News of Technology

Microsoft makes Net phone deal with SoftbanMicrosoft makes Net phone deal with Softbankk

2005-12-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

Microsoft and Softbank will jointly offer Internet-based telephone services to corporate customers in Japan.

Microsoft's Japan unit, Tokyo-based Softbank, and its Japan Telecom affiliate will sell a package that includes Internet phone, e-mail and Internet access starting in the spring, the companies said.

Microsoft is developing software for making and managing phone calls through the Internet to compete against eBay Skype Technologies.

Softbank, Japan's second-biggest provider of high-speed Internet service, already offers Internet-based phones to consumers in Japan via its Yahoo! BB Internet access service.
Seven & I Holdings

7-Eleven owner buys Japan retailer

Seven & I Holdings, owner of 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan and the United States, said Monday it will pay $1.13 billion to buy department-store operator Millennium Retailing in a deal creating Japan's biggest retailer.

Aside from 7-Eleven, Seven & I also owns the Ito-Yokado supermarket chain. Millennium owns Japanese retailers Sogo and Seibu Department Stores.

Their combined revenue would come to around $38.8 billion for the year ended Feb. 28, making Seven & I the biggest in Japan's retail industry.

Seven-Eleven Japan became a shareholder in Dallas-based 7-Eleven in 1991 and finished buying all the shares in November.

Read More

Nissan to Debut Xbox Car

2005-12-28T13:39:00.000-08:00

In a move that could steer some attention away from the lack of Xbox 360 game consoles available in stores, Microsoft said Wednesday it helped develop a concept car created by Nissan that would include the software giant’s console in its design.

The concept car allows a driver to play Microsoft’s driving game Project Gotham Racing 3 on an embedded Xbox 360 while the car is in park mode, using the car’s steering wheel, the gas and brake pedals, and a flip-down screen.

The car was developed by Nissan Design America and will debut at the North American International Auto Show on January 9.

Shares of Microsoft dropped $0.04 to $26.42 in recent trading.

In Short Supply

Microsoft’s latest marketing move could help provide a temporary distraction from the fact that Microsoft has produced far fewer Xbox 360s than the world market currently demands.

The Redmond-based company boosted its marketing to create buzz for a consecutive worldwide launch in November that delivered long lines and completely sold-out retail outlets (see Xbox 360 Invades Europe).

But Microsoft only made about an estimated 300,000 Xbox 360 units available in the United States, and roughly the same amount available in Europe. Japan likely saw less than half of that figure.

Microsoft made fewer consoles than the expected demand because the company is also losing money on each unit, which costs the company from $525 to over $700 to make, according to varying estimates (see Xbox Loses Money).

The console is still sold out in pre-orders to retail outlets and on various web sites (see Xbox 360 Sold Out Online). On Internet auction sites, the price is as high as $1,000.

The lack of supply has meant the company could fail to meet analysts’ former estimates of 1.5 million consoles sold by the end of the year (see Xbox Losing Japan Game).

The company could barely meet the 1-million mark by the end of the year, if more supplies don’t reach stores soon.

Analysts think that Microsoft could meet the 3-million console mark by February but will need to ramp up supply to make the deadline.

The milestones are important in that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has a head start of several months in the console war against Sony’s PlayStation 3, due out sometime next year (see Xbox 360 Starts Console War).

Weak Game Sales

Microsoft’s attention to its driving game, Project Gotham Racing 3, also signals the company’s attempts to boost individual game sales.

Microsoft was criticized for not developing any blockbuster games for its console launch. Critics say that beyond the supply chain issues, the company has few “winning” games on the market for its new console (see 18 Games Launch for Xbox 360).

Analysts say PGR3 is a solid title, but not the kind of title that moves an industry like a Halo 2 or a Grand Theft Auto.

In addition the game industry took a hit this Christmas after consumers failed to buy enough game titles. And the industry saw a 20 percent drop from the previous year’s holiday season game sales (see Holiday Game Sales Freeze).

Read More

The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

2005-12-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

We're living in the golden age of the gadget. Don't believe it? Check your pockets. Odds are you're carrying a portable music player, an electronic organizer, a keychain-size storage device, a digital camera, or a cell phone that combines some or all of these functions. And you'd probably be hard-pressed to live without them.

At PC World, we'd be lost without these things. We don't merely test and write about digital gear, we live and breathe the stuff. In honor of this raging gizmo infatuation, we polled our editors and asked them to name the top 50 gadgets of the last 50 years. The rules? The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the "cool factor." Then we tallied the results.

After a lot of Web surfing, spreadsheet wrangling, and some near fistfights, we emerged with the following list. Some items in our Top 50 are innovative devices that appeared briefly and then were quickly consigned to museums and future appearances on eBay, but whose influence spread widely. Others are products we use every day--or wish we could.

With the holidays in full swing, and as folks shop for the right gear to give their loved ones, join us as we visit with the ghosts of gadgets past and present.

1. Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)

Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)Portable music players are so cheap and ubiquitous today that it's hard to remember when they were luxury items, widely coveted and often stolen. But when the blue and silver Walkman debuted in 1979, no one had ever seen anything quite like it. The $200 player virtually invented the concept of "personal electronics."

The first Walkman (also branded as the Stowaway, the Soundabout, and the Freestyle before the current name stuck) featured a cassette player and the world's first lightweight headphones. Apparently fearful that consumers would consider the Walkman too antisocial, Sony built the first units with two headphone jacks so you could share music with a friend. The company later dropped this feature. Now, more than 25 years and some 330 million units later, nobody wonders why you're walking down the street with headphones on.

Read More

Virtual property yields $100,000

2005-11-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

A Miami resident has bought a virtual space station for $100,000 and wants to turn it into a cross between Jurassic Park and a disco.

Jon Jacobs, a director of independent films, plans to call the space resort, in the science-fiction themed game Project Entropia, "Club Neverdie." Like other land areas in the game that has been visited by 300,000 players, the resort grounds will spawn dinosaur-like monsters, which visitors can kill.

Jacobs will take a cut of the virtual resources that the carcasses yield, like hides.

