Most people know eBay Inc. for its online marketplace, where deals abound on everything from gadgets to antique furniture. But soon, eBay’s biggest business will likely be PayPal, the online payments service that has been growing steadily even as the economy has stumbled.

EBay has spent much of the past two years trying to improve its faltering marketplace business, hoping to increase buyers’ trust and clean up the look of its Web site. In the meantime, PayPal has thrived as more consumers and merchants use it to send money online.

Its growth is expected to continue in spite of competition from Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., which have services that online retailers sometimes offer alongside PayPal.

PayPal bills itself as a shopper’s online wallet. Users set up accounts and link them to bank accounts and credit cards, making it easy to transfer cash into the account. Then users can make payments through PayPal using either their cash balances or the underlying credit card. PayPal users can also send cash to someone based on as little information as an e-mail address or cell phone number.

But unlike what happens with a credit or debit card online, PayPal doesn’t share your financial information with merchants. That brings peace of mind to people who might otherwise worry about shopping at a site they’ve never heard of.

PayPal, which began in 1998 as a way for people to beam cash from one Palm Pilot to another, was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 and has been a steady performer. The service charges fees for certain transactions, and in the most recent quarter it reported $688 million in revenue, a 15 percent jump from last year. As of the end of September, 78 million people had active PayPal accounts, up from 65 million a year ago.

To try to maintain its advantage, this week PayPal opened its system to third-party developers, which will mean PayPal can be built in to all sorts of applications. For instance, an iPhone app could let consumers order a pizza and pay for it with PayPal.

PayPal has kept its big lead in online payments largely because people find it convenient, and because it’s hard to build a competing system. Shoppers and merchants both need to be using an online payment system for it to have any value. And every state and country has its own rules for e-commerce. PayPal has managed to navigate these waters — it accepts payment in 24 currencies — and analysts don’t yet see Checkout By Amazon or Google Checkout as much of a threat.

John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, has said he expects PayPal to surpass the marketplaces business in revenue simply because PayPal targets all of e-commerce while eBay is one of many online sales sites.

“PayPal can go well beyond that in the next three to five years,” he said in an interview this week.

The company projects PayPal’s revenue will be between $4 billion and $5 billion in 2011. EBay’s forecast for the marketplaces business, which includes the main eBay.com Web site and other sites such as Shopping.com, calls for $5 billion to $7 billion in revenue that year.

Donahoe also thinks PayPal can eventually make more money than the marketplaces business, even though PayPal’s profit margins are lower.

PayPal’s opportunities figure to expand with its new move to open its platform to outside software developers. The process took two years, said PayPal’s president, Scott Thompson, largely because of the need to deal with banking regulations while keeping up the company’s fraud protections. But from here the open platform should incur few costs for PayPal, Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Shawn Milne said.

More than 1,000 entrepreneurs have been testing the system, known as PayPal X. Among them is Michael Ivey, the founder and CEO of Twitpay, a startup that lets people send money over short-messaging site Twitter.

When Twitpay started last year it used Amazon’s payments service to transfer funds. PayPal’s huge user base clinched the decision to make the change, he said.

Further growth — be it on cell phones or the Web — will have restrictions, though. While PayPal boasts that more 3 million online retailers accept it for transactions (not counting merchants on eBay who accept PayPal), many vendors offer it alongside services from Google, Amazon and others, to give shoppers as many choices as possible. As PayPal shows up on more Web sites, these rivals could, too.

And because of PayPal’s size, any hiccups can have big ramifications. In August, a series of breakdowns made the service unable to process any transactions worldwide for several hours.

But Thompson is confident. He credits the fact that the service saves people time by making it easier to shop online. “The world needs what we do,” he said.

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Growing PayPal may one day overshadow eBay

A model demonstrates a Sony video game in 3-D during the country’s biggest consumer electronics sow in Chiba, Japan, Wednesday, Oct. 7. Japan’s big-name electronic manufacturers are readying flat-screen TVs that can show high-definition movies and video games in 3-D to launch next year.

While sipping a cup of organically farmed, artisan-brewed tea, I tap on my gigabit-wireless-connected tablet to pull up a 3-D movie on the razor-thin HDTV hanging on the wall. A media server streams the film via a superspeedy USB connection to a wireless HD transmitter, which then beams it to the TV.

That actor — who was he? My augmented-reality contact lenses pick up the unique eye motion I make when I have a query, which I then enter on a virtual keyboard that appears in the space in front of me. Suddenly my field of vision is covered with a Web page showing a list of the actor’s movies, along with some embedded video clips.

These technologies will come to life in the distant future, right? Future, yes. Distant, no.

Speed and content (much of it video) will be paired consistently across mobile, laptop, desktop and home-entertainment systems. New ways of using video — including adding 3-D depth or artificial visual overlays — will require more speed, storage, and computational power.

In our preview of technologies that are well on their way to reality, we look at the connective tissue of USB 3.0, 802.11ac, and 802.11ad for moving media — especially video — faster; at HTML5 for displaying video and content of all kinds consistently across all our devices; at augmented reality to see how the digital world will stretch into our physical reality by overlaying what we see with graphics and text; and at 3D TV, which will add image depth and believability to the experience of watching TV.

