Google announced that it is opening up its web based real time communications service, Google Wave for the first time at the beginning of October. Over 100,000 invitations are being sent out to users who previously requested access to use Google Wave, on a first come, first serve basis.

Google Wave is the latest in their range of applications designed to assist people with their communications needs. The new software brings together different forms of communication including chat, email and collaboration tools like wikis in to a uniform browser window. The beauty of it is that everything happens in real-time. You can even see a comment or a chat message being typed in real time, letter by letter. Wave also attempts to solve current users a unique problem current web users have; dealing with the different web based collaboration tools and real time communication tools. These services include cloud based document sharing and collaboration tools such as wikis and real-time tools like chat, Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed along with others like photo sharing applications.

However according to Google, some features are limited by browser features. The other issue that they are currently experiencing is that the application slows down after a few hours of use, mainly due to memory leaks. That being said the engineers at Google are working hard to have it fixed before the official launch and bring a whole new web experience to users out there.

As Google’s Chrome web browser is picking up market share, Google has now made it easier for IE users to gain the same experience that Chrome users do. How? By releasing an open source plug-in for IE called Google Chrome Frame. It can be used automatically to load a website using the same technology used in Google Chrome, complete with its enhanced JavaScript rendering and support for HTML5 technologies like Canvas and embedded audio and video.

Implementing it is simple. All the developer needs to do is to add the following code to the page header:

<meta equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”chrome=1?>

Once you include this in your code, if the user is running Google Chrome Frame in his or her browser, the page will be served up in a Chrome wrapper allowing the developer to make use of all the new technologies supported by Chrome, even if it is not supported by IE. Google’s plugin , will enable everyone, even those using IE to take advantage of HTML5 as soon as possible and leading up to this fall’s public launch of Google wave, the communication tool that makes extensive use of WebKit’s HTML5 and JavaScript rendering capabilities, thus ensuring that Google Wave works for everyone, even IE users.

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.

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.

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.

Sony Corp. announced plans to compete with Amazon.com by releasing a new e-book reader with wireless capability. Sony has sold e-book readers since 2006, but has been overshadowed by Amazon.com’s Kindle ever since its launch. Previous Sony readers operate with “electronic ink”, requiring users to connect the device to a computer in order to download books. Now the company plans to offer a reader that will compete with the latest version of the Kindle by allowing users to download materials over AT&T Inc.’s cellular network.

Users of Sony’s new reader will be able to view books from a variety of stores, unlike Kindle users, who can only download books from Amazon.com. Books downloaded to the new Sony reader can be transferred to and viewed on cell phones and a variety of other devices. The new reader will feature another significant difference from the Kindle: the ability to download books from local libraries. Each book will be available for 21 days with the use of a library card.

Sony began selling a smaller “Pocket Edition” e-book reader for $199 this week as well as a $299 larger, touch-screen version. Both of these versions have to be connected to a computer to download books. The Sony Reader Daily Edition with wireless capability will be offered for $399, but will not require any wireless fees to download materials, and will feature a 7-inch touch-screen. The most recent version of the Kindle is $299, but does not include touch-screen technology. The Sony Daily Edition is planned to hit stores in December.

Microsoft is releasing its highly anticipated new operating system on October 22, 2009. The new operating system, Windows 7, will be a step up from Windows Vista.

Getting a Copy of Windows 7 before its official release date could be a tricky venture for those who aren’t either beta testers or Microsoft employees. If you do not fall into those two categories, there are a couple of ways that you can get your hands on a copy of Windows 7.

The simplest and easiest way is to pre-order it and be the first in line. If you want a legitimate and full copy of Windows 7 with no hassle, this is the way to go.

For those if you who are risk takers, there is also the option of pirating a copy. A few file sharing sites claim to have the leaked code for Windows 7, and if you look hard enough I am sure you could find it. Keep in mind, pirating a copy of anything is illegal, and in addition to the major consequences, pirated software carry a lot of viruses and trojans.

Unfortunately those are the two best options left for those of us wanting to get Windows 7 earlier than the rest of the crowd. There was an option to download the Release Candidate from Microsoft, but that download is no longer available. There might be web sites online that had mirrors of the Release Candidate along with extra serial keys.

To sum up, unless you work for Microsoft, are a beta-tester, or do not mind breaking the law, the only way to get your hands on Windows 7 early is to pre-order it.