Jacobs, 39, plans to hire famous disc jockeys to entertain visitors once a week or so at the resort but still reckons on netting $20,000 a month from the hunting tax and other income.

Jacobs bought the property late last month from MindArk PE AB, Project Entropia's Swedish developer. The game, which has no subscription fee, has its own currency but it's convertible at a fixed rate to dollars.

About a quarter of the purchase money came from Jacobs' in-game earnings.

Over three years playing Project Entropia, Jacobs accumulated items that later became worth thousands of dollars, like first-aid kits and powerful weapons.

He sold those items last year to buy an island in Project Entropia, but was outbid -- it sold for $26,500, the previous record sale in that world.

New virus uses Sony BMG software

2005-11-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

A computer security firm said Thursday it had discovered the first virus that uses music publisher Sony BMG's controversial CD copy-protection software to hide on PCs and wreak havoc.

Under a subject line containing the words "Photo approval," a hacker has mass-mailed the so-called Stinx-E trojan virus to British email addresses, said British anti-virus firm Sophos.

When recipients click on an attachment, they install malware, which may tear down a computer's firewall and give hackers access to a PC. The malware hides by using Sony BMG software that is also hidden -- the software would have been installed on a computer when consumers played Sony's copy-protected music CDs.

"This leaves Sony in a real tangle. It was already getting bad press about its copy-protection software, and this new hack exploit will make it even worse," said Sophos's Graham Cluley.

Later on Thursday, security software firm Symantec Corp. also discovered the first trojans to abuse the security flaw in Sony BMG's copy-protection software. A trojan is a program that appears desirable but actually contains something harmful.

Sony BMG's spokesman John McKay in New York was not immediately available to comment.

The music publishing venture of Japanese electronics conglomerate Sony Corp.and Germany's Bertelsmann AGis distributing the copy-protection software on a range of recent music compact disks (CDs) from artists such as Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan.

When the CD is played on a Windows personal computer, the software first installs itself and then limits the usage rights of a consumer. It only allows playback with Sony software.

The software sparked a class action lawsuit against Sony in California last week, claiming that Sony has not informed consumers that it installs software directly into the "roots" of their computer systems with rootkit software, which cloaks all associated files and is dangerous to remove.

New Windows Trojan causes confusion

2005-11-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

the Tokyo-based antivirus company said it had discovered a Trojan horse that used an image-rendering flaw in Windows to attack systems, a day after Microsoft had provided a fix for the vulnerability. But late Thursday, Trend Micro said its initial analysis of the Trojan might be incorrect.

"We asked another team to start the disassembly process again," said Raimund Genes, chief technologist for Trend Micro in Europe. That means researchers will reinvestigate the Trojan code to see what it does.

The Trojan is referred to as "emfsploit.a" by Trend Micro. Initially, the antivirus software maker reported that the malicious code would crash "explorer.exe" on unpatched Windows machines. Explorer runs key parts of the Windows graphical user interface, including the Start menu, taskbar, desktop and file manager.

Trend Micro has found that the Trojan does cause a crash on certain Windows XP systems, but the finding is not consistent with Microsoft's Tuesday bug report. Trend found a crash only on Windows XP computers without Service Pack 1. But according to Microsoft, the vulnerability also affects systems with SP1 and SP2, so these should crash as well if the Trojan indeed exploits the MS05-053 flaw.

Trend Micro describes the new Trojan as a "proof of concept." It received one sample of the code from a customer in Japan, but as of late Thursday the Trojan hasn't actually been detected anywhere else, Genes said. The company hence rates the overall risk "low."

EU takes swipe at U.S. Internet oversight

2005-11-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

The European Commission on Friday took a swipe at U.S. oversight of the Internet but offered no concrete alternatives, in advance of an international summit on how the Internet should be run.

A U.N. report has proposed a multinational approach as a more democratic and clearer way of running the Internet.

The controversy centers around the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California-based non-profit company set up in 1998.

Yahoo out of talks on AOL stake

2005-11-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Internet media firm Yahoo has said it has pulled out of talks to buy a stake in Time Warner's internet unit AOL.

The move came after Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel met Time Warner executives in October, Yahoo said.

"After we learned what their proposed deal terms were we passed and we've never looked back," a Yahoo spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

The withdrawal of Yahoo leaves Google and Microsoft as the two favourites to do a deal with AOL.

The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday that Time Warner was expected to pick one exclusive partner with which it will begin talks, possibly as early as next week.

Revamp

The AP news agency cited unnamed sources as saying the reason why Yahoo pulled out was because Time Warner wanted to retain a majority stake in AOL.

Time Warner has seen its share price plunge since 2000 and has come under pressure from investors.

In September, Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons said he was determined to increase AOL's value which, in turn, would boost the US media giant's share price.

The firm is seeking to transform the business by changing it from a subscriber-based service to an advertising-funded one.

In November Time Warner reported a sharp rise in profit and promised investors a $12.5bn share buy-back programme.

Lenovo Reports Triple-Digit Sales Growth

2005-11-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

PC maker Lenovo reported second-quarter revenue growth of 404 percent, attributing the hefty gain to organic growth and its acquisition of IBM’s PC business.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, sales totaled $3.7 billion, according to the Purchase, N.Y., company, whose parent is based in China. Pretax earnings came in at $65 million, and profit for shareholders rose 2 percent, the company said.

Lenovo issued its second-quarter report from Hong Kong, where much of its international operations are located. The company’s earnings press conference, also in Hong Kong, wasn’t broadcast to media in the United States.

The financial report was the first that included a full three-month period of contributions from the former IBM PC business. Lenovo closed that acquisition April 30, and the company said industry reports show that it turned in a 13 percent growth in unit PC shipments during that time.

"The new Lenovo is already showing signs of achieving its potential, although we have much yet to do," Lenovo CFO Mary Ma said in a statement.

Lenovo has yet to officially roll out its new terms and conditions for the U.S. solution provider channel. Company executives have begun preliminary discussions with some members of its channel advisory panel and said they expect to begin detailing the new channel program--expected to be less restrictive in many aspects than IBM's--over the next couple of weeks.

