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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 |Wed, 30 Apr 08
British Snap Up Nintendo's Wii Fit Video Game
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59527
For a nation perhaps better known for a fitness regimen of darts and a pint, the news from Elspa Ltd.'s Chart-Track was particularly startling. The data-compilation service, which among other things tallies the sale of software titles, announced that last week Nintendo's Wii Fit was the top-selling title in the United Kingdom. The company's Mario Kart Wii dropped to the number-two position.
Chart-Track said Wii Fit had the sixth-fastest-selling launch of any software title, recording more than $32 million in sales in its first seven days. Approximately one in 10 Wii owners in the United Kingdom purchased Wii Fit, the company said. Only games from the industry's major franchises -- Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto and Halo -- did better than Wii Fit in their opening weeks.
The strong debut by Wii Fit was considered all the more remarkable because of the higher cost for the title. The software is bundled with a proprietary balance board used in game activities, including step aerobics, jogging and even yoga. The board can measure a player's weight, center of gravity, and body-mass index, and a suggestion has been made that it could enable medical professionals to remotely assist patients with rehabilitation activities.
Together, the Wii Fit software and balance board retail for £70 (US$138) in England. A similar package is scheduled to debut in the U.S. on May 19 for $89.99. That is much more expensive than the general version of Grand Theft Auto IV, which retails for $59.99, but Take-Two also offers a "special edition" that costs $89.99.
The success of Wii Fit in the UK and its upcoming release in the U.S., where sales of the Wii console have been particularly strong, will only add to what has been a terrific year for Nintendo.
Just a week ago,...
Wed, 30 Apr 08
Windows XP SP3 Delayed as Death Nears -- or Maybe Not
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59526
The last upgrade to the popular but dying-or-maybe-not Windows XP operating system was supposed to be out Tuesday, but Microsoft decided to delay the release of XP Service Pack 3 to the Microsoft Download Center. SP3 was released to manufacturing on April 21 and a release via MSDN and Technet download was scheduled for May 2.
Microsoft cited a compatibility issue between SP3 and the Microsoft Dynamics RMS for small and midsize businesses. The glitch also affects Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which Microsoft began pushing out for automatic updates last week.
SP3 includes a variety of bug fixes and minor enhancements to XP. Several Windows Vista features are also provided, including Network Access Protection, "black hole" router detection, the Microsoft Kernel Cryptographic Module, and others. Each successive service pack includes all previous fixes.
The supported operating systems include Windows XP, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Home Edition N, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional Edition, Windows XP Professional N, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Starter Edition, and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. The download size, depending on selected components, is between 428KB and one megabyte.
Microsoft has repeatedly said it will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales for XP after June 30, but there has been a groundswell of support for XP as reports of problems with the newer Vista OS continue. XP Home has been granted a pardon until 2010 on low-end computers such as the Asus Eee.
Even as XP's end approaches, the reports of its death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, may be greatly exaggerated. On Monday, news reports indicated that computer makers Dell, HP and Lenovo will use loopholes in their Microsoft licenses to continue offering XP beyond June 30.
Dell's contract reportedly enables it to provide XP Professional as...
Wed, 30 Apr 08
New iMac Could Be Big Hit with Gamers
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59525
The upgrades to Apple's iMacs announced Monday might seem pedestrian, but some observers see them as heralding an exciting new future for the Mac -- gaming.
The high-end version of the iMac costs $1,799 and boasts a 24-inch screen, a 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with an option for 3.06 GHz, and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics card, among other goodies.
Writing on his Hardware 2.0 blog, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes provided some intelligence on those specifications and some speculation on the hardware. The 3.06-GHz option, he writes, is a "special run on an existing CPU overclocked to handle the 3.06-GHz workload and 1,066 MHz" on the front-side bus. It's hosted on a Santa Rosa motherboard, he added.
"Apple's working the current technology hard to get 3.06 GHz out of something designed to give 2.8 GHz here. Why?" he asked.
As for an option for a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics processor, Kingsley-Hughes said, "This is a high-end GPU and certainly offers far more power than most Mac users currently need from the iMac."
"Putting the overclocked processor and a high-end NVIDIA GPU in a box makes this system look like a gaming system to me," he wrote. Even though Apple has some iMac design constraints, "the company does seem intent on squeezing as much power as it can out of the components."
If Apple is aiming for the gaming market, it might just be expecting gamers to run Windows games via BootCamp -- the software that lets users run Windows on Intel-based Macs -- or a Mac-based gaming push might be in the works. "Either way, it looks to me like Apple is getting into gaming. And why not, it's a lucrative market!" Kingsley-Hughes wrote.
However, several blog readers doubted Apple has any such intention. Noting that Apple...
Wed, 30 Apr 08
Profitable Rogers Will Bring Apple's iPhone to Canada
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59524
Rogers Communications said its first quarter net income grew 102 percent to $339.8 million. Revenues at Canada's largest wireless network operator rose 14 percent in the quarter to $2.57 billion.
Executives said the company's first-quarter revenue bump was driven principally by 97,000 additions to the carrier's postpaid subscriber base. Rogers Communications also was able to reduce its monthly postpaid subscriber turnover rate, or "churn," to 1.10 percent -- down from 1.17 percent in the year-ago quarter.
"This was a robust start to 2008 both operationally and financially," said Ted Rogers, the company's chief executive. "We added subscribers across the business at healthy rates" and achieved "a good set of balanced results overall," he told investors.
Wireless data revenue in Rogers' first quarter increased 47 percent in comparison with the year-ago period. Company executives said the increase reflects continued growth in a variety of wireless data services ranging from wireless Internet access to downloadable ringtones, music and games, and the company remains bullish about mobile broadband.
Data revenue currently represents approximately 15.1 percent of the Canada-based wireless carrier's total network revenue -- up from 12.3 percent one year earlier. And the impending addition of Apple's iPhone to Rogers' product lineup potentially could boost the carrier's data-plan adoption rates even further.
"We have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year," Rogers said. "We can't tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned. This is just one of the many exciting wireless, cable and Internet innovations that you'll hear from Rogers over the coming months."
Though the iPhone delivers a good user experience, the ultimate success of Apple's red-hot handset in Canada will be entirely dependent on the data plan Rogers intends to offer for the device, said Brownlee Thomas, a Montreal-based...
Wed, 30 Apr 08
GTA IV Expected To Set Records, Boost Take-Two's Value
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59522
OK, a quick show of hands: How many people called in sick today (cough, cough)? If early reports are any indication, a sudden wave of Grand Theft Auto-itis swept the globe last night as eager gamers stayed up late -- or never went to bed at all -- to explore the rich graphics, extensive soundtrack, and detailed story in Rockstar North's latest installment.
Although exact opening sales figures will not be announced for a few days, there is every indication that Grand Theft Auto IV is on track to smash the existing first-week sales record, currently held by Microsoft's much-hyped Halo 3. Released last September, Halo 3 generated $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours and $300 million by the end of the first week.
Game critics have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about GTA IV. The video game has a near-perfect rating on the Web site Metacritic.com, which summarizes reviews for different types of media. While noting the inherent violence of the game, critics have praised the sophistication and detail of the story, in some cases likening it to films like The Godfather and Goodfellas.
Douglas Gentile, director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family, said consumers are consciously seeking out entertainment like GTA IV. "We want media to affect us," Gentile said. "But as we become more used to it, we get more jaded, and seek out even more stimulating media. So ... we seek it out, it affects us, we seek it out more, and it affects us more."
One market sector clearly not jaded by video games is the music industry. One of the features of GTA IV that has drawn the most attention is its extensive soundtrack. The game features hours of music from a wide variety of genres, including jazz,...
Wed, 30 Apr 08
Cray Will Add Intel Processors To Supercomputers
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59508
Cray and Intel announced Monday a multiyear agreement to develop new supercomputers. Cray CEO and President Peter Ungaro said the agreement has the "potential of bringing together Intel's powerful silicon expertise and Cray's industry leadership" in scalable high-performance computing (HPC) systems.
Intel executive Patrick Gelsinger added that the collaboration will allow HPC users to take advantage of future Xeon and other Intel processor technologies.
The deal also involves Cray's licensing of Intel QuickPath Interconnect technology and an agreement for Cray to use Intel processors in systems that could be released as soon as 2011. Cray has been using processors from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices, as well as AMD's HyperTransport chip interconnect.
Among other projects, Cray has been using AMD processors and HyperTransport for several supercomputers it is building with IBM under a contract worth about $500 million with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). AMD technology was being used for Cray's Cascade system, which was featured in the DARPA bid.
Reportedly, Seattle-based Cray has now asked DARPA to use Intel technology in its Cascade technology.
Ungaro said this is not a switch, and Cray will still use AMD technology. Intel's increased efforts in the supercomputing space, including scaling up a business unit devoted to this area, reportedly played a part in Cray's increased interest in its technology.
Among the component designs the companies will explore are multi-core processing and advanced interconnects. One of the goals is to link Intel's QuickPath Interconnect with Cray's systems-level interconnect. The collaboration is expected to result in a range of HPC systems and technologies over several years.
Supercomputers are used for computer-intensive tasks, ranging from weather forecasting to drug designing. Processors are typically two to four cores, but supercomputers have hundreds or thousands of processors, and new generations could have processors with more cores.
Martin Reynolds,...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Google Researchers Want To Improve Image Searches
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59507
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how valuable is the ability to find the perfect image of an object from the entire Web? According to a paper delivered by two Google researchers at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing last weekend, the search-engine giant may be one step closer to answering that question.
Information scientists Shumeet Baluja and Yushi Jing announced the development of an algorithm, called VisualRank, that generates significantly more relevant image-search results than current results using text-based clues (captions and other words associated with each image).
The goal ultimately is to train computers to move beyond text into the effective identification of "rich content" -- the shapes, colors and context of images that humans recognize with little effort.
VisualRank, Baluja and Jing reported, is designed to incorporate ongoing advances in computer recognition into Web search technology. The complicated process blends image-recognition advances with Google's sophisticated tools for assigning rank and weight to search results.
The net effect, they said, is that within a relatively narrow universe of search results, the algorithm was able to reduce the number of irrelevant results by more than 80 percent.
But as Baluja and Jing freely concede, it is highly impractical to try to identify comparable images among the billions currently stored on the Web. To test its system, the Google team created data sets of images of the 2,000 products most commonly searched for on Google. Team members then assigned a relevance score to images produced by Google's normal image-search tool and VisualRank.
One of the questions is whether VisualRank has practical market possibilities or is merely a challenging intellectual exercise. As industry observers have pointed out, the Web site Like.com also offers surfers the ability to locate images of similar products by searching for a particular element in each image....
