Core i7 Super CPU

Core i7:
The new super CPU

Chip czar Intel has once again set new benchmark records with its latest CPUs, the Core i7 series. CHIP reveals the technical innovations inside them.

Intel's development model for processors is known as the “Tick Tock” cycle. Every alternate year, they focus is on miniaturizing the existing production technology for CPUs (known as a process shrink—“Tick”), while in the next year a new architecture will be introduced, based on this process (“Tock”). The system has been functioning well for four years now. The Core i7 architecture, formerly known by its codename “Nehalem”, was introduced in November 2008, after the original Core architecture was shrunk to 45 nm around the end of 2007 (products codenamed “Penryn”). The new design brings a series of changes with it, all aimed at optimizing performance, power consumption and reliability.

New package

The last time Intel changed its processor package was in 2004, when it went from 478 contact pins to 775 pads. Since then, the package and matching socket has remained the same despite many CPU refreshes, but now Nehalem requires a radical turnabout. The new CPU requires about 600 more pins for all its new functions. Core i7 CPUs won’t fit into older motherboards since they now have 1,366 contact pads instead of 775. Even if they did fit physically, nothing would work since there are many new elements on the CPU which need to be connected to the motherboard and the rest of the computer’s components. The transition is understandable since it’s been a long time and there are genuine needs and advantages, but anyone who wants to use the new Intel technology must buy a new motherboard.

Goodbye FSB

The most significant innovation with the Nehalem architecture is the obsolescence of the Front Side Bus (FSB), which has been responsible for all communication between CPU and chipset so far. Its successor is known as the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI). The FSB was replaced mainly because its bandwidth was found to be inadequate: QPI provides 20-bit wide, bidirectional links resulting in a maximum data rate of 25.6 GB/s. This is immediately twice the speed of what an FSB at its highest possible rating of 1,600 MHz could offer. QPI is very similar to the HyperTransport technology used by AMD since 2001, which is now at version 3.1 and achieves similar transfer rates.

Intel has chosen to adopt another technique very successfully applied by AMD: a memory controller integrated in the processor package. Intel’s desktop architectures until now have placed the memory controller in the chipset. The specialty of current high end Core i7s is their triple-channel memory controller. Three memory modules can now be ganged up to achieve data transfer rates fast enough to keep the CPU fed with fresh data so that its potential is used optimally. The result is that PCs which make use of this will have 3, 6 or 12 GB of RAM, which is unconventional compared to the progression we’re used to. However, lower-cost Nehalem CPUs which are yet to be launched will feature more traditional dual-channel memory controllers and a different, smaller socket with only 1156 contact pads.

 

HyperThreading makes a comeback

Since the end of the Pentium 4 generation, HyperThreading disappeared almost completely, but it is now making a comeback. Intel refers to a processor’s ability to process two program threads at the same time as Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). So in addition to the impressive figure of eight CPU cores on a chip in the Windows task manager—four virtual and four real—SMT allows the cores to be utilized more efficiently, with a promised increase in performance of up to 30 percent.

New clock speed tricks

Core i7 processors can run with each individual core at a different clock speed. Turbo mode is especially interesting, because it allows some cores to be overclocked when a non-multithreaded task taxes one or two cores while the others are left idle. Such a situation allows the application to run more efficiently and utilize resources more effectively—and can result in a performance increase of up to 10 percent. On the other hand, a new power saving mode switches idle cores to the C6 state (deep powerdown). In this state, the core is simply disconnected from the power supply. This is taken care of by microcontroller logic which monitors the temperature and power consumption of each core.

 

New design: Small L2 cache and large common L3 cache

One of the weak points of the cache design on Intel’s previous CPUs was that on a quad-core CPU, each pair of two cores shared a 6 MB L2 cache which was exclusive to them. This was great for fast data exchanges between those two cores, but bad for exchanges between all four, which required the data to travel through the much slower Front Side Bus. In Core i7 CPUs, each core now has its own L2 cache, which is considerably downsized to 256 KB, but with its speed increased by 50 percent. Like in AMD’s  Athlon CPUs, a common 8 MB L3 cache (for the current quad-core models) is added to enable data exchange between the cores. This cache receives all data from the cores’ L1 and L2 caches, which in turn considerably accelerates data processing. This allows each core to be shut down without any risk of losing data that's in transit between caches.

A CPU design for all applications

The scalability of the Core i7 architecture is quite unique. Nehalem is suitable for desktops, servers and notebooks as well. Thanks to the new cache design and the introduction of the QPI, two, four or eight cores can now be integrated in a single processor die. Furthermore, the high speed of the QPI enables quick communication between several CPUs on one motherboard for high-end and server configurations. When 8-core Nehalem chips are available, power users should be able to gang two of them up for a grand total of 16 cores and 32 virtual CPUs!

At present, three Core i7 models are available in the market, with more to come soon. By the end of the year 2009, lower cost versions of Nehalem (codenamed Lynnfield and Havendale) will hit the market, with many more innovations and performance advantages in store for users.

Choice of Browsers

Spoilt for choice of browsers

Windows 7 promises to run smoothly on small netbooks. We wanted to know whether it’s actually good enough to displace XP and Linux

When Microsoft launched version 8 of Internet Explorer in the market, it was an instant hit with all its practical innovations. It was supposed to win back users who have made Firefox the number 1 browser in some parts of the world, and make it fit for a battle in which it has lagged behind the competition for a very long time. But the other players aren’t sleeping either. In addition to global pressure to force Microsoft to offer its users a choice of browsers, it has been caught sleeping while smaller companies have released products with far greater usability and value.

Many users no longer believe IE is the only choice for surfing the Web. But which browser is the best? CHIP gives you the answer in the big browser test. We tested the latest versions of Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari in our own kind of triathlon: security, speed and functionality.

Security

The easiest and most common way for malware to enter a system is through the browser. Security leaks make it easy for hackers—especially if you are surfing with an old version, you are an easy target.

