What's New

Here Comes "Conroe"

2006-07-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

Without further ado: Intel Core 2 Duo

Intel is set to announce its long awaited Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors tonight, July 14th, at 12:01AM EST. Initially announced at the Spring Intel Developer Forum 2006, Intel’s Conroe was demonstrated beating out AMD’s fastest processors from high end Athlon 64 X2’s to the gaming and enthusiast oriented Athlon 64 FX. Intel also previously launched the Core 2 architecture based Woodcrest Xeon 5110, 5120, 5130, 5140, 5150 and 5160 models. With the new Core 2 architecture Intel is moving away from the megahertz war and moving towards higher instructions-per-clock performance and improved power efficiency instead.

New Core 2 processors are based upon a new micro architecture that shares its roots with Intel’s Core mobile architecture. Intel will launch Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme dual-core processors initially, though a single-core Conroe-L Core 2 Solo processor is expected in 2007. Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors have a plethora of new features including Intel Wide Dynamic Execution, Intel Smart Memory Access, Intel Advanced Smart Cache and Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost. Intel’s Wide Dynamic Execution technology allows the 14-stage pipeline to have a 33% wider execution over previous Netburst based processors. Each core also has deeper buffers, 4 wide-decode to execute, 4 wide-micro-op execute, micro and macro fusion and enhanced ALUs too.

Intel Smart Memory Access has an improved branch prediction unit with new pre-fetch algorithms that accelerate execution of out-of-order instructions and improve data movement between the L2 cache and system memory. With Intel Smart Memory Access the pipeline is always kept full for more efficient memory access that can mask the latency associated with a north bridge-equipped memory controller. Intel Advanced Smart Cache allows both processor cores to share the same L2 cache -- though bear in mind this has already been done for some time on Conroe's mobile predecessor, Yonah. Lower-end Core 2 Duo processors will have 2MB of shared L2 while Core 2 Extreme processors and higher end Core 2 Duo processors will have 4MB of share L2 cache. Intel claims a shared L2 cache reduces access latency and improves performance.

Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost is a performance enhancement for previous SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions. While SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions require two clock cycles to execute a single 128-bit instruction on previous architectures, the new Core 2 architecture can execute the same instructions in a single cycle. This improves performance and improves power efficiency as the processor can accomplish the same task in half the time.

Previous features such as Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology and Execute Disable Bit are available on new Core 2 processors as well.

While the performance NDA lifts later tonight availability isn’t expected until July 23rd, 2006. On July 23rd, 2006 consumers should be able to purchase Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors from most online retailers and stores. That being said, it's not unlikely that some merchants will start showing stock immediately to pre-empt shipments. Intel will officially announce availability on July 27, 2006.

Intel Desktop Performance Roadmap

Processor
Number

Frequency

FSB

L2
Cache

Price
July 23

C2D X6800

2.93GHz

1066MHz

4MB

$999

C2D E6700

2.67GHz

1066MHz

4MB

$530

C2D E6600

2.4GHz

1066MHz

4MB

$316

C2D E6400

2.13GHz

1066MHz

2MB

$224

C2D E6300

1.86GHz

1066MHz

2MB

$183

P4D 945

3.4GHz

800MHz

2x2MB

$163

P4D 915

2.8GHz

800MHz

2x2MB

$133

P4D 820

2.8GHz

800MHz

2x1MB

$113

P4D 805

2.66GHz

533MHz

2x1MB

$93

Intel has priced Core 2 Duo processors competitively with a traditional Pentium 4 processors on all price points. At the low end of the spectrum are the 2MB L2 cache equipped Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400 priced at $183 and $224 respectively. For an extra few bucks consumers can pickup the Core 2 E6600 with 4MB of L2 cache. Topping off the Core 2 Duo lineup is the E6700 for $530. Core 2 Duo processors will be available with 1.86, 2.13, 2.4 and 2.67 GHz respectively.

Gamers and enthusiasts looking for more performance can pickup the Core 2 Extreme X6800 for $999. Unlike previous Pentium Extreme Edition processors which only added a faster front-side bus and Hyper Threading technology, the Core 2 Extreme is clocked at 2.93 GHz, a 263 MHz clock frequency advantage over the Core 2 Duo E6700. Hyper-Threading will not be available on any initial Core 2 based processors. Intel will launch a 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme processor later this year, and a quad-core Kentsfield Core 2 Extreme processor early next year.

With the launch of Core 2 Duo Intel will aggressively cut prices on current Pentium D 945, 915, 820 and 805 processors. The 2x2MB of L2 cache equipped 3.4 GHz dual-core Pentium D 945 will drop to $163 while the 2.8 GHz Pentium D 915 will drop to $133. Pentium D 820 and 805 processors will drop to $113 and $93 respectively.

Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme compatible motherboards are expected from Asus, Epox, Gigabyte, Intel and Universal abit with 975X, P965 and G965 chipsets.

Google Spreadsheets v.1.1.4d

2006-07-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

The version number for Google Spreadsheet has been updated from 1.1.4b to 1.1.4d today — with it comes some new features that will be useful for anybody actually using the service. In addition to new features, the loading time seems much faster to me, though I am unable to do benchmarks that confirm this.

There are now context menus that provide easier access to some basic functionality. You can right click in a cell to perform actions like cut/copy/paste or you can right click on a row to perform actions like inserting and deleting.

Cell formatting has been improved in this release as well. You can manage borders using the new toolbar item, and you can also use the copy/paste function to change only the formatting of a cell if you don't want to lose data.

Even though this is a minor update, it shows that they are continuing to improve the product. I have a feeling the Googlized version of Writely will be making an appearance soon too — the sub-sub domain has been created (writely.l.google.com) which is usually an indication that the sub domain (writely.google.com) shouldn't be far behind.

Google's antisocial downside

2006-07-13T21:23:00.001-07:00

news analysis In the social-networking party sweeping the Web, search titan Google is playing the wallflower. Is it being smart or just plain nerdy?

MySpace.com, Facebook.com and others have turned heads for their skyrocketing traffic and massive appeal among young people, who flock to the sites by the millions to bond via photos, videos, blogs, e-mail and instant messaging. Meanwhile, top portals MSN and Yahoo, threatened by the prospect of losing favored-site ranking to MySpace, have begun to organize their applications around social networking, as well.

But Google's 2-year-old social network Orkut--which connects friends and friends of friends around shared interests, but does not include blogging or video features--has lagged in the popularity contest. It's still not widely available and has yet to adopt the Google brand. "It proved to be a problem for Google so now they're watching it," said Stephen Arnold, author of "The Google Legacy," referring to accusations that Orkut members promoted gang-related violence in countries like Brazil.

"It will be interesting over time to see how close Google can come to understanding people through algorithms."

--Esther Dyson, editor, Release 1.0

But as Google takes time to tinker with another one of its many young services, competitors are fast encroaching on the company's other turf.

Blogger, for example, was the Web's top blog-publishing tool when Google bought it in February 2003. Although Google hasn't turned the service into a full-on social network, Nielsen/NetRatings considers blogging a social activity.

In the last year, MySpace, which lets members include blogs on their personal pages, surpassed Google's Blogger as the top social-networking site by Nielsen's measure in the United States. In May 2006, Blogger had 20 million unique visitors, up 67 percent from May 2005. In contrast, MySpace drew 42 million unique visitors in May, up 329 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen.

Orkut fell below Nielsen's reporting cutoff at roughly 300,000 unique visitors.

According to Google, which responded via e-mail, the company is "committed" to social networking through Blogger, Google Video and Orkut. "Where it makes sense, Google continues to integrate its products to provide the best user experience possible, as with Gmail and Google Talk, for example," according to an unnamed spokesperson.

Of course, some proponents say Google is savvy not to invest heavily in services that have questionable benefit to its search and advertising business, which is worth near $6 billion annually. What's more likely, they say, is that Google will invest in technologies that can improve Web search and its rate of return on advertising "clicks."

"Fundamentally, information, not people, is Google's forte," said Esther Dyson, editor of tech newsletter Release 1.0, which is owned by CNET Networks, publisher of CNET News.com. "It will be interesting over time to see how close Google can come to understanding people through algorithms," she added.

The rival advantage
Onlookers have doubted the staying power of social networks like MySpace, calling them fads. But efforts to get into social networking by portals Microsoft and Yahoo show that the social services can resonate with Web surfers and prove beneficial to display and search-related advertising.

Microsoft, for example, is leveraging social networking to gain a tactical advantage over rival Google.

Moz Hussain, Microsoft group product manager at MSN Spaces, said that by incorporating social features into its blog publishing tool MSN Spaces, the company is driving consumer loyalty and ad revenue.

MSN Spaces, which was launched in December 2004, has become the most popular social network on a global basis, according to ComScore Networks. That's a fact the software giant attributes to social-networking features inserted last year that alert people to changes within friends' blogs via MSN instant messenger.

"The obvious way you make money is by generating a large number of page views and (displaying) ads against those pages," Hussain said. But he added that "if people use two of our products, they become much more valuable and use all of our products more."

The result has meant more display and search-related advertising, he said.

In the next month or two, Hussain said the company will infuse more networking features into MSN Spaces and its social-network brand, Windows Live Spaces. With the tool, people will be able to see lists of friends on their blogs or IM windows, and then, via an upcoming product called "Friends Explorer," use the cursor to peruse friends of friends.

Arnold, the author, said social software is ultimately a shortcut for MSN in the search race because it provides the software giant with easy markers for spidering the Web and producing relevant results.

"Microsoft's looking...to do something Google's not doing aggressively," Arnold said.

"Google would be smart to start thinking of social networks as infrastructure for other applications on their network as Yahoo has done."

--David Hornik, venture capitalist

Google introduced Orkut in January 2004 as the sideline project of one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten. Like most of the company's new products, Google's Orkut enjoyed enormous buzz early on, thanks to an invitation-only policy that included many Silicon Valley muckety-mucks as community members. But since then, Orkut hasn't grown significantly in the United States compared with the speedy trajectory of other social networks like MySpace.

