In a similar fashion, there’s a reverse bidding system where service providers compete for work assignments or projects, posted by clients and with more bids chipping in every passing moment, new price quotes keep getting reduced and eventually the best value-for-money offer wins the project (although decision is eventually taken by client on whatever basis he or she considers most appropriate, be it price, quality of service, experience or all of them together).

In technology business, there are popular sites such as freelancer that provide such reverse-auction marketplaces for tech service providers and clients who want to get things done at cost-effective rates.

Shpoonkle is a newly launched online marketplace that’s built on the same reverse-auctioning model and aims to provide a place for clients(who are seeking a legal attorney) and attorneys(who can provide legal services to prospective clients).

Shpoonkle presents a one-of-its-kind marketplace to novice people, who’re seeking legal assistance(for things like divorce case, adoption, criminal defence, etc) but afraid of getting over-charged, due to lack of understanding of the field. On the other side, legal attorneys get a hub to explore possible business clients, which is obviously a boon for any attorney, especially those that don’t have clients queued up in front of their office.

The service is currently free to use for both attorneys and clients. All in all, it’s a unique implementation of an old, successful method of establishing an online marketplace for legal attorneys and clients. A recommended service for any legal attorney or anyone seeking legal assistance at cost-effective price.

Here’s what MSNBC has to say about Shpoonkle

This Android version of Google Chrome is focussed on two primary aspects: speed and simplicity. You can download this application here(read below for availability).

Chrome for Android: Features

Compared to the previous native browser of Android, WebKit, a lot of new features have been added. Navigation is fluidic and is best suited for using on small screens like those of smartphones or tablets. Some new features include:

• Accelerated page loading, scrolling and zooming.
• An “omnibox” is present which allows user to search or navigate to a URL from the same box, similar to the omnibar present in the desktop version of Google Chrome.

• Unlimited number of tabs with easy to switch stack interface.
• Chrome Sync to enable users to synchronise Chrome data, including bookmarks, passwords, etc., from their desktops to the mobile phone and vice versa.
• Incognito mode to browse the web secretly.

Apart from these one more feature is present which allows you to send the pages from the desktop version of Chrome to the mobile version allowing users to view those pages anywhere on their mobile, even when they are offline. This page sync feature works in both directions, allowing the users to automatically resume the pages they were viewing on the last device.

Some other special features include the loading of the top results, while you scroll through the results of the Google search.Search suggestions are also available. The password manager is also a boon for people having a lot of passwords to remember.

No support for Flash

If you’re a fan of Flash support on mobile devices, especially android’s native browser then you may be disappointed to hear that Chrome for Android does not (and will never) support Flash. The same has been officially confirmed by Adobe. But as support for Flash in mobile browsers is hardly being endorsed by Adobe itself(due to poor performance) and also with fast growth of HTML5 compatible versions of websites and web apps, Flash support on mobile phones will not be missed that much.

Availability

This release of Chrome for Android is available as a beta version. It is available in the following countries only: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. It will be made available worldwide very soon.

Moreover this release is only meant for Android 4.0+(Ice Cream Sandwich ) devices, so you can see it working only if you have a Motorola Xoom, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S or ASUS Transformer Prime. There are very less chances that a version compatible with the older versions of Android OS will be released, though there is no official word on this.

Conclusion

Launch of Chrome for Android is great step by Google. Users have ever since been requesting for Chrome for Android because of the ease of use of the desktop version of Chrome. If Google releases a version compatible with the earlier version of Android then it will be a win-win situation for all.

It would not be surprising if this version of Chrome takes over all other mobile web browsers available for Android. We just hope that the future versions of Chrome for Android will have support for plugins.

This decision, although taken ‘voluntary’ by service owners, is clearly a ripple effect of what happened with Megaupload a couple weeks back.

BTJunkie writes…

This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!

Since the Megaupload fiasco, many other file sharing sites have proactively taken several preventive measures(such as disallowing file sharing, not rewarding file uploaders, etc) to not be perceived as similar to Megaupload. But BTJunkie happens to be the first case in this row where the entire services have been voluntarily shut down by its owners.

But in case, you’re hearing about the tremor of a news from the demolishing Torrent World for the first time, here is where it all started from…

Mega-Blow behind Shutdown(Limited or Complete) of File sharing services

Online piracy has become a huge concern for the US justice department in the past few years. In its efforts to curb online piracy, the US courts and FBI shut down one of the biggest file sharing services, MegaUpload.com. For some perspective on how huge Megaupload is, It’s the 13^th most popular website in the world and accounts for 4% of the total web traffic.

On 20^th January 2012, the US courts ruled against MegaUpload, leading to the shutdown of the website. Moreover, Kim Schmitz (usually known as Kim Dotcom) and Mathias Ortmann, founders of MegaUpload, were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand.

Three other executives of the website were also arrested while two other executives are on the run. In addition to this, an additional 20 arrest warrants were issued in eight different countries and all the servers hosted in US, Netherlands and Canada were seized. Apart from this, a total of 18 domain names belonging to MegaUpload family have been blocked leading to the worldwide shutdown of MegaUpload services.