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Blackberry Faces a Strong Challenge from the iPhone
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59506
Apple's iPhone has dramatically shaken up the smartphone market -- especially the leader, Research in Motion. In just the last three months of 2007, smartphone shipments shot up 60 percent from a year ago, according to industry research firm IDC. And RIM doubled sales of the Blackberry, adding 6.5 million subscribers in its last fiscal year, double the previous year.
But as the market has grown, the Blackberry's market share has dropped from 45 percent to 40 percent while the iPhone took 17.5 percent in the second half of 2007. The iPhone's "consumerization" of the smartphone market has forced RIM out of its enterprise comfort zone and into the unchartered waters of consumer marketing.
RIM's efforts in the consumer space have largely fallen flat, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research, in a telephone interview. "All their marketing stuff falls flat. It's not persuasive, it feels forced," he said
Competing with Apple for consumers' wallets is a challenge. To pull it off, RIM needs to lure third-party developers, Sterling said. "If the Blackberry is able to get enough cool stuff on the device to make applications compelling to enough people, it's a hedge on iPhone's move into enterprise," he added.
Apple's appeal to third-party developers could easily overwhelm RIM. Apple has said it will launch a new version of the iPhone software to enable third-party applications on the iPhone and the iPod touch. Apple says more than 200,000 developers are working on applications for the iPhone.
Meanwhile, Apple will roll out Outlook and Exchange integration on the iPhone, which may give it a boost in the enterprise, putting additional pressure on RIM. "Blackberry's smartphone share will continue to erode if the enterprise responds to Outlook and Exchange on the iPhone," Sterling said.
Besides the iPhone, RIM is feeling pressure from...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Grand Theft Auto IV Ready To Roar Onto Screens
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59505
At midnight Monday around the world, rabid video-game players will finally be able to exchange $60 for the fourth installment of the wildly popular series from Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto. There is widespread expectation that GTA IV will sell more than six million copies in the first week, adding to its status as one of the gaming industry's most successful franchises.
There are even reports that GTA IV is on the radar of the Guinness Book of World Records for a possibility that the game could set new marks for units sold around the globe.
Not surprising, the release has renewed concerns about the game's pervasive violence, aggressive game play, and rampant racial stereotypes. As New York Times game critic Seth Schiesel put it, "[h]ardly a demographic escapes skewering." Associated Press reviewer Lou Kesten gave the game three and a half stars out of four, but noted the game "has lots of blood, some nudity and a nearly constant stream of filthy language."
The increasing realism of video-game graphics only heightens the concerns of observers. Last year, Rockstar North was initially blocked from releasing the second edition of its horror series, Manhunt, due to the game's extreme violence and sadistic themes. After some minor edits, the game was released under the most restrictive "M" (for mature) category. GTA-IV will carry the same label.
Douglas Gentile, an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family, said the success of the GTA franchise is as much about its game play as its content. "When GTA III came out," Gentile said, "it revolutionized games through its open architecture -- that is, it allowed you to do anything you wanted ... you didn't need to follow a script. That was a great...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Apple's iMacs Get More Power, Especially for Graphics
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59504
Apple's all-in-one iMac line is being upgraded with new Intel Core 2 Duo processors with 6MB L2 cache, a faster 1066-MHz front-side bus throughout the entire line, two gigabytes of memory for most models, and the most powerful graphics yet available.
The 24-inch iMac can now have a 3.06-GHz Intel processor and optional, high-performance NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics with 512MB of video memory. Apple said it can provide up to twice the standard performance for graphically intensive applications.
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said the iMac has been "an incredible hit with our customers" and that it is "just one of the reasons Mac sales are growing three and a half times faster than PC sales."
The new iMacs have suggested retail prices from $1,199 to $1,799. The new 20-inch 2.4-GHZ iMac features one gigabyte of 800-MHz DDR2 SDRAM that is expandable up to four gigabytes. The 20-inch is also available with a 2.66-GHz processor, and two gigabytes of memory expandable to 4 GB. The new 24-inch iMac comes with a 2.8-GHz Core 2 Duo processor that can be upgraded to 3.06 GHz, two gigabytes of memory, and a 320GB serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm that can be upgraded to a terrabyte.
Richard Shim, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, noted that the upgrades were "pretty standard and nothing dramatic." But this upgrade is a regular step in moving the iMac up the ladder of performance, he said.
"While these things might seem to be pedestrian, the significance is that they are 'revving the engines' of performance," he said.
He said this kind of regular upgrading is, at least in part, a direct result of Apple's decision to use industry-standard hardware components, especially Intel processors. When Apple machines were still built around...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Yahoo Ignores Deadline, So It's Microsoft's Move
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59502
Yahoo ignored Microsoft's deadline to respond to its $44.6 billion takeover offer by Saturday, leaving the next move in this chess game to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft has a number of options, but none of them are particularly appealing and investors are impatient with the lack of progress.
Typical was a comment reported by Bloomberg last week: "They need to quit fooling around and get the deal done," said Ken Smith, director of technology investment at Munder Capital Management.
Last week, speaking to business executives in Madrid, Ballmer dropped numerous hints that most analysts viewed as posturing. At one point he said that if a deal with Yahoo failed to materialize, "we go forward alone" by trying to compete directly with Google in online advertising.
But he also emphasized that Microsoft is not interested in sweetening the pot. In the same speech he called Microsoft's offer "quite generous" and hinted that a hostile takeover was in the works. "By this point if they don't agree, we would have to take our arguments directly to the shareholders," Ballmer said. "We will see what they do, and we will move appropriately at that point."
Financial analysts viewed much of this talk as posturing. The consensus among analysts is that Microsoft needs Yahoo to quickly build a business that can compete with Google. "Microsoft does need Yahoo," Sachin Shah, a merger-arbitrage analyst for ICAP Securities, told Bloomberg Television. "If they didn't, they would have walked away a long time ago."
If Microsoft is truly committed to acquiring Yahoo, it basically has three strategies: raise the price, launch a hostile takeover bid, or take a breather and hope Yahoo continues to flounder over the summer.
Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, expects Microsoft to go hostile. "Microsoft needs Yahoo, so I think their next step...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Struggling GPS Device Market Faces a Turning Point
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59500
Consumer navigation devices have gone from expensive gadgets to mainstream gear in just three years, but Europe's largest maker is struggling.
The experience of Netherlands-based TomTom NV -- which saw earnings fall 83 percent in the first quarter -- suggests the market for stand-alone global-positioning systems is at a turning point.
"What we saw for the first time is that selling prices fell, but volumes didn't improve enough to compensate," analyst Eric de Graaf of Petercam said after the results were reported Wednesday. "It's a signal the market is getting saturated."
Some analysts believe that as stand-alone versions are overtaken by cell phones and other devices with navigation technology built in, GPS devices will become low-margin commodity products, like pocket calculators. But others think a smart company could turn GPS devices into premium products the way Apple Inc. made its iPod music player stand out from a host of cheaper devices.
For now, TomTom's larger U.S. competitor, Cayman Islands-based Garmin Ltd., appears to be faring better by virtue of its greater range of products.
Including Taiwan's MiTAC International Corp. -- owner of the Navman and Mio brands -- the top three GPS makers hold around an 80 percent market share, giving them scale advantages over smaller players. But competition is coming from many directions, including big names like Nokia Corp., Sony Inc., Google Inc. and probably Apple.
"TomTom and Garmin are branded well," said Thilo Koslowski of Gartner Research. "But functionally there's not much difference" yet among GPS devices.
In 2007 alone, including strong holiday sales, 33.9 million units sold, almost triple the 11.9 million sold in 2006. Now, 10 percent of U.S. drivers and 20 percent of those in Europe own a navigation device. But prices for basic stand-alone devices have fallen below $200 from $500 or more.
TomTom reported a net profit of $12 million in...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Somebody Stole My Internet Domain Name
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59498
When Alicia Navarro began casting about for a memorable name for her new company, she confronted a brutal reality. All her brilliant ideas for an Internet domain name were taken.
"I came up with so many gems, only to be devastated to find that the domain name was not available," Navarro, a former executive at Vodafone, said. "It means that Internet entrepreneurs are having to come up with ridiculous words to name their businesses -- Twango, Yugma, Stikkit, Rootly."
Add Skimbit, the invented name of her London Web-applications company, to that list. Her Web woes -- like those of many others -- are tied to the sharp acceleration of speculation in Internet names, a practice known as "domain tasting" in which names are registered by the millions and tested for their advertising prospects without charge during a five-day grace period.
Arbitrators like the World Intellectual Property Organization and the National Arbitration Forum attribute the record number of international trademark disputes last year to domain tasting. Since this form of domain name tasting emerged in 2005, for example, the number of disputes to come before the WIPO has risen 48 percent, to 2,156.
For companies like Microsoft, domain tasting creates the constant headache of chasing after typo-squatters -- those who create and register Web sites with misspelled variations of the Microsoft name. For individual users, it means that millions of names are tied up in a constant churn of registering and returning names before fees are charged.
Now ICANN -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization based in California that manages domain names -- is considering steps to stamp out the practice.
The board of ICANN will vote in Paris in June on a proposal to severely limit the number of domain names that can be returned without a fee, but the...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Social-Networking Applications Can Pose Security Risks
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59495
Sarah Brown is unusually cautious when it comes to social networking. The college sophomore doesn't have a MySpace page and, while she's on Facebook, she does everything she can to keep her page as private as she can.
"I don't want to have to worry about all the different online scandals and problems," says Brown, an education major at St. Joseph College in Connecticut. She'd like to control her personal information and keep it out of the hands of identity thieves or snooping future employers. "It's just common sense."
It sounds like her info is locked down and airtight. But is it?
Turns out, even the privacy-conscious Sarah Browns of the world freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.
Brown, for instance, has installed applications on her Facebook page for Boston Bruins fans and another that allows her to post "bumper stickers" on her own page and those of her friends. It's a core way to communicate on social networking sites, which allow friends to create pages about themselves and post photos and details about their lives and interests.
People often think Facebook profiles and sometimes MySpace pages, if they're set as private, are only available to friends or specific groups, such as a university, workplace, or even a city.
But that's not true if they use applications. On Facebook, for instance, applications can only be downloaded if a user checks a box allowing its developers to "know who I am and access my information," which means everything on a profile, except contact info. Given little thought, agreeing to...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Growing Customer Base Boosts Verizon's 1Q Profit
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59492
Verizon Communications Inc.'s first-quarter earnings rose 9.8 percent as its wireless division signed up more customers than rival carriers, the company said Monday.
