It’s almost three months now since the announcement of Kahuna-the new interface for Msn/Hotmail.Finally I got an invite from Microsoft.With yahoo also announcing that they are going to update their interface and gmail’s continuous splurge in popularity Microsoft has some competition.Lets see how it fares.Here is a short graphical review of it(Click on the thumnails for full size images).

The welcome screen:
MSN Today

The Inbox
The new 3 pane inbox certainly looks a lot less cluttered now.But there is one major functionality issue for me.Suppose you want to trash some of the message.You have to do them one by one.They have removed the checkbox.

However a very handy addition is that you can drag and drop your messages.

Also Kahuna features a customized right click menu just like in Outlook.

Now you can create your own folders and group your messages.This is somewhat similar to Gmail’s idea of labeling emails.Microsoft has clearly taken a leaf out of Google’s book.Now you can search your emails in Kahuna too.


Hotmail is optimised for viewing at 1024×768 resolution.However even at that resolution a Kahuna cropped away the edges of some mails.

Microsoft claims that Kahuna would be able to alert you about suspicious phishing emails.It did correctly pick out one fake Paypal email that I had received.

Composing emails

Nothing special here.Standard rich text formatting options are available along with the familiar MSN Messenger smileys.Kahuna also looks up addresses from your buddy list and suggests it as you type.

Calendar

The calendar sports a neat and tidy look.You have the option of being alerted on via MSN Messenger, email as well as Mobile.

All in all I think it is definitely a major improvement.Microsoft says that it is going to provide you upto 2gb space.However I am not sure about the maximum attachement size.However I dont think that there is any limit on the total size of attachements.However Kahuna now supports Internet Explorer 6 more later.Hopefully in future it would add support for Firefox and Opera also.

In case you are interested in trying out Kahuna you can enroll yourself here

There is a bad news as well as a good news.

Lets start with the bad news first.
Macworld has done a review of various Macbrowsers.The scores were as follows
Firefox : 4.5/5
Safari : 4/5
Opera : 3.5/5
Omniweb : 4/5
Camino : 3/5

The review was appaling to say they least.Tim Luoma has written an excellent review of the Macworld review.You can read it here

The good news is that the leading German technology news site Chip Online has written an article comparing the features of three different browsers and Opera emerged as the clear winner here.More details available at my.opera.com

It may seem that I am calling the Macworld article as appaling only because Opera looses out in the review.It is not true.If you read Tim’s article then it would become clear to you how biased the author was.

Channel Register also wrote an interesting article titled Opera tunes up to overtake Firefox.Check that out too.

Taken from Boingboing.net

Daniel Cuthbert of Whitechapel in London, has been reportedly busted for using a non-standard browser (Lynx) while making a donation to an online tsunami relief fund.The had browser triggered the donor’s intrusion detection system.A part from that he had also probed the system as he suspected that it may be a phishing scam.

What Daniel actually did to ‘knock on the door’ was to insert a ../../../ character sequence into the web address and a single quote into the credit card field - THROUGH HIS BROWSER. He did not use any attack ‘tools’ or ‘probes’ other than Internet Explorer. Furthermore, typing these sequences into a browser does not an attack make - it only proves that a website may be vulnerable. It takes a hell of a lot more effort to actually gain any form of unauthorized access to the site. Daniel did none of this, he only typed the sequences and watched the responses - and don’t forget, he actually donated the 30 p towards the fund using his real credit card and personal details.

Judge Purdy accepted that Cuthbert had not intended to cause any damage, and also pointed out there was almost no case law in this area.He was fined 400 plus 600 costs.An online pole carried out by ZDnet shows that more than 92% people disagree with this ruling.

Read the full article here

Yes.This is a shocker.Today when I updated my Anti-spam black list from b2evolution’s centralised list I was shocked to see download.com in the list!When I checked in b2evo’s official forum I found that download.com was reported by a min of 20 users for spamming!One of the forum members had received 4 hits from them in 5 seconds,and there was no link to his blog on download.com.You can find the discussion here

Download.com is already very popular and they get a huge number of hits everyday.It is beyond me why they would need to do this.One thing that comes to my mind is that may be it is a conspiracy.But again I dont see any reason why any one would be mad enough to do that.

What do you think?Anyway I have decided to remove download.com from my black list.

Yes.You read it correctly.Recently there were a lot of reports that the screen of the super sexy and sleek looking iPod Nano gets scratched or damaged easily.Apple has acknowledged that they have received several complaints regarding this issue, however at the same time they claimed that it was not a designing flaw.Apple’s SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller said today in a press release that this issue has has more to do with obese Americans in tight pants putting the nano in their front jeans pocket, and then sitting for extended periods of time.
Apple has offered to replace the “defective” nanos. However, they are insisting that all customers weighing over 230 Pounds also agree to sign a form stating they will carry their nano in an altoids case for protection.”

Well, I think this may be blessing in disguise for American parents.This may finally prompt their kids to become more health conscious.

