Finally done!! About time too! This is the official release of the instant messenger we’ve been working on for the past 6 months.
Please download guys and girls and let me know what u think!

Avaliable via: http://www.messenger.24.com
Will post more on my involvement in the project soon, so stay tuned

You can add me: chrisbeech@24.com

If you were wowwed by those Japanese modders who overclocked their stock CPU to 7GHz, wait till you hear about IBM’s latest foray into the world of ultra-fast computing: together with researchers from the digital camera-hating Georgia Institute of Technology, Big Blue has managed to overclock a chip to an unheard of 500GHz.

Granted, the model they used already had a blistering native clock speed of 350GHz to begin with, but we’re still floored that you could actually coax a small silicon wafer into operating at an incredible half-terahertz. As you probably suspected, there’s no way to achieve speeds like this at room temperature, so the team froze their high-performance silicon-germanium chip to a super-chilly negative 451-degrees Fahrenheit, which is just eight degrees above absolute zero.

Unfortunately, after learning about this breakthrough, electronics giant Sony apparently felt that consumers would no longer be impressed with their much-hyped Cell processor, so they’ve once again delayed the PS3

until IBM can make the liquid helium-cooled CPU suitable for mass production . Expect the 500GHz PS3 to hit stores sometime in 2011.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/20/ibm-git-overclock-cpu-to-500ghz/

Very cool site! Some awesome ways to display images. Fun to play with.

http://interact10ways.com/

It’s worth noting the massive increase in users and traffic at MySpace over the last few months. Paul Kedrosky summarized the key October 2005 MySpace metrics from a BusinessWeek article late last year. Those stats, along with more recent April Comscore and internal Myspace data, are summarized below.

MySpace has 75 million users (see somewhat dated comparison stats here), 15 million daily unique logins, is growing by a massive 240,000 new users per day, and is generating nearly 30 billion monthly page views (that’s 10,593 page views per second). The number of page views generated by each unique visitor is stunning – clearly these users are very, very passionate about the site, and it’s unclear if they do much else on the web besides hang out on MySpace.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/13/myspace-the-27-billion-pound-gorilla/

Google has quickly become one of the most well known words in the world and is used by millions daily, including myself. In an advanced database class back in university, we spent a couple of weeks studying the inner workings of search engines, and one topic which happened to come up was data mining using Google. Much to my surprise, out of a class of 80 fourth year computer engineers maybe four or five knew how to use Google to perform any sort of advanced queries.

Google (and many other search engines) has the ability not only to search on keywords, but also using a more “database-ish” query language to really narrow down your search results. Below is a summary of a few of the most useful lesser known features. Note: in the examples, replace cwire.org with your own domain.

Basic Usage:

• Use quotation marks ” “ to locate an entire string.
  eg. “bill gates conference” will only return results with that exact string.
• Mark essential words with a +
  If a search term must contain certain words or phrases, mark it with a + symbol. eg: +”bill gates” conference will return all results containing “bill gates” but not necessarily those pertaining to a conference
• Negate unwanted words with a -
  You may wish to search for the term bass, pertaining to the fish and be returned a list of music links as well. To narrow down your search a bit more, try: bass -music. This will return all results with “bass” and NOT “music”.

General Tips: (I use many of these almost on a daily basis)

• site:www.cwire.org
  This will search only pages which reside on this domain.
• related:www.cwire.org
  This will display all pages which Google finds to be related to your URL
• link:www.cwire.org
  This will display a list of all pages which Google has found to be linking to your site. Useful to see how popular your site is
• spell:word
  Runs a spell check on your word
• define:word
  Returns the definition of the word
• stocks: [symbol, symbol, etc]
  Returns stock information. eg. stock: msft
• maps:
  A shortcut to Google Maps
• phone: name_here
  Attempts to lookup the phone number for a given name
• cache:
  If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, cache:www.cwire.org web will show the cached content with the word “web” highlighted.
• info:
  The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, info:www.cwire.org will show information about the CyberWyre homepage. Note there can be no space between the “info:” and the web page url.
• weather:
  Used to find the weather in a particular city. eg. weather: new york

