IbyeU-blog

Intel, Yahoo in deal to bring Internet to television

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:28:00 +0000

Intel Corp. and Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday announced plans for the Widget Channel, a television application framework optimized for TV and related consumer electronics devices.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) said the channel "will allow consumers to enjoy rich Internet applications designed for the TV while watching their favorite TV programs" and will be powered by the Yahoo Widget Engine, a fifth-generation applications platform.

Widget Channel also will allow developers to use Javascript, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash technology to write TV applications and will use Intel's CE3100 chips.

Yahoo-branded TV widgets "will enable consumers to engage in a variety of experiences such as watching videos, tracking their favorite stocks or sports teams, interacting with friends, or staying current on news and information," the companies said.

"TV will fundamentally change how we talk about, imagine and experience the Internet," said Eric Kim, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the company's Digital Home Group. "No longer just a passive experience unless the viewer wants it that way, Intel and Yahoo are proposing a way where the TV and Internet are as interactive and seamless as possible.

The companies said they are also working to promote the development of "open and consistent standards necessary to grow the TV widget ecosystem."

Intel has operations in Chandler.

credit news by : bizjournals.com

Microsoft Photosynth Goes Live

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:22:00 +0000

Microsoft on Wednesday opened up its Photosynth 3D photo offering to the public.

Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs them in a 3D environment. It could take Flickr photos of a monument like Notre Dame Cathedral from hundreds of separate accounts and compile them into one, continuous shot of the cathedral and its surroundings.

Users can install Photosynth at photosynth.com. All photos that are added to the site will be public and visible to anyone on the Internet. It is currently only available on Windows-based machines running XP and Vista, and users will have to sign up for a Windows Live ID to access Photosynth.

Microsoft first previewed Photosynth at its 2006 financial analyst meeting, several months after it acquired Seattle-based Seadragon Software, which developed technology to display large images on computers and handheld devices. Microsoft later previewed a more in-depth look at last year's TED conference.

It is "creating hyperlinks between images and it's doing that based on the content inside of the images," Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, said during his TED presentation. "When you do a web search for images, you type in phrases and the text on the web page is carrying lots of information [about that photograph]. What if that picture links to your pictures" via Photosynth?

"This is something that grows in complexity as people use it," he said. "Your own photos are getting tagged with metadata."

The Photosynth Web site includes a photography guide for those just getting stated as well as a downloadable video that demonstrates how to synch.

"Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup," the Live Labs team warned in a blog post. "Whether you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, please let us know. We'll do our best to address them."

credit new by : pcmag.com

Comcast: No New Traffic Management Plan Yet

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Comcast has made no final decisions on how to manage network congestion, despite news reports Wednesday that it will slow traffic for heavy users for up to 20 minutes during times of peak network use.

Comcast has been looking into new network management practices after the furor caused by an Associated Press report last October that said the cable modem service provider was quietly slowing BitTorrent P-to-P (peer-to-peer) traffic as a tool to fight network congestion.

Net neutrality advocates called on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to take action against Comcast, and early this month, the FCC voted 3-2 to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing specific applications on its network.

Comcast has been conducting tests on new network management techniques since the end of May, said Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman. Among the leading options is to slow all Web traffic from heavy users for up to 20 minutes during times of heavy network traffic.

When the congestion is resolved in under 20 minutes, the heavy users' traffic would be slowed for shorter times, sometimes for only a minute or two, he said. Heavy users' traffic would still move over the Internet, but it would "become de-prioritized" during times of congestion, Douglas said.

This approach would be "protocol agnostic," Douglas added. By not blocking specific applications, Comcast likely would comply with the FCC's Aug. 1 vote.

Asked why Comcast doesn't slow all users' traffic during times of congestion, Douglas said it's not fair to subscribers who aren't clogging up the pipes. "It's the heaviest of users that are directly contributing to the degradation of the service for the other people on the network," he said.

Representatives of Free Press and Public Knowledge, two digital rights advocacy groups that filed a complaint against Comcast for slowing P-to-P traffic, expressed reservations about Comcast's apparent new direction.

"It's an interesting reflection on the claim that there is a free market for broadband," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge. "If there was competition, could you slow down your best customers?"

Comcast was "dishonest" in the past about its network management practices, added Ben Scott, Free Press policy director. The broadband provider originally denied it was degrading BitTorrent streams.

"We have to be skeptical and vigilant," Scott said. "The FCC has required them to disclose all the details -- so we look forward to seeing that before we can fully evaluate. Any move that doesn't involve blocking consumers' access to the Internet is a positive step -- but we won't know for sure about this particular practice until we see the details."

On Wednesday, the FCC released the full text of its Aug. 1 order prohibiting Comcast from blocking legal Web applications. Public Knowledge and Free Press praised the order, with Scott calling it "a major milestone in Internet policy."

credit news by : pcworld.com

Yahoo Buzz Sets The Bee Free Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Yahoo's Digg-like service, Buzz, will be opening up to public contributors as of 7 p.m. PDT tonight. Since the service's launch in February, only a select 400 publishers could add new links to Buzz.

With so many submitting and rating sites out there, including the mighty Digg, Yahoo Buzz has a few advantages up its sleeve. Besides using the links submitted by contributors, Buzz's algorithms take into account search engine popularity, feeding the most popular stories to Yahoo's home page.

Making it to Yahoo's home page and getting server-melting traffic will likely create a new frenzy among Web traffic manipulators who are already pushing their luck with Digg and AOL's Propeller. Buzz wants to avoid this kind of exploitation by adding editorial discretion when determining headlines.

Another interesting feature that Yahoo brings is the possibility of adding any type of Web page to Buzz. This basically means that pages that aren't in a news or blog format could be submitted as new links on Buzz. Buzz pages could soon offer such diverse links as museum sites, Twitter messages and patent fillings alongside the select publishers' articles Yahoo favors today.

Shortly after Buzz's initial launch in February, the new service managed to overtake Digg in traffic scores, attracting nearly 7 million unique U.S. visitors. What's more, 51 percent were women, compared to Digg's 39 percent female users.

It is not clear how "clean" Yahoo is playing when bringing massive amounts of traffic to sites like Salon.com and GigaOm. It is said that Yahoo asked its select few publishers to join the company's Publishers Network, dropping their AdSense agreements with Google in exchange to buzzing-up to Yahoo's home page. It is not yet known if this rule is still applicable for the new publishers joining Buzz.

Yahoo's Buzz submit page will go live tonight. Meanwhile, you can get ready by adding the service's buttons to your site.

credit news by : pcworld.com

Apple posts iPhone 2.0.2 update; users say 3G problems remain

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:52:00 +0000

August 18, 2008 (Computerworld) Apple Inc. updated the iPhone's software Monday afternoon, but according to first reports posted to the company's support forum, the new 2.0.2 firmware has not fixed users' 3G reception problems.