The country's second-largest telecommunications company earned $1.64 billion, or 57 cents per share, in the quarter that ended March 31, compared with $1.5 billion, or 51 cents per share, a year ago.
Revenue rose 5.5 percent to $23.8 billion from $22.6 billion.
Excluding one-time items, earnings were 61 cents per share, matching expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Analysts had expected revenue of $23.86 billion.
"Verizon has weathered the current economic uncertainty with strong first-quarter results," said Chairman and Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg.
Analysts have been looking to the telecommunications companies to hold up well as the economy slows. AT&T Inc., Verizon's largest rival, bore that out with an earnings report last week that showed little sign of trouble. On a conference call Monday, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said there was no change in bad customer debt during the quarter.
Shares rose 56 cents to $37.60 in premarket trading.
UBS analyst John Hodulik said wireless results where strong, while the landline business was somewhat lower than expected.
Verizon Wireless added 1.5 million subscribers, beating AT&T, which added 1.3 million in the quarter. However, its growth rate was down from 1.7 million in the same quarter last year. Verizon Wireless still trails AT&T in the total number of subscribers, at 67.2 million compared with 71.4 million.
Verizon Wireless started a minor price war for high-end cellular plans in February, introducing a $99.99 monthly plan with unlimited calls and no roaming fees. Other carriers quickly matched or undersold that plan, and stocks took a hit across the industry as investors feared for carrier margins.
But Verizon chief operating officer Denny Strigl said Monday that the plan was boosting results. Before the plan was introduced, 4 percent...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
The Real Threat to Google: Cell Phones
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59491
Google's biggest threat may not be Microsoft or Yahoo.
No, one of the most formidable challenges facing Google is likely sitting in your pocket or purse. It's your cell phone, and it will put added pressure on Google and other Internet companies to revamp the way they handle online marketing.
As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what's called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.
Google can now fit about 10 ads on a standard computer screen. [If you look at Google search results on a PC monitor, paid ads are the listings at the very top and along the right.] But on your cell phone, if you type in a search query at google.com you get only one or two paid ads in response.
Imagine the horror that would befall your business if a large slice of what you sell suddenly disappeared. A similar fate could befall companies that depend on online advertising, as small screens become the gateway to the Internet.
Of course, no one's suggesting that consumers will abandon standard computer screens overnight. And early research shows that mobile advertising may be more effective than standard online advertising, suggesting that it will be more lucrative for the companies that rely on it. Still, the shift is coming fast enough that Google must get prepared.
It was Apple, a frequent Google collaborator, that tipped the trend. Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
Nokia Announces Three New Mid-Range Phones
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59488
Nokia announced Monday three new cell phones for the mid-priced market. The world's biggest phone maker, based in Finland, described the Nokia 6600 fold, the 6600 slide, and the 3600 slide as balancing "stunning and sophisticated looks with the latest in mobile functionality."
Priced at 175 to 275 Euros (US$274 to $430), the new models will be released in the third quarter. Nokia executive Mikkel Drucker said the phones are a response to a "strong consumer demand for mobile handsets that blend elegant looks with modern features."
The 6600 fold features a 2.13-inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen with 16 million colors that is opened by a button touch. On the outer high-gloss surface, a double touch can "wake up" its display, showing such information as missed calls, incoming messages, and the time. A double tap in the right place can also put alerts on snooze, and either reject or silence incoming calls.
A two-megapixel camera has double LED flash, and the 6600 has easy access to Yahoo Go.
Its sibling, the 6600 slide, has a steel cover and an aluminum center key. As with the 6600 fold, a double tap can also bring up the time or alerts, or can mute incoming calls. This model has a 3.2-megapixel camera for still pictures and video, sharing can be done directly from the photo menu, and there's a 2.2-inch QVGA display for high-quality viewing.
A Nokia Maps application is included, but the Global Positioning System is not -- although an optional GPS module can be added.
The colorful 3600 slide is, the company said, its first product to feature background noise cancellation. A built-in music player can play up to 3,000 songs, stored on an optional microSD card. For picture-taking, there's a 3.2-megapixel camera with two-LED flash and autofocus.
Chris Hazelton, an...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
CRM Mashup Apps Help Businesses Make Connections
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59485
If mashups sound like the kind of Web 2.0 application best used for checking traffic jams on Google Maps, think again: Mashups within the enterprise environment are becoming common for functions such as integrating social-networking information into CRM tools. And as they get easier to make, they'll continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.
Kapow Technologies, which creates mashup environments for businesses, has taken some steps forward in bringing mature mashups into the corporation. This week it released several mashup products that aim to bring business intelligence to desktops with little human intervention. One new product is Kapow OnDemand.
"It can be used in any instance where what you're trying to do is eliminate the manual process of having people sitting there in front of a monitor finding information they need externally, and then copying and pasting it to get it into the environment they need," said Ed Julson, director of product marketing for Kapow.
Kapow's mashups work with the help of "robots," automated tools that collect and integrate selected Web data into a spreadsheet. "If you were a pricing analyst going to a number of different Web sites to collect information on the competition, you'd go to these sites, search for and find what you want, copy that piece of information, and paste it into spreadsheet," Julson said.
With OnDemand, a robot does that instead. "Instead of a copy-and-paste function, you actually add structure to that data" by embedding the data model into the robot, he explained. "When you bring this information back to the spreadsheet, it has structure; you can put it into a database, and applications understand it. Now you have a way to make connections to anything on the Web."
All an organization's subscribers have access to that information to make sharing easier. "There's...
Tue, 29 Apr 08
What Awaits the iPhone in Europe?
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59449
Will the iPhone change Europe? Or will Europe change the iPhone? Two recent newspaper reports published on the Continent say that Europe appears to be exerting the greater influence so far on the iconic device.
Neither report revealed its source, but both asserted that Apple was poised to fundamentally change the way it sells the iPhone in Europe, giving up its demand for a share of data revenue from operators -- which some analysts say is as much as 30 percent -- to accommodate local preferences for less expensive, subsidized devices.
In France, Les Echos reported on April 17 that Apple was pressuring Orange, the France Telecom subsidiary that is its exclusive sales partner in the country, to lower its euro 399, or $630, price for the iPhone to improve sales.
In Italy, La Repubblica reported Monday that Apple was prepared to give Telecom Italia a non-exclusive right to sell a new, high-speed version of the iPhone that would work on Telecom Italia's third-generation network without demanding a cut of revenue. Representatives of Apple and the operators declined to comment.
Carolina Milanesi, the research director of mobile devices in London at Gartner, the research firm, said it was likely that Apple would begin to tinker with, if not significantly change, the mechanics of its business model this year to ease its expansion into new European markets.
Several factors are pressuring Apple to abandon its exclusive sales strategy, Milanesi said.
One is softening demand for expensive cell phones in Europe, cited by both Nokia and Sony Ericsson in their latest quarterly earnings reports.
Another is the vagaries of the European national markets, which can make a single sales strategy impractical. In Germany and France, for example, consumers are conditioned to pay heavily discounted prices for new cell phones in exchange for one- to two-year service commitments.
But in...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Defense Could Object to Apple's P.A. Semi Purchase
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59487
Apple's planned acquisition of chip-design firm P.A. Semi may run into trouble from an unlikely source -- the Department of Defense.
According to EETimes, P.A. Semi informed several current customers Monday that it was about to acquired by an unnamed company and that it could not guarantee supplies of its chips going forward. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal that his company acquired P.A. Semi for its design engineering talent, not the product line.
But P.A. Semi's chips are widely used in every major branch of the armed services. If Apple stops production of the chips and no other manufacturer steps up, Defense may object to the purchase, EETimes said.
P.A. Semi's high-performance, low-cost PWRficient CPU is used in at least 10 Defense systems, including one that forecast using 70,000 of the chips over the next 10 years, the magazine said.
"We've had customers saying they are going to the DoD on this one," said a source who works with one of the companies that makes embedded computer boards with the processor.
"I've never seen such fast adoption of a product in the mil/aero world," said the source, who asked not to be named. "Typically users in this area take a wait-and-see approach on new products, but that didn't happen this time."
EETimes reported that P.A. Semi told customers that Apple "may be willing to supply the chip on an end-of-life basis, if it could successfully transfer a third-party license to the technology." That is probably a reference to the PowerPC architecture license from IBM.
"I don't know how a Lockheed Martin or a Raytheon would take the news that the part might not be available after a few months or perhaps two years," said the source. "Typically, these military programs last for many years."
Jobs also...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
AT&T Begins Wi-Fi Rollout at Starbucks Stores
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59486
AT&T and Starbucks on Friday announced the beginning of the rollout of AT&T Wi-Fi service at company-operated Starbucks stores, kicking off a nationwide effort that will continue through 2008.
At this year's AT&T stockholders meeting in San Antonio, Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson announced that the companies have started deploying AT&T Wi-Fi at Starbucks locations in San Antonio.
As of May 1, qualifying AT&T high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi customers will have complimentary Wi-Fi access at more than 7,000 Starbucks locations nationwide. For millions of AT&T customers, that means more speed in more places -- for free -- is on the way. Analysts said this gives the telecom giant an advantage over competitors like T-Mobile.
Stephenson said AT&T is moving to strengthen its ability to meet the needs of mobile consumers virtually everywhere.
"Expanding our reach across company-operated Starbucks locations nationwide
helps us bridge the gap between our wired and wireless offerings and affirms AT&T's commitment to connect people with their worlds, everywhere they live and work," Stephenson said.
Qualifying AT&T subscribers will be able to select "ATTWiFi" after powering up their mobile devices. Free AT&T Wi-Fi service is currently offered with AT&T's three higher-speed residential broadband packages, all small business broadband packages, and all AT&T U-verse offerings with high-speed Internet service.
For other customers, AT&T Wi-Fi will reach company-operated Starbucks locations throughout the year. The experience will include a mix of free and paid connection options for both frequent and occasional Wi-Fi users and qualifying Starbucks customers. Once AT&T Wi-Fi service is available, customers will be able to shop and surf both Starbucks' and AT&T's Web pages for products and services.
"We continue to build on the experience we know our customers expect from us," said Chris Bruzzo, chief technology officer for Starbucks. "By partnering with AT&T as our U.S. Wi-Fi provider we...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Stock Dip for Microsoft Does Not Mean a Yahoo Victory
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59483
Microsoft's stock was down Friday, but Yahoo may not have much reason to hope for a higher price in the acquisition drama. Despite lower-than-expected revenues, analysts said Microsoft isn't likely to raise its takeover bid.
