During the fall of 2008, Nokia also acquired Qt that was initially developed by Troltech as a proprietary software. Nokia released the source code of Qt under LGPL after the acquisition. Nobody understood what Nokia was upto, because Qt ES (formerly known as Qtopia Core) wasn’t so popular at that point of time. Later, when Meamo development community created a support for Qt framework, it got clear that MeeGo applications can be developed with Qt! With Qt, it is possible to develop applications for a range of devices like netbooks, notebooks, palmtops, smart phones, PDAs, tablet PCs and other handhelds. Qt applications are very rich in GUI and have proved to be solid. Opera browser and Skype are popular examples. This makes MeeGo a serious competitor for Android and iPhone. MeeGo can be downloaded and byte-copied to a thumb drive for testing. It has got a pleasing appearance, vibrant colors and a nice interface and nice big icons designed for touch environment.

If we look at the new Windows mobiles, without skype they are rated ‘poor’ for user experiences. Skype has already announced its support to iPhone, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry and has ditched Microsoft again. In such circumstances, Microsoft is not left with many choices, they should either go open source with Windows Mobile or come up with their own hardware to compete with iPhone and android powered HTCs.

There is no clear winner in the battle of these premium touch phones, but the competition is getting tougher by the day.

Top vendors confirm that clients were asking for more services to be provided for lesser money. How could that be possible in an industry with a growth rate of more than 15% per annum? How could vendors sustain their growth momentum and, more importantly, their profit margin under the circumstances? It was hard for companies to sustain their growth margin solely by reducing their capital expenditures. Instead, they had to look for ways to increase revenue simultaneously. That, actually led to the evolution of the business model where billing would be based on the business outcome rather than the employees work or time. Cloud Computing came into limelight as a result of acceptance of this new model.

In Cloud Computing, you needed to pay only for the services you availed of and didn’t have to bother about the hardware and other expenses. This was more than acceptable to clients because they had to pay more only if they were getting more. The disadvantage though, for the vendors, was the low margins. Vendors now looked for multiple contracts from the same client to sustain their revenues. They proposed a complete outsourcing package to clients by beefing up their portfolio and this happened through acquisition of niche players also. Clients too, were looking for a similar alternative and they awarded bulk contracts to the same vendor reducing the number of vendors drastically. By this, clients could negotiate more and concentrate on fewer vendors.

This new trend has forced outsourcing companies to integrate IT and BPO services to win more contracts. Many top IT-services players have added BPO to their portfolio to provide end-to-end service to their clients. Conforming to this model oil giant, British Petroleum, has reduced their number of vendors from 40 to 6. BPO players are also striving to add IT services to their portfolio. To this end, they are partnering up with small IT companies to create simplified systems that make life easier for their clients.  So the recession has helped clients to get more work done at a lesser cost. As for vendors, it has aided in the expansion of their portfolio and area of expertise.For the employees, it has been an opportunity to expand their skill-set and hence demand bigger salaries. A burst in the economy is inevitable after a boom and our economy is slowly gearing up for another boom. This is a natural cycle and will prevail until the expiration of earth!!

Normally, after scratching your head you would probably go digging through your notes, calendar or spreadsheets to find out what caused the spikes in traffic. If that’s unsuccessful, you might try recollecting an event that triggered it. For example, there could have been a press release that caused a spike on a certain day. Or it could be due to some significant change made to your website like a tweak made to the design / page / content.

Tracking down every change that has caused a traffic dip or spike may be difficult in the long run. Annotations solve this by allowing Google Analytics users to add notes to dates within Google Analytics reports.

Annotations allow any user with access to a Google Analytics profile to leave shared or private notes right on the display graph. Add an annotation specifying what was done and on which page, that way when you notice a change in the performance of the site, or a page you can see why there has been a change. A quick note from a colleague can provide you with records on any event or interesting shift in trend on a specific date saving you hours of work (and frustration).

By allowing you to note your changes at the actual date of change, you can literally go back to the point where your traffic peaked or dropped and see what caused the trend.

Here’s a quick 1 minute video of Google Analytics Annotation in action!

Annotations are a good way to mark holidays and other company events because occasions such as these may uncover traffic trends that haven’t been spotted before. They give you even more accountability for your results and allow you to make easy-to-understand reports that attribute actions to results.

This feature is handy especially when you have to manage several websites and want to keep track of updates across the different domains.

Android 2.2 Froyo(Frozen Yoghurt) offers the following variances compared to Android 2.1 Eclair.

