If, like many, you only tend to fire up Internet
Explorer to download Firefox or Chrome, then
you may want to check out what Microsoft's
elves have been slaving over to put these
browser upstarts in their place.

howcasing IE9, Microsoft talked up its support
for HTML 5 and hardware acceleration which
sees the browser doing tasks previously the
domain of Adobe Flash, while offloading
graphical chores into graphics hardware. Interactivity and zippy graphics aside, IE9 also
sports a bevy of other lesser known features
such as "Pinned Sites" and what Microsoft calls
"One Box". But the million dollar question is
whether or not IE9 and it's new feature set
have the chops to take on Chrome and Firefox? Look and feel While Internet Explorer has long sported a user
interface that even its own mum would
struggle to love, IE9 signals a change in design
direction. The clutter has been kicked to the
curb as IE9's designers focus on less interface
and more on the web. This may sound like small beer but at the end of the day, as web
pages become increasingly information rich and
complex, less is the new more in the browser
interface game. From this perspective, IE9 seems to have moved
on from its awkward teen years into a more
mature early adulthood. The fugly menu bar is
gone and its navigation buttons and address
bar now dominate proceedings. Equally nice are
the small-yet-noticeable tweaks that add a hint of sophistication - such as the backwards and
forwards buttons changing colour to match the
of the site you're browsing. Add in the Aero
glass frame and translucent windows, and IE9
is a good match for Windows 7 or Vista. It
won't work on the aging XP operating system. New features Rather than taking the same tired old chassis
and adding different coloured upholstery,
racing stripes and a shiny set of wheels,
Microsoft seems to have gone to some effort to
add genuinely useful features to IE9. It may be one of IE9's more subtle features but
Pinned Sites quickly became an indispensible
part of my surfing repertoire. Thanks to Gmail
and several other sites, I live with browser
pages open 24/7 on the PCs scattered
throughout my home and work. As the cloud continues to grab a growing slice
of our productivity, being able to pin websites
to the Windows Taskbar makes a whole lot of
sense. Once you've dragged a site to the bar, it'll
behave like a completely separate application,
complete with notifications (e.g. new email etc). Some pinned sites also support jump lists
(which are shortcuts to site specific tasks when
you right click the pinned icon on the Windows
taskbar). It mightn't sound like much, but it
goes a helluva long way towards streamlining
how you interact with the web. Also absent is the multitude of distracting text
field boxes that plagued previous versions of
Internet Explorer. The address bar is still there
but now does double duty for entering search
terms. Tab trickery has also been given a spit
and polish with tabs now able to be snapped out from the browser and misbehaving tabs
able to be closed without killing the entire
application. Equally nice is the new Tab Page which shows
sites that you've visited. Last but by no means
least, Microsoft has finally heard the pleas of
many a geek and added an actual real to
goodness Download Manager so you can now
see what files have been downloaded and the progress of downloads as they happen. Performance IE9 may be brimming with usability
improvements, but power users have a near
insatiable need for speed, so has Microsoft
added a bigger donkey under IE9's hood? There's been a lot of talk about IE9's HTML5
support and hardware acceleration as well as a
new faster JavaScript engine, plus support for
fancy pants web technologies like CSS3 and
SVG2, but is IE9 really that much faster? Having spent the better part of a week with
IE9, my answer to this is a positive yes. After
having had several badly-behaved Firefox add-
ons bring it to its knees in the past, IE9's "Add-
on Performance Advisor" was a godsend. The first time I fired up IE9, I was greeted with
a pop-up asking if I'd like to speed up
browsing by disabling slower add-ons. The
resulting snappiness was a welcome addition. Perhaps the most noticeable performance boost
with IE9 during my testing wasn't browser
start up or page render times (although these
felt plenty fast), but how responsive it felt in
use. Hitting the stop button on earlier IE
versions felt like trying to stop a runaway bus, especially when lots of tabs were open. With
IE9 things felt more like taking a spin in a Lotus
Elise.

To IE9 or Not to IE9? Until recently IE was primarily seen by geeks in
the know as a vehicle for downloading Firefox
or Chrome, but the will IE9 see this change?
Thanks to a significantly improved interface
design, some genuinely useful features and
usability improvements (one of which is definitely speed) Internet Explorer 9 is primed
to give both Firefox and Chrome a real run for
their money.

According to the grapevine Nokia ’ s first MeeGo smartphone called the N9 seems to be revealed with its high quality pictures. The new pictures seem to be quite similar to the N9 handsets by
Nokia which was disposed few months ago.
Though Negri Electronics showed up few images
claiming them to be Nokia N9, but those images
any how doesn ’ t look like the images of Nokia N9, that we discovered off late. However the
detailed specifications of Nokia ’ s N9 handset yet to be disclosed. Hence for
now we can only give you few
features that we are expecting from
the device

According to the images
the handset has got a wide
touchscreen display with a full QWERTY keyboard that offers easy typing facility. It also boasts a front-
facing camera together with a flash-
enabled photo camera on the rear. The
N9 handset is also seen with few
functional keys on the left side of the QWERTY
keyboard. These photos were publicized more or less at the same time when latest images and videos of the Nokia C7 have also been revealed online. If you are too keen to buy Nokia ’ s N9 handset then you need to wait few months more
since Nokia is planning to launch this device
sometime later this year. Till then follow us to get
more detailed reviews on this.