Most of Orkut's following comes from Portuguese-speaking countries, and Google has encountered problems with the Brazilian government for member content promoting gang violence in that country.

In May, Orkut had 210,000 visitors in the United States, up 85 percent from the year earlier, according to ComScore.

Worldwide, Orkut enjoyed more popularity. It ranked fifth in May by ComScore's measure, more than doubling its visitors for the year to 33.7 million. In contrast, MSN Spaces doubled its visitors to 101 million, and MySpace grew 250 percent to 74 million, according to ComScore.

In contrast, Yahoo's 360 amassed nearly 5 million visitors in May since launching in March 2005. Microsoft's MSN Spaces drew 9.6 million visitors, up more than 200 percent in that same period. And MySpace attracted 51.4 million visitors, up 230 percent year over year.

Social networking demands attention not only for its expanding influence among Web surfers, but also because sites like MySpace are encroaching on the amount of search traffic on the Internet--a key driver of the $14 billion online advertising business.

In May, MySpace for the first time joined the ranks of top search sites counted by ComScore Media Metrix, a New York-based measurement firm. In June, it continued to hold the sixth slot, garnering about 53 million searches, behind No 1. Google, followed by, in order of ranking: Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask, according to ComScore. To be sure, it reaches only a small fraction of the market versus Google's 43 percent reach, but its newly held recognition could mean that social networks are the portal of the future, investors say.

This could indicate that Google needs to cultivate its own social aspirations quickly in order to protect its multibillion-dollar advertising business.

"Google was early to the pure-play social network party, which was certainly smart at the time," said David Hornik, a venture capitalist at August Capital. "But social networking has evolved into an important underpinning of other key experiences, such as photo sharing with Flickr or blogging with Vox," a new personal blogging service.

"Google would be smart to start thinking of social networks as infrastructure for other applications on their network as Yahoo has done," Hornik added.

Robert Goldberg, an early stage venture capitalist at Ridgelift Ventures, doubts Google will pay much attention to social networking, and will instead opt to focus on advertising technologies and services such as Google CheckOut, the company's recently launched payment service.

"There are a few things that Google's going to get deadly serious about," said Goldberg, "but social networking is not one of them."

CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

New Virus Pretends to be WGA

2006-07-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

UPDATED: A virus posing as Microsoft's controversial anti-piracy software is spreading via AOL's popular Instant Messenger network, but it appears to be more of a jab at Microsoft than a real threat.

The message itself does not spoof someone in the user's Buddy list, it comes in from an unknown sender. The virus then comes via a link in the instant message, should the user be foolish enough to click on a link sent by someone they don't know.

Once infected, the virus registers itself as a new system driver service named "wgavn" and has the public display name of "Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification." If the user shuts it down, the user is informed that removing or stopping the service will cause system instability.

Unlike WGA, the virus poses a real danger because it disables the Windows firewall and opens a backdoor to the infected computer. It's not known at this point whether anyone has actually exploited such an opening caused by the new virus.

"If you get it, it's as bad as any of them," said Randy Abrams, director of technical education for Eset Software, developer of the NOD32 antivirus program. "Ok, it's not flashing your BIOS chip or grabbing specific banking info, but once you get a backdoor on a computer, it's trivial to download a bot or do much more."

ESET's anti-virus hunters first heard of the WGA impersonator, which it dubbed Win32/IRCBot.OO, on June 29 and got in a sample of the virus on July 1. But Abrams admits it hasn't been thoroughly examined because as far as threats go, this one is pretty far down the list. It ranked 1,400 on Eset's threat list.

"The choice of names makes it clear it's an attack on WGA. Its effect is not in harming users but in making bad publicity for Microsoft," said Abrams.

Windows Genuine Advantage is a controversial utility in Windows XP that verifies that the installation is not pirated. However, it has drawn user ire and two lawsuits over the fact that Microsoft did not disclose what it does. Also, users were forced to download WGA or forfeit receiving non-critical software updates from Microsoft.

At this point, Abrams notes there are probably more names for the virus than there are infections. It's a long-standing problem in the antivirus vendor world; every vendor gives a new virus its own choice of name. When a new-found virus comes in, the first concern is finding a fix, not worrying about naming conventions, Abrams pointed out.

According to the virus names list on AV-test.org, AVG calls the virus Worm/Opanki.IP; BitDefender calls it Backdoor.IRCBot.JV, F-Prot calls it a new variant of W32/Threat-HLLIM-based!Maximus, Kaspersky calls it Backdoor.Win32.IRCBot.st, McAfee calls it W32/Opanki.worm.gen and Sophos calls it W32/Cuebot-K.

Updates prior version to correct spelling of Abrams' name.

Microsoft drops its XP pirate checks

2006-07-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

MICROSOFT has dropped Big Brother-style plans to track down pirated copies of Windows XP, dumping elements of its Windows Genuine Advantage Notification after they ignited a firestorm of controversy.

The stealth application, introduced with auto updates in Australia in April as part of a pilot scheme, "phoned home" every time the computer was booted to confirm that the operating system was genuine.

If the software was pirated it triggered a series of irritating warnings. Now Microsoft has reacted to user anger by switching off the boot-up check.

The company has retained another tool, WGA Validation, which checks back periodically with Microsoft headquarters.

A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to speak to The Australian about the issue.

"No Microsoft spokespeople have spoken to the press regarding the update to the WGA Notifications program," she said.

US users have already filed a class action against Microsoft alleging that the tool is spyware, and Australians are fuming over the covert nature of the program.

Computer repair companies, frustrated that the changes were introduced with no advance warning, have been left to deal with angry customers who have inadvertently bought PCs with pirated operating systems.

"Most people say the validation procedures are probably fair enough, but if your software is legitimate and they come back and check it every day, well, that's why people are a bit reactive," said Ian Smith, a user angered by the WGA Notification pilot.

"I bought my software legitimately, I validated it, I go to Microsoft for updates, and if they want to check it then, that's okay. But coming back every day is too much."

The secrecy of the initiative, with the tool downloaded through the Windows auto-update feature, is what has angered users most of all. Mr Smith said the anti-piracy measure was "slipped under the radar", making it difficult to avoid and leaving most users completely unaware that their system was checking up on them.

"It ended up on my machine without me knowing about it," he said. "The fact that they didn't tell anyone was the worst part of it."

The notification scheme has caught plenty of people unaware, with computer service companies left to deal with clients who thought they had bought their software legitimately, only to find, sometimes years down the track, that it was pirated.

Mark Ahern, a specialist with Brisbane support firm computersbehavingbadly, said some of his clients who bought their hardware elsewhere had found they had been ripped off.

"Not many people realise that unless there's a sticker on the box, the chances are it's dodgy," he said. "I had three clients who had their systems flagged as non-genuine, and they had paid their money to the whitebox assembler and been stung."

Microsoft should have warned users before introducing the changes, he said. "Part of the issue has been that there was no form of warning," he said. "The end-user licence states that they can do that, but who reads it?"

Mr Ahern said the WGA program was part of a wider attempt by Microsoft to slowly but surely crack down on pirated operating systems and other software. Ultimately, even additional hardware may be locked out if the operating system was pirated.

"At the moment it's an annoying warning, but the machine still functions," he said. "My theory is that they'll gradually make it so you can't install software, and it will be necessary to have the genuine stuff."

San Diego lawyer Scott Kamber has filed a class action against Microsoft on behalf of millions of computer users, alleging the tool is spyware.

A Microsoft Australia spokeswoman refused to discuss the action. "WGA is not spyware," the company's statement says.

"It's installed with the consent of the user and seeks only to notify the user if a proper licence is not in place".

The Australian

The Top Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps

2006-07-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Top ten lists are a dime a dozen, but I haven’t seen one floating around yet on the most beautiful OS X apps out there. And as someone who’s hitting MacUpdate daily as a small part of my job, always on the hunt for what’s cool and new, I thought I’d share some of my insight, condensed down for mass consumption into a neat little list. Before you go on, remember that this is going to be controversial no matter what. I haven’t found a single top ten list that doesn’t get most people complaining. But honestly, after a lot of thought, I feel there are very few truly beautiful OS X apps left out if you include the honorable mentions. Oh, and before you begin, note that Apple apps (like Front Row and Aperture) have been knocked off the list. This one features independently developed freeware and shareware apps. So, without further ado, presenting the ten most beautiful OS X apps in the world:

The List

Starting off this list is the first of two extremely eye-pleasing P2P apps. (Coincidentally, the other one links to this from within its Help menu as the recommended BitTorrent client.) Transmission is an exercise in simplicity and Aqualicious UI design, with notable exception to its icon. (Look for a replacement icon coming soon on this blog by Tom.) For all of you Azureus and BitTorrent users out there, feast your eyes on this baby. And for an even appearance, download an alternate set of toolbar icons by artist Matt Ball.

The Potion Factory’s second release may not be quite as useful as Podcast Maker is for many podcasters (it’s also on this list), but the UI is just as lickable. Starting with the mouth-watering application icon (ok, I’ll stop with the food analogies there), the eye candy gets only better. (Doh.) You definitely have to try this one to experience it. For what is ultimately an extremely fun voice recording and filtering toy, there’s been a lot of love put into this app. You’ll notice some really cute icons for each filter effect by the excellent Mischa McLachlan of Zyotism, and the secondary windows for setting reminders and viewing alerts are just as gorgeous. If you have any kids, or never fully grew up, check this one out. Useful as a voice recorder, fun as a prank tool, and costs less than a Yakbak or Whoopee cushion.

I’m no podcaster, but Andy and Jin at the Potion Factory must be doing something right with their flagship app, Podcast Maker, because after one look at the demo, I actually fired up Garageband and tried to record a few shows, just to fiddle around with PCM. An hour or two later I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a celebrity podcaster, but regardless, the app’s UI was something I was glad to have experienced. For all experienced or novice podcasters out there, there is no better tool on the Mac to put your shows together. Just ask “The Office” creator Ricky Gervais, the band “They Might Be Giants”, Senator Debbie Stabenow, or any of the other celebrity podcasters and happy customers listed in the Podcast Maker gallery.