The Allegations

All this has been done because of the charges placed by FBI on Megaupload founders. These charges include: “engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement”.

One more statement about the case was posted on the FBI website saying that this action was amongst the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the US and directly targeted the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property online.

The prosecution alleges that Megaupload has had over 1 Billion visits to the website with more than 150 Million registered users and 50 Million daily visitors. The losses caused by MegaUpload are estimated to be over $500 Million. The owners of the website are also said to have illegally earned more than $175 Million of profits through advertising and by selling premium memberships.

However, before it was closed down, Megaupload issued a statement reading: “The fact is that the vast majority of Megaupload’s internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.”

Megaupload = Youtube ?

Megaupload has been trying to defend itself by telling the courts that the operation and functioning of MegaUpload is idnetical to the rules followed by legitimate websites such as Youtube and Metacafe.

A user, before uploading any file, has to agree to the condition that file is not protected under any kind of copyright. The infringing material is pulled down if anybody reports it as illegal. FBI stated online that even though the illegal files were removed from the website, no action, in particular, was taken against the user uploading the files. So he can just upload the file again.

The Backlash

There have been a lot of after effects post closure of MegaUpload. Anonymous, the popular hacktivist group has said that it had brought down the US Justice Department’s website. The department also reported that its server was experiencing a drastic increase in activity resulting in a degradation of service and was investigating the cause of this activity.

There has been a lot of discussion on many technological forums whether acts like this would help curb piracy, or will just make the people move from MegaUpload to some other such service, just like it happened when Napster was brought down.

A huge unrest is also shown by people who have a premium membership of Megaupload. Those people have paid for the membership and the website is now shut down. Other major effects include the steps taken by another such site FileSonic. The website FileSonic worked in a way similar to Megaupload but has now changed the policies and now allows user to download only the files which were uploaded by them.

SOPA and PIPA are already being discussed, and with forced shutdowns like MegaUpload and voluntary shut downs like BTJunkie shows that the future of online file sharing is bleaker than ever.

Now what we actually need to observe is whether these policies will actually do any good to stop online piracy or will it just make the ‘pirates’ adopt different methods of piracy.

A lot of websites like 4Shared, MediaFire, etc. offer such facility. But many times it happens that the file we download is not the file we wished to download. This is the time when websites like General-Files and General-Catalog come into play.

General-files is a big collection of files which have been uploaded elsewhere on other sites on the web. You just have to search for the filename and it will give you the full details and links of the files.  It is kind of a file search engine on the net.

What this website does is that it searches the file sharing websites for the requested files and shows the websites on which the files are available for download. All sorts of content ranging from images, television shows, movies, games , softwares, music, e-books are available for download.

General-Catalog is another sister site to general-files. It can basically be understood as a free software directory. It functions in a pretty similar way to general-files but the difference lies that you can browse the whole classified database of files, instead of mere searching for the files.

For example if you are looking for a media player, instead of searching for VLC, you can browse the softwares section of the website and look for different media players available for download free of cost.

Both these sites contain download information of over more than 700 million files and this count is increasing at a very fast rate. Overall the General Family provides a very convenient method of searching and downloading files from the internet.

Microsoft has earlier announced that they will launch a version of Kinect for Windows PC before February, 2012. On 31^st January 2012, Craig Eisler, the General Manager for the Kinect for Windows project, kept its word by announcing the launch of Kinect for Windows hardware. Along with the hardware Microsoft has also brought out a revised version (1.0) of the SDK.

What is Kinect?

For all those who do not know much about Kinect, it is a device that recognizes gestures precisely using a combination of numerous video and speech recognition sensors. Microsoft, over the past couple of years has successfully implemented this Kinect sensor as an add-on device for their gaming console, Xbox. This Kinect device has created a lot of hype in the gaming industry. Many sports and other motion based games are available for this platform.

The Kinect for Windows hardware is launched in 12 countries including the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Japan, New Zealand and Mexico and will be available worldwide in not so distant future. The price of the hardware is $249 which is pretty much high compared to the price of the old Kinect device that worked with Xbox ($130).This device will also be offered at a special academic price of $149 for Qualified Educational Users.

Microsoft has greatly improved the SDK and the device over the few beta development stages which have been out for quite a time now. The major improvements include support for upto four Kinect sensors on a single computer. A new mode called near mode has been introduced which allows the device to track objects as close as 40cm as compared to the Xbox version which tracked only after 50cm. The latest version of Microsoft Speech recognition components has been included in the SDK and runtime apart from the many other API updates and enhancements.

Apart from these major updates some minor changes like improved skeletal tracking and the ability to choose which user to track, has also been implemented. The development samples provided in the SDK are far more informative. A commercial installer is also provided which can be integrated in the setup of your application to install the Kinect for Windows runtime components on the user’s machine.

