Techno-Freek

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Location: Hyderabad, India

11/20/2005

Google Web Accelerator

Bigger, better, faster, more! Even in these days of gigahertz processors and broadband connections, users are naturally trying to exploit their power for the fastest access to information possible. Leverage the power of the Internet's premiere search engine by caching its contents and feeding that cached info directly to users, thus streamlining data delivery and bypassing any Internet traffic jams along the way. The software also pre-fetches pages to store locally on your hard drive (these are kept separately from your browser cache). Web Accelerator also compresses some data to add a further speed boost.

Google Web Accelerator requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 with service pack 3, and the Internet Explorer 5.5 or Firefox 1.0 browser. (You can, however, manually configure the software to work with other browsers.) Google doesn't recommend Web Accelerator for dial-up connections -- it's specifically geared towards broadband DSL and cable users.

If you fit the profile and install Google Web Accelerator, you'll find it has a simple interface. The application loads a small icon in the upper right hand of your browser window that displays how much time you've saved. By clicking on the icon, you can turn off Google acceleration on specific Web sites (or fully disable the software). Other preferences are accessed through Google's Web-based interface. Overall, Google Web Accelerator delivers on its promise of faster web browsing speeds. How much of a difference this will make to you is another matter, but the clean interface and easy uninstall make it at least worth a test on your own PC.

11/02/2005

Oracle unveils free database

Hoping to appeal to smaller businesses and fend off competition from open-source rivals, Oracle released a free version of its database software. Oracle announced Oracle(r) Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), a free, starter edition of the world's leading database software. This new edition of Oracle Database 10g offers application developers, database administrators (DBAs) and students a free starter database to develop and deploy their applications. It is also freely available for independent software vendors (ISVs) and hardware vendors to distribute or embed with their applications and products. Oracle Database XE is built on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base and is fully compatible with the family of Oracle Database products including Oracle Standard Edition One, Oracle Standard Edition and Oracle Enterprise Edition. Users can start small, choose to upgrade to other editions of Oracle Database 10g as demand grows, and move their applications to other editions without changes. Oracle Database XE is available on 32-bit Linux and Windows operating systems, and can be installed on any supported hardware platform. As a free, starter database, Oracle Database XE: * uses at most one CPU or one dual core of processing capability; * memory usage is kept below one gigabyte (GB); * is limited to a single instance per system; and, * stores up to four GB of user data. The beta version of Oracle Database XE is available for download from the Oracle Technology Network at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/xe.