JIT Comparison: Android 2.2 Froyo Vs Android 2.1 Eclair

Froyo makes Google-based phones faster and more powerful with added features. It has:

o JIT(Just In Time) compiler
o Free additional RAM
o OpenGL ES 2.0 enhancements
o Wifi and USB tethering
o Flash 10.1 support
o Fixed problem with “crazy screen” / Resolution of cross multi touch
o Activation of Color Trackball
o Enable FM radio

Features like Hot Spot Tethering and USB Tethering make it more appealing. Wifi tethering is now available on Android phone. Certain devices like the Nexus One can be turned into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot that can be shared with up to 8 devices.You can use your Android-powered phone as a 3G connection for a Windows or Linux laptop by connecting their phone to the computer with a USB cable. The connection is then shared between the two devices. Watch how

Ending all the speculation as to whether it will be possible to install applications directly into the SD card and run it, this feature is enabled with Froyo. Now, Froyo will update all market applications simply by the click of one button: Update all.

It can be concluded that Android 2.2 makes Google-based phones faster and more powerful with added features

o Ignore this, the ones who do not like Flash, Froyo has it.
o Froyo also has HTML5, the rival Web content standard that Apple prefers, and it does it faster than the iPhone.
o Froyo also makes existing Android phones run faster – up to 4x faster, according to early reports.(Seven reasons why Android 2.2 Froyo beats the iPhone)
o Other useful features that the iPhone doesn’t have: native Wi-Fi and USB tethering and native Web apps.

To know more about how you can leverage these to benefit your Android application development, please get in touch with bdg@qburst.com.

But “being out there” is not all! Social media is all about conversations, and conversations need to be listened to.

Are companies listening to the conversations that go on about them? If they aren’t, they could be in for a surprise. What some companies are yet to understand is that the Internet buzz can turn negative to the extent of even ruining businesses. It was only a couple of months back that Nestle tasted the sourness of social media. Listening and closely following Internet conversations can often aid timely interventions to deflect possible catastrophic outcomes. However, keeping track of all the different threads of online conversations is a big challenge. Social media monitoring and analytic tools go a long way in helping organizations on this front.

A typical social media monitoring tool scours the Internet for specific keywords/ search phrases and aggregates relevant bits of ‘mentions’ to display collectively on an easy-to-use dashboard. These mentions can be tagged or grouped based on a number of factors like sentiment of the article, type of media source, credibility of the source, etc. While many of these online tools are fully automated, there are a few like Trackur that provide for human intervention to make the results even more meaningful.

Snapshot of the Trackur Dashboard showing results for the search term “Qburst”.

Based on the data collected, grouped and analyzed, users can generate customized reports and trending charts which can also be exported. Some of these tools have extensive collaboration features which make them all the more attractive to companies. Radian6 and ViralHeat are examples of tools that go beyond just monitoring, to offer value-added features like third party application integration. Tools in their genre also provide co-branded or white label products for agencies.

Reputation management services go one step deeper. These monitor, analyze as well as take proactive or reactive measures to help maintain a general good impression on the web. Media monitoring and analysis is only a part of online reputation management services (ORM). ORM covers a wider range of services including creation of social media profiles, search engine optimization, development of microsites, promotion of positive content, link building and removal of negative content.

As a result, ORM services can be much more expensive. While social media monitoring tools are available for as low as $1/month, streamlined ORM packages fall in the price range of $100 – $5000 per month. Some providers have a set-up fee in addition to the monthly or yearly charges. WebpageFX is a web design and development company that offers Internet marketing services. Their reputation management packages are bundled with an interesting variety of features for which they charge a one-time investment along with the monthly fee.

As with SEO services, online reputation management services are also offered on a consultancy basis. Tailor-made solutions can be drawn up to suit specific requirements. Large corporations and enterprises may opt for such customized services while SMBs would probably find the streamlined services or tools more affordable.

Big or small, companies do need to monitor social media chatter to maintain their reputation and increase customer base. The options are many; businesses just need to sift and sort through the market to find a solution that best suits their need.

Semantics

The main overhead in HTML4 is the extensive usage of <div> elements to mark the various sections of a standard web page like header, columns, footers etc. But HTML5 has flown in with the right solution for the same, with better semantics for marking these elements in a more structured way. New elements would be able to identify each section distinctively.. Elements like <header>, <footer>, <nav> etc., provide a more disciplined semantics making the lives of web developers easier.

Advanced Audio and Video Support

Advanced tags like <audio> and <video> tags are going to make the process of audio and video embedding a much smoother and faster one. Apart from audio and video support, HTML5 has provisions to view animations and other Rich Internet Applications too. This could turn out to be a real challenge for its counter parts like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight.

