Non-commercial search
There have been attempts in the past to re-define search on the Web, breaking away from the big commerce-driven search engines such as Google and Bing. Even Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales tried to raise a new model of an open source peer-reviewed search engine in 2008 with SearchWikia. That project never made it past the Alpha stage.
Now a new search project YaCy (search.yacy.net) is attempting to do the same thing — create ‘people-generated' search results rather than ‘searchworm-generated' search results. One can go to the project's home page, and download a Peer client on their machine to participate in the project. The open source search engine runs on a peer-to-peer search sharing rather than being connected to a central server. This also ensures user privacy as the search results data resides in the computers of the users. The version 1.0 of YaCy has indexed over 1.4 billion documents. However, the recent publicity material released by the company, floating around geek forums, has seriously slowed down the site.
Ice Cream Sandwich
Android version 4.0 codenamed ‘Ice Cream Sandwich,' expected to premiere with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus device soon, has come up for review in some technology forums. The screen grabs look like no other Android so far. Despite making serious inroads into the smartphone space, Android has still not matched up to the interface experience of Apple's iOS. The few who have reviewed the new mobile OS say that Google's Android is finally catching up.
The original Apple contract
Weeks after his death, Steve Jobs memorabilia continues to be gold dust in online tech forums. One of the most popular Mac forums online, www.macrumours.com, quotes a Bloomberg report that the original contract papers signed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne to establish Apple Computers on April 1, 1976 is coming up for auction at the famous Sotheby's in New York. Twelve days later, Ron Wayne would withdraw as a partner in exchange for 10 per cent of the stocks and later an additional payment of $1,500. The documents that have found their way to the auction table once belonged to Wayne, and the opening bids are close to $1,00,000. It is a safe bet to say that the winning bid would far exceed this sum.
iPhone 5: what next for Apple
Rumours are doing the rounds about the speculated launch of iPhone5 next summer — Apple's first big launch in the post-Steve Jobs era. Apple fans and fanatics alike are betting on just how much of Jobs' vision would remain. One of the rumours gaining momentum is that the world's largest selling smartphone would have a 4-inch display. Apple faithfuls maintain that Steve Jobs was clearly against increasing the size of the display.
Compiled by KARTHIK SUBRAMANIAN