USB 3.0
Before you leave work, you need to back up your computer. You push a button, and 5 minutes later, while you’re still packing up, your system has dumped 150GB of data onto an encrypted 512GB superfast solid-state drive, which you eject to take with you for offsite backup. On your way home, you stop at a movie kiosk outside a fast-food restaurant and buy a feature-length 3-D video download on sale. You plug in your drive, the kiosk reads your credentials, and while you watch a 90-second preview of coming attractions, the 30GB video transfers onto your SSD. You pull out the drive and head home.

USB may be one of the least-sexy technologies built into present-day computers and mobile devices, but speed it up tenfold, and it begins to sizzle. Cut most of the other cables to your computer, and the standard ignites. Bring in the potential of uncompressed video transfer, and you have a raging fire.

Any task that involves transferring data between your PC and a peripheral device — scanning, printing, or transferring files, among others — will be far faster with USB 3.0. In many cases, the transfer will be complete before you realize it has started.

The 3.0 revision of USB, dubbed SuperSpeed by the folks who control testing and licensing at the USB Implementors Forum (USB-IF), is on track to deliver more than 3.2 gigabits per second (gbps) of actual throughput. That transfer rate will make USB 3.0 five to ten times faster than other standard desktop peripheral standards, except some flavors of DisplayPort and the increasingly out-of-favor eSATA.

In addition, USB 3.0 can shoot full-speed data in both directions at the same time, an upgrade from 2.0’s “half duplex” (one direction at a time) rates. USB 3.0 jacks will accept 1.0 and 2.0 plug ends for backward compatibility, but 3.0 cables will work only with 3.0 jacks.

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This technology could be a game-changer for device connectivity. A modern desktop computer today may include jacks to accommodate ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or 800 (IEEE 1394a or 1394b) or both, DVI or DisplayPort or both, and — on some — eSATA. USB 3.0 could eliminate all of these except ethernet. In their place, a computer may have several USB 3.0 ports, delivering data to monitors, retrieving it from scanners, and exchanging it with hard drives. The improved speed comes at a good time, as much-faster flash memory drives are in the pipeline.

USB 3.0 is fast enough to allow uncompressed 1080p video (currently our highest-definition video format) at 60 frames per second, says Jeff Ravencraft, president and chair of the USB-IF. That would enable a camcorder to forgo video compression hardware and patent licensing fees for MPEG-4. The user could either stream video live from a simple camcorder (with no video processing required) or store it on an internal drive for later rapid transfer; neither of these methods is feasible today without heavy compression. Citing 3.0’s versatility, some analysts see the standard as a possible complement–or even alternative — to the consumer HDMI connection found on today’s Blu-ray players.

The new USB flavor could also turn computers into real charging stations. Whereas USB 2.0 can produce 100 milliamperes (mA) of trickle charge for each port, USB 3.0 ups that quantity to 150mA per device. USB 2.0 tops out at 500mA for a hub; the maximum for USB 3.0 is 900mA.

With mobile phones moving to support USB as the standard plug for charging and syncing (the movement is well underway in Europe and Asia), and with U.S. carriers having recently committed to doing the same, the increased amperage of USB 3.0 might let you do away with wall warts (AC adapters) of all kinds.

In light of the increased importance and use of USB in its 3.0 version, future desktop computers may very well have two internal hubs, with several ports easily accessible in the front to act as a charging station. Each hub could have up to six ports and support the full amperage. Meanwhile, laptop machines could multiply USB ports for better charging and access on the road. (Apple’s Mac Mini already includes five USB 2.0 ports on its back.)

The higher speed of 3.0 will accelerate data transfers, of course, moving more than 20GB of data per minute. This will make performing backups (and maintaining offsite backups) of increasingly large collections of images, movies, and downloaded media a much easier job.

Possible new applications for the technology include on-the-fly syncs and downloads (as described in the case study above). The USB-IF’s Ravencraft notes that customers could download movies at the gas pump at of a filling station. “With high-speed USB [2.0], you couldn’t have people waiting in line at 15 minutes a crack to download a movie,” Ravencraft says.

Manufacturers are poised to take advantage of USB 3.0, and analysts predict mass adoption of the standard on computers within a couple of years. The format will be popular in mobile devices and consumer electronics, as well. Ravencraft says that manufacturers currently sell more than 2 billion devices with built-in USB each year, so there’s plenty of potential for getting the new

standard out fast.

Video streaming over Wi-Fi
When you get home — with your high-def, 3D movie stored on a flash drive — you plug the drive into your laptop and transfer it to your network file server over a gigabit Wi-Fi connection. A couple of minutes later, the movie is ready to stream via a 60GHz wireless link from your networked entertainment center to your wall-mounted HDTV.

Wired ethernet has consistently achieved higher data speeds than Wi-Fi, but wireless standards groups are constantly trying to figure out ways to help Wi-Fi catch up. By 2012, two new protocols — 802.11ac and 802.11ad — should be handling over-the-air data transmission at 1 gbps or faster.

As a result, future users can have multiple high-definition video streams and gaming streams active across a house and within a room. Central media servers, Blu-ray players, and other set-top boxes can sit anywhere in the home, streaming content to end devices in any location. For example, an HD video display, plugged in with just a power cord, can stand across the room from a Blu-ray player, satellite receiver, or computer — no need for expensive, unsightly cables.

