Internet becomes most popular information source

The Internet is by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new poll in the United States.

But just a small fraction of U.S. adults considered social websites such as Facebook and MySpace as a good source of news and even fewer would opt for Twitter.

More than half of the people questioned in the Zogby Interactive survey said they would select the Internet if they had to choose only one source of news, followed by 21 percent for television and 10 percent for both newspapers and radio.

Only 10 percent described social websites as an important for news, and despite the media buzz about Twitter, only 4 percent would go to it for information.

The Internet was also selected as the most reliable source of news by nearly 40 percent of adults, compared to 17 percent who opted for television and 16 percent who selected newspapers and 13 percent for listened to the radio.

"The poll reinforces the idea that efforts by established newspapers, television and radio news outlets to push their consumers to their respective websites is working," Zogby said in a statement.

Almost half of 3,030 adults questioned in the online survey said national newspaper websites were important to them, followed by 43 percent who preferred television websites.

Blogs were less of a necessity than websites with only 28 percent of those polled saying blogs that shared their political viewpoint were important.

"That the websites of traditional news outlets are seen by a wide margin as more important than blog sites - most of which are repositories of opinion devoid of actual reportage - could be seen as an encouraging development for the media at large," Zogby added.

When asked to peer into the future, an overwhelming 82 percent said the Internet would be the main source of information in five years time, compared to 13 for television and 0.5 percent chose newspapers.

About 84 percent of American have access to the Internet, according to industry studies.

Knowing File Extension .SAM

The world of Computer Software is developing day by day. There are several program files which have unknown extensions and are very difficult to open. One such software is the software with the File Extension SAM. This file extension was formed by California Institute of Technology. The file is structures in two lines of columnar numbers. The first line that follows designates the data format. The second line is used as a comment line. The Third line consists of geographical positions. This data file is in ASCII text format as a result of which it is highly scientifically coded.

This extension is commonly linked to Samna Ami Pro application pack. It is a word-processing and spreadsheet application pack which was made for Dos programs. The File Extension SAM can be opened and accessed using the MS Office document. One can run the file by using the Microsoft Office Converter Pack and can also convert the .sam files to .doc files using the converter and also convert the .doc files to .sam files.

Application packs linked to File Extension SAM is also used with Map files which often consists of all the details related to module name, start address for list of program groups, program file header timestamp, public symbols and entry points. File Extension SAM is also commonly associated with Signed 8-bit Pulse Code Modulation which encodes an audio waveform in the time domain.

To get more detailed info on .sam files and its applications and different application packages which use the File Extension SAM, you may visit its site.

T-Mobile introduces Dash 3G

T-Mobile has introduced the T-Mobile Dash 3G, a long-awaited refreshed version of its predecessor. The Dash 3G will go on sale in stores in July.

The new Dash 3G is similar to the HTC Snap, which is available on Sprint and Verizon. It is the first 3G phone from T-Mobile to use the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition operating system. The handset has evolved from its previous iteration to look sleeker and more smoothly designed. It replaces the previous model's five-way nav button and cluster of small nav keys beneath the display with a trackball and clearly defined, round nav buttons. The QWERTY keyboard appears roomy as well.

More details, including price, to come when available. What is known is that the Dash 3G has a QVGA (320 by 240 pixel resolution) display, integrated GPS, Exchange server support, microSDHC card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, and a 2-megapixel camera. These features are a boost over the previous version, but fall short of some of the beefier specs of phones like the Palm Pre or the iPhone 3G.

Microsoft new search engine Bing is Growing

Microsoft's new search engine Bing continues to gain market traction, but it may not be for long. Bing, the service debuted just more than two weeks ago, continued to attract daily users for a second week.

According to a study by comScore, an Internet traffic tracking company, “Microsoft sites' average daily penetration among U.S. searches reached 16.7 percent during the week of June 8-12, up three percentage points from May 25-29, the week before Bing's debut”.

In its second week, Microsoft's share of search-result pages in the U.S. increased 12.1 percent, also up three percentage points from the week before its launch.

How Long Will It Last?
One week after its May 28 debut, Bing's market share rocketed past that of rival Yahoo, both in the U.S. and globally. Bing took second place behind Google, which has 71.47 percent of the U.S. market, and beat Yahoo's 10.22 percent with 16.28 percent, according to StatCounter, a New York daily Internet tracking company.

Globally, Bing had 5.62 percent of the market while Yahoo had 5.13 percent. Google held first place globally with 87.62 percent.

Even with a successful launch, it wasn't all smiles for Microsoft. Just after Bing launched, scandal ensued, giving the service some negative attention. A feature in Bing called smart motion preview, which plays videos when a user navigates over it, landed Microsoft in hot water with both child-advocacy groups and countries such as China. Microsoft defended the service and provided its customers with an extra layer of control over the content.

