Internet pioneer Paul Baran dies at 84

Paul Baran, whose work with packaging data in the 1960s has been credited with playing a role in the later development of the Internet, has died at age 84. Baran died at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. Saturday night of complications from lung cancer, said his son David Baran. Paul Baran is best known for the idea of "packet-switching," in which data is bundled into small packages and sent through a network. Baran outlined the concept while working on Cold War issues for the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in 1963 and 1964. In 1969 the technology became a concept the Department of Defense used in creating the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet, numerous reports on the subject said. The idea had been so advanced at its development that private companies had passed on it. "Paul wasn't afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do," Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google and a colleague and longtime friend of Baran, told the New York Times, which first reported Baran's death. President George W. Bush presented him with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2008. A year earlier, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, joining the likes of Thomas Edison. "I think that we give a lot of attention to music and football, why not those who come up with ideas that we use in a different way," he said. Baran's method of moving data was designed to still function after a nuclear attack. Because there were no centralized switches, and bundles of data could simply find a new route if one weren't working, the system could still work even if much of it were destroyed, the RAND Corporation said. He called the process "message blocks." Donald Davies of Great Britain independently developed a similar system and his term, "packet-switching," would eventually be adopted, RAND said. It would be decades before the social and commercial possibilities of the technology would become clear, and Baran would miss out on a lot of the money and glory that came with it, but he was happy to live to see it happen, his son said. "He was a man of infinite patience," David Baran said. The son said his father recently shared a paper that he wrote in 1966, speculating on the future of the computer networks he was working on. "It spelled out this idea that by the year 2000 that people would be using online networks for shopping and news," he said. "It was an absolute lunatic fringe idea." Paul Baran was born in Grodno, Poland in 1926 and his family moved to the United States when he was 2 years old. Baran received many accolades late in life for his pioneering work, but he was anxious to widely distribute the credit. "The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral," he told the Times in a 1990 interview. "Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, I built a cathedral. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part." Baran's wife since 1955 Evelyn died in 2007. He is survived by his son and three grandchildren.

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.

Search Giant Google does a mistake

If you did some Google searches between 9:30 a.m. EST and 10:25 a.m. EST, you might have got this message - “This site may harm your computer” - along with your search results. Computer users doing Google searches during a nearly one-hour period Saturday morning were greeted with disturbing but erroneous messages that every site turned up in the results might be harmful.

Google has blamed the mistake on human error and apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.

The glitch occurred between 9:30 a.m. EST and 10:25 a.m. EST, Google Inc. said in an explanation on its company blog. Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw a message "This site may harm your computer" accompanying every search result.

Google said it routinely flags any search results with that message if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously, a practice aimed at protecting its users.

Saturday's error happened when Google erroneously applied one of its periodic list updates in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.

The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said. Since the updates are applied in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing at 9:27 a.m. EST and disappeared no later than 10:25 a.m. EST, with the duration for any particular user approximately 40 minutes, it said.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said "We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again”.

Google scans websites to identify sites that may be dangerous to users. When it finds such sites, Google issues warnings in the search results. This morning, they inadvertently added these warnings to nearly all websites, causing user confusion.

… for more and updated info you may visit Google Official Blog

China witnesses 298 million internet users

China has witnessed a fast-growing population of Internet users. The Internet users in China has risen to 298 million after passing the United States last year to become the world's largest.

According to China Internet Network Information Center, the latest figure is a 41.9 percent increase over the same period as compared to that of last year.

China's Internet penetration rate is still low, with just 22.6 percent of its population online, which leaves more room for rapid growth.

China's Internet use is growing at explosive rates despite government efforts to block access to material deemed subversive or pornographic. Regulators are in the middle of a crackdown on sites accused of carrying sexually explicit material.

However, the financial size of China's online market still trails that of United States, South Korea and few other countries.

According to research firm Nielsen Online, the United States had an estimated 223.1 million Internet users in June.

China is preparing to launch third generation mobile phone service, which supports wireless Web surfing- that is expected to set off a new surge in Internet use.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest self-made billionaire ever

“23 year old, Single, US resident, Harvard University drop out.” I am talking about Mark Zuckerberg, who has become the newest golden boy of technology. Whenhe was at Harvard, he founded an addictive social-networking site Facebook in February 2004. Later, he left school for Silicon Valley that year; scored initial $500,000 investment from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Venture firms soon swooned, among them Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

Today Facebook boasts 66 million active users. Estimated annual sales: $150 million. Expanding beyond being a college-only message system and photo album; now courting users to 55,000 different high school, business and city networks. Last October, Microsoft bought 1.6% stake for $240 million and this deal led many analysts to suggest the company is worth $15 billion.

His net worth is estimated to be $1.5 billion, which has made this tech savvy boy the youngest billionaire on earth and possibly the youngest self-made billionaire ever.

China benefitted because of large population

Earlier it was United States but now its China which has become the world's largest in terms of Internet using population.

According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, the number of Internet users in China was 210 million at the end of last year, only 5 million fewer than the U.S. Internet users then. Now China’s internet users have reached 221 million by the end of February and have made their country feel proud in this area.

However China's Internet penetration is still low. With 16 percent of people online, its far below compared with a world average of 19.1 percent.