless on there.

Tom Ilube, chief executive of Garlik has said “The fact that parents feel compelled to monitor their children on this scale should send a powerful message to the big social networking sites.”

Both Bebo and Facebook have an age limit of 13 while Myspace has set their age limit at 14. Also an alarming fact is that a quarter of 8 to 15 year olds have admitted of having strangers as friends on their social networking page. A fifth of that figure also said that they have met these strangers that they befriended online.

It is now time that these social networking sites did more to stop this from happening. But this is such a hard thing to monitor, this will take sometime to come up with a perfect solution.

Source

Apple maintains Music Sales Lead

The latest figures are in from NPD MusicWatch, and they confirm that Apple iTunes is beginning to dominate music sales in the US. Earlier this year, they surpassed music sales by Wal-Mart and these latest stats show that iTunes remains the leading U.S music retailer, with Amazon starting to also climb the charts.

Amazon rose from fifth place to fourth due to two main reasons, the first being that online CD sales are not dipping as fast as those at high street stores, and secondly the fact that Amazon was now gaining sales from its newly launched digital music store, Amazon.mp3.

A quote from the NPD predicts that Apple will continue to enjoy more success, “We expect Apple will consolidate its lead in the retail music market, as CD sales continue to slow,” claims Russ Crupnick who is a entertainment industry analyst for the NPD group.

This latest story is further evidence that the music industry is more reliant on online sales than ever before, I wonder just how many of you use iTunes regularly to purchase your music, before previously going outside to retail stores to buy, the convenience of it all is basically enough to tempt most of us to purchase tracks online these days.

Here is the chart of Music sales in full:

1. iTunes
2. Wal-Mart
3. Best Buy
4. Amazon
5. Target.

Source: Read