Offline Storage

HTML5 is on stage with a highly advanced version of Cookies through an offline storage system. HTML5 promises an offline storage of around 5 MB, much bigger than the capacity of Cookies. The exponents have named this as ‘Local Storage’ that would enable the users to continue using applications when the connection gets terminated under certain non-predictable conditions, through its offline storage of data.

Hyper Threading

One of the most interesting features of HTML5 is that different background threads can be utilized for processing. This proves to be one of the best solutions for web applications that use huge scripts for processing. Performance would also remain unaffected through this hyper threading process.

The Art of ‘Canvas’ing

HTML5 brings forth a new element by name – <canvas>. The <canvas> element holds the power to draw shapes, graphs, gradients etc which would enable to canvas drawings of any shapes in your web page. In short, HTML5 provides the feature where you can render any images or graphics dynamically with the support of javascript libraries.

Geolocation

Geolocation is yet another brand new experience that HTML5 plans to launch.In other words, one would be able to locate the Geo information of a person who browses the website through a Geolocation API support in all browsers. The integration of a high level interface of Global Positioning System (GPS) makes it possible for locating the geographical information of the user.

The fascinating features about HTML5 mentioned above are just a few among the hundreds. The list of new elements that have been launched as part of HTML5 goes endless, empowering the users beyond boundaries.

The world is all set for the revolution. Are you?

So, what makes iPhone 4.0 superior?
Why should I have it?

1) Multitasking
A simple task switcher (might remind you of a windows task manager plus app switching ability) can be used to see all running applications while allowing user to switch between running applications. For now, the multitasking is limited to audio streaming, VoIP and GPS applications. Other applications can be suspended in the background. The question of whether it is actually multitasking is valid. To the user, it is, but under the hood, all system resources are available to all applications, with the system assuming the role of a traffic controller, giving preference to some tasks and less preference to others as needed. Obviously, the question of RAM involved will be raised — but it is to be remembered that iPhone does not load the entire application to the memory; only that part that accesses the service is loaded. Hence, there will not be an issue of slower performance on devices with lesser RAM.

2) Information Safety and security
From the perspective of an IT manager, the number one feature of iPhone 4.0 is that the device pass key is used as an encryption key to protect email messages and attachments stored on iPhone 3GS. This security enhancement means that business critical information is safe even if the device is compromised.

3) Resume or fast application switching
With iPhone’s multitasking, actually, certain functions of applications (GPS lock or video stream) can be “paused” so that it gives the feel that the application is running the background. When the application is re-opened, they are restored to exactly the same state they were in when they were closed/switched.

4) Alerts and notifications
Would you like to know when your farm is ready to be harvested when you are using another application on your iPhone? Since the iPhone does not have a start bar or a dock-type interface, it might be assumed to be difficult. Well, rejoice! Notifications will be sent between applications on the phone and not just from remote servers. In other words, if something important or fun happens in an application you have opened and moved away from, a notification will pop up in the application you’re using at the time.

5) Better Mail
This is a feature that makes iPhone 4.0 so much better than its predecessor. The OS allows users to set up multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts and now works with Exchange Server 2010. The new unified inbox feature allows users to see messages from all their email accounts conveniently displayed in a single inbox, or they can quickly switch between inboxes to see messages from any single account. If users receive an attachment that they want to save or edit, Mail now lets you open attachments with compatible apps from the App Store.

6) Application sharing
Apps can be updated without requiring users to connect to their computers or go through the App Store. iPhone OS 4 enables enterprises to securely host and wirelessly distribute in-house applications to employees over Wi-Fi and 3G. This is bound to increase popularity of iPhone OS 4.0 in enterprises.

Pushing past the observation that there seems to be a 4 application limit, the point that not much RAM will be used may not be all that great after all. Lets say, iPhone comes up with a device with enough RAM, it might never be used. It is questionable how much it will benefit a user, which means Apple may have no need to give users more RAM. The penalty is that developers are more limited to what they can do in the background.

QBurst Technologies has already starting working on the iPhone OS 4.0’s development kit (SDK). If you wish to know more, do not hesitate to contact us at: bdg@qburst.com

Skipfish is an open source scanner written in C language used to detect vulnerabilities in web applications. Users can compile the code and execute it for installation. Skipfish crawls through the web application, detects the security probes and generates a report for security assessments.

Features

Skipfish overcomes some of the common issues associated with other web security scanners. It is designed for high performance. It can handle 7000+ requests per second against local instances, 2000+ for LAN/MAN networks and 500+ against Internet targets. Its usability extends even to websites with multi-frameworks and different filtering rules. It also chalks out tricky scenarios including stored XSS (path, parameters, headers), blind SQL and XML injection.

