~TECH-BYTES~

Apple, a funky little start-up based in Cupertino, has recently filed a couple of patents which will have hairs standing on end and eyebrows rising incredulously across the globe. Patent one describes a technology the company is working on called the “illuminated touchpad” — a kind of input device which could track your movements and provide visual feedback via a lighted surface. The application suggests that the optic effects will be linked to input on the device’s facade, and that the display might be capable of glowing, ambiguous color effects, as well as direct and specific reaction to motion. Patent two is something of a historical filing. With the launch of Panther (10.3, for you youngsters),

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It’s there each time you look… the ongoing campaign to vote for India’s most breathtakingly beautiful monument of love, the Taj Mahal, as one of the seven ‘new’ wonders of the world.

Then again, no Indian worth-his-salt wouldn’t want this most magnificent marble edifice to figure in the new list of world wonders.

Jumping into the ‘vote for Taj’ fray is Bharti Airtel, which has announced a free SMS campaign for its mobile customers across the country.

To participate in Airtel’s Taj campaign, all users need do is send an SMS with the keyword, ‘TAJ’ to a short code - 4567.

Airtel users can avail the first SMS free up until July 6th. Thereafter each subsequent message will be chargeable at the rate of Rs 3.

Commenting on the initiative, Sanjay Gupta, chief marketing officer of mobile services, Bharti Airtel, said the Taj Mahal is a historic landmark that symbolizes India’s rich heritage and culture. That this initiative is a special gesture by Airtel inviting the whole family to come forward and vote for the Taj!

Adding a dash of spice is music maestro, A R Rehman, who has specially composed customized music in six languages, including Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malyalam.

The music can be downloaded as Hello Tunes by dialling 678777.

hey ppl….
i welcome my very good fren sohit ahuja…. to passiontech… sohit will contribute to passiontech.. so now u’ll have lots more news n stuff….

The advent of the Internet has brought a completely new dimension to globalization, but the system isn’t perfect. Last December, an undersea earthquake off the coast of Taiwan disrupted Internet cables, causing communications to be down for several days. A new pact formed last week between 17 major telecommunications companies hopes to avoid a repeat of that situation with plans to complete a $500 million undersea fiber optic cable between Southeast Asia and the U.S., which they claim will be relatively safe from natural disasters.

The project is called the Asia-America Gateway and will span 12,428-miles, connecting the western U.S. with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii. Telekom Malaysia is leading the band of 16 other companies and says the connection will “provide an alternative and a more secure link for traffic from the region to the U.S.A. … This low-risk route was designed to avoid the volatile and hazardous Pacific Ring, thus mitigating the effects from natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.”

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have been awarded the contract for the development of the link. The fiber optic cable is already under construction and is projected to begin operating in December 2008.

If you are using a public terminal in an internet cafe, college library or even inside the posh business center of an hotel or airport lounge, do check the connection between your keyboard cable and the desktop - the white AA battery sized hardware device in the picture is actually a keystroke logger.

Hardware keyloggers may soon become a challenge in schools and offices as these devices get affordable and widely available.

These deceptive KeyGhost hardware keyloggers plug-in between your keyboard and Desktop PC and will largely go unnoticed by the computer user. Once plugged in, it tracks and records all computer keystrokes in it’s internal Flash memory. The keystrokes can later be retrieved using any text editor.

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