Lenovo's mostly upbeat financial report stands in contrast to that of rival Dell, which reported Monday that its profit would be at the lower end of its earlier forecast and sales for the current quarter would be below expectations. Dell cited weakness in its U.S. consumer and U.K. businesses, as well as a charge of $450 million, most of which the Round Rock, Texas-based PC giant said will pay for the cost of fixing "previous-generation Optiplex desktop systems" that didn't perform up to company standards.

For its part, Lenovo said much of its sales growth was fueled by shipments of its ThinkPad notebooks, as well as a refresh of its ThinkCentre desktop PC lineup.

Intel Is Checking Up Digital Health

2005-11-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. has a prescription for enhancing health care in the future: increasing the dose of computer technology.

The chip maker, which established a new Digital Health Group as part of a broad reorganization earlier this year, is preparing to trial a laptop-like device that could aid in the care of people suffering from Parkinson's disease. The device conducts a battery of tests to measure their symptoms and stores the data for doctors to access. Intel researchers plan to begin medical trials of the machine, which they say can be used to tracks the patients' symptoms more closely by repeating the tests weekly at home versus a doctor's office visit every few weeks, with about 60 patients in January.

Intel isn't poised to enter the medical devices business with the tester, however. Instead, the device represents one of numerous opportunities the chipmaker sees in applying its forte—designing chips and the systems that surround them—to health care. To that end, researchers inside the company's labs—many of whom are now affiliated with the Digital Health Group following the reorganization—have been experimenting with numerous ways to use fairly standard computer chips, software and networking technologies, including RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, to assist doctors and their patients as well as aid in the care of aging populations around the globe.

"This is not going to make a laptop replace a nurse. That's not what we're thinking," said Manny Vara, a technology strategist inside Intel's research labs, while demonstrating several of Intel's health care-oriented research projects for Ziff Davis Internet during an event in New York City.

However, "We think some of this is very promising," he said.

Intel researchers envision sensor networks that use RFID tags to help monitor the daily activities of elderly people, for example. By gathering data from RFID-tagged household implements, even including drinking cups, a network could track a person's movements throughout a house and therefore deduce whether he or she was capable of performing day-to-day activities or track whether medications were being taken on time, Vara said.

"You can deduce what [your grandmother] is doing by looking at what' she's touching" around the house, he said.

Numerous Intel researchers were on hand at an event in New York City where they discussed projects, including the Parkinson's tester, digital pill box, sensor networks as well as others such as location-aware wireless networks. But the Digital Health Group also had its coming out party a few months ago at Intel's fall Developer Forum in San Francisco.

There, the group's General Manager, Louis Burns discussed the benefits of IT-enabling patients, doctors and instruments to create more consistent care during a keynote address at the forum.

Burns touted other potential health care benefits. Electronic prescription processing could replace written prescriptions, he said.

Burns also demonstrated connected blood-pressure cuffs, thermometers and pulse readers that could chart information instantly onto a patient's medical record, in another example of networked medical devices.

That interoperability has the most power to improve health care, he said during the speech.

"If you optimize just one component of the [health care] system, you just shift the bottleneck," he said.

Intel plans to reveal more detailed product information next spring, he said in the keynote.

Apple sells a million videos

2005-11-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Apple Computer said its iTunes online service has sold a million videos in under 20 days.

iTunes, the most popular online music store, began selling about 2,000 music videos and episodes of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" for $1.99 October 12.

The debut coincided with the launch of a new generation of Apple's iPod digital music player that can play video on its 2.5-inch color screen.

Technology, media and Wall Street analysts are eyeing Apple's performance for validation that a market for legal downloading of videos exists.

Topping the list of big sellers were music videos by Michael Jackson, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West, as well as episodes of ABC shows.

"Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal downloads," Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, said in a statement. "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings."

At the service's launch, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC was the only nonmusic programming provider aside from Jobs' Pixar Animation Studios Inc., which is also providing short films for the service.

Sources have said Apple is in discussions to lure more television networks to provide programming.

Ready for a 20-inch laptop?

2005-10-30T05:52:00.000-08:00

How big is your laptop? Fifteen inches? Seventeen inches? How about a massive 19- or 20-inch wide-screen LCD model?

With so many DVDs featuring letterboxed or wide-screen versions of films, consumers' fascination with larger screen sizes is changing the size and shape of the laptop industry, an IDC report issued Monday stated.

The wide-screen format, found in only 39.2 percent of laptops expected to ship this year, will become dominant in mid- to late 2006. It will nearly eclipse standard screen dimensions by the end of 2009, the market research firm estimates.

The IDC report doesn't refer only to the larger sizes, however. IDC predicted that 12-inch ultraportables and 14- and 15-inch wide-screen displays will fuel 62.5 million notebook shipments this year. That number, IDC forecasts, will climb to 114.6 million in 2009.

"What we are seeing is the commercial market driving the manufacturers," IDC analyst Richard Shim said. "In addition to watching movies or playing games, customers are appreciating that wide-screen formats let them view documents and spreadsheets side-by-side instead of scrolling up and down."

But are consumers ready to lug around a 20-inch laptop? Shim said that displays measuring 15 inches and 17 inches on the diagonal--once considered too big to carry around--are now among the more popular versions.

In its report, IDC predicted that 73.6 million laptops will ship by the end of 2006. Of that number, 38.5 million, or 52.3 percent, will be wide-screen formats, Shim said. About 35.1 million, 47.7 percent, of laptops shipped will be the current standard square configuration.

In 2009, when IDC has predicted 114.6 million laptops will ship, the analyst firm also estimated 96.7 million wide-screen laptops, making up 84.4 percent of the market. In the same year, standard-size laptops are expected to reach 17.9 million units, or 15.6 percent, of the market.

While IDC is expecting a larger price difference between standard-size and widescreen notebooks in the 14-inch category, prices should even out next year as demand for widescreen notebooks takes off and computer makers transition from 14-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch displays to the larger sizes, Shim said.

Other factors in transitioning laptops into wide-screen format include the rise in high-definition content and operating systems like Microsoft Vista, which are expected to accommodate WSXGA (Wide Super Extended Graphics Array) pixel resolutions of 1680 by 1050 and 1440 by 900.

