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The shortage of IPv4 addresses has reached a critical stage, according to the registries that allocate Internet numbers around the world.

The Number Resource Organization (NRO), which represents the registries, said Tuesday that less than 10 percent of all IPv4 addresses remain available, threatening the future network operations of all businesses and organizations unless ISPs and businesses step up their migration to IPv6.

“The limited IPv4 addresses will not allow us enough resources to achieve the ambitions we all hold for global Internet access,” NRO Chairman Axel Pawlik said in a statement Tuesday. “The deployment of IPv6 is a key infrastructure development that will enable the network to support the billions of people and devices that will connect in the coming years.”

Source CNET

Google has revealed first details of ‘Caffeine’, the codename for the newest edition of its powerful search engine.

The company says that Caffeine will be the “first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

Web developers are now invited to test the new search engine and provide feedback.

Though the front-end of the engine will look no different to the one online today, the tech driving it will speed up indexing search results and create a larger index.

One clear outcome of this will be the reduction in time it takes for the search engine to find new content freshly-published on the web.

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The popularity of a Facebook application mostly depends on whether you are male or female, and if it meets the criteria of being "cool", says a latest study.
The research was conducted by Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Dr. Larry Neale from the Queensland University of Technology. They studied the value of applications such as ‘Superpoke’, ‘Mousehunt’ and ‘Scrabble’ which enable people to interact with social networking sites and other users.
According to Russell-Bennett, when it came to discovering what made social networking applications successful, it seemed women wanted to express themselves, while men enjoyed the thrill of social competition.
She added that "Facebook users want to possess and share cool applications that enhance their standing within their network of friends. For women this is about self-expression, for men it is about who is the best."
Russell-Bennett highlighted the importance of the study by saying that from a commercial view, organisations were struggling to understand how to develop a cool application and identify the features that would encourage people to recommend cool applications to friends.
"Popular applications can attract tens of millions of views and uses per month, and given that applications are relatively cheap to develop and are distributed virtually cost-free, this makes them an attractive substitute to traditional advertising."
"Anecdotally we know that companies are spending a lot of money on applications but they aren’t necessarily working," she said.
Now that they are armed with the knowledge of what motivates people to use and recommend applications, companies could better tap into the social networking market, Russell-Bennett added.
The results of this study will be presented at the UK Academy of Marketing conference in Leeds later this month.

An Iraqi IT expert has set up the country’s first e-shopping website for trading anything from cars to game consoles, hoping to build a business that may one day cater for locals and foreign investors alike. Named after an ancient and teeming Baghdad market, Harej, which means "commotion" in Arabic, the site connects buyers and sellers for free – although few goods are on offer so far.
Its creator, Mehdi al-Ajwadi, said the idea would take time to catch on in the almost entirely cash-based economy of a country ravaged by years of conflict, and where only a tiny proportion of the population has access to the Internet. "There is still a long way to go before it’s accepted by the people," Ajwadi told Reuters. "In future, when credit cards become more common and widely used here, we will take a percentage on each trade." Hosted on a British server, www.harej.com runs in Arabic and Kurdish and offers new and used goods in categories including real estate, electronics, books, furniture and vehicles. By far the most popular section is cars, with 16 offered including a BMW X5, Mercedes C300 and GMC Yukon XL. Elsewhere, sellers are flogging a Nokia mobile phone handset, a Sony Playstation 3, and a modest four-bedroom home costing $65,000.
Eventually, Ajwadi hopes to develop a delivery service to get goods to buyers, as well as one day to tap the global market. "In the future we aim to be able to direct foreign investors to investment areas in different provinces of Iraq," he said.

Norwegian browser maker Opera ASA said on Friday that Microsoft’splan to ship its Windows operating system in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser was not enough to restore competition.

On Thursday the world’s top software maker Microsoft, countering pressure from European regulators, said it plans to ship the newest version of Windows in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser. “I don’t think what Microsoft announced is going to restore competition,” Opera’s Chief Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie told Reuters. “I don’t think it’s going to be enough, I don’t think it will get them off the hook,” he said.

Microsoft’s abrupt reversal comes shortly before the European Commission is due to rule on antitrust charges brought against the company in January, claiming that it abuses its dominant position by bundling its Explorer browser, shielding it from head-to-head competition with rival products.

Until now, Microsoft has claimed that the browser was an integral part of the operating system and should not be pulled out, but it now plans to do that for a European version of Windows 7, due to be rolled out later this year. A European Commission official said the EU watchdog will examine the conditions under which Microsoft will ship Windows 7 without browsers to manufacturers and suppliers, warning that the Commission will find out if there are any conditions attached. “We never suggested that they have to sell Windows without Internet Explorer. We suggested that they might have to give the possibility to customers to chose between different browsers,” the official said. The official added that it was in Microsoft’s interest to inform the Commission of any conditions attached to the rollout. The Commission, which enforces competition rules in the 27-nation European Union, said it planned to decide shortly on its latest case against the U.S. tech giant. It has to date fined Microsoft nearly $2 billion for various offenses.

The Commission can impose a fine of up to 10 percent of a company’s turnover and other remedies if found to have breached EU rules. Last month, it slapped a record $1.49 billion fine on the world’s biggest chipmaker Intel for anti-competitive practices.