As it did two weeks ago when it released iPhone 2.0.1, Apple gave no details of today's update contents, stating only that it included "bug fixes."

Users expecting to see a fix for long-running 3G reception issues, however, were mostly disappointed. The majority who posted messages on the subject to Apple's support forum after installing iPhone 2.0.2 said that the update had not solved their problems, which included dropped calls, weak signal strength and slow surfing speeds.

"I just finished downloading the new 2.02 software and I do not see a difference," said a user identified as "jay25cent" on the longest thread about 2.0.2 and 3G.

"I can't see any improvements," echoed "curveball," who said he lived in Sweden. "Same crappy signal."

"Still no 3G here (O2 UK) for me," added "musicvan" on the same thread. "Disappointed. So unless the 3G network is down at my so-called 100% coverage area, then nothing has changed."

Users have been complaining about 3G network problems almost since the July 11 debut of the iPhone 3G. More than 2,000 messages have been posted to the phone's support forum since then, detailing difficulties making calls from areas supposedly covered by a 3G network, and griping about weak signals and slower-than-promised data download speeds.

Although Apple has not publicly commented on users' complaints or has said whether it will come up with a software fix, some sources have claimed that the company is working on a firmware update that will solve the problems.

A few of the users who contributed in the support thread said that they believe the 2.0.2 update improved their 3G reception. "Now showing 4 bars, not 0-2, which looks better," said "vegasj."

And at least one user was just unsure. "I think there has been an attempt to correct the 3G issue but not sure if it has," said "whatsinitforme."

credit news by : computerworld.com

Google Starts To Test Ads For YouTube Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:47:00 +0000

In a notice posted on Google Mobile Blog, Christine Tsai, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube, said the company has started to display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan.

This test is considered to be the first step in the mobile advertising system for YouTube, as Google tries to find new ways to turn the video-sharing site to profits.

In June Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, said in an interview with the New Yorker’s writer Ken Auletta that the company plans to make some money out of YouTube, but it hasn’t figured out how to do so yet.

YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.6 billion, but so far, this money seems to have gone to charity, since the popular video site hasn’t managed to bring any profit to its parent company. On the other hand, the site has proven to eat out most of Google outgoing bandwidth.

Mr. Schmidt has said that the solutions for online advertising that will be implemented in the site will be made public next year. However it seems that ads that would run at the beginning of the videos that are posted on YouTube, a practice that has been adopted by other similar sites, is not an option that Google sees fit.

The two things that encourage Google in thinking that they will eventually be able to make YouTube profitable are the facts that there are plenty of people watching its clips and that the company has the luxury of taking its time in finding a solution.

The first ad system for YouTube was introduced last year, in August. The format enables a semitransparent ad to appear on a strip at the bottom of the video and it appears after a video plays for 15 seconds.

If the user who watches the video doesn’t click the ad it disappears up to 10 seconds later. The ad format is non-intrusive because the viewer can click to close the ad right away. In case he chooses to watch the ad, the main video pauses until the commercial stops.

However, Google didn’t release any details about the effectiveness of its YouTube ad system.

credit news by : efluxmedia.com

Dell wants to give you choice, but choice is dead

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:22:00 +0000

According to BusinessWeek, Dell plans on taking aim at Apple and will unveil a solution that could see companies from a bunch of industries working together to create the first solution to give consumers real choice.

The idea will be unveiled in September and will attempt to give you more choice in how you buy and consume media, BusinessWeek reports. More importantly, Dell will give its partners the software they need to establish the solution and will try to turn a profit on the sale of hardware.

"Customers want access to content from a broad variety of sources--how, when, and where they choose," Michael Dell told the publication.

"Apple wants to lock you in," Robert Enderle said to BusinessWeek. "Dell wants to lock you in to choice."

But will all those choices translate into a profit and a new standard that will take iTunes and every other proprietary service down? Will buying a song on Amazon.com and sending "it to the mobile phone of a friend or the car stereo of someone who has satellite radio" really work?

Sure, it might appeal to us and I certainly think that's a neat idea, but based on the information we have, it sounds like there are too many moving parts and too many people involved in the decision-making to make this a viable service.

I look forward to the day where the content I buy from one service will work on anything I want it to work on, but I don't think we're at that point yet.

The music industry is the most obvious sticking point in this whole solution. Granted, Dell claims it has most labels on its side, but we can't forget that this is an industry that's extremely worried and scared of change. And if anyone can buy just one song from Amazon and ship it to a friend's car stereo, I don't see the music industry being too keen on that.

But it goes far beyond the music industry. There seems to be too many moving parts and too many companies with a hand in what's happening for this to be a success. You mean to tell me that I should expect this new standard to beat Apple because companies like Kenwood, Amazon, Dell, EMI, Microsoft, iRiver, HP, XM Sirius, LG, and RIM are going to play nice with each other? I don't think so.

Choice is something that we should all have, but the current state of the tech industry and company cultures dictate that that's simply impossible. Call me a cynic, but I simply don't see Microsoft being too excited about people buying a song from a different vendor and listening to that on the Zune. And I certainly don't see Jive Records getting excited when one person buys a song and sends it to five friends on five different devices from five different companies.

That's not to say that this is an indictment of Dell or what it's planning, but this is an indictment of the protectionist policies that are so rampant in the tech business right now. Suffice it to say that choice is not paramount in any company's business model and more often than not, they want devices and software to be locked down for a reason--it keeps customers in-house and doesn't let them stray.

And although choice is what we all want, and I believe it could happen eventually, it's not going to come from Dell and a loose alliance of partners. Instead, it's going to come when the Old Guard leaves and a new generation of fresh ideas and business models starts dictating this industry.

Sorry, Dell, I think you're ahead of your time.

credit news by : news.cnet.com

Toshiba’s HD-DVD Revenge: XD-E DVD player, XD-E500 1080p

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:16:00 +0000

Toshiba announced the release of its first DVD player packed with Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology. The device is called XD-E500 and will provide a "near-HD" picture quality for the users’ standard-definition DVDs.

The official release date is scheduled for today, August 18 and the suggested retail price has been set at $149. Its added layer of enhancement is expected to become extremely popular, as there are many movie enthusiasts with significantly large DVD collections, who will surely rush at the chance of viewing their favorite movies on a better image. Toshiba’s product presents three enhancement modes: sharp, color and contrast, which can be easily modified by users.

Sharp mode is used for improving edge detail, enhancing it only where the image demands it; color mode makes green and blue adjustments when needed and contrast mode makes dark areas visible without ruining the lighted places, providing more detail for certain scenes.

