Gmail to Support Million-plus Student Users

With the help of an Australian partner, Google is close to landing a contract to support 1.3 million students with Gmail.

The deal for student e-mail accounts at public schools and colleges in New South Wales is not quite finalized. But it is expected to be worth roughly AU$9.5 million (US$9.05 million) over a three-year period with an optional two-year extension, according to a press release from a New South Wales government agency.

SMS Management & Technology, an Australian systems integrator, will handle the implementation, which will be in place by year-end, the release said.

Beyond money, this particular type of customer win has major strategic value for Google as it attempts to wrest enterprise market share from dominant players like Microsoft, according to search analyst Stephen Arnold.

"Google's efforts to get students and academic institutions to use the company's cloud-based services like Gmail is part of the GOOG's strategy to penetrate the enterprise," Arnold wrote on his blog on Tuesday. "But it is a longer-term strategy because Google is willing to get students comfy with its products and services, let them get their jobs, and then pull Google along with them. ... The real payoff, to my way of thinking, will be the students who graduate with Google as part of their thought processes."

School-district officials could not immediately be reached Tuesday, and a Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to a number of questions, such as what type of e-mail system Gmail will replace. One report in the Australian media said the school has been using Microsoft's Outlook system.

---

Source: pcworld.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: google,mail,internet

| Continue Reading..

IsoHunt adds 10.000 Free and Legal Albums

When BitTorrent sites have come under attack by media groups and their battalions of lawyers, it’s usual for them to pull up the drawbridge and keep the site going as is, and try to get the case over with as soon as possible. The other option is to close down and hunt for a settlement, but isoHunt, like its other big-site brethren, hasn’t. Despite a legal campaign that’s now over two years old, it continues to grow and add features and functionality.

One of these new developments has been the addition of increasing numbers of Creative Commons (CC) licensed material. Creative Commons media is licensed by the creator, to be shared - usually with some restrictions - and is the same license used by TorrentFreak. It’s not a niche license, instead it is becoming increasingly popular, with Nine Inch Nails having released their Ghosts album under a CC license earlier this year.

With this is mind, isoHunt has announced a partnership with Jamendo, a site that deals in Creative Commons licensed music. Reaching the 10,000 album milestone only days ago, content available on Jamendo is growing quickly and when you grow, it helps to be able to get the content out there. This is why isoHunt decided to partner with several BitTorrent sites. isoHunt’s owner, Gary Fung, has been a long time supporter of Creative Commons and public domain works, and has stated that there is a strong future in Creative Commons material at isoHunt.

Laurent Kratz, CEO of Jamendo told TorrentFreak “Jamendo uses the Creative Commons licensing scheme to keep the rules very straight forward : copy as much as you can eat, the artist, the right-holders are ok. The new thing about partnering with a torrent portal like isoHunt, is that Jamendo has started an editorial work on top.”

“We receive up to 500 new albums per week, from more than 60 countries in the world,” Kratz said. “In order to maximize the interest of millions using torrent search engines every day, it was critical to only highlight a subset of all the albums we receive every day. It’s not about discriminating one band from another, it’s about getting anonymous BitTorrent fans to Jamendo, and discovering unsigned bands from everywhere in the world.”

Jamendo is also partnering with SumoTorrent, and torrent.to, and has been experimenting with mininova. In addition, their torrents are also available through Vuze. What better way to “stick it to the **AA” as so many of our commenters put it, than to ignore their memberships product, and use sites like this instead.

---

Source: torrentfreak.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: torrent,legal,download

| Continue Reading..

First look: OpenSUSE 11 out, offers best KDE 4 experience

Novell announced the official release of OpenSUSE 11 yesterday. It's the latest version of the community-driven Linux distribution and includes significant new features like the KDE 4 desktop environment and the PulseAudio sound server.

We tested both the GNOME and KDE flavors of OpenSUSE 11 by installing from the Live CD images. These work reasonably well and provide an installation experience comparable to that of Ubuntu and Fedora. The few minor issues that we encountered when we tested the beta 2 live installers back in May have all been resolved. There is also a full installer that is offered as a 4.3 GB DVD image. It provides a highly polished visual interface and an enormous package selection. For most users, who only require one desktop environment, the live installers are probably more practical than the full installer.