The question in many observers' minds is how long Bing's traction will last. "It is just out of the gate, so it won't be until the next few months that we will be able to tell whether they have taken some real percentage points," said Aodhan Cullen, founder of StatCounter, from his office in Ireland.

"You can see they have gained traction from advertising and publicity from the launch of this search engine," Cullen said. "If you look at statistics, it has returned to the levels it was at before the launch with Windows Live and Live Search."

There is Good Competition
Despite falling back to third place, Bing is still stealing market share from Google and Yahoo, Cullen said.

StatCounter analyzed search-engine market share two weeks before and two weeks after the launch of Bing. For the U.S. market, it found Google's market share decreased from 78.68 percent to 77.94 percent, Yahoo decreased from 11.46 percent to 10.76 percent, and Bing increased from 7.4 percent to nine percent.

Regardless of whether Bing continues to move ahead of its search competitors, it has given searchers more services from which to choose.

"It is hard to break the Google habit," Cullen said. "But it is great to have extra competition because it is not good to have one dominant player with the entire market share."

You can buy an Infected PC for 10 cents

It doesn't take much to get started in Internet crime these days. Find the right site, hand over $50, and you can start wreaking havoc with 1,000 already-infected PCs.

Finjan, a San Jose, CA security company, looked into the Golden Cash site, used by black hats to buy and sell the use of hijacked computers. The crooks behind the site infect PCs with the Golden Cash remote-control malware, and then sell access to those PCs. And that access doesn't cost much.

According to the price list in Finjan’s report, a batch of 1,000 infected PCs in Australia costs $100 - a whopping 10 cents each. A batch in the US runs $50, and bargain-basement bad guys can build a far-east malware network for as little as $5 per 1,000. Crooks can then install other malware, send spam, embed rogue antivirus, or use the victim PCs in any number of profit-making scams.

Sites like Golden Cash are part of a thriving Internet black market that provide every service a bad guy could ever want. An infected Web site or e-mail with a malware attachment is only the tip of the iceberg, an end result of a widespread underground business. Other services might provide stolen credit card numbers, custom-built malware guaranteed to evade antivirus, or access to anonymous network.

All this is a scary stuff, but lucky for us, it's not that hard to keep a PC from becoming a criminal commodity. Most attacks use poisoned Web sites to go after old, unpatched security holes, or use a social engineering con-job to trick you into opening a poisoned e-mail attachment. Following good and basic security practices like keeping all your software up-to-date won't guarantee your safety, but will go a long way towards keeping Golden Cash and all the other scammers at bay.

RIM to launch World Phone called BlackBerry Tour

Research In Motion is all set to add another smartphone to its BlackBerry lineup as it aims to win market share among both executives and mainstream consumers despite tough economic conditions.

The new model is known as the BlackBerry Tour and falls somewhere between the BlackBerry Curve, which has proved very popular with consumers, and the BlackBerry Bold, which RIM has aimed at high-end corporate users.

RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said in an interview that the new device will soon be launched with Verizon and Sprint in the United States and Telus and BCE's Bell unit in Canada.

Even though the device isn't drastically different from many other BlackBerry handsets in appearance - it has the familiar candy-bar shape with a full keyboard - Balsillie said the Tour is a big step forward.

It is what RIM calls a "world phone," which means it can easily access voice and data services on networks outside the user's home country. This has proven popular with business users in the past.

To appeal to the retail market, the Tour is loaded with multimedia features similar to those found in the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl, including a photo and video camera and media player.

Unveiling products that cross customer categories is proving increasingly important to RIM and it is continuing to make deer inroads into the broader retail market.

However, the company is also being careful not to alienate the corporate users who have been its mainstay and who rely on its smartphones to send wireless e-mail securely.

At the same time, rivals such as Apple and Palm in North America and Nokia in Europe are launching new products and aggressively pricing their phones to lure users.

Grab your Personalized Facebook URL - Remember these 10 Points

The race to grab your very own Facebook URL is about to begin. Facebook will allow its users to register custom usernames for the first time starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT Saturday. The usernames are bound to go fast, and if you aren't prepared, you may end up empty-handed.

Here, then, are 10 things you need to know before the floodgates open.

1. Facebook's usernames will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis.
If you're dying to get something like "your name," you'd better not go to bed early. Facebook will start handing out usernames at precisely 12:01 a.m. EDT. Odds are, most common names will be gone by 12:02.

2. Once you pick a name, it's yours for life.
Each Facebook account gets only one username, and you can never change it. You can't transfer it to someone else, either. Even if you delete your Facebook account, Facebook says the name won't go back into the pool.