Advanced Tips:

• filetype:
  Does a search for a specific file type, or, if you put a minus sign (-) in front of it, it won’t list any results with that filetype. Try it with .mp3, .mpg or .avi if you like.
• daterange:
  Is supported in Julian date format only. 2452384 is an example of a Julian date.
• allinurl:
  If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the url.
• inurl:
  If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their url, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the “inurl:” and the following word.
• allintitle:
  If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both “google” and “search” in the title.
• intitle:
  If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their title, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the “intitle:” and the following word.
• allinlinks:
  Searches only within links, not text or title.
• allintext:
  Searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title.
• bphonebook:
  If you start your query with bphonebook:, Google shows U.S. business white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ bphonebook: google mountain view ] will show the phonebook listing for Google in Mountain View.
• phonebook:
  If you start your query with phonebook:, Google shows all U.S. white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ phonebook: Krispy Kreme Mountain View ] will show the phonebook listing of Krispy Kreme donut shops in Mountain View.
• rphonebook:
  If you start your query with rphonebook:, Google shows U.S. residential white page listings for the query terms you specify. For example, [ rphonebook: John Doe New York ] will show the phonebook listings for John Doe in New York (city or state). Abbreviations like [ rphonebook: John Doe NY ] generally also work.

Putting it all Together: 

Now it’s time to start to get creative with our search terms and really narrow down our results. Now that we have the basics, let’s start to combine them all into one search term.

Example #1: Search for some MP3s
Let’s say you’re a Beatles fan and want to see if you can find some of their songs on the Internet without using Kazaa, etc. Try this query:

“index of” + “mp3″ + “beatles” -html -htm -php
or you could try this query:
* “index of/mp3″ -playlist -html -lyrics beatles

Right away on the first few results returned by Google you can download MP3s.

Example #2: Mixing some techniques together

Here’s a simple exercise. We’ll mix around a few terms to get more accurate results. Let’s say we want to research sleep recommendations. One assumption could be that research papers on this topic would most likely be on an educational website — perhaps with a .edu domain. We could try this query:

sleep recommendations site:edu

Maybe we’re in my situation, and am thinking of applying to grad school. Let’s see if we can find the Graduate Studies Admissions Requirements at the University of Toronto. We could try this query:

grad school admission requirements site:utoronto.ca

Summary:

After reading this article, you might be thinking “well, I could probably find those results without remembering these advanced search terms”. Well, the truth is that you probably could. The reason you want to start to use these advanced search tips is because they will help you find what you’re looking for faster. They greatly help narrow down the results, and more often than not, the information you were looking for will be in the first two or three results.

http://www.cwire.org/data-mining-using-google/

Some very cool and very strange gadgets!

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/top-10-strangest-gadgets-of-the-future

ATHENS (Reuters) – A helicopter landed in the middle of the high security Athens Korydallos prison, picked up two prisoners and flew away in a Hollywood-style escape that has left Greek police stunned.

A criminal on the run hijacked the helicopter Sunday to get his brother out of prison, police said. Vassilis Paleokostas, 40, who was serving a 25-year sentence for kidnapping and bank robbery, and an Albanian convict escaped.

“The guards thought it was a surprise inspection by ministry officials and did nothing,” a police official said.

The helicopter pilot, who said he was forced at gunpoint to undertake the mission, flew the inmates to a nearby cemetery and they made their escape on motorbikes. Greek police have launched a manhunt for the convicts.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060605/od_nm/greece_escape_dc;_ylt=AigzFWuD1EzwOrYreE5ZX7ntiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA–

Telkom has filed for price reductions with ICASA (the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) with the main beneficiaries being the ‘line rental’ charge of their ADSL service.

An average reduction of 24% across all ADSL access charges are expected, with a maximum reduction of around 32%. These changes are expected to become effective as of 1 August 2006.

Furthermore the monthly rental for residential ISDN services will drop by up to 20% and there will be a decrease of up to 39% in the rates for IPLC’s (International Private Leased Circuits).

