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Meraki is a new technology provider for mesh wireless networks based on WiFi. The goal of the project is to provide cheap access points that use the MIT Roofnet concept to help create metropolitan WiFi networks, WiFi Internet Providers or any other type of deployment that would need this king of technology.

Meraki offers an integrated package, which makes it ideal for companies or people with little time or knowledge. The Meraki Mini (picture), which price is not on the company’s website is rumored to cost 50$, which is cheap considering the possibilities it offers. With a few dozens of these with a range of about 50m indoor and 200m outdoor you can quickly make a mesh wireless network with only one of the Meraki Mini access points connected to the Internet. Meraki Mini uses an Atheros chip, like La Fonera from FON, which is also Google funded.

The solution offered my Meraki also includes a web interface management software for the administrator to check the network health, bandwidth usage, make software updates, etc.

This is a solution which you should really consider if you intend to cover an area with a WiFi connection. It’s cheap, easy to deploy and most important it’s a mesh solution, which are rare now.

According to The Associated Press, Google Inc. acquired internet video site YouTube on Monday for $1.65 Billion. The deal will now allow Google to gain the online video market as more viewers and advertisers swiched television with the Internet. Months ago RIAA, which is against Internet piracy considered that the newest way to share music illegally online was via music video’s from Youtube and Google Video, since then YouTube has partnerships with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, CBS Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Also later this year YouTube, the popular online video-sharing site that lets users upload their own clips, has decided to block pirated TV and movies by introducing a time limit of 10 minutes per file.

In almost two years, the Internet video site has grown in popularity showing over an estimated 100 million video clips per day. It started in February of 2005 thanks to Chad Hurley and Steve Chen who, as part of the deal, will keep working and also the site 67 employees.

We are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.
- said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer -

Alan Yates, general manager of business strategy for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft, has been recently interviewed by IT Wire regarding Microsoft Office 2007. Yates claimed that Open Office 2.0 is similar to Microsoft Office 10 years ago. For open source fans this is going to lead for a huge debate, however, this is not the case with Yates.

Due to facts gathered from general comparisons of product features, it is been obviously proved that Open Office is just suitable for individual users that are using only basic features of Office. Moreover needless to say that Microsoft has made dramatic improvements in its Office 2007.

Microsoft Office enables sharing documents and open standard for document formatting which in turn enables third party integration with Microsoft Office 2007 files. Moreover Microsoft Office 2007 offers highly integrated framework among the office applications including but not limited to Outlook, Power Point, Word, and Excel and a few more applications such as Microsoft Office Communicator. Microsoft hasn’t stopped at that level but also it has applied the latest usability engineering research results in order to provide the easiest to use solution for their customers through their newly designed menus.

Open Office in turn is a free, open source, secure, easily upgradeable solution for basic office users. With Microsoft Office 2007 users will approximately need a week’s worth of learning while this is not the case with Open Office.