The thumb rule is that the more popular the browser, the more it is targeted by hackers. IE 8 seems to continue the trend that previous versions set, with rather poor security. At the time of testing, the experts at Secunia indicated there were two unpatched security leaks for IE. Firefox had one gaping leak. In addition, both browsers have more known and patched weak points. For the new versions of Opera and Chrome on the other hand, no leaks were known at the time of the test—though they have been around for only a short while. However, since nothing revolutionary has happened with respect to the browsers’ security architectures, attackers will certainly find their way through here as well.  Another security risk is browser plug-ins like Flash, QuickTime and Adobe Reader. For protection, Firefox offers a rather interesting approach from version 3.5.3 onwards: during a browser update, it checks the Flash version as well. If it is old, then the user can install the latest version using a link on the default “What’s New” page displayed after updates. The feature has been so successful that in its first week alone, around ten million users updated their Flash version. The way Mozilla is planning it, this service will be soon extended to other plug-ins as well.

Flash expands the option of websites for JavaScript, (and also the infamous ActiveX in IE), but with a risk. The handling of such active elements can be controlled in all browsers except Chrome. This, and the fact that it is the only browser that does not show any information about the identity of visited websites through the address bar, costs it a lot of points.

Nowadays it is standard for all browsers to have a protection mechanism that identifies phishing and other scam sites – unfortunately these are of varying quality. The filters cannot always identify the latest scam sites immediately. IE and Chrome need to do some catching up so that they don’t display pages which try to tap login data for bank accounts. However, IE is the only browser that protects against Cross-Site-Scripting (XSS), a type of scam which uses the credentials of one site while scamming you through another. Attackers use XSS to steal information from cookies or log individual keystrokes. IE’s XSS filter identifies and blocks dangerous scripts which are loaded from different pages. Firefox can however be upgraded using an add-on to include this protection.

Privacy

For privacy on the web, keeping track of your own traces including cookies, search entries and website history is important. Here, the most convincing browser is Firefox, which offers many options to define how these are handled. You can delete data from the last 1, 2, or 4 hours or “forget” individual pages in the history list, i.e. deleting them selectively along with all sub-pages. Firefox also has the most refined privacy mode, in which the browser does not save any surfing traces. Except for Opera, all browsers now offer such a surfing mode (though Opera lets you delete all private data easily). IE further offers optional, freely configurable “InPrivate” filtering. This prevents data pertaining to surfing patterns or system configuration from reaching Google, Amazon, and other companies which like to track users’ online habits.

Page Display

Websites today like to dazzle users with advanced design techniques which browsers sometimes struggle to reproduce faithfully. To keep visual appeal intact, the browser have tweaked their graphics rendering engines and, to some extent, their interfaces as well. Opera, Safari and Chrome get full points in the Acid3 test, which checks whether the browsers can handle today’s various web standards. IE8 on still falls short of these standards, which, like before, makes it display some website elements incorrectly.

Plug-ins like Flash, Shockwave and Silverlight, which although unsafe are necessary to play videos and animations, could soon be a thing of the past. This is supposed to be made possible by HTML 5, the further development of the HTML language. Firefox and Chrome are ahead in this respect, and already support the video function of HTML 5 among other things. Safari and Opera cannot do it yet, but have implemented other elements such as the Canvas function, which can dynamically render vector graphics directly in the browser. For IE8, HTML 5 currently seems like Greek and Latin.

Opera has pioneered several innovations in the user interface, including the original idea of tabs many years ago. The latest version has a tab bar that can now be resized so that you can see thumbnails of all open pages. You can also find side panels for quick access to favorites, widgets, notes, downloads history and other functions if required.

When you open a new tab, Opera also presents the most frequently visited sites just like Chrome and Safari. However, while this overview in Opera and Chrome is functional enough, Safari scores more with a better looking version which automatically reloads pages and thus gives an overview of what is new on your favorite websites. Even otherwise, Safari has a sleek look, as is typical for Apple. For example, the favorites and the history can be browsed in cover-flow view just like iTunes. This is useful because you can find pages much more easily when you actually see them and not just read their names.

 

Intelligent Functions

The new browser generation not only looks better, it has makes surfing the web more comfortable. The largest scope of functions is offered by Opera as before: mouse-control, password manager, integrated mail-client (which now also supports HTML-Mails) – the competition cannot keep up there. For users with slower Internet connections, Opera Turbo could also be interesting. Here, the browser refers to data through a proxy server, which compresses large elements like pictures to a great extent and thus enables fast surfing.

IE is also trying to develop new features. Web slices, which let modules from websites be cut out and used as independent widgets, are still not found in any other browser. Web slices can be stored in the favorites list like bookmarks. There, they are automatically updated like RSS feeds and display fresh content after a click in the preview window.

Chrome is light and sleek. Although the browser has a lot of basic functions, it has hardly any luxuries to offer. Nevertheless, you can now beautify it with themes that suit your taste. Under the bonnet, the Chrome developers have enabled prefetching, which tries to read the IP addresses of links on a page and load the most likely ones in the background before the user even clicks a link. With this feature—which Firefox version 3.5 onwards also offers—linked page loads become somewhat faster.

Opera and IE can be expanded to add functions; however, the selection of plugins is not extensive. Here, Firefox, which continues to rely heavily on the tab add-ons, offers the maximum variety (although Opera has many of these functions already built in).

Speed

The new rendering engines used by the browsers not only ensure improved visual presentation, but also promise faster surfing. In our performance tests, we hit the gas pedal and thrashed the browsers to their limits. The benchmark Peacekeeper tests different JavaScript functions, rendering typical HTML elements, loading, sorting, searches in databases, generating dynamic websites, filtering and replaceing character strings. The SunSpider test measures the speed of browsers while loading JavaScript objects, and the CSS test specifically measures the loading and handling of style sheets.

The overall picture of this test is clear: Safari and Chrome—both of which rely on the WebKit engine—are the fastest. They achieve better results in all tests than the competition. Safari, overall, manages to do a tad better than Chrome. The differences are mainly with respect to web applications such as Google Maps: the modern browsers load map sections speedily while IE clearly struggles. Safari and Chrome are therefore also better equipped for interactive Web 2.0 applications.

