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Kaspersky released Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 & Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 recently. Kaspersky 2010 is has very good detection rate and also some enhanced features such as improved identity theft protection and behavior based blocking.

If you are planning to get a license of Kaspersky Antivirus 2010, here is a great opportunity to grab a genuine 6 months license of Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 for absolutely free.

Just follow the steps given below to grab one genuine license key:

1. Head over to the offer page.

2. Click on the big orange button (refer the below image).

 

3. Once you click on the button, you need to sign in with hotmail email ID. In other words, you need to have a hotmail, live or MSN account to grab this offer.

4. You will be given a 6 months genuine license key of Kaspersky Antivirus 2010.

 

5. That’s it.

Microsoft apologized Wednesday after a Polish version of the company's ad had a black man's head replaced with the head of a white man. The image alteration of the picture was making rounds on the forums last night and Microsoft pulled the picture today.

The edit of the Microsoft ad for its Polish division was crude, to say at least. The U.S. ad depicted three people at a conference table: an Asian man, a black man, and a white woman. When localizing the marketing image for Poland, Microsoft had the black man's head clumsily replaced with that of a white man.

As pictured above, the photos are basically identical and the Microsoft ad left room for racial interpretation. However, in the picture, only the black man's head was replaced -- the hands noticeably a different color.

Many thought this was originally a joke, but a double check last night on both Microsoft's U.S. and Polish sites confirmed otherwise. Microsoft apologized and pulled the image from the Polish site today, while "looking into the details of this situation," the company told Cnet. The Polish Microsoft site now features the unaltered image.

A couple of other things are peculiar about Microsoft's (even unedited) image. First of all, the laptop in front of the black man is an Apple MacBook (yes, another Apple product in a Microsoft ad with the logo covered) and the computer monitor in front of the woman is not plugged into anything, even though the keyboard is.

Perhaps Microsoft should either look twice before buying stock photography or just hire a local photographer when they want to localize some marketing images.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com

Sony’s upcoming S-Series Walkman has leaked, prematurely listed at French retailer materiel.net. Two versions of the PMP are detailed, the 8GB Sony NWZ-S544 and the 16GB NWZ-S545, each with a 16:9 aspect QVGA 2.4-inch LCD display and integrated stereo speakers.

There’s also an FM radio with 30 presets, MP3, WMA and AAC support, a built-in microphone and H264/AVC, MP4 and WMV video playback at up to 30fps. Unlike the OLED X-Series Walkman there’s no WiFi, internet access or YouTube playback, but then the S-Series are meant to be a far more affordable breed of PMP.

Battery life is listed as up to 42hrs music playback or 6.5hrs video playback, and there’s a nifty little stand for hands-free use. The listings have since been pulled, but the S-Series started from €129 ($183) for the 8GB model.

Fresh Samsung ultraportable tidbits for you today, with the news that not only will the company’s N510 NVIDIA Ion netbook be shipping in the US come September, but that it will be the first of three models to use the GeForce 9400M GPU. According to documentation acquired by Netbook Choice, the N510 will be joined by the Samsung NP-N511 and NP-N508.

Details of the two new notebooks are unknown; however it’s speculated that the N511 will use a different Atom CPU while the N508 might drop down a size-point and have a 10-inch display. Release dates are similarly unknown.

As for the N510, according to Liliputing that will begin shipping in September with a $599 MRSP. The ultraportable – which has an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 display, HDMI port, Intel Atom CPU and 160GB hard-drive – is expected to land in Europe this month priced at €499 ($707).

According to a "reliable" source cited by Netbook News, the mobile phone manufacturer / adorable couple known as Sony Ericsson is looking to follow Nokia into the netbook (or is that "smartbook?") market. There's not much more to this story at present, although it does make sense -- so we'll take it, with the proverbial grain of salt. And while we're on the subject.

Real-world versions of Web sites can be pretty nifty, and the Twitter and Facebook mouse pads from theMeninos studio are no exception. Both feature a large, fill-in status box, just like you'd find on each of the sites, although in each case the wording has been changed to reference the use of your mouse. I especially like the details on the Twitter one that includes things like the speech bubble nub on the top of the pad, and the faux advertising box with instructions to "just point and have fun."

These pretties set you back $11.99 each, or $17.99 for both--plus a whopping $12 on shipping to the U.S.

Source: http://www.cnet.com

Intel and Microsoft will hold an event next week to discuss collaboration on improvements to Windows 7.