Microsoft on Thursday announced third-quarter revenue of $14.45 billion, operating income of $4.41 billion and diluted earnings per share of 47 cents. Operating income and earnings per share results included a charge of $1.42 billion, or 15 cents per share, for a European Commission fine.
"Our third-quarter results demonstrate the benefit of our diversified business model," said Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer. "Our broad span across geographies, product categories and customer segments is a tremendous asset and supports our outlook for double-digit revenue, operating income and earnings per share growth for this fiscal year and also for fiscal year 2009."
Yahoo has rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid -- twice. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent what amounts to an ultimatum letter to Yahoo's board in early April. The letter made clear that Microsoft's goal in making "such a generous offer" was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction.
Ballmer wanted Yahoo to authorize a team to negotiate and come to a definitive agreement. He then threw down the gauntlet: a three-week deadline to come to a conclusive agreement -- or else. That three weeks ends on Saturday. Yahoo is still not budging, and neither is Microsoft.
In the earnings call, Liddell offered an update on Microsoft's plans: "Speed is of the essence for the deal to make sense. Unfortunately, the transaction has been anything but speedy and has been characterized by what would appear to be unrealistic expectations of value."
The Internet has always been Microsoft's weak spot, according to Marc Pado, a securities analyst with...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Ericsson Eyes Flat Mobile Infrastructure Growth
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59482
Mobile network equipment maker LM Ericsson told investors that its sales rose 5 percent to $7.4 billion in the first quarter, but its profit for the period fell 55 percent to $60 million. Still, the results were far better than many industry analysts had expected.
Ericsson's mobile infrastructure business developed well in the quarter, considering the present market environment and the declining U.S. dollar, noted Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg. "The sales development in the quarter reflects the demand for mobile infrastructure, especially in high-growth markets," Svanberg said. Absent the dollar's negative impact, "total growth would have been 11 percent in constant currency terms."
Though the proportion of new network builds in high-growth markets -- especially in India -- is increasing, "in combination with a weaker U.S. dollar, this continues to put pressure on our margins," Svanberg explained. Therefore, Ericsson still finds it prudent to be cautious and "plan for a flattish mobile infrastructure market in 2008," he said.
Still, Svanberg remains upbeat about the company's longer-term prospects in light of the rollout of mobile broadband on networks around the world. Subscriber growth on the network side of the business continues strongly -- up by 160 million in the first quarter alone. The numbers were "pretty impressive" in March, with China up by around 9 million, and India up by about 7 million, Svanberg said.
The global wideband CDMA subscriber base is also growing. "It's now over 200 million, and the number of HSPDA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) subscribers within that is also growing quite quickly," Svanberg noted.
What is important to understand here, Svanberg said, is that all these mobile technologies will continue to coexist for years to come.
"In the early days, one technology matured and was eventually replaced by another," he noted. "Now, with so many subscribers and such...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Yahoo To Rewire for Social Networking with Open Strategy
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59481
Yahoo may resemble islands of Web properties, but the company is launching a renovation that could turn it into one huge platform. On Thursday, Yahoo announced its Open Strategy at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
"Imagine a world where you can write code that will meaningfully reach millions of users in a single bound," wrote Yahoo's Neal Sample on the company's Yodel Anecdotal blog.
Open Strategy invites developers to use Yahoo's huge scale, he added, "to write applications that build on our existing properties," such as Mail, Sports, Search, the front page, mobile, My Yahoo, and others. Yahoo-owned properties also include the photo-sharing site Flickr, the bookmarking site Del.icio.us, and the social-calendar site Upcoming.
Sample also noted that, with 500 million unique users spending 235 billion minutes each month on its sites, and with 10 billion relationships in buddy lists and Yahoo address books, the company has "a massive, latent social network." The new initiative, he added, will "bring it to the surface."
In other words, he told news media, Yahoo is not building another social network, but "building social into everything we do."
He described it as a "rewiring" of Yahoo by building structures that change how its pieces work together. He said developers will be able to take advantage of the "vitality" that will exist within this unified platform. An application written for a Yahoo property will be able to integrate with other properties and with the extended social network.
An example is Yahoo's Search Monkey, where developers can blend other data with search results so that, for instance, an Italian restaurant could have reviews and ratings along with the link to its Web site. Search Monkey officially launches in mid-May.
Charlene Li, an analyst with industry research firm Forrester, wrote on her blog that Yahoo's rewiring "is...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Microsoft Insists XP Death Date Firm Despite Ballmer
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59480
Despite CEO Steve Ballmer's comments, Microsoft has no plans to continue selling Windows XP after June 30, the company said Thursday. It added, "Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged. We're confident that's the right thing to do based on the feedback we've heard from our customers and partners."
Ballmer started a wave of speculation at a press conference in Belgium when he suggested that the June 30 deadline could be changed. "If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," he said, according to Reuters.
A spokesperson from Microsoft's public-relations firm, Waggoner Edstrom, told PC World that the company's research had led it to conclude that "the dates are right." Microsoft believes "we've made the right accommodations for customers in certain segments who may need more time to transition to Windows Vista," she said. "But as Steve noted, we maintain a constant stance of listening to our customers and our partners. That's what is guiding our plan, and will continue to guide us going forward."
The anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. More than 170,000 people have signed an online petition spearheaded by InfoWorld magazine to "Save XP." The petition calls for Microsoft to keep XP around "indefinitely. Not just for another six months or a year but indefinitely." And enterprise adoption of Windows Vista has so far been tepid.
"Ballmer's cryptic comments suggest that although they say they listen to customers, they're hard of hearing," said Galen Gruman, the InfoWorld editor who launched the petition, in an e-mail. "On one hand, Ballmer's comments acknowledge a demand for XP beyond June 30, but then he indicated that demand is trivial. I believe he's wrong."
Gruman foresees a rising chorus in favor of XP as the...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
One Laptop Per Child Controversy Centers on Windows
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59479
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative wants more kinds of Sugar, and some developers are not sweet on that idea. Sugar is the user interface created for the low-cost laptop developed by a team headed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte. The XO laptop, originally intended for a price point of $100 and incorporating an open-source Linux operating system, is designed for use by children in third-world countries.
This week, Negroponte indicated that Sugar is not only a great interface for Linux, but for Windows as well. "Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed," he wrote in a posting on an OLPC site. It needs to be "disentangled," he said, from collaborative tools, power management, and other functions, so it can be modularized and evolve more efficiently.
He is also seeking to have it run on top of Windows, which has soured the enthusiasm of some for the XO. The laptop, if sold in the tens of millions worldwide as originally envisioned and if based on Linux, could become a key driver in moving that open-source operating system toward popularity on the desktop.
Negroponte has confirmed that OLPC has been in discussion for several months with Microsoft about a dual-boot version of the XO. In October, a Microsoft executive told news media that the company was spending "a nontrivial amount of money" on adapting Windows for the XO.
Negroponte, in his e-mail, said "some purism has to morph into pragmatism" as the organization reaches out to engage a wider community, and it is "absurd" to suggest this "forsakes open source or redirects our mission."
Some of the developers upset about the current direction are inside OLPC. On Wednesday, OLPC developer C. Scott Ananian posted a reply on the organization's site, in which he publicly criticized...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
CIOs Battle Hackers Using Olympic-Themed Attacks
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59463
The run-up to the Beijing Olympics has been anything but smooth, with global protests marring the festivities. While police battle the protestors and athletes battle each other, CIOs are engaged in another battle: with hackers using the Olympics as a guise for digital attacks.
Security experts at MessageLabs, which scans e-mail messages for hostile content and provides Web security services, have found more than a dozen Olympic-themed attacks over the past six months, targeting different industries with Trojan attachments that could allow the attacker to conduct corporate espionage. These e-mail attacks have realistic and legitimate-sounding names, such as The Beijing 2008 Torch Relay, and purport to be from the International Olympic Committee in some cases, although most originate in Asia.
It's not new to say that e-mail attacks contain Trojans. What's new is the latest shift to delivering a malicious payload without being detected by antivirus programs, said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs. "The file that was infected with the Trojan was an Access database (.mdb) file," Sunner said. "Throughout the time MessageLabs has been intercepting targeted Trojans, almost all of them have been inside Microsoft Word documents using the vulnerabilities within those file types."
But as those vulnerabilities have been fixed, the attackers have exhausted their options with Word documents and have moved on to new types of Microsoft files. Sunner said exploits within these file types are much less likely to be detected by traditional antivirus engines.
The evidence shows that the attacks were successful. While MessageLabs won't say who the target was, Sunner told us that "the social engineering in this attack has been so precise that the target passed the malicious e-mail on to others. It marks the first time that such an outcome was intended by the attackers."
Targeted attacks...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Cable Companies Pull Out of Joint Venture with Sprint
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59456
Three of the nation's largest cable companies are quietly pulling the plug on a joint cell-phone venture with Sprint Nextel Corp., called Pivot.
Spokespeople for Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Cox Communications Inc. said Wednesday they have stopped marketing the Pivot service and plan in the coming weeks to give their Pivot customers the option of switching to traditional Sprint mobile phone plans.
A spokeswoman for the fourth cable partner, privately held Advance/Newhouse Communications Inc., declined to comment.
Pivot customers will be able to keep their phones and their numbers and receive a month's free Sprint service for their trouble. They'll also be given a set period once they've switched over to cancel their contract without penalties.
Announced with great fanfare in November 2005, the four cable partners and Sprint each invested $100 million in the venture. The Pivot brand was unveiled a year ago.
The partnership's goal was to give the cable operators a "quadruple play" of voice, video, Internet and wireless products in their battle against telephone companies that have added TV to their arsenals.
But the cable companies said the complexity of the offering itself, as well as meshing what was essentially a retail operation with their cable service, made marketing Pivot a chore and controlling the direction of the joint venture difficult.
"We remain committed to bringing a wireless component to our portfolio of services, but we don't believe Pivot was the best option," said Cox spokeswoman Jill Ullman.
The cable companies refused to say how many customers they had signed up through Pivot, but each said it had launched the service in a limited number of markets.
Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley added that it's still unclear how important wireless services are in keeping customers from jumping to other providers.
"Wireless in some format may be part of our portfolio, but we...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Security Gaps Open When ISPs Hire Third Parties
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59455
When Internet providers hire third-party companies to serve up advertisements on unused Web pages, that creative attempt to make money can open major security vulnerabilities they can't control, a researcher has found.
One such vulnerability -- described last weekend at a security conference by Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for Seattle-based computer security consultant IOActive Inc. -- works like this:
Say you mistype the name of a Web site into your browser. Instead of getting an error message, you get a wall of advertisements whose profits flow back to your Internet provider.