Ahh, finally, the much loved FTP application from Panic. Transmit, around since OS 9, made the UI jump to OS X with much grace (unlike some other competitors still figuring it out), and has since matured at a very consistent, comfortable pace. The single most impressive UI feature of Transmit is the remarkable amount of features and functionality it squeezes into its pretty, pitch-perfect Aqua window. Basically, you’re left with the feeling that if Apple had their own “iFTP”, it’d look something like this.

Just about every corner of thish app oozes with polish and works as you’d expect it to. Tabs and column view are reimplemented from scratch better than just about any other shareware app out there, and Transmit even comes with a pretty nice widget for customers to use in the Dashboard. (And hey, that’s coming from the guy selling a competing widget.) It’s an app I use nearly everyday, and use with utter pleasure.

The small shareware/freeware Mac game market doesn’t exactly offer a wealth of UI gems, so this is pretty much the exception. While the icon needs some work, Quinn’s interface looks more like a sleek skin for an expensive utility than, well, a tetris client. Pop open the drawer, and you get a slick animated radar type dealy while searching for servers, and just about every action in the game is smoothly animated, whether it’s the pane shifting around after joining a server, or typed chat messages quickly wiping in with a neat, subtle sci-fi sound. The score display looks extremely cool, and the blocks themselves look suitably clean, though I’d like to see some slicker skins. (Future “Pimp your App” feature on this blog perhaps?)

The coolest part perhaps is how far this freeware game has come along in the UI department. When I tried it a few weeks ago for the first time in over a year, my jaw dropped. I’ve never before seen an app’s looks improve this much. Oh, and the game itself is fun too.

By far the simplest in function and UI among the rest of these apps, AppZapper packs an incredible amount of tasteful visual punch per pixel into its tiny, efficient UI. Factor in the animated dropzone, the truly iconic application icon, the smooth sliding and fading between window views, the construction warning strip for “safe apps”, and the utter elegance of the package as a whole, and maybe this #1 spot will start to sound reasonable. And let’s not forget that beauty is not limited to what our eyes take in. I wouldn’t call it ‘beautiful’ necessarily, but there is something to be said about this magical combination of screen flashing and the “zap” noise that makes appzapping waaaay more fun than it should be. If this doesn’t snag this year’s Apple Design Award for Best OS X User Experience, I will honestly be very, very shocked.

David Watanabe’s extremely slick and polished P2P application Acquisition won’t win any Apple Design Awards for a pretty glaring reason (think Apple’s tenuous deals with the record companies), but if the “Best OS X User Experience” category was judged without politics, this would surely take it, or at least make runner-up. That not being the case, Dave can hopefully take some comfort with this spot on the list for a very well-deserving app. Sporting one of the most polished unified window apps out there, Acquisition manages to pack in a lot of features while maintaining what is ultimately a surprisingly spare and aesthetically pleasing UI. There is no single outstanding visual element here, unlike Delicious Library’s shelves, or CoverFlow’s 3D effects. It’s all about the presentation as a whole.

Props to the slick in-list progress bars, the visually contextual search button that animates while searching, the Mail rules style filtering UI, and even the use of the main pane for one of the most visually pleasing nags ever, and some discreet branding for registered users. Acquisition does a lot with its single window interface, and is so intensely polished and perfect, that you just know the app is in really, really talented hands. Which is true, because with three apps in this post (one as an honorable mention), Watanabe is a powerhouse dev with a perfect eye for masterful UI design.

This little app came out of nowhere last year, and has since managed to pretty much universally wow everyone who tries it with its unique 3D visual effects. CoverFlow attempts to fix one of the more glaring shortcomings of the modern music jukebox application’s user interface: its lack of visual navigation, and general lack of attention to album art. The solution the app’s UI offers is by far the most fun way to browse music since flipping through LP’s at the local record store. (The icon pictured is coming soon. For now you can download it and install it through artist Jasper Hauser’s blog by dropping in the icns file into CoverFlow’s resources folder.

Newsfire 0.1 debuted two summers ago to a very crowded RSS feed reader market which included the venerable NetNewsWire and of course the not yet out Safari RSS, announced at WWDC just months before. That hasn’t stopped this app from fast becoming one of the most popular RSS feed readers out there though, in large part due to its obsessively polished UI. Watanabe looked towards iChat’s buddy list for inspiration, and the result is a UI that contains a feed list in Newsfire that smoothly shifts around items when feeds are updated, displays unread items in familiar green badges, and perhaps most importantly, presents news and podcasts in an extremely slick fashion. Sure, even at version 1.3 Newsfire lacks some of its competitors’ features and customizability, but this is a case where you won’t have a problem with giving up UI control to developer Watanabe’s hands. He knows what he’s doing, and frankly, sometimes, it’s best not to mess with works of art.

With a reported $250,000 in sales in its first month of release, Delicious Library will go down in history as one of the most successful shareware application launches ever. With a price tag of $40, it’s also the most expensive shareware app on this list. So, why did masses of people pay a solid chunk of change for what is in its essence an app that helps you organize your media collection and borrow items out to your friends? Witness the power of UI design.

Clearly, Delicious Library’s most viscerally appealing feature is its ability to let users relive the joy of building their collection, this time for free and with little hassle on their Mac. What Delicious Library did to differentiate itself from the competition in this regard, in addition to its slick improvement of the “adding” process with iSight barcode scanning support, was represent your media collection about as realistically as it was technically possible to do. The super slick representation of CD album art and book covers downloaded from Amazon as jewel cases and real paperback and hardcover books in a virtual wooden bookshelf truly resonated with its users, and I feel, ultimately contributed hugely to its success. There’s more of course, but I’ll let you try this app out for yourself, in the unlikely event that you haven’t yet of course.

Honorable Mentions

Finally, there was of course a list just as long of apps that didn’t quite make the cut. If you found some gems in the top ten and want to explore further, I highly recommend trying these additional ten apps out: Inquisitor by David Watanabe, TextMate by Macromates, Pixadex by The IconFactory & Panic, Omniweb and OmniDazzle by The OmniGroup, RapidWeaver 3 by Realmac Software, CSSEdit by MacRabbit, Comic Life by Plasq, Adium 1.0 SVN, Quicksilver by BlackTree, Inc., and StickyBrain by Chronos.

These apps are all pleasures to behold, and definitely worth a spin.

Conclusion

My thoughts after compiling this list? I have to say that there are definitely a lot of clean, HIG complying freeware and shareware apps out there, but when you try to really narrow it down to the truly slick, beautiful, and eye-catching, there ultimately aren’t that many contenders. And, let me add, the shareware contenders listed in this post generally tend to do pretty well. Developers, listen up. UI matters, a lot more now than it did in OS 9, or does in Windows, and I’m not talking about just slapping in some nice toolbar icons and calling it a day, customers can respond amazingly well to what many programmers will write off as extraneous eye candy. (Delicious Library’s shelving? AppZapper’s screen flash?) Some of the most successful Macintosh shareware companies are represented on this list (Delicious Monster, Panic, and The OmniGroup among others) and I think you can get an early glimpse at the next generation of powerhouse companies as well, and it’s not a coincidence. Good UI sells, so give it the time it deserves. And for the rest of you, enjoy these apps! Hopefully you’ll find a few gems in here that you’ll be trying out for the first time.

Why Windows takes so long to shut down.

2006-07-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

We all have been there. It is 4:55 and you want to get out of work...But you want to make sure your system is shutdown for the night. You dutifully close all of your applications and start shutting down

5 minutes later it *finally* powers off

It happens to more machines that it should. I decided to see what the problem might be. I searched google, forums, and newsgroups for an answer. The biggest culprit is a problem unloading the current users profile.

This can happen when third party, or even Microsoft applications have not properly cleaned up when exiting. Windows will keep trying to unload the profile until Windows finally decides that it can't and should shutdown. Even if you find the application causing the problem - it may be impossible to do anything about it.

This is why Microsoft released the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

This free utility automatically cleans up user profiles and prevents you from playing the timeout wait game.

Once you run the setup wizard it will look like the installer did nothing. If you open up your services list, you will see that a new service is running in the background:

The idea of this program is to reclaim resources when a task is finished (memory, handles, etc). It accomplishes this by monitoring for users to log off and verifying that unused resources are reclaimed. This approach is superior as it works for any known reason that profiles do not unload and also will keep working to address new unknown issues.

Now when you go to shutdown, logoff or restart it will happen within seconds. Instead of minutes.

The Anatomy of the Google Product Cycle

2006-07-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek's hype-killing article on Google's product line has everyone buzzing about the company's product cycle. Guest writer Garry Bibb explains the process -- it all starts with a Battlestar Galactica marathon and some Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Friday Night
Two googletards meet for Battlestar Galactica marathon on UPN but end up calculating their worth as the weekend stock price hovers around $415; after two epicurean Mike's Hard Lemonades, a message is sent to an internal developer list with an idea for (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
Senior VP Marissa Mayer returns to her email client from a night of weeping in front of a vanity mirror, costumed in lingerie and stilettos no one knows she owns; realizes (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface is exactly what the company needs.

Monday Morning
CEO Eric Schmidt receives idea at a weekly staff meeting; pretends to understand it; in a halfhearted attempt to save face, makes offhand remark about how processors are much faster than when he was in grad school at Berkeley.

Two Weeks Later
Upstart, 20-something business development and/or marketing Googlies learn about it at the Googleplex cafeteria; confuse it with a competitor for Oracle's database solution and/or a product that will take down Boeing. Spread it casually at Marina bars to all their other dotcom friends.

45 Days Later
Om Malik receives phone call; does investigation; dispells rumors that an aircraft is involved but still poses question: is this an Ebay-Killer??

