Posted by Eric Torres on Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 10:41 AM
The social networking phenomenon Facebook is all about connecting people. Plans to add Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communication to Facebook could be the chosen method of staying in touch for many in the future. A few Facebook users have started seeing a “Call” button randomly show up when they visit their friends' profiles. The new button doesn't seem to do anything, but it's not too big of a stretch to guess that Facebook wants to start doing VoIP calls.
Facebook likely will not develop the technology on its own. After all, the social networking giant has been working on deep integration with Skype to deliver SMS and voice/video chat using Facebook Connect for the last four months, if not longer. With the release of Skype 5.0 for Windows three months ago, we saw Facebook phonebook and browsing integration in the new Skype client.
Will we soon see Skype integration on Facebook? Admittedly, nothing actually suggests Skype in these leaks, but we're assuming so anyway; these screenshots are easy to fake, but we don't really see any motivation to do so.
The image above is courtesy of AroundThe.Net. Another user also saw the button appear and sent in a slightly different screenshot to The Daily What.
Posted by Eric Torres on Wed, Jan 26, 2011 @ 11:23 AM
Five days after Eric Schimdt announced he will be turning over the position as Google Inc.’s CEO to Google’s co-founder Larry Page,
Google announced that they will be hiring about 6,200 workers this year.
Google made the announcement Tuesday in what would be one of the biggest hiring the internet giant has made. This move would boost Google’s workforce by 25 percent and makes their total number of workers to about 30,000. Google hired 6,131 workers in 2007 and at least 4,500 workers just last year.
Google, the world’s most used search engine company, has not disclosed specific figures though. It was also not clear if how many workers will the company hire from the United States. In a statement last Tuesday, Eric Schmidt said that they are to hire more than 1,000 employees from Europe. Google said that they would make their biggest hiring this 2011.
The recent expansion will be an added challenge for incoming CEO Larry Page, one of the founders of Google along with Sergey Brin. Page has already been the CEO of Google but shareholders insisted that they need a more mature leader, then Schmidt came in. During the time that Page was the CEO of Google, the company only had about 300 employees.
The announcement of Google is welcomed by economists as a positive sign even though it came on the same day that Yahoo Inc. laid off around 100 workers. Though the expansion of Google would not be enough to solve he region’s unemployment woes, it is still a big help to the economy.
In the recent State of the Union Address of President Barack Obama, he stressed that more jobs are needed to help the ailing economy of the United States. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is among those who gives advice to Obama regarding the economy.
A lot of developments have been happening with Google Inc. recently. In addition to the announcement of Schmidt to step down as their CEO, Google also released their revenue report for the fourth quarter of 2010 wherein the company had revenues of $8.44 billion. Google had a profit of $2.54 billion during that quarter alone, 29 percent up as compared to their profits in the same quarter in 2009.
Posted by Eric Torres on Fri, Jan 14, 2011 @ 11:30 AM
Get ready Firefox fans, because Firefox 4 is on the way. PCWorld writes that the next version of the second most popular browser worldwide is 
"nearly ready for release" and should be available starting next month.
Mozilla's senior director, Damon Sicore, wrote on a developer mailing list that "We have to reach Release Candidate status as quickly as possible" but until the launch "we need *everyone* to help in testing."
Mozilla had planned to ship the latest version of its popular browser by November, 2010, but too many bugs remained to release a final candidate. According to Sicore, Flash, Silverlight and "other major plug-ins" were continuing to cause problems, with users "affected by hardware acceleration causing crashes or other issues." According to PCWorld, Sicore said that "about 160 'hard blockers'--or significant bugs--remain in the project."
Hardware acceleration is one of the key features boasted by Microsoft to boost Internet Explorer 9 ahead of other browsers. Currently, Firefox is second in popularity worldwide only to Internet Explorer, with Chrome and Safari following behind.
For a full look at what to expect in the latest version of Firefox, take a look at this in-depth review from Make Tech Easier, earlier this year. The long and short of it is that the next version will be faster, sleeker, with "do not track" capabilities to enhance user privacy.
If you want to help Firefox along, you can take part in beta testing the product by downloading the latest version and reporting any bugs you come across.
I have been a Firefox fan for quite some time and have been on the beta for months now, yet I still have Chrome as my default browser due to some of the early bugs that hopefully Mozilla has addressed. What do you think? Will you try out Firefox 4? Is that your browser of choice or will Chrome keep your attention? Or has IE9 brought you back to the Microsoft side?