A hacker who breaks into the computer system of the company hired to display those ads can cause all kinds of mayhem, injecting code onto the pages you see or altering the pages to trick you into coughing up sensitive personal information.
"The security of the Web for these ISPs is limited to the security of these random ad servers," Kaminsky said in an interview.
Kaminsky's presentation centered around a "dead trivial vulnerability" he discovered on the servers used by U.K.-based Barefruit to serve ads for EarthLink Inc.'s Internet service.
The so-called "cross-site scripting" vulnerability allowed him to place his own code and content on pages Barefruit was serving.
Barefruit Chief Executive Dave Roberts said the company fixed the vulnerability -- which he said could be exploited only in "incredibly unlikely circumstances" -- within 30 minutes after Kaminsky told the company about it.
Kevin Brand, senior vice president for access products for Earthlink, said no users were harmed by the vulnerability, and he said Earthlink lets customers opt out of seeing ads on unused Web pages. But it requires them to alter the settings on their computers to do that.
"We're not trying to hold any of our customers hostage by any means," he said. "We're just trying to improve their experience."
Other security experts said Kaminsky's...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Some Car-Stereo Makers See Drivers Ditching CDs for iPods
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59446
First eight-track players slid off into history. Then that unruly stack of cassette tapes disappeared from glove compartments. Now, car-stereo makers are marketing units that threaten to boot compact discs into the auto audio graveyard.
On Wednesday, Blaupunkt announced it's shipping a second-generation, $160 stereo and AM/FM radio that ditches the CD player in favor of ports for other digital music technologies including Apple iPods and other MP3 players, thumb drives or other USB devices or SD memory cards.
Other makers have competing units that began appearing last year. All are aimed at the growing segment of music-loving auto enthusiasts who carry their tunes in their pockets.
"We're very close to an age when we're not going to have to carry around a bunch of discs anymore," says Ben Oh, editor of Car Audio & Electronics Magazine. Units "are starting to gain some popularity."
Going CD-free:
*Clarion. The car-stereo maker rolled out a $199 unit last year that plays music from MP3 players or SD cards. It was treated as a market test, but "we've hit our expectations" for it, says Kevin Kuenzie, senior manager. "You get better sound out of a CD, but very few people recognize it."
*Alpine Electronics. Three CD-less units were unveiled in January at $200 to $400, "for the consumer who takes their iPod with them everywhere," spokeswoman Connie Sung says. In the space vacated by the CD player, "We take that real estate and use it toward better sound quality and faster data transmission."
*Blaupunkt. The new unit adds capabilities to one introduced last year that was a "slow burner" in sales, not catching on right away, says Andrew Oswick, a general manager. But the future is clear: "There's a new breed of consumer who doesn't want to have CDs. They get their music from any number of online stores."
In industry...
Sat, 26 Apr 08
Motorola Plots Its Comeback as Cell Phone Icon
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59445
Talking with Greg Brown, Motorola's new CEO, is a bit like stepping into The Twilight Zone: Both require you to suspend disbelief, at least temporarily, and simply go with the story line.
Brown says the company's board is spinning off Motorola's troubled cell phone division for one reason and one reason only: to "unlock" the value of the business, which has no strategic value to the rest of the company.
Carl Icahn, the corporate-raider-turned-shareholder-activist, has pushed Motorola for more than a year to take such a step. Brown says, "That really wasn't a factor."
Even if the handset division were flying high and Icahn hadn't shown up, he says, "The result would have been the same. We would have spun it off anyways."
So it goes these days at Motorola, which is struggling to recover from a string of management, marketing and product blunders. The missteps have left it ill-prepared to compete in the wireless industry it birthed and promoted for more than 35 years.
Motorola's answer, for now, is to split itself into two parts: one devoted to the money-losing handset business, the other to the profitable parts of the company that provide software, hardware and broadband gear to a range of government and corporate customers. About half of Motorola's $37 billion in annual revenue is generated by the cell phone business. The balance is from the other two divisions.
The split, which will result in two independent companies with separately traded stocks, is expected to take about a year to complete. Investors will wind up with shares in both. Brown plans to join the successful part of the business. A search for a CEO for the handset business is underway.
Some analysts are lukewarm, at best, to Motorola's plan. "Breakups don't usually enhance shareholder value," says Mark Sue, an analyst at RBC Capital in New...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Google Offers Branding Ads for Mobile Devices
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59462
In another move to extend its market-leading brand beyond the desktop, Google on Wednesday launched brand-image ads for mobile devices.
The image ads look like standard image ads for desktop Web pages, but they are smaller to fit on mobile screens and they run on the mobile-content network. All mobile image ads are keyword-targeted, priced on a cost-per-click basis, and must link to a mobile Web page.
Mobile image ads are currently available in Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, the UK, and the U.S.
"For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good click-through rates," Alexandra Kenin, Google's product marketing manager for mobile ads, wrote in the company's blog. "Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page."
For publishers, he continued, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. Publishers can choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both, and Google will dynamically return the ad it expects will perform best at the time the ad is shown. Publishers who are already using AdSense for mobile content do, however, need to update their AdSense code to display mobile ads on their site.
"For those of you who are mobile Web surfers, mobile image ads provide a new way to interact with mobile content," Kenin said. "Contextual targeting keeps ads relevant, and with only one mobile image ad shown per page, you can uninhibitedly browse mobile Web sites while clicking only on the ads that interest you."
Worldwide mobile advertising is projected to surpass $2.7 billion this year, up from $1.7 billion in 2007, according to Gartner.
What's more, 23 percent (58 million) of all U.S. mobile subscribers said they were exposed to advertising on their phones...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Apple's Purchase of P.A. Semi Suggests New Devices
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59461
Apple's surprising purchase of P.A. Semi, a niche chip designer, for $278 million has analysts and journalists trying to make sense of the deal and what it means for future products.
P.A. Semi is a 150-person company specializing in high-performance, low-power processors for the PowerPC platform -- the very platform Apple dumped a few years ago in favor of Intel chips for the Macintosh. P.A. Semi was founded in 2003 by Dan Dobberpuhl, a long-time Digital Equipment designer. He was a lead designer for DEC's Alpha and StrongARM processors in the 1990s.
Apple has been talking to P.A. Semi for about three years, just before abandoning the PowerPC line, Forbes reported. At that time, Dobberpuhl was talking about designing super-powerful chips that drew little power, but Apple ultimately chose to move the Mac to the Intel platform, Forbes said.
P.A. Semi boasts an impressive team of designers. Besides Dobberpuhl's work on DEC chips, its designers have worked on Intel's Itanium, AMD's Opteron and Sun's UltraSparc. Last year, P.A. Semi released a 64-bit dual-core microprocessor that consumes a mere five to 13 watts running at two gigahertz. The company said it was 300 percent more efficient than any other chip.
So what could Apple do with this kind of know-how? Tina Teng, a wireless analyst at iSuppli, doubts Apple is just looking at controlling designs for future version of iPhone chips, which are currently supplied by Samsung. "Just to have an internal design for a product that's going to be ready in the short term ... it's too much investment," Teng said. She thinks Apple is looking down the road to a next-generation product, where Apple can benefit from "having total control of what areas P.A. will focus on."
That's not to say P.A. Semi won't be involved in designing chips for the iPhone....
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Apple Reports 43 Percent Jump for Strongest Q2 Ever
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59460
It's been another boffo quarter for Apple. On Wednesday, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced revenue of $7.51 billion for its second quarter, compared to $5.26 billion a year ago.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the company was "delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March-quarter revenue and earnings in Apple's history." Looking ahead to the third quarter, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company expects revenue of about $7.2 billion.
The quarter's net profit was $1.05 billion, versus $770 million in the same quarter last year. The gross margin, however, was down from last year's 35.1 percent, to 32.9 percent.
Some financial analysts have noted that the gross-profit margin came in below expectations, while net income was higher.
Macintosh computers showed a 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth compared with the year-ago quarter, and iPods had a one percent unit growth and an eight percent revenue growth. Actual sales were nearly 2.3 million Macs and about 10.6 million iPods.
Globally, the company sold 7.8 million desktop and notebook computers. Its growth rate worldwide for computers was 38 percent, more than twice that of the industry average. In the U.S., the NPD Group reported last month that Apple's share of the market was 14 percent, up from nine percent at the same time last year
The tiny increase sales growth for the iPod stems from the fact that it has been so successful, with the market saturated. Apple has lowered prices on some units, but it has also been replacing the growth in iPod hardware sales with its still-growing online music sales.
Apple sold about $880 million worth of music and accessories in the quarter from its iTunes Store, 35 percent higher than a year ago. And the iTunes Store was recently named by...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Ballmer Hedging Bets on Yahoo, Vista
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59459
Microsoft is "prepared to move forward without Yahoo," CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday, speaking in Milan. Noting that $44.6 billion is "a lot of money," Ballmer said Microsoft does not plan to increase its offer from its intial offer in January. Originally worth $31 a share, the offer is now worth about $30.45 based on Microsoft's share price.
"Today Google has the lead, there's no doubt about it and I wanna make sure that they have plenty of competition," Ballmer said. "We think the best way to move that forward quickly is to come together with Yahoo. I hope that it works, but if it doesn't we go forward alone."
On April 5, Microsoft told Yahoo it had three weeks to agree to that offer or face hostile takeover actions. That deadline is this Saturday and Ballmer's speech fueled speculation that Redmond is rethinking whether the acquisition of Yahoo justifies the additional costs associated with a proxy fight and tender offer.
Many executives and ordinary workers are opposed to the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the opposition is not yet leading Ballmer to abandon the deal, his speech suggests he his "hedging his bets," the Journal said.
Ballmer was also hedging his bets on Windows Vista, the troubled successor to Windows XP. While consumer sales are strong, since Vista comes pre-installed on new PCs, the enterprise's response thus far has been tepid. Internet petititions to "Save XP" have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures. Microsoft is due to stop selling XP on June 30 but Ballmer suggested XP sales could be extended.
"XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," Ballmer said. "In the...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
IBM Unveils Cool Web 2.0 Server System
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59458
IBM has unveiled a new server offering aimed at large enterprises with online operations that make use of Web 2.0-style computing. The IBM iDataPlex features innovative cooling and efficiency improvements that can help online organizations dramatically lower the cost of operating massive data centers with tens of thousands of servers, IBM executives said.
"With iDataPlex, IBM is making Web 2.0-style computing more efficient and commercializing it for Internet companies and other high performance segments like financial services and research," explained the senior vice president of IBM Systems and Technology Group Bill Zeitler. "iDataPlex can provide a foundation that companies can build on to provide improved services to Web users around the world," he said.