Nokia will launch its first Windows Mobile phone in roughly 12 months from now, the
Finnish firm’ s India MD, D Shivakumar said. Shivakumar also defended the deal with PC
operating system maker pointing to Microsoft ’ s strengths in areas such as socia networking,
search and other software. In a regulatory filing in the US on Friday, Nokia
had said that it expected most of its smartphones
to migrate to the Windows Mobile platform only
in two years, setting off speculation that it will
take two years to implement the strategy. Nokia and Microsoft had announced a deal last
month under which Nokia promised to build
smartphones only on Windows platform, and to
abandon other platforms like Android and
Symbian.


According to Canalys, a global IT market research
firm, the share of Windows in total smarphone
sales had plummeted to just 3% during the last
quarter of 2010 despite having been present on
more than half of the smartphones in the early
2000s. In comparison, Symbian, which is being discarded by Nokia, had a marketshare of 31%. Critics and consumers dismissed the last major
version of Windows Mobile, called Windows
Mobile 6, as being clunky and resource-hungry,
though they have been kinder on the new
version -- Windows Mobile 7, unveiled earlier this
year. Shivakumar said Nokia ’ s bet is on the new version and its is much better than the earlier
ones. “ We took the decision after looking at that operating system [Windows Mobile 7]. It ’ s a good operating system, ” he said, when asked about abandoning a popular product for a less
popular one. Nokia, which has around 35-40% of India ’ s cellphone market, is estimated to be maintaining
its share in the smarphone market as well,
despite teething troubles in bringing new models
to market. The Finnish firm has been caught in a
semi-paralysis for the last 2 years as rivals such
as Samsung and LG raced ahead by introducing tens of new models in the smartphone category. The flounder also cost Nokia ’ s four-year-old CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo his job late last year, and
brought Stephen Elop, then head of Microsoft’ s business division to Nokia ’ s head. Shivakumar said the alliance between Nokia and
Microsoft will give the latter a second shot at the
mobile market, thanks to Nokia ’ s 33% global marketshare. “ Microsoft has been looking for a strong hardware partner, but they have been on phones
[platforms] which has not given them that
strength. With Nokia, suddenly the scales are
huge. “ So, for the first time in many a markets, people will get used to a Windows Mobile phone thanks
to the Nokia tie-up, ” he pointed out. For Nokia, the deal will help the company give a
quiet burial to the ailing Symbian operating
system while leveraging Microsoft ’ s influence as a shareholder at Facebook to bring nifty features
to its future smartphones. “ Its [new] operating system has links to it [Facebook].. It has a range of services which
complement Nokia services -- they have Bing
[search], Zune [music] and games,” the India MD said. Meanwhile, Nokia will launch around 40-50
new phone models in 2011, including around 20
smartphones built on Symbian, he added. He also claimed that the Rs 23,000 ‘ N8’ trebled the Indian smartphone market since its launch six
months ago. Around 6 million out of the 155
million phones sold in India last year are
expected to have been ‘ smart’ , according to research firm IDC India. They are expected to hit
39 million units by 2014, according to Canalys.

The morning after Japan was struck by the most powerful earthquake to hit
the island nation in recorded history and the
tsunami it unleashed -- and even as the earth
continued to twitch with aftershocks -- the
disaster's massive impact was only beginning to
be revealed.


The 8.9-magnitude temblor, which was centered
near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of
people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of
water that swept across rice fields, engulfed
entire towns, dragged houses onto highways,
and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi
Prefecture on Japan's east coast.

