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| Oct 2008 | Sep 2008 | Aug 2008 | Jul 2008 | Jun 2008 | May 2008 | Apr 2008 | Mar 2008 | Feb 2008 | Jan 2008 | Dec 2007 | Nov 2007 |Fri, 29 Feb 08
Spammers Get Past Security Into Google's Gmail
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58602
When you sign up for an e-mail account at Google's Gmail, you have to navigate past a CAPTCHA -- squiggly words and letters that need to be typed into a box to prove you're human and not an automated system looking to send spam. But in the war against spammers, CAPTCHAs are not holding up well and the latest attacks let spambots into Gmail.
CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Typically image files, the challenge-and-response system has been fairly successful in preventing spammers from opening e-mail accounts on popular Web domains like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Those accounts are prized by spammers because Web administrators can't simply blacklist the popular domains.
Spammers have found ways to break CAPTCHAs, according to Stephan Chenette, manager of Websense Security Labs. "What we're seeing is the technology on the hacker side has surpassed the simple CAPTCHAs," Chenette told us. "In the public domain there are several tools available right now for everyone to use to break simple CAPTCHAs."
Chenette said organized attackers are using automated tools to sign up for Gmail and other Web-mail accounts. When the CAPTCHA image appears, it's automatically sent off to a large and low-paid workforce, typically in another country, where a worker enters the code and sends it back so the account can be created.
This type of attack has been used against other Web-mail sites, Chenette said, but in the attacks on Gmail there's a new wrinkle. "One of the more interesting things about the Gmail CAPTCHA breaking is that we believe that this might be happening through an automated process, which is the next step to breaking CAPTCHAs as opposed to hiring a large workforce to break them," he said.
In fact, Chenette believes these are two-pronged attacks. The...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
More Chinese Dissidents Claim Harm by Yahoo
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58601
As if Microsoft's takeover bid wasn't enough, Yahoo now faces two more lawsuits from Chinese dissidents. In November Yahoo settled with the families of journalists Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, who were jailed on information provided by Yahoo China.
Zheng Cunzhu and Guo Quan filed the suits in federal court in California, although neither has been arrested by Chinese authorities.
Zheng alleges he lost control of his business investments in China that included factories and a trading company. He was a member of the China Democracy Party, as was dissident Li Zhi, and Zheng moved to the U.S. in early 2006 after Li Zhi's arrest on information provided by Yahoo.
Since Zheng used a Yahoo e-mail account to join the CDP, he was afraid to return to China and lost "the real control of the two factories, and his investment and property were under danger of being defrauded by others," his suit says.
Guo Quan, on the other hand, isn't complaining about Yahoo's e-mail policies. Guo, a former associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, lost his job after calling on Chinese leaders to allow multiparty democracy. Guo complains that Yahoo blocked his name and his company's name from the Internet -- or as much of it as is available in China.
Li Zhi is also part of the suit, which claims that at least 60 other people were "arbitrarily imprisoned" in China for advocating free elections, democracy and human rights, and they were possibly identified when Yahoo turned over user information. Li has served four years of an eight-year sentence for working on behalf of the CDP.
"By providing Internet user identification information to the People's Republic of China, [the] Defendants knowingly and willfully aided and abetted in the commission of torture and other major abuses violating international law that caused Plaintiffs severe...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Nokia Retains Lead as Mobile-Phone Sales Soar
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58600
Worldwide sales of mobile phones skyrocketed to 1.5 billion in 2007, according to research firm Gartner, a 16 percent increase from 2006 sales of 990.9 million. Sales at the end of the year matched a trend that has demand spiking in the fourth quarter. Fourth-quarter sales reached 330 million.
"Emerging markets, especially China and India, provided much of the growth as many people bought their first phone," said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner. "In mature markets, such as Japan and Western Europe, consumers' appetite for feature-laden phones was met with new models packed with TV tuners, global positioning satellite functions, touch screens and high-resolution cameras."
Nokia continues its global leadership with a 40 percent market share in the fourth quarter, when it sold slightly more than 133 million phones. Samsung maintained second place and, although its market share slipped slightly, the gap widened between Samsung and third-place Motorola.
The problems that beset Motorola in the third quarter continued in the fourth quarter. The company recorded global sales of 39 million for the quarter, taking 11.9 percent of the market.
Motorola retained second place in annual sales, Gartner reported, largely thanks to the inventory it disposed of in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, the extent of Motorola's troubles can be seen in the 9.7 percent drop in its market share in the fourth quarter from the same period in 2006.
Sony Ericsson ended 2007 with another positive performance, growing its market share on a quarterly basis to nine percent from 8.7 percent. And LG's mobile-phone sales totaled 23.5 million in the fourth quarter, maintaining its 7.1 percent market share despite a sales increase of more than 3 million..
The market saw three new players in the top 10 for the fourth quarter...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Task Force Will Seek Tools To Protect Children Online
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58599
A new Internet Safety Technical Task Force will be led by the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The task force includes Internet businesses, identity-authentication experts, nonprofit organizations, academics and technology companies. Among the members are AOL, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Google, the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), Second Life's Linden Lab, Microsoft, Symantec, Verizon and Yahoo.
The task force will prepare quarterly reports and submit a final report at the end of the year. It intends to focus on identifying effective online safety tools and technologies, said Berkman Executive Director John Palfrey.
"The safety concerns posed by the Internet are part and parcel of the safety concerns that arise in human interactions in the physical world," Palfrey said. "These concerns are not unique to any one service or technology platform; they are shared by the companies that provide Internet services and the individuals who use these services."
The group is charged with the implementation of safety principles for social-networking sites that MySpace and the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia posed in a joint statement in January.
"The principles we have adopted set forth what the industry needs to strive toward to provide a safer online experience for teens," said MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam. "The Berkman Center's past research on the challenges and opportunities offered by the Internet makes it the ideal leader."
The task force will review some of the authentication tools available for verifying age requirements "alongside whatever other techniques they can come up with, both things that exist right now and what they can hypothesize," a spokesperson said.
Since few minors have credit cards or driver's licenses, new identity-authentication tools must be developed. "We hope to see technology like this implemented on all social-networking sites," said Massachusetts Attorney General Martha...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Judge Questions Request to Shut Down Wikileaks
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58598
The latest stage in the ongoing saga of Julius Baer v. Wikileaks was to take place Friday morning as a federal judge considered whether to extend a temporary injunction against the whistle-blowing Web site.
The case started in early February when the Swiss banking conglomerate Julius Baer asked the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to take down the Wikileaks.org domain. Baer said Wikileaks had posted "stolen and forged bank records" provided by a "disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign."
Wikileaks says the documents are five to 10 years old and show the bank was setting up shell structures to funnel money through the Cayman Islands.
Judge Jeffrey White issued a "ex parte" permanent injunction requiring Wikileaks' domain registrar, DynaDot, to "disable the wikileaks.org domain name" and prevent it from pointing to any Web site other than a "blank park page." The judge also issued a temporary restraining order against Wikileaks itself, blocking it from "displaying, posting, publishing, distributing, linking to" or providing information on how to access the documents.
Wikileaks -- which says it is "developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" -- protested that the injunctions amounted to "prior restraint" of the press -- the most offensive restriction of the First Amendment. Wikileaks compared the court's orders to injunctions against The New York Times in the landmark Pentagon Papers case. These orders are the "equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power," it said.
Hardly, said Eric Goldman, director of Santa Clara University Law School's High-Tech Law Center. "I would put it in the bucket of judicial freak-out, but we run into those every day," Goldman said in a telephone interview. "This is a judge who just doesn't like...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Air Force 'Big Brother' Blocks Blogs, Content Sites
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58597
A large organization decides that blogs cut productivity, provide misleading information and could compromise security. It discontinues access for its personnel, even though information is a key weapon in competition. The question is whether this is a smart policy for a large organization, especially the U.S. Air Force.
According to a report this week in Wired, the Air Force is eliminating access for its troops to virtually any site that uses the term "blog." Sites are also being blocked because of a negative review of content by supervising personnel. The move comes, according to the publication, as the Cyber Command of the Air Force Network Operations Center (AFNOC) takes over control of what sites Air Force personnel can visit, a responsibility previously borne by each major command.
Maj. Henry Schott of AFNOC is quoted by Wired as saying that the Air Force personnel can still access "primary, official-use sources," such as established media like The New York Times. The basic idea is that non-legitimate sources of news shouldn't be read during work time because of credibility, security risks, and loss of productivity.
The Air Force will block other, less-established sources on the basis that they provide less credible information. The policy, according to one Cyber Command spokesperson, is to "block first and then review exceptions." This means that Air Force personnel posting to or reading from sites that might relate to technical or military subjects have found themselves caught in the filters.
The tools used by the Air Force have included Secure Computing's SmartFilter software, running the Web Security Appliance platform from Blue Coat software. According to a press release on Blue Coat's site, SmartFilter's international control list "continuously categorizes millions of Web sites into content groups, including pornography, gambling and MP3."
The Air Force has also banned some sites...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Microsoft Will Slash Retail Prices for Vista With SP1
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58582
Microsoft said on Thursday it plans to slash prices on its Windows Vista operating system sold through retail channels. The company wants consumers to upgrade to the latest version of its flagship product.
The price changes will take effect globally with the retail release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later this year. In the U.S., Microsoft will cut the price for Windows Vista Ultimate from $399 to $319 and for an upgrade version from $259 to $219. Vista Home Premium will drop from $159 to $129.
Vista has been on the market for more than a year, with more than 100 million licenses sold in its first year. While Microsoft sees those figures as progress, the company also sees an opportunity to grow its business even more with some of the new editions, according to Brad Brooks, vice president for Windows consumer product marketing at Microsoft.
"Today, the vast majority of Windows licenses are sold with PCs. Retail stand-alone sales, in contrast, have been primarily from customers who value being early adopters and those building their own machines," Brooks said. "We've observed market behavior, however, that suggests an opportunity to expand Windows stand-alone sales to other segments of the consumer market."
Microsoft has conducted promotions in several markets combining various marketing tactics with lower prices on versions of Vista. One constant emerged -- an increase in demand among consumers that went beyond tech enthusiasts and build-it-yourself types. Brooks said these promotions inspired Microsoft to change its pricing structure.
