New Nimbuzz for Java phones ready for download

Nimbuzz introducing a brand new Nimbuzz version(1.9.4) for Java enabled mobiles is available on our website. You can get it here.

What’s new?

fixed a few bugs, including the annoying “not enough memory” issue
added Romanian language

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Facebook apologizes for Merck homepage mix-up

REUTERS - Facebook Inc said on Monday that it made a mistake in letting Merck & Co take over a page on the social networking website from its German rival Merck KGaA.
The takeover had prompted an unusual Nov. 21 filing by Merck KGaA with a New York state court.
In it, Merck KGaA sought to force Facebook to explain how it lost the page, www.facebook.com/merck, and the ability to administer it to Merck & Co, a separate company.
Facebook plans to make the URL www.facebook.com/merck unavailable for use until both Mercks agree which company may use it. The companies may request other URLs and maintain presences on Facebook.
"The transfer of the vanity URL Facebook.com/Merck from Merck KGaA to Merck & Co was due to an administrative error," Facebook said in a statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
Merck & Co spokesman Ronald Rogers said: "We are going to continue to have a Facebook page. It is an active webpage. We are continuing to look into the matter of the vanity URL."
Merck KGaA did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment after business hours in Germany.
According to court papers, Merck KGaA had contracted with Facebook in March 2010 for exclusive use of the page, but discovered last month that Merck & Co was using it.
Merck KGaA said the loss of the page deprived it of an "important marketing device." Merck & Co was not a defendant.
According to Merck KGaA, the Mercks became separate companies under the Treaty of Versailles. Each retained rights to the Merck trademark in different geographic areas, as part of Germany's reparations following World War I.
Merck & Co is based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey; Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany; and Facebook in Palo Alto, California.
The case is Merck KGaA v. Facebook Inc, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 113215/2011.

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Facebook plans IPO between April and June

REUTERS - Facebook Inc is looking to go public between April and June 2012 with a valuation of over $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The social media giant is considering raising as much as $10 billion in its IPO, the report said.
Sources familiar with the matter said the company has not made any decision over which banks will be involved in the IPO.
Facebook's CFO David Ebersman is in talks with Silicon Valley bankers about an IPO, but founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not decided on any terms of the IPO, the Journal said.

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Sony launches Cyber-shot DSC-TX55 in India for Rs. 19,990

Sony India has expanded its Cyber-shot camera range with the launch of the DSC-TX55. The company dubs the DSC-TX55 as the world's slimmest camera in its class. The new Sony camera is 12.2 mm thick (measurement excludes lens cover) and features 16.2 megapixel, Full HD video, 5x Zoom and 3D capability.

The DSC-TX55 also features Exmor R CMOS sensor that is supposed to deliver high image detail and ultra-low picture noise in both still images and Full HD video – even in low light conditions. The company says camera’s hi-speed auto focus can lock onto subject in as little as 0.1 seconds.

The new DSC-TX55 camera makes it simple for users to easily achieve DSLR-like picture quality. Its Superior Auto mode recognises a wide range of shooting situations, adjusting exposure and other settings for high-quality images with low noise and high dynamic range. Further, the camera’s back panel has a 3.3-inch (8.3cm) Xtra Fine OLED wide touch-screen.

The 3D Still Image feature captures dramatic 3D photos without the need for a large, bulky stereoscopic lens. With a single shutter press, the camera takes two shots consecutively, using the first image to estimate depth information to create a dramatic three-dimensional still image. Other 3D shooting options include 3D Sweep Panorama mode and Sweep Multi Angle.

DSC-TX55 is available in Gold, Black & Silver and is priced at Rs. 19,990. It is available at all Sony Centers and other major electronic outlets across India.

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Celebrating 7 years of Firefox with the newest (and cutest) Mozillians!

Firfox tea excited to join together as a global community to celebrate the 7th birthday of Firefox. As the only independent browser with a mission to make the Web better, we are proud of how the last seven years of Firefox have pushed the Web forward:

The latest release of Firefox is more than 32 times faster than Firefox 1.0.
Firefox recently shifted to a new release cycle to deliver features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster.
Leading edge HTML5 support in Firefox ensures that developers can create beautiful and exciting Web experiences for users.
Favorite features like tabbed browsing, built-in phishing and malware protection, the Awesome Bar, Do Not Track and our gallery of thousands of Firefox add-ons give millions of users around the world more choice and control over their Web browsing experience.

