Facebook acquired FriendFeed back in August this year (2009) and most wondered what they would do with the service. Facebook has obviously made some improvements to it, and has now released the source code as an open source framework. Tornado, the new Python based web framework, is specifically designed to handle the massive server loads of FriendFeed’s real time updates. By releasing this code, Facebook aims to empower developers to use this infrastructure in their own real time projects.

The appeal behind Tornado is its practical and proven use. While web apps like Twitter had issues dealing with scaling for performance as its user base grew rapidly, FriendFeed seemingly had no issues. Tornado can support up to 8,000 simultaneous requests per second as opposed to Django, which can only handle about 2,200 requests when run as four load-balanced processes on a four core server. Tornado also comes with the basic building blocks for a social networking site, with features such as user authentication, cross site request forgery protection, templates, signed cookies, localization and aggressive static file caching amongst other features.

How can you use Tornado? Well if as a developer you are looking at developing any sort of real time web application, Tornado might be the ideal framework. The trusted and proven architecture will be ideal to ensure a working solution for your project.

Law professor Eric Goldman states that Wikipedia will fail by 2010 and he is not going to prove it with an academic paper. In his definition, failure does not mean that the site will die and cease to exist, it means that Wikipedia’s dream will end.

The problem that Wikipedia and it’s dream of enabling anyone, anywhere to edit an article or item is credibility. In recent times there have been several high profile incidents that have prompted the website to take action to ensure article protection. Including article protection in Wikipedia means that they cannot provide the initial Utopian concept of allowing anyone, anywhere to edit or add content to the site. Right now Wikipedia has imposed something called flagged revisions on their articles about living persons. The flagged revisions system means that if you edit something about a living person, the changes will not go live until an editor within Wikipedia approves it. Professor Goldman predicts that a system such as flagged revisions will be implemented site-wide, which will delay the time taken for changes to appear on the website as well as provide heaps of work for the editors within Wikipedia.

The other problem the site will have is to carry on forward without offering anything to the editors who put some much effort may become unattractive to newcomers. And while Wikipedia concentrates on cleaning up and maintenance of its content, the dream of providing a anyone, anywhere the ability to contribute to an encyclopedia will surely die, says the professor.

Israeli scientists have devised a portable breath tester that detects lung cancer with an accuracy rate of 86%. Reported in the journal ‘Nature Nanotechnology’, the device could even act as an early warning system to flag disease before tumours are visible in x-rays.

Using gold nano particles, the sensor detects levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) measured in a few parts per billion. This increases in cancer patients. With lung cancer, early detection increases the odds of survival, though only 15% of cases are discovered before it begins to spread. Chest x-rays and CT scans can be used to detect cancer and reduce the lung cancer mortality rate, however, it is expensive and also exposes patients to harmful radiation.

The study, lead by Hossam Haick of the Israel Institute of technology sampled breath from 56 healthy people and 40 lung cancer patients. The findings included that 33 compounds that appeared in at least 83% of the cancer group, but in lesser than 83% of the control group. Once the arrays were ‘trained’ to detect a selection of cancer-specific VOCs, it was tested on both artificial mixtures or biomarkers and real human breath. The researchers concluded that they were able to, “distinguish between the breath of lung cancer patients and healthy controls, without the need for de-humidification or pre-concentration of the lung cancer biomarkers.” The scientists also indicated that this technique could be extended to other forms of cancer.

WHO statistics report that lung cancer claims around 1.3 million lives worldwide annually, accounting for nearly 18 percent of all cancer-related deaths.

Google’s browser, Chrome has become one of the four most popular browsers in the world. Within just a year of it’s launch the browser has manged to secure about 3% of the total market share. Google mentioned earlier this year that it is talking to a major OEM about shipping Chrome with its PCs. Now sources at Google state that it has done a deal with Sony to ship its Chrome browser with all the Vaio brand PCs in the US. Neither Google nor Sony have commented on whether the browser will be included in the PCs shipped to other countries.

People who have used Google’s Chrome are extremely happy with its performance and use it above other browsers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that is shipped with the Windows operating system is still the most popular browser in the world, while Mozilla’s Firefox is a distant second and Apple’s Safari comes in third. However, Google’s deal with Sony may not yield a significant benefit to its browser market. According to statistics Sony’s Vaio PCs have an extremely small share in the computer business. Google has mentioned that it is working on a deal with Dell to include the browser with their PCs, and if it works out, would lead to a much bigger portion of the computers sold than with Sony. However, they have not commented on the status of this deal.

iTunes is the default music playback application that comes with your iPhone and music playback is one the major features of today’s iPhones. Here are five other ways to listen to music without using iTunes:

1. Pandora: Pandora is a web based streaming audio application that is based on the Music Genome Project and is available as a free app for the iPhone. You can listen to specific stations and rate and vote for the music that is being played. You can use Pandora when in a Wi-Fi zone as well as over 3G.

2. AOL Radio: The AOL Radio free iPhone app is ideal for those who are more accustomed to traditional radio. You can listen to any number of stations that are categorized in to genres and use the Locals feature to listen to stations near your area and mark stations as your favorite.