"The PC makers are also getting aggressive now because there is no standard in place saying that 15.4-inch wide-screen is the standard and a 15.3-inch widescreen is not," Shim said.

Any downsides to larger laptop displays are minimal, Shim said.

"Some corporate buyers might be concerned that their homegrown applications may not look the same in a larger-size wide-screen display," Shim said, noting that consumers are more likely than businesses to purchase a wide-screen machine.

The other downside would be a potential glut of LCD panels in 2006, Shim said. But if there is an oversupply, Shim said the sales will hurt suppliers and manufacturers more than it would hurt consumers.

Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too

2005-10-30T05:37:00.000-08:00

IN many ways, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem an unlikely pair to lead an advertising revolution. As Stanford graduate students sketching out the idea that became Google, the two software engineers sniffed in an academic paper that "advertising-funded search engines will inherently be biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers."

They softened that line a bit by the time they got around to pitching their business to venture capitalists, allowing that selling ads would be a handy safety net if their other, less distasteful ideas for generating revenue didn't pan out.

Google soared in popularity in its first years but had no meaningful revenue until the founders reluctantly fell on that safety net and started selling ads. Even then, they approached advertising with the mind-set of engineers: Ads would look more like fortune cookies than anything Madison Avenue would come up with.

As it turned out, the safety net was a trampoline. Those little ads - 12 word snippets of text, linked to topics that users are actually interested in - have turned Google into one of the biggest advertising vehicles the world has ever seen. This year, Google will sell $6.1 billion in ads, nearly double what it sold last year, according to Anthony Noto, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. That is more advertising than is sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. By next year, Mr. Noto said, he expects Google to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion. That would place it fourth among American media companies in total ad sales after Viacom, the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, but ahead of giants including NBC Universal and Time Warner.

More quietly, Google is also preparing to disrupt the advertising business itself, by replacing creative salesmanship with cold number-crunching. Its premise so far is that advertising is most effective when seen only by people who are interested in what's for sale, based on what they are searching for or reading about on the Web. Because Google's ad-buying clients pay for ads only when users click on them, they can precisely measure their effectiveness - and are willing to pay more for ads that really sell their products.

HIDDEN behind its simple white pages, Google has already created what it says is one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built. In a fraction of a second, it can evaluate millions of variables about its users and advertisers, correlate them with its potential database of billions of ads and deliver the message to which each user is most likely to respond.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, explains the company's astounding success in advertising - and reconciles it with the founders' distrust of hucksterism - by suggesting that advertising should be interesting, relevant and useful to users. "Improving ad quality improves Google's revenue," he said in an interview at the company's headquarters, known as the Googleplex. "If we target the right ad to the right person at the right time and they click it, we win."

This proposition, he continued, is applicable to other media. "If we can figure out a way to improve the quality of ads on television with ads that have real value for end-users, we should do it," he said. While he is watching television, for example, "Why do I see women's clothing ads?" he said. "Why don't I see just men's clothing ads?"

The media and advertising industries certainly see a future in which television ads are aimed at individual viewers. But few outside of the engineering Ph.D.'s at Google think that television ads should simply be utilitarian, rather than entertaining, provocative or annoyingly repetitive - the models that have worked so far. And some media industry executives wonder whether Google, which has already become the most powerful force in Internet advertising, should also become the clearinghouse for ads of all types - a kind of advertising Nasdaq.

Adobe Digital Negative Specification Continues to Win Industry Support

2005-10-30T05:15:00.000-08:00

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced that its Digital Negative Specification (DNG) - an industry-wide initiative to create one unified format for archiving raw digital images - is continuing to win support from camera manufacturers and software makers. Ricoh Co. is the latest camera manufacturer to support DNG, with its new GR digital camera. By providing DNG support directly in its products, Ricoh joins respected camera manufacturers Hasselblad and Leica, along with a wide range of software manufacturers such as Apple, Extensis, iView and ULead.

"DNG addresses a critical need in the market to preserve digital images in their purest form while also simplifying the raw workflow for photographers," said Kazuhiro Yuasa, general manager of the Image Capturing Solution Division at Ricoh. "The Ricoh GR Digital represents the latest advancements in high resolution compact cameras, and by incorporating support for DNG we're giving our customers the flexibility and control they require to do their best work."

"Serious photographers have already expressed their eagerness to find cameras that support the common DNG format," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Digital Imaging and Digital Video at Adobe. "Ricoh's commitment to DNG is great news for the photography community. We look forward to working closely with Ricoh and other manufacturers as DNG evolves and becomes part of everyday photography workflows."

Support for Over 80 Camera Models
In addition, Adobe introduced the Camera Raw 3.2 plug-in that extends long-term archiving capabilities to 14 new camera models from leading manufacturers, bringing total support to over 80 cameras. With the new plug-in, users can preserve more metadata when saving files in the DNG format. Added support for GPS metadata tags gives photographers the ability to associate images more easily. Additional features include an updated, user-friendly interface for Photoshop® Elements 4.0 users and "As Shot" white balance support for Nikon D2X, D2Hs and D50 camera users.

New cameras supported by Adobe Camera Raw 3.2 plug-in and DNG Converter include Konica Minolta ALPHA SWEET DIGITAL (Japan), Konica Minolta ALPHA-5 DIGITAL (China), Konica Minolta MAXXUM 5D (USA), Konica Minolta DYNAX 5D (Europe), Leaf Valeo 17, Leaf Aptus 22, Leica D-Lux 2, Nikon D2Hs, Nikon D70s, Nikon D50, Nikon Coolpix 8400, Nikon Coolpix 8800, Panasonic DMC-LX1, and Panasonic DMC-FZ3.

Availability
The Adobe DNG Converter and Adobe Camera Raw 3.2 plug-in require Mac OS X 10.2.4 or higher, Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 3, or Windows XP.

The updated Adobe DNG Converter is available today as a free download at www.adobe.com/dng . The Adobe Camera Raw 3.2 plug-in also requires Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop Elements 4.0 and can be downloaded for free by going to the Adobe Web site at www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is the world's leading provider of software solutions to create, manage and deliver high-impact, reliable digital content. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

Microsoft to Start Online Book Searches

2005-10-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is diving into the business of offering online searches of books and other writings, and says its approach aims to avoid the legal tussles met by rival Google.