The 802.11ac and 802.11ad standards should be well suited for home use, though their applications will certainly extend far beyond the home. The names reflect the internal method of numbering that the engineering group IEEE uses: 802 for networking, 11 for wireless, and one or more letters in sequence for specific task groups (that’s how we got 802.11a, b, g, h, n, and others).

The 802.11ac standard will update 802.11n, the latest and greatest of a decade’s worth of wireless local area networking (WLAN) technology that began with 802.11b. With 802.11ac, wireless networking performance will leap from a theoretical top speed of 600 mbps to a nominal maximum of more than 1 gbps. In practice, the net data carried by 802.11ac will be likely be between 300 mbps and 400 mbps — up from 160 mbps or so for a good real-world 802.11n setup, and more than enough capacity to carry multiple compressed video streams over a single channel simultaneously. Or users may assign individual streams running on unique frequencies to a number of separate channels. Like 802.11n, 802.11ac will use many antennas for receiving and sending data wirelessly.

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The 802.11ac flavor still won’t have the capacity to carry lossless high-definition video (video that retains the full fidelity and quality of the raw source), however. Today, lossless video is common over wired connections after decompression or decoding of a data stream from a satellite, cable, or disc. The right hardware will be able to take the 802.11ac compressed data stream and send it directly to a decoder in an HDTV set; some HD sets already have this capability today. But when uncompressed video has to stream at a rate faster than 1 gbps, a speedier format must be used.

That’s where 802.11ad comes in. It abandons the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands of the spectrum (where today’s Wi-Fi works) to the newly available 60GHz spectrum. Because the 60GHz spectrum has an ocean of frequencies available in most countries — including in the United States — you’ll be able to use multiple distinct channels to carry more than 1 gbps of uncompressed video each.

Unfortunately, the millimeter-long waves that make up 60GHz signals penetrate walls and furniture poorly, and oxygen readily absorbs the waves’ energy. So 802.11ad is best suited for moving data across short distances between devices in the same room. Apart from supporting fast video transfers, 802.11ad will permit you to move files or sync data between devices at speeds approaching that of USB 3.0 — and 1000 times faster than Bluetooth 2.

The 802.11ad spec is one of three competing ideas for using the 60GHz band of the spectrum. The Wireless HD trade group, a consortium of consumer electronics firms, is focusing on video use of the 60GHz band, while the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) is looking at networking and consumer uses. Membership in the various groups overlaps, making an interoperable and perhaps unified spec possible. Though 802.11ad doesn’t specifically address video, it will be a generic technology that can accommodate many kinds of data. At a minimum, each group will work to prevent interference with one another’s purposes.

The combination of 802.11ac and 802.11ad, coupled with USB 3.0, will allow you to position clusters of computer equipment and entertainment hardware around your home. USB 3.0 and gigabit ethernet might connect devices located in a cabinet or on a desk; 802.11ac will link clusters across a home; and 802.11ad will carry data to mobile devices, displays, and other gear within a room.

Allen Huotari, the technical leader at Cisco Consumer Products (which now includes Linksys products and ships millions of Wi-Fi and ethernet devices each year) says that the change in home networks won’t result from “any one single technology in the home, but rather a pairing of technologies or a trio of technologies — wired and/or wireless — for the backbone and the wireless on the edges.”

This means fewer wires and cables, better speeds, and higher-quality video playback than anything possible today. By 2012, both specifications should be readily available.

3-D TV
Disconnecting your active-shutter 3-D glasses from a charger, you slip them on, eager to check out your downloaded copy of Hulk VI: Triumph of the Stretch Fabrics,the latest entrant in the green antihero’s film franchise. You drop into a comfy chair, tell the kids it’s time for a movie, and twist the heat pouch on a bag of popcorn to start it popping. The kids grab their own glasses and sit down to watch the Hulk knock the Predator practically into their laps!

When television makers introduced HDTVs, it was inevitable that they would figure out a way to render the technology obsolete not long after everyone bought a set. And they have. The next wave in home viewing is 3DTV — a 2-D picture with some stereoscopic depth.

As 3D filmmaking and film projection technology have improved, Hollywood has begun building a (still small) library of depth-enhanced movies. The potential to synthesize 2-D movies into 3-D could feed demand, however — the way colorizing technology increased interest in black-and-white films in some circles in the 1980s. For movies based on computer animation — such as Toy Story 3D, a newly rendered version of the first two movies in the series — it’s already happening.

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Yes, the picture is great — when you can get it. But until it’s an all-HDTV world, you’ll have to live with some inconsistencies.

The promise of 3-D is a more immersive, more true-to-life experience, and substantively different from almost anything you’ve watched before. In commercial theaters, 3-D projection typically involves superimposing polarized or distinctly colored images on each frame and then having viewers wear so-called “passive” glasses that reveal different images to each eye. The brain synthesizes the two images into a generally convincing notion of depth.

In contrast, 3-D at home will almost certainly rely on alternating left and right views for successive frames. HDTVs that operate at 120Hz (that is, 120 cycles of refresh per second) are broadly available, so the ability to alternate left and right eye images far faster than the human eye can follow already exists. Fundamental industry standards are in place to allow such recording, says Alfred Poor, an analyst with GigaOm and the author of the Web site HDTV Almanac.

Viewing 3DTV displays will require “active” glasses that use rapidly firing shutters to alternate the view into each eye. Active glasses are expensive today, but their price will drop as 3D rolls out. Meanwhile, designers are in the development phase of producing a 3-D set that doesn’t require the glasses.