Toshiba explains that "while XDE, like many DVD players, up-converts DVDs up to 1080p to match the resolution of your HDTV, it goes a step further — thanks to XDE’s special picture-enhancement capabilities. XDE delivers a crisper, more vivid picture quality from your DVDs."

The company will back up its release with a carefully planned sales strategy, which will include a print and online ad campaign scheduled for September, ads in consumer magazines and local newspapers and also a Web site, www.Toshibaxde.com, which will offer customers all the needed information about the product.

Among XD-E500’s features users will find HDMI CEC, DivX video playback, playback of MP3- and WMA-encoded CDs, and JPEG playback.

credit news by : efluxmedia.com

Researchers Found A Substitute For Heparin

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:04:00 +0000

A medical breakthrough is about to happen, as chemists announced the advanced work on the development of a fully-synthetic version of the blood thinner known as heparin. Up until now, it was only made out of pig intestines at there were several concerns from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the dangers of contaminated batches.

Apparently, due to a contaminated batch, the animal-based product was linked last year to at least 80 deaths and many more allergic reactions. The new product would put some of those worries behind, offering a much safer option.

"With the problems associated with contaminated heparin produced from pig tissues in China, a non-animal source of this essential drug is gaining importance," says study co-author Robert J. Linhardt, Ph.D., a chemist with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. "A safer version of the drug could result in less adverse effects and fewer deaths."

Heparin is used by doctors worldwide to prevent potentially fatal blood clots during kidney dialysis and heart surgery. The problem with its fabrication process, which is mostly done in China (about 70 percent), is that when it comes to hygiene and regulatory control standards, the workshops handling the operations are far from the environment needed by such a delicate activity.

"If heparin is prepared the right way, it should be consistent and safe, even from an animal source," explained Linhardt.

The new procedure, called chemoenzymatic synthesis, managed so far to produce only small quantities of heparin and the research continues in order to find the way of producing it on a bigger scale, which will surely be widely adopted.

credit news by : efluxmedia.com

Dropped calls plague iPhone 3G, and not just in U.S.

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:00:00 +0000

If you're having problems with dropped calls on your new 3G Apple iPhone, you're not alone

From New York to Stockholm, 3G iPhone owners are complaining loudly about connection failures - sometimes repeatedly - during calls.

The problem typically occurs when the device attempts to move from 3G to another network.

RELATED: Static continues for Apple's iPhone debut

According to people familiar with the matter, the culprit appears to be the 3G chipset provided by Infineon Technologies, a German chipmaker. Sources declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk about the problem publicly.

According to these sources, AT&T and Apple are working on a software fix. The fix, which will be available remotely via iTunes, could be ready as early as next week, they said.

Infineon "chipsets" - a group of chips designed to work together - allow the iPhone to jump from one network to another. The handoff is supposed to be seamless.

The dropped-call problem is global, says Roger Entner, senior vice president at Nielsen IAG.

"Apple has had the same problem in every market where the (3G) iPhone is sold," he says.

Translation: AT&T's 3G network isn't to blame.

"It's probably the device," Entner says.

The iPhone is sold in more than 20 countries, including Italy, France and Finland. New markets are added constantly.

Apple declined to comment.

Infineon did not respond to e-mail and phone inquiries seeking comment.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel declined to say whether the chipset was a problem, saying only that the 3G device "overall is working great."

Siegel says AT&T, as a matter of routine, urges iPhone users to sync often to ensure that they have the latest software.

Francis Sideco, a senior wireless chip analyst at semiconductor researcher iSuppli, says the problem could be in the Infineon chip or it could be something else.

Given the complexity of the iPhone - it's basically a miniature computer - the possibilities are endless. "It could be something as simple as a solder joint," he says.

Cellphones use many components to turn a person's voice into a digital computer signal and transmit it over a network.

These components are typically manufactured by different suppliers, then cobbled together on a circuit board in a factory.

Chipsets are usually subjected to rigorous testing prior to shipping. But Sideco says chips can get damaged in the manufacturing process or in transit.

The good news, he says, is that big carriers such as AT&T have testing equipment that can identify dropped calls and pinpoint the manufacturer of the failed part.

The bad news: If a simple software fix isn't feasible, Apple could be forced to issue a worldwide recall. Such a step would be costly and time-consuming.

It would also leave Apple, inevitably, with a prominent black eye, Entner says.

That said, Entner doesn't think it will come to that.

"In all likelihood, they won't have to do a product recall," he says, adding, "It depends how big the problem is."

credit news by : news.yahoo.com

Google Privacy Practices Worse Than ISP Snooping, AT&T Charges

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:49:00 +0000

Online advertising networks -- particularly Google's -- are more dangerous than the fledgling plans and dreams of ISPs to install eavesdropping equipment inside their internet pipes to serve tailored ads to their customers, AT&T says.

At least that's what the company told Congress in a letter early this week, responding to four prominent House lawmakers who are bird-dogging ISPs about their online profiling practices. Those lawmakers asked 33 internet companies on August 1 to explain some of their monitoring practices, Most have replied.

In its letter (.pdf), AT&T denies that it currently digs deep into the net habits of its users "for the purpose [of] developing a profile of a particular consumer's online behavior."* (AT&T is currently being facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly helping the NSA spy on Americans' internet usage, but that's a different issue since the NSA does not run ads.)

However, it says it may bake this kind of surveillance into its tubes in the future using so-called Deep Packet Inspection technology. The company rightly says could be also be used to detect copyright infringement, speed up packets of streaming video and detect child pornography.

But even if it did, that's nothing compared to Google, it says.

"If anything the largely invisible practices of ad-networks raise even greater privacy concerns than do the behavioral advertising techniques that ISPs could employ, such as deep-packet-inspection," AT&T wrote.

AT&T rightly points out that Google can know almost as much a snooping ISP could -- which, is the case for users who install Google's toolbar and don't know to opt out of Google's Web History program. And if Google does combine its third-party cookie information, with user's search histories, with Gmail summaries, and with Google Analytics data, among other data sources, they would be a proper domestic intelligence agency.

AT&T writes:

Advertising-network operators such as Google have evolved beyond merely tracking consumer web surfing activity on sites for which they have a direct ad-serving relationship. They now have the ability to observe a user's entire web browsing experience at a granular level, including all URLs visited, all searches, and actual page-views.

AT&T goes to say then that because of Google's singular ability to gather online data that online advertising networks are substantially similar to ISPs monitoring their customers.

Google and Yahoo are perhaps the only two online empires that AT&T could realistically point towards to make that argument.

It's a clever argument, since online advertising cookies are nearly universally accepted and there are voluntary codes of conduct that most advertisers agree to in order to keep government regulators away.