The Redmond-based software giant said Tuesday that it will sidestep hot-button copyright issues for now by initially focusing mainly on books, academic materials and other publications that are in the public domain.

Microsoft plans to initially work with an industry organization called the Open Content Alliance to let users search about 150,000 pieces of published material. A test version of the product is promised for next year.

The alliance, whose participants also include top Internet portal Yahoo Inc., is working to make books and other offline content available online without raising the ire of publishers and authors.

Danielle Tiedt, a general manager of search content acquisition with Microsoft's MSN online unit, said the company also is working with publishers and libraries on ways to eventually make more copyright material available for online searches.

She said Microsoft is looking at several options, including models where users would be charged to access the content.

Microsoft said it has no plans right now to have targeted ads located in the search results, but the company cautioned that it was still working out the details of its business model.

"I think about the 150,000 books as a test," Tiedt said.

Rival Google has taken a markedly different approach, with plans to index millions of copyright books from three major university libraries Harvard, Stanford and Michigan unless the copyright holder notifies the company which volumes should be excluded.

The Association of American Publishers, representing five publishers, and The Authors Guild, which includes about 8,000 writers, have both sued the search engine giant over the plans.

Google has defended the effort as necessary to its goal of helping people find information and insists that its scanning effort is protected under fair use law because of restrictions placed on how much of any single book could be read.

Internet Users Cut Back Because of Fears

2005-10-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

As identity theft has grown, so has fear of being victimized through high-tech means.

Nearly a third of Internet users are cutting back on time spent surfing the Internet and a quarter say they have stopped buying online altogether, according to a study from Consumer Reports WebWatch.

Some 80 percent of Internet users say they're at least somewhat concerned someone could steal their identity from personal information on the Internet. Fifty-three percent of Internet users say they've stopped giving out personal information on the Web.

Among those who shop online, 54 percent say they're now more likely to read a site's privacy policy or user agreement before buying and 29 percent have cut back on how often they buy online.

The random telephone-based survey of 1,501 Internet users aged 18 and older was conducted May 19 to June 21. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Gates Promises Tough Battle With Google

2005-10-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

On his first trip to Israel, Bill Gates promised Microsoft Corp. would make an aggressive push into the fast-growing market for Internet searches, taking aim at archrival Google Inc.

Gates also said Israel's vibrant high-tech sector will play an important role in the global marketplace and pledged to strengthen cooperation with the country. He offered $1.4 million for local startups and pledged to connect tens of thousands Israeli children to the Internet.

"It's no exaggeration to say that the kind of innovation going on in Israel is critical to the future of the technology business," Gates told reporters.

He acknowledged the intense competition with Google, which dominates the highly profitable market for Web searches. But Gates said Web-search technology still has room to improve.

"Internet search as it is today will be dramatically better in a few years, whether it's us or Google," he said. "We're both going to be making dramatic improvements there."

Despite heavy investments in search technology, Microsoft remains a distant third in the area. Google processed 45 percent of U.S search requests in September, outdistancing 23 percent for Yahoo Inc. and 12 percent for Microsoft's MSN, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Gates said Microsoft is quickly branching out beyond its core business of desktop software, saying the company is developing software for use in automobiles, videogames and cell phones.

He said Microsoft is looking for new ways to use its software, "particularly making it user-centric so you can move between these various devices quite easily," he said. "Our strategy has never changed. It's a dream about software and the empowerment that software can provide."

Anti-Spyware Group Publishes Guidelines

2005-10-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

A coalition of anti-spyware vendors and consumer groups published guidelines Thursday to help consumers assess products designed to combat unwanted programs that sneak onto computers.

The Anti-Spyware Coalition released the guidelines for public comment and also updated a separate document that attempted to craft uniform definitions for "spyware" and "adware" in hopes of giving computer users more control over their machines.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Internet users have become more cautious online because of worries about spyware and adware, which can bombard users with pop-up ads and drain processing power to the point of rendering computers unusable.

Nearly half of adult online Americans have stopped visiting specific Web sites that they fear might infect them with such unwanted programs, and a quarter have ceased to use file-sharing software, which often comes bundled with adware.

In addition, 43 percent of Internet users say they've been hit with spyware, adware or both, with broadband users generally at greater risk.

The new guidelines from the coalition assign risk levels to various practices common with spyware and adware.

High-risk practices include installation without a user's permission or knowledge, interference with competing programs, interception of e-mail and instant-messaging conversations and the display of ads without identifying the program that generated them.

Changing a browser's home page or search engine setting is deemed a medium risk, while using data files called cookies to collect information is considered a low risk.

"Although all behaviors can be problematic if unauthorized, certain ones tend to have a greater impact and are treated with more severity than others," the guidelines say.

The idea is to agree on what practices consumers should worry most about. Within the general rankings, individual vendors still have leeway to assign their own weight to each behavior in deciding whether to quarantine or remove a program when detected.

Toshiba Tecra M4 Review

2005-10-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

With a silver lid and a black base, the Toshiba Tecra M4 convertible tablet looks right at home in the boardroom. It is solidly designed and loaded with features, but its 6.2-pound weight is a killer if you want to hold your tablet like a clipboard for any length of time. If you want a decent laptop with tablet functionality, the Tecra M4 provides top-notch performance, a comfortable keyboard, and a large 14-inch screen. If you're looking for something to use primarily as a tablet, you're better off with smaller devices such as the ThinkPad X41 or the Motion LE1600.

Measuring 12.9 inches wide, 11.4 inches deep, and approximately 1.5 inches thick, the Toshiba Tecra M4 has the same dimensions as the Toshiba Satellite R15; both are significantly larger than the other convertible tablets we've seen, such as the HP Compaq tc4200 and the Averatec C3500. Again, the Tecra M4 is one of the heaviest tablets around and really appropriate only for carrying down the hall and on occasional trips.