Sony and Panasonic have announced plans to produce 3-D-capable displays, and Panasonic recently demonstrated a large-screen version that the company expects to ship in 2010. As happened when HDTVs rolled out, premium 3DTVs will appear first, followed by progressively more-affordable models.

Creating and distributing enough 3-D content to feed consumers’ interest may be more of an challenge. Poor noted that filmmakers are currently making or adapting only a handful of features each year for 3-D. But techniques to create “synthetic 3D” versions of existing films (using various tracking, focus, and pattern cues for splitting images) could fill the gap.

Existing terrestrial cable and IPTV networks should be able to distribute 3-D content. The bandwidth that such networks use to deliver typical HD broadcasts will be adequate for delivering 3D video once the networks upgrade to newer video compression techniques. Satellite may face a more difficult road, since such systems already use the best levels of compression.

For physical media playback, Blu-ray can store the data needed, and 3-D Blu-ray players are already on the drawing board. No fundamental changes in Blu-ray will be necessary, so the trade group that created the standard is focusing compatibility — such as ensuring that a 2-D TV can play a 3-D disc.

Standards issues might not end up being very troublesome, so long as the 3DTVs are flexible enough. An industry group is working on setting some general parameters, much as digital TV was broken up into 480, 720, and 1080 formats, along with progressive and interlaced versions. A 3DTV may need to support multiple formats, but all will involve alternating images and a pair of shutter-based glasses.

Poor expects that 3DTV will be but a minor upgrade to existing HDTV sets. The upgraded sets will need a modified display controller that alternates images 60 per second for each eye, as well as an infrared or wireless transmitter to send synchronization information to the 3-D glasses.

‘Augmented reality’ in mobile devices
You enjoyed “Hulk VI” so much on your home theater setup that you decided to see it on the big screen. The movie is still playing, but you’re not sure how to find the movie theater where it’s playing. In the old days, you might have printed out directions from MapQuest; but nowadays you don’t need to do anything so primitive. Instead, you dock your smartphone on the dashboard as you slip into your car, and instantly it superimposes driving directions to the theater are superimposed on your car’s windshield. As you approach your destination, you see a group of tall buildings. Superimposed on the windshield over one of the buildings is the building’s name, the name of the movie theater inside it, the name Hulk VI, and a countdown to show time. “Turn left in 100 yards,” the navigator speaks through your stereo as a large turning arrow appears, guiding you into the parking structure.

In Neal Stephenson’s book “Snow Crash,” “gargoyles” are freelance intelligence gatherers who have wired themselves to see (through goggles that annotate all of their experiences) a permanent overlay of data on top of the physical world. In less immersive fashion, we may all become gargoyles as “augmented reality” becomes an everyday experience.

Augmented reality is a catchall term for overlaying what we see with computer-generated contextual data or visual substitutions. The point of the technology is to enhance our ability to interact with things around us by providing us with information immediately relevant to those things.

At work, you might walk around the office and see the name and department of each person you pass painted on them — along with a graphical indicator showing what tasks you owe them or they owe you. Though many case scenarios involve “heads-up” displays embedded in windshields or inside eyeglasses, the augmented reality we have today exists primarily on the “heads-down” screens of smartphones.

Several companies have released programs that overlay position- and context-based data onto a continuous video camera feed. The data comes from various radios and sensors built into modern smartphones, including GPS radios (for identifying position by satellite data), accelerometers (for measuring changes in speed and orientation), and magnetometers (for finding position relative to magnetic north).

In an application called Nearest Places, the names and locations of subway stops, parks, museums, restaurants, and other places of interest are shown on top of an iPhone’s video feed. As you walk or turn, the information changes to overlay your surroundings.

“Smartphones and the related apps are the trailblazers for augmented reality,” says Babak Parviz, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in nanotechnology. “In the short to medium term, my guess is that they will dominate the field.”

Other prototype applications display information dropped at particular coordinates as 3D models that the user can walk around, or as animations whose details update in 3D relative to the user’s position. But the technology for those apps isn’t ripe yet; handhelds require a more-precise positioning mechanism in order to handle that kind of data insertion. Fortunately, each smartphone generation seems to include more and better sensors.

In other realms, augmented reality may serve to provide not just additional information, but enhanced vision. One day, infrared cameras mounted on the front of a car will illuminate a far-away object represented as a bright-as-day image on an in-windshield display. Radar signals and wireless receivers will detect and display cars that are out of sight; and one piece of glass will host GPS and traffic reporting.

Leaping past displays, Parviz and his team are working on ways to put the display directly on the eyeball. They’re trying to develop a technology for embedding video circuitry into wearable contact lenses. While wearing such contact lenses, you would see a continuous, context-based data feed overlaid on your field of vision.

Before Parviz’s lenses become a reality, augmented reality is likely to become a routine navigation and interaction aid on mobile devices. In addition, game developers may use the technology to overlay complete digital game environments over the reality that gamers see around them.

HTML5
“Hulk VI” was great, but what should you watch this evening? Before heading off to work in the morning, you click to some trailers on a movie Website, but you don’t have time to watch many. So you use your mobile phone to snap a picture of the 2-D barcode on one of the videos; the phone’s browser then takes you to the same site. On the commuter train to the office, you watch the previews over a 4G cell phone connection. A few of the movies have associated games that you try out on your phone, too.