And certainly any ISP thinking about looking at what its users are doing has got to be worried given that the House Energy and Commerce Committee is on a roll -- taking on ISPs that want to or have watched what their customers do online in order to serve them targeted ads. That roll is reportedly heading towards a long-fabled online privacy omnibus bill. Add to that, this month's unprecedented decision by the Federal Communications Commission to slap down Comcast for its secret and deceptive interference with file sharing traffic.

But the argument is also just wrong.

You pay your ISP to carry your traffic to and fro.

It can see everything you do online, unless you take extreme measures. It could know where you bank, the contents of your emails and chats, what sites you shop at, what you search about --regardless of search engine -- and everything you read or watch online.

Your ISP does not need to be peering into your traffic to decide whether to show you ads for hemmoroid cream or sports bobble heads.

They just need to get that health information and that gallery of hockey's worst bobble heads to your browser quickly.

* Threat Level readers may enjoy this full sentence from the letter: "AT&T does not at this time engage in practices that allow it to track a consumer's search and browsing activities across multiple unrelated websites for the purpose [of] developing a profile of a particular consumer's online behavior."

credit news by : wired.com

Microsoft Gives More Details About Its Next OS: Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:43:00 +0000

In the beginning of April, when he was still in business so to say, during the speech held at the Inter-American Development Bank in Miami, Bill Gates mentioned Windows 7, but besides saying the new operating system would be launched as early as 2009, he wasn’t very talkative.

After several weeks, at the end of May, during the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows experience program management, presented a series of features that were to be included in the upcoming Windows 7. Several Multi-touch technology based applications were shown in the company’s attempt to get everyone hyped up about its product; some were photography-related features, with the help of which users can handle digital photos way easier; another was the use of an on-screen piano keyboard by direct screen contact.

This week on Thursday, Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan, senior engineering managers for Windows 7, handled the launch of the Engineering Windows 7 (E7) blog. Among other things, they said Microsoft had learned from its previous mistakes and the team is not going to "get ahead of itself" with talks about upcoming features until they are fully understood. With regard to the newly unveiled blog, they said the pre-release communication it will provide will ensure the fact that company people have "a reasonable degree of confidence" in the issues they will approach in future talks.

For those who wish to find out specifics about Windows 7, the two managers provided some good news when they said the company would reveal a lot more at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles.

There have been some serious talks about Microsoft’s operating systems lately; while Vista sales are indeed going up, there are a lot of customers who had complained about several issues. As many business customers have decided to keep on using XP until Windows 7 is out, at the beginning of June, Microsoft issued a white paper encouraging the reticent to give Vista a shot. Mike Nash, Microsoft Vice President of Product Management, said that by choosing not to get Vista, customers would be "missing out on the proven benefits such as better security, productivity, search, mobility, manageability, and infrastructure optimization."

Earlier this year, at the Gartner Emerging Trends conference in Las Vegas, two Gartner analysts, Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver, talked about several Windows-related problems. One of the most serious was considered to be the operating system’s lack of adaptability. Another problem was found in Windows' rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it quite difficult to promptly provide significant changes for a new version. The thing that confirmed this was Vista, as Microsoft returned to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 for Vista’s foundation, once it saw no actual progress in five years of development efforts. During the same conference, Gartner also said that "Windows as we know it must be replaced."

Perhaps the upcoming Windows 7 will take care of all the problems previously identified and bring users everywhere a new, stable and innovative software.

credit news by : efluxmedia.com

NASA Has Its Closest Look at Geysers on Saturn Moon

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:24:00 +0000

Exquisite close-ups of fissures on a tiny frozen moon of Saturn will provide the latest clues in solving the riddle of how a 310-mile-wide ice ball could possibly be shooting geysers of vapor and icy particles.

Since the discovery of the jets in 2005, the moon, Enceladus, has jumped to near the top of the list of potential places for life in the solar system. A warm spot near Enceladus’s south pole powers the jets and may also melt below-surface ice into water, a necessity for living organisms.

On Monday, the NASA spacecraft Cassini made its latest flyby of Enceladus (pronounced en-SELL-ah-dus), passing 30 miles above the moon’s surface at 64,000 miles per hour.

Despite the high speed, Cassini was able to take razor-sharp images that, at seven meters per pixel, offer a resolution 10 times greater than earlier views. Scientists can now clearly see the V-shaped walls of the fractures, which are nearly 1,000 feet deep. Team members likened the accomplishment to taking a photo of a roadside billboard using a telephoto lens held out the window of a speeding car.

“If there is one set of images from this mission that illustrates how skilled we have become as planetary explorers, this is it,” said Carolyn Porco, leader of Cassini’s imaging team. “They are the most astounding images of any planetary surface that our cameras have so far taken.”

The observations should help scientists understand how geological processes can persist on such a small body, which is being heated by tidal distortions induced by Saturn.

A series of long fissures known as tiger stripes scars Enceladus’s south polar region, and earlier observations allowed the Cassini scientists to triangulate the origin of the jets within the fissures and show that the warm spots coincide with them.

In a flyby in March, Cassini flew through the plume and detected organic molecules, the carbon-based molecules that could provide the building blocks for life. Cassini also detected water vapor, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The composition was surprisingly similar to that of a comet, scientists said.

At first glance, nothing in the landscape differentiates the active jet areas from other parts of the fissures. “We have a lot of interpretation to do,” Dr. Porco said. “The effects appear to be subtle.”

Comparison with other data taken during the flyby — like temperatures — should provide more clues.

The researchers see smooth areas on Enceladus that appear to be piles of ice particles that have fallen back to the surface. “Like snow,” Dr. Porco said. “We’re pretty sure we’re seeing that in these pictures.”

Paul Helfenstein, the team member who developed the technique for taking the high-speed, up-close pictures, said: “We can actually count boulders on the surface. We can look at details and distinguish fresh deposits.”

In the fall, Cassini is to make an even closer near-miss of Enceladus, passing within 15 miles of the moon’s surface.

credit news by : nytimes.com

Nintendo Continues To Lead Game-Console Sales

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:14:00 +0000

U.S. sales of video-game consoles and software jumped 28 percent last month compared to last year, according to market researcher NPD Group. Nintendo's DS portable and Wii remained the most popular systems.

For hardware, that means nearly $450 million in July purchases, a 17 percent increase compared to the same time last year. The top-selling DS moved about 608,000 units, with the Wii second at about 555,000.

PS 2 Still Popular

The next four places showed small differences, with third-place Sony's PlayStation 3 at 225,000, its PlayStation Portable in fourth with 222,000, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 fifth with 205,000. The PlayStation 2, now entering late middle age eight years after its release, still sold about 155,000 for sixth place.

