The New York is an amphibious transport warship designed specifically to ferry U.S naval and amphibious forces to the regions of conflicts and protect American interests overseas. As per traditions, the first watch for the U.S.S New York was set and sailors as well as the marines boarded the new vessel, signaling the commissioning of the New York. The commissioning ceremony as expected was an emotional one, with Sec. Of State  Hillary Clinton, Governor Paterson and the mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg present at the ceremony.

The command of the newly inducted naval vessel as assumed by Commander Curt Jones, who also happens to be a native New Yorker at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, with an audience of more than 6,000 people. In statement, Commander Jones sad,

“There is a lot of emotion that is associated with this ship for all of us. The steel that is in the bow of the ship, that motivates us literally every day in what we do.”

The New York has an estimated crew capacity of 360 sailors and for the nest few days will be docked at Pier 88. later, it will begin its journey to its base of operations in at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.

According to a firefighter present at the ceremony,

“To me it’s a show of resiliency to the whole tragedy that happened. The crew members are great. I met a Marine and went to say ‘Thank you’ to him. He said, ‘No, sir, thank you very much.’ We have a lot in common.”

Via NY Daily News.

The bilateral talks between Russia and the United States of America seem to be heading in the right direction as the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev stated that, the nuclear arms reduction treaty is a possibility that could be realized as early as by the end of this year. However, he also stressed on the fact that, other nuclear weaponized nations must also take the initiate to the join the disarmament treaty for the deal to be successful.

In response to the reports of conflicts between the Mr. Medvedev and the Russian Prime Minister and former President, Vladimir Putin, the Russian President said that, the two leaders work in harmony and the reports of increasing rifts between the two are overblown. Many analysts have been saying that, even with the Mr. Medvedev as the President, it is  Mr. Putin who is making the final decisions and monopolizing the Russian foreign policies. In a statement, President Medvedev said,

“No one must have any doubts that our ‘tandem’ has been working quite harmoniously. As you can see, predictions that we will have a falling out so far have failed to materialize. The U.S.-Russian arms control talks are moving at a good pace. We have every chance to agree on a new treaty, determine new (weapons) levels and control measures and sign a legally binding document in the end of the year.”

The current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that signed on by both Russia and the United States, that was signed in the year 1991, has proven successful significantly reducing the number of the nuclear weapons on both sides, but is slated to expire on December 3rd, 2009. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the President of United States, Barrack Obama had met in the month of July this year for a one to one talks in regards to the arms reduction treaty and unanimously agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenal to between 1,500 and 1,675 nuclear weapon fixing a sever years deadline.

Via Associated Press.

A suicide bomber tore thorough a bustling market in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 12 people including a mayor, who is now believed to be the target of the bombers. The incident took place in the north west region of Pakistan. The marketplace that is located in the town of Adazai, some  16 kilometers away from the main city of Peshawar was in full swing with shoppers storming t he marketplace as the holy festival of Eid approaches.

Among the dead was the local mayor, Abdul Malik who is known to be an anti Taliban government official. The initial reports had suggested that, mayor Malik had survived, but his demise was later confirmed by a high level official in Peshawar. In his history with the Taliban, mayor Abdul Malik suits the examples of bad turning into good as at one time, he was himself a Taliban fighter, but later, due to reasons unknown, Mr. Malik went anti-Taliban, so much so that he even created his personal militia to fight off the Taliban.

As per the city officials, the bomb that ripped through the marketplace, claimed the life of a young girl who is one of the eleven people who died in today’s attack. 25 others have also been injured and have been rushed to thew hospital, where most of the injured are said to be in critical condition. According to an eyewitness,

“That place turned into a hell where the dead and injured were lying everywhere and blood and flesh were spread around. Now we have our blood in this war.”

The recent numerous terrorist attacks targeting civilian and military infrastructure have so far claimed the lives of more than 300 people and are believed to be in retaliation to the ongoing Pakistani military offensive campaign in South Waziristan against the Pakistan Taliban, Al Qaeda and the other terror elements.

Via Associated Press.

