Worst is over: chip makers start recovery

According to IDG News Service Japanese chip makers have resumed their operations, first time after earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. While some Factories have started recovering others are coping with damage and power shortage.
Shin-Etsu Chemical, the world's second-largest supplier of 300-millimeter (12-inch) silicon wafers, vital to chip production, said that two of its four factories shut down after the earthquake are back and running. Company is assessing damage to other two factories. It further added that it will be transferring production equipment from one of its plant to elsewhere in Japan.
Silicon wafers are the raw material on which chips are etched. Japan supplies 72% of the world's 300mm silicon wafers, according to investment bank.
Japanese DRAM maker Elpida Memory has said a chip testing and assembly plant located in northeastern Japan is back and running after an initial closure caused by power outages related to the earthquake. The company said the facility was not damaged by the earthquake.
Both of these companies said that power outages remain an issue.
The 9.0-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami knocked several power plants offline in northeastern Japan, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. The company continues to work to restore power to companies and residents, and started rotating power outages from Monday due to a shortage of capacity.
Chip makers that fabricate chips, the sensitive etching work that takes the most time in chip production, would not be able to resume operations until the earthquake activity settles down in northeastern Japan, according to IHS iSuppli.
"Earthquakes ranging from 4 to 7 on the Richter scale will make it impossible to fully restart these labs until the aftershocks stop happening with such frequency," IHS iSuppi said. "Every time a quake tops 5, the equipment automatically shuts down."
Northeastern Japan continues to be rocked by earthquakes, the latest a fairly strong 5.4-magnitude temblor Friday evening, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Japan continues to recover after the biggest earthquake in its history. On Friday, the National Police Agency of Japan published dead and missing figures almost double the numbers from Wednesday. The number of people confirmed dead now stands at 6,539 with 10,354 missing. The tsunami spawned by the temblor swept away entire towns, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, while an emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station caused by the tsunami continues to plague officials in Japan.

Indian Prime Minister lying said Wikileaks founder

According to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is deliberately misleading the public by suggesting that the veracity of cables between U.S government and Indian embassy cannot be established.
Since November Wikileaks has been publishing leaked cables in partnership with certain newspaper. Indian newspaper “The Hindu” started publishing cables related to it on March 15. Due to these publication of leaked cables, an uproar was sparked in India’s Parliament because some of these cables suggested that India’s ruling Congress party has given bribe to members of Parliament to survive avote of confidence. During that time left party has withdrawn their support from coalition government as they were oppose to a civilian nuclear deal between India and U.S.
Manmohan Singh denied these allegations against his party in Parliament due to which Julian Assange reacted by saying on NDTV that the cables are authentic, there is no doubt about that.

China blocking Gmail to suppress “Jasmine Revolution”: Google

According to Google, China is blocking Gmail with methods that it looks as if the problem lies with Google. For the last several weeks Chinese users have reported difficulty in visiting Gmail. According to users the service was either slow or inaccessible.
Google further added that they have no technical issue on their side and they have checked extensively. They said the government is doing this and it looks as if the problem is with Gmail.
The blocking of Gmail coincides with China's recent efforts to suppress any mention relating to the "Jasmine Revolution", which began as an online call urging the Chinese people to protest the government.
While China regularly blocks politically sensitive content, experts say government censors have further tightened their grip on the Web in the last few weeks. The word "Jasmine" and terms relating to the anti-government protests in the Middle East can no longer be searched for on the country's microblogs. China has also responded by arresting activists, harassing foreign journalists and deploying large police forces to prevent unrest.

Firefox eyes faster release, to get more features

According to a proposal posted this week, Mozilla will add more features in a series of versions and will make new versions faster of its browser like that of Google. The new pace will result in a new browser every 16 weeks that means new three browsers in a year and Firefox 5 and 6 in 2011.
An analyst of IDC, Al Hilwa said it is good to see Mozilla looking hard at streamlining their development to achieve faster release cycle.
The change Firefox users would immediately notice under the faster scheme is that new features will regularly appear in the browser, rather than waiting for months while work on the next edition is completed. "The goal of the process is to provide regular improvements to users without disrupting longer term work."
Mozilla's move would be a major departure for the open-source company. Firefox 4, for example, was in development for over a year, while Firefox 3.6 took about the same amount of time to complete
To replicate Chrome's rapid release schedule, said Sayre's planning document, Firefox will need to include a "silent update" feature that automatically delivers upgrades in the background, a practice Google uses for its browser. "This proposal also requires changes to our software update behavior to make them happen more automatically in the background and interrupt the user less often," said Sayre.
Nightingale, however, denied that silent updates was a requirement for the faster pace.
In August 2010, Mozilla had listed silent updates as one of the features that would make it into Firefox 4. But later, the company yanked the feature from the browser. In an interview Wednesday, Nightingale confirmed that silent updates didn't make it into the final of Firefox 4, and said developers are still working on the tool.
"We have a lot of patches [for silent update] under way," said Nightingale.
It's unclear how Mozilla will ship Firefox security updates if it pulls the trigger on the frequent-update plan, or how long the company will support earlier editions. Currently, Mozilla frequently delivers Firefox patches: In 2010, for instance, it shipped 13 security updates for Firefox 3.6, which launched in January of that year.
Nightingale said discussions are continuing about how best to serve up security fixes for Firefox in a faster-paced development process.

Facebook buying Snaptu: a mobile tool maker

According to IDG News Service Facebook is planning to buy a four year old startup named Snapto which develops mobile versions of web based applications for cheaper mobile phones.
According to a post on snapto blog acquisition will complete within few weeks. Facebook and Snapto together will enable more quick delivery of better mobile applications for phones with less processing capabilities than smartphones.
Earlier this year Snapto has released a mobile application for Facebook. The application called Facebook works on more than 2500 phone models.
Facebook has also developed its own mobile application for Apple's iPhone. There are also Facebook apps for T-Mobile's Sidekick and for smartphones from INQ, Palm, Nokia and High Tech Computer (HTC), which sells two Android smartphones with dedicated Facebook buttons.

Android defeated iPhone 4 by 50%

According to an independent field test by Blaze software it was found that the smartphone running latest Android loads webpage 52% faster than iPhone 4 which is running iOS 4.3. Android uses chrome browser whereas iPhone 4 uses safari.
Blaze has used 1,000 websites for the test and out of that it was found that Android has run 840 websites faster than safari. Android also provided faster browsing experience.
Both iPhone and Android optimized JavaScript engines in latest versions and both have said that it has vastly increased their browser performance, but it came as a surprise that they were not much faster than previous version.