To celebrate, Mozilla has once again adopted firefox (a.k.a red panda) cubs at the Knoxville Zoo. For the next few months, you can watch these baby firefoxes play, live and grow via a 24 hour live video stream at Firefox Live.

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How to increase traffic to blog withbacklinks?

Have you been making an attempt to boost your blog in Google?! have you ever thought of giving your blog an enormous kick by backlinking with different websites? Backlinking is not something new however many of us do not do it or they solely do not know the way to do it. regardless of the reason is, it’s a crucial thanks to increase traffic to your web site or blog. i would wish to provide you with some necessary tips, along side some helpful concepts to allow your blog that boost it needs!
Here are three recommendations on the way to increase backlinks to your blog:

1. the way to increase backlinks with Niche-Specific Forums
Developing your blog around a distinct segment can increase your probabilities of ranking higher within the major search engines, which is {able to} facilitate to extend the percentages that anyone who is craving for your specific content are going to be able to realize you. However, there’s a baffling assortment of internet sites out there that supply similar content. one among the foremost effective and proven ways that to assist your blog become additional noticeable and appealing to the niche-specific forums is to join up with them by using backlinks.
To build backlinks for your blog you must realize a decent backlink tool or service. you’ll weigh down the workload of finding backlinks by using one among the various tools on the market.

2. the way to increase backlinks with Directories
A link directory provides a vehicle for community members to parade their websites to their peers. Backlinking your blog to a directory may be a sweet plan and might assist you get extremely specific concerning where you wish to make your blog backlinks. verify directories like DMOZ for samples of a very deep class and subcategory system.

3. the way to increase backlinks with Relevant & connected Websites
Now, for your blog backlinks, here are 2 important things for you to think about. I decision them the 2 R’s, Relevant & connected. to realize a robust name on the online it’s important that you simply solely link to relevant or connected websites. If your blog is concerning quilting and you are backlinking with websites that point out basketball then there’s not a relevant or connected association. you may retreat potential customers as a result of they will not realize any relationship between your blog and therefore the web site they solely came from.
Backlinks are the lifeblood of promoting your blog and you’re that a lot of nearer to driving net traffic to your blog. Building backlinks will be really easy, and really beneficial! Heck, it may also be fun!
I’ve learned the way to increase the traffic to my blog sites by using backlinks and currently i am sharing that each one else.
To build backlinks for your blog you must realize a decent backlink tool or service. you’ll weigh down the workload of finding backlinks by using one among the various tools on the market. Bookmarking Demon is one among those tools. it’s super straightforward to use, you only enter your keywords and choose the sort of links you wish to seek out and Bookmarking Demon can do all the finding for you.

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IPhone 4s price in India

 

Bharti Airtel will be releasing iPhone 4s in India on 25th november.

The price for different models is as follows:

• 16GB model for Rs.44,500
• 32 GB model will be sold for Rs 50,900
• 64 GB model for Rs 57,500

All iPhone handsets sold in India would be fully unlocked. You can also pre-book a 16GB or 32GB model online at Airtel's e-store.

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Review: Samsung Galaxy Note

It is an unwritten rule of sorts that if a device has a display below 5-inches it is considered a smartphone and if the display size crosses the 7-inch mark, it is a tablet. Lately, however, an increasing number of smartphones displays in excess of 4-inches have blurred the line between tablets and phones. Some companies have started to stray into the uncharted territory between 5-inches and 7-inches.

Dell was the first to test the waters with Streak, the first device to come armed with a 5-inch display. Then came Acer with the Iconia Smart. However, neither of these were well received by either customers or reviewers. But, undeterred, Samsung has also been thinking along the same lines. The world's best selling Android brand clearly felt this was an area they own and they came up with the Galaxy Note. It looks like the lovechild of the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Tab, and it packs in some awesome firepower. Lets see if the Note has some noteworthy chops to make the market warm up to this new hybrid concept.