The event, on September 1 in San Francisco, will "share how the two companies collaborated on key enhancements during the development of Windows 7," according to Intel. Steve Smith, vice president and director, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group Operations, and Michael Angiulo, general manager of Windows Planning and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft, will talk at the event. Microsoft plans to launch Windows 7 on October 22.

Windows 7 collaboration will be demonstrated by engineers from both companies, according to Intel. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is working closely with Intel, whose chips will power the vast majority of PCs running Windows 7.

In a blog posted in July, Intel described how Microsoft and Intel "saw unique opportunities to optimize Windows 7 for Intel processor technology" in the areas of performance, power management, and graphics.

The blog discusses improvements to multitasking based on "SMT Parking," which provides additional support to the Windows 7 scheduler for Intel Hyper-threading Technology. With Hyper-threading, the operating system sees a single processor core as two cores (i.e., a dual-core chip becomes a virtual quad-core processor), thus potentially improving multitasking--or doing tasks (threads) simultaneously.

In addition, improvements over Vista for boot and shutdown times have been implemented during the Windows 7 development cycle, according to the blog.

And on Intel's Web site, the chipmaker lists desktop motherboards and associated drivers that have passed logo certification for Windows 7.

Another beneficiary of improved Windows 7 technology: Intel solid-state drives, which are typically faster than hard-disk drives and gaining ground in niche markets such as high-end laptops, gaming PCs, and servers. SSDs will be able to take advantage of Windows 7 technology called the Trim Command. Trim will allow blocks of data to be freed up for reuse to better maintain the performance of the SSD.

Windows 7 will also do more than previous operating systems with graphics via DirectX 11. Advanced Micro Devices has described DirectX 11-related technology that enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games. And, beyond games, Windows 7 has the potential to turn a graphics processing unit (GPU) from AMD or Nvidia into a general-purpose compute engine, used to accelerate everyday computing tasks like a central processing unit, or CPU. Specifically, "the compute shader" can be used to speed up more common computing tasks. The buzz word used to describe this technology is a mouthful: GPGPU or general-purpose graphics processing unit.

Source: http://www.cnet.com

Microsoft on Monday announced plans for mobile software that aims to allow people in emerging markets to access various Internet programs using lower-end feature phones.

The software, known as OneApp, is due out later this year and should allow people in emerging markets to access services like Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger using the kinds of inexpensive phones most often sold for $20 or $30. Microsoft said Blue Label Telecoms in South Africa will be the first to use OneApp and will use it to offer phones that ship with a dozen mobile applications, including a mobile wallet program as well as the social-networking tools.

While not an operating system, OneApp is a software environment within which many kinds of programs can run. The key to OneApp, Microsoft said, is the fact that the applications and data run largely from the cloud. That means that OneApp can run on phones with rather meager memory and processing abilities. OneApp itself takes up only about 150 kilobytes of memory, as opposed to the many megabytes often used on programs for smartphones. Individual applications can be as small as 10 to 15 kilobytes.

"When you launch an application, (OneApp) only loads the part of the application that you want," said Amit Mital, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's "unlimited potential" unit, which focuses on emerging markets. "We use very intelligent and sophisticated caching. The rest of it sits in the cloud."

Microsoft has been working on OneApp for the past year and a half, noting that there are hundreds of millions of feature phones in emerging markets, most of which aren't being used to run software.

"People have used them just for voice and SMS" (Short Message Service), Mital said. "What we want to do is unlock their power so they can be used from a broader set of services and applications."

The move comes as Microsoft is also struggling to keep up in the smartphone race against heightened competition from the likes of Apple, Google, Research In Motion, and others. Microsoft said that OneApp is separate from its Windows Mobile efforts.

Mital stressed that OneApp is an adjunct to Windows Mobile, which is still the company's bet for smartphones, and is largely aimed at emerging markets, rather than developed ones.

OneApp is Microsoft's plan for developing markets for the here and now. Longer-term, Microsoft has been exploring a concept called "phone plus," in which a smartphone could be plugged into a television and keyboard to act as a sort of basic computer.

With OneApp, Microsoft will find itself competing against applications written for Sun's J2ME.

Mital said that the big advantage of OneApp is that programs written for it should run on most OneApp-enabled phones, something he said is often not the case with Java.

"If you build an app for one phone it may or may not work on another phone," Mital said. "The development cost is extremely excessive. You go through the development cycle over and over. That is just debilitating."