Remember when every Website had a badge that read “optimized for Netscape Navigator” or “requires Internet Explorer 4″? In the old days, people made Web pages that worked best with — or only with — certain browsers. To some extent, they still do.

The new flavor of the HTML — the standard program for writing Web pages — is called HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language version 5); and HTML5 aims to put that practice to bed for good.

Specifically, HTML5 may do away with the need for audio, video and interactive plug-ins. It will allow designers to create Web sites that work essentially the same on every browser — whether on a desktop, a laptop or a mobile device — and it will give users a better, faster, richer Web experience.

Instead of leaving each browser maker to rely on a combination of its in-house technology and third-party plug-ins for multimedia, HTML5 requires that the browser have built-in methods for audio, video and 2D graphics display. Patent and licensing issues cloud the question of which audio and video formats will achieve universal support, but companies have plenty of motivation to work out those details.

In turn, Web site designers and Web app developers won’t have to deal with multiple incompatible formats and workarounds in their efforts to create the same user experience in every browser.

This is an especially valuable advance for mobile devices, as their browsers today typically have only limited multimedia support. The iPhone’s Safari browser, for example, doesn’t handle Adobe Flash — even though Flash is a prime method of delivering video content across platforms and browsers.

“It’ll take a couple of years to roll out, but if all the browser companies are supporting video display with no JavaScript [for compatibility handling], just the video tag and no plug-in, then there’s no downside to using a mobile device,” says Jeffrey Zeldman, a Web designer and leading Web standards guru. “Less and less expert users will have better and better experiences.”

Makers of operating systems and browsers appear to be falling into line behind HTML5. Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera, and WebKit (the development package that underlies many mobile and desktop programs), among others, are all moving toward HTML5 support.

For its part, Microsoft says that Internet Explorer 8 will support only parts of HTML5. But Microsoft may not want to risk having its Internet Explorer browser lose more market share by resisting HTML5 in the face of consensus among the other OS and browser makers.

HTML5 is now completing its last march toward a final draft and official support by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

5 new technologies that will change everything

Chris Challinor, 70, got the surprise of her life when the mammoth beech crashed onto the bonnet of her Volkswagen Polo.

The front of the car was completely crushed by the trunk – meaning Chris would have been killed if the vehicle was just a few yards further along the road.

Narrow escape: Chris Challinor, 70, was driving her car when a 65ft beech tree crushed the bonnet, missing her by inches

She suffered only shock during the incident at 10.30am on Sunday and the grandmother-of-six says she is ‘very lucky to be alive’.

Chris, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, said: ‘I feel incredibly fortunate. If the tree had come down half a second later I would have been killed.

‘The whole thing is a blur because it happened so quickly. I just remember coming to an immediate stop with the huge trunk smashing into the bonnet.

Lucky: Mrs Challinor walked away with minor injuries

‘I was frozen in shock until the police and fire service came to release me.

‘I was sorry not to make it to church but I think someone may have been looking down on me after all.’

Chris was hit by the falling tree – which was felled by 60mph winds – as she drove past Cheltenham College Junior School on her way to church on Sunday.

The trunk destroyed a 6ft wall before smashing onto the bonnet of the mint green car.

She was eventually freed by firefighters and paramedics but did not require hospital treatment.

Chris’ granddaughter Poppy said: ‘My dad went to see her as soon as we found out. She’s completely shocked. We all were, and her car is wrecked.’

Eyewitness Peter Cruwys said he heard the ‘hulking great piece of wood’ crashing down as he drove nearby.

He said: ‘There was a huge creaking sound and then I heard the crash as the tree landed on the car.

‘It was a hulking great piece of wood. It broke through the outer wall of Cheltenham College and spanned across the entire road.’

Inspector Ian Phillips, of Gloucestershire Police, said: ‘The lady in the car was fully conscious and talking, but was in shock.

‘We were called out to respond to several incidents throughout the day, with cables and trees falling down in various parts of the county due to high winds.’

An ambulance worker said: ‘If the tree had come down a fraction of a second later it would have been right on top of her so she is a very lucky lady.

‘Once she had been freed from the car she was able to walk to the ambulance for treatment. She had only minor injuries but her car was well wrecked, unfortunately.’

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Pensioner’s miraculous escape after 65ft tree crushes her car during drive to church… and she walks away uninjured

Experts looked at children’s levels of being overweight or obese that have been forecast to 2020.

Analysis using data from the past few years indicated a 17 per cent drop in the forecast number of overweight girls aged two to 11 and a 4 per cent drop in the anticipated numbers of obese girls of the same age.

The figures indicated a 5 per cent drop in the forecast number of overweight boys, and a 7 per cent drop in the anticipated numbers of obese boys, of the same age.

Overweight boy being measured at Carnegie Weight Loss Centre for fat and overweight children Leeds 

Public Health Minister Gillian Merron said: ‘Obesity is one of the biggest health challenges we face. There are currently 1.5 million children and 25 million adults that are overweight or obese, leaving them at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart and liver disease.

‘The encouraging news that child obesity may be levelling off is thanks to the hard work of families, schools and the NHS across England, supported by Government initiatives such as 5 A Day and Healthy Schools, which have overseen improvements to school food and school sport.

‘But obesity levels are still too high and we need to keep the momentum going – that’s why I’m delighted to see our campaigns such as the Change4Life Healthy Towns being so successful.

