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Looks like Google’s new CEO Larry Page is feeling the heat. He has promoted at least seven executives to head key parts of the company. The management reshuffle is an attempt at streamlining a bureaucracy that’s sometimes bogged down Google even as it became the world’s most valuable Internet company.

Page, Google’s 38-year-old co-founder, took over from Eric Schmidt, who is staying on as executive chairman. Page has made it a top priority to cut out the bureaucracy and speed up innovation at Google, which is facing threats from new startups, such as Facebook, Twitter and the online deals company Groupon.

These companies have built their success on “social,” the buzzword that defines the latest generation of Internet icons. Google, whose bread and butter is online search, hasn’t been all that successful in building up the social side of its products.

The seven executives, all holding the title of senior vice president, are:

• Andy Rubin, its top mobile executive;

• Salar Kamangar, the head of video site YouTube;

• Sundar Pichai, who’s in charge of the Chrome browser and operating system effort;

• Alan Eustace, senior vice president for engineering and research;

• Jeff Huber, senior vice president of commerce and local;

• Vic Gundotra, who leads social ventures; and

• Susan Wojcicki, who heads ads.

Some already had the senior vice president title before the latest change.

Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Capital, said the management changes are not surprising overall. But he said Page’s decision to elevate “social” to make it a separate group on par with ads or search shows a clear concern over the threat from Facebook and others.

Google reports its first-quarter earnings Thursday.

Shares of Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., slid $1.84 to close Friday at $578.16.

Source : Yahoo

Microsoft Corp filed a formal complaint with European anti-trust regulators about Google’s dominance of the Internet search market in the region.

Google bars competitors from accessing its YouTube video site for search results and has kept phones running Microsoft’s operating system from working properly with YouTube, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said in a blog posting by General Counsel Brad Smith. A Microsoft unit and two other rivals last year lodged a complaint with the European Union, which is investigating whether Google has violated the region’s anti-trust laws. Google is under growing pressure from global regulators that are probing whether the company uses its dominance of Web search to thwart competition.

“Our filing today focuses on a pattern of actions that Google has taken to entrench its dominance in the markets for online search and search advertising to the detriment of European consumers,” Smith wrote in the blog posting.

While Microsoft and partner Yahoo! Inc. have about a quarter of the US search market and Google the rest, Google has almost 95 percent of the market in Europe, Smith said, citing data from regulators. Google “is not surprised” that Microsoft has complained because its advertising unit, Ciao from Bing, filed a complaint last year, said Al Verney, a spokesman for Google in Brussels. “We continue to discuss the case with the European Commission and we’re happy to explain to anyone how our business works,” he said in an e-mailed statement today.

Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the European Commission in Brussels, declined to comment. Google shares fell 0.7% to 411 euros and Microsoft fell 0.03 percent to 18.15 euros at 9:18 a.m. in Frankfurt trading.

Besides cordoning off YouTube, Google is also seeking to block access to content owned by book publishers and restricting its own advertisers from accessing the data they put in Google servers as part of ad campaigns, Microsoft said. “Unfortunately, Google has engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers,” Smith said in the blog. Microsoft is the world’s largest software maker.

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Well, the rumors were true. Not only is Amazon entering the “music locker” space, they’re doing it before both Google and Apple — as their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player” have just gone live on their site tonight.

Cloud Drive is the name Amazon is giving to its media storage space on their servers. They give you 5 GB of storage for free and allow you to access the media from any computer. Cloud Player is the name of yes, the actual player. And it comes in two flavors: a player for the web, and one for Android devices. You’ll note an absence of an iOS player…

A bit more:

• Any album bought through Amazon MP3 is stored for free in your Cloud Drive — a very nice perk.
• If you buy one album from Amazon MP3, they’ll upgrade your Cloud Drive storage to 20 GB for free for a year — another nice perk.
• Normally, 20 GB of Drive storage will cost $20 for a year. 50 GB is $50. 100 GB is $100. And so on. All the way up to 1 TB for $1,000.
• The Cloud Drive storage isn’t just for music — Amazon notes that 1 TB will hold 70 hours of HD video.
• Other files can be uploaded — this includes music, movies, photos, and even documents.
• The MP3 uploader accepts MP3 or AAC files, but they must be DRM-free (.wma, .wav, .ogg and others are not supported)

Continue reading the post via  techcrunch.com

How do i claim back my money? If this is your question then i say we possibly have an answer for that.

Its been estimated by US government officials that there is about $32 billion dollars left unclaimed by its respective owners.

Holy cow, back in 09′s and 10′s, people lost everything they had thanks to recession and here we find so much money that is unclaimed yet. Spooky!

Lets try and figure out ways to claims your uncleared money

1. Check the federal government’s savings bond database

Start your search by visiting the  Treasury Department’s savings bonds website and navigate to a special page called TREASURY HUNT. To get to the Treasury Hunt page, click on the tab for “Individuals,” then on the tab for “Tools” — or just go to Google and search for the term “Treasury Hunt.”

Once you’ve reached the Treasury Hunt page, you’ll find a big blue button two-thirds of the way down marked “Start Search.” Click on it, type in your Social Security number, and you’ll instantly be informed whether or not they are holding bonds in your name. The whole search should only take you a few minutes.

2. Check the Banks

It so happens that we may forget to check out the bank account which was opened by our parents when we were kids. Ask yourself whether you cashed  it out or not? If not then my first stop would be the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA) website, which provides links to the individual databases of all 50 states listing unclaimed assets.

I’d also visit missingmoney.com, a one-stop-shop for finding unclaimed property that is operated by a private company for NAUPA. What distinguishes both these websites is the huge amount of data they can access — and the fact that both of them are FREE.