Traditionally, the vast majority of Windows licenses are sold through PC makers, and Brooks said that won't change. Microsoft is positioning the price reductions as a "great opportunity" for its retail partners to sell more stand-alone copies of Windows, and help grow a "small but important part" of its business, he said.
It's...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Apple Ready To Open iPhone to Third-Party Apps
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58580
Apple has scheduled an event to present the Software Development Kit (SDK) that can open up its iPhone to third-party native applications. It also will present new iPhone features for the enterprise.
Press invitations went out this week for the iPhone Software Roapmap on Thursday, March 6, at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. The original launch date for the SDK had been in February.
The SDK will allow thirty-party developers to create applications for the iPhone. Up until now, outside developers' offerings have had to run within the Safari browser on the iPhone, not on the iPhone itself.
The invitation promises "some exciting new enterprise features." Some observers have speculated that Apple will position the iPhone as a competitor to the BlackBerry, which would require Apple to address a variety of compatibility, application and security issues.
Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis, noted there are also issues about how Apple expects developers to use the SDK. For instance, he said, "can a developer post the application on their Web site, or does it have to go through iTunes?" There are also questions about how users will load third-party apps onto iPhones, whether Apple gets a cut of apps revenue, and whether certain kinds of apps are off-limits because Apple reserves them for itself.
Until we know the answers to these and other questions, Greengart noted, it isn't possible to estimate the impact that the much-awaited SDK might have on opening up the iPhone.
Apple may also be open to new carrier arrangements. COO Tim Cook has been quoted in news media as telling investors that "we're not married to any business models."
Some observers take this to mean that Apple is reconsidering its exclusive-in-the-U.S. relationship with AT&T, but Greengart said there isn't "any indication that Apple is reconsidering that deal." He characterized...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Yahoo, RealNetworks Cut Music Deal
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58575
Yahoo will turn off its subscription music service and refer customers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody, the companies announced Monday.
Music remains an important area for Yahoo and its users; its music site gets about 22 million unique visitors each month, noted Ian Rogers, vice president of video and media applications at Yahoo. But in the fall, the company decided to de-emphasize its service, dubbed Yahoo Music Unlimited, he said.
Yahoo decided it could have a music interest and information site without actually running a music store or subscription service.
"This is about focusing in the right places," Rogers said. "The whole point is we wanted to get resources for working on different things."
The move will happen in the first half of this year. The companies also plan to work together on a download-to-own music service, Rogers said.
Company executives did not discuss the financial details of the agreement, other than to say that it is a multi-year deal.
Yahoo made a big splash when it launched its subscription service in 2005. The company attempted to undercut competitors such as Rhapsody with lower prices and integrating the service with other popular Yahoo products. But subscription services in general have proved to be a tough sell with consumers, and Yahoo's was no different. Despite years of effort, RealNetworks has just 2.75 million subscribers for all its various music offerings, including Rhapsody.
Yahoo doesn't disclose how many Music Unlimited customers it has.
After Yahoo shuts down Music Unlimited, basically three such services will be left standing in the United States: Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft's Zune Marketplace.
Consumers just need to be educated a bit more about the value of subscription services, argued Dan Sheeran, Real's senior vice president of business development. The marketing that Yahoo will provide Rhapsody should help "enormously" on that front, he...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Industry Teams To Fight Viruses
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58574
There are tech products most gadget reviewers and I are not equipped to review. Primary among them is antivirus software. If you're only dabbling in the effort, it's easy to go in the wrong direction. But PC Magazine's Neil Rubenking does a good job actually figuring out what sorts of "malware" each software package can block.
I know the features antivirus software should have, including ways to stop e-mail phishing, block spyware, eliminate viruses, update its list of known malware, protect passwords and offer warnings about suspicious Web sites and risky behavior. Lastly, it should do all of that without slowing your computer to a crawl. In short, it should keep you out of trouble and avoid annoying you at the same time.
The makers of antivirus software have noticed this shortcoming of reviewers. Back in September, Symantec wrote a letter expressing concern about the quality of an antivirus software review in Consumer Reports. Now the industry is getting together as a group to create standards for evaluating antivirus software. David Cole, director of Symantec's Norton Group, says a parallel for this is the crash test dummy.
"The testing industry has to evolve to keep up with safety features," Cole said. "It's not one size fits all. You used to be able to throw malware on a disk and scan it."
For those who do testing, one of the typical tasks is to scan a computer to see whether the antivirus software will pick up any viruses on the machine. Antivirus software must scan for the signatures of known threats and eliminate them. But that's simply the last line of defense these days.
The best antivirus software stops a lot of viruses and other malware before they have a chance to mess up your computer. For instance, antivirus software should...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
HP Looks to Stores for Inkjet Expansion
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58572
Two decades ago, Hewlett-Packard Co. launched a printer that would create global demand for what would become one of its most profitable products: ink.
HP marks the 20th anniversary of the Deskjet on Thursday and is seeking new markets for its printers and ink, including retail chains and corner drug stores where Americans are increasingly turning to have their digital photos put on paper.
Printer supplies -- ink, paper, photo books -- provide 60 percent of the revenue at HP's printing division, according to analysts. And that division delivers almost half the company's profits, which totaled $7.26 billion last year.
In 1988, the Deskjet was a clunky 14 pounds costing a hefty $1,000, but it turned hugely popular after dropping below $500 in the early 1990s: Office managers could typically buy supplies that cost under $500 without approval from a higher up.
Now, inkjets cost less than $100 and provide all-in-one services, including high-quality photos. HP has sold more than 200 million Deskjet printers, each with a big hunger for ink.
But with home-based photo printing on the decline, HP is now marketing its inkjet technology to retailers like Target Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp., urging them to scrap their old "wet lab" chemical-based photo printing and go with "dry lab" inkjet machines that shoot out 1,500 prints an hour.
As Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP's printing division, puts the company's strategy: "Instead of thinking of printers, think of printing."
While HP holds 46 percent of the printer market, Joshi is eyeing the printing market -- books, magazines, newspapers -- where HP grabs only a 1.8 percent share of total pages printed.
Joshi sees HP growing its printing business 4 percent to 6 percent per year, with a 14 percent to 15 percent operating margin, by converting some of the traditional analog printing market to digital...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Bill Gates Links Up with LinkedIn
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58571
Microsoft Corp.'s big bet on Facebook's online social network isn't stopping Chairman Bill Gates from promoting other popular Internet hangouts.
Gates is helping out LinkedIn Corp.'s online professional network by setting up a profile on the service and posing a question to help draw more attention to a makeover of the Web site's front page.
The question, scheduled to be posted Thursday, will solicit suggestions on the best way to encourage more young people to pursue careers in science and technology.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn will encourage its 19 million members to try out a new tool that will let them broadcast their daily activities to their connections. The "status" feature copies one of the top applications on Facebook's site, which revolves around a more playful premise than LinkedIn's buttoned-down atmosphere.
Gates plans to use LinkedIn's status feature, although he decided against listing "trying to buy Yahoo" as his current activity. He instead will start off by letting everyone know "Bill is checking out LinkedIn."
The decision to take a closer look at LinkedIn might please a few industry analysts who have argued Microsoft would be better off buying several up-and-coming Internet startups like LinkedIn instead of pursuing its current bid to acquire slumping Yahoo Inc. for more than $40 billion.
Although LinkedIn is frequently mentioned as an attractive takeover candidate, the Mountain View-based company so far has indicated it is more likely to make an initial public offering of stock during the next year or two. LinkedIn spokeswoman Kay Luo declined to comment on Microsoft's possible interest.
Microsoft late last year invested $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc., whose 66 million members make it the Internet's second largest social network behind News Corp.'s MySpace.
Gates is among Facebook members, although he reportedly stopped using the site recently because he was tired of sifting...
Fri, 29 Feb 08
Google Releases Health Service Details
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58567
Google Inc. will not use advertising to support its new Internet health service, CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday in the search company's first detailed public comments about a venture raising concerns among privacy advocates.
Schmidt said the service was merely a platform for users to store their medical information. It will be an open system inviting third parties to build direct-to-consumer services like medication tables or immunization reminders. But Schmidt emphasized no data would be shared without the consumer's consent.
"Our model is that the owner of the data has control over who can see it," Schmidt said at the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. "And trust for Google is the most important currency on the Internet."
Schmidt described the service as helping doctors and the increasing numbers of patients who use the Internet for their own medical research. He said surveys show more people trust what they find online than what they hear from physicians, and the service will give people control over their own health.
For example, they will be able to store X-rays taken at any number of facilities all on one online account, accessible from any computer.
The company is testing the service with about 1,370 volunteers at the Cleveland Clinic, a not-for-profit medical center. The service is not yet available to the public, and Schmidt wouldn't say precisely when it will be. However, he said the company was working hard to release it soon.
"The current trial is a couple of months. It seems to be doing extremely well in its first week," he said.
The interface demonstrated at the conference has menu sections for several areas: health notices, drug interactions, health conditions, medications, allergies, immunizations, procedures and test results. It connects the user with online research published about any condition they might have and notifies them...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Sun CEO Defends Purchase of Open-Source MySQL
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58559
Sun Microsytems closed its acquisition of Swedish open-source database company MySQL AB, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on his blog Tuesday. He also announced a global marketing and support program.
Sun will start "rolling out global programs to raise awareness and adoption of MySQL among more established enterprises," Schwartz said. The main targets will be "institutions and independent software/service vendors looking to standardize on open-source architectures." With enterprise support programs for MySQL, Sun is "going all-out to sign up new customers, extending MySQL's reach," he said.
But Schwartz also took the opportunity to snap back at some "snarky" comments that have been made since the acquistion was announced a month ago.
"There are still folks in the world who don't believe there's an economic model behind open source -- they thus believe $1 billion is an outlandish price to pay for MySQL. The most extreme among them see Linux, OpenSolaris or companies like SugarCRM as nothing more than playgrounds for hobbyists," he wrote.
Open source is a solid business model, Schwartz declared. "Companies that freely distribute their products, rather than limit access via pricing or proprietary licensing, are simply prioritizing adoption over immediate revenue." He pointed to Microsoft's recent announcement that it would make developer tools free to computer-science students.