3. You don't necessarily have to use your real name.
While Facebook is encouraging the use of real names, you aren't limited in that regard. The system will suggest a few available options based on your first and/or last name, but it'll also provide a blank field in which you can type something completely unrelated.

4. You won't be able to get a 'generic word' as your username.
Facebook says "generic words" won't be available for usernames. A full list of included terms hasn't been released, but "pizza" and "flowers" were given as examples of what won't fly.

5. You'll have to use at least five characters.
The Facebook usernames will have to be at least five characters in length and can only contain letters, numbers, and a period. Trying names with special characters -- you know, symbols like $#@% - will only waste your time.

6. If you created your Facebook account after 3 p.m. on June 9, you won't be able to get a username yet.
Facebook is only letting users who had accounts prior to 3 p.m. on June 9 register for usernames this week. The social network says it's a precaution to help prevent people from creating accounts just for "name squatting" purposes. If you registered your Facebook account after that time, you'll have to wait till June 28 at 12:01 a.m. to get your new name.

7. The restrictions are even greater for Facebook Pages (public profiles).
Owners of Facebook Pages- public profiles for companies, organizations, or public figures - must have been registered before May 31 in order to be eligible for a custom URL. Additionally, the Facebook Page must have had at least 1,000 fans as of May 31 in order to get a username now.

8. Facebook does plan to protect trademarks.
Facebook says it'll work to protect intellectual property and trademark rights.

9. Your current privacy settings will apply to your new URL.
Your new Facebook username will immediately become your new URL. Depending on your privacy settings, though, people may not be able to see much there. Whatever settings you currently have on your account will apply, so if your profile is set to be private, it'll remain private- even on the new address.

10. Your Facebook username may be used for more things in the future.
As of now, the Facebook usernames will be used for custom URLs. In the future, however, the company has said it plans to unveil other uses for the names. Specifics have yet to be revealed, but know that whatever name you pick will likely pop up in even more places down the road.

Sony Ericsson unveils greener phones: C901 GreenHeart and Naite

Cellphone maker Sony Ericsson has unveiled two handset models, which are said to be more eco-friendly, adding that the company will push greener features across its product line in the next two years.

The new models, C901 GreenHeart and Naite, will be sold in smaller packages and have user manuals that are electronic. The devices use more recycled materials and consume less energy.

"Today we are announcing a commitment to roll out these innovations across the broader portfolio in 2010 and 2011," Sony Ericsson Chief Executive Hideki Komiyama said in a statement.

The role of greener products is increasing rapidly in the cellphone industry, with a recent ABI Research survey saying nearly half of U.S. consumers are likely to be influenced by suppliers' green credentials when purchasing devices.

Sony Ericsson said on Thursday it targets a cut of 20 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions by 2015.

The handset industry is closely followed by environmental organizations around the world due to its large scale. More than 1 billion phones are sold globally each year, which requires the use of sales boxes, add-ons and tons of rare raw materials.

The world's top cellphone maker, Nokia, started to renew its packaging in 2006, and has said it saved 100 million euros ($142.9 million) in less than a year.

Sony Ericsson said its new models will use at least 50 percent recycled plastics, similar to Nokia's 3110 Evolve model, which the Finnish firm introduced last year.

Last year Nokia's chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, showed a prototype of a phone made fully of recycled materials at the Mobile World Congress trade show, but the model has not reached production.

Sony Ericsson, the world's fifth-biggest handset maker, is in need of new models to renew its offering since the appeal of the years-old Sony-branded Cybershot cameraphones and Walkman music phones has faded.

Govt posted sensitive list of US nuclear sites

The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of government and civilian nuclear facilities and their activities in the United States, but a U.S. official said Wednesday the posting included no information that compromised national security.

The 266-page document was published on May 6 as a transmission from President Barack Obama to Congress. According to the document, the list was required by law and will be provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Some of the pages are marked "highly confidential safeguards sensitive."

Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the document had been reviewed by a number of U.S. agencies and that disclosure of the information did not jeopardize national security. He said the document is part of an agreement on nuclear material inspection under the IAEA's nuclear nonproliferation effort.

"While we would have preferred it not be released, the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Commerce and the NRC all thoroughly reviewed it to ensure that no information of direct national security significance would be compromised," LaVera said in a statement.

An Energy Department official said none of the sites on the list are directly part of the government's nuclear weapons infrastructure.

Included in the report are details on a storage facility for highly enriched uranium at the Y-12 complex at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and some sites at the Energy Department's Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, this official acknowledged.

The publication of the list was first reported in an online secrecy newsletter Monday. The document had been posted on the Government Printing Office Web site, but has since been removed from that site.

The document includes both government and civilian nuclear facilities, all of which have various levels of security, including details and location of nation's 103 commercial nuclear power reactors, information readily available from various sources.