46 Days Later
Michael Arrington publishes "exclusive" screenshots on TechCrunch; says it lacks features which his Web 2.0 company Edgeio has; provides an irrelevant recommendation for Zooomr or Skobee.

47 Days Later
Zawodny blogs; laments that Yahoo had this idea in 1999; considers quitting; instead posts excel spread sheets cataloging (a) his weight loss (b) his Cessna's mileage.

48 Days Later
Chaos ensues at Microsoft, Yahoo, and/or Ebay; Fox buys Myspace anyway; Steve Ballmer throws a chair.

49 Days Later
John Battelle's intern discovers rumor, "breaks" story; Schmidt denies rumors to the New York Times; says Google is not out to displace any other company.

2 Months Later
Google blog announces a product which will displace some other company; Google engineers realize this is actually (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface. Lose heart; but add it to their del.icio.us pages anyway.

2 Months and 1 week Later
Wall Street clods doubt Google after much inquiry; stock drops to $385; panic at the plex.

2 Months and 2 weeks later
Mayer holds damage control press event; research director Peter Norvig shows pictures of caseless servers last used in 1999; claims computers without cases are much more efficient; "70/20/10" is bandied about along with shrimp cocktail.

2 Months and 3 weeks later
CFO Reyes figures out math to make Google meet quarterly expectations; considers the follical implant surgery but in a late, lonely night at the office, rediscovers appreciation for the Jean Luc-Picard look.

3 months later
The math works; on a Friday the stock balloons to $415 in after hours; coincindentally, two googletards meet for another Battlestar Galactica marathon on UPN...

HD-DVD clearly outshines Blu-ray

2006-07-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Q: What are your thoughts regarding the new HD-DVD and Blu-ray high definition video discs?

Thaddeus Mark, Castle Shannon

A: HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc are the two new formats competing to be the high-definition video disc of the future. Each promises to provide much better picture quality than standard DVD. The formats are not compatible. HD-DVD players will not play Blu-ray discs, and vice versa. (Think Beta vs. VHS again.) You can buy the Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player for $500. The only Blu-ray player currently available, the Samsung BDP-1000, costs $1,000.

I recently saw demonstrations of both. The Blu-ray demo was at a top-notch home theater specialty shop. It used a front projection system and a prototype Sony player, and it was led by Sony executives using custom-made demo material. I saw a regular production HD-DVD player with a 50-inch plasma TV in a Best Buy store. Both looked great to my eyes. Obviously, the Blu-ray demo was bound to be more impressive given the environment and demo material.

Even taking this into account, I was very impressed and left with no reason to think Blu-ray would be anything but incredible in production form.

Given that the demonstrations used radically different equipment, software and surroundings, I did a little follow-up research online and was shocked at what those who own both formats have to say about their real-world experience.

Based on the first round of reports, the HD-DVD format is garnering praise, but Blu-ray is garnering almost universal scorn from reviewers and enthusiasts alike. Reviewer Evan Powell, of projectorcentral.com, commented of Blu-ray: "The image quality does not measure up to what we would expect from a high-definition source, and it certainly falls short of the hype."

At the AVS Forum, home-theater buffs had even harsher reactions. A sampling of their comments: "There's no getting around the fact that, at this time, BD is not as good as HD-DVD"; "I watched one and a half movies when I realized that they look horrible. ... needs to go to the scrap heap"; "This has to count as one of the greatest AV disappointments I can remember!"; "I took it back after two days. ... I just couldn't justify keeping the Samsung when I considered what I'm getting from the Toshiba at half the price"; and "Too much money, too little performance. It went back!" You can read these and more comments under the Blu-ray player and HD-DVD player forums at www.avsforum.com.

The bad launch does not mean Blu-ray is doomed, as more movies and players are to come, and they are likely to improve.

Industry politics and money will play a role in the format war, too. In two weeks, I will discuss more on HD-DVD, Blu-ray and DVD.

Don Lindich is the creator of the "Digital Made Easy" series of books. Submit your audio, video and digital photography questions to donlindich@yahoo.com.

Google's secret IPv6 plans

2006-06-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

Google Operating System reports on Alex Lightman's theory why Google is buying up "dark fiber" — to pursue IPv6 initiatives. According to Lightman, Google has a huge block of "slash 20" addresses — exactly what is needed to be a large scale service provider.

That got me wondering — what does it take to get a block of IPv6 addresses? I turn to ARIN to find the answer — the information I found seems to provide some confirmation to Lightman's speculation.

To qualify for an initial allocation of IPv6 address space, an organization must:
a) be an LIR;
b) not be an end site;
c) plan to provide IPv6 connectivity to organizations to which it will assign /48s, by advertising that connectivity through its single aggregated address allocation; and
d) be an existing, known ISP in the ARIN region or have a plan for making at least 200 /48 assignments to other organizations within five years.

If you take ARIN's policies at face value, these statements must be true:

a) Google is an LIR (Local Internet Registry). LIRs are generally an ISP whose customers are typically end users or other ISPs.

b) Google is not considered an "end site" (therefore must be a service provider)
c) Google has plans to provide IPv6 connectivity to organizations.
d) Within 5 years Google will provide connectivity to at least 200 organizations.

How do we know that Google falls under these policies? Well, if we look up "Google" on ARIN, we can see that in March 2005 they registered a block of IPv6 addresses. The parent of that block is ARIN.

Firefox 1.5 vs. Opera 9

2006-06-25T05:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a diehard Firefox user sense before Beta 1. I wrote my Firefox Guide earlier this year, once that page hit Slashdot there were several comments about how Opera does all of that and more, without the need of the extensions that Firefox has. I put a mental note that I should check this out. Well a few months later and Opera 9 has been released. Well I guess now is a good time to look at this Opera vs. Firefox talk that everyone flamed about. So the goal in this article is to see what is better under different environments. So let’s give it a go.

Both Firefox and Opera have many more features than Internet Explorer. This isn’t about tabbed browsing, having a search box on the right of the navigation bar, added support for extra features, or anything else we’ve come to expect in these browsers. My goal in this is to go into the features that Opera is showcasing and to see how well Firefox holds up.

Features

BitTorrent Client – Well I am honestly not sure what the point of this feature is, none the less it is a feature. I am usually not the type of person that goes for a once size fits all application. I like to have a different application for each use, web, email, irc, ftp, and more. I do tent to leave programs open for a century or two and I only reboot my box when it’s totally necessary. I am currently using uTorrent as my default torrent application so I went to grab a CentOS ISO file. I do not have the exact memory usage of both applications but I can say the memory usage jumped a bit on Opera and I think uTorrent was around 10-12MB. Well Opera has Firefox on this, 1 this feature is built in, and 2 there isn’t an extension that adds a BT client to Firefox.

IRC – Setting up IRC was very straight forward. I actually liked it a lot. I am not going to go into details on how to configure an IRC client, but it works great. For an IRC client in Firefox the extension ChatZilla works well, but I honestly have to say I like this much better, and would actually use it. I currently use mIRC.

IRC Screenshot

Add Favorite Search Engines – This is a very standard feature although I do like how they did the layout of the menu.

Content Blocker – This I thought was an awesome idea, just not implemented very well. An example I was on Digg and wanted to see if I could remove the ads on the homepage. I right clicked, and went down to the content blocker; well in short it said hit the shift key when clicking on the time. It didn’t work. Firefox doesn’t have a built in feature that does this, but the extension AdBlock/AdBlockPlus does this very well. You are able to block any element of the page.

Thumbnail Preview – When browsing with lots of tabs I often wonder what one tab is when I am trying to find a certain page. I often use the Ctrl-Tab shortcut in Firefox to browse through tabs. Well Opera has gone many steps above Firefox in solving this problem by showing a thumbnail of the webpage when you hold the mouse over the tab. Check out the screenshot below. There is an extension for Firefox, Viamatic foXpose that displayed thumbnails of all the pages on a separate tab. I used that a few times but found it to be slow and cumbersome and removed it very soon afterward. In writing this article I have already found this feature to be very useful.

Transfer Manager – This is very similar to the Download Manager in Firefox, except its in a tab. Very cool implementation and reduces the number of windows open.

Fast Forward – This is a very interesting item. I am not quite sure what to say about this, I haven’t found it very useful at all. Fast Forward will detect the most likely "next page" link and greatly simplify navigation in multi-page documents such as search results and image galleries. Although I must admit I haven’t been on forums, Digg, Slashdot, photo galleries, or Google much this afternoon. Maybe when I start browsing those sites I’ll fall in love with this feature.

Notes – Save text from web pages or write notes for later viewing. I’ve been looking for something like this forever. I’m in love.

Sessions – Saving sessions is very important to me. Incase you don’t know what it is, saving sessions basically allows the user to have for example 5 tabs open. Close Opera. Open it again and all your pages are where you left them. This is a wonderful tool, although right now I rarely close Firefox because it lacks this feature. I do use an extension, SessionSaver, but in some instances I have found it to be very unreliable. The only time I use it is when I need to restart Firefox after a few days to recover the memory lost in leaks.

Mouse Gestures – I personally haven’t ever been a fan of these features. There is a Firefox extension, Mouse Gestures that basically has the same features that Opera has out of the box. For the people that love this feature this probably kicks totally ass to have it built it. For me it’s cool but I don’t use it.

Trash Can – I know that whenever I close a tab I didn’t mean to a few words start coming to my memory. Well Opera has what they call the Trash Can. The extension in Firefox I use for this is TabMixPlus, I also use that to drag and drop tabs around. Opera has drag and drop support built in, as well as the feature to drag and drop tabs across different windows. I’ve even used that today a few times.

Speed / Memory Usage

When running Firefox I usually have at least 10-20 windows open at any given time. Therefore memory usage is a big deal to me. I have been using Opera for about 8-9 hours at this point so my experience is nothing like my experience with Firefox. When browsing I noticed the CPU usage was very minor compared to Firefox rendering the same page. RAM usage with 28 tabs in Firefox and 22 in Opera was 89MB and 69MB. Opera as you can tell was much better on ram usage, and over time seemed to stay lower even though I had more tabs open.