Firefox is also now much faster than older versions, thanks mostly to a new JavaScript engine, TraceMonkey. This translates script language into machine code and thus processes it faster.

The benchmark SunSpider confirms that in comparison to its predecessor, the current version needs only a third of the time. The result for the CSS test is more or less the same. Although IE8 is clearly smoother than its predecessor, it still lands in the last position. Nevertheless, while measuring the RAM utilization directly after each browser starts (with the start page set to www.google.com) IE8 had the best value of them all with only 11.7 MB.

Conclusion

The test ends in a close finish, with Firefox slightly ahead of Opera. As before, Firefox is the most balanced browser; a true all-rounder with functions that can be expanded any time using add-ons. The most innovative browser is Opera; however, the missing private surfing mode is a drawback. Safari is, no doubt, fast and looks good, but cannot keep up with respect to security and the scope of functions. Chrome lags far behind and has nothing more to offer than smooth surfing. IE8 therefore brings up the rear. Although this version of IE is far better than its predecessor, it is just not good enough to overtake the competition yet.  

– feedback@chip.in

 

New Web TechnologY

The latest version of HTML (4.01) is already almost ten years old—no wonder that it can only be used to meet the demanding requirements of today’s interactive Web 2.0 sites only with the help of Flash and other plug-ins. In the coming version HTML 5 on the other hand, web designers can integrate audio and video files directly in a website. Flash containers, as we are used to seeing nowadays to play films on the web, will thus become unnecessary. Chrome and Firefox already support these audio and video tags.

They have the necessary codecs for the playback on board (both use the free Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis, Chrome also uses H.264). HTML 5 also has other innovations in store, which could even replace JavaScript functions and thus make the browser faster and safer. However, what is still unclear is whether and when the standards demanded by developers and browser manufacturers will be completely implemented. For the time being, only demos exist, such as the flash-free YouTube minisite www.youtube.com/html5.

The other major development we're looking forward to is CSS 3. Even though it's been delayed for several years, browsers have started implementing draft functionality. CSS 3 will allow for embedded fonts, shadows, transparency, scalable vector graphics, rounded corners, and animated transitions.

Safe Social Networking

Safe Social Networking

You're connected to more people than you know, and that innocent photo of last night's party could harm you in ways you never imagined. 

 

If one day you met a long-lost school friend while out shopping, for example, you might spend a few minutes catching up on each others’ lives, exchanging news about common friends, sharing a few laughs and recalling good times. You might exchange phone numbers or even joyously arrange a get-together at a future date. But you probably wouldn’t automatically start rattling off every detail of every place you’ve been and every new friend you’ve made in the last decade. Imagine now that instead of walking up to that friend you found his Facebook profile just by chance and sent him a message and invitation. You’ve most probably just handed him not only an entire summary of the activities of your life, but also access to your photos and videos, personal thoughts, group memberships, and list of other friends—and all this despite not knowing the first thing about what he’s been up to and who his friends are. A few days after he adds you, you see you have friend requests from a dozen other former classmates, none of whom you were particularly good friends with or would ever consider contacting yourself. They say your name pop up in their news feeds, since your old friend was on their lists. Now all of these semi-random acquaintances know you have an active Facebook profile, and you feel awkward about ignoring them… so you just click ‘Accept’.

Each one of them can now see every last detail about your life.

 

That one branch spawned a dozen branches, and each of those dozen could spawn another dozen. Like the roots of a tree, your online connections can quickly grow into a vast, overlapping, complicated network of interconnected strands, and you’ll quickly lose control over not only who you’re connected to, but who can steal your information to make your life miserable.

 

 

Subtle Dangers

Your photos could be copied, altered and reposted online. Your email address could be harvested by spammers. Your boss could frown on evidence of you partying late last night. Your ultra-conservative co-workers could shun you for things that are none of their business. Or your grandparents could one day mortify you by leaving comments on your friends’ updates! All of this is possible with social networks expanding from young, net-savvy users to anyone and everyone—and very few are happy to adjust.

MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, Orkut, and dozens of other mainstream or niche social networks used to be vast, open playgrounds where people freely posted about the most intimate details of their lives. Today, doing anything like that is a pretty bad idea. There are a few major causes of concern: the fact that enormous corporations are building detailed databases and distilling your profile information into marketable slices is dangerous but abstract—you don’t worry about it that much because you can’t see it happening and you most probably can’t identify any incident that has disrupted your life as a result. One the other hand, information about you can be seen by strangers, your updates can make information about your movement visible to undesirable people, and you expose yourself to a huge amount of liability even with friends, family and coworkers.

The threat of stalkers is very real. One twenty-three year old from Mumbai who prefers to remain unnamed was repeatedly sent friendship requests on Facebook by a stranger over the course of several months. She didn’t know who the person was and kept declining. His profile had a film star’s photo and (misspelled) name, with no clue about how he might know her. They had no friends in common and his profile showed only 8 connections, implying the account had been created solely for the purpose of sending messages anonymously. The requests then started including remarks about her that included references to places she had recently visited, and at least one extremely vulgar comment about her partying and drinking. After frantically checking all her security settings to make sure her updates weren’t visible to strangers, she realized that photos tagged with her name were visible not only to friends, but also strangers tagged in the same photos and their friends! That meant any photos taken at parties where it’s impossible to know everyone, and which had been helpfully tagged by a friend, were visible to that friend’s friends too—which meant she had absolutely no idea how many people could see them and who they were! The girl eventually used Facebook’s flag feature to report abuse, but still has no idea whether the stranger was someone she’d ever met, or who might someday recognize her in public. The Indian police cybercrime cells are actively involved in tracking down such stalkers, you can always approach the one in or nearest to your city if you ever face a similar situation.