There are also unclaimed-asset sites that will charge you to do a search. A typical example is unclaimed.com. But please go to the correct site, unclaimed.org. Take the FREE approach first. The other sites charge up to $18 per search.

3) Check With the IRS

IRS is the best place to begin the search. You go online to the IRS website and you click on the link labeled “Where’s My Refund?” You then input some basic information about yourself (Social Security number, filing status, and the amount of refund you’re due) and the site will tell you the status of your refund. If you don’t have access to the Internet, you can phone the IRS toll-free at (800) 829-1040 and ask them if they’re holding a tax refund for you. Since 2004, taxpayers have used the “Where’s My Refund?” tool more than 24 million times. If you think there’s even a remote chance that you never got a refund you were supposed to get, you should join this crowd.

Now here’s the big catch. The IRS has a rule that you have to claim your refund within three years from the time your return was due or they get to keep the money. If you have a refund coming to you for 2007 or later, you still have a chance to get your money.

DISCLAIMER:

Although we feel the above mentioned information will be useful for your search on  unclaimed money. We do not guarantee you its success. And in any such case of you not being able to find your missing money, we are NOT RESPONSIBLE for that.

We would encourage you to keep the post as an alternative in your search for money and also we insist you to find out your own ways to claim your money, if  any has been left unclaimed

ICC World cup 2011 can never get bigger and better after what we witnessed today. Pakistan convincingly defeated West Indies in the quarter finals of the ICC world 2011 thereby becoming the first team to enter the semis.

Boy, Oh Boy, i could not forget the match. This is one of those matches where i kept on creeping the google search engine at work to know the score board. I am sure that thousands, may be millions, among you would have done the same from work.

Coming back to the match held today at Mirpur, Bangladesh, West Indies batted first. I reckon west indies players would do all in their power to forget their defeat today,but  if they remember the loss  then it will be very very tough  for them to mentally cope up.

Captain Shahid Afridi turned out to be the star for Pakistan team as they damage the west indies batting completely. Besides Chanderpaul who remained unbeaten on 44, no other batsman had any clues on the Pakistani bowling attack.

West Indies lose all their wickets for 112 .

Pakistan kick start their batting with Kamran Akmal and Mohammed Hafeez, who won the match by the massive opening partnership and more importantly Pakistan maintained their dominance by not losing even a single wicket .

In the end, Pakistan won the match in the 21st over with 10 wickets remaining.

Mohammed Hafeez was named the man of the match.

Amazon has launched a dedicated store just for Android apps. Now this must be clear sign, signaling the raise of popularity and demand for Android apps.

Google’s Android Market which now has about 170,000 apps, users can now get games, music players, e-readers, maps and more at Verizon Wireless’ V CAST and Amazon.com’s new Appstore for Android.

Amazon’s move comes after Android took over Apple’s iOS as the most popular smartphone OS in the US market.

The Amazon site went live Tuesday, offering a promotion of one free (ordinarily paid) app per day, beginning with a new version of the game Angry Birds Rio. The initial inventory includes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Zagat To Go, Lookout Mobile Security, Shazam Music, and CBS Sports.

“This also gives Amazon an outlet and opportunity to differentiate new and emerging Android-based products of its own, like a Kindle/tablet,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

“There will be more, many more” vendors offering [apps], said Ken Dulaney of Gartner Research. “I don’t think it’s an advantage; actually a slight disadvantage because you have to go to so many.”

He likened Google’s approach to “Moving from the department-store model to the boutique shop. But this approach is needed because Google is unwilling to take on the role for better qualifying apps. They could easily run the apps through more testing before they are published. That is what Amazon is offering over Google via their app store. Google doesn’t have to let Amazon or anyone take on this role.”

Android offerings continue to pale against Apple’s App Store on iTunes, which now has more than 400,000 apps.

As Amazon launched Android Appstore it has been sued by Apple for trademark infringement over the use of the work ‘App Store’.

Hours of commitment , yet i got a bug. What will i do now? Shall i report the seriousness to my boss or else i just stay quiet until my boss finds out. These are the following thoughts of an employee working in any organization.

Out of fear of being scolded or degraded, when an employee skips his boss about the occurring defect, the more problem will he be getting after the product is launched. The bug which he skipped will be very complex to rectify once the project develops.

On top of that the employee will surely be scolded of his lack of act when he first spotted the bug. So the better way is to stop the bug then and there itself.

Now that, you found out the bug! you have decided to communicate with your boss! But how???

Here i am giving you some tips on the communication part with your boss.

Know What You Want To Speak

The crucial part before speaking to your boss is Know What You Want To Speak. Frame the things that your mind speaks into a simple grammatical sentence and write it down.

After your utmost sure of what you want to speak . Go forward into your boss room.

Know When You Have to Speak

Yeah! Don’t just rush into your boss room as if he is  a free guy or some office man. Investigate on what your boss is doing and find out his free timings. Cross check with your colleague about the timings. once you verify it enter your boss room.

Find out the Solution for the Problem

This will probably be the first thing which you have to do once you find a bug.  Dont just tell your boss and expect a solution. He may or may not know it.

Your bug or problem will be hard for him to understand at the very moment unless and until he goes through the code . Which will take away the precious production time.

Besides, like you, your boss will have more problems and responsibilities in his shoulder. In the end you will be screwed for the bug.

Instead of waiting for boss action, investigate on your own on how the error occurred.

Google it or by what ever means try and find out 10 possible solutions for the problem.Then visit your boss with the possibilities.

Now he will be happy to hear you out and willingly will help you out with best answer.

In the end, the most important factor that matters is the solution which you have found and how you communicate with the boss!