The epicenter of Friday's main quake
was located off Miyagi Prefecture, about
230 miles (370 kilometers) northeast of
Tokyo, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Also in Miyagi, officials reported that a
train had derailed and authorities had
lost contact with four trains in coastal
areas, Kyodo reported, citing the East
Japan Railway Company. Six million households, more than 10%
of the total in Japan, were without electricity, said Japan's ambassador to the United
States, Ichiro Fujisaki. In Tokyo, rail service was suspended overnight,
elevated highways were shut early Saturday and
surface streets remained jammed as commuters --
thousands of whom had spent the night in
shelters -- tried to get to their homes in outlying
areas. Video aired by Japanese broadcaster NHK
showed extensive fires in Miyagi and in the port
city of Hakodate, in the southern part of
Hokkaido island in northern Japan. An oil refinery
was burning in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo,
according to NHK. And Kyodo News said fires could be seen in extensive areas of Kesennuma in
Miyagi. Aerial views of Kesennuma showed plumes of
white smoke emanating from the center of the
city and large, black areas the flames had already
traversed. In the city of Minamisoma in Fukushima
Prefecture, all that was left of many structures
were their foundations. Only concrete and steel
buildings appeared to have withstood the wash.
No people were visible in the streets of the town,
whose population on Friday had been 70,000. And a dam in Fukushima Prefecture failed,
washing away homes, Kyodo reported. There
was no immediate word of casualties, but the
Defense Ministry said 1,800 homes were
destroyed. The National Weather Service sent a warning to
50 countries and territories it said could be
affected by the tsunami. Scores of aftershocks jarred the country
Saturday, punctuated by a pair of strong
earthquakes in the early morning, including one
with a magnitude of 7.1 and another with a
magnitude of 6.8. A leak occurred in an atomic power plant in
northeast Japan, a spokesman for Japan's nuclear
agency said Saturday. Cooling equipment stopped
working when generators failed in the quake,
and the temperature inside the plant in the
Fukushima prefecture had risen; officials lowered the pressure inside the plant hangar by venting
it, said spokesman Kazuo Kodama. But high levels of radiation led officials to
suspend the release, NHK said. Alternative plans
were being evaluated, the broadcaster said. Citing Japan's nuclear safety agency, Kyodo said
radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal
in the the control room of the facility's reactor. An evacuation order was extended to people
who live within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the
plant, named Fukushima Daiichi, about 160 miles
(260 kilometers) north of Tokyo. The agency said the radiation amount posed no
immediate threat to the health of nearby
residents, Kyodo reported. Cooling problems also appeared to have affected
to another of the Tokyo Electric Power
Company's nuclear facilities. Kyodo reported the power company alerted
authorities that the cooling system at three units
of another plant in the same prefecture. That
prompted Japanese authorities to add that plant
to its emergency list, along with the another
plant, Kyodo said. Prime Minister Kan inspected the plant and the
rest of the affected region from a helicopter. The government ordered the evacuation of
residents nearest the plant as efforts to keep it
cool after it was shut were initially hampered. Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported
Saturday that the death toll is more than 900,
with about 700 others reported missing. Earlier
Saturday the nation's Kyodo News News Agency,
citing police, reported that the death toll was 433,
with at least 784 missing. The official death toll is likely to rise as authorities
continue rescue and relief efforts in the worst-hit
areas. Kyodo predicted the death toll would
surpass 1,000.

The first update for Windows Phone 7 is already
out but the first one with merit - well, with copy
and paste anyway - is coming this month
(though not as fast as expected). Hopefully,
Microsoft has learned from their mistake with the
first one and this one will go smoother.


The first update was supposed to improve the update process itself to make the phones ready
for the future updates. That didn't go very smoothly as Samsung Windows Phone 7 owners
will attest, but the issue was fixed and WP7 phones should be all ready to get one of those
small but "I can't believe it doesn't have it"
features. We're talking about copy and paste - we've seen
it on video and there's a new video out too. The update is also expected to speed up performance
of apps and revamp the Marketplace. The update was officially confirmed for March
and Microsoft France's public relations blog says
the update will come in the second half of March
(instead of the first half as originally planned).
Either way, you'll receive a notification when it's
available. Microsoft has promised a lot more for Windows Phone 7 - Internet Explorer 9 mobile browser,
Twitter integration, cloud support for Office and
of course multitasking. These features should
come later this year, bringing Windows Phone 7
up to speed with the competing OSes before the
WP7-running Nokias come out.

jennifer Lopez fans in India (are there any?) now
have a reason to rejoice. The official first track of
her much talked about album – ‘ Love ?’ will be made available exclusively on Nokia ’ s Ovi store until March 9th, 2011.

The digital version of the song, ‘ On the floor’ features the American rapper, Pitbull. Apart from
this track, her new album ‘ Love ?’ will combine R&B, pop music and hip hop songs for a mixture of
club-ready singles as well as slower mid-tempo
songs and is tentatively scheduled for release in
March 2011

The Justin Bieber fever seems to have spread across the globe as the teen sensation has
become the most downloaded artiste across Asia,
Europe and Latin America.


According to Nokia's Ovi Music, Bieber has
rocketed up 52 places in the January 2011
downloads chart to 26th place, beating biggies
like Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Ke$ha and Akon. Ahead of his debut global "My World" tour, which
kicks off March 4 in the Britain, he has his
popularity has seen a 350 percent increase in
music downloads since January of last year. According to a press statement, India is the global
hotspot for 'Bieber fever', accounting for 28
percent, followed by China with 16 percent,
Finland with 13 percent and Britain with nine
percent. His most downloaded song is "Baby", followed by
"One Time" and "Somebody to Love**".