‘We’ll only turn the tide on obesity for good if everyone – Government, families and industry – play their part.’

Tim Marsh, associate director of the National Heart Forum, and a member of the research team, said the findings were good news.

‘This is the first indicator of a positive change in the [upward] trend [in child obesity].

‘It is certainly not going up as much as we said in the Foresight report two years ago. It is positive – how positive only time will tell.’

Dr Marsh said the study could not explain why obesity was slowing but there were a number of factors that could be responsible.

‘We think it is a combination of changing attitudes – obesity is now recognised to be a serious health problem – and changes in government policy. A significant amount has happened since 2004.’

The Change4Life Healthy Towns, launched a year ago this month, are Dudley, Halifax, Sheffield, Tower Hamlets, Thetford, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Tewkesbury and Portsmouth.

The towns, which each received a share of a £30 million Government investment, have spent the last year creating opportunities for their local communities to become active and eat healthily.

Over the year, initiatives in the campaign have included:

A healthy meal event in Middlesbrough with more than 10,000 diners taking part

Free fruit and vegetables for the 5,629 Year Seven pupils in Sheffield

Healthy weight projects in workplaces across Halifax

Change4Life corner shops stocking fresh fruit and vegetables in Tower Hamlets

A mass bike ride in Portsmouth with more than 250 cyclists

A ‘green gym’ for people to become active in the outdoors in Thetford

Cooking clubs for mothers, fathers and children in Tewkesbury

Better walking and cycling facilities in Dudley

Obesity rates have been rising in England – as in most developed nations – since the 1970s, and the latest positive figures will be widely regarded as welcomed by health experts.

A similar trend has been recorded in several other countries, including the US, France and Denmark.

There are currently 1.5 million children in England who are overweight or obese – leaving them at increased risk of health problems such as type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

The Department of Health has set a target of reducing the number of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels by 2020.

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Childhood obesity rates are levelling off for the first time in 30 years

Based on the GT215 core, the upcoming GeForce GT 240 graphics card will be based on a 40nm GPU, manufactured at TSMC, will boast support for DirectX 10.1 and will be equipped with 96 stream processors. Although information about the clock speeds have not been given, is generally assumed that the GDDR5 version of this card will run at about the same level as a regular producer of chip GeForce 9600 GSO or models.

One of the biggest problems with this card is that the only strong competition from current and future products AMD will face. This is already the case with the GeForce GT 220, which was launched by the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker a while back. This card is facing heavy competition from AMD’s 4670, Radeon 4770 or the recently launched Radeon HD 5700-series, which will be fast enough, even though the yield on 40nm TSMC problems.

Although the GT-240 is an interesting choice for the average PC user, player, computer enthusiasts and early adopters probably anxious to wait for the official debut of the new Fermi-based 40nm GeForce cards, which have to start somewhere before the end of this year, according to recent reports. Unfortunately we have no information on the pricing of over 240 GT, but the rumored release date is not far ahead.

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

NVIDIA to unveil the GeForce GT 240 in mid-November

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· A large variety of free downloadable extensions and themes that add specific functionality and visual changes to the browser.

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Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Free download Firefox 3.6 Beta 1

Key features:
· Free configurable Prioritization
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· optimal Dial-Up connections
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· broadband limits

Download cFosSpeed 5.01 Build 1580 Beta
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Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Free download cFosSpeed 5.01 Build 1580 Beta

Your ticker is a pretty simple organ. It brings blood in by way of arteries and then pumps it back out to the rest of the body. A waxy substance called plaque can build up on the inside of these arteries, which makes them narrower, and it becomes more difficult for the blood to take the ride into and out of the heart. Over time, the buildup of plaque deposits can rupture and cause total blockage of the blood flow to the heart. This is called a heart attack and it’s the No. 1 killer of both men and women each year in the United States.

The bad news about heart attacks is that there are many factors that play in to whether you’ll have one, including your genes, what you eat and how much you exercise. The good news is that they’re preventable. If you take steps now, you can greatly improve your chances of not having a heart attack. We’ve compiled a list of 10 things you can do to help you avoid being a heart attack statistic.

Heart Tip 10: Exercise

This one is a no-brainer. When you lift weights, your muscles get stronger and healthier. Your heart is a muscle, so the same thing holds true for it. Doctors recommend 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise three times a week at the bare minimum. If you want to really get yourself into shape, you should try and get that 30-minute workout in five to seven days a week. Not everyone loves to jog or go to the gym. This is why the key to any exercise plan is to make it something that you enjoy. 

If you hate to jog, try a team sport or play some tennis. If tennis is too hard on your joints, try swimming. If you can’t swim, take your dog for a brisk daily walk. Throw the Frisbee with friends in the park. Go rollerblading. If you love golf, ditch the cart and walk the 18 holes. Exercise doesn’t have to mean plodding away on a treadmill. Find something you enjoy doing and do it with regularity to establish a routine. After about a month, that routine is ingrained as a habit. Before you know it, that habit has you on your way to avoiding a heart attack.

Heart Tip 9: Sleep

This tip is one most people can probably get behind. In today’s hectic world, it seems like some of our basic needs aren’t often met — sleep is one of them. Although it varies for everyone, doctors suggest that you should get about 8 hours of sleep per night. Almost 60 percent of adults have problems sleeping, and only 37 percent get that recommended amount per night. Not only does being tired all day hurt your performance, but research shows that too little or too much sleep can have some poor effects on your blood pressure and ticker, specifically.