"It's interesting that weeks after the MySQL deal was announced that Schwartz feels the need to defend the acquisition," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, in an e-mail. "Such sensitivity -- from an executive and company that have often demonstrated a 'my way or the highway' approach to public relations -- suggests that Sun has been having trouble articulating its overarching MySQL strategy."
Schwartz cited Marten Mickos, MySQL's CEO, who he said describes the business market as a spectrum from those with more time than money to those with more...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Unknown Glitch Blocks Millions of Windows Live Users
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58558
An unexplained glitch left many Internet users unable to access Microsoft's Windows Live Mail and other online services most of Tuesday. The problem was resolved as of Tuesday evening, according to Microsoft, but there is no word on what the problem was.
Microsoft's Windows Live ID (the most recent incarnation of Microsoft's single sign-on service once called Passport) allows users to enter a host of protected sites, including the Live Mail e-mail client, the Messenger instant-messaging client, and SkyDrive, the company's online file storage. Those services were unavailable to many around the world, leaving frustrated users unable to access their e-mail and other online information.
Windows Live Product Manager Samantha McManus said in a statement to NewsFactor, "Early Tuesday morning we had an unforeseen event on our network, which caused a service disruption of our authentication services. During this time, some consumers worldwide experienced difficulty logging in to their Windows Live accounts."
"Microsoft worked aggressively to resolve this problem as quickly as possible and normal service operations were restored by 1:30 p.m. PST," McManus said. "Our infrastructure is designed for strength, resilience and security and our customers have come to expect a high level of service reliability. ... We apologize for any inconvenience."
It's impossible to guess how many users were locked out of online services. "Microsoft claims more than 400 million Live IDs, but doesn't say how many unique users that represents," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "Undoubtedly, some of those are duplicates for the same individual."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Todd Bishop wrote on his blog that Microsoft told him that the problem at first affected "the majority of customer log-in attempts worldwide" but that number decreased to "less than 30 percent of log-in attempts." That could still put the number of those impacted in the...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Microsoft Launches Server 2008 with 'Heroes' Theme
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58547
"HEROES happen {here}" was the theme for Microsoft's launch Wednesday of its Windows Server 2008 operating system. The heroes, of course, are the IT workers who have been waiting through the many announcements for the final release and, sometimes, helping in the beta testing.
Today's sold-out event was scheduled for the Los Angeles Convention Center, followed by similar events in succeeding weeks in New York, San Antonio, Chicago, Boston, Denver and nine other cities, as well as online virtual launches.
The final technical preview of the release candidate for SQL Server 2008 was also expected Wednesday. The public launch is expected in the third quarter.
Server 2008 could have a major impact, said Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group. Its features include enhanced security, virtualization, increased power, a smaller footprint, and advancements in management and remote access.
The impact on virtualization, she said, is going to be "huge," although she noted that the virtualization wave encompasses not only servers but storage, clients and other areas.
Server 2008 has some virtualization built-in, but enhanced virtualization will be offered by Microsoft's Hyper-V, a hypervisor. A hypervisor is a layer of software that operates between the hardware and the operating software. DiDio said there was disappointment about the delay of Hyper-V, which will be released 180 days after Server 2008, but "customers are used to delays from Microsoft."
Microsoft has said that Windows Server 2008's virtualization is highly scalable, permitting multiprocessor guests, memory allocations of more than 32GB per machine, and integrated virtual switch support. Supported storage protocols include iSCSI and fibre-channel SAN.
Another potential "huge sea change," she said, is the increased adoption of 64-bit technology. DiDio added that one of the reasons why the 64-bit Windows Server 2003 did not have larger adoption is that "it...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Verizon Leads a New Era of Open Wireless Networks
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58546
A new era in open wireless networks is dawning in the U.S., and an announcement by Verizon Wireless this week about the upcoming release of its "Any Device, Any App" technical specification is one of the milestones.
The carrier said version 1.0 of its specs will be released at its Open Development Device Conference beginning March 19 in New York City. It said the conference will "focus on how traditional device and consumer electronics companies and entrepreneurs new to the wireless ecosystem can bring new wireless devices to the marketplace" under its Open Development Initiative.
Verizon Vice President Anthony A. Lewis said the specs will provide a "road map for wireless-device visionaries and tinkerers, as well as existing device makers," to create products not offered by Verizon but which can run on its network.
He said input from developers at the conference could be used to refine the specs, and 1.0 will be the foundation for device certification by Verizon. A new "network-only" option will be available this year so non-Verizon wireless devices and applications can run on its service.
The open network represents a "new era" for consumers and businesses, said Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC.
He noted that, with the release of the open-source mobile platform Android from the Open Handset Alliance last year, and the lobbying effort that resulted in open-network provisions for some of the 700-MHz bandwidth currently being auctioned by the Federal Communications Commission, the major carriers in the U.S. are embracing openness.
Hazelton pointed out that, although Verizon will issue the specs and provide certification, there will be no support. For the consumer, this means there could be an explosion of choices in third-party applications, services and devices -- and possibly independent vendors for support.
Hazelton said the consumer smartphone market...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
EC Fines Microsoft $1.35 Billion for Stifling Innovation
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58545
The European Commission has fined Microsoft a record $1.35 billion for noncompliance with its March 2004 antitrust decision. Commissioner Neelie Kroes said the fine is in response to the software giant's continued stifling of innovation by charging other companies prohibitive royalty rates for the essential information they need to offer software products.
"Charging such an unreasonable price effectively rendered the offer of the information pointless," Kroes said.
The EC's 2004 decision had required Microsoft to disclose complete and accurate interoperability information to developers of server operating systems on reasonable terms. Initially, Microsoft had demanded a royalty of 3.87 percent of a licensee's product revenues for a patent license and 2.98 percent for a license governing access to secret interoperability information.
The EC concluded that Microsoft's royalty rates were unreasonable before October 22, 2007 -- the date when the software giant agreed to accept a 0.4 percent royalty for a worldwide patent license and a one-time payment of $14,240 for access to its interoperability information.
"Microsoft's behavior did not just harm a few individuals or a handful of big companies," Kroes said. "Directly and indirectly this had negative effects on millions of offices in companies and governments around the world."
Kroes also said the record fine contains lessons that Microsoft and any other company contemplating similar illegal actions will need to learn.
"We don't want talk and promises -- we want compliance," Kroes warned. "If you flout the rules you will be caught, and it will cost you dear."
Microsoft has a long history of doing the absolute minimum -- or in this case, less than the minimum -- required by regulators, noted Linux Foundation spokesperson Amanda McPherson. "Hopefully this fine and the changes in the market will convince Microsoft to open up and comply with regulatory and market demand," McPherson said.
Wed, 27 Feb 08
New Sony Blu-ray Players Have Advanced Features
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58544
Now that the high-definition DVD war is over, the real innovation can begin. On Tuesday, Sony updated its Blu-ray Disc player line with two new models that will offer advanced interactive features, including trailers and games from the Internet. The new players will debut this summer.
The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 models both support BonusView -- Picture-in-Picture -- featured on some of the new Blu-ray Disc theatrical releases. The BDP-S350 is BD-Live ready and features an Ethernet port for an easy firmware update and access to Internet-based interactive content. The BDP-S550 will be BonusView and BD-Live capable when it ships.
"Building on the exceptional picture and sound quality of previous players, Sony's next-generation Blu-ray Disc models bring exciting interactive features to life and offer consumers a groundbreaking experience," said Chris Fawcett, vice president of marketing for the Sony Electronics Home Product Division. "These new devices bring home movie experience beyond the cinema and into a whole new realm of entertainment."
The new players are compatible with most standard DVDs and feature quality upscaling through an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) connection to capable HDTV sets. The upscaling automatically improves the picture performance of existing DVD libraries. Both models also feature an external port for local storage, so users can add an optional storage device. The BDP-S550 will include a 1GB storage device.
The BDP-S350 ships this summer for about $400 and the BDP-S550 will be available this fall for about $500. But some consumers are taking issue with the price, especially since Toshiba deep-discounted its HD DVD players to $99 during the holiday season.
"You can't equate the discounting that occurred for HD DVD and Blu-ray over the holidays with what these players cost to make," said Richard Doherty, a senior analyst at Envisioneering Group. "Toshiba's pricing was unreal. They were...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Apple's iTunes Store Is No. 2 in Music Sales
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58543
Move over, Best Buy. Watch out, Wal-Mart. Apple's iTunes Store is now the number-two music retailer in the U.S., behind only Wal-Mart, based on the latest data from the NPD Group MusicWatch survey, which tallied the amount of music sold during 2007. Apple sold more than four billion songs, with 20 million sold on Christmas day.
According to NPD, the amount of music consumers acquired in the U.S. increased six percent in 2007. A sharp increase in legal digital download revenues could not offset declines in CD sales, however, which resulted in a net 10 percent decline in music spending (from $44 to $40 per capita among Internet users). That means only 42 percent of music acquired was actually paid for in 2007, down from 48 percent in 2006.
"The continued growth in legal download sites is encouraging, yet the industry struggles to improve the value of each digital customer," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. "With so many baby boomers and gen-Xers entering the market, there are certainly opportunities to sell more digital albums, promote older catalog titles, or create bundles that will raise revenues."
In the near term, Crupnick continued, digital music sales will be the best means to narrow the gap on dwindling CD revenues. NPD estimates that 1 million buyers dropped out of the CD market in 2007, led by younger consumers. In fact, 48 percent of U.S. teens did not purchase a single CD in 2007, compared to 38 percent in 2006.
At the same time, peer-to-peer file sharing rose to 19 percent of U.S. Internet users last year. However, the number of files each user downloaded increased, and P2P music sharing continued to grow aggressively among teens.
The result is that legal music downloads now account for 10 percent of the...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Woomail Wants To Woo You Away from Spam
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58541
Are you bugged by spam? Plagued by e-mail-borne viruses? Annoyed when an online merchant sells your e-mail address to e-marketers? Worried about the security of your messages?
If the answer to some or all of those questions is "Yes," then you might be interested in the new paradigm that John Halloran has to offer. It's called Woomail, and Halloran promises that it will put control over online communications in the hands of users.
Woomail is a Web-based e-mail client that's free for noncommercial users. From the perspective of a message sender, the interface is not that different from Gmail. But things get interesting when you send a message to someone outside the Woomail system: The recipient gets an e-mail saying, "I only read secure e-mail" and a link that takes the recipient to a reply page on the Woomail server, so that no part of the communication travels through cyberspace.