OpenSUSE 11 ships with KDE 4.0.4, which is acceptably stable. It's not quite ready yet for all KDE users, but it's far more complete and robust than the original KDE 4.0 release. The distribution also ships with full support for KDE 3.5 so that those users who aren't ready to make the switch yet aren't left out in the cold. Although 4.0.4 doesn't have the 4.1 plasma hotness, it does have usable implementations of important features like support for creating multiple panels, changing panel height, and setting the edge each panel is connected to.

The OpenSUSE GNOME installation uses version 2.22 of the desktop environment, which was released in March. GNOME 2.22 includes some important new architectural improvements like a new virtual filesystem layer.

The most recent versions of several popular applications are included in OpenSUSE 11, including the Firefox 3 web browser, which was released earlier this week. The installer ships with Firefox 3 beta 5, but the final version will be made available through an Internet update. OpenSUSE 11 also includes Banshee 1.0, a recently released overhaul of the popular open source audio player. As we noted in our recent review of Banshee 1.0 beta 2, it's an excellent program that delivers solid multimedia functionality and a very nice user interface.

OpenSUSE 11 also comes with the aesthetically rich Compiz window manager enabled by default, and it ships with a few cool new plugins like cube deformation that you won't find in the latest Ubuntu release.

This is a very strong OpenSUSE release with a lot of compelling improvements. OpenSUSE 11 offers the best KDE 4 experience out there and will continue to be our reference distribution for KDE testing. OpenSUSE 11 is also an increasingly solid choice for GNOME users—its unique GNOME customizations add a nice level of polish, and the inclusion of Banshee and Beagle ensure that it provides a better set of default applications out of the box than Ubuntu and Fedora. It's no Ubuntu-killer, but we can definitely expect to see OpenSUSE gain a larger following in the coming months.

---

Source: arstechnica.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: Linux,System

| Continue Reading..

24 Free Mac Design Programs

Last year the most successful post on this blog was 45 Best Freeware Design Programs on PC - a hand picked list of free design programs for the PC. Now the time has come for MAC fans. The funny thing is, before starting I thought “well maybe It won’t be as prolific as the PC list since Mac has a smaller piece of the share market cake”. But as a pleasant surprise the scene for free design applications in mac is as interesting as the PC’s - maybe not as big, but as varied and of good quality.

Indeed you will find at least one excellent option in many designs fields. Like Maya for 3D animation, Archicad for Building modeling, or GIMP and Inkspace for bitmap and vector editing. Definitely worth checking out. Sure it is not going to be the Adobe Creative Suit Killer but I am quite sure you will find some pearls out there.

Animation

Lego Digital Designer

With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual Lego bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation online in Lego Factory, or you can print out an inventory of bricks and take it to any Legoland theme park or LEGO Store. The latest version of LDD is 1.5 This version has increased stability and fixes a number of small bugs from version 1.4.

New in Version 2: Improved building experience, quicker brick selection, easier to connect bricks when building, new brick palette tool, more bricks, partly built models for easy start, new backgrounds, new UI, and more.

Overview | Download

Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition (OS X) 8.5

Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is a special version of Autodesk® Maya® software, which provides free access to Maya for non-commercial use. It gives 3D graphics and animation students, industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics an opportunity to explore most aspects of the award-winning Autodesk® Maya® Complete software in a non-commercial capacity. The Maya Personal Learning Edition software is available for 32-bit Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional and Apple® Mac OS® X (for Macintosh Power PC or Intel-based Macintosh computers) operating systems.

Autodesk Maya PLE is based on Autodesk Maya 8.5.

Overview | Download

Graphisoft ArchiCAD 11

The ArchiCAD educational version is a fully-functional copy of the commercial version, with the only exception that it prints a watermark-style logo onto all ArchiCAD project files created or opened with the ArchiCAD student version. You, as a student, will have at your fingertips the very same modeling solution - ArchiCAD - that you will encounter after graduation on the job, out there in the real, competitive market among great architects who have built their reputation on it. So, take a moment to read detailed description of ArchiCAD 11, to be clear just how this design tool can transform your approach to building modeling for a fun, satisfying and successful architectural career.

