Internet 50% slower -- Cable Failure

Internet users in India struggled with slow surfing speeds on account of the breakdown of two undersea cables in the Mediterranean -- (Sify News)

Bogged down by slower-than-usual Internet speeds for the last couple of days? Brace yourself for a couple more such days... (Techtree)

Extensive damage to two undersea cables has thrown Internet activity across large parts of India, Asia and the Middle East, out of gear. (Rediff News)

Internet users in India struggled with slow surfing speeds and companies tapped redundancy systems to overcome a disruption to international. ( Times of India)

Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt (NewYork Times)

India's digital pathway has shrunk by half because of a Mediterranean undersea cable snag, affecting Internet services and businesses with clients (Calcutta Telegraph, India)

nternet outages disrupted business and personal usage across a wide swath of the Middle East on Wednesday (Seattle Times, United States)

Brands say it all!

What first thing comes to your mind when you compare any gadgets/goods/services?

The trust for your company reflects from its brand name.
The more your are know (for good) the better will be your market capitalization in terms of brand awareness. Customers do prefer brand value when it comes to competition with similar services/products in offer.
Some of the popular brands make things tangible to what my take is:
AMD
AMD Headquarters:
One AMD Place
P.O. Box 3453
Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3453
Tel: 408-749-4000
http://www.amd.com

CISCO Main Address:Brand Global rank 16
170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134-1619
Phone: (408) 526-4000
Toll Free: (800) 326-1941
Fax: (408) 526-4100
http://www.cisco.com

Apple Corporate Address: Brand Global rank 43
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408.996.1010
www.apple.com

Borland Software Corp.
Public Company, Headquarters Location
20450 Stevens Creek Blvd., Ste. 500, Cupertino, CA, United States
(831)431-1000, (831)431-4141 fax,
http://www.borland.com/

HP Corporate Headquarters Brand Global rank 12
Hewlett Packard
3000 Hanover ST.
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
http://www.hp.com

eBay Headquarters: Brand Global rank 60
eBay Inc. 2145
Hamilton Avenue San Jose
California 95125
(408) 558-7400
(877) 329-3229
http://www.ebay.com/

Intel Headquarters:Brand Global rank 5
Intel Corporation
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
Phone: 408-765-8080
Fax: 408-765-3804
Toll Free: 800-628-8686
http://www.intel.com

McAfee Headquarters:
3965 Freedom Cir.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Phone: 408-988-3832
Fax: 408-970-9727
http://www.mcafee.com/

Sun Microsystems Headquarters
Sun Microsystems
4150 Network Circle
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Phone: 650-960-1300
Fax: 408-276-3804
Toll Free: 800-555-9786
http://www.sun.com

Symantec Headquarters
Symantec
20330 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014-2132
Phone: 408-517-8000
Fax: 408-517-8186
http://www.symantec.com/

Yahoo! Headquarters Brand Global rank 61
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Phone (408) 349-3300
Fax (408) 349-3301
Office Hours 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST
http://www.yahoo.com


Google's headquarters
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001
http://www.google.com

Yahoo! adopts OpenID specifications

What is an OpenID?

According to Wikipedia,

OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID "identity provider" (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.

OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL and Orange acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox 3 and OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace, which is part of .NET Framework version 3.0 (the .NET Framework version 3.0 comes with Windows Vista by default and can be downloaded for Windows XP).

Now the latest news from Yahoo! is related to the future oriented thinking for using OpenID 2.0 norms. Here is a news from Yahoo to look at::

Yahoo is moving in a big way to embrace the new OpenID 2.0 specification, which eliminates the need for Web surfers to create separate IDs and logins at each of the Web sites, blogs and profile pages that they may visit during an online session.

Beginning Jan. 30, Yahoo's 248 million active registered users worldwide will be able to use a new beta test version of Yahoo ID to seamlessly sign in to hundreds of OpenID-compatible Web sites, the search engine giant said.

Google Note

Google adding some online bookmarking / collective diary stuff to its SERP's


The new functionality observed ( well checkout if its really new)

Google now provides the "note this" utility. Its a bit of online notes taking for future reference which will be of great help while surfing the internet and for those who are not that genious when it comes to long lasting memory.

The utility was observed working well for blogger and uploaded posts, as well as the personalized interface which we get after logging in.