Screenshot of the 28 tabs I opened.

Innovations

There are a few innovations that I really found handy and useful. First off when clicking on the address bar this nice box drops down with Hope, Top 10, Bookmarks, Search Box, and Price Comparison. This saves a bit of time of having to move the mouse all over the place to find these items.

Using Ctrl-Tab to switch menus is very fast, but often I will fly right past the window I need or have to go through them all when searching for a window. Opera has a nice menu that drops down to display all the page titles for you to see and browse.

Disappointments

I often double click on a word to highlight it so I can copy the text or for some other usage that isn’t coming into my brain right now, but in Opera a menu pops up. For some reason I find this very annoying and unwanted.

I love the scroll wheel on my mouse. I often use it when trying to find something on a long webpage where scrolling is required. Duh. However in Opera whenever I click the scroll wheel on my mouse the cursor jumps the exact center of the page and then starts scrolling. Another annoyance is when I am middle clicking links to open then up into a new tab and I miss the link and the cursor jumps to the center of the page.

Safari, the web browser bundled with OS X and Opera both have the button to close the window on each tab. I personally love having it on the right side of the window, like Firefox has it, unless you use an extension to have it on each tab. I wish there was a way to change it to be like Firefox, but then again I guess it’s something that in time will grow on me.

I am sure there is a way to turn these annoyances off, I just haven’t found out how to, yet.

Widgets

Just like in MacOS X 10.4, Opera has the ability to have them to. I browsed around the Widgets page on Opera’s website and didn’t find anything (yet) that really struck me. I think widget support is needed, but not nearly as powerful as the extension support in Firefox.

Conclusion

I am sure many of the shortfalls in Firefox that have been fixed via extensions will be added in Firefox 2.0. Firefox 2.0 is currently in Alpha and Beta, but I am not including anything on because I want this base fully on finished products.

In short when I first opened Opera I expected another Firefox. After using Opera most of today, and going through all the features I can think of I am starting to like it more and more. Maybe it’s time I start an Opera Guide like the Firefox Guide.

I am officially torn on what browser to use; only time will tell. What I can see if Opera being a replacement to Firefox due to the amount of built in features, but Firefox has many powerful extensions that might take some time looking for replacements. Look for an addition to this article with widgets to replace some of my beloved Firefox

Microsoft: Vista Most Secure OS Ever

2006-06-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia opened up TechEd 2006 in Boston Sunday evening by proclaiming that Windows Vista was the most secure operating system in the industry. But a bold statement can only go so far, and much of this week's conference has been spent reinforcing that point.

From the network perimeter to deep inside the Windows client, the significance of security has permeated into every facet of technology. Norman Mailer said that 20th century man's default status was anxiety. We have barely dipped our toes into the 21st, and our default status has already been elevated to outright fear.

Consumers are being plagued with spam, phishing attacks and spyware, while the corporate world fends off data and identity theft. Microsoft believes its new wave of software will be the panacea for such problems, thanks to the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and technologies such as BitLocker and smart cards.

Windows Vista is the first operating system from Microsoft to be built from the ground up using the SDL development model. Every bit of code is scrutinized for Common Criteria Certification and security compliance checkpoints must be met along the way.

Services are now run with reduced privileges that contain profiles specifying allowed file system, registry and network activities. Further below the surface, the Vista kernel makes it harder for rootkits to elude detection, while better protecting against unauthorized patches.

Spyware and malware threats, meanwhile, are contained by the operating system's built-in scanning engine that is based upon Windows Defender. In addition, the Vista firewall extends the functionality added in Windows XP Service Pack 2 to provide full directional filtering and application blocking.

Potentially malicious applications are also restricted with Vista's new User Account Control feature, which has spurred a great deal of complaints from beta testers. UAC forces programs to run in a specific Integrity Layer, with a default of medium, and request elevated privileges from the user when performing system commands or writing to sensitive directories.

Internet Explorer 7 in Vista runs in a low Integrity Level known as "Protected Mode" in order to prevent malicious Web sites from compromising an entire system. Features such as a phishing filter and security status bar add further safety checks for users.

UAC additionally enables file and registry virtualization for programs needing administrator access. This capability will ensure backwards compatibility without sacrificing the security of Windows Vista. For example, a program trying to write files to the root of the hard drive will actually be writing to a special folder called the virtual store.

On the hardware level, Microsoft has implemented BitLocker full disk encryption. Using a TPM chip located on the motherboard or USB stick, BitLocker literally encrypts data while it is being written to the disk. If a laptop were stolen, the hard drive would be inaccessible without a recovery key.

Microsoft says the 256-bit AES encryption technology only causes a single-digit slowdown when communicating with the disk, and the majority of users would never notice it was running.

Vista will also support smart cards with its user-based file and folder encryption technology known as EFS. Moreover, integrated rights management (RMS) enables organizations to enforce access policies for individual documents, which would prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

But Microsoft acknowledges that nothing is infallible when it comes to computer security. In turn, the company has employed black hat hackers for what is called a penetration, or pen, test team. This group has only one duty: to break the security in Windows Vista and help the company develop fixes for the vulnerabilities.

Microsoft is also looking outside to shore up its defenses. The Redmond company at TechEd 2006 announced the formation of the Microsoft Security Response Alliance. MSRA builds upon five other alliances currently helping to organize security efforts, and will offer a portal for collaboration along with a communication framework for sharing security response information.

All of these security changes won't be easy on application compatibility, but Microsoft says it is doing its best to mitigate any problems by the time Windows Vista ships early next year. The company is working closely with developers to add custom "shims" that will ensure their programs are compatible with User Account Control.

Still, Microsoft admits that antivirus software, games and some applications will continue to have problems. Work to streamline the experience for consumers will not stop with the final release, however, as Microsoft already has compatibility improvements planned through Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Linux Coming to Mobile Phones

2006-06-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

A group of the world's mobile operators and handset makers said today they are joining together to develop an open-source Linux-based operating system that could to be used in phones by the end of 2007.

Mobile network operators Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo and handset makers Motorola, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic, said they would form an independent not-for-profit group to share the costs and speed up mobile software and handsets and cut the number of operating platforms on the market.

A world-class Linux-based platform aims to provide key benefits for the mobile industry including lower development costs, increased flexibility, and a richer mobile ecosystem - all of which contribute to the group's ultimate objective of creating compelling, differentiated and enhanced consumer experiences.

To help guide these efforts, the companies are also announcing their intent to form an independent foundation. The founder companies' objective is to realize the development of the platform based on the contributions of all interested stakeholders through an open and transparent process. Focusing primarily on the joint development and marketing of an API specification, architecture, supporting source code-based reference implementation components and tools, the foundation intends to leverage the benefits of community-based and proprietary development.

Foundation members also intend to work on the following:

- Implementation of a fair, balanced, transparent contribution and participation process across the current and future membership
- Establishment of safeguards to minimize fragmentation
- Collaboration on a mobile Linux developer ecosystem
- Coordination with existing industry organizations
- Seeking participation from all interested companies across the value chain, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third-party developers

Once established, the foundation aims to provide an API specification, architecture, references to open source code, new source code-based reference implementation components (to be developed and committed by foundation members) and specifications for referenced third party software. The foundation also plans to provide a test suite to assess and demonstrate product conformance to the platform specification.

While the initial foundation members plan to be primarily responsible for delivering the development of the first reference implementation of the mobile operating platform, they will also actively encourage membership participation of other companies committed to its development. More information about how others can join the foundation will be made available at a later date.

Robot Hall of Fame inducts 5 new members

2006-06-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

Robots Made Their Marks in Film, Factories and Research

PITTSBURGH—A robotic pet, an industrial robot and three robot stars of classic movies will be inducted into Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame® in a June 21 ceremony at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh.

Actor Anthony Daniels, who played the robot C-3PO in all six "Star Wars" films, returns as master of ceremonies and Daniel H. Wilson, author of "How to Survive a Robot Uprising," published in 2005, will be the keynote speaker.

This year's class of inductees, announced in April, include Maria, the art deco star of the 1927 silent film classic "Metropolis"; Gort, the metallic giant sent to Earth to establish peace in the 1951 sci-fi thriller "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; David, the boy-like android who bonded with his adoptive mother in Steven Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence: AI"; Sony's AIBO, a dog-like entertainment robot that became a research and education workhorse; and the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA), an industrial robot that helped make inexpensive consumer electronic devices commonplace.

Participants in the ceremony will include SCARA inventor Hiroshi Makino, an emeritus professor at the University of Yamanashi in Japan, and actor Billy Gray, who played actress Patricia Neal's young son in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and later became a boomer icon as Bud in the hit '50s TV show "Father Knows Best."

The affair will cap the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition, a two-day international business development event for mobile robotics and intelligent systems, produced by Robotic Trends Inc.

This is the third induction for the hall of fame, which was founded in 2003 by James H. Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon West, the university's four-year-old campus in Silicon Valley. It highlights the contributions of robots to society by honoring robots that are technological landmarks, as well as fictional robots that captured the public imagination and inspired roboticists to make dreams reality. Inductees are chosen by an international panel of researchers, educators and enthusiasts.

"When C-3PO was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame, he felt his existence had finally been given the validation it deserved, rather than the brush-off usually awarded him by characters like Han Solo," said Daniels, a veteran of stage and screen who served as emcee when the golden android was inducted in 2004. "Now, I've been asked to return to Carnegie Mellon to host this year's awards. I feel validated as a human."

Wilson, who earned a doctorate in robotics at Carnegie Mellon's famed Robotics Institute, will tell "The Truth About Robots" in his keynote address. A film version of his tongue-in-cheek guidebook, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising," starring comedian Mike Myers, is slated for release by Paramount Pictures next year.

The ceremony will feature video clips of each of the robots in action and commentary by people who have been involved in their creation or their nomination to the hall.