 

Another example, Aashish, was fresh out of college and settling in at his first traineeship with a financial consultancy. A week or so in, he recalls, one of his superiors made an offhanded remark about how he’d seen stress lead to drug use in extreme cases and that young people today seem to not be scared of drugs, all the while looking pointedly at him. He thought it was odd but dismissed the incident, but only found out months later that his boss had been shown printouts of a string of comments left on his Orkut profile by college mates making jokes about being inebriated. The company’s recruitment staff had recently made it a routine practice to scan the names on all resumes they processed through the most common social networks, presumably as a form of background checking. The suspicion hadn’t cost him the job in that case, but it had certainly colored his colleagues’ minds about him even before he’d had the chance to make a first impression.

 

There’s also the constant debate now about how to behave once you’ve added your parents to your contacts list! There’s no doubt that social networks are now growing fastest amongst middle-aged users, no longer the private space away from parents and relatives that they used to afford to the original college-aged users. Again, the abstract idea that strangers can see your status updates isn’t half as terrifying as the realization that parents and even distant relatives have been reading all about your social life! Hundreds of kids have started Facebook groups with names including “PARENTS INVADING FACEBOOK!!!”, “NO PARENTS ON FACEBOOK”, “Parents having facebook should definitely be illegal”, and “adults SHOULD NOT be on facebook ESPECIALLY YOUR PARENTS”. This wall post sums up the situation perfectly: “i keep deleting my mom but then she tells me to re- add her, or else i cant use the computer. Once I tried making a new account, but she found out about it. Now i can't swer, upload pictures, or talk about funny things that happened. and she tells me to do my homework. help me!!!!” Although some are supportive of their parents, they often find their own friends feel restricted or become uncomfortable with using Facebook to communicate once they realize the full contents of their own profiles can be supervised, thanks to the “friends of friends” visibility factor. Nineteen year old Delhi resident Radhika was left red-faced after her boyfriend’s mother gave her a stern lecture about drinking one day. Once again, the culprit was a Facebook photo gallery. “I wanted to run home and untag myself from every photo I’d ever been in, even if it meant my friends would never be able to find me. But the damage had already been done” she says. Others report being embarrassed when their parents leave comments on their photos and status updates, while the parents might only be trying to connect with kids away at college or too busy during the day. In fact, dealing with parents, teachers or bosses is very likely to be the first time a lot of users even think about restricting access to their personal profiles. One of the newest ways to be embarassed is to find screenshots of your interactions on blogs like myparentsjoinedfacebook.com and lamebook.com

 

The amount of information about you that’s just readily available to strangers is staggering, but the situation is actually getting even more dangerous. This month, Twitter will start the broad rollout of its location-aware services, including location-based timelines of user activity. On one hand, this will let people discover interesting users in their vicinities. On the other, it will allow your precise GPS coordinates to be mashed in with all your other information, telling people not only what you’re doing, but where you’re doing it. If you’re using Twitter on any recent smartphone, chances are your GPS coordinates have been transmitted along with your Tweets for a while already, but this hasn’t been displayed publicly. Compulsive Tweeters beware, your exact movements are being tracked, and Facebook is likely to follow this move anytime.

Where does all the information go?

In one word: advertising. Facebook serves ads to its users based on their activity and what it calculates will be relevant to them. Orkut data gets fed into the enormous mines of information that Google already has about its users. The good news is that most sites have been hounded about privacy enough that they have clearly stated policies about what data is retained, and what kind of metrics are shared with third parties (http://www.orkut.com/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html, http://www.facebook.com/policy.php, and http://twitter.com/privacy). Of course all of this still requires users to use strong passwords, not share them with friends, and follow basic common security procedures.

Facebook was at the center of a controversy in the middle of last year when it emerged that advertisers had access to users’ profile photos. These were then used in ads, to demonstrate that a person’s friends were already fans or users of the product being advertised. Facebook officially termed this “abuse” and went on to ban others from doing this, though it itself still can provided that users don’t disable a particular setting. Third parties however retain the ability to send you tracking cookies to measure your response to ads. This is just one more reason you need to be well acquainted with your privacy page! Also note that external applications including your own mobile phone and other sites which let you sign in to update your profile, will have their own privacy policies and settings… some less benign than others.

The other big thing today is real-time search. Bing and Google News users might already have noticed Twitter posts popping up in their search results, and being constantly refreshed even as the results page lies open. Real-time updates are the latest search frontier, and everyone wants to get in on the action. Your social networks will be partnering with more and more search engines in order to be more relevant—already huge proportions of the world get their news first from Twitter, and use it to further spread updates that the mainstream press might take hours to catch up on. Who knows where your Tweets will end up next?

Social applications and games, the most popular example of which is Farmville, also have a field day with your information. Everytime you use an app, you authorize it to access your profile information including your location, date of birth, and friends list. These are used to spam your friends with messages aimed at bringing them into the fold as well. Eventually, unethical apps prompt users to either divulge more information—which is then outside the scope of any host network’s privacy policy—or pay money using real-world credit cards in order to advance to a higher level. Quizzes are similarly dangerous; most have very little point anyway and spit out utterly arbitrary results, but somewhere down the line lure users with “offers” or “rewards”, which are only thinly-veiled scams. Applications have already been banned because of this, but the amount of money coming in is hard to ignore.

As always, users have to beware of phishing scams. Your social networking profile information is so valuable that elaborate fake sites are set up, and users are sent emails tricking them into typing their usernames and passwords onto them. Once anyone with malicious intent has your account credentials, they will not only steal all your information but try to con everyone on your friends list as well, by sending out messages disguised as you. With such scams being quite widespread, every network is now forced to actively monitor for suspicious activity and mass spamming. It looks like they're getting better at nipping these attacks in the bud now. In late 2009, a worm called Koobface started doing the rounds. This one was particularly strong, and became known for its deliberate targeting of social networks, most famously MySpace and Facebook.

 

How to strike a balance

The reason that social networks are successful is simply that their users are comfortable with sharing information about themselves. They can build circles of trust for their personal interactions, and usually begin with no inhibitions about discussing anything. As soon as that comfort level is gone, the whole concept begins to unravel. People start to feel uncomfortable about sharing any kind of information and put up walls around themselves just like they would do offline.