Overview | Download

Authoring Tools

Simple CSS 2

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to specify the styles of fonts and other page elements on your sites. It makes it easier for you to update styles too, because when done right, you only need to make a single change to update the styles on multiple pages and elements. Another bonus is that your visitor’s browser needs to load less data per page, helping you reduce your data transfer usage while serving the same information. That means you’ll be able to accommodate more site visitors without having to spend more on data transfer. Your pages will also load faster. To help you work with CSS, we’ve created a tool called Simple CSS, which runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. Simple CSS allows you to create cascading style sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface.

Version 2.0 includes faster WYSIWYG previews. Version 2.0 includes faster WYSIWYG preview

Overview | Download

Blender (PowerPC) 2.46

Blender is the open-source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. It is available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Version 2.44 offers numerous bug fixes. Version 2.46 includes cloth and fur simulation, physics caching and baking, shading, glossy reflection and refraction, raytraced soft shadows, improved rendering features, and more.

Overview | Download

Scribus v1.3.3.11

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

Overview | Download

Colorate 1.1

Colorate is a utility for creation of harmonized color palettes and color schemes, aimed from hobbyist to professional designers.

Colorate fully automatizes the palette generation from a particular color swatch, selected from the standard Color Panel, dragged from other application or obtained from an image through the integrated Image Analyze feature

Overview | Download

Front End Digital Media WorkShop 2.0

Front End Digital Media Workshop harnesses the power of QuickTime to bring you powerful batch based conversion of sound, video, and image files. Resize, resample, join, split, trim, basic edits, selective conversions via marked I/O points are some of the tools. All in an environment that provides powerful play back features including variable speed, slow motion, full screen playback and video to image frame capture. Batch lists can be saved and also used as play lists. Some of the dozens of supported formats include: MP4, MOV, AIFF, 3GP, 3GP2, WAV, AU, AVI (basic codecs), JPEG, PICT, PNG, PSD, BMP, and TIFF. QuickTime video filters and effects are also available.

Overview | Download

HyperEngine-AV 1.5

Multimedia authoring software for capturing, editing, organizing, processing, and exporting video, audio, and text to create DVD quality movies and slide shows. Features a groundbreaking “trackless” workspace that allows the free manipulation of an unlimited number of video, audio, stills, and text tracks. Editable transitions are created automatically when video clips are dragged on top of each other. The full palette of QuickTime effects is available. HyperEngine-AV comes with twelve studio-quality effects from Arboretum’s Hyperprism suite of audio processors. More can be added by purchasing a license, including Ray Gun for cleaning up scratchy vinyl, tape hiss, and hum.

HyperEngine-AV also offers text features to display credits, section titles, or karaoke lyrics with fully editable font, size, type, color, style, alignment, and scroll direction. HyperEngine-AV is for both novice digital moviemakers and professionals alike.

Overview & Download

Illustration

DAZ Studio 2.2.2.15

DAZ Studio is a feature rich 3D figure posing and animation tool that enables users of any skill level to easily create stunning digital imagery. Whether you’re a 3D newbie or an avid 3D artist, you’ll find DAZ Studio is the perfect tool for designing unique digital art and animation with virtual people, animals, props, vehicles, backgrounds and more. Experience total creative freedom with DAZ Studio and express yourself in 3D like never before.

Overview | Download

Bryce 5.5

Create breathtaking realistic 3D landscapes and animations with DAZ 3D Bryce 5.5. The easy user interface simplifies the design process for a novice or the seasoned professional. Start out building or importing a landscape as impressive as the Grand Canyon. Populate it with buildings, people or any other object you create or from the extensive DAZ 3D library. The Light Lab provides you robust control over your sunsets, moonlight nights or high-noon ambiance. Tree Lab allows you to plant your landscape like the gardens of Versailles. You’ll have to register your copy of Bryce 5.5 on the publishers web-site to gain access to your free Bryce serial number.

Overview & Download

Google SketchUp 6

Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create, export and present 3D models. Whether you want to design a new deck for your house, build models for Google Earth, or teach geometry to your fifth-graders, you can use SketchUp to see your ideas in 3D. And when you’re done, you can export an image, make a movie or print out a view of what you made.

Overview | Download

POV-Ray

POV-Ray is a three-dimensional ray tracing engine. It takes information you supply and simulates the way light interacts with the objects you’ve defined, creating stunning 3D pictures.
Overview | Download

Gnuplot 4

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari and many other platforms. It was originally intended as to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot supports many different types of terminals: interactive screen terminals (with mouse and hotkey functionality), pen plotters (like hpgl), printers (including postscript and many color devices), and printings to output file as vectorial pseudo-devices like LaTeX, metafont, pdf, svg, or bitmap png. Gnuplot is easily extensible to include new devices.