The exponential growth of online traffic due to the popularity of video streaming, online gaming and social networking is forcing many large organizations with an online presence to build ever vaster pools of computers that devour energy resources on a 24/7 basis. IBM notes that these massive data centers typically force many enterprises to spend 10 to 30 times more on energy costs per square foot than a typical office building. But that's about to change.
IBM says iDataPlex has been designed to reduce power consumption by 40% while simultaneously increasing the amount of computing that can be done by a factor of five. To achieve these breakthroughs IBM said it created a design that, among other things, turns the standard rack on its side.
According to Big Blue, the new server offering can be outfitted with a liquid-cooled back wall that will enable the system to run at room temperature -- eliminating the need for expensive air conditioning systems. And even without water cooling, IBM claims, iDataplex will run at least 20% cooler then a conventional rack approach.
The double-digit cost savings can be "a hefty...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Leaked: Grand Theft Auto IV Hits the Torrents
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59442
While the buzz is building that Grand Theft Auto IV will be the biggest video game release ever, the leaked copies of the software are making it onto the Internet.
The pirated copy is reportedly available for the PAL version of the Xbox 360. A group that calls itself iCON is making the pirated files available. Bootlegged copies of Grand Theft Auto IV are finding their way to torrent sites across the Internet.
Although it is yet unclear if the 6.32 GB download is the entire game, and while only a PAL version is currently available, the rumor mill is churning about an NTSC version of the pirated program coming online in the next few days. ICON warns downloaders not to play the game while connected to Xbox Live until next week.
U.S. computer and video game software sales grew six percent in 2007 to $9.5 billion -- more than tripling industry software sales since 1996, according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). But the group says piracy is threatening its growth.
The ESA in February asked for assistance from the U.S. Trade Representative. The report highlights persistent problems in countries like Canada, China, Malaysia, Russia, and parts of Europe that thwart healthy game industry growth and development.
"In 2007, our industry had a record-breaking year with receipts totaling $18.85 billion, but piracy closes off promising markets, artificially limiting our industry's ability to contribute even more economic growth to the American high-tech economy and economies of our trading partners," Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, said in a statement.
Michael Goodman, a Yankee Group video game analyst, agrees that piracy restricts sales, particularly at the launch of new video games. Six months after launch, pirated copies are often downloaded by folks who wouldn't have paid for the program anyway,...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Microsoft's Tellme Releases Mobile Voice Searching for Local Info
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59441
If your fingers are too slow for you to easily search for local info on your mobile devices, Tellme is offering a solution. Your voice.
On Wednesday, the Microsoft subsidiary announced it was adding local "on-the-go" information to its mobile voice portal, beginning with some BlackBerry models. Instead of typing or looking through menus, a user who has downloaded the software just holds the "talk" button and says a keyword. The results are shown on the screen.
After the BlackBerry, the service is expected to be available on future Helio, Windows Mobile, and Apple iPhone devices. According to news reports, it was launched on BlackBerry first, rather than devices with Microsoft's own Windows Mobile, because of BlackBerry's support for Java.
Mike McCue, TellMe's founder and general manager, said the service not only uses a voice interface, but it provides a specific answer to a specific question -- "like a movie show time, local weather info or driving directions."
Users also do not need to type in their location, as Tellme uses global positioning system (GPS) technology to gauge a user's position.
Some of the uses for the service include a Business Finder, Movies, Traffic, Weather, Maps, or Driving Directions. As one example, a user can say a business name or a business category, such as "coffee" or "hardware," and results from Microsoft's Live Search will provide the business address, driving directions, and options to call the business or to share with a friend.
Similarly, saying the name of a movie theater will result in theaters closest to you, movie show times, driving directions, and, via Fandango, the ability to buy tickets. "Traffic" will result in a map of current traffic conditions, "weather" will show a five-day forecast, and "driving directions" followed by saying or typing the destination yields turn-by-turn directions.
There...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Midsize Companies Spend Big on Storage, Security
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59440
Medium-sized companies (those with 100-999 employees) in the United States will spend nearly $8 billion this year on data storage and security -- a 12 percent increase over what they spent last year. One major factor in that growth is the need to guard against security breaches and to ensure that sensitive data is kept confidential.
Research by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners revealed that as much as 86 percent of medium businesses (MBs) reported a security breach or data loss over the past 12 months, while 77 percent said they had experienced a hard-drive failure in the same time period. Nichelle McKenzie, a research analyst with AMI Partners, said that the cost of security breaches is about $7,000 annually.
With data breaches occurring more frequently than ever (and receiving ever-higher profiles), organizations are moving toward security and storage investments that they hope will help prevent loss. McKenzie said that most MBs are investing in data backup and recovery software. Those investments are aimed at preventing hard-drive failures and outside attacks, while also providing sufficient storage.
"The types of storage investments that are popular among U.S.-based MBs are in the areas of upgrading and purchasing storage hardware," McKenzie told us. "For example, MBs are spending roughly $1.4 billion for storage hardware that includes fibre-channel storage area networks, IP storage area networks, network attached storage, PC-attached storage, SAN switches, server-attached storage, and tape-backup devices."
These investments are needed to constantly manage the growing volume of e-mail data, ensure business continuity, make storage management/maintenance easier, and ensure legal compliance.
In terms of security, companies are investing in technologies that will keep them safe from hackers, as well as secure in case of a disaster.
McKenzie said that security hardware, managed security services and security software -- such as antivirus,...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Low-Cost Laptop Program Sees a Key Leadership Defection
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59433
A key person behind the "$100 laptop" for schoolchildren has left the project as the organization overhauls its operations and prepares to tweak its open-source approach by welcoming Microsoft Corp.'s Windows.
While the One Laptop Per Child Foundation is known as the brainchild of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nicholas Negroponte, his longtime MIT colleague Walter Bender was a close No. 2. Bender oversaw software and content for the green-and-white "XO" laptops, whose user interface was specially designed as an educational tool.
But in March, after OLPC's initial run of its $188 laptops reached fewer children than originally envisioned, Bender became head of "deployment."
Officially, OLPC said it was streamlining its organization because the laptop's technology essentially had been built. A different view came from the XO's former top security architect, Ivan Krstic, who wrote on his blog that Bender got demoted. Krstic said OLPC was undergoing a "drastic internal restructuring" and "a radical change in its goals and vision."
Then last week, Bender left the group entirely. That marked a third high-profile departure from OLPC. In addition to Krstic, Mary Lou Jepsen, who had been chief technology officer, left in December.
Negroponte said Bender was burned out after helping to shape OLPC for two years, during which time it has sold more than 500,000 laptops for children in such countries as Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Peru, Uruguay and Mongolia.
But Bender already has new plans: to launch an independent effort to further the development of the XOs' homegrown software, known as Sugar, and get it to run on Linux computers other than XOs. "Sugar is in a narrow place and it is ripe to be unleashed," he wrote in an e-mail exchange.
Sugar relies heavily on icons and other graphical features and avoids Windows' files-and-folders format. That was done to be intuitive to children in developing countries...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
EMC 1Q Profit Dips 14 Percent, Revenue Up 17 Percent
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59428
EMC Corp.'s first-quarter profit dipped 14 percent on acquisition-related charges, but the data storage vendor managed to post a double-digit revenue gain amid a slow U.S. economy, beating Wall Street expectations.
Its shares rose more than 2 percent on morning trading.
Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said Wednesday that net income fell to $268.8 million, or 13 cents per share in the three months ended March 31. That's down from $312.6 million, or 15 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.
The latest quarter's performance was hurt by a $79 million non-cash charge to write off research and development operations from recent acquisitions. Without that charge and other one-time items including employee stock options costs, EMC's profit was $477.3 million, or 23 cents per share.
Revenue rose 17 percent to $3.47 billion, beating the $3.45 billion consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
Despite a lagging U.S. economy that threatens to slow technology spending, EMC posted 14 percent revenue growth in North America, which accounted for 57 percent of total company revenue. Overseas, where EMC has consistently posted stronger growth, the revenue gain was 21 percent.
EMC's biggest business area, storage systems, posted a 10 percent revenue gain, with software license and maintenance revenue rising 18 percent. Revenue from a segment that includes professional services and systems maintenance posted 30 percent revenue growth.
EMC shares rose 35 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $15.94 in morning trading.
"EMC is off to a solid start to the year, and we remain on track to achieve the 2008 financial targets we set for the business at the beginning of the year," said Joe Tucci, chairman, president and chief executive of EMC, whose rivals include IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Network Appliance Inc.
EMC reported earnings a day after VMware Inc., a storage software maker in which EMC holds a majority...
Fri, 25 Apr 08
Opinion: Why the Apple TV Doesn't Make Toast
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59422
"You know, our next big step is we want it to make toast."
- Steve Jobs (2004, referring to iPods)
I have written a lot about the Apple TV. I've written about updates, I've pointed to stories and reviews, and I've discussed the compression issues related to getting HD content into the customer's Apple TV via the Internet. All along the way, I've resisted buying one for several reasons. I didn't think much of the content selection, I was trying to avoid another "buy the box then pay for the content" syndrome, and finally, I was using an iPod nano 3G to physically move content from my Mac to my HD TV system's A/V receiver input, and that seemed good enough.
In time, I decided those reason's weren't good enough, so over the weekend, I bought a 40GB Apple TV, and while my perceptions about the device haven't change a lot, my perceptions of the Internet culture surrounding devices like this have.
First of all, I should say that I like the Apple TV. The feed from a Comcast cable modem goes to a hardware firewall/router, then a D-Link gigabit switch in my office. From there, it continues through the walls to the living room via a Cat 5 Ethernet cable to an uplinked Linksys 10/100 switch. From there, I'm into the Apple TV and out to the Denon A/V Receiver via HDMI. I'm easily exceeding the 6 Mbps required to utilize an Apple TV for HD trailers and movies, since the link exits the Linksys switch at a measured 12 Mbps. All's well there.
I've not purchased any movies or TV shows yet, but I have looked at some trailers in HD, synced to my Mac's iTunes that has Jeremiah, Season II, (one of my all-time favorite TV shows) and...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Customs Can Search all Files on a Laptop, Court Rules
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59439
Business travelers carrying laptops into the U.S. from overseas may be in for a rude experience. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers can search laptops -- including opening every file on the hard drive -- without any reasonable suspicion.
The decision in United States v Arnold by a three-judge panel reverses a U.S. District Court decision that said such searches require reasonable suspicion.
The case concerns Michael Arnold, who arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from the Philippines and was pulled aside by customs agents for a random laptop search. When the officers started up the computer they found two folders on the desktop labeled Kodak Pictures and Kodak Memories.