First of all, remember this: it’s perfectly okay to decline a friend request! It’s far better to be safe than sorry, and there are ways to deal with those who might be offended. Every user needs to be familiar with their networks’ security settings—or they might find everything is open to the public! Facebook’s own founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was caught unawares when his private photos became visible, so let that serve as a lesson. Set your privacy, and keep checking to make sure policies haven’t been altered by the site—which actually happens quite often.

The next step, also quite simple, is to set up groups or lists of friends. The exact terminology varies by network, but the controls can usually be found in the Security settings. Lists should allow you to define access privileges for everyone in them. So if you absolutely cannot decline a friend request but don’t want the person in question to see every last detail in your life, edit the list so its members can see only what you allow. You can group people by the amount of distance you want to maintain with them, such as co-workers, acquaintances, friends who have drifted apart, family and relatives, etc. Beware that opening up any part of your profile to “Everyone” will also make it visible to search engines and those who don’t even have Facebook accounts will be able to see them. “Everyone” is now the default setting for many parts of your profile. You also have a handy “Restricted Profile” list by default, which basically locks members down into a windowless world. You can still customize this list’s settings, but it’s a great way to add people to your list while keeping them blind to your activities and interactions.

While creating a photo gallery or even a single status update on Facebook, you can now choose which sets of people should be able to see it, over and above the default rules you create in the security settings. You’ll need to keep track of who is in which group and check in from time to time to make sure that this is the best arrangement for you.

Comb through the settings thoroughly. You’ll find options for sharing your behavior tracks with outside partners, or publishing information about your activities. Check all Facebook applications thoroughly, especially the free games! Chances are they are only interested in scraping information from your account to profit on advertising or spam. There’s still no surefire way to tell how long these sites will retain your information once they have it.

The simple fact is that every added security measure makes the sites less and less appealing. You alone can decide how much of your life is open season for the general public. Just be aware that in this day and age, no one’s a stranger. Things you post online can come back to bite you in unimagined ways even years down the line.

Need for More Speed

Need for more speed

With new USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s standards, you won’t have to wait too long for data transfers.

In the last few months, we have seen updates to two standards. One is Hi-speed USB 2.0, which has been the interface standard for peripherals and external storage devices since almost a decade, and the other is SATA 3 Gb/s, which has been around for five years or so. With the upgrade to version 2.0, the USB interface received a speed bump that was 40 times higher than its predecessor, USB 1.1. Now with SuperSpeed USB 3.0, the peak theoretical throughput has reached 4.8 Gb/s, which is ten times faster than Hi-speed USB 2.0. Such a bump was long needed because external storage devices, especially hard drive-based ones, can easily saturate USB 2.0 bandwidth. Thus, the USB 2.0 interface has become a bottleneck for external hard drives, which are capable of transferring data at more than twice the interface bandwidth. The same isn’t the case with SATA 6 Gb/s, because even today, spindle-based hard drives aren’t capable of saturating the existing 3 Gb/s bandwidth. Here, the bottlenecks are areal density and spindle speed, which can't be bumped much due to mechanical restrictions. However, solid state drives, which are faster, are gradually reaching a point at which they will fully utilize the current 3 Gb/s bandwidth, after which, they will need to move on to SATA 6 Gb/s for optimum performance.

New interfaces call for discrete controllers

Currently, there aren’t any motherboard chipsets that natively support USB 3.0. Therefore, motherboard manufactures have no choice but to include a discrete USB 3.0 controller on the motherboard. The NEC D720200F1 USB 3.0 controller, which offers two ports, is commonly seen on motherboards these days. The only chipset that natively supports SATA 6 Gb/s is the AMD 890G. Motherboards based on other chipsets use SATA 6 Gb/s controllers by Marvell to offer SATA 6 Gb/s ports in addition to SATA 3 Gb/s ports supported by the chipset. The use of on-board controllers will exist until chipsets natively support the new standards.

 

Good news for those who have older motherboards

No need to be upset if you have an older motherboard that doesn’t have USB 3.0 and SATA 6 GB/s ports. Add-on USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s controller cards are already available in the market and that too at very reasonable prices. So you can go ahead with your plans to buy a USB 3.0 external storage device or a SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive even though you have an older motherboard.    

We received retail samples of ECS S6M2 and ECS U3N2, which are SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 add-on cards. They aren’t bigger than a credit card and utilize the motherboard’s PCIe x1 slot. Neither card requires additional power and they both come bundled with low-profile brackets for use with small form factor chassis. ECS S6M2 features a single SATA 6 Gb/s port (on the card) and an eSATA port on the rear panel courtesy Marvell 9128 controller. And ECS U3N2 is built around the NEC D720200F1 controller, which offers two USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel.

How fast is fast?

The theoretical transfer rate of USB 2.0 is 480 megabits/sec or 60 MB/s. However, full theoretical speed cannot be achieved due to the latency caused by the process in which USB transactions take place. This is also true in the case of USB 3.0, which has a theoretical transfer rate of 4.8 gigabits/sec or 600 MB/s. You can tell how fast the device is only by running benchmarks, such as file transfer tests. We set up a test PC to find out how fast an external USB 3.0 hard drive was compared to a USB 2.0 device. We also wanted to find out how fast the first SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, the Seagate Barracuda XT, is. Our test PC comprised an Intel Core i7-870 CPU, Asus P7P55D-E Premium motherboard, and 4 GB DDR3 RAM. We chose to test the drives on Asus P7P55D-E Premium because it features support for both USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s via discrete controllers. We also tested the drives using controller cards by ECS.

USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0

Here we used Western Digital My Book 3.0 which was the first external USB 3.0 hard drive to hit shelves. We assessed its performance by first connecting it to a USB 2.0 port and then to the motherboard’s USB 3.0 port. When connected to a USB 2.0 port, the average read and write speeds were 25 MB/s and 23 MB/s respectively. But when we hooked it up to a USB 3.0 port it could read data and write data three times faster at over 90 MB/s and 75 MB/s respectively. When we connected the My Book 3.0 to the ECS U3N2 card, the read speed was almost the same, but the write performance dropped by around 20 percent. Random write speed dropped by 10 MB/s and sequential write speed dropped by 17 MB/s. The on-board USB 3.0 performance is superior, but if your motherboard doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports you can enjoy speeds twice as fast as USB 2.0 using an add-on card which costs a little more than Rs 1,000.

SATA 3 Gb/s vs SATA 6 Gb/s

The 2 TB Seagate Barracuda XT is a terrific performer. When connected to a SATA 3 Gb/s port, it read multiple files amounting to 2 GB in 16 seconds, which translates to 123 MB/s. The average write speed was 128 MB/s. HD Tach reported read and write speeds of 116 MB/s and 102.5 MB/s respectively. On switching over to SATA 6 G/s, we found absolutely no difference in performance. Infact the write performance deteriorated and average speed fell by 20 MB/s. We ran the test thrice, with a restart between tests to confirm the difference in performance. Results were similar when we switched over to the ECS S6M2 card.

 

Final Words

USB 3.0 looks very interesting, because it offers a tremendous performance boost over USB 2.0. Theoretically it’s 10 times faster than USB 2.0, but USB 3.0 external storage devices can transfer data three times faster, which is a very good jump for the moment. At present Western Digital My Book 3.0 (3.5-inch) and Seagate BlackArmor PS110 (2.5-inch) are the only USB 3.0 external storage devices on the market. You can expect a raft of USB 3.0 flash drives and portable hard drives by various storage device manufacturers this year.

In contrast to USB 3.0, SATA 6 Gb/s doesn’t feel very exciting, because the available hard drives don’t seem to offer any performance boost over SATA 3 Gb/s. The present spindle-based and solid state drives aren’t able to saturate the SATA 3 Gb/s bandwidth of 375 MB/s. Even high-end SSDs have a read speed of 250 MB/s. So you won’t be missing anything for at least a year or two by not upgrading to SATA 6 Gb/s, unless you’re ready to splurge on a high-end SSD.

HTML 5 - The New Language

HTML5:
The new language

The current HTML standard 4.01 is ten years old. In this time, the Internet has become rich with multimedia and interactivity. So it’s definitely time for change!

Videos are really popular on the web, so it should come as no surprise that sites like YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo are among the first few sites to integrate the new HTML5 standard. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, the language in which the basics of the Internet are written. The standard specifies rules according to which this happens. Since Web browser engines need to be adapted to this, four of the big browser manufacturers (not including Microsoft), developed HTML5 comprising of numerous new functions that help close the long gap between being a document-oriented markup language as it has traditionally been, to becoming an application-oriented one, as the modern web demands. Many can now dream of a revolution on the web.

Videos without Flash 

The core of HTML5 is better integration of multimedia content. So far, browser plug-ins such as Adobe’s Flash Player have been needed to play video and music. But these consume resources, are prone to crashes, and most importantly, are a safety risk. Flash, in particular, allows a lot of malware to creep into a PC. In spite of this, almost all big websites use it to incorporate video, interactive applications, and other imaginative content. HTML5 intends to make a difference here - the new

Another disadvantage of the video implementation is the lack of support for acceleration using the graphics card. The Adobe Flash Player has this capability as of version 10, and thus remains a better choice for HD video on the web, especially on weaker PCs such as the popular netbooks.

The HTML5 “Canvas” function is an interesting and considerably problem-free innovation. It defines an area on the website where the browser engine can create its own graphics in real time. Thus, a browser can be instructed to draw crisp, scalable vector graphics. Your website can thus contain an integrated drawing program, games, or beautiful animation all without requiring the user to install Flash or the like. This function will become more attractive as soon as it starts supporting 3D graphics. At present, browser manufacturers are working on the WebGL standard, which will enable the Canvas function to render even complex 3D scenes in real time, using the OpenGL graphics library. 

Quick and easy surfing

HTML5 supports multi-threading to avoid slowdowns that might be caused by Canvas scripts or other functions. Scripts and web applications run in parallel in separate threads. This will enable quicker rendering of sites on your screen, and eliminate jerks while scrolling or delayed text input on heavy pages. HTML5 also brings something new when working with user data. So far, such data has been stored in small cookies. As opposed to that, the new Web Storage mechanism stores data of up to 10 MB on the user's computer, either permanently or for as long as the browsing session lasts. While cookies are limited to plain text files, Web Storage uses a database that can stores even whole applications for offline use. However, this gives hackers new invasion options, which would affect all operating systems. HTML5 will, however, provide more protection in other areas. One of the biggest safety risks on web sites today is that of iFrames; sections in which the content of external sites are displayed. iFrames infected with dangerous code can hide on pages, contaminating visitors’ PCs.  

To avoid this, web developers should use the Sandbox attribute in the future, instead of iFrames. This will disable or limit external sites from implementing scripts, accessing cookies and inserting or manipulating inputted data.

 Further innovations include Web Forms 2.0 (forms which process text input better), new tags for page structuring, and the GeoLocation attribute. This last one is not an actual part of the HTML5 standard but can still be implemented in the browser engine. GeoLocation is a programming interface which a Web site can use to locate a computer without plug-ins. It accesses the IP address as well as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth wireless data and can display the location on a map, opening up new social interaction methods, for instance.

Soft upgrade, loud effects

Whether and when these new functions will become widespread is still unforeseeable. One of the obstacles is that Internet Explorer, the most entrenched browser, barely supports these features. The lack of a universal codec to replace Flash will also dampen momentum. The other functions will definitely be accepted and make surfing more comfortable, but will also take time to creep into the mainstream for both web developers and end users.

Banking on the MOVE

Banking 
on the move

Banking has never been simpler. If Internet banking made going to the bank passé, the mobile revolution promises to make banking a breeze.