Design

At 9.65mm, the Galaxy Note is the thinnest device in the hybrid category and we dare say it is thinner than most smartphones on the market. It also weighs only 178 grams making the Galaxy Note a very pocket friendly device. This, however, does not necessarily make the Note a small device in itself. In fact, quite the opposite. Its gargantuan 5.3-inch display takes center stage and we had trouble with the phone or tablet struggle. Obviously, the device borrows its heritage from fellow Samsung products like the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab, but after handling it for a few minutes it became quite clear the Galaxy Note was basically a slightly plusher and much larger version of the Galaxy S2. Make no mistake, if you use this device to make calls in public places people will stare at you for all the wrong reasons.
As usual, Samsung has employed capacitive Android controls right below the display and have also incorporated the front facing 2 megapixel camera on the top of the display alongside the proximity and ambient light sensors.

Samsung has made subtle changes to the design of the Note from the Galaxy S2, where the sides are now tapered with a chrome like metallic material instead of the black one employed on the Galaxy S2. It's an acquired taste - some will like the new design, some will not. We will not desist from passing judgment on the change itself but we will say that it looks a wee bit less fragile than the Galaxy S2. That's a good thing, but still not very reassuring. As with the Galaxy S2, the standard power button is placed on the top right hand side, the volume rockers are placed on the left hand side of the device and the 3.5 mm audio jack is placed on the top. On the bottom end of the device Samsung has placed the microUSB/charging slot and, next to it, a silo for the 'S-Pen' which is a digital pen and a special feature of the Note.
Apart from this, the 8-megapixel camera is housed in the rear end of the device along side the flash. For the back cover Samsung employed a similar super slim plastic as it did with the Galaxy S2, but this time around it is tad a softer to touch.
Another thing we could not help noticing is an ever so slight contour on the back which makes the device ergonomically sound.

On the whole, we can safely say the device was quite pocket friendly, though not ideal, and light years ahead of the Dell Streak and the Acer Iconia Smart both of which were bulky and would often sneak out of the confines of our pockets.

Display

When it was first shown off at IFA 2011 in Berlin, the display of the Galaxy Note created a lot of hype as it was the first device to adopt a Super AMOLED HD display with a resolution of 1280x800. In our testing we found out the hype around the display of the Galaxy Note was worth it. On the large 5.3-inch display, the Super AMOLED HD panel was a sight to behold. It was just stunning, in spite of Samsung employing the rather ungainly Pentile-Matrix technology for the sub-pixels instead of the one seen on the Super AMOLED+ display of the Galaxy S2.

Obviously, with the massive increase in resolution there was also quite a massive upgrade to the pixels per inch count with the Galaxy Note encompassing 286 pixels per inch (PPi). Compare this to the Galaxy S 2's 218 PPi, which uses an 800x480 Super AMOLED+ panel. It still does not manage the magical retina resolution of the iPhone 4S, but the super gorgeous 5.3-inch panel more than makes up for this variance, as the text looks immensely sharp, colours in photos look vivid and overall viewing angles are absolutely stunning. To put it simply, this display is the best among the Android family at least till the Galaxy Nexus arrives on Indian shores.

Playback on videos is outright gorgeous. In our opinion, the 5.3-inch form factor is ideal for video content but, of course, that comes with a massive ergonomic trade off as the device itself becomes quite large for regular usage.

One area where the Galaxy Note excels due to its large display is typing. In this BlackBerry generation thumb typing is the name of the game and often-full touch screen devices fall short due to their virtual keyboards. Refreshingly with the Galaxy Note, one does not need precise typing skills on a virtual keyboard - a probable first, though the auto correct on Samsung's keyboard is still not the best and does not come close to the iPhone's.

The true strength of the Galaxy Note's display lies in the way it displays webpages. The display shows more content thanks to the higher resolution and that too in a more beautiful way. Suffice to say, it was probably the most pleasurable web browsing experience we've had - more so than on the iPad 2 - and that too with Flash support.
What more can one ask for? Obviously naysayers will say the Galaxy Nexus will beat the Note thanks to retina PPi count, but we will cross that bridge once we have the Galaxy Nexus actually in our hands.

