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The tech industry is in turmoil. Layoffs happen in thousands and this is being written. But even in this financial climate, IBM wants to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion – in cash! If this deal is done – it could shake up the whole of tech industry specially the Silicon Valley.

Why buy Sun?

And the reasons for IBM to keep an eye out on Sun are not few. Sun has positioned itself as a strategic player in the tech for more than 20 years. Sun developed Java, one of the most important programming languages for Internet. It also has Solaris tucked under its belt. Sun is also a strong contender in the server markets which could place IBM at a very lucrative position if the IBM-Sun deal gets somewhere. Sun also bought MySQL, the most popular open-source database for about $1 billion last year.

While Sun is good at developing and improving products, it is slow at promoting its products. On the other hand IBM has vast sales network and has deep roots in corporate computing where it can place its offering more attractively. And when banks are bailing what better thing to do than throw a $6.5 billion out of its unused $13 billion? Good investment and a bargain if you ask – even after paying a 100% premium to Sun. Sun has also been the company that helped the rise Web 2.0 and gove

Stock Market Reacts

The Wall Streets reaction to this deal has been somewhat mixed. While Sun’s share rose 61 percent [$3.05] to $8.02, IBM shares plummeted about 2.5% [$2.46] to $90.45.

Why is it a good deal for IBM?

Sun’s products have become insustry standards and this gives IBM an edge over its competitors [read Microsoft]. Sun offers a free and open-source OS Solaris and also Star Office, Sun’s version of OpenOffice.org – a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. And Sun announced its Cloud Computing strategy that’d be a competing service to Amazon Web Services! The paradigm shift to cloud computing could sweeten the deal even more for IBM. If the dealmakes its way it’ll be the biggest acquisition of IBM – to date.

Get in line!

While IBM will try its best to buy Sun there are other competitors that may ruin IBM’s plans. The competitors include HP, Dell and Cisco. Microsoft doesn’t count as buying Sun would mean axing their own products in favor of open products.

Lets see where the deal goes! Subscribe by RSS or email ?[top-right of the page] so that you don’t miss a post!

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Google Chrome logo

Google released Chrome, a new, light-weight browser and ever since I became a fan. I’ve been using Google Chrome more than Firefox because Google Chrome loads in an instant, is considerably faster and you can close non-responsive tabs without affecting other tabs.

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There was only 1 reason that I stopped using Google Chrome because it started crashing but then Google took off the BETA label and released a stable version in December. I then started using it once again!

Although I like Google Chrome for more reasons than I can mention – I’d really like to see Google toolbar for Chrome because I can then -

• Bookmark interesting websites on the go and access them in the cloud
• Google toolbar tracks which websites you visit and you can then search a website if you remotely remember the contents of the page [given that you have Pagerank enabled]

Some of the new features include -

• Auto fill forms – eliminate sore fingers!
• Drag tabs side-by-side?
• Autoscroll pages
• Full page zoom?

Google claims that the new Chrome BETA is 25% faster in their V8 benchmark ?and 35% faster in Sunspider benchmark. You can see the graphs that show the results -?

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Result of V8 benchmark

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Sunspider benchmark result

After being delayed for more than a month, the Discovery space shuttle finally launched on?7:43 p.m. EDT Sunday. ?The seven member crew took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Discovery’s STS-119 flight is carrying the space station’s fourth and final set of solar array wings, completing the station’s truss, or backbone. It is a 13 day mission and will provide electricity to the space station through the solar panels.

via NASA

Times are tough. People are losing jobs. The unemployment rate of the country is approaching 10% . And its time for you to arrange all your documents so that the government takes all your hard-earned money in the form of taxes.

And after paying all those taxes there is very little that you have in your pocket. But there is some hope – even in these testing times!

Many people are claiming government money even when many people are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

First, it was the Government of California offering more than $5 billion in unclaimed money – see www.claimit.ca.gov?

And now its Unclaimed.org offering nearly $33 billion in unclaimed money sitting in government treasuries!

If you believe the state owes you any money then go to Unclaimed.org to find out.

You must have your signature notarized if you owe more than $50. Although each state has its own procedure, the basic process is almost the same.

People are claiming the government money way before it was publicized by the government.?

For a limited time, you can get a FREE Grant Software CD that scours all the resources where there is money to be claimed. Get it now before it ends – for FREE!

Google Voice

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Google has released a preview of Google Voice, a one stop shop to better manage your communication.