Long distance and international call charges will drop. Long distance calls will drop by 10% costing 72c per minute during Standard Time and 36c per minute during Callmore Time.

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=3054

International calls will drop by 9.9% in the average price per minute with calls to the US costing 99c per minute during Global Off-peak Time and R1.20 in peak hours. Calls to the UK are slightly more expensive at R1.30 in off-peak and R1.40 in peak hours.

The fact that only long-distance and international call rates are dropping may be testimony to the impact that VOIP (Voice over IP) is having on the voice market. Many South Africans with adequate Internet connections, generally an ADSL service, are now using SkypeOut which is free if used from PC to PC and from a PC to a telephone can cost as little as 13c per minute.

Telkom has also recently come under fire at the ICASA ADSL pricing hearings for their high tariffs for ADSL services. One of the factors pushing up the price is the high charge for line rental which only Telkom receives. This is currently the R477 for the 512 DSL service or the R680 for the 1024 DSL offering.

The proposed DSL 192 and 384 monthly rental is R245 from 1st August 2006 – a price decrease of R25 (9.3%) on the former and R114 (31.8%) on the latter.

“We are combining our DSL 192 and DSL 384 services, and DSL 192 customers will automatically be upgraded in due course to an up-to 384kbit/s service, depending on network infrastructure. In future, business customers will also be able to subscribe to the DSL 384 service,” explained Steven Hayward, Telkom’s Managing Executive for Retail Marketing.

Reductions in line rental for their flagship service, the 1024 DSL offering, will fall by 24.1% (R164 per month) costing R516. The 512 DSL service will also drop from the current price of R477 to R362 per month (also a 24.1% reduction).

The news for consumers is all round good with the end user set to benefit from Telkom’s proposed reductions. In the long run it could turn out to boost Telkom’s revenue with more users able to hop on board.

Telkom customers are set to benefit from overall price reductions from August this year if price changes filed by the telecommunications giant are approved by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA).

Telkom filed an overall price decrease of 2.1% with ICASA this morning. If accepted, the proposed price changes will become effective from 1st August 2006.

“Telkom is committed to its customer centricity drive and we are certain that the proposed price changes made to ICASA will result in significant savings for all our customers,” said Hayward.

Reductions in the price of Telkom’s voice and data services have been on the cards for a long time and since the new CEO’s arrival consumers have been waiting for evidence of his new consumer-centric approach.

This is the first measurable sign that Papi Molotsane has made towards giving customers what they really want – lower prices.

It is however disappointing that customers had to wait since August last year for the next price reduction, and that it will effectively be a year since the previous ADSL reductions before consumers benefit from this announcement.

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for its own
purposes (suspect for updates and interrogating your machine etc..)
Here’s how to get it back:

Click Start–>Run–>type “gpedit.msc” without the “

This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:

Local
Computer Policy–>Computer Configuration–>Administrative
Templates–>Network–>QOS Packet Scheduler–>Limit Reservable
Bandwidth

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the ‘Explain’ tab :

“By
default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the
bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the
default.”

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3113

Download videos from Youtube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm, Dailymotion…
and other 60+ video sites ! And all embedded objects on a webpage
(movies, mp3s, flash, quicktime, etc) ! Directly !

VideoDownloader add a small icon on the status bar at the bottom of
your firefox window, and a toolbar button. Just click that and download
the video you are watching !3

Sites supported:
Youtube, Google Video, iFilm, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Myspace, Angry
Alien, AnimeEpisodes.Net, Badjojo, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk,
Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, CollegeHumor, Current TV, Dachix, Danerd,
DailySixer.com, DevilDucky, Double Agent, eVideoShare, EVTV1,
FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Grinvi, Grouper, Hiphopdeal, Kontraband,
Lulu TV, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video
Code, Newgrounds, NothingToxic, PcPlanets, Pixparty, PlsThx, Putfile,
Revver, Sharkle, SmitHappens, StreetFire, That Video Site, TotallyCrap,
VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, Vimeo, vSocial,
Yikers, ZippyVideos… and any other webpage with embedded objects.