The large dimensions do allow for some creature comforts, including a spacious keyboard and two pointing options: an eraser-head pointing stick (similar to the TrackPoint on ThinkPads) and a touch pad. As on the HP Compaq tc4200, the pointing stick and the touch pad each has its own mouse button, and the touch pad features horizontal and vertical scroll zones. With the Tecra M4 in tablet mode, you can navigate and write on the screen with a stylus that has the bulk of a ballpoint pen and offers a good pen-on-paper feel. However, we prefer the rubberized grip and the thick Montblanc feel of the Motion LE1600's stylus. We also wish the Tecra M4's pen had a tether to keep us from losing it.

If you want to see life on the big screen, the Toshiba Tecra M4 is the tablet for you. While the Acer TravelMate C301XCi, the Gateway M275, and the Toshiba Satellite R15 all feature 14-inch screens, none can touch the Tecra M4's superfine 1,400x1,050 SXGA+ native resolution, which lets you view multiple windows while in landscape mode. Unfortunately, the screen is prone to glare and doesn't have as wide a viewing angle as we've seen elsewhere--for example, on the Motion LE1600. With the Tecra M4 in tablet mode or laid flat beneath overhead lights, we had problems viewing the screen at a 45-degree angle.

Another advantage of the Toshiba Tecra M4's size is that it can accommodate a decent mix of ports and connections. In addition to the headphone and microphone jacks, you'll find VGA, S-Video, four-pin FireWire, infrared, and three USB 2.0 ports. There are also SecureDigital and Type II PC Card slots, and you can connect to the Internet via modem, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. We like that the headphone and microphone jacks, the volume control, and a button to kill the wireless are easily accessible on the front of the machine. Small stereo speakers offer decent sound, but the lid covers them in tablet mode. The Tecra M4 lacks a fingerprint scanner, which would both provide security and make it easier to log on in tablet mode; however, it does have a Trusted Platform Module to help protect you from data theft. Like other Toshiba laptops, to keep data safe in the event that it's dropped, the Tecra M4 stops the hard drive from spinning whenever the tablet moves too fast.

The Tecra M4 runs Windows XP Tablet Edition, and our test unit came with a good selection of software, including Microsoft Office OneNote, Microsoft Works 8.0, and Zinio Reader for reading digital magazines. It also came with Toshiba's very cool ConfigFree utility, which has a neat NORAD-like radar graphic that plots the signal strength (but not the location) of nearby wireless networks.

Toshiba has always been competitive with features and has put more power under the hood of the Tecra M4 than you will find in any other tablet. Our $2,099 (as of August 2005) test unit included a very fast 2GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of quick 533MHz SDRAM, and a smoking Nvidia GeForce Go graphics card with 64MB of dedicated video memory (rare for a tablet). In CNET Labs' performance benchmarks, the Tecra M4 performed 24 percent faster than the similar-size Toshiba Satellite R15, which has a slower 1.6GHz processor. The Tecra M4 also handily beat the 1.8GHz Pentium M-based HP Compaq tc4200 and the Averatec C3500, which has a 1.67GHz processor. Only the new Acer TravelMate C310, with its 2.2GHz processor and 14.1-inch screen, looks poised to give the Tecra M4 a run for its money.

On the downside, the Toshiba Tecra M4's battery lasted for a mediocre 2 hours, 47 minutes. By contrast, the Toshiba Satellite R15's lasted 4 hours, 42 minutes, and the HP Compaq tc4200's lasted 4 hours, 56 minutes. If you don't need the DVD drive, you might want to consider swapping it out for an additional slim SelectBay battery ($169), which Toshiba claims will give you a total of 6 hours of battery life.

Sun looks for users running rival OSes

2005-10-26T03:55:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems on Wednesday is expected to announce that its Java Enterprise System server software now supports Microsoft's Windows and Hewlett-Packard's UX operating systems.

JES--a suite of enterprise middleware--already supports Sun's Solaris 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Support for Windows and HP-UX was originally due in the first quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, Sun won't add JES support for IBM's AIX. "If we saw demand for that we would do it. We have not seen demand," John Loiacono, executive vice president of software at Sun, said Tuesday in a meeting with reporters here. The company had suggested in the past that it might deliver AIX support at the same time as Windows and HP-UX support.

Sun sells six JES suites, five of which are priced at $50 per user per year. For all those five, the company charges $140 per user per year. Bundling options for the sixth suite--a SeeBeyond software integration suite--have not been determined. The suites include an application server, collaboration software and identity management software.

Sun is proud of the software's sales pace, Loiacono said.

"We are rapidly approaching 1 million subscribers," he said. Wednesday's announcement is for JES version 4, which was actually been made available last week, he said.

The expanded operating system support is one of several examples of Sun branching out from Solaris. Windows support starts with Windows 2000, and a Windows Server 2003 version is due in 90 days, Sun said.

Linux desktop play Additionally Sun is looking to expand the reach of its Java Desktop System software to cover more flavors of Linux. Sun has a new "JDS partners program" for Linux makers, which it hopes will bring the desktop software suite to Linux versions such as Gentoo, Yellow Dog, Red Hat and SuSE.

Previously the company had moved away from efforts to sell JDS on Linux and focused on Solaris.

JDS includes the GNOME desktop environment, StarOffice productivity suite, Mozilla Web browser, Evolution mail and calendar client, and Java 2 Platform Standard Edition to run Java applications. Sun today offers JDS on Solaris, on a variant of SuSE's Linux and on its Sun Ray thin clients.

"We want to expand our play in that area and want to make it prolific on all desktop distributions," Loiacono said. There are no commitments yet from Linux providers, but Sun is close to striking some deals, he said.

Solaris 10 momentumWhile adding support for rival operating systems, Sun also sees momentum for its own Solaris 10. Since its release at the end of January, Solaris 10 has been licensed to run on 3 million computers, the company said.

"This has been the fastest adoption of our software in the history of our company," said Tom Goguen, vice president of operating platforms at Sun.

More than 534 systems from various hardware makers support Solaris 10, Sun said. The company has submitted the operating system for a high-level(vis by ZDnet)

Panasonic R4 ASpec

2005-10-26T02:45:00.000-07:00

Panasonic has finally adopted the Sonoma God in its line-up, so here we are face-to-face with the new R4 series, and more specifically its strongest member, the R4 ASpec.