The document details the location of the nuclear sites and what is being done there. For instance, there are nuclear reactors at the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, Pa. This facility is currently working on research into what happens when there are accidents with the nuclear reactors. The project started in 2006 and is expected to end in 2012, according to the document.
There are "zero" national security implications to the publication of this document, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Government's Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood found the document on the GPO Web site and highlighted it in his online bulletin.

"I regret that some people are painting it as a roadmap for terrorists because that's not what it is," Aftergood said.

"This is not a disclosure of sensitive nuclear technologies or of facility security procedures. It is simply a listing of the numerous nuclear research sites and the programs that are under way," Aftergood said. "And so it poses no security threat whatsoever."

Xbox gets Facebook-Twitter Integration

Microsoft's Xbox is about to get a lot more social. Social networking sensations Twitter and Facebook, along with Internet radio star Last.fm, are connecting to the Xbox 360 videogame console online world.

Twitter-Facebook Integration
The Xbox Twitter-Facebook integration, revealed at the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, will bring the two services into the Xbox Live online gaming service. In addition to the service's multiplayer functionality, you'll be able to send and receive status updates with the social networks straight from your Xbox console.

Some games will be ready to take advantage of the added options, too. An upcoming version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, for example, will allow you to send screenshots and score updates directly into your Facebook stream via the Facebook Connect interface. You'll also have the option of inviting friends to join your games without so much as shifting your eyes off the screen. It's all expected to become available sometime this coming fall.

Last.FM Additions
Twitter and Facebook aren't the only social services being added into the Xbox world - music-streaming service Last.FM will be built into Microsoft's expanded Xbox offering as well. Xbox Live users with paid “gold level” subscriptions will be able to listen to tunes via their consoles, using the site's "personalized radio station" setup to select songs.

Microsoft also confirmed a new partnership with U.K.-based Sky TV that'll let British users view movies and live TV shows through their Xbox systems. Of course, you can do that here in the States now, too, if you know how.

Amidst all the excitement, one burning question has yet to be answered: With Microsoft's search service, Live, now officially known as “Bing”, will Xbox Live follow suit?

Console owners that subscribe to Xbox Live become part of an Internet videogame community with benefits such as being able to connect to Netflix online film rental service.

By year's end, Xbox Live members will be able to access their Twitter or Facebook accounts through consoles, posting content and connecting with friends the same way they might by using computers or smart phones.

The link is essentially a Facebook application for Xbox 360 users, and the California social networking firm is set of making similar links to online communities for Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii console users.

Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for 240 million dollars in 2007.

Giga-byte Technology displays CULV Laptop at Computex Taipei 2009

Giga-byte Technology revamped a netbook that takes advantage of touchscreen and tablet functions in Microsoft Windows 7 and put its first laptop with an Intel CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) microprocessor inside on display at Computex Taipei 2009 on Monday.

The TouchNote T1028 netbook sports a 10.1-inch touchscreen that swivels so that the screen can be turned around folded down to transform it into a tablet PC. The netbook is an update to its first netbook with the same function, but the main difference this time is the Windows 7 software, which includes functions that support both the touchscreen capability and the tablet mode.

Windows 7 is Microsoft's latest operating system, but so far only a beta (test) version has been released.

Giga-byte's new T1028 will include Intel's latest 1.66GHz N280 Atom microprocessor. It will cost around US$599 and could be on the market globally as early as July or August. The launch date will partly be determined by when Microsoft releases Windows 7. Should the T1028 launch early, it could come with Windows XP and will be upgradeable to Windows 7.

Giga-byte's first CULV laptop is part of its Booktop family of products, the M1305. Intel's CULV microprocessor is small, thin and energy efficient and designed for thin portable laptops.

The Booktop M1305 sports a 13.3-inch screen and can hold up to 8G byte of DDR3 (double data rate, third generation) DRAM, which is a newer version of mainstream DRAM that has not yet caught on widely.

The M1305 laptop that Giga-byte displayed Monday used Windows 7 as its operating system. The company hopes to launch the M1305 in September or October armed with Windows 7.

The laptop is only an inch (2 centimeters) thick and is built light as an alternative to netbooks, but includes a key feature lacking in netbooks, a DVD drive, as well as a larger screen.

Giga-byte also showed off another new netbook on Monday, the Myou S1024. The netbook is designed to be ultra-small despite its 10.1-inch screen, which is a big size for netbooks.

The Myou S1024 weighs 900 grams and is less than an inch thick. Giga-byte managed to put a 6-cell battery inside the device despite its small size for long battery life. The S1024 will be available globally within the next few months and will cost around US$599.

The three new devices can all be used with a number of wireless technologies, including 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Giga-byte will offer optional WiMax and 3.5G (High-speed packet access) modules.

Pricing information about the devices was not immediately available.