Google acquired GrandCentral in 2007 and Google Voice will only be available for existing GrandCentral users, for now.

Now, I truly love all the services that Google launches but I have my own complains for GrandCentral and I think it sucks because it is not available in other parts of the world where the service is equally needed

GrandCentral is only available for US residents.

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Keep track of calls and voicemail - for FREE!

GrandCentral offers you a free number that can be used for every other number you use – home, office or mobile.

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You can make totally FREE calls within the United States by calling a special number that Google gives you. Now select option 2 and then dial the number that you want to call for FREE followed by # key! Simple.

Now, GrandCentral which will be rebranded and launched as Google Voice will provide you with a voicemail inbox that you can access on the web.

One of the coolest features is that you now can get text transcripts of the voicemail and also get them emailed to you. They’re pretty accurate with very few mistakes but Google says that they’re working to iron them out.

Google Voice is also handy if you want to archive and save all the SMS text messages that you send or receive!?

Using Google Voice you can also make cheap international calls – I knew Google VoIP was near!

You can register here to be notified when Google Voice opens for everyone .

What you can do with Google Voice is only limited by your imagination. I’ll soon make a blog post describing how you can use Google Voice to do fun things!

Already lagging behind the lauch schedule by about a month – Discovery had postponed the launch again!

The cause of the delay in launch is the leak that was found while fueling the vehicle.?

“It’s better to be flying than sitting on the ground”, said Mike Leinbach. He also said that the space business needed perfection and so the launch was delayed again.

The shuttle engineers won’t have access to the leak vent valve until Friday and so the launch maybe delayed until Sunday, 15th March according to a tweet by NASA.

After weeks of delay, Discovery, the space shuttle is finally ready to take off on Wednesday evening for a 2 week mission to the International Space Station.

Mike Leinbach, the Launch Director for Discovery confirmed that they weren’t having any issues and the NASA team was anxious to go.

Discovery had to be delayed for about a month due to concerns regarding 3 Hydrogen valves in the engine compartment.

The valves that had paper-thin cracks have now been replaced.

Some facts about the shuttle -

• ?This is the 125th shuttle flight and the 36th for Discovery
• The 2 week mission includes 4 spacewalk
• A 31,000 pound final truss segment will be installed with 2 solar array wings
• Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut willl spend the next couple of months on the shuttle.
• He will replace Sandra Magnus who will retun to Earth from Discovery
• 2 flags among which is a green flag representing the Andretti Racing Team
• 8 chocolate bars will be taken to the space
• You can get latest updates by following NASA on Twitter

If you’re like me then you must be watching a LOT of YouTube videos! Most of the time I stop myself from going to YouTube.com so that I don’t waste half of my day watching the videos. It can get quite addictive – I frequently go to YouTube to watch some useful videos and hop on to several other entertaining videos.

The best solution for this is saving the videos locally on your computer to enjoy later! There are many tools and website that’ll let you download the videos once you just place the URL like KeepVid.com

But YouTube is starting to offer premium download options and soon it will start cracking down on these websites.?

So when is this technique to save the already buffered or loaded video on you computer useful -

• The video has already been loaded or buffered in the browser
• You are halfway through a large video and you realize that it could be better saved locally to watch later.
• You want to show the video to your friends, kids, boss or anyone else who may not have a faster connection [and even if they do have they'd be reluctant to load it themselves].

Stuff You Need -

1. Mozilla Firefox Web Browser [download FireFox]
2. YouTube or any other video sharing website
3. Disk space to store the video
4. FLV player to watch the downloaded video [download Applian FLV player]

Watch the video below that shows you how to save the YouTube video for local playback -

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Martha Stewart’s puppy has been the victim of a propane explosion and has died as the consequence. The blast took place at a northeastern Pennsylvania kennel.

Martha is deeply saddened by the death of Ghenghis Khan, her pet chow.

The blast took place on Friday when Timothy Kleinhagen, a kennel worker was filling the propane tank at the kennel that was home to many show dogs.

Karen Tracy called Timothy a hero for attempting to save the lives of as many dogs as possible even after suffering several severe burns. Timothy remained in a ?critical condition even on Saturday.

Martha Stewart blog also has a post on this unfortunate event. Please post your consolences for these pets below – they have a very special place.

Here is a pic of Ghenghis Khan -

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Ghenghis Khan - Martha Stewart's Dog who died in the explosion