The stable version of Linux 3.4 is officially out providing users of the open source operating system with new filesystem, driver and performance updates. This follows  follows the Linux 3.3 release by two months and is now officially "stable" after Linux creator Linus Torvalds pushed out seven release candidates.

In terms of features, enhancements to the Btrfs filesystem top the list. The Btrfs effort was initiated by Oracle engineer Chris Mason as a means to provide a more robust filesystem for Linux than the default Ext4 system. Linux Kernel Btrfs first debuted in March 2009 as part of the Linux 2.6.29 kernel and has been steadily evolving ever since.

Linux 3.4 adds a new btfs-restore utility for Btrfs, which can help to recover data from a filesystem that is not mountable. Performance in Btrfs has also been improved with support for metadata blocks of up to 64KB in size, up from the previous 4KB.

A critical part of Btrfs is the use of something known as extents, which define the part of the disk being used for storing a given piece of information. In Linux 3.4, Btrfs has improved the way it handles extents.

"Previously we could exit writepages with only having written half of an extent buffer, which meant we had to track the state of the pages and the state of the extent buffers differently," Kernel developer Josef Bacik wrote in his kernel commit message."Now we only read in entire extent buffers and write out entire extent buffers. This allows us to simply set bits in our bflags to indicate the state of the extent buffer, and we no longer have to do things like track uptodate with our iotree."

Among the other new features in Linux 3.4 is a set of improvements to B.A.T.M.A.N. BATMAN, or Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking, first landed in the 2.6.38 Linux kernel back in March of 2011. In the 3.4 kernel, B.A.T.M.A.N has been improved to now have the ability to alter the routing algorithm used to create the ad hoc mesh network.

KVM virtualization also gets a big boost in Linux 3.4. New kernel features contributed by Red Hat expand the maximum number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) that can be supported in Linux, from 64 all the way to 160.

The Apple App Store is certainly pleased with itself, for reaching 25 billion downloads about two weeks after the contest was declared. While the winner has not been named, we do know that he or she is from China (apt). Apple has also released another list of "winners", as one may call them. This list comprises of the top 25 apps (seperate list for free and paid) across all their iOS devices. The list exists in iTunes and you can check it out by going to the Apps page in your iTunes. Here's how it looks.

iPhone Top Paid Apps

1. Angry Birds

2. Fruit Ninja

3. Doodle Jump

4. Cut the Rope

5. Angry Birds Seasons

6. Words With Friends
7. Tiny Wings
8. Angry Birds Rio
9. Pocket God
10. Camera+
11. The Moron Test
12. Plants vs. Zombies
13. Skee-Ball
14. The Game of Life
15. Scrabble
16. Monopoly
17. Fat Booth
18. WhatsApp
19. UNO
20. Color Splash
21. The Sims 3
22. Flight Control
23. MotionX GPS Drive
24. Where’s Waldo
25. I Am T-Pain 2.0

iPhone Top Free Apps

1. Facebook
2. Pandora Radio
3. Words With Friends Free
4. Skype
5. The Weather Channel
6. Google Search
7. Google Earth
8. Angry Birds Free
9. Shazam
10. Netflix
11. Paper Toss
12. Twitter
13. Movies by Flixster
14. Bump
15. PAC-MAN Lite
16. Flashlight.
17. Unblock Me FREE
18. Temple Run
19. Instagram

20. Touch Hockey
21. Angry Birds Lite
22. ESPN ScoreCenter
23. Fruit Ninja Lite
24. Groupon
25. Angry Birds Rio Free

Top Paid iPad Apps

1. Pages

2. Angry Birds HD
3. Angry Birds Seasons HD
4. Penultimate
5. Scrabble for iPad
6. Fruit Ninja HD
7. GarageBand
8. GoodReader
9. Angry Birds Rio HD
10. Cut The Rope HD
11. Numbers
12. Keynote
13. Words With Friends HD
14. Star Walk for iPad
15. MONOPOLY for iPad
16. Plants vs. Zombies HD
17. Where’s My Water?
18. Friendly Plus for Facebook
19. QuickOffice Pro HD
20. Notability
21. Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad
22. Pinball HD
23. MyPad+ – For Facebook & Twitter
24. Infinity Blade
25. Real Racing 2

