EOL - A Biological Encyclopedia website too popular on first day

While it has taken almost a year, the non-profit Encyclopedia of Life project launched recently. It gained so much attention, that the site quickly crashed.

During five-and-a-half hours, the site logged 11.5 million hits, including visitors who reached the “503 error”.

EOL is estimated to have cost US$110.5 million so far.

The site has limited information on 30,000 species, and full profiles of 25 species. These fleshed-out profiles include an article with scientific references, maps of where the species are found, and are illustrated with photos and video. One million placeholder pages have been set up so far, and the plan is to eventually catalog all 1.8 million species. Read on» » » »

Visa to Issue Largest IPO in the US History

Visa credit card.

Visa, Inc. announced on February 25, 2008 that it would soon go ahead with a much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of about half its shares. This would make it the single biggest IPO in United States history, according to the regulatory filing the company made. Visa hopes to raise about US$17-19 billion, emulating its main rival, MasterCard Inc., which successfully put out an IPO in 2006.

Shares are expected to range from $37 to $42 each. Visa is banking on a changing global economy which relies less on liquid cash and more on credit. Revenue at both Visa and MasterCard has climbed as consumers pay for more purchases with credit and debit cards, instead of cash. Cards are expected to be used for 55 percent of all U.S. consumer transactions by 2011, up from 40 percent in 2005. Read on» » » »

XI/PI: Configuring the Sender Mail Adapter

We have earlier discussed how to configure receiver mail adapter to be able to send emails from SAP XI. In this article, let us understand the configuration of Sender Mail Adapter. Sender Mail Adapter is used to collect emails from an email server and convert them to XML messages so as to process them in XI Integration Engine. Read on» » » »

Buying Your First Home - A Guide for the Beginner

Becoming a first-time home buyer is a tremendous step in life. The sense of personal accomplishment, pride, satisfaction, and joy is irreplaceable. It is not without it’s challenges, though. Because of the huge number of options available to you as a potential buyer, you need to take the time to become familiar with an overview of the buying process, the terminology used, and how to best approach buying your first home.

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The Best of Free Open Source Windows Software

You use Windows and whenever you need some functionality or software you go about searching the internet for free and open source software that you can easily download and get your job done. But one thing that worries you is security - the issue of spyware and adware. The internet is full of Open Source softwares. There are a number of software download sites available. However, when presented with long list of softwares, each one with numerous reviews, you find it really difficult to gauge different softwares to suit your needs. This is where Open Source Windows comes in handy to give you a quick relief. Read on» » » »

The Colors Speak

Divya Sasidharan is a software engineer from Pune, India. In her leisure time, she loves to paint. She shares one of her beautiful creations with riyaz.net. Its a painting in Oil on Canvas.

I must say its awesome work of art! What do you say? Do leave your comments and ratings. Divya would love to hear from you!

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IBM Supercomputer to rule the Internet

IBM has announced a new project called Kittyhawk, which entails constructing a global-scale shared supercomputer capable of hosting the entire Internet on one platform as an application. Currently the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks.

IBM has prepared a white paper detailing the project. The Kittyhawk will be based on the previously developed IBM supercomputer called Blue Gene. In theory the Kittyhawk will have up to 16,384 racks, providing a maximum of 67.1 million cores with 32 petabytes of memory.

Read on» » » »

Japan launches WINDS satellite

An earlier H-IIA launch Image: Naritama, GFDL

A Japanese H-IIA carrier rocket has successfully launched the Wideband InterNetworking test and Demonstration Satellite (WINDS) experimental communication satellite. WINDS, also known as Kizuna, is a Japanese spacecraft intended to relay Internet access to homes and organisations in Japan, as part of a programme known as i-Space. It will be operated by JAXA, and Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

The launch was conducted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The spacecraft separated from the carrier rocket 28 minutes into the flight, at 09:23 GMT. The rocket placed the satellite into a Geosynchronous transfer orbit, from which the spacecraft will transfer, under its own power, to a Geosynchronous orbit, approximately 35,000 kilometres above the equator.

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XI/PI: Sending Emails Using XI Mail Adapter

In this article we shall discuss the configuration of SAP XI Mail Adapter on the receiver side. The receiver mail adapter resides on the J2EE stack and converts the XI messages into emails and transfers them to email server or in simple words sends them as emails to intended recipient(s). Read on» » » »

Mozilla Firefox Celebrates 500 Million Downloads

The Mozilla Firefox browser has been downloaded 500 million times. The Firefox community is celebrating this by raising 500 million grains of rice at FreeRice. This would feed 25,000 people for a day.

To support the cause, simply go to FreeRice.com and play the game. You have to guess the meaning of the word displayed. For each word you get right, FreeRice will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program to help the hungry. If you choose the right word, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier one. Not a bad idea to prepare for your upcoming English exams in case you are preparing for GRE or the like.

Firefox is becoming the most popular browser and the community is growing day-by-day. 500 million milestone is a remarkable achievement for Mozilla.

Now a days many users seem to be switching over from IE to Firefox. Read on» » » »