John Halloran, a Puerto Rico-based precious-metals dealer, created Woomail after struggling with the huge amount of spam his brokers and office staff were dealing with. He said that his goal was to put users in charge of their communications, inbound and outbound.
"The problem was that anyone in the world can send you communication from anywhere, and I can't stop them from sending it to my servers," he said. "If I can get them to come to me by typing in a URL or Woo to Woo message, then I can control communications on my server and so I can prevent fraudulent use." (A "Woo to Woo" message is one in which both parties have Woomail accounts.) Sending a message from within the site cannot be done without a challenge-and-response question, putting the kibosh on automated spammers.
Halloran thinks the real benefit will be to corporate users. The enterprise version would be...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
Pakistan Lifts Curbs on YouTube
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58529
Pakistan's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday it has lifted restrictions on YouTube that knocked out access to the video-sharing Web site in many countries for up to two hours over the weekend.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told Internet service providers to restore access to the site after the removal of what it called a "blasphemous" video clip, authority spokeswoman Nabiha Mahmood said.
Pakistan ordered the site blocked on Friday over a clip featuring a Dutch lawmaker who has said he planned to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.
Mahmood said attempts to access the offending clip on Tuesday afternoon brought up a message explaining that it had been removed on ethical grounds.
She said the authority had posted a complaint through the Web site -- a facility open to any registered user -- but had not been in contact with the administrators of YouTube.com, which is owned by Internet giant Google, Inc.
While several other videos featuring the politician, Geert Wilders, would remain visible to Pakistani Internet users, Mahmood said the one which was removed had been "totally anti-Quranic" and "very blasphemous."
She said it promoted Wilders' upcoming movie, but provided no details about its content.
The authority aimed to restrict the site only in Pakistan, but the move inadvertently cut access for many of the world's Internet users for up to two hours on Sunday.
YouTube said the next day that it was caused by a network in Pakistan.
"We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again," YouTube said in an e-mailed statement.
Mahmood said the Pakistani regulator carried no responsibility for "technical hitches" which may have lead to problems elsewhere. She said it was not clear how that occurred.
Pakistani officials hope to prevent a repeat of violent anti-Western protests that...
Wed, 27 Feb 08
IBM Rolls Out New Million-Dollar Mainframe
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58527
IBM Corp. rolled out a new mainframe computer Tuesday boasting a 50-percent performance boost and dramatically lower energy costs than its predecessor.
The new System z10, with a starting price at about $1 million, comes as IBM focuses on lowering the price tag for running its storied line of data-crunching workhorses.
The Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it designed the new machine to help companies and government agencies that rely on mainframes -- usually for critical data processing such as bank transactions or census statistics crunching -- save money on energy bills and better handle a flood of Internet information.
The size of IBM's investment -- the company spent five years and $1.5 billion developing the new mainframe -- also underscores its commitment to the long-term viability of the mainframe and efforts continue adapting the decades-old product line to the Internet age.
For years some IT experts predicted the demise of the mainframe, bulky and expensive machines that face competition from smaller, less-expensive servers. But IBM says mainframe revenue is growing, rising in 5 out of the last 7 quarters, thanks in part to interest from emerging markets like Brazil, China, India and Russia.
IBM says it incorporated a number of technological upgrades into the new machine to appeal to cost-conscious companies looking to consolidate the number of servers in their data centers.
The z10's capacity is equivalent to 1,500 servers based on the popular x86 design, IBM says, though it has 85 percent lower energy costs and takes up 85 percent less space than the batch of x86 servers.
The new machines also boast more processing horsepower, using 64 processors compared to the 54 processors used in its predecessor, the z9.
Those chips are better at multitasking -- the new machine is IBM's first mainframe to use so-called "quad-core" chips, or microprocessors with four computing engines on a...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
VMware Inks Virtualization Deals With Server Makers
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58540
On Tuesday, VMware pulled a virtual rabbit out of its software hat, announcing agreements to embed its ESX 3i hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM. The four vendors are expected to begin shipping VMware-embedded machines within the next 60 days.
Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware, outlined the agreements with representatives from Dell, HP and IBM at Tuesday's VMworld Europe keynote. Greene said the deal will proliferate virtualization and fast-track customers on the path to a self-managing virtual data center.
With customers able to get VMware configured into a server platform, virtualization came a step closer to fulfilling analyst predictions for installations. IDC has predicted server virtualization will be a $15 billion market worldwide by 2009.
VMware's ESX 3i is based on its core virtualization technology that more than 100,000 customers are already using. At 32MB, it is the industry's smallest hypervisor. ESX 3i is the only OS-independent virtualization platform and, VMware said, the first virtual machine that can operate within minutes of booting a server with optimized configurations.
"ESX 3i is a relatively small piece of code. It doesn't take up an enormous amount of space, so it really creates some interesting opportunities for server vendors to use virtualization to improve system performance," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "From a competitive perspective, it is going to make room for VMware to have its system on machines months ahead of Microsoft's own embedded Hyper-V virtualization."
Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM servers will also include access to an evaluation of the VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) suite, which delivers a fully managed virtual data center. VI3 is VMware's solution for virtualizing servers, storage, networks, applications and desktops. The technology aims to help make sure IT services are delivered...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Novell Buys Software Maker PlateSpin for $205 Million
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58539
Novell has agreed to pay $205 million in cash to acquire Toronto-based PlateSpin, which provides software resources for the management of heterogeneous data-center workloads on a single physical or virtual host.
PlateSpin's software portfolio is expected to serve as a cornerstone for Novell's virtualization strategy for delivering the next generation of infrastructure software needed to power tomorrow's data center, Novell executives said.
"Together, we will have the most comprehensive workload-management solution that allows customers to monitor and analyze what to virtualize, provide the tools to seamlessly virtualize and unvirtualize workloads, automate the management of workloads, and provide the leading open-source platform from which to run virtualized work," said Novell Chief Executive Ron Hovsepian.
PlateSpin's technologies are designed to improve both the speed and quality of server consolidation, data-center relocation, and disaster recovery. Once the deal closes, Novell expects to offer its customers tools for moving physical workloads to Xen-based virtual machines running on SUSE Linux Enterprise as well as other virtual platforms provided by Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and other vendors.
Novell's virtualization platform had been missing some key virtualization capabilities, noted Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon. For example, there was no "good way to assess and monitor which workloads were candidates for virtualization" or stream "virtual and physical workloads," Dragoon said.
Novell's platform also needed "an elegant and affordable method for enabling businesses to recover from disasters" as well as protect their data-center workloads from unplanned outages, Dragoon said. "PlateSpin's PowerRecon, PowerConvert and Forge products are designed from the ground up to handle those important tasks," he said.
With its acquisition of PlateSpin's technology, Novell said it will be able to provide IT departments with a fully integrated product suite that automates data-center initiatives such as server consolidation, relocation and hardware upgrades. PlateSpin's disaster-recovery offerings are also expected...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Google Invests in One of Four Transpacific Cables
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58526
While it appears that Google will not be getting into the cell-phone business, the search giant announced Tuesday it is taking a different route. Most observers believe Google wasn't the winning bidder in the Federal Communications Commission's 700MHz wireless spectrum auction. So rather than controlling the airwaves, Google has joined with five telecommunications companies to build a submarine fiber-optic cable to connect the U.S. and Japan.
Google's partners in the new $300 million Unity cable are Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet and Singapore Telecommunications. The cable will run 6,200 miles from Chikura, off the coast near Tokyo, to Los Angeles and other West Coast centers.
"The Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online," said Jayne Stowell, a spokesperson for the consortium.
Unity said the cable will provide "much-needed capacity" as growth in Internet traffic skyrockets between Asia and America. It will initially boost transpacific cable capacity by 20 percent and potentially could add 7.68 terabits per second of bandwidth across the Pacific.
It's unusual for an Internet company to become so involved with infrastructure. "While Google is the first non-telecom company to take an active role in ownership of a submarine cable, it's not likely that this is the beginning of a new trend," said Alan Mauldin, research director at the submarine-cable consultancy TeleGeography.
Indeed, Google has a unique reason for investing in infrastructure, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, in an e-mail. "Google appears to be trying to vertically integrate -- my guess is so they eventually can provide a complete Internet/phone/entertainment service which is completely ad-driven," he wrote.
Such integration would make the company "virtually impossible to displace without disruptive technology and be in the best position to take advantage" of...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Apple Boosts MacBook Pro Speed, Graphics
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58525
Apple has updated its MacBook Pro line to include faster graphics. While there's not much to wow Mac fans, the new laptops offer speed increases thanks to Intel's new chip architecture.
"It's absolutely just what we expected," Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, told NewsFactor. "They're moving to the new Intel processor platform, which is bringing faster speeds and a little better power management. Those are the noteworthy things."
The new MacBook Pro includes an Intel Core 2 Duo processor that can run up to 2.6 GHz with as much as 6 MB of L2 cache. In a nutshell, "you can get more done in less time," Apple's Web site says. The new processors are almost 75 percent faster than the MacBook Pro's original Intel processors. The new laptops can be expanded to 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 memory.
That doesn't mean an increase in energy use, however. Bajarin explained that Intel's 45-nanometer process puts transistors closer together so they can share resources. Apple's site says the transistors are small enough that "you could fit a hundred inside a human cell," which helps keep the MacBook Pro thin.
With NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics cards that can expand on some configurations to 512MB of video memory, the new laptops have powerful graphics capabilities. They use a solid-state trackpad with Apple's Multi-Touch gesture support, which gives users more precise cursor control. The full-size keyboard is backlit with an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts keyboard and screen brightness.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro is available with a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB of on-chip shared L2 cache, or with a 2.5-GHz or a 2.6-GHz processor with 6MB of L2 cache. Storage options are a 200GB or 250GB, 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive (a 200GB 7200-rpm drive is available). This...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Comcast Executive Grilled at FCC Hearing
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58524
Is throttling of peer-to-peer traffic -- especially BitTorrent traffic -- on Comcast's cable Internet service "reasonable network management" or a breach of trust? That was the question at the Federal Communications Commission's hearing Monday in Cambridge, Mass.