No longer do you need to go to the bank, wait for your turn, fill in slips, or even maintain cheque books. Right from transferring money to paying bills, recharging your mobile to booking movie tickets, and shopping to managing your finances, online and mobile media have revolutionized banking. We take a look at the various banking services, which will make you a more efficient money manager.

 

PAY USING YOUR MOBILE

Remember that ad for a leading cellular network that has a woman haggling with a fisherman over the price of fish, only to end up paying using her mobile phone? Well, that is no longer just an idea, but a reality. While there is still a long way to go before you can actually pay the local vegetable and fish vendors, you can start by paying your utility bills, and you can even shop, using your mobile phone. 

 Obopay is an application that allows you to do this. Its Easy Money option is just like a mobile top-up, and for this, it has tied up with Nokia. All you have to do is walk into a Nokia Priority store and pay cash; this amount will be credited to your Obopay account. You can then use this amount to pay all your utility bills and recharge/top-up cell phones. There’s also an Easy Send service that allows you to transfer money from person-to-person or pay merchants for their products/services. To activate this service, you will have to go to a Nokia Priority store and download the application. Then, you will have to fill a know-your-customer form (as per RBI rules) to open a YES Bank account. This service is activated within 24-48 hours. The only catch is that the recipient has to be an Obopay member, otherwise the money won’t be transferred when doing a person-to-person money transfer. Currently, Obopay services are available only in Pune and Chandigarh. 

Another great payment gateway using the mobile phone is mChek. Through this service, you can securely pay for your phone bills, flight tickets, insurance premiums, movie tickets, utility bills, and online shopping. mChek links your mobile phone to your Visa/Mastercard credit or debit card, allowing you to make payments through your phone. It allows you to key in details for a credit card and a debit card, and for every transaction, it lets you choose between the two cards as your mode of payment. After selecting the payment mode, you must authenticate the transaction by entering your mChekPIN number. mChek has a comprehensive list of merchant partners and when you shop online, you will see an option to pay using mChek. All you have to do is feed in your mobile number and then you will receive a payment authorization request on your phone, which when confirmed, completes the transaction.  

 While Obopay and mChek are fairly newer services, PayMate has been around for a while. It links your mobile phone to your existing bank account or credit/debit card, letting you pay for online purchases, utility bills, flight tickets, and much more. When you wish to conduct a financial transaction (online or offline), all you have to do is share your mobile number, and you will instantly receive an automatic IVR call-back confirming the transaction. Once you authenticate the same with your PIN, your payment will be processed and you will receive an SMS confirming the status. If you have more than one accounts linked with PayMate, then while making the payment, you can choose which account you wish to use. If you do not wish to transact using your credit or debit card, you can even purchase a GiftMate voucher, which allows you to transact using a pre-paid balance. 

 PayMate has also come up with a Green Money Transfer service in association with Corporation Bank and Tata Teleservices. It is a person-to-person mobile money transfer, wherein any mobile phone user can send or receive money almost instantly. A person who wishes to send money has to go to a Tata Green PCO and submit in cash the amount to be transferred. He will receive an IVR call asking him to confirm the transaction with his mPIN. After this, he will get a transaction code on his mobile to be shared with the recipient. All the recipient has to do is walk to a nearby Tata Green PCO and share his transaction code. He will then receive an IVR call asking him to authenticate the transaction with his mPIN. Once the verification is complete, the cash will be handed over to him. Currently, the services are limited to registered customers of Corporation Bank in Kerala and Karnataka. 

 THE BANK COMES TO YOU

 

 If you don’t trust third-party applications, look no further than your own bank.  Almost all major banks now offer their customers the convenience of mobile banking at no extra cost. Apart from SMS alerts regarding transactions and checking balance, you can now carry out full-fledged banking transactions. Getting started is simple; just follow the m-banking link of your bank and download the application. After keying in your login details and getting verified, you are good to go.

You can conduct funds transfers and transactions involving purchase of goods/services to a maximum of Rs 50,000 per day, but this may vary from bank to bank. Mobile banking is absolutely safe as it is user-specific and requires a four-digit PIN code for any transaction. In case you lose your phone, simply call the 24-hour customer care and request them to block the application. Also, as with the ATM, the application blocks itself on feeding three consecutive wrong PIN entries.

 MANAGE YOUR MONEY ONLINE

 With all this talk of paying bills and shopping, let’s now look at something that will help us save some money. We came across Intuit Money Manager (www.intuitmoneymanager.com), which is an online personal finance tool that helps you plan, save and grow your money. The best part about it is that it allows you to consolidate all your financial accounts, be it your bank accounts, credit/debit cards, loan accounts, investments, and even your bills, under one platform. After logging in, you’ll have to feed in the details for all your accounts and then you can easily keep a track of all your expenses at a glance. Your expenses are categorized, which allows you to map your spending trends and even set budget goals. You can fix a budget for each category and when you reach the limit, you will receive an SMS or email alert asking you to stop spending. It even calculates your tax liabilities, which helps you to set aside money and invest it later. 

  

With Intuit Money Manager, you can even monitor your stock investments, ULIPs, mutual funds, etc, thanks to live price updates. It also allows you to set reminders for all your payments, so you don’t have to worry about missing a due date. It thus acts as a constant reminder of your financial health and motivates you to save more. Currently, it supports over 40 major financial institutions in India, including banks and brokerage firms. This service is available with a 90-day free trial, and if you like it, you can go for an annual subscription at Rs 365.

Another website you can look at is Perfios.com, which provides a 360-degree view of one’s personal finances, right from bank accounts and credit cards, to mutual funds, loans, and taxes. With Perfios, you can also invite your family members to share accounts and integrate the same with your portfolio. This will help you keep tabs on your family’s finances and plan better. As of now, the service is free, but they are planning to launch premium services in the near future at a nominal cost. The best part is that this website even provides mobile access. 

Social Media Manager

Be a
Social Media Manager

If writing a blog comes naturally to you, if your Facebook profile is the center of activity, if you have a huge following on Twitter, if you have more videos on YouTube than your peers, then social media management is just the right career for you.  