This offer is valid only for today.Dont miss it.
Grab it from http://www.divx.com/anniversaryoffer/
Continue reading…

The following is a list of XP tweaks that either do not work, do not work as advertised, or that are better left alone. Many of these once worked in some version of Windows and virtually every other tweak guide and program uses these tweaks.

Memory Optimizers

They claim “Increasing the amount of available RAM improves performance”. However, the only thing that these programs can do is harm real system performance.

Although gaining more available memory might seem beneficial, it isn’t. As RAM Optimizers force the available-memory counter up, they force other processes’ data and code out of memory. However, because virtual memory masks the layout of physical memory from processes, processes can’t directly benefit from having virtual memory backed by contiguous physical memory. As processes execute and undergo working-set trimming and growth, their virtual-memory-to-physical-memory mappings will become fragmented despite the availability of contiguous memory.

Prefetch Parameters

The Prefetcher component in Windows XP is part of the Memory Manager, and helps to shorten the amount of time it takes to start Windows and programs. You may want to disable this component for troubleshooting scenarios or in lab environments. The following list describes the different possible values for the Enable Prefetcher key.

0 = Disabled

1 = Application launch prefetching enabled

2 = Boot prefetching enabled

3 = Applaunch & Boot enabled

By default the Prefetcher is set to a Value of 3 in Windows XP. Values such as 4, 5, 6 etc. do not exist and are thus useless. The default value is already optimal for maximum performance.

L2 Cache Tweak

Many tweaks claim “Adjusting the SecondLevelDataCache Registry value to match your CPU’s L2 Cache size will improve performance”.

Actually Windows will use the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for retrieval of the L2 cache size automatically on boot up. The HAL is able to retrieve the L2 cache size from any CPU using the set-associative cache design (Pentium II or newer).

Always Unload Dll’s

The first and most important point is, no evidence shows that this setting works in Windows 2000/XP. In fact, the official Microsoft technical documentation clearly and unequivocally states. For operating systems prior to Windows 2000, you can shorten the inactive period by adding the following information to the registry.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\AlwaysUnloadDll]

Windows 2000/XP uses a complex and efficient process to manage memory operations. It keeps the DLL loaded in case you need it again. If this tweak actually did work, you have hurt your overall performance because you unloaded a DLL when it didn’t need to be and caused the system to have to load it again when called upon.

Set Irq Priority

This “tweak” can be found in most XP all-in-one tweaking applications. This is a perfect example of why they are not recommended. Adjusting the Priority of IRQs especially IRQ 8 will improve system performance” -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\PriorityControl]

“IRQ8Priority”=dword:00000001

However, IRQs don’t even HAVE a concept of “priority” in the NT family. The NT family of OSes doesn’t even use the real-time clock (IRQ for time keeping in the first place!

Large System Cache

Most tweaking applications think Enable Large System cache will increase I/O speed of the file system -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management]

“LargeSystemCache”=dword:000000001

This setting is also achieved by going to Start > Settings > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Memory usage = System Cache.

Under XP this tweak could be of some value under various odd circumstances. However, it causes problems with many drivers/hardware/applications. This tweak is really designed for machines running as a server. If you use this tweak and have problems don’t be whining at the driver/application writers for writing code that takes advantage of the way XP uses memory. They didn’t ask you to turn your machine into a server.

I/O PageLockLimit

The tweak below are always considered as an effective way to boost your harddisk buffer.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management]

“IOPageLockLimit”=dword: somevalue

Indeed, it does absolutely nothing in Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 and up, and absolutely nothing in Windows XP.

FIFO Buffer

This is a new myth about tweaking Windows. It says that Increase the FIFO buffer can greatly boost your Windows system

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Serial]

“RxFIFO” = dword: &H10

It is real a fake, since the registry key “Serial” claims that it is only related with “Serial port”. How can “Serial port” work on the whole performance of Windows?

PageFile Size Setting

Note that the common myth about the pagefile being .1.5 x RAM. or some other multiple is quite clearly counterintuitive. Consider the situation where you only have 128MB of RAM: setting the maximum pagefile size to 1.5 x 128MB = 192MB + 128MB = 320MB of total available memory for Windows XP which is obviously not going to give you enough memory for modern games and applications. Remember, it is about how much total memory (RAM + Pagefile) that should be made available for Windows to operate efficiently.

Source: Optimizexp

Team Opera is working very hard on the next major upgrade.Opera v9 would also be using the new engine which has been the subject of a lot of speculation.Although nothing much is known about v9 at the moment, but more and more details are slowly emerging.Olafur Arnason aka Olli has revealed that the new version would have significantly improved standards support.It would support XSLT, a selected selection of CSS 3 selectors and WebForms 2 among others.The biggest improvement is support for Rich text editing.A part from that Opera v9 is expected to pass the Acid2 test.

Interestingly Opera has codenamed v9 as Merlin which is the name of a small falcon. Tim Altman has written an interesting article regarding the use of acronyms by Team Opera.You can read it here

Keep it up Opera :>>