SCARA (Click on these images to download high resolution versions)

Matthew T. Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, will join Makino in paying tribute to SCARA, a type of industrial robot arm that was introduced to commercial assembly lines in 1981. SCARA robots excel in picking up components from one place and placing them rapidly and precisely in a product.

AIBO

Katsumi Moto, vice president of corporate planning for Sony Supply Chain Solutions, Inc., will accept the induction on behalf of AIBO. Though Sony halted their commercial production earlier this year, the four-legged robots remain important tools for research and education.

Maria © copyright Kino International Film Distribution, 2006.

Anne Balsamo, professor of interactive media and gender studies at the University of Southern California, will welcome Maria of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to the hall of fame. The transformation of human to robot — in this case, making the robot resemble the film's human heroine — has been repeated often in science fiction and the influence of Maria's art deco design can be seen in robots such as C-3PO.

David © copyright Artificial Intelligence: AI, Dreamworks/Warner Brothers, 2001.

Hall of fame juror Sherry Turkle will induct David, an android played by actor Haley Joel Osment. Turkle, professor of social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contends the emotional bond between David and his adoptive mother raises questions of what relationships are appropriate between humans and machines.

Gort © copyright The Day The Earth Stood Still, Twentieth Century FOX, 1951.

Gort, one of the most memorable pop culture images from the Cold War era, will be celebrated by his co-star Gray and by Don Marinelli, director of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The eight-foot-tall robot — whose mission of destruction was halted by the famous command "Klaatu barada nikto!" — remains a symbol of the lethal consequences of human conflict.

Carnegie Mellon's Robot Hall of Fame® is a joint project of its Robotics Institute and its Entertainment Technology Center. For more information, visit

How to jam your neighbor's Wi-Fi legally

2006-06-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

Have you ever get frustrated with your neighbor hogging all the Internet bandwidth on the block? Tired of your neighbor using his Wi-Fi gear on channel 1, 6, or 11 (that's all the possible choices) on the 2.4 GHz spectrum? Well now's your chance to get even! Introducing Draft N and Pre-N Wi-Fi! They might not interoperate at high speeds with each other but they're FCC legal and they're guaranteed to shut your neighbor down or your money back!

While Airgo's third generation product achieves record breaking throughput, it annihilates any legacy 802.11 b/g product in the vicinity and effectively shuts them down. Ok that's not an actual advertisement, but it might as well be one. Our friend Tim Higgins has been at it again testing so called "Draft N" and "Pre N" Wi-Fi gear (implied compatibility with 802.11n) and he has some very interesting results about the interoperability and interference characteristics of these products. Earlier this month, Tim ran a battery of tests on these wannabe 802.11n Wi-Fi products to see if they lived up to the kind of throughput and range being promised by the Wi-Fi vendors.

What the first set of tests reveals is that Airgo's product still beats the "Draft N" competition from Broadcom and Marvell hands down with their third generation MIMO product in range and throughput. Note: The results showing the Cisco business-grade 802.11g gear performing so well on range may not be a good test of chipset efficiency since it can use 100 mW of transmit power which may be higher than the consumer gear tested. One could also easily quadruple the range on a Cisco Access Point with the right kind of high-powered antenna but that wouldn't be a fair measurement on how good the radio and chipset design is.

In the second set of tests examining interoperability and interference characteristics on neighboring 802.11g Access Points, the results are alarming. While the Draft N and Pre N products technically work with each other, it would seem that most of them don't interoperate at the higher speeds. Broadcom announced that their Draft N products will interoperate at high speeds with Atheros Draft N products, but the Atheros based products weren't available for testing yet at the time of the review. Broadcom and Atheros feeling the heat from relative newcomer Airgo have put their fiercely competitive past behind them though I'm not sure if this will help if they can't post good throughput versus range numbers against Airgo. When I asked Broadcom's representative if they were guaranteeing future compatibility with 802.11n in writing, I couldn't really get a straight answer and was told that their Draft G product was eventually compatible with 802.11g and that they are using a flexible design that can change if the 802.11n draft standard changes. I finally got them to admit that there are no such guarantees for actual 802.11n compatibility.

Airgo is a very interesting story by itself. I've praised them in the past for having the cleanest design in terms of staying in a single 20 MHz channel while retaining the speed crown. Airgo's competitors eventually pushed past the performance of Airgo's first and second generation products by hogging two radio channels and Airgo quickly answered with their third generation product that also used a 40 MHz wide signal and regained a massive lead in throughput which holds today. The problem is that Airgo when from being the nicest single-channel neighbor in town to being the absolute worst Wi-Fi neighbor in town.

While Airgo's third generation product achieves record breaking throughput, it annihilates any legacy 802.11 b/g product in the vicinity and effectively shuts them down. The other products from Broadcom and Marvel weren't quite as devastating to the neighbors, but the damage is still severe. What's crazy is that these products are FCC legal and are being sold on store shelves today. This is a serious problem in the city where town homes and condominiums are right next to each other and it's even a problem for businesses which primarily uses 802.11 b/g. While these products are aimed at the home market, they're also sometimes used in a small office environment and these radio jamming characteristics are intermittent (when data is being sent) and difficult to track down.

So who is to blame for all of this? Airgo to its credit pushed for spectrum efficiency among the 802.11n standards body as long as it could and tried to lead by example while everyone else was spectrum hogging. Once it was clear that the 802.11n draft standard wasn't going to be swayed on spectrum efficiency, Airgo turned to the dark side and became the biggest spectrum hog of all. The industry was moving the right direction with dual band 2.4/5 GHz products which mitigate interference issues until the arrival of the 802.11n MIMO type products because customers are easily seduced by higher speeds when what's really needed is less interference and better range.

The range issues could have been easily solved with higher gain antennas which ironically are frowned upon by the FCC but don't do nearly as much damage to the neighbors. Since larger antennas are optional, people won't resort to them unless they really needed the longer range in which case no one's nearby to begin with. With these N based products, they come off the factory floor ready to jam everything within its operating radius and this seems to be what the 802.11n standards body is encouraging with its decision to allow for wider channels. The fact that almost none of these new "N" products interoperate with each other and none of them guarantee future compatibility with 802.11n is sad. The best solution for anyone wishing to avoid the radio jam is to move to 802.11a and the 5 GHz band as soon as possible.

Social networks--future portal or fad?

2006-06-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.--Social networks like MySpace and Facebook are the zeitgeist for online executives and investors, just as they are for millions of young people.

But attendees at the Piper Jaffray Global Internet Summit here still can't decide if these companies are next-generation portals, or merely flash-in-the-pan communities that will eventually fade from popularity like one-time high-fliers Geocities or AOL.

Telling evidence stacks up on both sides.

On the one hand, MySpace's scope of services and member traffic rivals that of many major portals. Since launching three years ago, MySpace, now owned by News Corp., has added e-mail, instant messaging and blog services, as well as jobs, video, book and music stores. According to founding MySpace member Colin Digiaro, who spoke here Tuesday, the company is talking to "all the usual suspects and unusual suspects" about licensing Web search technology to accommodate a growing demand among its 50 million members for that functionality. (It currently uses Yahoo search for internal site search and displays Overture ads for Web search results.)

"We're trying to find the best-of-breed search functionality," Digiaro said.

I used to be into MySpace and now I'm getting over it.

--Monica, 18, who will attend UCLA this fall

What's more, MySpace's monthly traffic figures have trumped those of MSN and AOL, according to ComScore Media, and they comprise about 75 percent of Yahoo's, the No. 1 site on the Web. Anecdotally, the time teens and college kids spend on MySpace is stealing time they would otherwise spend watching TV, according to an informal focus group of young and older teens interviewed at the conference.

MySpace's "goal was to become a next-generation portal," Digiaro said. "I think we're there."

Trouble ahead for MySpace?
On the other hand, these social communities could turn out to be fads among capricious Web surfers, skeptics say. After all, rudimentary social networks have always been around in communities like AOL and Geocities. And if comments made during the same focus group of young and older teens are any indication, MySpace could be headed into trouble with a thriving portion of its members. The aging kids talked about tiring of MySpace and moving on to other social networks or activities, much the way some kids have left AOL's instant-messaging service.

"I'm starting to get over it," said Juliana, a 21-year-old living in Orange County, who said she's now into Faceclick, another, newer social network for college kids.

Monica, an 18-year-old who's enrolled at UCLA in the fall, said she's further along with MySpace, opting to spend her more than eight hours a day online at sites like photo-sharing site Photobucket.com and Acidplanet.com, a music-hosting site. "I used to be into MySpace and now I'm getting over it."

Still, younger teens interviewed said that they were big users of MySpace, spending hours honing their member profiles. And 80 percent of MySpace's demographic skews over 18 years old.

Yet, Safa Rashtchy, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, compared the social networks to the walled garden environments of AOL and eBay, two companies that have lost favor among investors. He asked whether people ultimately like to stay within these online walled gardens.

Also, it's unclear whether advertisers are spending enough with social networks to make their free services profitable. During a panel discussion of advertisers, ad executives said that many marketers don't want to associate their brands with the sometimes risque or inappropriate material that can surface on the social networks from their members.

When pressed by industry observers, executives at MySpace and Facebook declined to say whether they are profitable. As part of Newscorp., MySpace is not required to report its finances. Owen Van Natta, COO of college-focused social directory Facebook, which is privately held, joked that it's a "definite maybe."

In other news:

Some panelists still took this as a sign that these companies, despite hosting user-generated content that generally doesn't cost as much to support as staff editorial, were not profitable. The cost of advertising rates at these sites aren't typically at a premium, either, making it unclear how much MySpace and Facebook are benefiting from growing online ad sales.

In defense, Digiaro, MySpace senior vice president of sales and business development, said that the company works with all major advertisers in various vertical markets, including the Cokes and Ford Motors of the world. MySpace also commands ad premiums for such areas within its music and video stores, he said.

He said to retain teen surfers, which comprise about 20 percent of its total audience, MySpace has introduced new features faster than rivals and has developed a lasting social connection with members that increases as their history of blog posts and e-mail amasses. The company also plans to expand internationally, starting with the U.K. and Ireland, and get on mobile handsets across the United States.