The FCC met at Harvard Law School in response to petitions from a consortium of public-interest groups and Internet video company Vuze. The petitions accused Comcast of violating the FCC's four Internet policy principles, which boil down to allowing consumers to use the Internet without interference from service providers. An exception to the principles is "reasonable" network management and the hearing focused on whether Comcast's actions were reasonable.
By the end of the day, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he hadn't come to a conclusion, but he told reporters later, "One of the main concerns I have is that there wasn't a transparency to some of the network-management practices (Comcast) engaged in."
The highlight of the hearing, which included panels on policy and technology issues, was Martin's grilling of Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen. Martin asked Cohen why Comcast thinks it "necessary to block" BitTorrent when customers "are acting within the constraints you sold them. ... Doesn't that undermine the arguments you're making?"
No, Cohen responded, "I don't think we're restraining the customers from using the service in accordance with the way we're selling it to them." He said Comcast gave subscribers fair notice of the practice in a FAQ on its Web site. "Comcast may on a limited basis temporarily delay certain P2P traffic when that traffic has or is projected to have an adverse effect on other customers' use of the service," Cohen read from the notice.
Is that sufficient notice to consumers and developers? No way, said Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press, one of the groups that petitioned...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Yahoo Buzz Ranks Web Content by Votes and Searches
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58523
Forget the buzz about Microsoft acquiring Yahoo. This week the search titan wants the world's attention on Yahoo Buzz, an extension to Yahoo.com that promises to deliver the most interesting and relevant content from Web sites. The new tool is currently in beta.
In true social-networking style, Yahoo Buzz measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the Web. Top stories are then given primary consideration for placement on Yahoo.com.
Yahoo Buzz can highlight anything -- a major news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post -- and instead of editors, real people vote and search for their favorite stories to determine the top-rated content.
Yahoo Buzz ranks the most popular content of the moment by combining votes with search popularity to give a story a Buzz Score. Yahoo said it is creating a lens on what people are most interested in to enhance relevance on Yahoo.com and help publishers deliver their best content to Yahoo's 500 million-plus users.
Yahoo is aiming to build on its recent successes in improving the Yahoo.com home page. According to the company, consumer engagement with the home page has increased nearly 20 percent year over year. Yahoo sees this as evidence that continuing to open up and provide consumers with direct links to third-party publishers keeps people coming back to Yahoo.
Currently, Yahoo Buzz includes content from nearly 100 publishers, each of which has a "badge" that lets readers vote and submit stories to Buzz in real-time. Stories with the highest Buzz Scores will be highlighted through direct links to the publishers' sites from buzz.yahoo.com and submitted to Yahoo.com's editors for possible coverage on the Yahoo homepage. Yahoo allows users to submit Buzz...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 Tops MacBook Air Features
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58522
Lenovo on Tuesday launched the ultrathin, ultralight ThinkPad X300 notebook, which immediately invited comparisons to Apple's MacBook Air. The laptop is three-fourths of an inch at its thinnest and weighs as low as 2.9 pounds. It includes solid-state drive storage, a 13.3-inch LED backlit WXGA+ high-resolution display, and low-voltage processors.
"Our customers told us that they wanted a notebook that was amazingly thin and light," said Peter Hortensius, Lenovo senior vice president, "but they still wanted their battery options, their USB ports and, of course, their DVD burner."
Hortensius made obvious references to features the Air has been criticized for lacking, notably a battery removable by the user, USB ports in excess of the Air's single port, and no internal optical drive. The Air does offer wireless access to an external drive.
The X300 is a "great step in the progression of the ThinkPad line," said Doug Bell, an analyst with industry research firm IDC. He added that the X300 is "what a lot of road warriors are looking for," and the option of either Windows XP or Vista is "a big plus" because many enterprises are reluctant to move to the newer Vista operating system.
The biggest hurdle for businesses, Bell said, is the price, which starts at $2,799. He noted that many business users do not have input into which model is purchased for them, and IT departments may be put off by the cost. But he added that the X300 could be of interest to consumers and the MacBook Air is primarily a consumer-oriented product.
With the X300, road warriors will have plenty of options. The laptop includes stereo speakers, a digital microphone, and an integrated camera. For the itinerant salesperson, the new notebook boasts a roll cage to protect it from falls and drops.
Lenovo...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
iPhone Developer's Kit Expected Soon
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58521
The iPhone is about to get more than a little help from its friends.
Any day now, Apple is expected to release a developer's kit that will allow independent programmers to create new applications for the device. While it is common for mainstream PC users to download third-party programs to their computers, it is relatively uncharted territory for average cell-phone users to do the same, observed American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu.
Apple's kickoff will follow on the heels of Microsoft's announcement this week of a software giveaway campaign that will unlock high-end developer tools used to create everything from games to cell-phone programs to millions of college and high school
students around the world.
"It's going to make the platform more attractive, no question," Wu said of the iPhone. What is unknown, he said, is whether the new applications will boost iPhone sales.
The move will give the device -- a combination of telephone, multimedia player and Wi-Fi gadget -- an array of new features, from games to better ways to sync it with corporate e-mail accounts. And it could eventually help make the iPhone Apple's iconic product,
unseating the iPod as consumers increasingly embrace smart-phone devices.
"I think the phone portion will be reduced as a service on these cool devices. You won't be buying it because it's a phone," said Jim Grossman, an equity analyst at Thrivent Asset Management in Minneapolis. "I call it a mini-computer."
Even without Apple's technological road map for the iPhone, there already are some 300 "underground" applications created for the device, a powerful indication of interest among code writers to join its universe, said Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith.
"You will see a lot of them move real quickly to the new environment, and you'll see mainstream software companies jump...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Get Untangled from the Web with Twine
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58520
How often have you wasted time searching through page after page of e-mail messages, Web sites, notes, news feeds and YouTube videos on your computer, trying to find an important item?
If the answer is "too often," a company in San Francisco, Radar Networks, is testing a free, Web-based application, called Twine, that may provide some robotic secretarial help in organizing and retrieving documents.
Twine, at twine.com, can scan almost any electronic document for the names of people, places, businesses and many other entities that its algorithms recognize.
Then it does something unusual: it automatically tags or marks all of these items in orange and transfers them to an index on the right side of the screen. This index grows with every document you view, as the program adds subjects that it can recognize or infer
from their context.
Customers have individual accounts on Twine's Web site, where they save URLs or other information.
They can make their collections, or "twines," private, share them in groups with other members having common interests like politics or fashion, or even make the twines public.
For instance, people planning a trip to Italy could send all the Google maps, articles and travel guide Web pages they are collecting to Twine.
As each document is added, Twine automatically tags items and adds them to the database for the Italy trip, compiling an index with references to, for example, Pisa, Rome and Siena; Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon and Dante; and the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburg
family and St. Peter's.
The more documents that are added, the more numerous the references and the more links to related information.
Twine is based on technologies created for the developing semantic Web -- foreseen as a smarter Web where machines may someday be able to process the meaning of words and phrases in documents and even routinely answer...
Tue, 26 Feb 08
Could Microsoft Learn from Oracle?
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58502
In its continuing battle with Google, Microsoft has worked its way down its list of ideas to its current course of action: pursuing a hostile bid for Yahoo.
Michael Cusumano, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written several books about the software industry and about Microsoft, is not impressed with Microsoft's rationale. He said the bid seemed to be a pursuit of "an old-style Internet asset, in decline, and at a premium."
Determined to match Google in Web search and online advertising, Microsoft has managed to overlook a plain-vanilla strategy, the oldest one in the book: build on your own strengths. What it does best is to sell software to corporations, for all sorts of applications, visible and not so visible, at a handsome profit.
If Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should not pursue Yahoo. Rather, it should acquire another major player in business software, merging Microsoft's strength with that of another.
For an illustration of how Microsoft could select targets more judiciously, Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, pointed to Oracle's strategic acquisitions and its prudent use of capital to "roll-up firms with similar products and customers to its own." With impressive regularity -- 13 strategic acquisitions in 2005, another 13 in 2006 and 11 in 2007 -- Oracle has picked up major products and customers while avoiding venturing too far away from its core business, or paying too much.
Last month, Oracle pulled in another major prize, BEA Systems, a leading software company, for about $8.5 billion. You have probably never heard of BEA: it is doubly obscure, producing the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that large companies use to build behind-the-scenes software systems for their entire business, or...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
Pakistan Blocking Sends YouTube Into 'Black Hole'
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58519
In a bizarre turn of events, Pakistan's attempts to block its citizens from accessing Google-owned YouTube wound up sending the video-sharing site into a "black hole" and exposing some fundamental weaknesses of the Internet architecture.
It's not clear what YouTube video spurred the Pakistani action. Leading contenders include a film by Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders and the incendiary political cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad published by Dutch newspapers in 2005. The newspapers recently republished the cartoons in solidarity with the cartoonist, whose life was threatened in a plot discovered by Dutch authorities.
Whatever the reason, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority issued an order to Pakistani ISPs to block YouTube. The nation's largest ISP, Pakistan Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. (PTCL) took steps to send all requests from Pakistan for YouTube into a "black hole." But, apparently inadvertently, the ISP hijacked YouTube's IP addresses, effectively shutting down the site for users around the world for several hours.
"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site," Google announced after working around the problem. "We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."
BBC reporter Darren Waters, who did some of the early reporting on the story, wrote in a blog, "There will definitely be some fallout from this. It would seem that all it takes to hijack a Web site globally is for a telecoms firm to instruct its ISPs that they now run a domain, and for one of those ISPs to announce that globally. So that other ISPs follow suit in a piggyback chain of confusion."
What happened exactly? The answer has to do with some fairly low-level details...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
Dick Tracy Would Love Nokia's Morph Cell Phone
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58518
At a trade show, you stretch your wristwatch cell phone to check the time and then hand out business-card phones with your logo. This vision of the not-too-distant future is one of the possibilities of the Morph joint venture by Nokia and the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge.
That vision went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Sunday, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. "Morph," Nokia said, "is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes."
Dr. Bob Iannucci, Nokia chief technology officer, said the Nokia Research Center is looking to "reinvent the form and function of mobile devices" through the use of nanotechnology and the Morph "concept phones" show some of the possibilities -- including flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.