The all new Verizon Eris is an exact opposite of the Droid handset and with its simplicity in design and features, it is definitely designed for the ones who prefer performance over looks. The Eris lacks physical keyboard, which could become a downside for the device, but has retained its elegance with a sleek design and is quite inexpensive, marketed at just $99 with services included. The Eris is embedded with proximity sensors that, measures the distance between the device and the user and also comes in pretty handy while you are on a call, as the sensors switch off the screen, thereby eliminating any chances of an accidental activation of its features.

Version Eris features a 3.2-inch HVGA touch sensitive screen with a 320×480-pixel resolution. Due to the fact that, the Eris supports HVGA, the display is vibrant and extremely gorgeous. The Eris is built around Google Android OS, v1.5 (Cupcake) platform. The light sensors that switch the phone screen on or off on base don the distance between the user and the device are complemented  by a built-in accelerometer that works as an auto-rotation feature, changing the screen’s position as per the position of the phone.

As far as the input method is concerned, the Verizon Eris boasts of independent HTC developed on screen keyboard, instead of the default keyboard that Google has incorporated in the Android mobile operating system. The HTC keyboard in a bit better than the Android one with a white background, larger characters and most importantly the spacing between the characters has been greatly increased. The Eris also comes with a universal 3.5 mm music jack that supports all conventional headsets, providing an enhanced and rich music experience. The standard features include, Bluetooth, voice dialing, Verizon visual voice mail, a calculator, a calendar, a speakerphone an alarm clock, Wi-Fi, PC syncing, USB mass storage, and a voice recorder.

Via Cnet.

U.S Army Major. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man responsible for the killing of people on the larges army base on U.S soil. Fort Hood, Texas is now believed to be a known visitor to a mosque that was also visited by the 9/11 terrorists from Al-Qaeda who carried out the horrendous Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. As investigators dig deeper into the past of Major Hasan, to find clues as to why he went on a shooting rampage at the medical center located on the base, they have found that the accused frequented the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia the same year, when the 9/11 attackers were preparing for the wost terrorist attack in the world. The radical Imam of the mosque, Anwar al-Awlaki is known to be the spiritual leader of the terrorists and it was the same place where Major Hasan used to offer his prayers. Al-Awlaki is an American national, but by profession is a Yemeni scholar and has been accused of supporting terror outfits.

At the time Major Hasan offered his prayers at Dar al-Hijrah, two of the 9/11 operatives, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour were also attending the preachings of Anwar al-Awlaki  who had relocated to Virginia from the West Coast in January 2001. According to Charles Allen (Former Undersecretary of Intelligence, DHS),

“Anwar al-Awlaki was an “al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers… who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen”.

Former classmates of Major Hasan have stated that, when they heard about the shooting at the base, they were shocked but when they got to know that Major Hasan was the culprit, they weren’t surprised as according to these classmates, Hasan was becoming increasingly anti American. Major Hasan was in the habit of criticizing the U.S war efforts in one instance even stated that, the war on terror is infact is a war on Islam. He was a staunch supporter of the suicide bombers, so  much so that he even gave a presentation about these human bombs.

Via The Telegraph.

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol or XMPP is an open standard that was designed for the further enhancement of Instant Messaging. XMPP was designed and developed by the Jabber open-source community in the year 1999and has been considered as the de facto open standard for instant messaging. Since its inception, this protocol has come a long way with immense advancements such as, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as seen in Skype and Google Talk and the ability to transfer data and media files in a chat windows.

Until now, user have to be logged into the Facebook network, via the Facebook website to use the Facebook IM engine. However, when the XMPP protocol is releases on Facebook, it would give the users the freedom of logging into Facebook chat via any instant messaging client regardless of their login status in Facebook.

Via GigaOm.

One of the biggest and most widely used social networking websites, Facebook has reached a landmark 325 million users. The bustling social network has grabbed the attention of users worldwide and is now one of the leading platforms, where news breaks, people meet, kids play games and the application lovers try out different apps that keeps all these segments glued to Facebook. The rapid growth at which Facebook is expanding both in popularity and financially doesn’t seem to slow down.

The inventors of social networking such as MySpace, Bebo, hi5 etc. have now become mere dots in front of the behemoth that is now Facebook. Whether it be Mafia Wars, coverage of the Iranian post election violence or the Fort Hood tragedy, users are rather using Facebook as they would work with Twitter, posting updates, news feeds, creating pages ensuring that, the one platform that has tied them to million of users remains active and kicking.