He also suggested that MySpace could eventually introduce a transportable persona that members could take with them to other services.

"Social networks will continue to evolve," he said.

eBay Wiki released - world's largest commercial wiki

2006-06-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

As I wrote in my Read/WriteWeb blog, eBay and JotSpot have just released a new community wiki - making it almost certainly the world's largest wiki platform for a commercial website (Wikipedia is bigger, but it's non-commercial). eBay Wiki is described as "a collection of fact-based articles written and maintained by eBay Community members" and is powered by JotSpot's innovative wiki technology.

eBay Wiki "It's a kind of Wikipedia for eBay" is located at www.ebaywiki.com and the wiki topics are categorized and tagged. You must be logged in as an eBay member to edit a wiki page, which then presents you with an easy-to-use wysiwyg HTML editor. eBay Wiki also has article history and ratings, the editor's user details and seller/buyer ratings (i.e. their eBay reputation), RSS feeds and other easy-to-use social features.

So why did eBay choose to add a wiki? eBay has a buyer and seller community of more than 193 million members - a huge community that is thriving with conversations and activity. Their message boards get over 100,000 messages per week and eBay users are very knowledgeable on their topic niches. Having a Wiki on eBay will serve to refine and formalize the cream of the content in its user forums. It will also help eBay in the search engine rankings, as its user-generated content coffers will increase significantly over time!

I spoke to JotSpot co-founder and CEO Joe Kraus about the new eBay wiki yesterday. He described eBay Wiki to me as "a kind of Wikipedia for eBay and about eBay". He said its main focus is to give "tips and tricks on how to get the most out of eBay". The eBay Wiki will complement and build on the eBay forums, in that the wiki will be a "single point of reference" on topics.

Joe sees eBay Wiki as another step towards wikis coming of age and becoming mainstream. I agree, the use of wikis from one of the Internet's biggest consumer companies may be vital to the growth of wikis outside of tech and enterprise circles. Joe said eBay will promote the Wiki as part of their community hub and eBay CEO Meg Whitman is announcing it in her keynote address at the eBay Live! user conference in Las Vegas today.

Image Gallery of eBay Wiki

Google to Launch Government Search Site

2006-06-15T06:24:00.000-07:00

It's finally happening: The ever-expanding Google Inc. is making its move on the federal government.

Today the company plans to announce a new online product aimed at being a one-stop shop for searching federal government Web sites. The launch of Google U.S. Government Search, http://usgov.google.com , targets federal employees who often need to search across several government agencies.

The site is also designed to help citizens navigate convoluted pages of government-speak and tailors news feeds to their interests. Users can customize the layout of their page to remain updated on government-related news from official and commercial sources, including the White House, Department of Defense, The Washington Post and CNN. Google is also working with agencies to increase the frequency of news updates to keep content current.

"People are moving away from directory access to enter these sites," said Kevin Gough, product manager for Google U.S. Government Search. "They just want to type in a few words to pinpoint the information they need."

The product is an outgrowth of the company's flagship site, which has the largest share of the U.S. search market -- 50 percent in April, according to Nielsen-NetRatings. It aims to "unify disparate Web sites," Gough said, so people have a single source to find everything from Social Security policy to income tax forms.

The government search site joins similar engines that target the same audience. The five-year-old FirstGov.gov, a government-sponsored site powered by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, is geared to help citizens locate federal, state and local information without sifting through individual agency sites.

Other similar search engines include http://govspot.com , http://searchgov.com and http://govengine.com .

Gough said he expects Google's product to "complement" FirstGov without directly competing with it.

But Google's name recognition, especially among first-time users, may give it an edge over FirstGov, said Larry Freed, president of ForeSee Results Inc., a Michigan firm that measures customer satisfaction of Internet sites.

The new site could actually drive traffic away from other government-related search engines that buy ads on Google's main search engine, he said.

"Google drives a fair amount of traffic to those sites," he said. Now that Google has its own portal that serves the same purpose, "they could potentially be creating competition for their customers."

Many government employees access documents and information through agencies' intranets, or inter-office Web sites, and through FirstGov, said Stephanie Zaiser, communications director for the National Association of Government Employees.

But they may switch to the new engine if it is easier to use, she said. Zaiser expects federal employees to use the Google site because of the company's "ubiquitous presence" in the search-engine market.

More than 87 million unique visitors used Google's search engine in May, compared with 443,000 that searched FirstGov, according to Nielsen-NetRatings.

In recent years, Google has launched several specialized search engines to help users narrow their results. In addition to heavily used sites geared specifically for news, directions and maps, newer sites search the contents of scholarly journals, books and blogs. Yesterday, Google Book Search launched a Web site geared toward searching Shakespearean plays.

"There is a trend toward developing more finite, category-specific searches," said Deborah Fallows, senior research fellow at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Government employees are among the heaviest users of government Web sites, so there's a market."

A November 2004 Pew survey found that 54 percent of Internet users have looked for information from government Web sites, and 10 percent of users will look for such information on any given day.

Robot soccer World Cup kicks off

2006-06-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

A football tournament played by teams of robots has kicked off in Germany.

The 10th annual RoboCup, being held in Bremen, will see more than 400 teams of robots dribbling, tackling and shooting in an effort to become world champions.

Machines compete in 11 leagues including those designed for humanoid and four-legged robots.

The organisers of the tournament hope that in 2050 the winners of the RoboCup will be able to beat the human World Cup champions.

"RoboCup 2006 is the first step towards a vision," said Minoru Asada, president of the RoboCup Federation.

"This vision includes the development of a humanoid robot team of eleven players, which can win against a human soccer world champion team."

Emotional game

Teams from 36 countries have flocked to Bremen to take part in the tournament.

As well as providing a visual spectacle on the pitch, some robots will be helping out in other ways.

Live commentary of a number of matches is provided by a pair of robots developed by scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in the US.

Sango and Ami, as the duo are known, will explain the rules of the game and dissect fouls for spectators using synthesized voices.

"They don't talk at the same time," said Manuela Veloso, the Herbert Simon Professor of Computer Science and head of Carnegie Mellon's RoboCup teams.

More than 400 teams will compete during the five day tournament

"But if one is explaining a rule and a nice goal is made, the other has the ability to interrupt."

Sango and Ami also have very different personalities. Sango provides a very sober account of the game while Ami provides a more emotional response to proceedings.

Both celebrate by pumping their arms when a team scores.

Future strategy

As well as having novelty value and, the RoboCup has a more serious side.

It is a chance for 2,500 experts in artificial intelligence and robot engineering to meet and trial their latest ideas.

Football is a useful test for robotics because it has so many different elements including movement, strategy and vision.

Researchers come to assess their sensors, artificial intelligence and software on the pitch.

"After 50 years within artificial intelligence, it has been determined that these things can be better researched using soccer than the game of chess," said Hans-Dieter Burkhard, the Vice President of the RoboCup Federation.

This year all eyes are on a team from Japan who are expected to do well in the humanoid category, while the current world champions from Germany are a force to be reckoned with in the four-legged tournament.

The championships run until 18 June and are then followed by a conference for two days where the teams can dissect their play and work on improvements before the big game in 2050.

Google Earth zooms in

2006-06-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google unveiled on Monday a new version of its Google Earth application, which features greater coverage and higher resolution, even showing people walking in some locations--detail you get with aerial photography and not usually satellites.

The downloadable Google Earth 4.0 runs on PCs, Macs and Linux-based machines and is available in localized versions in French, Italian, German and Spanish, according to Michael Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth. Jones, speaking here at Google Geo Developer Day, said the improvements will eventually show up in the Web-based Google Maps site.

Developers can use Google's SketchUp 3D modeling software to make the images as lifelike as possible, such as adding texture to buildings. Users can also overlay different data on top of the same view. In a product demonstration, Jones showed a 3D view of San Francisco from 2005, and with a click, showed the same view of San Francisco in the 1940s.

"Developers can place images on top of (the map) that span the whole Earth," Jones said, half-jokingly calling it a "time travel" application. "I think people will use it to share ancient maps (and share) information about possible future developments."

Mark Limber, product manager for Google's SketchUp modeling software, demonstrated how to create a 3D building and insert it into a Google Earth map. Realtors can use SketchUp to build models of homes and put them into maps to show prospective buyers, he said. A repository of links to geographic- and nongeographic-referenced objects that can be used is located here.

Jones also showed off the Google Earth Community, which he described as "participatory mapping," in which individuals can add personal placemarks to information on the map.

More than 30,000 developers around world are using the Google Earth application programming interface, and there have been 100 million downloads of Google Earth, said John Hanke, Google Earth and Maps product director.

Google representatives also demonstrated how people can easily overlay geographic data on top of a Google map without hosting a map on a Web site to create a map "mashup." Google is adding geographic-coding support to Google maps so developers can easily get the coordinates for an street address.

The company also introduced Google Maps for Enterprise, which can be used by companies internally and includes service and support. Pricing starts at about $10,000 per year.

Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence said he was impressed with the improvements in resolution and coverage. "Google is trying to make all these tools more accessible to ordinary people and get them engaged in content," he said. "In addition, the idea of a geobrowser is fascinating, as is the eventual merger of gaming and mapping."

Top Microsoft blogger to resign

2006-06-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

The blog became a regular read for hi-tech industry watchers

A business blogger who changed the wider world view of Microsoft is leaving the software giant for a Silicon Valley start-up.

Robert Scoble's blog about his life and events inside and outside Microsoft became the unofficial corporate voice of the company.

Many turned to his blog to find out how the firm reacted to big news events.

His blog won praise for its neutrality and readiness to point out Microsoft's mistakes or praise its rivals.

Conversation piece

Mr Scoble's blog, called Scobleizer, is widely seen as helping to humanise Microsoft and shift its stance from arrogant and aloof to one that is more inclusive and accepting of criticism.

It also commented on broader changes in the net world and how they affected the company.