Top Free iPad Apps

1. Angry Birds HD Free
2. The Weather Channel for iPad
3. Netflix
4. Skype for iPad
5. Kindle
6. ABC Player
7. Pandora Radio
8. Angry Birds HD Free
9. CNN App for iPad
10. Words With Friends HD Free
11. Google Earth
12. Calculator Pro for iPad Free
13. Fruit Ninja HD Lite
14. Calculator for iPad Free
15. NYTimes for iPad
16. USA TODAY for iPad
17. Facebook
18. MyPad – for Facebook & Twitter
19. Flipboard
20. eBay for iPad
21. Angry Birds Seasons HD Free
22. Dictionary.com
23. Twitter
24. Solitaire
25. Friendly for Facebook

Of course, iPhone apps, include apps downloaded for the iPod Touch. The list doesn't include the top 25 apps downloaded for the Mac platform. This may be because the Mac App Store has only been around for a little over a year. Looking at the apps, games are still the more popular genres of applications to download and Angry Birds still dominates. Furthermore, Facebook retains its position as number one free app for the iPhone. For more on popular applications, check out Tech2's article on top 10 addictive mobile games.

The latest version of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) – BBM 5 – makes it easy for BlackBerry Smartphone users to share their BBM pin codes with each others using two-dimensional barcodes (QR codes) that can be scanned directly into BlackBerry Smartphone using their integrated cameras.

You can add new contacts to BBM simply by using your BlackBerry Smartphone’s camera to scan a barcodes off your computer screen or the screen of a BlackBerry device. You can also share and display your own barcode on your phone, email signature or social networking profiles to make it easy for your friends to add you to their contact lists.

Here’s how to make BBM barcodes work for you. Remember to upgrade to the latest version of BBM before you try.

To display and share your personal barcode:

* Click the BBM icon

* On the contact list screen, press the Menu key

* Click My Profile

* Click Display My Barcode

* Another BlackBerry Smartphone user can then scan the barcode from your phone using his or her device’s camera

Sharing your BBM barcode via social media and email:

* Follow steps above, then press Menu and select Save Barcode Image.

* From your pictures folder, select Send or Share for the social networking app of your choice (including Twitter and Facebook) to share the barcode and a caption or Tweet with your friends

* You can also email the barcode to yourself and then save it on your computer to use as your email signature

* Using the Facebook BBM PIN barcode app, you can generate your BBM barcode for your Facebook friends to scan

To scan a personal barcode from a BlackBerry screen or the screen of your computer:

* Click the BBM icon

* On the contact list screen, click Invite contact

* Click Scan a person’s barcode

* Hold your device so that all four corners of the barcode appear on your device screen and wait for confirmation that it has been scanned.

Robert Morris, a mathematician and cryptographer who was among the top U.S computer security experts and a leading developer of widely used UNIX operating system, died on June 26th at age of 78yrs.

Morris began his work on the groundbreaking OS back in 1970 at AT&T's Bell Laboratories, where he played a major role in developing Unix's math library, password structure and encryption functions. His cryptographic exploration continued into the late 1970s, when he began writing a paper on an early encryption tool from Germany. But the paper would never see the light of day, thanks to a request from the NSA, which was concerned about potential security ramifications. Instead, the agency brought Morris on board as a computer security expert in 1986.

To know more about Robert Moris visit:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(cryptographer)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/technology/30morris.html?_r=4

May his soul rest in peace.

Just three months after the release of Firefox 4, Mozilla has pushed out Firefox 5 for the desktop and Android devices. That is a big change from the two years it took to move from Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 4.

Firefox 5 is part of Mozilla’s new rapid release development cycle. This cycle (which is more akin to what Google does with its Chrome browser) promises faster, more iterative updates. With any luck, Mozilla expects Firefox to hit version 7 by the end of the year.

Visually, Firefox 5 looks identical to Firefox 4. Every feature that Firefox 4 had applies to this release. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Mozilla has added better support for web standards, fixed some bugs, made performance enhancements and added a few additional code touches.

The big new features include: Support for CSS animations, better visibility for the Do-Not-Track header preference, improved canvas and JavaScript support, better standards support for canvas, HTML5, XHR, MathML and SMIL, better tuned HTTP idle connection logic.

In another move that mimics what Google does with Chrome, Mozilla now has more options for users who want to partake in the beta and testing process. In addition to nightly and beta channel releases, users can also opt to use the new Aurora channel, which will give users access to features before they hit beta, but with limited QA testing that you don’t get with nightly releases. This is akin to Chrome’s developer channel.

In most tests, Firefox 5 has been fast — even faster than Firefox 4. Most people also love the more frequent update cycle, because it means that the browser will be more able to support the latest and greatest browser features. To update to the latest Firefox, click on the “check for updates” button in the “About Firefox” menu.