For now, Microsoft is working directly with select partners to develop OneApp, but eventually Microsoft plans to release a software development kit to allow others to write their own OneApp programs. Programs for OneApp can be written using tools like XML and JavaScript, Mital said. "The world does not need another new programming paradigm. We were very determined to use existing programming paradigms."

In addition to Blue Label Telecoms, which is launching shortly, Mital said that Microsoft hopes to announce one or two more carriers using OneApp before the end of the year.

Although there are plenty of feature phones still shipping in developed markets, such as the United States and Europe, Mital said Microsoft is focusing on emerging markets.

"Right now my team is extremely focused on emerging markets," Mital said. "There's literally billions of customers in these markets."

Source: http://www..cnet.com

Microsoft has just confirmed that they will be releasing Zune HD player - their successor to Zune player. Besides a MP3 player and a HD Video player, it will also serve as a Pocket internet device with WiFi connectivity and a Web browser.

With the Zune HD, Microsoft has taken a big step into the Multimedia market. Zune player was their not so successful attempt to gain market share in Multimedia industry. Even after Zune 2, they are no where closer to their expectations with the Zune player. The iPod has stayed the leader in the Multimedia device market share holding 72.7% of the share with Zune a mere 3.2%. However, the Zune HD is likely to boost their market share (provided it is not over-priced). Here is the chart:

Here are the specs:

When you think about a cool mobile phone user interface, you probably think of Google Android or the more obvious Apple iPhone. Both designs are not only revolutionary in terms of technology but they're simply easy on the eye and exceptionally user friendly.

However, if you think about the Windows phone OS the same thought do not cross through your mind. Visually, Microsoft's Windows phone OS get trampled by Google's and Apple’s coolness. Likewise Blackberry makes Microsoft Phone OS as if it's from the Stone Age.

Just when it seems that Microsoft will lose a lot of its market share, the software giant firm decided to redesign the OS for the cellular market which can be installed on cell phones later this year and may boast a myriad of new capabilities.

Microsoft places consumers' needs at the heart of its product design: with the Window Phone OS you can take pictures and access Facebook and Twitter, edit a Microsoft document or an Excel spreadsheet and email these files. This new OS will be particularly useful for consumers in the corporate sector.

The whole interface has had makers aimed at making the OS more intuitive and finger-friendly. In the latest OS, care has been given to the home screen.

The need to drill down to an application is eliminated. Microsoft will also initiate a series of related support products from an application store to Myphone, an online backup service that already works well in beta.

The inevitable question yet to be answered in whether Microsoft can compete with market leaders. The figures at this point suggest that it has steep catching up to do. Industry is densely competitive. Microsoft's share of the cellphones' OS market has fallen as the iPhone has wormed its way into corporations by licensing Microsoft Exchange so that it can handle Active Sync push notifications and calendaring.

So while users enjoy the sleekness of the iPhone or the coolness of the Android, Microsoft is brewing what it hopes to be its next big break in the mobile phone OSs market.

Google just announced about a new project they are working on. Its the Google Chrome OS. Google is amazed by the feedback of their web browser Google Chrome with over 30 million users. Now, Google thinks that the Operating Systems today are not Web-friendly or Web-optimized. So, Google is making an Operating System called Google Chrome OS which will be focused on Web users.

Google Chrome OS will be a light-weight and Open Source OS targeted for netbooks. The source code will be available in around the last quarter of 2009 where as the OS will be available to consumers in the end of 2010.

More on official Google Blog post.

Microsoft has launched latest version of its famous video editing software Movie Maker for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Unfortunately this version doesn’t support Windows XP.

Windows Live Movie Maker has been upgraded with lots of new transitions and visual effects which gives you better range for editing your videos. Windows Live Movie Maker 2009 also lets you upload your videos directly to Facebook and YouTube. This latest release also has ability of editing HD (high definition) videos.

I have seen and reviewed quite some twitter tools, but one which I am going to review today is a bit new in this niche. Screenr which launched yesterday is a screen casting tool powered by twitter’s oAuth system which allows you to post your recorded screencast on your twitter account easily.

Recording your screen with Screenr is really too simple just login there using your twitter credentials and then hit the Record button, you will prompt there to a new page where Screenr will run right from within your browser. Once you have recorded video you can tweet it or you can simple save it there and then manually tweet it later.

Screenr allows you to record videos up to 5 minutes and it also gives you facility to embed your record video on your blog/website or upload it directly you YouTube or simply just download it as MP4 file for your iPhone or Desktop.

So far, Screenr looks quite promising and could give a tough competition to its competitor by reason of its twitter integration feature which you can also say is the USP of this site.