Camera Quality

The Galaxy Note boasts of the exact same camera sensor as the Galaxy S2. Its performance is also pretty much the same. We mean superb, of course. More advanced camera devices such as the iPhone 4S have popped up in international markets but till we test them we will reserve comparisons. The 8 megapixel camera on the Galaxy Note offers a plethora of customization options that shutter bugs are definitely going to like. These include: Self Portrait, Scene, Focus, Effects, Exposure mode, Self Timer, ISO, White Balance, Metering, Anti shake, Blink detection and Auto contrast. Clearly, Samsung wants to impress photographers.

On the whole images are very sharp and colour contrast is quiet impressive though at times, due to post processing, the colours tend to look artificial. This though is a problem with most mobile cameras. In low light conditions the camera performs admirably though some glitches do pop in due to the flash and there are a few over exposed grainy images, but for the most part it's more than satisfying. Let's just say you will not need a point and shoot after you purchase the Galaxy Note.

The Galaxy Note ably shoots 1080p full HD video at 30 frames per seconds with minimal hiccups. The performance is at par with Galaxy S2, if not a tad better.
On the whole Samsung has packed the Galaxy Note with a very strong camera package, which is easily the best among the current crop of Android devices, but things could change once the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy Nexus get here.


Operating System and Interface

The Galaxy Note runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread on which Samsung has applied its ugly TouchWiz layer. Don't get us wrong, TouchWiz has become quite a useful addition over the years but beautiful is one thing it is not. As we have mentioned many times in our reviews, the iconography on Samsung handsets look like cartoonized versions of iOS icons which is one of the reasons Apple is relentlessly pursuing a patent battle against Samsung. Apart from being copies, they look horrible. But otherwise, TouchWiz is quite handy. Samsung adds its Live Tile widgets for the device and there are numerous interface enhancements, which enrich the Android experience.

There are nice touches inside the contacts and call logs where we can swipe on the name to either message or call. Other niceties include tilt zooming inside the web browser which is assisted by the accelerometer and gyroscope. However, these features are not unique to the Galaxy Note but are part of the TouchWiz user interface.

Samsung has also spruced up the Music player and Video Player apps but they do not offer anything revolutionary. They just look different from their stock Android cousins. All features seem to be the same with the MP3 player playing most of the standard formats including lossless formats such as - FLAC and also offering numerous equalization options.

The video player plays most of the standard formats - except for HD video encoded in .mkv format, unfortunately.

Preloaded Software

Apart from the standard suite of Google apps, Samsung has loaded the Galaxy Note to the teeth with a myriad of apps. Some are handy, some border on bloatware.
To start, there are a number of 'S' apps such as the S Memo, the S Planner and S Choice apps store. All these 'S' labeled apps are designed especially for the S-Pen. While most will think the S-Pen is a glorified stylus, in truth it is a full-fledged digitizer. With the S-memo app, we can draw and sketch as if on paper. We can also take screenshots and edit them with the help of the S-Pen according to our whims and fancies. It pretty much became our personal digital notepad. We can even use handwriting recognition capabilities but these are not very accurate.

The S-Pen itself has a buttons placed which activates a variety of different features, such as taking screenshots.

The S-Planner is a calendar app optimized for the S-Pen, there is nothing revolutionary about it apart from cool quotient.

The S-choice is an apps store dedicated to apps optimized for the S-Pen. Samsung has also released a Software Developer Kit (SDK) for the S-Pen, allowing developers to build apps optimized for the S-Pen. As of now, the S-Choice store only offers 10 apps but Samsung expects the number will increase over time, but we are not entirely convinced.

Although the S-Pen is not the first of its kind in a mobile device, Samsung has definitely nailed the implementation. It is way better than the haphazard pen input on the HTC Flyer where the pen cannot be utilized throughout the OS. At the end of the day, however, it's still a novelty function - at least until the handwriting recognition algorithms are nailed because, in our opinion, only a superb handwriting experience will drive forward Pen based devices.