A 10-year-long Harvard University study tracked the sleep habits and health of more than 70,000 women between the ages of 45 and 65 who had no previous heart trouble. At the end of the 10-year period, 934 of these women suffered from coronary heart disease and 271 died from it. The 5 percent of the women who slept less than five hours per night were nearly 40 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease than women who slept an average of eight hours. On the flip side, the women who slept more than nine hours per night were 37 percent more likely to have heart trouble. Studies have returned similar results in men. So the key is to try and stay within that eight hour range, and you’re doing your heart a favor.

Heart Tip 8: Aspirin

In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advised people that have already had a heart attack to begin taking an aspirin a day to help prevent another one. The popular pain reliever, in low doses, works to help prevent clotting by thinning the blood. If your blood isn’t clotting, you’re less likely to have a heart attack. The American Heart Association (AHA) also suggests a daily dose of aspirin to help prevent a first and second heart attack. 

However, many people haven’t heeded the warning about taking too much aspirin, and nearly 250,000 adults are admitted to the hospital each year for internal bleeding as a result. The FDA and the AHA recommend that adults stick to the minimum daily dose, which is only 75 to 81 milligrams. This is the equivalent of a single baby aspirin. When you consider that a standard full dose of aspirin comes in at 325 milligrams, people who pop one of those per day are doing more harm than good. Before you start an aspirin regimen, you should consult your doctor. The requirements are different for men and women and not everyone is a good candidate for aspirin therapy. You also shouldn’t drink alcohol if you’re on a daily aspirin dose because it can increase your chances for internal bleeding.

Heart Tip 7: Lower Your Cholesterol

Cholesterol gets a bad rap. There are actually two kinds of cholesterol and one of them, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), is produced in the liver and plays a vital role in the functioning of your body’s cells. The easiest way to say it is that HDL makes your cells waterproof. This ensures that the biochemistry of the inside of the cell is different from the outside. HDL also serves as a guard against cancer and aging and is necessary for proper neurological functioning.

So why would you want to lower your cholesterol? Because the second kind, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), get smaller and smaller until they’re tiny enough to enter the walls of your blood vessels and attach themselves like a bad houseguest. Once enough of the LDL sticks around, it’s called plaque. Over time, the plaque can rupture and block the vessels altogether. Then it’s heart attack time.

You can combat this in a couple of ways. There’s the age-old advice to quit smoking, get on a healthy diet and exercise. Then there’s a drug treatment called statins that can help lower your LDL levels. The American Heart Association recommends that fat not exceed 25 to 30 percent of your daily intake and your cholesterol from food not be more than 300 milligrams. You should also get 25 to 30 grams of fiber into your diet each day and see tip No. 1 for your exercise routine. Statins are the other option. If your doctor finds that your LDL levels are more than 130 grams per deciliter, he may decide to put you on one of the six brands of statin drugs on the market. Whether it’s through diet and exercise, statins or both, lowering your cholesterol is a great way to help you avoid the dangers of a heart attack.

Heart Tip 6: Lower Your Blood Pressure

A lot of people may hear the words blood pressure and not even know what that actually means. It’s pretty simple — blood pressure is the measurement of the force of the blood against the walls of your blood vessels. When your blood pressure is measured, there are two readings — systolic and diastolic. The systolic part refers to the pressure when your heart is expanded, and the diastolic reading is when your heart is at rest. They’re given as systolic over diastolic, like a fraction.

The American Heart Association estimates that about one-third of all Americans have high blood pressure, or hypertension, and that a third of those people don’t know it. This is because there really aren’t any symptoms. It’s called the “silent killer” because the only way to find out if your pressure is high is to check it. Some people sit down at the machines in pharmacies and grocery stores, but unless it’s a new machine or you know that it’s been maintained and recently recalibrated, you can’t really trust those numbers.

If you get your pressure checked and it falls under 120/80, then you’re doing fine. Anything between 120-139/80-89 is called prehypertension, and above this level is considered high. The first step in controlling your blood pressure is to have it checked on a regular basis. Once you find out you have high blood pressure, your doctor will ask you to eat less fatty foods, cut your salt intake, stop smoking if you’re a smoker, exercise and limit the amount of alcohol you drink. If this isn’t enough to get your pressure down, you may need to go on blood pressure medication like diuretics, which get rid of excess fluids and salts, and beta-blockers that actually reduce the amount of blood your heart pumps.

Heart Tip 5: Chill Out

Everyone knows that being stressed out isn’t a good feeling. Turns out, it goes a little deeper than that — stress can actually have some pretty severe effects on your body. Research scientists in Canada performed a study and found that people who had heart attacks and returned to a stressful career were twice as likely to have a second attack as those who held down reasonably stress-free jobs. University of London researchers found similar results for people who had stressful intimate relationships.

There’s an area at the base of your brain called the hypothalamus that sets off an alarm whenever you get stressed. This alarm sends a signal to your adrenal glands to release a surge of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. This is also known as the fight-or-flight response. Your heart rate increases, which elevates your blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. If you’re always stressed, then your body thinks it’s in a constant state of threat — not a good thing. Reducing your stress levels will lead to a reduced heart rate and ultimately help you to lower your blood pressure.