When they found photos of nude women in those folders, they spent several hours opening multiple files until they found images of child pornography. They seized the computer and two weeks later obtained a warrant. A grand jury charged Arnold with breaking federal child-pornography laws.
In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit held that international arrivals at U.S. airports are subject to the same rules as border crossings. Those rules give customs officials broad leeway to conduct searches of anything a traveler brings into the country. The international terminal of a U.S. airport is the "functional equivalent of a border," the court said, citing the U.S. Supreme Court case of Almeida-Sanchez v. United States.
In arguments before the court, Arnold's lawyer, Marilyn Bednarski, had a creative argument to get around the presumption that border searches are reasonable. Computers are "an extension of ourselves," she told media outlets this week. "It really is like looking into someone's mind, rather than looking into a box or a folder or a purse."
In other words, Bednarski argued, laptops are actually an extension of our bodies. That argument is based...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Sony Ericsson Sees Softening Demand for Some Phones
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59438
Sony Ericsson said it shipped 22.3 million mobile handset units in the first quarter of 2008 -- a two percent increase from the year-ago period, but a sharp fall from the 30.8 million units the company moved in the prior quarter.
The world's No. 4 handset maker also estimates that it held an eight percent share of the global handset market at the end of the quarter -- a one percentage point decline from the prior period.
"We have experienced a softening of demand for mid-to-high-end phones in the markets where we have a strong presence, particularly in Western Europe," said Dick Komiyama, Sony Ericsson's president.
Gartner Research Director Carolina Milanesi noted that the company is heavily dependent on the region for its overall sales performance. "No other player from the top five has a similar exposure to Western Europe," she said.
During the first quarter, the average selling price (ASP) of Sony Ericsson's phones decreased both sequentially and year-on-year. Company executives stressed that this should be considered the overall market trend.
Milanesi thinks two different elements are playing specific roles in perpetuating the overall trend. "One is the lengthening of the replacement cycles, as operators sign up users for longer contracts on more expensive devices in the attempt to get some return on investment on the subsidies," noted Milanesi, who does not see this dynamic changing in the remainder of 2008.
Moreover, consumers currently might be a bit more careful with their spending and be opting for cheaper devices that do not lock them into longer contracts and high monthly tariffs. "I do not see this trend lasting into the second half of 2008, unless the economic situation gets much worse," Milanesi said.
Komiyama also cited the negative impact of "quicker than anticipated" growth in emerging-market sales of lower-priced phones --...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
FCC Chief Says Comcast P2P Blocking Was Widespread
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59437
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin lashed out at Comcast Tuesday in testimony before Congress, asserting that the cable company blocked peer-to-peer traffic widely, and that he doesn't know when or even if the company will stop blocking P2P applications.
Comcast used equipment from Sandvine Inc., or similar equipment, which provides a "relatively inexpensive, blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic by blocking certain traffic completely," Martin told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. "More modern equipment can be finely tuned to slow traffic to certain speeds based on various levels of congestion."
The FCC has conducted two public hearings focused on Comcast's blocking of file uploads over the peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent. At a hearing earlier this month at Stanford University in California, Martin strongly suggested the commission would take action against Comcast.
If the FCC finds that Comcast violated the principles in the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, "the commission stands ready to enforce this policy statement and protect consumers' access to the Internet," Martin said.
Martin contradicted several claims Comcast made in defense of its actions. "Contrary to some claims, it does not appear that cable-modem subscribers had the ability to do anything they wanted on the Internet," he said. "Some users were not able to upload anything they wanted and were unable to fully use certain file-sharing software from peer-to-peer networks."
In addition, Comcast's blocking activities were clearly not "content-agnostic," since Comcast has since announced plans to migrate to a "protocol-agnostic" method of network management, Martin said.
Perhaps most importantly, Martin said Comcast did not block traffic only at high-volume times, but blocked BitTorrent traffic even at low-volume times. "Based on the testimony we have received thus far, this equipment is typically deployed over a wider geographic or system area...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Apple Buys P.A. Semi for iPhone, iPod Advances
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59436
Apple has agreed to buy P.A. Semi, a boutique microprocessor design company, according to Forbes magazine. The deal is reportedly worth $278 million in cash.
Led by chip-industry veteran Dan Dobberpuhl, P.A. Semi is perhaps best known for its PWRficient processors for the multibillion-dollar high-performance embedded-computing markets. PWRficient 64-bit multicore processors aim to redefine power, cost and throughput efficiency in high-performance processing.
P.A. Semi's processors could provide advanced features in future iPods and iPhones.
The acquisition may be a dream come true for P.A. Semi, as well as deja vu. When Apple was ready to dissolve its relationship with IBM and its PowerPC processors, P.A. Semi was the rumored heir apparent processor maker for the Mac. P.A. Semi is an active member in Power.org and leverages IBM's Power Architecture in its processors.
However, Apple selected Intel as its chipmaking partner for the Mac. This time around, it appears Apple CEO Steve Jobs is more concerned about a competitive advantage for the iPhone.
"P.A. Semi makes some great technology, very power-efficient and ideal for a variety of mobile devices. It does appear to be something of a slap in Intel's face. Intel is making such a big deal of its Atom processor, which is aimed at that same market," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research.
Indeed, Intel announced five new Atom processors and Centrino Atom processor technology for mobile Internet devices and embedded computing solutions earlier this month.
The technology package includes the Intel Atom processor (formerly code-named Silverthorne) plus a single chip with integrated graphics called the Intel System Controller Hub that enables PC-like capabilities, including an Internet experience and long battery life, in devices that can fit in your pocket.
"Acquiring P.A. Semi is an interesting opportunity for Apple that probably reflects the company's tradition of...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
AMD Launches Phenom X3 Triple-Core Processors
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59435
Advanced Micro Devices has released three new Phenom X3 triple-core processors, saying they provide "a full HD experience and visually stunning gaming and digital performance." AMD added that its Phenom X3 line offers the "world's only triple-core x86 processor," with balanced platforms of "great value."
Leslie Sobon, AMD director of product and brand management, went further, calling AMD the only company in the world to "deliver a balanced platform solution without compromise," offering a "thrilling visual experience and powerful multi-threaded application performance."
The company said Phenom X3 processors, along with AMD 780G chipsets, provide the processing and display performance historically available only in higher-end systems. The X3 will come in three versions -- the 8750 running at 2.4 GHz, the 8650 at 2.3 GHz, and the 8450 at 2.1 GHz.
The new triple-cores play to AMD's strength in the marketplace. Martin Reynolds, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner, said AMD's challenge is that rival Intel has the performance edge. "So they can't match Intel head-to-head" on that front, he said.
Instead, he said, AMD can compete by providing the same performance with lower power requirements and a lower price with the new triple-cores.
He also described "triple-core" as interesting, because it is one of the ways AMD can "play with the silicon" -- that is, release products with various combinations of cores, speed, price and overall performance. We used to have "gigahertz races," he said, where a chip might not be released if it wasn't fast enough. Now, he said, you can take several slower cores and package them together into a new product.
He also noted that a triple-core product can allow a company to use quad-core chips that may have a single defective core, not uncommon in the manufacturing process.
AMD is in the process of finding product solutions...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Live Mesh Will Help You Connect all Your Devices
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59421
Too many devices in your life? Microsoft wants to help you simplify, and on Wednesday it launched a limited technology preview of Live Mesh.
Microsoft said Live Mesh is its new "software-plus-services platform and service that uses the Web as a hub to centrally connect people to the information, applications, people and devices they care about most." The preview is currently limited to a relatively small number of testers, but a larger beta is expected later this year.
The platform came about, wrote Microsoft's Amit Mital on a company blog, following an internal discussion about digital life. The Web is central to Microsoft employees' lives, he noted, and they stay connected to it through a variety of devices.
"Unfortunately, at least initially," Mital wrote, "every new device I add makes my life a little harder, not easier." He said there were many times where he would find that a file was on another machine, or he couldn't access something because he was offline.
Hence, Live Mesh. It allows devices to work together, data and applications to be available from anywhere, sharing to happen with just a few clicks, and your information to always be up to date and available.
In practice, a user signs up with a Windows Live ID and then goes to a personal Live Mesh page. The user then adds a device to a personal "device mesh," which allows each Windows device to become "aware" of others. Mitral noted that, in the future, Live Mesh will support the Mac and various mobile devices.
After a device has been added, there are a few changes in the device, most notably a new notifier icon in the Windows Taskbar. When a user hovers over the icon, a list of devices, news feeds and folders in the mesh pops up.
A user...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Yahoo Profits Up, But Microsoft's Bid Holds Steady
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59420
Yahoo's first-quarter revenue and profit beat Wall Street's estimates, but Microsoft is unfazed by the financial progress. In fact, before the earnings reports were even released, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wouldn't raise the bid for Yahoo no matter how well Yahoo performed.
Yahoo's revenues were $1.82 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a nine percent increase compared to $1.672 billion for the same period of 2007. Marketing-services revenues were $1.572 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a seven percent increase over the year-ago period. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2008 was $1.063 million, an 11 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007.
Jerry Yang, co-founder and CEO of Yahoo, said he believes the company can significantly accelerate its revenue growth, return to its historically high margins, and double its operating cash flow by 2010.
"This quarter's solid performance underscores the fact that we are executing on that plan. Yahoo is beginning to realize the benefits of the very substantial and deliberate long-term investments we've made to capitalize on the opportunities ahead in display and to recapture momentum in search," Yang said.
Yahoo has rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid -- twice. Ballmer sent what amounts to an ultimatum letter to Yahoo's board in early April. The letter made clear that Microsoft's goal in making "such a generous offer" was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction.
Ballmer wanted Yahoo to authorize a team to negotiate and come to a definitive agreement. He then threw down the gauntlet: a three-week deadline to come to a conclusive agreement -- or else. That three weeks ends on Saturday. Yahoo is still not budging, and neither is Microsoft.
"We are offering a lot of money," Ballmer said at a Microsoft conference in Milan on Wednesday....
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Study Finds Infected Web Pages on the Rise
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59415
A year ago, one out of every 909 e-mails was infected with malicious code. In the first quarter of 2008, only one out of every 2,500 was infected. Good news? Not really. All it means is that the attackers have changed tactics to overcome the defenses you're building, according to security company Sophos.
"As companies implement better e-mail defenses, the hackers are looking for new avenues of attack. E-mail also lacks some of the flexibility that Web-based attacks can offer," said Richard Wang, U.S. SophosLabs Manager.