The partnership between Nokia and the university, announced last March, involves a research facility at the university and collaboration with several academic departments, including the Nanoscience Center and the Engineering Department. Nokia said the projected timeline for integration into handheld devices is within seven years, initially through high-end devices, and applications could include lowering the cost of manufacturing.
Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, noted that the collaboration supports a general trend toward the development of morphing or changeable phones. Morphing, he said, is the industry's growing effort to address the need "for greater capability for mobile phones, while getting around the size barrier."
He noted that the morphing trend includes designs in which form literally follows function, such as the keypad in Motorola's Rokr E8, in which a 12-key alphanumeric pad for phone use can become a media playback pad with play, stop and other functions.
He...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
MetaRAM Finds a Way To Quadruple Memory
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58517
While microprocessing power increases dramatically from year to year, memory capacity lags behind. That may change as a start-up called MetaRAM addresses the gap with an innovation it promises will quadruple the amount of memory on servers and workstations at a much lower cost.
Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) provides short-term storage for computer data, and successive generations with more capacity come at a higher price because there are few manufacturers and they're more difficult to make.
"More memory is a critical enabler for computing-intensive applications," including CAD/EDA simulations, database transaction processing, and virtualization, said Jeremy Werner, senior marketing manager at MetaRAM.
As critical as memory is, Werner said there have been restrictions on storage capacity because of a limitation on how many DRAM chips a memory controller can address. "Also, DRAM density has been limited by the rate of technological advancements of memory-process technology, doubling density in SDRAM about every three years," Werner said.
MetaRAM has overcome this problem by creating MetaSDRAM, a chip that sits between multiple DRAM chips on a computer's memory module, allowing cheaper one-gigabit memory chips to work together while making the package appear to the computer as a much larger-capacity memory chip. Different versions of the MetaRAM chips will double or quadruple capacity.
The chips fit into standard memory slots and are engineered to work with a minimum of power. Companies are already looking at how the MetaRAM chip will change the ways they do business.
"Business owners, independent researchers, and IT managers looking to implement virtualization will recognize a significant increase in efficiency at a lower cost," Werner said. He added they will be able to serve large databases much faster and solve large simulation problems in a fraction of today's time.
Today South Korean DRAM manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor Inc. announced the launch...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
Adobe's AIR and Flex Merge Desktop and Web
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58515
The worlds of online and offline applications came closer to converging Monday as Adobe Systems released its AIR 1.0 and Flex 3 platforms. The platforms include tools and services that help developers create rich Internet applications (RIAs) that combine the Web's real-time updates with the desktop's speed and access to local files.
The applications can be run in the Flash player as well as in the Adobe Media Player, now in beta release, which the company said will be "a fusion of TV and the Internet."
"AIR is the big thing" in this release, said Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst with industry firm Forrester, although he noted that there are no obvious improvements over AIR's beta releases. He said the platform gives developers a sandbox in which existing skills in HTML, Ajax, Flex and Flash can be utilized to "blend the previously separate development models -- development for the desktop and development for the Web."
Flex 3 is a free, open-source framework. AIR and the AIR SDK (software developers kit) are also free, and, large parts of AIR are open source, including the WebKit HTML engine, Tamarin ActionScript Virtual Machine, and SQLite local database functionality.
The blending of desktop and Web applications could impact many e-commerce and other business experiences on the Web. AIR's momentum, said Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, shows the "real need for businesses to engage with customers in more effective ways."
Adobe said the momentum includes AIR-deployed applications from such companies as AOL, eBay, NASDAQ, The New York Times, Nickelodeon/MTV Network, Sharp and others.
NASDAQ has an RIA for the desktop that allows financial pros to replay market activity at any point in time. With it, brokers can remotely show customers exactly what was taking place when an order was placed. Adobe said AIR "allows for instant...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
EU Decision on IP Addresses Could Hurt Search Engines
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58514
European regulators are considering whether to categorize IP addresses as personal property. Their decision could throw a monkey wrench into the methods that search-engine operators like Google, Yahoo and MSN use to track the online habits of Web surfers.
"As the use of search engines becomes a daily routine for an ever-growing number of citizens, the protection of the users' privacy and the guaranteeing of their rights remain the core issues of the ongoing debate," the European Commission's data-protection working group said earlier this month.
The group said it expects to release a final report in the months ahead. Its recommendations will have worldwide implications because any search engine with at least one establishment in any European Union country will be required to comply with EU privacy policies.
Google has been trying to convince the regulators that IP addresses aren't personal. Given that not everyone is connected at the same time, each Internet service provider assigns a different IP address to each connecting computer, and then reassigns it when users disconnect, noted Google software engineer Alma Whitten.
"Because of this, the IP address assigned to your computer one day may get assigned to several other computers before a week has passed," Whitten said.
For example, as laptop users move from home to work or operate from temporary locations, they are changing IP addresses constantly. "And if you share your computer or even just your connection to your ISP with your family, then multiple people are sharing one IP address," Whitten said.
Still, Whitten admits that each ISP knows the name and address of the person who holds the subscriber account to which a specific IP address has been assigned.
"On the other hand, the IP addresses recorded by every Web site on the planet without additional information should not...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
FCC Hearing Focuses on Comcast Internet Blocking
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58513
The Federal Communications Commission convened at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., Monday for a public hearing on allegations that Comcast improperly throttled the peer-to-peer application BitTorrent.
In opening remarks the commissioners also signaled they would look at a broader range of alleged wrongdoing, including a case where Verizon blocked a pro-choice group's text message. Two Democratic commissioners called for additional policies protecting network neutrality.
Chairman Kevin Martin focused the meeting on the FCC's four Internet policy principles:
-- Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
-- Consumers are entitled to use applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
-- Consumers are entitled to connect legal devices, so long as they don't harm the network.
A
-- Competition among providers needs to be protected.
All these principles are "subject to reasonable network performance."
"The question is, 'What are reasonable network practices?'" Martin said. He emphasized that the principles require network providers to be "open and transparent" to consumers in terms of fees, practices and services. The purpose of the hearing, he said, is to "hear from both sides publicly."
And the chairman warned: "The commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary."
After the commissioners' opening remarks, the hearing was to feature two panels of legal and technology experts, as well as consumer organizations and industry executives.
A morning session focusing on policy issues expected representatives from Comcast and Verizon, several law professors and the general counsel for Free Press, one of the organizations that filed a petition with the FCC challenging Comcast's actions.
Speaking to the media last week, Columbia University law professor Timothy Wu, who will speak on the policy panel, said, "What we're going to see on Monday is a trial of the Internet. "Comcast is in the docket, accused...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
EA Publicizes Rejection of $2B Offer for Take-Two
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58499
Call it a flashback to the Microsoft-Yahoo takeover battle. On Sunday Electronic Arts announced a proposal to acquire Take-Two Interactive Software in an all-cash merger valued at approximately $2 billion. In true Yahoo style, Take-Two said the proposal is inadequate and not in the best interests of its stockholders.
EA's proposal of $26 per share is a premium of 64 percent over Take-Two's closing stock price on Feb. 15 and 63 percent over Take-Two's 30-day trailing average price ending on that date.
Take-Two did not solicit the deal, and EA did not publicize its Feb. 19 offer -- until it was rejected. That's when EA decided to release the letter and bring its proposal to the attention of all Take-Two stockholders.
"Our all-cash proposal is a unique opportunity for Take-Two shareholders to realize immediate value at a substantial premium, while creating long-term value for EA shareholders," EA CEO John Riccitiello said. "Take-Two's game designers would also benefit from EA's financial resources, stable, game-focused management team, and strong global publishing capabilities."
Take-Two's board of directors said it thoroughly reviewed EA's unsolicited proposal with independent financial and legal advisers and concluded that the proposal is inadequate. Specifically, Take-Two said, the offer undervalues its franchises. Take-Two called EA's offer "highly opportunistic" and one that attempts to "take advantage of our upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto IV."
"In addition to undervaluing key elements of our business, EA's proposal fails to recognize the value we are building through our ongoing turnaround efforts, which will further revitalize Take-Two," said Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two board chairman. "While we have made substantial progress already, the turnaround of our business which we initiated in June is not yet complete, and we believe its benefits have not been recognized in either our current stock price or in the value of EA's...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
Goolag Scanner Checks Web Sites for Vulnerabilities
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58498
On Monday, the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker group released an open-source Web auditing tool that aims to let owners check their Web sites for security vulnerabilities. Dubbed the Goolag Scanner, the technology is based on "Google hacking," a form of vulnerability research developed by Johnny I Hack Stuff. Goolag Scanner is a standalone Windows GUI-based application.
"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," Cult of the Dead Cow spokesperson Oxblood Ruffin said. "And this platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for Web-site owners to patch up their online properties."
Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerable Web sites on which to plant malicious code. The Sophos 2008 Security Threat Report published in January revealed just how prevalent the danger is.
Sophos detects a newly infected Web page every 14 seconds. Eighty-three percent of those pages belong to companies and individuals who are unaware that their sites have been hacked.
"We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe and the Middle East," Ruffin said. "If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The vulnerabilities are that serious."
Cybercriminals can target any computer user through e-mails containing links to the poisoned Web pages. The hacked Web site can determine if the visiting computer is a Mac or a PC, and deliver malware custom-written for the surfer's operating system.
Web sites of all types from antique dealers to ice-cream manufacturers to wedding photographers have hosted malware, according to Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Tools like Goolag can help Web-site owners determine if their sites are vulnerable,"...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
The Dawn of Green Mobile Networks
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58495
Mobile phones long ago began conquering parts of the world that are far away from the nearest electrical substation. But the rising price of oil is exposing a problem with the networks that connect mobile handsets together.
In the far reaches of places like India or Africa, where companies such as Ericsson or Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture of Nokia and Siemens, are installing new cellular base stations at a furious pace, the facilities almost always get their power from diesel-powered generators. But fuel can account for as much as two-thirds of base-station operating costs. Add to that the expense of trucking diesel over poor roads to far-flung locations and protecting the valuable fuel against theft. "Getting oil or diesel to these stations is tremendously difficult," says Mats Granryd, president of Ericsson India.
As a result, green energy is suddenly becoming more than a feel-good project for the world's mobile service providers. As mobile networks expand far beyond the reach of power grids, they need to find alternatives to diesel. After experimenting for years with base stations powered by wind, solar energy, or biofuel, equipment suppliers are preparing to roll out alternative energy technology in significant numbers.