Overview | Download

Comipro Plus 4.0.2

Comipro Plus is a cartoon production software. You can produce the cartoon work with the kind of feeling which compiles the document with the word processor as the material using the picture and the photograph. Version 4.0.20 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Overview & Download

Scratch

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Overview | Download

iPhoto 4.0.3

Whether you have twenty or twenty thousand digital photos, iPhoto 4 keeps track of them all, automatically organizing them so you can find them fast. Lightning fast. Easy to use, iPhoto puts you in charge of your photographs–helping you import them, organize them into albums, enhance their appearance, as well as, share them in print, via email, over the web and in stunning coffee-table books.

This update addresses several issues with using multiple text rules in Smart Albums and it also eliminates some problems with creating iPhoto books in the German and Dutch languages. Additionally, 4.0.3 keeps users informed about new version of iPhoto that have become available.

Overview & Download

NIH Image 1.62

NIH Image can acquire, display, edit, enhance, analyze, and animate images. It reads and writes TIFF, PICT, PICS, and MacPaint files, providing compatibility with many applications, including programs for scanning, processing, editing, publishing, and analyzing images. NIH Image supports many standard image-processing functions, such as contrast enhancement, density profiling, smoothing, sharpening, edge detection, median filtering, and spatial convolution with user-defined kernels. NIH Image can be used to measure area, mean, centroid, and perimeter. It also performs automated particle analysis and provides tools for measuring path lengths and angles. Spatial calibration is supported to provide real-world area and length measurements. Version 1.62 fixes bugs and improves compatibility with PowerPC machines.

Overview | Download

Goldberg 2.3.2

Goldberg is a freeware image and movie viewer with image-editing capabilities and support for applying QuickTime and other effects. It offers rotation capabilities, free zooming, and undo support. Version 2.3.2 fixes a problem with reading multilayer image files as Photoshop documents. It also fixes a problem with corrupted Preferences files, and the PDF item in the pop-up format in the export dialog box has been removed.

Overview & Download

Image Tricks 2.3.3

Image Tricks is an image editing application that allows you to easily edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images. This program allows modification of around 50 core image effects and filters, import over 20 image formats (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS among them), export to TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats, resize images, and iPhoto integration.

Overview | Download

Inkscape 0.45

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. Inkscape’s main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development process, and by making sure Inkcape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.

Overview | Download

GIMP 2.4

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Overview

Downloads

There are various ways to obtain and install GIMP for your Macintosh. In addition to the source code distribution here on www.gimp.org, there are various alternative sources for packaged and even commercially distributed CDs, which aim to make installation and setup an easier task. These include:

• MacGimp
• Wilber loves Apple

iFastViewer

iFastViewer is an easy and fast viewer for your pictures with optimized interface. It allows to select photos “on-the-fly” and locate them in the Finder (with move, copy, and delete options). The program code is also available under General Public Licence.

Overview & Download

Media Management

JAlbum 8.0

JAlbum allows you to create nice-looking photo galleries for the Web. You simply select or drag and drop folders containing images or movie files onto JAlbum, and it creates thumbnails and HTML pages to publish your images as a gallery or as a picture slide show. The galleries are based on various templates, and their appearance can be further customized by advanced users. The application’s additional features include support for IPTC/EXIF data, style sheets, lossless image manipulation, pluggable image filters, and a built-in FTP/SFTP client.

Version 8 adds full drag and drop support, image-editing tools, faster image scaling, and many other new features and fixes.

Overview | Download

---

Source: snap2objects.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: software,free,mac

| Continue Reading..

Bloomberg Launches Windows Mobile App

Customers of Bloomberg LP's real-time market data who have long been receiving feeds on their BlackBerrys can now receive them on their Windows Mobile-based devices, thanks to a recently completed development effort.

Bloomberg, whose customers tend to be institutional investment firms, announced the development of the Window Mobile effort at last week's Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) conference in New York, where the company is based.

The Bloomberg app was developed with Microsoft's .NET Compact Framework using Visual Studio, according to John Waanders, a Bloomberg product manager who oversaw the development of the mobile app.