In total sales, the Wii is in first place, with about 13.5 million sold in North America and about 31 million worldwide. The Xbox 360 is in second place, with 12 million U.S. sales and 20 million worldwide, and the PS3 takes third with 5.5 million U.S. and 15 million worldwide.

Game software sales in the U.S. totaled $591 million, an increase of 41 percent over last year. The top two games were Electronic Arts' NCAA Football 09 for the Xbox, with 397,000 sold, and Nintendo's Wii Fit, with about 370,000. Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS sold 309,000 for third place, and Wii Play was fourth with 284,000.

The remaining games in the top 10 were, in order, NCAA Football for the PS3, Soulcalibur IV for the Xbox 360, Mario Kart for the Wii, Rock Band Special Edition Bundle for the Wii, Soulcalibur IV for the PS3, and Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360.

'Years' for Sony to Catch Microsoft

Mike Goodman, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said it is "pretty safe to assume that Nintendo will continue to lead the way for the foreseeable future." The more interesting development, he added, is the continuing monthly battle between the PS3 and the Xbox 360, which in the U.S. is "still very close."

In the latest U.S. figures, he noted, "Sony has managed to inch ahead of Microsoft," but the Xbox 360 still leads in total sales since launch. "At this pace," Goodman said, "it will take Sony years to catch up with Microsoft."

Goodman said the PS3's built-in Blu-ray high-definition DVD player is "nice to have," but probably "not a must-have" that would sway buyers. The inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 delayed the release of the console, but became a possible asset after the recent Blu-ray triumph in the high-definition format war with HD DVD.

Goodman noted the monthly competition might be in for a shake-up if a rumored big price-cut for the Xbox 360 takes place this fall. If, he said, Microsoft were to drop $100 from the console price, the dynamic of the monthly sales race could dramatically shift once again.

credit news by : news.yahoo.com

Yahoo spends $36M on advisers in Microsoft dance

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:48:00 +0000

SEATTLE – Yahoo Inc. shelled out $36 million in the first half of 2008 to the outside advisers that helped the company navigate stormy buyout talks with Microsoft Corp. and the ensuing proxy threat from activist investor Carl Icahn.

Yahoo leaned on investment banks Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Moelis & Co., and the law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, after Microsoft made its initial $44.6 billion offer, which was made public in February.

The negotiations collapsed in early May when Yahoo rejected an even richer $47.5 billion offer, but Microsoft came back later that month with an offer to buy Yahoo's search operations a la carte. As that failed, Icahn, who has a long history of challenging corporate boards, threatened to replace all of Yahoo's directors with his own hand-picked slate so he could negotiate a sale.

Yahoo's $36 million tab, disclosed in a regulatory filing, amounts to about 5 percent of the $673 million in profit Yahoo reported in the first six months of the year.

That total doesn't cover what the company spent in July, when Icahn and Microsoft joined forces to pitch another partial sale scheme, which the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company rejected. Later in July, Yahoo struck a deal that gives board seats to Icahn and two of his picks.

Yahoo's spending on outside advisers did include litigation defense costs related to the Microsoft saga, according to the recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Yahoo's SEC filing detailed several shareholder lawsuits claiming that Yahoo executives and board members breached fiduciary duties during the buyout negotiations. The lawsuits claim that Yahoo's search advertising partnership with Google Inc. and its updated severance plans for employees were designed to dampen Microsoft's interest in acquiring the Silicon Valley pioneer, according to the filing.

credit news by : news.yahoo.com

NASA Celebrates Hubble Space Telescope's 100,000th Orbit

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:43:00 +0000

NASA plans one final update to keep Hubble going until 2013

It's hard to believe that NASA first launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, making 2008 its 18th year of service. During all its years of service, it has seen numerous shuttle missions to fix and upgrade its systems. According to NASA, Hubble orbits the earth every 97 minutes at about 360 miles above the surface of the earth.

NASA announced today that the Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit. To celebrate its 100,000th orbit, NASA scientists aimed the telescope at a small portion of the Tarantula nebula that is a hotbed of celestial birth and renewal. With the myriad of updates and fixes the Hubble has seen during its 100,000-orbit voyage -- spanning the last 18 years -- it is easy to see the parallel NASA is trying to draw between the telescope and the image of the Tarantula nebula shot today.

NASA says the Tarantula nebula is near star cluster NGC 2074, which lies about 170,000 light-years away from the Earth. This region of space is the most active star-forming region in our local group galaxies according to NASA. NASA describes the image as containing dramatic ridges, valleys of dust, serpent-like "pillars of creation", and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation.

NASA says that high-energy radiation coming from young, hot star clusters is sculpting the wall of the nebula and is slowly eroding it away. NASA reports that another young star cluster could be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas in the image. It's hard to get any sense of scale from the image, but NASA says the image is of an area almost 100 light-years wide. The seahorse shaped cloud pillar to the right and the image is 20 light-years long on its own -- roughly four times the distance between our sun and its nearest star Alpha Centauri.

"This morning, the greatest scientific instrument since Galileo's telescope has reached another great milestone - its 100,000th orbit around the Earth. Hubble has given us amazing insight into the origins of our universe, and I'm so proud of the men and women at Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute for their contributions and dedication to these great discoveries,” Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA said in a statement. “The entire world is looking forward to the Hubble servicing mission in October 2008, when Hubble will get new scientific instruments, new batteries and new gyroscopes. The servicing mission will extend Hubble's life and give it a more powerful view of our universe. Hubble is the telescope that could, and its best years are ahead of it!"

The Hubble Space Telescope has one more repair and updates slated for October 2008. This will reportedly be the final update or repair to the Hubble space telescope and is expected to allow the telescope to continue operating through 2013.

credit news by : dailytech.com

ComScore: Social sites are going global

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:39:00 +0000

We sort of knew it already: while Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, and Friendster were all founded in the U.S., social networking is a worldwide phenomenon. New statistics from ComScore show that sites like Facebook are growing rapidly across the globe, even as that growth slows down in their home country.

Earlier on Tuesday, performance firm Pingdom released numbers pulled from Google Insights for Search, showing that different social networks have very different levels of "interest" across the world. ComScore's numbers, also released Tuesday, underscore the fact that social sites are increasingly global in nature--and sometimes unexpectedly.

According to ComScore's numbers, social-networking sites may be nearing a peak in North America. The industry's foothold in the U.S. and Canada grew only 9 percent from June 2007, but in Asia it grew 23 percent, in Latin America 33 percent, and in Europe 35 percent. And social networks grew a whopping 66 percent in the Middle East and Africa. The 9 percent growth in North America meant that it was the only region of the world where the growth of social networks did not outpace the growth of the Internet-using populace as a whole, which ComScore pegged at 11 percent.