A study done by Sophos that examines the security events and trends of the first quarter of this year showed that the decline in attacks against e-mail was balanced by what the company calls "an unprecedented number of threats" targeting Web pages. Last year, the company detected an average of roughly 5,000 infected Web pages a day; this quarter, the average is 15,000 per day. That's one new infected Web page every five seconds.
And these are sites you may well visit: 79 percent are legitimate sites, not sites set up specifically to host malicious attacks.
"The Web gives hackers an easy way to deliver software to their victims," Wang said. "It also allows them to change the software they are using at a moment's notice. This makes the Web far more flexible as an attack vector than e-mail."
Companies in the United States are taking the worst beating from the switch in tactics, with domestic companies now unwittingly hosting the greatest number of malicious content. (Last year, the number-one spot was held by China.)
"The most likely cause of this is the hackers' move away from purpose-built malicious Web sites. The vast majority of sites that we now see hosting malware are legitimate sites that hackers have broken...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
How You Can Eliminate Cell Phone Text Spam
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59409
Like most of the 148 million consumers who signed up for the Do Not Call list a few years back, I rarely get unsolicited calls to my home telephone.
But my wife has recently been receiving telemarketing calls as well as text messages on her cell phone, and several readers report having the same experience.
Unfortunately, regulators don't make it easy to deal with this problem.
Under federal law, auto-dialed calls to cell phones are prohibited, even if the cell phone is not registered on the Do Not Call list.
That's why a "Truth About Cell Phones" fact sheet issued two weeks ago by the Federal Trade Commission said, "It is not necessary to register cell phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry to be protected from most telemarketing calls."
But the unscrupulous telemarketers ignore the rules, leading to 10 "missed-call" notices and voice-mail messages from New Hampshire, Nevada and several California numbers we've gotten in the past month.
Each says it is our last chance to extend an auto warranty.
When I called the numbers left on caller ID, a recorded message -- the same one on each -- told me how to get on this telemarketer's do-not-call list. None gave any indication who was calling.
On several I left a call-back number, but I'm still waiting.
When calls are made to my home phone, they are merely annoying. But for people on a cell phone plan with limited monthly minutes, they can be costly.
Two of the calls came while we were vacationing in Australia last month, and each came with a $1.49 roaming charge. The cost would have been even higher except we ignored four other voice-mail messages until we got home.
My experience seems to be increasingly common.
"Phishers are now sending unsolicited text messages to your cell phone which, as you...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Analog Chipmakers Seek Deals as Business Slows
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59406
Analog chip makers, faced with slowing industry growth and looking to put their piles of cash to use, are likely to search out deals in the coming months.
The pace of deals had lagged behind the overall technology sector because of strong growth opportunities within the industry. The analog semiconductor industry grew at about 25 percent annually from the mid-1990s until about five years ago, driven by exponentially increasing demand for these chips from industries ranging from housing to communications.
Analog chips receive continuous signals and are used in products that involve sound waves or pressure, which cannot be broken into ones and zeros -- the stuff of digital signals. Mobile phones, computers, planes, cars and radios all use analog chips.
But the industry is now maturing, with the rate of growth dropping to about 10 percent annually. Analysts expect growth to decline slightly over the next few years.
"Growth isn't as explosive anymore," Patrick Wang, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan, said. "The industry is ripe for consolidation."
Analog chip makers are also feeling the sting of the economic downturn, which has shrunk demand for mobile phones, consumer electronics and other products that use analog components. Last month, Texas Instruments, the largest U.S. maker of chips for cell phones, lowered its first-quarter earnings forecast, citing a weaker market for chips used in high-end phones.
These factors are likely to spur companies that have the cash to look for alliances designed to lead them to new markets and plug holes in their product portfolios, analysts said.
Wang said he expected a handful of acquisitions over the next 12 months, as companies try to scale up by combining products, cross-promoting them and bundling sales.
The uncertainty in financial markets may also lead these cash-rich companies to seek acquisitions, since they could get better returns from a deal than...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Get Ready for the Monitor-Connection Format War
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59402
The computer world is no stranger to format wars, and we're about to have another one, with the new connection format to the next generation of computer monitors.
Oh yes, we're about to mix it all up again.
We used to connect monitors via those blue plugs and get the so-so VGA picture. A step up from that is the white DVI plug, the bigger, flatter one that started showing up on video cards and monitors a few years ago. That gave computer users a digital output and a pretty glorious picture, if consumers knew enough to use that connection instead of the blue one.
Now comes the confusing part.
Many manufacturers now are shipping monitors with HDMI ports, the USB-looking ports found on many HDTVs. These are cool ports (when they work, but that's another column) that also are capable of carrying digital audio. There is a large push to make HDMI the standard for computer monitors going forward. However, manufacturers have to pay a 4-cent per-device royalty for the right to use the HDMI technology.
Four cents! That will never stand, so some, including Dell, are trumpeting a competing (royalty-free) format called DisplayPort, which is not compatible with HDMI, of course. There are nerds and geeks who are trumpeting the merits of both in Apple bars everywhere, but the bottom line is we have another war on our hands.
The good news is the winner is already at hand. HDMI is already installed on every high-def TV on the planet and will be crowned the winner in the monitor wars, as well. Everyone knows what it is, everyone knows how it works, and the cables are in Wal-Mart.
For a while, we will see monitors that have both jacks on it, but in the end, it will cost lots more than 4 cents to...
Thu, 24 Apr 08
Is the Mobile Market Ready for Virtualization?
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59399
Peter Richards, who runs software startup VirtualLogix, carries three phones. He uses a Research In Motion BlackBerry Curve 8300 for e-mail, a Motorola Razr for calls, and an Apple iPhone for mobile Web browsing. He'd rather get that combination of features from a single phone.
Sunnyvale [Calif.]'s VirtualLogix wants to help build that phone using a kind of software known as virtualization, which increases the efficiency of computers. One of last year's most successful initial share sales came from VMware, a company that uses virtualization technology to help companies make better use of their servers, the computers that run Web sites and corporate networks. Orders for VMware's products surged 88 percent in 2007, to $1.33 billion. VirtualLogix and a handful of other companies, including Trango Virtual Processors, Green Hills Software, Open Kernel Labs, and Wind River Systems, are hoping to replicate that success by applying virtualization to cell phones.
Handset makers could use virtualization to more easily replicate the features found in one another's devices and confront the threat posed by Apple, which introduced the iPhone in 2007. Virtualization could also help cell-phone makers offer more features at a lower price. "Ultimately, the [handset] winner is going to be determined by their ability to manage security, costs, and time [to market]," says Steve Subar, CEO of Open Kernel. VirtualLogix got a push forward in its effort by a funding infusion from Motorola, unveiled on Apr. 21.
Here's how mobile virtualization works. Currently, programmers have to rewrite every application -- be it a game, social networking service, or other feature -- for each of the various operating systems, including Symbian, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, or Google's Android. The tinkering can take months. But virtualization software would enable a mobile-phone maker to add features regardless of the operating system. So Motorola could grab...
Wed, 23 Apr 08
Sony BMG Jumps on Nokia Music Phone Bandwagon
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59414
Sony BMG just became the second recording label to join Nokia's mobile music platform and service.
Dubbed Comes with Music, Nokia has already wooed Universal Music Group to its new system for delivering music on mobile phones.
Here's how it works: People who buy a Nokia Comes With Music device will have a year of access to the Sony BMG catalog of music. Consumers will be able to download tracks to both their mobile device and computer through the Nokia Music Store during the first 12 months that they own their Nokia device.
"As one of the leading major music companies in the world, our collaboration with Sony BMG means we can offer a huge range of fantastic music from both international and local artists via Comes With Music," said Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president and head of the Nokia Entertainment and Communities business. "It's great to have them on board as we move forward with bringing our unlimited music bundle to the market."
As Ojanpera sees it, Nokia Comes With Music is an innovation that not only helps people discover and enjoy music, but also expand the overall business and revenue for the benefit of artists, labels and other rights holders.
At the end of the one-year period, consumers can keep their downloaded tracks and, should they purchase a new compatible device or computer, can transfer their downloaded material by substituting their new device or computer for the original devices. That means music fans who participate in the Comes With Music experience will be able to keep their downloads on their device and/or computer for the rest of their lives.
Consumers will have a number of options for continuing to get new music after the Nokia Comes With Music subscription is over: They will be able to continue to purchase additional...
Wed, 23 Apr 08
New Jersey Court Says IP Addresses Are Private
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Individuals have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the connections between their personal information and the IP address they use to access the Internet, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Monday.
While the court's ruling was based on the New Jersey constitution's expanded definition of privacy, it is "an open question" as to whether the same privacy rights would be upheld in federal court, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University Law School, in a telephone interview.
The case concerns an employee accused of changing content on her company's Web site and altering the password so no one else could correct the misinformation. On Aug. 27, 2004, Timothy Wilson, owner of Jersey Diesel, noticed his company's shipping address had been changed on its Web site.
The company's IT specialist reported that someone had logged onto the server, changed the address and changed the login password. The specialist found the IP address of the person who made the changes.
Wilson suspected an employee, Shirley Reid, with whom he had recently argued, and reported her as a likely suspect to the Lower Township, N.J., police. When Wilson contacted Comcast to request the identity of the IP address user, Comcast declined without a subpoena.
The local police then obtained a deficient subpoena from the municipal court and served it on Comcast, which complied, identifying Reid as the person who changed the site. The subpoena was captioned Wilson v Reid, although no such case existed -- a blatant violation of the process.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether the evidence gathered from the deficient subpoena should be suppressed. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has found no privacy expectation in Internet subscriber information, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the state's constitution goes further and New Jersey citizens do have a...
Wed, 23 Apr 08
Apple Seeks Patent on iPhone Instant Messenging
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=59412
Apple fans who were expecting an iPhone instant-messaging client based on AOL's popular software could be in for a surprise. Apple has applied for a patent on a chat feature.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published an application entitled Portable Electronic Device for Instant Messaging on March 6. That's the same day Apple offered details on its software development kit for the iPhone.
Last month, Apple mentioned AOL's test version of the first "official" native Web chat for the popular iPhone. But that could be a temporary solution. The patent was filed in August 2007.
The application reads, "The GUI has a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person. The set of messages (is) displayed in a chronological order. In response to detecting a scrolling gesture comprising a substantially vertical movement of a user contact with the touch-screen display, the display of messages (is) scrolled in accordance with a direction of the scrolling gesture."
Of course, the iPhone already has SMS messaging. But an Apple-branded chat feature would offer Apple multiple benefits, so Ilan Barzilay, a member of the Electrical and Computer Technologies Practice Group at Wolf Greenfield in B