The advancements that Facebook has applied to the website’s security and privacy apparatus is one of the primary reasons why more than 325 million users prefer Facebook over any other social networking website. Despite the fact that, many users are not pleased with the changes Facebook keeps making to its home page and other services, the fact remains that, it has fast become an indispensable communications network for numerous users, whose online existence is synonymous with Facebook.

Via All Facebook.

The Windows Live services accounted for about 70% of the 3.9 billion hours of online time recorded by comScore on Microsoft websites. On the whole, Microsoft bagged 15% of the total time spent by users on the internet. Microsoft was followed by Google with 2.5 billion hours of user time on Google sites. Yahoo was close on the heels of Google with a recorded usage time of 1.7 billion hours on various Yahoo sites. The Google figure is comprised of 1.5 billion hours that were spent on its widely acclaimed video acquisition, YouTube.

Microsoft also raced ahead of Google and Yahoo when the scores are compared outside the United States. In Europe, Microsoft counted for 16.8 percent of usage time and in Latin America as well as in Middle East it scored 35.9 percent of usage time. According to Jack Flanagan (Executive Vice President, comScore Media Metrix),

“The Internet continues to be a dynamic and growing environment around the world with the global online population climbing more than 20 percent in the last year. With the U.S. economy only now emerging from a recession, many multinational corporations have shifted the focus of their growth strategies towards developing markets and the Internet represents an important aspect of those strategies. Understanding the global Internet landscape is the first step towards executing effective marketing strategies in these growing markets.”

Via Seattle PI Blogs & comScore.

Ever since Sony entered into the world of notebooks with its flagship brand Vaio notebooks, it has taken the facet of Apple Inc, a company that till recently was manufacturing high end ‘luxury‘ notebooks. Same is in the case of Sony Vaio that made its presence known with the launch of the Vaio W series that started off at $499 per notebook. Sony has never embraced the normalcy of the technology market, producing goods that even though are significantly costlier than the other brands, yet have such innovative technologies and designs that makes Sony stand apart in the crowd.

Sony latest gift to the notebook market is the all new Sony Vaio X, that is incredibly light and sleek and is built around a carbon fiber chassis. The Vaio X will set you back $1,499 for the Gold Edition and $1,200 for the Black Edition. Vaio X comes with a sold state drive, providing the users with the ease of mind about the condition of the hard drive, even if the notebook is dropped. The new notebook is powered with a 2.0 GHZ Intel Atom Z550 processor and comes with 2GB of RAM that is more than sufficient to run the Windows 7 Home Premium that comes bundled with the device and the other programs that you wish to install on top of the OS.

However, there are a few flip sides to Vaio X as well. Firstly, the Intel Atom processor providing a clock speed of 2.0 GHZ might not please the users who are avid gamers and for those who like run heavy applications on their notebooks. The second issue with Vaio X is the price range. Although, the Golden Edition comes with a 128 GB sold state drive, but it costs $1,400 and the Black Edition with a price tag of $1,200 has greatly compromised on the notebook’s storage capacity with an only 64 GB solid state drive.

Via Cnet.

There seems to be an all new trend in the field of online shopping and that is the purchase of virtual items, that decorate your social network profiles, e-mail inbox, IM chat windows etc., instead of beautifying your living room. That’s right, nowadays users are more than willing to buy wines, e-cards, toys and other weapons (only for online gaming purposes) among a million other virtual goods, that help them in giving a boost to their online presence. Also, these small inexpensive committees are also fast becoming tools for getting ahead in online games, and social interaction, as users are sending them to their family and friends on a regular basis.

As per the estimates given by analysts, the virtual commodities business in flourishing and if it retains its current pace, then it would bag about a billion in the United States alone and on a global scale, the virtual goods could fetch close to $5 billion for the year 2009. According to Jeremy Liew (Lightspeed Venture Partners),

“It’s a fantastic business. Because it’s digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins.”

Some of the most prominent virtual gifts and good developers such as Zynga, Playfish and Playdom are extremely pleased with the user response to their gaming applications and the virtual add ons and have posted significant profits and good amount of revenue. The advent of the mobile gaming arenas and application supporting big hitters such as Apple iPhone has added an immense strength to the business of virtual commodities.

Via New York Times.