You can download the SDK here which allows you to develop applications built with C++, C#, or Visual basic using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft has also stated its future planning to improve Kinect. It states that they have decided to roll updates for the SDK and runtime for about 2-3 times per year. Moreover they are working pretty hard on their testing and adoption programs like the Kinect Accelerator.

Kinect for Windows is Microsoft’s first serious attempt to implement gesture recognition technologies to day to day computing. If this becomes a success, it will definitely change the way we interact with computers. All that is required is sincere effort of the developers who will have to make useful applications based on this platform.

For sample testing uCertify’s study material, we decided to pick up 77-881 – MS Word 2010 Practice Test , a rather simple and commonly used office application that most of us use on a regular basis and here’s what we found in our hands-on experience with the prepkit.

The software prepkit is loaded with various self-training sections such as:

• Study Notes
• How-tos
• Exam specific standards and objectives
• Subject related articles

Prepkit also comes packed with a lot of testing simulations such as:

• Diagnostic Test
• Practice Test
• Interactive Quiz
• Adaptive Test

Different type of test simulations test the knowledge of the exam aspirant differently. In our usage, we found tests to be fairly competitive and (in some cases) tough to crack, which is again a good thing for anyone who’s looking to prepare for any IT certification exam and wants to be fully prepared before facing the final frontier.

We specially loved the tests in ‘Learn mode’ as this mode allows the user to look at the answers with full explanation, at any point of time during the test. This may not be ideal for training yourself in ‘exam’ conditions but certainly a good way to see proper explanation for the correct answer of any given question, if and when you get it wrong.

Overall, we found quality of uCertify’s prepkit to be satisfactory and recommendable. Price may be a bit of concern for some but given the content and test quality, you won’t regret buying a prepkit for your preparations.

While many web startups have a unique purpose behind them and do not relate or rely on any other existent web service in any way, many others choose to build a web application that largely depends on some existing popular web service.

The latter types generally make use of available APIs provided by popular web services for fetching user data. This kind of model has been made popular, largely by Twitter and Facebook in recent years. In fact, Twitter and Facebook were among the first web companies that became hugely popular with the proliferation and support of developer community and gazillion applications that got developed around these web companies.

While web companies such as Twitter and Facebook appreciate developers to build apps around their services, there could be a possibility that a large web company may have a problem with third party developers using their data for feeding into some sort of external application.

In this regard, SingleStat.us is an ideal example to learn from.

It was an interesting web service, started by David Weekly,  back in 2006. It had one simple purpose behind its existence: To send you an alert, if and when any of your friend breaks up with his or her beloved and acknowledges the same by changing his or her relationship status on Myspace.

Soon after the service went live, it had a thunderous start and got a lot of users excited to use it in first few weeks itself. And not so soon, Myspace stepped in and sent a Cease and Desist letter to David Weekly, asking him to shut down operations of this fast-growing web service.

Reason?

SingleStat.us, according to Myspace, was constantly sending far too many data requests to Myspace, eventually putting undue load on Myspace servers and consequently troubling normal operations of the then-popular Social network. According to Myspace, this was in violation with some TOS of Myspace.

So a nice idea, which was getting popular by each passing day, died prematurely, merely after few weeks of its existence, for a (ridiculous)reason that many startup folks many not even care to ponder about.

What to learn from ‘SingleStat.us Debacle’

If you have a business idea and that idea heavily rests on the data feeds from an existing web company(considerably bigger!), you must ensure, before starting to work on the idea and investing your time and efforts in it, that you’re not going to get a thumbs down from the very company that you’re heavily relying on, for data feeds or anything else.

In some cases, It may be possible that even when you’re actually NOT violating TOS of a particular web company, you may still receive service take-down threats from the web company that you’re requesting data from. In such a case, you may not be able to do anything as you can’t lock horns with the very company that feeds you the data to run your app. Also, you just can’t afford to challenge their claim with a counter-lawsuit, as you don’t have the funds to go that way.

So the best thing in such a scenario is either not rely too much on data from an existing web company and if you do need to do so then better try seeking a formal agreement with the company you’re going to be relying on, before putting up your resources onto building such a web service.

Movavi Video Converter already contains database containing the video conversion profiles for almost all mobile phones and portable devices. So it is best suited for converting videos to play them on a mobile device.

How It Works?

• Select the file(s), or the folder containing the files to be converted. You can also directly select the DVD drive containing the DVD to be converted.
• Now select the mobile phone or the portable device on which you wish to transfer the videos or select the video specifications yourself.
• Just click the convert button and you’re done!

Features

• It has preloaded profiles of more than 200 devices including Apple iPods, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, etc. mobile phones.
• It also allows joining two or more videos, and making them into a single video.
• Many plugins are available to perform various tasks, viz., uploading directly to a Sony PSP.
• You can also play videos of different formats in the converter.

Scope of Improvement:

• The user interface can be improved a bit and can be made more fluidic.
• Even though a lot of device profiles are already available, video profiles for a lot of devices are still not present

Overall Movavi video converter does its job pretty well. The additional plugins might be useful for only a few people but are definitely a plus point. The program is easy to use and straightforward, but still a lot of improvements can be made.