Besides the 'S' apps, Samsung has also loaded Polaris Office, which is a very capable office suite and also doubles as a file manager. It even supports the cloud with .Boxnet integration. It's a pity that .Boxnet does not offer the 50Gb free storage to its Android clients that it offers to iOS users, otherwise this would have been a lethal combination.

As with all Samsung devices, we get the Social Hub which is Samsung's social media aggregator. It integrates Twitter, Facebook, Email and SMS feeds in one. It's not the most intuitive way or not even the most handsome way of accessing ones personal information; frankly, we would rather use the default Facebook and Twitter apps for this.

Samsung has also loaded Kies Air Wi-Fi sync functionality, which works in tandem with a Kies Air desktop app or works directly via web browser. Definitely a handy tool, but Samsung could do a lot more to unclutter the interface especially in light of the iPhone's new found wireless capabilities thanks to iOS 5.

Performance

Samsung has armed the Galaxy Note with their latest Exynos processor dual-core which now clocks 1.4 GHz, a 0.2 GHz boost from the Galaxy S2's 1.2 GHz processor. All this firepower works in concert with I GB of RAM and, needless to say, the Galaxy Note is by far the fastest Android device we have ever reviewed. This is a claim we make on the basis of daily usage rather than on the basis of synthetic benchmarks such as Quadrant where the device scored a class leading 3980, besting the Galaxy S2's score of 3212.

While the performance was stunning there is something suspicious about how Samsung's Exynos processor scores on the Quadrant benchmark as both the results of the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Note are almost 33% higher than phones with different dual core processors. We say this as the performance variance is not so great in real work testing. In fact, because we test such things on a daily basis, we were able to make out minute differences.

Nonetheless, the Galaxy Note has sublime firepower and this fact was further vindicated by the Linpack Pro benchmark where it scored 96.54 MFLOPS in 1.75 seconds on a multi-thread analysis. In comparison to, this the Galaxy S2 lagged behind with 47.75 MFLOPs in 1.77 seconds.

Even on the BenchmarkPi test, the Galaxy Note had the chops to take on the best as it managed to calculate Pi in just 578 milliseconds while the Galaxy S2 trailed slightly at 617 milliseconds.

As far as web browsing went, we already mention it was the best we had experienced with Flash running smoothly. But just to check we ran the Rightware Browsermark test where it scored in excess of 55456 which, again, class leading.

In terms battery performance, Galaxy Note is impressive. Samsung has packed a gargantuan 2500 mAh battery though naysayers expected the 5.3-inch Super AMOLED HD display to down Samsung's 12 hour claim. For the most part, the Galaxy Note lives upto Samsung's lofty claims as it managed a decent 10 hours which included us making our regular calls, a bit of web browsing via 3G and Wi-Fi networks, and listening to music for a couple of hours.

Call quality is pretty good, though not top notch especially in crowded areas - like Palika Bazaar in New Delhi - where the call quality dipped a few notches. In comparison, our BlackBerry Bold 9700 maintained stellar calling performance, But this situation was not disastrous like the iPhone 4's antenna gate. At the end of the day, most people will be quite satisfied with call quality.

Apart from all these performance related goodies, Samsung also packs in 16GB of Flash based memory and for a memory card slot for multimedia gluttons.

Verdict

There is absolutely no doubt that the Samsung Galaxy Note currently offers the most cutting edge Android experience with its stunning high definition Super AMOLED display and super fast processor. The questions one should ask is - Am I comfortable with this weird form factor, or will I use the large display for productivity? If your answer is a yes, then go ahead and buy the Galaxy Note because it not only offers the best hardware on the market, but also the most slick form factor amongst all the hybrid devices. If the form factor is not palatable then one will be better off waiting for the Galaxy Nexus which will come with Google's shiny new Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and at the same time will provide all the hardware goodness of the Galaxy Note in a more subtle and sleek package.