You will find that almost every brand today has a presence on one of the many social networking sites. And it’s not just a happy coincidence or some brand aficionado who is doing it for them. Social networking today forms a crucial part of companies' marketing and communication strategies. Having a social media manager is no longer a fad, given that over 50 percent of the world’s population is under 30 years-old and spends the better half of their day on social networking sites. Increasingly, companies are looking for dynamic young people who know their way across the various social platforms and have the ability to communicate well to manage their virtual image.   

According to Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO WATMedia Pvt Ltd, social media in India has taken a serious turn over the years. It’s still at a very nascent stage but more and more companies have started investing their money on social media. He says, “There are 71 million Internet users in India according to the IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) report in 2009. Approximately 22 million people are active on social media. Looking at these numbers, it’s important to understand that these users would be sharing information about various brands, which could be positive or negative experiences.”

He states further, “These users create pages of their favorite brands and start conversations which can be harmful as these won’t be the official presence. Thus, it’s important to have a social media manager who will look into these pages/conversations, will manage them and create official presence of their brands on social media. A social media manager is required also because social media is two–way communication platform, thus enabling users to communicate their feelings about the brand. A crisis situation can be well handled on social media with the presence of a social media manger.” 

EXPERT SPEAK

“Anyone from a communications background with a fair knowledge of the Internet can become a social media manager. Apart from that, and from personal experience, anyone with street smarts and common sense can become one. And hard work of course! The starting salary can be between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000. The growth prospects are huge since the social media concept has taken everyone by storm, especially all the marketing and advertising agencies in the world. Every such agency has an in-house team, and if they don’t have one, they outsource it to smaller agencies. In the past 12 months, my own startup company has seen a 600% growth, with an addition of two members to the team every month.” 

- Aditya Rao, Co-founder and Director,
Social Business Strategy, Superchooha

“Experience in this field as a social media executive is necessary to graduate to the level of a social media manager. The ideal candidate should be proficient with Microsoft Office products, must have a deep knowledge of online marketing, must possess excellent communication and writing skills. He should also have the ability to manage multiple priorities in a limited timeframe. He should be able to identify threats and opportunities, and make quick decisions. Of course, he should have a deep knowledge and understanding of all social media platforms. Social media is an upcoming field and therefore the career growth of an individual depends on his/her capability and interest in this field. The salary model is based mostly on the PR model.”

- Rajiv Dingra, Founder and
CEO WATMedia Pvt Ltd.

“Anyone who's passionate about the web and understands the flow of conversations between people can become a social media manager. The industry is a fast evolving one and a lot of PR/advertising/digital and specialist social media agencies, along with many brands, are looking at having social media specialists. Growth is totally dependant on you. You could go ahead and become digital heads in agencies, become entrepreneurs employing social media in your activities, become consultants, community managers to brands, etc. Salaries are typically based on experience. I wouldn't advice joining a formal training program at this stage. Get on the job and explore your interests in social media. It's the best training module available.” 

- Robin Jacob Abraham, Solutions Architect, Drizzlin Media

“Social media is a specialized subject and one needs to have a good understanding of the medium in terms of technology as well as in terms of understanding how social media communications need to be created. Thinking of social media like mass media, communication is the biggest hurdle. One has to unlearn some of the mass media communication principles in order to be successful in social media. On the personal front, if one is an introvert, then pursuing a career as a social media practitioner is not easy; you have to be "sociable". Also, one does not need to be tech savvy, but must have the ability to learn new things and keep oneself abreast with what is happening. It is sun rise industry and growth prospects are very bright.”

- Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength

What constitutes social media?

When we think of social media, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube come to mind, but social media goes beyond these platforms. As Robin Jacob Abraham, Solutions Architect, Drizzlin Media, says “How do you create meaningful dialogue and establish communities? This could involve going offline to generate conversations online, creating a branded community itself, creating videos, presentations, blogs, other forms of content, or engaging in already active communities across the web.” The most challenging aspect, according to him, is to engage the community. He says, “You need to understand what conversations and content works in generating engagement and buzz, maintaining engagement as well as reacting to negative and sometimes abusive comments.”

What does the job entail?

Broadly speaking, the job of a social media manager is to communicate with the customers and clients. It’s all about talking with people rather than talking to people. What sets it apart from PR is that while PR is one-way communication, social media facilitates two-way communication. It is the job of the social media manager to identify the proper channels of communication for the brand and come up with meaningful strategies. It is also his/her job to ensure that all the communication flowing from the organization, be it PR, advertisement, marketing or social networking is in sync and conveys the same message. A part of the job is also to pass on the communication across the various platforms to the relevant department in the organization, so that a suggestion can be implemented or a query resolved. Another important aspect of the job is keeping an eye on the activities of the competitors and always being prepared to combat bad publicity.    

Required skill set

If you are looking at taking up social media as a career, then firstly, you need to be a social and outgoing person. Analytical as well as out-of-box thinking abilities can come in handy. Most importantly, you should have thorough knowledge of all the social networking sites and you must keep yourself abreast with the latest trends and newer sites. You should not only be able to identify and develop communication strategies for the brand, but it’s also important that you execute them with efficiency. “It is not an easy task to handle communities with thousands of people in them. You have to say the right things at the right time. A good psychology and common sense are plus points.  Basically, you have to be street smart and internet smart,” says Aditya Rao, Co-founder and Director, Social Business Strategy, Superchooha.

Courses available

Looking at the increasing demand for social media managers, IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) together with WATMedia Pvt Ltd, recently launched India’s first social media course. The four week program is designed to aid the corporate as well as the student communities to demystify social media and its practices. For further information on this program, you can log on to www.socialmediacourse.in. You can also join the Social Media Club, Mumbai, which is the local chapter of the International Social Media Club Group. You can attend workshops that are held there, listen to the experts in the field, meet new people, share case studies, learn about industry trends and even develop business leads. To know more about Social Media Club, visit www.smcmumbai.com.