3. Soma FM: is another app that allows you to listen to streaming radio stations. However this app is not free. With Soma FM you can bookmark certain songs to purchase later, which is great if you come across a new song you would like to have.

4. NPR News: If you are the kind of person who loves being up to date on things and wants to listen to news the NPR News, free iPhone app will be great for you. It lists out numerous news stories that you can select and listen to. It also indicates which stories are on air right now.

5. Play music in safari: To do this, you will need to create a basic web page and add links to streaming web station’s .m3u files. Then open Safari on your iPhone and tap the link and it will start playing the music on the browsers built in QuickTime plugin. These streams will stay playing in the background as long as you want.

There are plenty more options out there on the web. The appStore itself has thousands of more programs that can be used for streaming audio. We’ve just listed the most popular ones.

Snow Leopard is the successor to Apple’s immensely successful Mac OS X Leopard. At first glance Snow Leopard does not seem to have anything new, the programs are subtly faster but no changes that are overly dramatic. Before its release Apple stated that the new OS would work better with existing hardware and that it is adding new UI enhancements to make day to day usage of the operating system to flow smoothly.

In order to find out how well the new enhancements work you need to look a little deeper and compare it directly with the old OS. When you compare the two Operating Systems head to head you realize how much faster Snow Leopard is. As for the UI there are five major changes. Icons can be scaled. There is a little slider at the bottom right hand corner of the screen that allows users to change the size of the icons in a window, and this means that video files can be played directly in the finder window. The Dock has gotten an addition too. By pressing and holding an icon on the dock, users can select which window of the application they want to open. Expose has also been improved as well, when viewing all the windows in an application, they are now arranged in a grid and have text labels beneath them. Stacks has been improved by allowing scrolling in the grid view and a smart list view that shows numerous files at once. Even QuickTime has been improved and it even has a new capture system for encoding audio and video clips and voice annotated screen capture sessions.

The end result is that Snow Leopard is a big improvement, boosting performance and incorporating many UI tweaks, driving it closer to being a perfect OS.

In the first week of September, Opera announced the launch of their new browser, Opera 10 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Opera is one of those browsers that introduce new features before they become mainstream; such as tabbed browsing and displaying visual bookmarks. Unfortunately, credit for these and many more inventions go to other browsers. However the new Opera 10 offers less drama in terms of brand new features seen for the first time or a new interface. The new program improves on its predecessor’s performance but has little else.

So what are the new features that have been incorporated? One useful feature is that Opera has incorporated system wide spellchecking on all platforms, which means Windows users do not need to install plug-ins for this feature. The Speed Dial page is also more customizable allowing users to choose from a 2×2 grid up to 5×5 grids and select a custom background image. Opera 10 also provides a nifty thumbnail-tab feature. If you drag the bottom of the tab downwards, all the open tabs will show dynamically sized thumbnails. You can also have the thumbnail tabs on the right hand side of your screen, which is extremely useful for widescreen laptops and computers. As you add more thumbnails, the row is squeezed horizontally or vertically displaying all your tabs.

Speed tests confirm that Opera 10 is the second fastest browser coming in second only to Google’s Chrome. On the Mac however, it is the slowest browser. So whether you start using Opera on your computer largely depends on the OS you use.

Apple is considering bringing the iPhone to multiple carriers as soon as summer 2010 in a bid to maximize market penetration of it’s flagship product. Analysts have pointed at the recent success and dramatic increase in sales in regions and countries that offer the iPhone on multiple carriers, as opposed to the US, where the device is still exclusively offered on only one carrier.

Aside from the market penetration numbers in other regions, sources state that Apple and AT&T are experiencing a few rough patches in their relationship, including coverage issues, feature support and controversy over app approvals. Also this news comes at a time when the FCC is reviewing exclusive contracts between wireless providers and handset makers to verify if they unjustly favor technology companies over consumers. Apple’s contract with AT&T wireless ends in summer 2010 and some experts have speculated that Apple may be looking at Verizon Wireless, the largest carrier in the US. However, since Verizon’s current infrastructure is not supported by the iPhone, it remains to be seen whether Apple will wait until it transitions it’s network to 4G, which may take several years or redesign the iPhone to work with Verizon’s current technology.

The new wi-fi standard knowns as 802.11n is soon to receive “official standard” status from the IEEE. 802.11n was initially proposed in 2002 as the successor to the current standard 802.11a, b and g. Since then products have been available, approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and most of the new devices come with default 802.11n compatibility.

The first specifications were published in September 2003 and the Task Group n (TGn) had issues with this version and asked that it be revised. Since then several versions of the draft have been published. The latest draft specification was published on 5th June, which is draft 11.0, revised on 23rd June. This it seems will be the final specification as sources inside the TGn claim that all parties are happy with the final draft. However, a newer standard known as 802.11ad Wi-Fi is now ready to hit the market and test on products. The new standard boasts much higher speeds than the n standard and it remains to be seen if the new standard will take another seven years to be approved.

Wireless access points that support 802.11a, b, g and draft n are already available in the market along with laptop computers and wireless cards that support all four standards. It’ll probably be more usefull to purchase hardware that supports all standards if you are in the market for new gear, as the n standard will most likely be official very soon.