Pros

Stunning Super AMOLED HD display
S-Pen is actually useful
Best in class performance
Battery Life

Cons

Average build quality
Slightly Expensive
Weird form factor if used as phone
No confirmed ICS upgrade date

Ratings

Performance: 5
Price: 3
Features: 5
Ergonomics: 3
Wow Factor: 5
Overall: 4.1

Samsung Galaxy Note Video:

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Qualcomm challenges LCDs through new e-reader

A new electronic display is poised to challenge power-hungry LCDs after U.S. mobile chip maker Qualcomm Inc. teamed up with a South Korean bookseller to introduce a new e-reader.

The "Kyobo eReader" was unveiled this week in Seoul and will reach South Korean consumers as early as Dec. 1, Kyobo Book Centre officials said on Thursday.

The e-reader features Qualcomm's 1.0 GHz "Snapdragon" processor, a custom Kyobo application based on Android and a 5.7 inch "XGA" mirasol display.

The mirasol display uses ambient light instead of its own in much the same way that a peacock's plumage gets its scintillating hues. Qualcomm's mirasols have already been used in a few Chinese and South Korean phones, and in an MP3 player on the U.S. market. The display contains tiny mirrors that consume power only when they're moving, easing battery drain. Mirasol displays also quickly change from one image to the next and show video.

The global market for e-readers is dominated by bright LCDs and grayscale "e-ink" screens. LCDs consume relatively more battery power while e-ink screens are slow to refresh.

The introduction of the e-reader jointly developed by Qualcomm and Kyobo signals increasing competition in the global market for tablets.

U.S. online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc. have recently released tablets of their own, Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, and are challenging Apple's iPad in pricing.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs noted South Koreans' near-100 percent literacy rate and digital reading skills during a launching ceremony in Seoul on Tuesday, according to the San Diego-based company. Fifteen-year-old South Koreans scored highest in their ability to absorb information from digital devices, according to a 2009 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Over 80 percent of households in South Korea have broadband Internet access.

The e-reader featuring the mirasol display will be priced at 349,000 won, or $302, said Seoul-based Kyobo, South Korea's largest bookseller.

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iOS 5 and iCloud coming October 12

Apple announced that the next major upgrade to its mobile operating system, iOS 5, will be available on October 12. Users of most recent iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models with be able to upgrade at no charge, though users of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and early iPod touch models will be stuck on iOS 4 from here on out.
Apple SVP of Software Engineering Scott Forstall described some of iOS 5's new features, such as the improved Notification system, location-based Reminders, and long-requested improvements to the included Camera application. iOS 5 will also include a new device-to-device messaging system called iMessage. Forstall confirmed that iMessage will work over WiFi and 3G connections, so it could replace costly texting plans for users that primarily communicate with iOS users.
Most important, perhaps, is iOS 5's compatibility with Apple's new iCloud service. iOS 5 syncs a variety of data between compatible Macs and Windows PCs as well as any registered iOS devices, including iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. With iCloud, apps, music, photos, videos, iWork documents, and other data are kept in sync automatically between devices registered with the same Apple ID. iCloud will also power Apple's $24.99 per year iTunes Match service, which keeps a copy of your entire iTunes library, up to 25,000 tracks, in the cloud for access from any registered device.
Apple SVP of Internet Services Eddy Cue was on hand to detail iCloud. He revealed one new feature that has been rumored but not previously announced: Find My Friends. Users can set up impromptu meeting places using GPS coordinates, and other users can use Find My Friends to find the location and time to meet up.
Both iOS 5 and iCloud are free upgrades for existing iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, and 3rd and 4th-gen iPod touch users, and will both be available October 12. iTunes Match with launch at the end of the month in the US.

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A new method to quickly download Youtube videos

Suppose you want to download this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0LrT8N02vys
Replace youtube.com with ssyoutube.com. So the new link would be http://ssyoutube.com/watch?v=0LrT8N02vys
Now go to that link and download video in any available format. Isn't that quick ?

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Google is promoting G+ on TV for the first time - video

Google's first video commercial for promotion of Google plus.
The ad demonstrates how one can easily organize different class of people into personalized circles. It also shows the very popular Hangout feature.
Google plus already has around 10 million people and is expanding enormously everyday. So far, a large proportion of it's userbase includes webmasters and tech enthusiasts. With television ads, it could become more popular among non-technical people like housewives, businessmen etc. I'm sure everyone would fall for the Hangouts feature.
Do check out this video.

