Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google’s global computer network to make web pages load faster.

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:

• Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
• Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
• Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
• Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
• Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
• Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

Dial-up users may not see much improvement, as Google Web Accelerator is currently optimized to speed up web page loading for broadband connections.

To use Google Web Accelerator, your computer must have a Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+ operating system. Google Web Accelerator works for the Internet Explorer 5.5+ or Firefox 1.0+ browsers.

You can download Google Web Accelerator Here

International Business Machines Corp. said Wednesday it would cut between 10,000 and 13,000 jobs and record a pretax charge between $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion in the second quarter.

The majority of the cuts are planned for Europe, where the company began slashing jobs even before it announced its disappointing first-quarter earnings last month. In March, IBM laid off 500 Swedish workers, 9 percent of its work force there, and shut down most operations in five cities.

IBM surprised investors in April when it missed first quarter earnings estimates by 5 cents a share. Chief financial officer Mark Loughridge said during the earnings conference call that the company planned a “sizable restructuring.”

Source: AP

In a Reuters report Wednesday about an Australian state’s move to outlaw employers from snooping on workers’ private e-mails, New South Wales Attorney General Bob Debus defended related legislation.

“We don’t tolerate employers unlawfully placing cameras in change rooms and toilets,” he said. “Likewise, we should not tolerate unscrupulous employers snooping into the private e-mails of workers.”

Source: News.com

The OASIS Group announces that the third Committee Draft of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved as an OASIS Standard. The submission of the approved standard can be found here.
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable.

Source: Slashdot

US Sirius Satellite Radio is latching onto the “podcasting” phenomenon, launching a daily four-hour show featuring podcast, self-published syndicated radio shows.

The new show, broadcast every weekday from 13 May, will be hosted by Adam Curry, the former MTV deejay who helped create technological tools for podcasting. Curry - in conjunction with Ron Bloom - is developing a virtual podcast studio for Windows. A public beta release is expected soon.

Adam Curry’s PodShow will be broadcast on Sirius channel 148, a commercial talk-radio station. Curry already airs a radio show called Daily Source Code from Guildford, UK.

Source: The Register

News.com published a very interesting article about a 25-year-old researcher has spent years analyzing how spyware and adware programs work and publicizing his findings. That often results in red faces and, occasionally, lawsuit threats from companies like WhenU and Claria, formerly known as Gator.

Source: News.com

Apple Computer late Tuesday released an update to fix a whopping 20 security flaws in its flagship Mac OS X and warned that the most serious bugs could lead to remote code execution attacks.

Apple Computer Inc.’s Security Update 2005-005 includes patches for Mac OS X v10.3.9 and Mac OS X Server v10.3.9. It covers a wide range of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by remote or local attackers to execute arbitrary commands, trigger a denial-of-service condition or obtain elevated privileges.

Source: eWeek