If you lead a stressful life, try to chill out by relaxing with friends after work. Take a walk or give meditation a try. Exercise and the right amount of sleep also go a long way toward combating your stress level. If none of these tricks work and you still find yourself stressed, see a professional counselor or psychotherapist. It can help your head and your heart.

Heart Tip 4: Stop Smoking

File this one under no-brainer as well. Every smoker on the planet knows that it’s not good for them. The problem is that it’s really difficult to quit. So difficult that nearly two-thirds of adults who want to quit aren’t able to . So hard that almost half of patients that undergo surgery for lung cancer continue to smoke. That’s how tough it is. It’s also extremely bad for your heart.

When you smoke, the burning of the cigarette creates something called carbon monoxide (CO) — the same stuff that’s created when your car burns gasoline. The CO you inhale takes the place of the oxygen that’s carried to and from your heart by your red blood cells. This basically poisons those cells and keeps them from carrying oxygen to the heart and from the heart to the rest of the body. This happens because CO is a master of disguise — it’s able to pass itself off as oxygen. So when you smoke, you’re basically starving your heart of oxygen, the one thing it needs to function properly. If you smoke a pack of smokes a day, the CO level in your bloodstream will stay between 4 and 8 percent. A normal amount of CO in your blood is extremely low — zero to eight parts per million.

Whether or not you’re at risk for a heart attack, you should probably try to quit smoking. It’s tough, but people do it every day all over the world, so you can too. Try cutting down first. A review of smoking studies for people that had no desire to quit showed that cutting down often led to complete cessation . It’s also been proven that it’s much easier to quit if you partner up with a fellow smoker who’s kicking the habit. Nicotine replacement therapy can be effective for some, and there are other new drugs on the market like Chantix that are effective for some smokers.

Heart Tip 3: Undergo Preventive Screenings

Here’s a novel idea — preventive medicine. In other words, trying to stop a problem before it becomes one. Preventive health screenings can give you and your doctor a lot of information about how at risk you are for cardiovascular disease. The Department of Health and Human Services recommends that you start getting your blood pressure checked every two years starting at the age of 18. It also recommends having your cholesterol levels checked at age 18, and from then on, as often as your doctor thinks is necessary.

The great thing about preventive screenings is that they don’t take very long and are basically painless. Blood pressure checks involve a stethoscope and an aneroid monitor. You may not recognize the aneroid by its fancy name, but it’s the arm cuff system that you’ve likely seen before. Your cholesterol levels are determined through a simple blood test, so you’ll need to get your arm tapped for the red stuff. Aside from these standard checks, there are ultrasound tests that can detect arterial blockage, and you’ll also likely have your body mass index (BMI) calculated so you’ll know exactly how out of shape you are. Your BMI is your weight divided by the square of your height, and multiplied by 732.You may not want to hear some of these numbers, but getting information early on about your risk level can help you avoid a heart attack down the road.

Heart Tip 2: Know Your Family Medical History

This one isn’t as easy as you might think. Some families never suffer through a divorce and are open and honest about everything that goes on. Other families are fractured and distant, with medical goings on swept under the rug for the sake of not worrying children. Because of divorce, death and parents giving their children up for adoption, many adults may not even be acquainted with one or both of their parents at all, much less their medical histories. Some people have genetic predispositions to certain diseases and illnesses — heart disease is no exception. If your father died from a heart attack at the age of 50, then chances are you may be headed down that same road. Even the healthiest of individuals can’t do anything about the genes they inherited.

The first thing you should do to get your information is to interview your siblings and parents and record the information they give you. Your doctor will ask you these questions anyway, so you may as well have the information. From there, go on to interview other family members. Find out about chronic illnesses, disease and any major surgeries they’ve undergone. Ask your grandparents about their siblings and parents. Take down all the information in detailed notes, no matter how limited it is. Even knowing how and at what age your great-grandmother passed away can be important to your risk level. The last thing you should ask in your interviews is what kind of lifestyle your relatives lived. If your grandfather who died from a heart attack at 50 drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney while he stuffed his face with salt pork, then you should take that into consideration.

Heart Tip 1: Adopt a Heart-healthy Diet

You really are what you eat. If you dine on a steady flow of bacon and eggs, cheeseburgers, French fries and Twinkies, then you and your heart aren’t going to be in the best condition. Adopting a heart-healthy diet is the most important thing you can do to benefit your ticker. It will help you to lower your blood pressure and cholesterol and limit the amount of bad fat you take in.

As far as a broad approach goes, try to get as far away from processed foods as possible. The closer your four food groups are to their original, unprocessed form the better. It’s called a whole foods lifestyle. Include plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and eat fish at least twice a week. Salmon is your best bet for supplying your heart with healthy omega-3 fatty acids that will help you reduce arterial plaque. Whole grains like oatmeal and whole wheat bread are a must as well.

Legumes like beans and lentils are loaded with protein, fiber, iron and calcium and are free of fat and cholesterol. Nuts are packed with antioxidants, omega-3s, fiber and vitamin E, among other things. The important thing is to not think of it as a diet, but as a lifestyle change. Stay away from boxed food, head for the fruit and veggie aisle, and you’re on your way to making sure there are no ambulances in your future.

Copyright © 2008 Tech News Update

Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Heart Attack