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Steve Jobs vs Dennis Ritchie

 

Without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no Jobs

Modern computing as we know it would not have existed without Dennis Ritchie, father of the C programming language and Co-creator of the UNIX operating system.

In the last two weeks, we have lost two people who had immense influence on our industry.
It is undeniable that Steve Jobs brought us innovation and iconic products like the world had never seen, as well as a cult following of consumers and end users that mythicized him.
The likes of which will probably be never seen again.
I too, like many in this industry, despite my documented differences with the man and his company, paid my respects, and have acknowledged his influence.
But the “magical” products that Apple and Steve Jobs — as well as many other companies created owe just about everything we know and write about in modern computing as it exists today to Dennis Ritchie, who passed away this week at the age of 70.


Dennis Ritchie?
The younger generation that reads this column is probably scratching their heads. Who was Dennis Ritchie?
Dennis Ritchie wasn’t some billionaire meticulous wunderkind from Silicon Valley that mystified audiences with standing room only presentations in his minimalist black mock turtleneck with new shiny products and wild rhetoric aimed against his competitors.
No, Dennis Ritchie was a bearded, somewhat disheveled computer scientist who wore cardigan sweaters and had a messy office.
Unlike Jobs, who was a college dropout, he was Ph.D, a Harvard University grad with degrees in Physics and Applied Mathematics.
And instead of the gleaming Silicon Valley, he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.
Yes, Jersey. As in “What exit?”
Steve Jobs has frequently been compared to Thomas Edison for the quirkiness of his personality and inventive nature.
I have my issues with that comparison in that we are actually giving Jobs credit for being an actual technologist and someone who actually invented something.
It is important to realize that while indeed the man was brilliant in his own way and his contributions were extremely important to the technology and computer industries, Steve Jobs was not a technologist.
Indeed, he had a very strong sense of style industrial design, understood what customers wanted, and was a master marketer and salesperson. All of these make him a giant in our industry.
But inventor? No.
Dennis M. Ritchie, on the other hand, invented and co-invented two key software technologies which make up the DNA of effectively every single computer software product we use directly or even indirectly in the modern age.
It sounds like a wild claim, but it really is true.
First, let’s start with the C programming language.
Developed by Ritchie between 1969 and 1973, C is considered to be the first truly modern and portable programming language. In the 40 years or so since its introduction, it has been ported to practically every systems architecture and operating system in existence.
Because it is a imperative, compiled, procedural programming language, allowing for lexical variable scope and recursion, and allowing low-level access to memory as well as complex functionality for I/O and string manipulation, the language became quite versatile.
This allowed Ritchie and Brian Kernighan to refine it to a degree which eventually was further refined by the X3J11 committee of the American National Standards Institute as the ANSI C programming language in 1989.
In 1978, Kernighan and Ritchie published the book “The C Programming Language”. Referred to by many simply as “K&R” It is considered to be a computer science masterpiece and a critical reference for explaining the concepts of modern programming, and is still used as a text when teaching programming to students in computer science curriculums even today.
ANSI C as a programming language is also still used heavily today, and it has since mutated into a number of sister languages, all of which have strong followings.
The most popular, C++ (pronounced “C plus plus”) which was introduced by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1985 and added support for object-oriented programming and classes, is used on a variety of operating systems including every major UNIX derivative including Linux and the Mac, and is the primary programming language that has been used for Microsoft Windows software development for at least 20 years.
Objective-C, created by Brad Cox and Todd Love in the 1980s at a company called Stepstone added Smalltalk messaging capabilities to the language, further extending the language’s object-oriented and code re-usability features.
It was largely considered an obscure derivative of C until it was popularized in the NeXTStep and OpenStep operating systems in the late 1980s and early 1990’s on Steve Jobs’ NeXT computer systems, the company he formed after he was ousted by Apple’s board in 1985.
What happened “next” of course is computing history. NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1996 and Jobs returned to become CEO of the company in 1997.
In 2001, Apple launched Mac OS X, which makes heavy use of Objective-C and object-oriented technologies introduced in NeXTStep/OpenStep.
While C++ is also used heavily on the Mac, Objective-C is what is used to program to the native object-oriented “Cocoa” API in the XCode IDE which is central to the gesture recognition and animation features on iOS that powers the iPhone and the iPad.
Objective-C also provides frameworks for the Foundation Kit and Application Kit that are essential to building native OS X and iOS applications.
Microsoft has its own derivative of C in C# (pronounced “C Sharp”) that was introduced in 2001 and serves as the foundation for programming within the .NET framework.
C# is also is the basis for programming the new Metro applications in the Windows Runtime (WinRT) for the upcoming Windows 8 as well as in Windows Phone 7.x. It is also used within Linux and other Unix derivatives as the programmatic environment for Mono which is a portable version of the .NET framework.
But C’s influence doesn’t end at C language derivatives. Java, which is an important enterprise programming language (and has itself morphed into Dalvik, which is used as the primary programming environment for Android) is heavily based on C syntax.
Other languages such as Ruby, Perl and PHP which form the basis for the modern dynamic Web, all use syntax introduced in C, created by Dennis Ritchie.
So it could be said that without the work of Dennis Ritchie, we would have no modern software… at all.
I could end this article simply with what Ritchie’s development of C means to modern computing and how it impacts everyone. But I would only really be describing half of a life’s work of this man.
Ritchie is also the co-creator of the UNIX operating system. Which, of course, after being prototyped in assembly language, was completely re-written in the early 1970’s in C.
Since the very first implementation of “Unics” booted on a DEC PDP-7 back in 1969, it has mutated into many other similar operating systems running on a huge variety of systems architectures.
Name a major computer vendor, and every single one of them has had at some time an implementation of UNIX. Even Microsoft, which once owned a product called XENIX and since sold it to SCO.