"We're starting to see this deployed globally now," says Dawn Haig-Thomas, director of the development fund of the GSM Assn., an industry group. "It's our hottest area." Two Asian network operators will shortly announce plans for more than 500 new base stations powered by a combination of sun and wind, Haig-Thomas says. [She declines to name the operators.]
Solving the power problem is key to maintaining the growth of the mobile industry. The number of mobile subscribers is expected to climb to 5 billion by 2015, from 3 billion today. A large proportion of those new users will be in poor, rural areas with little...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
Google Launches AdSense for Video
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58484
Hoping to earn more from its vast advertising network, Google has said it plans to begin selling ads to appear inside videos on sites across the Web.
While the money spent on Web video ads is a small fraction of the $20 billion spent on Internet ads in the United States, Google wants to capitalize on the explosion in online video and the scale of its advertising network, which analysts say includes a vast majority of Web advertisers and hundreds of thousands of Web sites.
The new program, AdSense for Video, could help Web publishers in that network make more money from their video clips.
While AdSense for Video is the latest in a string of new advertising initiatives that Google has started over the past two years, few, if any, of those initiatives have created substantial revenue for Google. They include Google's programs to place ads in
newspapers, on radio and on television stations and in a variety of new formats on the Web and on cell phones.
Last year, an overwhelming majority of the company's $16.6 billion in revenue came from small text ads that appear alongside search results and on the Google advertising network. In its 2007 annual report, which it filed last week, Google noted: "Revenues
realized through the Google Print Ads Program, Google Audio Ads, Google TV Ads, Google Checkout, YouTube, Postini and Search Appliance were not material in any of the periods presented."
AdSense for Video will offer advertisers a choice between video or text ads that will be overlaid on a small portion of the video viewer.
The text ads will rotate every 20 seconds and be tailored to match the content of the video and of the Web page where the video is played.
Overlay video advertising formats have been gaining favor with marketers as an alternative to the more common...
Mon, 25 Feb 08
The Secrets of Microsoft's Sync
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58481
Microsoft has spun its wheels for years attempting to craft an in-car computer, but the company may be primed for pole position with its latest effort to weave software into auto design.
The system is called Sync, and it lets motorists control car stereos and mobile phones with voice commands. Sync was featured in a keynote speech by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it's available exclusively from Ford Motor.
The automaker has sold more than 100,000 vehicles with the Sync system since it was introduced in November, says Martin Thall, general manager of Microsoft's automotive business, with 70 percent of those sales coming in 2008. Ford expects to sell a million Sync-enabled cars by early 2009, when the system will be available in 85 percent of its cars.
Part of the reason for the popularity is price. Adding a Sync system to a Ford, Lincoln, or Mercury adds only $395 to the sticker price, while adding similar features for controlling music and cell phones to other cars can cost as much as $800.
Researchers at market research firm iSuppli probed under Sync's hood for a closer look at how Microsoft and Ford managed to keep the price so low. The makers use inexpensive chips, for one thing. A teardown analysis by iSuppli found that the six major chips used in the system cost a grand total of $25. Of those, the most expensive component is an $8 applications chip from Freescale Semiconductor, the privately held former chip unit of Motorola. A second Freescale microcontroller chip costs $5.
Add in $4.80 worth of memory chips from Micron Technology, a $3.80 flash memory chip from Samsung, a $1.75 Bluetooth chip from Cambridge Silicon Radio, and a $1.65 audio chip from Cirrus Logic, and you've...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
EMC Embraces Cloud Computing with Pi Purchase
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58494
Enterprise storage giant EMC has acquired Pi Corp., a small technology start-up that has yet to release any products on its own. EMC did not disclose the purchase price, but did announce plans to hire Pi's founder Paul Maritz as president of a new Cloud Infrastructure and Services division.
Maritz is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft who left the company in 2000 and went on to serve as chairman of the Grameen Foundation, the innovative nonprofit founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
While information about Pi's technology is limited, EMC CEO Joe Tucci offered some clues about the company's cloud-computing plan.
Cloud computing, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to the strategy of data and applications existing on a shared network rather than on individual users' computers. With cloud computing, users have greater access to shared resources.
Tucci emphasized that Pi's technology is complementary to EMC's emerging cloud infrastructure strategy. And, he said, Maritz will provide leadership to help position EMC at the leading edge of cloud computing and personal-information management.
Maritz described his vision as "allowing consumers and corporate information workers to create, repurpose, store, share and access personal information in novel ways, taking advantage of the ubiquity of computing power and a new interconnected world."
EMC has been focused on cloud opportunities for the past year, said analyst Charles King in a telephone interview with us earlier today.
The company "has identified the incredibly rapid growth in information acquisition and storage as a really huge challenge for individuals and enterprises," he said. And, King added, EMC recognizes this as an opportunity to explore products and services they could offer to help.
EMC's acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems and the release of its Mozy product was the first step, while "Pi takes this a step forward," King said. "Pi is...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Nintendo's Wii Fit Creates an Exercise Program
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58493
Nintendo wants to turn a movement that is a key part of its Wii video-game console into an exercise program with a new Wii Fit product.
Announced earlier this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and launching in mid-May, the Wii Fit will use the motion-sensing controller and a new interactive Balance Board to create a workout. The board senses weight and motion, and the company said third-party publishers are also working on applications. Wii Fit is expected to retail for less than $100.
Wii Fit also includes access to the interactive Wii Fit Channel, where users can check their fitness progress on a daily basis, including weight and BMI index. Wii Fit is already available in Japan, and has sold more than 1.4 million units since its launch on December 1.
Reportedly, Nintendo's Takao Sawano worked with Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto in designing Wii Fit. The impetus came from an effort to adapt a simple weight scale for the Wii. Noting that sumo wrestlers require two scales to weigh themselves, Sawano began developing a scale from scratch with the idea of being able to sense a shift in weight. From that, a balancing peripheral was born that is sensitive enough to detect if a user is moving a hand to pick up a controller.
The fitness program offered with the Wii Fit focuses on yoga, strength training, aerobics and balance games, with as many as 10 activities for each area. Some activities use the board, such as balancing or push-ups, and some do not. For instance, running in place can use the Wii Remote like a pedometer to track progress and effort.
The Wii Fit is a "by-product of the whole Wii plan for getting people off the couch," said Michael Gartenberg,...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
10 Teams Register for Google's Robot Moon Race
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58492
One small step for man and one giant leap for robots. You could feel that sentiment from one of the first 10 teams to register for the Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the moon with $30 million in prizes.
International teams will compete to land a privately funded robot craft on the moon and roam the lunar surface for at least 500 meters while sending video, images and data back to Earth.
"We are excited that 10 teams from around the world have taken up the challenge of the Google Lunar X Prize," said Megan Smith, Google's vice president for new business development. "We look forward to the exciting achievements and scientific advancements that will result from the efforts of these teams as they participate in the next great space race."
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, reported a strong response to the competition. Six months after Google and the foundation announced the race to the moon, 567 groups from 53 nations have expressed interest. By comparison, at the six-month point of the Ansari X Prize, only two teams had registered.
"I think we are going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we have seen come out of the government space programs," Diamandis said. "Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today. I wish them all the very best of luck. I can't wait to join with Google in paying the winner."
There's plenty at stake in this race. The $30 million purse is divided into a $20 million grand prize, a $5 million second prize and $5 million in bonus prizes. To win the grand prize, a team must...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Symantec Offers Online Backup Solutions
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58491
New Web-based solutions from Symantec aim to make it easy for small and midsize businesses to back up data and be prepared for disaster. Symantec Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec join recent enterprise offerings from EMC and CommVault that use software as a service (SaaS) to simplify backup.
With SaaS solutions, consumers pay to use, not own, software that can be accessed across the Web. With a backup solution built on SaaS, businesses don't have to rely on putting data on disks or tapes, which can be administrative nightmares.
Symantec Online Backup offers browser-based backup and restoration. Data is stored on redundant servers and encrypted both before it's transmitted and while it resides in Symantec's data centers. Symantec says it has no access to the stored data.
Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec is an add-on to the company's existing offering, Backup Exec. Previous versions of the product allow data to be backed up to tape or disk. Now an online-storage option is also available.
Chris Schin, director of product management for the Symantec Protection Network, said the new offerings were engineered to work with Microsoft's next edition of Windows Server, known as Longhorn. "Each of them is the first solution in its market to be logo-certified for Windows Server 2008," he told NewsFactor. That's important because the way in which Longhorn is backed up has changed from Server 2003, he said.
Schin said the new products would be integrated with other Symantec solutions as customers have demanded. "We started to deliver on the promise of integration across Symantec's many security-product lines. For example, this version of Backup Exec 12 now integrates with Enterprise Vault, so if you have an Enterprise Vault e-mail archive, you can back it up using Backup Exec," Schin said.
Backup Exec...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Cold-Boot Attack Can Crack Disk Encryption
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58490
Encrypting your hard drive has been touted as the ultimate in data protection. But new research shows that a savvy attacker with a can of compressed air and good timing can access encryption keys used by Vista's BitLocker, the Mac's FileVault, and other well-known encryption tools -- and then your data.
While a computer is running, data and the encryption keys used by full-disk encryption systems are held in dynamic random-access memory. Researchers at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy took advantage of the fact that data persists on DRAM modules even when a computer is turned off.
Researcher Ed Felten wrote on his blog, "Virtually everybody, including experts, will tell you that DRAM contents are lost when you turn off the power. But this isn't so."
The data in DRAM modules persists only for a minute or less at room temperature, but the decay of data can be significantly slowed by using an air-spray duster to cool the chips (a few sprays can lower the temperature to -50 degrees Celsius). Then, with specialized software, "someone could carry out our attacks against a target computer in a matter of minutes," Felten wrote. The Princeton team did not disclose the source code or software used in the cold-boot attack.
"Most disk-encryption systems can be defeated if the computer is stolen or accessed while it is in sleep mode or in a password-protected screen saver," Felten wrote. Vista's BitLocker "is also sometimes vulnerable even when the computer is completely off."
