Google offers desktop search software

Google offers desktop search

SEARCH FIRM Google has introduced a free download today which lets you search Outlook, Outlook Express, Excel, Internet Explorer, Powerpoint and text, even when you're not connected to the wibbly wobbly web.

The sofware needs Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+ and autostarts when you turn your machine on.


Full Story: The Inquirer

CompTIA Offers Half-Price Retakes

CompTIA Offers Half-Price Retakes

Through December, candidates who fail a Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) exam can retake the exam for 50 percent of the original price.

The promotion, which began last month, applies to any CompTIA exam failed before the end of the year.

According to the company, a non-transferable, 50 percent discount retake voucher will be e-mailed to all candidates who fail an exam within 10 days of receiving the score report. CompTIA's Web site states that the voucher must also be used by Dec. 31, 2004, making the deadline tight, if not impossible, for exams taken in the last two weeks of the year.

More info: comptia.org

Geeks in the driving seat of the new space race

Geeks in the driving seat of the new space race

Ansari, Allen, Bezos, Musk. What have they got in common? They're people who have made silly amounts of money in IT, and are now ploughing some of it into space flight research. So what is it with geeks and space?

Since Anousheh Ansari was a little girl, she dreamed of exploring space. Then she became one of the most successful female IT entrepreneurs in history and decided to do something about it.

Full Story: HERE

Dell warns on fire-risk laptops

Dell warns on fire-risk laptops

Computer giant Dell is to recall 4.4 million laptop power adapters because of a fear they could overheat, creating a risk of fire or electric shock.

The company said it had received seven reports of overheating, though no injuries had been reported.

Full Story Link

BBC wants help developing open source video codec

BBC wants help developing open source video codec

The BBC demoed an early version of an open source codec it hopes will give proprietary video technology a serious run for its money at the LinuxWorld exhibition today.

Dirac, currently alpha software, can deliver equivalent results using only 50 per cent of the bandwidth needed for video files encoded using the MPEG-2 format, according to its developers in the BBC's research and development division. The codec is aimed at a wide range of applications including streaming media and storage of video content.

Full Story: The Register

Cisco Allows CCIE Written for Recertifying CCNA, CCNP, Others

Cisco Allows CCIE Written for Recertifying CCNA, CCNP, Others

On Friday Cisco Systems announced that starting Oct. 1. any Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert written exam will recertify all of its associate- and professional-level certifications, as well as any Qualified Specialist title.

This new recertification option "will offer candidates the opportunity to pursue lifelong learning while ensuring that existing certifications remain current," the company said on its Web site.

There are currently 11 CCIE written exams available in a variety of specialties. Passing one of these exams is required to attempt to a hands-on CCIE lab exam.

Full Story: certcities.com

SpaceShipOne claims the Ansari X Prize

SpaceShipOne claims the Ansari X-Prize

I know its not really cert related, and god i'm late (this is news from the 4th)

But on Monday at 7:45 (MST or PST i assume), White Night launched with SpaceShipOne aboard, a clean non eventful flight commenced, and at 7:51 a height of 328'000ft was attained (enough to beat the record set by the X-15 in 1963

SpaceShipOne was piloted this flight by Brian Binnie, who landed the craft safely about 20 minutes after takeoff.

I would like to congratulate all those who took part in the X Prize, who may just of changed human space exploration forever. May the future hold bright things for mans journey into the new frontier.

Various articles related to this are floating around the net
Slashdot
BBC...

8GB Flash for a grand

8GB Flash for a grand

San Disk has announced that a mouth-watering 8 gigabyte Compact Flash cartridge will be able in November, for the eye-watering price of $959 (or €959). That's twice the capacity of the current generation of hard drives powering devices such as the iPod mini.

The company claims the Ultra II disk can write at 9MB/sec and read at 10MB/s. San Disk also unveiled 2GB SD cards and 4GB Memory Stick Duos today, the latter priced the same as the 8GB CF card

Full Story: The Register

Hotmail fees for Outlook access

Hotmail fees for Outlook access

Millions of Hotmail users face having to pay to access their messages using the Outlook e-mail program.

Full Story: Here

Thanks noelg24 for the story.

Firefox bites back

Firefox bites back

A hundred thousand users an hour think Firefox is good news, but for Microsoft the story is rather different.

With a million downloads in 10 hours, the Firefox browser has kicked off a brand new round in a very old conflict.

Six years ago, Microsoft won the browser wars against Netscape -- the distant forefather of Firefox -- not because Internet Explorer was a better browser, but by the simple expedient of giving it away with every copy of Windows. That gave MS a killer lock on the market back in the last century when the CD was the only software distribution medium in town. Now we have broadband and the game's afoot once again.

Full story: Here