"While it's developed with the .NET Compact Framework, it uses the same programming model approach you would use to build an application running on the .NET Framework for a desktop. It just happens to be best-tuned to the form factor and the needs for a mobile device," said Stevan Vidich, an industry architect in Microsoft's financial services group.

According to Waanders, the development effort took about six months. The most challenging part was transforming the navigation model of the desktop to the various mobile devices on which Windows Mobile is offered. For example, some devices are touch screen-based, while others rely on keyboards or other forms of navigation.

There was also the issue of the actual footprint. Bloomberg's desktop users typically have four monitors showing different applications.

"We were a lot much more constrained in terms of the UI," Waanders said. "We had to really focus very heavily on getting only the most important data onto the screen at a time."

Still, the Windows Mobile deployment is in the early stages. Waanders said about 250 people are using the Bloomberg app on Windows Mobile devices, compared to some 40,000 using it on the BlackBerry. The latter was developed in Java before the BlackBerry platform supplier, Research In Motion, developed its .NET toolkit. Consequently, that development work did not carry over to the Windows Mobile project, according to Waanders.

---

Source: redmondmag.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: software,mobile,application

| Continue Reading..

91% Of Japanese Will Not Buy iPhone 3G

At Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, Steve Jobs was greeted with cheers when he demonstrated the Japanese character recognition of the upcoming iPhone 3G.

But a new survey from iSHARE reveals that Apple's handset may not be greeted as favorably by the Japanese market, as 91% of respondents surveyed said they have no plans to buy the iPhone 3G.

One possible reason is that the iPhone lacks a removable battery, of which 77% of respondents said they preferred a removable battery. Another issue could be that SoftBank, the only wireless provider that will offer Apple's handset at launch, is the nation's third-largest carrier.

However, the survey may not be representative of the entire population, as there were only 402 respondents. But, it is an indicator that the iPhone 3G will be facing some stiff competition in Japan.

While high-speed Internet access and GPS are new to Apple's handset, it's old hat to Japanese consumers who are accustomed to using their mobile phones to watch TV, get directions, pay bills, and order concert tickets.

But there are reasons for Apple to be optimistic, as nearly all of the remaining respondents said they planned to purchase the device. Additionally, researchers at Nomura Research Institute told USA TODAY that the Apple could sell 2 to 3 million handsets annually in Japan, capturing 5% of the market.

Apple is seeking to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of the year, and it's currently at the 6 million mark. The iPhone is only available in 6 countries right now, but the iPhone 3G, which goes on sale July 11, will be available in many new markets like Japan.

---

Source: informationweek.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: gadget,phone,apple

| Continue Reading..

Download Free, Pre-Activated Copies of Vista

Being the loyal adept of a business model based on proprietary software, a free operating system is not exactly something that Microsoft customers can expect from the company.

But of course that there are always exceptions to confirm the rule. And the free copy of Windows Vista up for grabs via Microsoft Download is an illustrative example in this context. That's right, a completely free copy of the latest Windows client, time-bombed of course, but free nonetheless.

Microsoft continues a tradition debuted after the launch of Internet Explorer 7. Because two different versions of Internet Explorer cannot coexist under normal circumstances on the same Windows machine, let alone be used simultaneously, the Redmond giant turned to an alternative solution to make the lives of web content developers and designers a tad easier. The company released Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images.

The images are essentially nothing more than Virtual Hard Disks designed to integrate with Virtual Server 2007. This is precisely the case of the latest IE Application Compatibility VPC Image containing Vista. The VHD brings to the table a pre-activated copy of Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 7. And just as with the previous releases of the Application Compatibility VPC Images, the Vista VHD is also time-bombed. According to the software giant, the June 17, 2008 release of the IE image containing Vista is set to expire on September 9.

But until that point the operating system is fair game. It can be downloaded for free from Microsoft and used in a virtual machine running under Virtual PC 2007 until September. At that point in time Microsoft is bound to make available new releases of IE Application Compatibility VPC Image to replace the ones that have expired.

The Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image containing Windows Vista is available for download here. (look for the downloads labeled IE7-VIS1.exe, IE7-VIS2.rar, and IE7-VIS3.rar.)

---

Source: news.softpedia.com
Posted By: IndoSourceCode

Technorati Tags: free,windows,download

| Continue Reading..