Specifications

So the R4 is Sonoma (you kinda figured that by now) and this implies a 915 chipset, a Dothan 753 at 1.2Ghz, a 915GMS Express graphics chipset with 128Mb of (shared) memory and DDR2. Here we look at the R4 ASpec, which means that the machine already 1Gb of RAM as of standard and a 80Gb HDD (as opposed to the usual 40Gb). This model also has a regular qwerty-keyboard layour with the Japanese characters.

A guided tour

The casing is identical to the R3's, so nothing new here.

A wolf in sheep's clothing
This PC still weighs less than 1kg and Panasonic announces a battery life of 9h, but we estimate it 6-7h, which is still impressive nevertheless.

QWERTY keyboard?

As you can see, the ASpec models (be it the R, W or Y series) all come with a qwerty layout without Japanese characters.

Bench

The only differences between the R3 we tested and this R4 ASpec are:
1) the Sonoma platform and the 128Mb of shared video memory
2) more RAM and a bigger HDD

RAM and video memory are influencing factors in these benchmarks, and they could explain the 109 points of difference between the R3 and R4. Not being an expert in these matters, I'll let the pro's draw their conclusions.

Conclusion:
We already thought the R3 was clos to perfection, and this R4 comes even closer with more RAM and a bigger HDD. The Sonoma chipset offers more video memory, which allows the machine to feel more at ease in certain domains. The Panasonic PC's are tailored to the needs of demanding users, because the R4, W4 and Y4 are built to withstand a pressure of 100kg (on any part of the casing) without breaking (not even the screen?). All in all, the ideal computer for demanding customers.

Plus:
The weight
The dimensions
A real XGA screen
Battery life
1Gb of RAM
80Gb HDD
VERY WELL BUILT
Fanless (no fan for the CPU)

Minus:
SD Slot SD is difficult to access
No CD or DVD drive

Canon Invests in Fuel Cell Future

2005-10-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

As portable electronics become more accessible, prolonging battery life is the number one industry problem. Whether its cellphones, laptops or digital cameras, we’ve all been caught holding dead pieces of equipment, wishing we had some extra juice. To assuage this, Canon has announced that it will begin developing tiny fuel cells that will eventually replace conventional batteries for its printers and digital cameras. Canon’s new system would take hydrogen straight from a refillable cartridge, making it more environmentally friendly. The company is also looking into replacing LCDs with Organic Light-Emitting Diodes that it will produce in-house. Other companies diligently working on fuel cell technology include technology include Toshiba, NEC and Hitachi.(via by gizmodo)

Choosing and using DVD formats

2005-10-25T01:14:00.000-07:00

Finding a way through the recordable DVD maze

There are several recordable DVD formats around.The good news is that your Sony HDD/DVD recorder supports virtually all of them. If you are confused about the number of different recordable DVD formats available, then you’re probably not alone.

Complete Dual Compatibility

The first thing to remember is that your Sony HDD/DVD recorder is 'Complete Dual RW' compatible. This means that it can record and play back DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW discs. The only format that Sony¹s DVD recorders do not support for playback or recording is DVD-RAM. On one level, then, it doesn¹t really matter whether you choose to make your recordings on +R/RW or R/RW media. Your Sony HDD/DVD recorder is also compatible with DVD+R double layer discs, which can hold around 1.8x as much material as a standard single-layer disc. So in the highest-quality, HQ recording mode, for example, you can record 108 minutes on a double-layer disc, compared to 60 minutes on a single-layer disc.

Record once or record many times ?

Although there are lots of formats to choose from, things are, in fact, not quite as complicated as they first appear. DVD+R and DVD+RW are simply recordable and rewriteable versions. Recordable means that you can only record on to the disc once. Rewriteable means that you can record on to the disk hundreds of times. So you would use a recordable disc to make an archive copy of a favourite film or maybe a home video. But you would use a rewritable disc for short-term copies, things you want to watch and then erase. Or for situations where you want to archive something but it is so short that you want to
use the remaining disc space to archive something else.

Which format is best?

DVD+R and DVD-R are so similar that it is impossible, and indeed pointless, to say whether one is better than the other. What is certain is that the recordable, write once formats, DVD+R and DVD-R offer better compatibility with existing DVD players than the rewritable, DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats. So if you want to share your recordings with family and friends, the write-once formats, DVD+R and DVD-R, are better. On the other hand, if you want the ability to reuse the disc, erasing old recordings to make way for new ones, then you must use one of the rewritable formats, DVD+RW or DVD-RW.

Which rewritable format is best?

Where it is difficult to rate DVD+R against DVD-R, each of the rewriteable formats does have an edge over the other, depending on what you want to do with your recordings. DVD-RW has two recording modes. These are the standard DVD-Video mode and VR mode. VR mode offers much more flexibility than DVD-Video mode, especially when it comes to editing your recordings. Using VR mode, you can, for example, create different playlists of scenes from a recording, without changing or removing any of the original recording. So from the same disc, you could play back a version of your summer holiday home movie lasting 10 minutes, and another one lasting an hour. So if you plan to edit your recordings, DVD-RW is the better rewritable format. If, on the other hand, you have no need to edit your recordings, but plan to play them back on other DVD players around the house, or share them with family and friends, DVD+RW discs are a better rewritable option. This is because they do not need to be finalized before being played back on other DVD players.

Although finalizing is a straightforward procedure, it does take a few minutes, so from a time-saving perspective, this gives DVD+RW discs an advantage over DVD-RW discs.

Other disc types

In addition to the recordable DVD formats your Sony HDD/DVD recorder can cope with, it can also play back regular DVD-Video discs, as well as many other types of disc. These include CD, CD-R (recordable), CD-RW (rewritable), Video CD, Data CD and Data DVD. And, in addition to DVD and CD soundtracks, your Sony HDD/DVD recorder can also play back CDs or DVDs containing MP3 audio files, or JPEG digital still photos. It’s a very versatile device.