The fastest-growing site is, not surprisingly, Facebook, with a 153 percent increase in unique visitors noted. Most of that growth is international--its domestic growth was estimated at 38 percent. Hi5, a San Francisco-founded site with a big foothold in Latin America, grew 100 percent. Friendster, another Bay Area social network, grew 50 percent thanks to a renewed interest among Asian audiences. Growing at 41 percent is Google's Orkut, at 32 percent is AOL's Bebo, and at 19 percent is Skyrock, a France-based social network that remains extremely popular among the youth in its home country.

News Corp.'s MySpace, still the biggest social network in the U.S., is not doing quite as well internationally. Its unique visitors have gone up only 3 percent year-over-year, ComScore said.

"Facebook has done an exceptional job of leveraging its brand internationally during the past year," ComScore executive Jack Flanagan said in a statement from the company. "By increasing the site's relevance to local markets through local language interface translation, the site is now competing strongly or even capturing the lead in several markets where it had a relatively minor presence just a year ago."

Facebook's internationalization strategy has consisted of leaving the single site intact but allowing members to translate it into the local languages of their choice. MySpace, with its focus more on media consumption rather than communication, has launched several dozen localized editions of the site instead.

MySpace representatives have said that the site's aim is to gain a long-term foothold across the world, not to be a hot global fad. At the same time, it's been engaging in high-profile marketing projects outside the U.S., and at this point it doesn't seem to have produced results yet.

credit news by : news.cnet.com

Intel's Next Gen "Nehalem" to be Called Core i7

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Intel's "baby" -- its new eight-core chips based on the new Nehalem architecture -- have been named and are almost ready to launch

The impending launch of Intel's Nehalem processor in Q4 2008 already has the hardware community buzzing. Nehalem has already shaped up to appear quite the performance beast. With the power of eight logical cores (four physical, doubled by hyper-threading) built on a 45 nm process to leverage, it’s shaping up to be a strong offering.

The new processor will feature QuickPath, Intel's answer to AMD's HyperTransport, an on-chip memory controller, SSE4 instruction support, and an 8 MB cache pool. Chips have already been demoed running at 3.2 GHz, so early indications are that Intel has had relatively little process problems.

Now Intel has made an important move towards the eventual release of Nehalem by giving it its official brand name. The processor will be branded "Intel Core" with an "i7" identifier for the first round of chips. This brand will include an Extreme Edition at launch according to Intel. It is also expected to launch to both the desktop and server markets, though the server line may come slightly later than the desktop lineup. Intel is also cooking up mobile versions of the processor.

In months following the launch, other products with different identifiers will be announced according to Intel. Intel says that its focus with the line is to both up the performance over its previous successful dual and quad core offerings. At the same time it hopes to cut the power usage significantly.

Sean Maloney, Intel Corporation executive vice president and general manager, Sales and Marketing Group says that focusing on the "i7" line is Intel's top priority. He states, "The Core name is and will be our flagship PC processor brand going forward. Expect Intel to focus even more marketing resources around that name and the Core i7 products starting now."

Intel will maintain a numbered system similar to its past "Intel Core" offerings to differentiate individual processor models.

Another significant advance for Intel is that all the chip's cores will be on a single piece of silicon. AMD has been using this method for quite some time, but Intel declined in order to improve yields. The chip will face off against AMD's upcoming Shanghai processor.

Meanwhile, the Penryn platform, while passing the torch to Nehalem will see a bit of new life of its own, thanks to the Dunnington platform which will place 3 dies for a total of 6 cores in a chip package and target the server market.

AMD plans to release a six-core version of Shanghai to combat this beast. A 12-core dual-die package version of Shanghai is thought to be in the works, and Intel is likely considering either a dual-die Nehalem with eight cores or consolidating Dunnington to a single die and releasing a dual-die variant with 12 cores to combat this.

Intel is also focusing significant attention to its upcoming line of discrete graphics processors, code-named Larrabee.

credit news by : dailytech.com

AMD Aims High-end Graphics Cards at Nvidia

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Advanced Micro Devices Tuesday unveiled a graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, that is widely expected to outperform rival Nvidia's top-end graphics card, the GeForce GTX 280.

Priced at US$549, the 4870 X2 is currently available and will be followed by release of the $349 ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 in September, AMD said. Both cards have dual graphics processors that are linked using the company's CrossFireX technology and a dedicated bridge chip. CrossFireX allows multiple graphics processors to work in tandem, offering a significant boost in graphics performance.

"We did some driver work, along with this bridge chip, to make this somewhat seamless," said Pat Moorhead, vice president of advanced market at AMD. "That took a lot of work."

The graphics chips used on the 4870 X2 run at clock speeds of 750MHz, while the chips used on the 4850 X2 run at 625MHz. Another difference lies in the graphics memory used on the two cards. The 4870 X2 has 2G-bytes of GDDR5 (graphics double data rate 5) memory, while the 4850 X2 has 2G bytes of GDDR3 memory.

AMD offered a taste of the graphics capability of the 4870 X2 in June, showing reporters at the Computex exhibition a brief, but very realistic-looking, clip of the company's female mascot, Ruby, being chased down a city street by a four-legged robot. The clip was rendered in real time, AMD executives said.

The use of two GPUs is what gives the 4870 X2 an edge over Nvidia's GTX 280, which was released in June and has a single graphics chip.

In a comparison of the GTX 280 and AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 -- which have single graphics chips -- conducted by hardware-enthusiast site TechSpot, the Nvidia card outperformed the top-end AMD card. But add another GPU to the 4870 X2 and AMD will likely have a healthy edge over Nvidia's latest offering.

The release of the 4870 X2 and 4850 X2 reinforces the strong graphics capability that AMD bought when it acquired ATI. ATI and Nvidia have long dominated the graphics space and their high-end technology easily outpaces the graphics technology found in Intel's integrated chipsets.

The technology used in the 4870 X2 will likely find its way into other AMD products. One possibility is that a similar graphics processor could be used in Fusion, a family of chips that AMD plans to release starting next year. Fusion processors will incorporate a graphics core into a microprocessor, a feature that AMD is counting on to increase the competitiveness of its future products. However, AMD has yet to reveal what graphics technology will be used in Fusion.

Commenting on Intel's Larrabee graphics chip, which is slated to arrive in 2009 or 2010, Moorhead acknowledged Intel's ability to consistently develop impressive products, but said the chip maker would have to prove itself with Larrabee as its integrated graphics cores never matched the power of high-end discrete graphics chips.

"Even with how big, mighty and forceful Intel is, after years of misfires in graphics, are they going to be able to pull this off?" Moorhead said.

credit news by : pcworld.com

By Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:55:00 +0000

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to put on a good display of shooting stars in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday.

