Google planning to shut down Slide social apps

Apparently the age of “superpoking” social network friends and throwing sheep at them is coming to a close.Google plans to shut down the social applications developed by Slide, a company it acquired a year ago for $182 million. Slide products include SuperPoke and photo management and decorating tools like Slideshow and FunPix.Slide’s applications like Slideshow were very popular on MySpace during its heyday, and found success on other social networking sites, including Facebook, where the sheep-throwing feature of SuperPoke caught on, entertaining and annoying many.

But usage of Slide applications has apparently been declining and disappointing, according to a message Slide posted on its blog on Thursday.“We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped,” the post reads.

IBM's 120 petabyte data drive: world's Largest data drive

IBM is currently in the process of building the world's largest data storage drive of 120 petabytes, to put this into perspective that's 120 million gigabytes, an iPhone 4 has 16GB.This mammoth task will be accomplished by putting together around 200,000 seperate disk drives, placed in a conventional horizontal pattern but with more spacing, allowing for more hard drives. 

To deal with all this data they've built an entirely new system which deals with how the information is collected and used. By sharing the information out over different drives the system is able to work on difference sections of the file at the same time, vastly improving speeds. The system is being produced for an unnamed client who apparently wishes to use it for 'simulation purposes'. At 120 petabytes this drive will be able to hold 60 copies of the largest backup yet made of the internet. Yes, that's right, 60 copies of the internet.

HP Elitebook 8×60 series laptop that can replace any desktop

HP’s Elitebook line of business laptops has enjoyed a pretty long history of good reviews from most users, thanks to their superb build quality, powerful specs and great business support (which is separate from the abysmal customer support for their consumer Pavilion line). The Elitebook has become an excellent choice over the other two main competitors, Lenovo’s ThinkPad and Dell’s Precision, especially when the former started to lose points in build quality (even their famous keyboard was affected) and the latter was full of bugs and improperly implemented features (like the fingerprint scanner that needs Dell’s custom software to run and therefore does not conform to most government or corporate specifications). And now, HP has released the next generation of Elitebooks – the 8×60 series, which are a worthy successor to the 8×40’s (not sure why they skipped the 50 number, though).

The new lineup brings a new, from grounds up redesign of the housing – after three generations of about the same design, the new laptops look either repulsive or very attractive. I really liked the classic yet modern lines and finish of the 8530w and 8540w, and the new “retro” look stirs somewhat mixed feelings – the hinge looks nice, but the overall design seems simply ugly. However, it’s really the thickness that gets a lot of people: with the previous models, HP was going for the slim design, while this time they just said “ah, forget it” and made the laptops a full half inch thicker than before – the 17 inch 8760w looks pretty normal, but for a 15 and 14 inch models, the 8560 and 8460 are too thick (and heavy)....

Samsung leaks Nexus Prime handset itself

It looks like Samsung itself has gone and confirmed it is going to be behind the long rumoured inbound Nexus Prime handset. Samsung has worked on the Nexus line before, as they built the Google Nexus , so their involvement shouldn't come as any great surprise. The new phone was mentioned in a cease and desist letter sent out to those who allegedly managed to get their hands on firmware relating to the as-yet unreleased handset. 

Website Geek.com posted an image of the letter that contained the Nexus Prime mention. It appears to confirm, via Samsung's own legal team, that it is behind the new Google handset. Just a tad ironic that Samsung would go and confirm a rumour whilst trying to squash it. So has Samsung finally put an end to rumours surrounding the Nexus Prime? Most definitely not, now we know it exists, it is time to start speculating on pricing and release dates.

Today's Tips & Tricks : Appear Online To Only Few Selected Friends In Facebook Chat

We all will have a lot of annoying people in our facebook chat often. We want to be online and still unable to help ourselves to put this people out of our chat. Do you know that in your facebook account there are few options which can make your things go easy? If not, then you are at the right place.. Well this is really possible. You can appear offline to selected friends on your Facebook chat. Facebook is really flexible if you know how to use it properly. Today let me tell you about a awesome feature in facebook, which most of the people don’t know how to use it and face a lot of problems with unknown people.Just follow the simple steps given below. I have supported the steps with example screenshots. So that you don’t find any difficulty in making your own list.

Step 1 : After you login your facebook account, Just go to Account -> Edit Friends (Arrow 1). Now you can see a option called as Create List (Arrow 2) as shown in below screenshot.

Step 2 : Now click on create a list to make your own list. And give any name and start adding your friends in it. Just as shown below.

 

Facebook Votes out Its Groupon Killer

Facebook announced today that it's phasing out its Groupon competitor Deals this week. The company released the information to Reuters in a statement, which was quickly picked up by other news outlets. The funny thing is, we asked Facebook about this on Tuesday when they announced their huge privacy changes and the end of Facebook Places. Places was tied in with Deals -- you had to check in at a location to redeem a deal -- so it seemed pretty weird that Facebook would continue running Deals without a method of checking in. But apparently, that's what they were going to do.

 Here's what a spokesperson from Facebook's PR firm told us would happen: Previously people had to click "Check in" from a mobile device to claim a deal. Now when they click "Check in" from a mobile device they will be directed to update their status and tell us what they are doing, who they're with, and where they are. Once a user checks in, they will see if there's a deal available below their check-in. If the Place they're at is running a Check-in Deal, the Check-in Deal information will appear below their News Feed status update story. The user will then be able to click there and claim the deal.

How to Change Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Login Screen

Today I will tell one small application for change Mac OS X login screen. If you are running MAC OS with password protection then first screen you see after startup is the login screen. By default Mac OS login screen have normal login screen and After some time some days or some months we feel boring with this default screen. But finally I discovered Loginox. It is freeware application which lets you easily customize the login screen.

You can also change login screen logo in same way. Click on Login logo tab on application and drop a JPG, TIF, PNG and PSD image file into the new login image frame. After that click on Set new Login logo button and application will change the login logo.

You can switch back on Mac OS X default login screen and logo anytime just press Reset button for available on application.mage size is also important point before start this 

application if you are using this utility on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard then image size must be 2560 x 1600 with ratio 8/5. But you are using this utility on latest Mac OS X Lion version then image size of the login screen will be automatically adjusted. If the image ratio does not fit, the image will be cropped in the suitable size.