I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me, at least as a supporter and friend

Robert Scoble

The blog was seen as a pioneer in the way that companies present themselves to the world by giving a human voice to what can be faceless corporations.

The success of Scobleizer kicked off a number of copycat blogs which aimed to expose the inner workings and opinions of other companies to more public scrutiny.

Within Microsoft, Mr Scoble helped to run the Channel 9 news site that aired video interviews with hundreds of employees to gain an insight into the projects they were working on.

Mr Scoble will stay at Microsoft until the end of June and then move to start-up PodTech.Net. He joins as vice-president of content and will help prepare video interviews with the great and good of the technology world.

In a fitting twist, the news about Mr Scoble's departure broke on another blog before he had chance to tell regular readers via his own journal.

In a posting on 10 June, Mr Scoble explained the reasons for his departure and said it has not arisen because he had fallen out with his employer.

"I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me, at least as a supporter and friend," he wrote in the entry.

The Internet's Future

2006-06-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

Congress should stay out of cyberspace.

THE SENATE will hold hearings tomorrow on "net neutrality," the idea that the pipes and wires that form the Internet should treat all content equally. An alliance whose membership ranges from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org is demanding that Congress write this neutrality into law; the groups fear that the pipe owners -- cable companies, phone companies and so on -- might otherwise deliver corporate content at high speed for high fees, while consigning political Web sites and hobbyists to a slow information byway. These arguments are amplified by the big Internet firms -- Google, Microsoft, eBay -- that want their services delivered fast but don't want the pipe owners to extract fees from them. Although this coalition lost a House vote last week, its prospects are stronger in the Senate. (The Washington Post Co. owns broadband networks that might charge Web sites for fast delivery. It also produces Web content that might be subject to such fees, so it has interests on both sides of this issue.)

The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. This analogy misses the fact that the market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want -- fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids' soccer league, their cousins' photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest -- and the provider would lose customers.

The cable TV analogy is doubly wrong because media culture reflects technology. Cable TV has been the province of Hollywood studios because making a sitcom is expensive and hard -- though, with cheap digital camcorders, this is changing. Equally, the Internet is the province of experimenters and hobbyists because creating your own Web site is cheap and easy. Thanks to technology, the Internet will always be a relatively democratic medium with low barriers to entry.

The serious argument for net neutrality has nothing to do with the cable TV boogeyman. It's that a non-neutral net will raise barriers to entry just slightly -- but enough to be alarming. To use a far better analogy: Competitive supermarkets aim to please customers by offering all kinds of goods, but the inventor of a new snack has to go through the hassle of negotiating for display space and may wind up on the bottom shelf, which dampens his incentives. Equally, if the owners of Internet pipes delivered the services of cyber-upstarts more slowly than those of cyber-incumbents, the incentive to innovate might suffer. Would instant messaging or Internet telephony have taken off if their inventors had had to plead with broadband firms to carry them?

This concern should not be exaggerated. Cyber-upstarts already face barriers: The incumbents have brand recognition and invest in tricks to make their sites load faster. The extra barrier created by a lack of net neutrality would probably be small because the pipe owners know that consumers want access to innovators.

Meanwhile, there are powerful arguments on the other side. If you want innovation on the Internet, you need better pipes: ones that are faster, less susceptible to hackers and spammers, or smarter in ways that nobody has yet thought of. The lack of incentives for pipe innovation is more pressing than the lack of incentives to create new Web services.

You can see this imbalance in Wall Street's low valuation of Internet infrastructure firms such as Verizon (price-to-earnings ratio: 12) and its infatuation with Internet service firms such as Google (price-to-earnings ratio: 69). You can see it, too, in the fact that U.S. broadband infrastructure lags behind that of East Asia and Europe. Allowing builders of Internet infrastructure to recoup their investment by charging the Googles and Amazons for use of their network would balance the incentives for innovation more closely. Ironically, a non-neutral net would accelerate the spread of zippy broadband that can deliver movies, allowing hobbyists with camcorders to take on Hollywood studios. The neutrality advocates who criticize corporatized cable TV should welcome that.

The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors. If this proves wrong, the government should step in. But it should not burden the Internet with preemptive regulation.

Yahoo e-mail under worm attack

2006-06-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

Symantec warns of mass-mail worm that exploits a vulnerability in Yahoo's Web e-mail

A mass-mail worm that exploits a vulnerability in Yahoo's Web e-mail is making the rounds but the impact appears to be low, security vendor Symantec said Monday.

The worm, which Symantec calls JS.Yamanner@m, is different from others in that a user merely has to open the e-mail to cause it to run, said Kevin Hogan, senior manager for Symantec Security Response. Mass-mail worms have usually been contained in an attachment with an e-mail note encouraging a user to open it.

The worm, written in JavaScript, takes advantage of a vulnerability that allows scripts embedded in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) e-mail to run in the users' browsers. Yahoo users should be able to modify their settings to block the zero-day exploit, Hogan said.

Symantec rated the worm a Level 2 threat, one notch above its least harmful ranking. Hogan said the worm did not appear to be spreading widely, and he did not anticipate the threat level rising.

When activated, the worms then sends itself to other users in the victim's address book who also use Yahoo e-mail with the suffixes of @yahoo.com or @yahoogroups.com. The worm mimics a function within Yahoo's Web mail called "Quickbuilder," which allows a user to add contacts in an address book from received e-mail, Hogan said. The process, however, is transparent to the victim, he said.

The harvested e-mail addresses are sent to a remote server. Users of Yahoo Mail Beta do not appear to be affected, Symantec said.

The worm also opens a browser that displays a Web page that does not appear to contain malicious content.

Although Yahoo's Web e-mail has not been fixed, users are advised to update virus and firewall definitions and block any e-mail sent from av3@yahoo.com. The subject line of the e-mail with the worm says "New Graphic Site," and the body says "this is test."

Yahoo officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Robot with the human touch feels just like us

2006-06-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

A TOUCH sensor developed to match the sensitivity of the human finger is set to herald the age of the robotic doctor.

Until now robots have been severely handicapped by their inability to feel objects with anything like the accuracy of their human creators. The very best are unable to beat the dexterity of the average six-year-old at tying a shoelace or building a house of cards.

But all that could change with the development by nanotechnologists of a device that can “feel” the shape of a coin down to the detail of the letters stamped on it.

The ability to feel with at least the same degree of sensitivity as a human finger is crucial to the development of robots that can take on complicated tasks such as open heart surgery.

Once the hurdle of touch is solved, robots have the potential vastly to increase their role in human society, whether as mechanical GPs, automated bomb disposal experts or astronauts who need not worry about getting back to Earth.

The touch device has been created by researchers in America who used nanoparticles to sense the contours of a coin. It is accurate enough to detect the outline of Abraham Lincoln’s face on a 1c coin and the letters TY in the word Liberty.

To make the sensor, the researchers built up a film consisting of alternate layers of gold and cadmium sulfide nanoparticles with a thin plastic sheet on top and glass below.

An object is placed on the plastic and an image sensor beneath the glass reads the changes in electrical current and electroluminescence caused within the nanoparticle layers.

The strength of the changes in electric charge and electroluminescence depends on how much pressure is being used. The more pronounced the shape on the coin, the stronger the signals emitted by the nanoparticles.

Analysis of the results, published in the journal Science, show that the sensitivity of the device is almost the same as that of a human finger.

Vivek Maheshwari and Ravi Saraf, of the University of Nebraska, say: “Variation in stress distribution caused by the embossing on a 1c coin leads to significant change in local current density.”

The ability to feel an object, whether a coin or a scalpel, would enable robots to improve their ability to grasp items. It would allow them to detect the texture of an item and judge whether it was slipping or being held so firmly that it was being squashed.

Richard Crowder, a senior lecturer at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University, said the device could represent a breakthrough for robotics.

“Today’s state-of-the-art dextrous robotic hands cannot achieve tasks that most six-year-old children can do without thinking,” he said. “A key component needed for these new robots is the development of a sensor or set of sensors that can replicate the human sense of touch.”

He added: “The thin-film design permits the [researchers] to produce a single tactile sensor. The challenge is to extract the information efficiently — something the human nervous system does with supreme efficiency.”

One of the device’s big advantages over previous attempts at developing robotic touch, apart from the degree of sensitivity, is that it has the potential to be easy to use.

The nanoparticles are so thin, at 10 nanometres, that they can be brushed on to a surface such as a robotic finger without getting in the way.

They also have the potential for great durability because even if the film containing the particles gets torn, it can be quickly replaced with another.

Robots, once suitably dextrous, are widely regarded as having the potential for improving surgery because they would be more accurate. Nor would they sneeze during an operation.

Although a handful of basic “minimally invasive” medical procedures can be carried out by robots, their dexterity is too limited at present for them to be entrusted with more serious operations.

A robot that could feel the difference between healthy tissue and a cancerous tumour, however, would be an enormous step forward for medicine.

Google Video: Movers, Shakers and history

2006-06-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

Google Video was given a couple new features today (also spotted by users of the blogoscoped forum) — the addition of Movers & Shakers, recently uploaded videos, search history, and also the main page was rearranged once again.

Movers & Shakers is a section that breaks video popularity down by country. I'm not exactly certain what makes a video a "mover and shaker", or how they are ranked. I am guessing it's basically the top 100 for each country rather than for the entire collection of videos.

The "recently uploaded" section is a nice addition too — one that was only a matter of time since making their publishing speed comparable to YouTube. As the title implies, it shows you random videos that were uploaded recently (seems to be within the last week).

For those who are paranoid about Google keeping search history, one more Google service has added the ability to track your searches. Google now records your video search history and keeps it in the same location as Google search history. I guess now finding that video you watched a week ago is a bit easier.

The final change I noticed today was the rearrangement of the main page. "Featured" videos are all the way at the bottom now — a bit ironic isn't it? You would think featured videos should be the most visible, but I guess they have figured out people would rather see the popular and recent videos than the featured ones.