Duck Calls by Cisco CEO John Chambers

Listen to duck calls made by Cisco CEO John Chambers which was recorded by Flip Mino HD video camera.

If you think you can make the best duck call, then respond with your video on this blog.or as a video response on  Cisco YouTube PR channel, you stand a chance to win new Flip Mino HD from John Chambers.

Gmail finally leaves the Beta Phase ;)

Finally after 5 long years GOOGLE’S GMAIL has lost distinction of being the longest running program on the market to retain a “beta” designation.

Rajan Seth,senior product manager for Google Apps, said that Google had woken up one morning and decided that the software had met all its goals for “feature completeness”. He also said “We’re taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite. “

Practically speaking, the change will mean precious little to Gmail’s millions of users.

But it could help Google’s efforts to get the paid version of its package of applications, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other products, adopted inside big companies. Corporate technology managers tend to shy away from beta products, and Google wants to remove any barriers to adoption that it can.

I guess Google finally decided to take off the Beta considering the fact that  generally many CIO’s generally shut doors for product labeled ‘beta’.

Download Free E-Books during World E-Book Fair

Every year on July, the World eBook Library,Project Gutenberg , The World Public Library , other sponsors will team up and provide free access for one month( to download any ebooks from their Libraries.)

worldebookfair.com goal is to provide Free public access for a month to 2.5 Million eBooks. During the rest of the year you may  download your selection of about 500,000 PDF eBooks by joining the World Public Library. Annual membership is only $8.95 per year.

So between July 4th to August 4th you can download ebooks for free on wordebookfair.com.

Happy free e-book downloading

Michael Jackson’s death certicate making rounds on Internet

Michael Jackson’s death certificate, issued July 7, 2009, states that he was 50 years old, divorced, a black male, and that his profession was a musician. His mother is listed as Katherine Esther Scruse and father as Joseph Walter Jackson. Michael Jackson was pronounced dead at Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center.

Official cause of death has been listed as ‘deferred’ until toxicology reports from the autopsy are ready sometime in the next few weeks

You can find the enlarged copy here.

Listen to his daughter speaking at MJ’s funeral.

Google Chrome Operating System to be launched by mid 2010

After introducing Google Chrome web browser 9 months ago and with around 30 million users, Google has announced that it would be launching an Operating System called Google Chrome Operating System.

Google in its official blog said “Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS.Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips.

As people use more and more web applications, the operating system becomes less important and it makes no sense to pay for it. The desktop mail client could be replaced by Gmail, the calendaring application could be replaced by Google Calendar, the office suite has lightweight alternatives: Google Docs and Zoho, it makes more sense to use an online feed reader like Google Reader, your scientific calculator is less powerful than Wolfram Alpha and you’ll rarely need a video player when you have YouTube, Hulu and other video sites.

This idea is not new and there are already operating systems optimized for the browser. For example, Good OS announced last year , an operating system that “integrates a web browser with a compressed Linux operating system kernel for immediate access to Internet, integration of browser and rich client applications, and full control of the computer from inside the browser”. If Google manages to create a great user interface, the new operating system could be very successful.

I have been waiting for an operation system that does not takes ages to boot up and which is optimized for browser. Lets wait and see whether Google will be able to redefine OS the way they redefined Search Engine.Google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. I am waiting to see whether Google Chrome OS can pose any threat to Microsoft or Apple.

You can read more about Google Chrome OS in Google’s official blog here