The best views will be from rural locations away from light pollution, where up to 60 meteors per hour could be seen, weather permitting. Urban and suburban skywatchers can expect far fewer.

The Perseids are bits of debris left by comet Swift-Tuttle.The debris is like a river of small particles in space, and each year, Earth passes through it. As the bits zoom through our atmosphere at 37 miles per second (60 kps) they vaporize, creating the brilliant streaks of light. Most of the meteors are no larger than a grain of sand.

The shower is typically best between midnight and dawn, when the side of Earth you are standing on is plowing into the stream as our planet plunges through space in its orbit around the sun. It's similar to how bugs hit the windshield of a moving car but rarely smack into the rear bumper.

The annual shower begins as a trickle in mid-July and will continue to spark a handful of shooting stars for several nights to come. But Earth passes through the densest part of the stream Aug. 12 at around 7 a.m. ET (1100 GMT). The moon will set around 1:30 a.m. local time (regardless of your location), leaving the sky dark for a few hours of optimal meteor watching across much of North America.

"There should be plenty of meteors -- perhaps one or two every minute," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Cooke said the brightest Perseids can be seen from a city, but the majority are too faint and are visible only from rural locations.

Meteor watching is easy.

Find the darkest location you can, away from porch lights and other lighting.

Use a blanket or lounge chair to lie back and scan as much of the sky as possible.

Allow 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Binoculars and telescopes are of no use, as the meteors move too swiftly.

Expect the shooting stars to arrive in groups. While scientists forecast 1 per minute during peak hours, the pace in fact tends to be higher for brief periods with relative droughts in between. Patience is truly a virtue. The best time to watch, regardless of your location, is from 2 a.m. to dawn local time, but the best seats will be in the western half of North America where dark skies coincide with the peak activity.

The Perseids get their name from the constellation Perseus, from which they tend to emanate like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The meteors can make their appearance anywhere in the sky, however.

Perseus rises in the northeast around 9 a.m. local time. So Monday evening, avid skywatchers will head out after 9 p.m. in search of early Perseids that tend to fly along the horizon. These earthgrazers, as they are called, are rare but rewarding sights.

Weather looks good for tonight's meteor shower

High pressure and dry air out of Canada is the recipe we want for viewing tonight's Perseid meteor shower. Too often in the Chesapeake region we get nominally clear skies for this reliable annual event, but high humidity still washes out much of the display.

Not this time. Forecasters out at Sterling say the upper-level low responsible for yesterday's clouds and storms is pulling away off the Jersey coast. It's being replaced by all this terrific cool, dry air. It's still just 73 degrees at The Sun as I write, up from an overnight low of 63 degrees. The airport dipped to 58 degrees overnight. This seems to be the mid-August break in the weather we've been waiting for. And it's here just in time for the Perseid shower.

That's not to say things are perfect this year. For the early part of the night we still must contend with the glare of the moon, now just four days short of full. It won't set until 1.47 a.m. in Baltimore.

Still, the skies should be clear, and the brightest meteors should begin to be visible after Perseid - the constellation from which the meteors seem to emerge - rises well above the northeastern horizon around 11 or 12 midnight tonight.

The best time to look will be between moonset and dawn tomorrow morning. Here's a nifty photo gallery of last year's Perseids.

The Perseid shower occurs each year as the Earth, in its annual trip around the sun, crosses the dusty trail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The comet itself, on its 130-year orbit around the sun, is cruising somewhere out near the orbit of Uranus this year. But the dust it leaves behind is still orbiting all along the comet's path. And this is the night when the Earth crosses the densest portion of that trail.

As our planet smacks into those dust grains and pebbles, they streak into the thin air at the top of the atmosphere at 37 miles per second, heating the air and making it glow until the dust is vaporized. We see it as a bright, fleeting trail across a portion of the sky.

The Perseids are remarkably reliable, producing as many as 60 meteors an hour at their peak. And because mid-summer is a pleasant time to be out under the stars, this is probably the most-watched annual meteor shower of the year - although it is not usually the best.

The first meteors to show up will be the so-called Earth-grazers. These are the meteors that streak across the sky late in the evening before the shower's early-morning peak. They're skimming the top of the atmosphere from east to west just as Perseus is rising in the northeast.

Later, as Perseus rises higher in the sky, the Perseid meteors seem to radiate in all directions from the constellation. They're not really coming from the constellation itself, of course. That's just the direction in which the Earth is traveling at this time of year. Perspective makes the meteors appear to be flying toward us, like snowflakes in the headlights of a moving car.

The bottom line here is that you can really look in any direction for these meteors. Although you may be able to trace the paths of many of them - the true Perseids - back to the constellation. They will appear almost anywhere in the sky. Until the moon sets, however, it may be best to watch with your back to the moon's glare. (If you see some that appear NOT to fly out of Perseus, they are probably "erratics" bits of dust and debris unrelated to Swift-Tuttle.

Once the moon has set, the added darkness should reveal more of the fainter meteors.

So, find a place with a dark sky, away from urban lighting. There are some suggestions for dark-sky locations at the end of the article at this link.

Take a blanket or a sleeping bag. We're looking for lows in the 50s tonight. Stretch out on the ground, or in a reclining lounge chair of some kind, and just watch the sky. Allow 10 or 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark.

But beware. Meteor-watching can be addictive, and will definitely cost you sleep! Be sure to stop back here in the morning and share your experience with all the sleepyheads who passed it up.

Citigroup sees better Amazon Kindle sales

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:47:00 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup said on Monday that Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) Kindle electronic book reader appears to be selling much better than expected and could double a previous estimate for units sold this year, sending shares in the online retailer up 9 percent.

With few cool new gadgets expected on the market, the Kindle could be one of the top electronics gifts of the upcoming holiday season, along with Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) newest iPhone, Citigroup said.

"Turns out the Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world," Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote in a note to clients. He kept a "buy" rating on the share.

Mahaney estimates Amazon will sell up to 380,000 Kindles in 2008, up from a previous forecast of 190,000, noting that adoption rate would be similar to the first year of sales for Apple's media-playing iPod. He sees Amazon selling up to 150,000 Kindles in the fourth quarter alone.

Mahaney also expects Kindle and related revenue of more than $1 billion by 2010, compared with a previous view of $400 million to $750 million.

Amazon shares were up $7.51 at $88 in midday trading.

credit news by : news.yahoo.com

Xbox 360 hits 60GB in UK

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:37:00 +0000

Starting with August 15, the new 60 Giga Bytes Xbox 360 console will be available in the United Kingdom. The price announced for the new release remains the same as before at £199 and it will replace the 20 GB Pro package as the mid-range Xbox Stock-keeping unit.