The main security checks performed by the scanner are categorized based on the risk levels and are listed in the Skipfish wiki. This tool is expected to support Linux, FreeBSD 7.0+, MacOS X, and Windows (Cygwin) environments.

Limitations

However, Skipfish is not found to satisfy some of the major requirements charted out in the WASC (Web Application Security Scanner Evaluation Criteria).

The Skipfish 1.29 beta version is currently available for download.

The term ‘Cloud Computing’ has been creating a buzz in the Information Technology space for a couple of years. There are so many articles, blogs, pod-casts and web-casts available in the Internet about Cloud Computing. More and more companies are moving to tap the opportunity in it to stay competitive. Merrill Lynch predicts that Cloud Computing will be $95 billion industry in 5 years and 12% of the software industry would be pulled into it. So what’s Cloud Computing all about? Why is it considered as an unprecedented solution to reduce the IT costs?

According to Wikipedia, Cloud Computing is “Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are used by computers and other devices on-demand, like a traditional utility.” In simple words, we can say that, “The delivering of services that is hosted in the Internet”. Google Apps, Sales-force.com, Zoho web applications are all examples of services hosted in the Cloud. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is another example of a web service that provides re-sizable computing capacity in the Cloud. The Internet is often represented in diagrams and flow charts by the Cloud symbol and from that the name has been derived.

Cloud Computing is broadly classified into three categories – 1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) 3. Platform as a Service (PaaS).

1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – In Software-as-a-Service model, the vendor hosts applications on the server and it is distributed to the customers over the Internet. The price will be based on the usage of a subscription. It has been estimated that this model will be worth $15 billion by 2011 and take way more than 30% of the software market. Salesforce.com is a good example.

2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – In this model, the vendor owns the infrastructure like storage, networking devices, hardware etc and will be responsible for facilitating and maintaining it. The user will pay for the service on the basis of the usage. This model is often helpful for web 2.0 start-ups who are keen on reducing their IT costs. IaaS model also helps companies to reduce their expenses in creating and maintaining data centers, which contributes heavily to the capital expenditure of the IT companies. Amazon web services is an example of IaaS model.

3. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In PaaS, the vendor will host a set of software and product development tools on a provided space. The biggest advantage is that the user needs just a computer and internet connection to start building applications and he doesn’t have to worry about the infrastructure. Some vendors even provide pre-built business applications, which helps developers to build applications from the scratch. Google Apps is a perfect example for this model.

We have seen the different types of services offered in Cloud Computing. Now, the Cloud itself can be classified into three – Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds. In Public Clouds, the vendors offer services ranging from storage, servers and other services to different customers within the Cloud. The vendor can achieve ‘economies of scale’ through this endeavour and is considered as an effective pricing model even in recession. Data Security is an issue, which the vendors have to deal with and that is the only disadvantage these type of Clouds possess.

Private Clouds are often used by individual companies, who deal with service level issues and want data security. In Private Clouds, the particular company controls the access, the applications that run on the Cloud and the complete administration. They own all the facilities including networks and servers.

Hybrid Clouds are the combination of Private and Public Clouds, i.e., in a controlled way, the vendors use some part of the Cloud and share other parts. Hybrid Clouds are useful for customers who own simple applications that will not require any synchronization or have complex databases.

There is no doubt that Cloud Computing will revolutionize the entire IT Industry and it is just a matter of time before majority of the players move to this platform. By 2020, at least 40-50% of the entire software providers will embrace cloud computing.

Amazon’s kindle, a wireless electronic portable reader which facilitates e-book reading has now become more capsuled, making it more convenient for people on the go.  BlackBerry users no longer need to carry a separate kindle to read their favorite e-books. Amazon, has now launched a Kindle app for BlackBerry, enabling the readers to purchase and read e-books. The iPhone/iTouch users already having Amazon’s kindle app, can sync the BlackBerry app with it.  The readers can thus maintain their book marks consistently across devices. Users can download the kindle app free of cost. Just like subscribing for magazines, books and news papers  using the Amazon kindle, readers need to pay only for the content they wish to download and read.

BlackBerry models, Curve 8520 & 8900, Tour 9630, Bold 9000 & 9700, Storm 9500, 9530, & 9550, supports this kindle app.

However, the user experience through a BlackBerry screen needs to be judged when compared to a Kindle device that provides a crisp black-and-white screen with regular paper readability.

Amazon is further in the process of developing similar kindle app versions for Mac and iPad.

Click here to read more.