Essentially, there are three main branches.
One branch is the “System V” UNIXes that we know today primarily as IBM AIX, Oracle Solaris, SCO UnixWare and Hewlett Packard’s HP-UX. All of these are considered to be “Big Iron” OSes that drive critical transactional business applications and databases in the largest enterprises in the world, the Fortune 1000.
Without the System V UNIXes, the Fortune 1000 probably wouldn’t get much of anything done. Business would essentially grind to a halt.
They may only represent about 10 to 20 percent of any particular enterprise’s computing population, but it’s a very important 20 percent.
The second branch, the BSDs (Berkeley Systems Distribution) include FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD which form the basis for both Mac OS X and the iOS that powers the iPhone. They also are used as the backbone that supports much of the critical infrastructure that actually runs the Internet.
The third branch of UNIX is not even a branch at all — GNU/Linux. The Linux kernel (developed by Linus Torvalds) combined with the GNU user-space programs, tools and utilities provides for a complete re-implementation of a “UNIX-like” or “UNIX-compatible” operating system from the ground up.
Linux of course, has become the most disruptive of all the UNIX operating systems. It scales from the very small, from embedded microcontrollers to smartphones, to tablets and desktops and even the most powerful supercomputers.
One such Linux supercomputer, IBM’s Watson even beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! while the world watched in awe.
Still, it is important to recognize that Linux and GNU contains no UNIX code at all — hence the Free Software recursive phrase “GNU’s not UNIX.”
But by design, GNU/Linux behaves much like UNIX, and it could be said that without UNIX being developed by Ritchie and his colleagues Brian Kernighan, Ken Thompson, Douglas Mcllroy and Joe Ossanna at Bell Labs in the first place, there never would have been any Linux or an Open Source Software movement.
Or a Free Software Foundation or a Richard Stallman to be glad Steve Jobs is gone, for that matter.
But enough of religion and ideology. We owe much to Dennis Ritchie, more than we can ever possibly imagine. Without his contributions, it’s likely none of us would be using personal computers today, sophisticated software applications or even a modern Internet.
No Android smartphones, no fancy DVRs and streaming devices, and no Macs and iPads for Steve Jobs and Apple to make Amazingly Great.
No “Apps for That.”
To Dennis Ritchie, I thank you — for giving all of us the technology to be the technologists we are today.

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