The decision to develop a console with significantly more space came naturally for the company and Mr. Neil Thompson, senior regional director of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, managed to explain it best: " No other device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver and we know consumers need increasingly more and more space to store the amazing digital entertainment content we provide." He also underlined the fact that users will now be able to enjoy the extra space at no extra cost.

The company included in its offer a wireless controller, a headset and one month subscription to Xbox Live Gold.

The rest of the company’s offer remains the same, with the Xbox 360 Arcade, which includes a 256 MB memory card but no hard drive, selling for £159.99 and the Xbox 360 Elite with its 120 GB selling for £259.99.

Another version, this time with an 80 GB hard drive, is also scheduled for release later this month on August 29 at the price of £299.99.

The Xbox 360 was first presented on May 12, 2005 during a show on MTV and since then it reached immense global popularity with its three available versions. The company is constantly looking for new ways to top its main competitors, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii.

credit news by : efluxmedia.com

MBTA Fare Card Hacked, MIT Students Claim

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:18:00 +0000

BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has obtained a temporary restraining order barring three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students from showing what they claim is a way to get “free subway rides for life.”

Video: MBTA Blocks Hacker Presentation

The 10-day injunction, ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock, prohibited Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Allessandro Chiesa from revealing what they claim are the vulnerabilities of the MBTA’s fare card.

The students claimed they had hacked the security features of the computerized “Charlie Card” and were scheduled to present their findings Sunday in Las Vegas at computer hacking conference.

“The Anatomy of a Subway Hack,” is the description of their presentation on the DEFCON 16 conference Web site.

“In this talk we go over weaknesses in common subway fare collection systems. We focus on the Boston T subway, and we present several attacks to completely break the Charlie Card,” the listing read.

The DEFCON 16 conference annually brings thousands of sophisticated hackers and technology security experts together.

“If what the MIT undergrads claim in their public announcements is true, public disclosure of the security flaws - before the MBTA and its system vendors have an opportunity to correct the flaws - will cause significant damage to the MBTA’s transit system,” MBTA attorneys wrote in their motion for the restraining order.

Anderson said the students never planned to show the public how to hack into the MBTA fare system.

“"We wanted to share our academic work with the security community and had planned to withhold a key detail of our results so that a malicious attacker could not use our research for fraudulent purposes," Anderson said in a statement posted on the Web site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The foundation, which said it would represent the students in court, said in a press release the students received an A grade from the professor who supervised their project. MIT was named as a defendant in the suit, but did not respond to requests for comment.

credit news by : thebostonchannel.com

Apple boots $1,000 app from App Store

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:06:00 +0000

The $1,000 application on Apple's App Store, which lets people know how rich you are simply for buying it, has been removed without explanation, making some developers wonder what it takes for Apple to pull the plug.

The "I am Rich" application developed by Armin Heinrich, a German software developer, does nothing more than display a picture of a red ruby on the iPhone screen. After initially approving the $1,000 application, Apple removed it from the store this week. Eight people managed to dish out $1,000 to buy the useless application, generating about $5,600 in revenue for Heinrich and $2,400 for Apple, which collects 30 percent of each sale on the App Store, according to a blog on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

Developer Heirnrich told the LA Times in an e-mail that he had no idea why Apple had pulled his application, since he was not aware of violating any rules of the software store. He claims that Apple has not provided an explanation as to why the application was removed.

I suspect the application was removed because Apple was afraid of being sued. Some people had already complained on the Web that they had clicked on the "buy" button for the application accidently. Considering that major wireless carriers, such as AT&T, have started settling class action lawsuits with plaintiffs who say they were hoodwinked into signing up for recurring charges for ringtones and other content, it's not surprising that Apple would try minimize liability. The European Union is also cracking down on wireless operators that allow companies to sell bogus products via cell phones.

But even if Apple had a good reason for removing the application, developers are concerned by the lack of communication from Apple about how and why certain applications are allowed or denied access to the App Store and why some are removed.

When the App Store was first announced earlier this year, company CEO Steve Jobs said there would be limitations on what applications could be sold. Specifically, he stated that porn would not be allowed. And beyond that, he left it pretty open. Now these loosely defined criteria are frustrating some developers.

At least two other applications have been removed from the App Store in the past week with seemingly no explanation. Several blogs have reported that Box Office, a movie showtime resource, and NetShare, which let people use their iPhone 3G as a modem to connect their laptops to the Internet, have also been removed from the App Store. At least in the U.S., exclusive wireless provider AT&T has explicitly said it does not allow the iPhone to be used as a laptop modem.

Nullriver Software, the developer of the NetShare application told MacWorld that it had tried for several days to reach someone at Apple to get an explanation for why its application was removed. The company said it finally made contact, and now is working with Apple to get NetShare back on the App Store.

Cyrus Najmabadi, developer of BoxOffice, also told MacWorld that he had tried to contact Apple to find out why his application had been removed, but he said he got no response.

Apple also did not respond for comment on this story.

credit news by : news.cnet.com

Some Web sites remain blocked at Beijing Olympics

noreply@blogger.com (AodDy ZubZero) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:01:00 +0000

BEIJING - Some Web sites remained inaccessible to reporters as competition got under way Saturday at the Beijing Olympics.

China's communist government routinely filters its citizens' access to the Internet, but in the runup to the Olympics Chinese officials and officials with the International Olympic Committee vowed there would be no censorship of the Internet for accredited journalists covering the games.

Some sites were unblocked 10 days ago after reporters arriving to cover the games found them blocked and complained to the IOC, but others remain inaccessible, including sites related to the Tiananmen Square protests, Tibet, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama.

While searches for these keywords turned up long lists of Web sites, attempts to open some of them resulted in a message saying the page could not be displayed.

A search for information about the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement not only drew that error message but froze the search engine and prohibited further searches for several minutes. Sites that host thousands of blogs appeared to be open, but specific blogs remained blocked.

A statement by Chinese officials indicated they had gone as far as they intend to go.

"Yes, we promised to provide free access to the Internet — except for a few that would jeopardize our national security and would not be good for the healthy growth of our young people," said Wang Wei, executive vice president of BOCOG, the Olympic organizing committee.

"As in any other country, there are some kinds of limitations," Wang added. "However, I think we are going to provide sufficient access for the media to cover the games."

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies suggested reporters should keep pushing the Chinese.

"Sites that you need to have for your job, it's important that you raise them for BOCOG's awareness," Davies said. "It's ongoing work."

Rebecca MacKinnon, who studies Internet censorship in mainland China, said none of the changes have affected Chinese-language sites.

"The censorship situation for those Web sites has not loosened at all," said MacKinnon, who teaches journalism at the University of Hong Kong. "From what I understand they have even tightened."

credit news by : news.yahoo.com