Microsoft acknowledged that the attack could occur. "Like all full-volume encryption products, BitLocker has a key in memory when the system is running in order to encrypt/decrypt data on the fly for the drive(s) in use. If a system is in 'sleep mode' it is, in effect, still running," Microsoft said in a statement provided...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Whoops! Microsoft Vista SP1 'Escapes'
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58489
The slow rollout of Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 has confused nearly everyone, with Microsoft announcing it had released SP1 to manufacturing several weeks ago but delaying its release until March 18.
Mike Nash, senior vice president of Windows product management, said at the time that Microsoft was dealing with an issue "with the way the device drivers were re-installed during the SP1 update process."
Microsoft then changed course slightly and announced it would release SP1 to volume customers by the end of last week. But now some 64-bit users are reporting that Windows Update is already delivering SP1.
Writing on the Hexus.net site, Parm Mann said Windows Update informed him Thursday that "I have one important update to install on my 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium-based system -- Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for x64-based Systems." Parm reported the installation took less than 30 minutes and went smoothly.
Microsoft confirmed that the update went out, but said it was a mistake. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, an internationally published technology author, blogged Thursday that he received this statement from Microsoft:
"Since releasing SP1 to manufacturing on February 4th, we have made Windows Vista SP1 available to beta testers, MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers, as well as Volume Licensing customers. Today, a build of SP1 was posted to Windows Update and it was inadvertently made available to a broad group. The build was intended only for our more technically advanced testers, and was meant to only be offered to those with a specific registry key set on their PC. For general availability, we are still planning to make SP1 broadly available in the mid-March time frame."
Microsoft also warned Friday that updating to SP1 may break a number of third-party antivirus applications. Some programs are blocked or do not run, while others...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
T-Mobile Testing Unlimited Home Phoning for $10
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58480
T-Mobile wants you to talk forever. The wireless provider is testing its Talk Forever Home Phone plan in two cities, Seattle and Dallas. The plan allows unlimited U.S. calling for $10 a month.
The home user needs four components: an existing high-speed Internet connection, a T-Mobile Wireless Router with Home Phone Connection, a qualifying T-Mobile wireless plan with the Talk Forever plan, and a compatible home phone. The router plugs into the user's broadband connection, and then any regular phone can be plugged into the router.
"You just plug in the router into your broadband connection and plug in your home phone into the router," the company said on its Web site, emphasizing ease of use. The existing home phone number can be used, and any standard touch-tone phone will do.
For homes with several cordless phones running off a base station, the base station can be plugged into the router and any of the cordless phones can use the unlimited service. However, T-Mobile warns, while 5.8-GHz cordless phones or traditional touch phones work fine, 2.4-GHz cordless phones "do not work well with Wi-Fi."
The Talk Forever plan can be added to an existing T-Mobile single-line mobile plan of $39.99 or higher, or any FamilyTime mobile plan of $49.99 or higher. Caller ID, voice mail, call forwarding, three-way conference calling, call holding, and call waiting are included.
"This is phase two of T-Mobile's existing HotSpot@Home plan," noted Bill Ho, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis. The HotSpot@Home plan, which offers a wireless router for home, has been out since fall 2006. It currently offers unlimited wireless calling over Wi-Fi for about $20 a month. Aside from the price difference, the user cannot employ a regular home phone in that plan.
Although the Talk Forever plan...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Red Hat Skeptical of Microsoft's Openness Promise
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58479
In a move to appease European antitrust officials, Microsoft on Thursday promised to open its products. It said its four-pronged approach would ensure open connections, promote data portability, enhance support for industry standards, and improve engagement with customers and the industry, including open-source communities.
It's that last item, open-source communities, that has the tech world talking, but it's not all pro-Microsoft. Open-source heavy hitters like Linux vendor Red Hat are viewing the announcement with skepticism.
According to Michael Cunningham, executive vice president and general counsel for Red Hat, three Microsoft commitments would show the company really means what it says: a commitment to open standards, interoperability with open source, and competition on a level playing field.
"Eight years ago the U.S. regulatory authorities, and four years ago the European regulators, made clear to Microsoft that its refusal to disclose interface information for its monopoly software products violates the law," Cunningham said. "So it is hardly surprising to see even Microsoft state that 'interoperability across systems is an important requirement' and announce a 'change in [its] approach to interoperability.' Of course, we've heard similar announcements before, almost always strategically timed for other effect."
Red Hat wants Microsoft to embrace the cross-platform industry standard for document processing, OpenDocument format, at the International Standards Organization's meeting next week in Geneva. The Linux giant also wants Microsoft to extend its Open Specification Promise to all the interoperability information it says will be made available. Red Hat also noted that Microsoft's announcement appears carefully crafted to foreclose competition from the open-source community.
"How else can you explain a 'promise not to sue open-source developers' as long as they develop and distribute only 'noncommercial' implementations of interoperable products? This is simply disingenuous," he charged. "The only hope for reintroducing competition to the monopoly markets Microsoft now controls --...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
EU to Microsoft: We'll Believe It When We See It
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58475
European Union regulators were skeptical Thursday on Microsoft Corp.'s offer to share more information about its products and technology, saying it has seen four similar statements before.
Microsoft's announcement doesn't touch on possible monopoly abuse in the past, it said, nor does it touch on allegations that it illegally gives away its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows desktop operating system to damage rivals.
The European Commission is currently investigating a complaint from rivals that Microsoft does not share essential information on the Office word processing program that would help create compatible products.
It said it would check if the company's offer complies with antitrust rules as part of that probe it launched in January, five months after an EU court upheld European regulators on Microsoft's legal challenge against a EU497 million (US$613 million) antitrust fine.
"The Commission would welcome any move toward genuine interoperability," the EU executive said. "Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."
The EU's new probe into how well Microsoft's products work with others was triggered by a complaint from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems -- a group representing IBM, Nokia Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Oracle Corp.
It will examine whether Microsoft withheld information from companies that wanted to make products compatible with its software -- including Office word processing, spreadsheet and office management tools, some server products and Microsoft's push into the Internet under the name of the .NET framework.
Since Microsoft supplies the software to the vast majority of home and office computers, rivals complain that refusal to give them interoperability information shuts the door on a huge potential market.
ECIS was also doubtful on the Microsoft offer. "The world needs a permanent change in Microsoft's behavior, not just another announcement," it...
Fri, 22 Feb 08
Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot O' Trouble
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58474
It can stop you from voting, destroy your dental appointments, make it difficult to rent a car or book a flight, even interfere with your college exams.
More than 50 years into the Information Age, computers are still getting confused by the apostrophe. It's a problem familiar to O'Connors, D'Angelos, N'Dours and D'Artagnans across America.
When Niall O'Dowd tried to book a flight to Atlanta earlier this year, the computer system refused to recognize his name. The editor of the Irish Voice newspaper could book the flight only by giving up his national identity.
"I dropped the apostrophe and ran my name as 'ODowd,'" he said.
It's not just the bad luck o' the Irish. French, Italian and African names with apostrophes can befuddle computer systems, too. So can Arab names with hyphens, and Dutch surnames with "van" and a space in them.
Michael Rais, director of software development at Permission Data, an online marketing company in New York, said the problem is sloppy programming.
"It's standard shortsightedness," he said. "Most programs set a rule for first name and last name. They don't think of foreign-sounding names."
The trouble can happen in two ways, according to Rais.
One: Online forms typically have a filter that looks for unfamiliar terms that might be put in by mistake or as a joke. A bad computer system will not be able to handle an apostrophe, a hyphen or a gap in a last name and will block it immediately.
Two: Even if the computer system is sophisticated enough to welcome an O'Brien or Al-Kurd, the name must be stored in the database, where a hyphen or apostrophe is often mistaken for a piece of computer code, corrupting the system.
That's what happened during the Michigan caucus in 2004, when thousands of O'Connors, Al-Husseins, Van Kemps and others who went to the polls didn't...
Thu, 21 Feb 08
Microsoft Opens APIs, Protocols as EU Demands
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58478
In a major shift in its approach to the open-source community and intellectual property, Microsoft announced Thursday four broad principles for openness and interoperability.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the principles -- to provide open connections to Microsoft's high-volume products, to improve data portability, to enhance Microsoft's support for industry standards, and to open communications with the IT industry.
The move is a direct result of the European Court of First Instance's decision in October that Microsoft must provide open access to its APIs and protocols.
"It's a fundamental recognition on Microsoft's part that the company has more to gain by working within the requirements of the European court's decision than to continue beating its head against the wall," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, in a telephone interview.
"The EU courts have said Microsoft is going to have to abide by its market's rules. There comes a point where a company needs to examine and re-examine what its doing," King said. "As the IT industry increasingly goes global, companies have to learn to play by the rules of the markets they want to compete in," whether that means the openness the EU requires or the complicity in censorship that China requires.
To open connections to Microsoft products, "We will document APIs and communication protocols," Ballmer said. "Developers will not need to take licenses to access that information."
Ballmer said Microsoft is immediately publishing 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade-secret license. It will also post documentation for Office 2007 protocols "in coming months," Ballmer said. Bob Muglia, senior vice president for the server and tools business, said that documentation will come online no later than June 2008.
"Documents and data have a lifetime that now exceeds the lifetime of...
Thu, 21 Feb 08
Remote System Will Ease Lost-Notebook Worries
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58476
Technology in the next generation of notebook hard drives will help you sleep better at night if your notebook is lost or stolen. Phoenix Technologies has an agreement with hard-drive manufacturers Seagate and Hitachi to have FailSafe, its remote data-protection system, built into new drives available within the next two or three quarters.
"If you lose your computer, you lose the machine, but more important for most users is that the machine contains an invaluable amount of data," Phoenix's Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Gaurav Banga, told NewsFactor. "FailSafe is a mechanism by which the owner of a personal computer can continue to exercise command and control over the computer even when it is not in their possession."
When a computer that contains FailSafe is purchased, the consumer adds it to the FailSafe system. FailSafe works through a password-protected, Web-based console that allows users to exert control remotely. From there, Banga said, "You can see where your computer is, and you can reach out to it" and delete files, disable it temporarily, or simply turn it into a brick. Different manufacturers will offer different FailSafe capabilities.
With new-generation notebooks including GPS, Banga said a stolen machine could even triangulate its location and display on a Google Map the next time it's connected to a network. Or it could snap a picture of the thief with its webcam and that could be made available to law enforcement.
Like other hard-drive manufacturers, Seagate already offers Seagate Secure Technology that provides encrypti