Sony RDR-GX310 DVD Recorder

2005-10-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

* DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW Recording (dual RW compatibility)

* Simultaneous Record and Playback only on DVD-RW VR Mode.

* Chasing Playback only on DVD-RW VR Mode.

* Precision Cinema Progressive with 12 bit/108 MHz DAC.

* DVD Video/CD/Video CD Playback

* DTT STB

* 8 Day EPG / Favourite Channel list / Channel Lock / Digital Text ( View/Rec )

* 30 Freeview digital TV and 20 digital radio channel

* CD-R/RW Playback and MP3 Playback

* DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R/DVD+RW Playback

* Visual Search.

* SmartLink.

* D-Matrix Noise Reduction.

* Intelligent Scene Chaptering.

* DVD +R Double Layer ( 8.5 GB ).

* Quick Timer.

* S-Video In/Out, Analog AV In/OUT, Digital Audio Output

* 2X Scart (1 including RGB input)

Panasonic VS7

2005-10-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

Vivid 16 million* 2.5- inch Colour Display

The images depicted on screen always look remarkably true to life. Thanks to an amazing 240 x 320 pixels QVGA resolution, now enhanced to approximately 16 million* colours and a brightness that goes as high as 300*.
The high-performance large 2.5-inch colour TFT screen is perfect to display crystal clear images.
The sub display is perfect for taking self portraits and provides excellent interface information.*

2.0 Megapixel Mobile Camera

The exceptional 2.0 megapixel resolution, with backlight compensation ensures every image captured and shown on screen is truly breathtaking. With the help of the 5x Zoom* function, you can zoom in to capture every detail beautifully.

Content

The VS7 comes with popular Sonic The Hedgehog pre-installed game from
SEGA for you to enjoy in thrilling speed. You can also download original Sonic The Hedgehog wallpapers and ringtones from PANASONIC BOX.*
The VS7 also features 3D Soccer Game.

Bluetooth

With Bluetooth connectivity, the VS7 enables you to chat without holding on to the mobile phone, or the hassle of a wired hand-free set. In addition, the VS7 allows you transmit and receive data with other Bluetooth® enabled devices.

One Push Auto Open
A light touch of the button near the hinge is all it takes to pop open the handset. You can set VS7 so that you can receive a call or read messages automatically just by opening it.

Infrared Compatibility
It is a joy to send and receive data without cables. Just activate and align the infrared with the port on your computer to wirelessly transmit data.

Express Yourself with Colours
The VS7 features the new way to enjoy communication with colour. When a message is received, the indicator flashes in different colours and patterns depending on the emoticons in the message. You can feel the "emoticon" of the received message before even opening it.

GPRS
The VS7 comes equipped with high-speed GPRS that connects you to the internet with ease.
Ringtones

The VS7 features a great-sounding 40-polyphonic ringtone.

Panasonic Panasonic TH-42PD25 Plasma HDTV

2005-10-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

As is usually the case, the display with the best black level, which usually means the best contrast ratio, won. What was interesting was how it just barely eked out that win. As I've said before, black level is important, but it's only one aspect of a good picture.

The "Montage of Images" from Video Essentials showed that the TH-42PD25 did some things better than the other plasmas and some things worse. As for the face that the other two plasmas had such difficulty with, the Panasonic had no visible quantization errors on this clip. Test patterns would later reveal that it wasn't capable of a perfectly smooth ramp from light to dark, but it was a lot smoother than the others, enough so that any steps weren't very visible in regular video.

While it may not have had quantization errors that were as severe as the other two, it crushed whites like it was a hobby. Any time there was a bright scene, you were guaranteed that the brightest information in the image would be crushed white. A cloud in the sky would have almost no detail; instead it would be a white blob. Reducing the contrast in the user menu only made the picture darker, while keeping the crushed whites.

Processing also wasn't the TH-42PD25's strong suit. It created very noticeable jagged edges in the waving flag from Video Essentials' "Montage of Images." Later, on Gladiator, the rooftops had obvious stair-stepping. Unlike the other two competitors, a decent progressive-scan DVD player is a must-have with this plasma.

What won this plasma its spot at the top was how everyone felt about it after calibration or, more likely, after the other plasmas were calibrated. The other two plasmas were extremely cool (very high color temperatures), which made the Panasonic, with its relatively accurate color temperature, seem overly warm. Once the other two plasmas were reigned in to a less-ionospheric level, the measurably accurate Panasonic finally appeared accurate. When I was running through my pre–Face Off setup, I kept going back to the Panasonic to double check that it was still set correctly and hadn't drifted into some bizarrely low color temperature. It's weird how the human eye works, isn't it?

Scientists Build Tiny Vehicles for Molecular Passengers

2005-10-22T04:07:00.000-07:00

Scientists at Rice University have built molecular vehicles so small that more than 20,000 of them could sit side-by-side on a human hair.

The fleet consists of nanocars, nanotrucks capable of carrying small-molecule payloads, and trimers that pivot on their three axes. All of them roll on buckyballs, which are 60-atom, soccer-ball-shaped spheres of pure carbon. Each axis pivots up and down independently to allow the vehicles to negotiation atomic potholes and mounds.

The work, which was first described earlier this month in the online version of the journal Nano Letters, is the fruit of more than eight years of research led by Prof. James M. Tour into systems that could be used to build structures molecule-by-molecule.

"This is it, you can't make anything smaller to transport atoms around," Professor Tour said.

The vision of the Rice researchers, like many other specialists working in nanotechnology, is of a world where new materials can be fashioned by armies of tiny machines working in organized ranks. This so-called "bottoms up" version of manufacturing is patterned after biology and, in the view of many researchers, it could be far more efficient than current manufacturing systems.

Skeptics have said such molecular manufacturing will prove to be impractical in most cases and may pose unexpected environmental risks. But scientists working in the field almost universally dismiss visions of nanomachines proliferating into a deadly world-choking "gray goo" as popularized in Michael Crichton's novel "Prey."

Nanotechnology derives its name from the nanometer, or billionth of a meter. Nanoscale objects are tens to thousands of molecules in size. While they consist of familiar materials, the scale is so small that atomic forces affect their behavior and strange, potentially valuable traits emerge. The nanocars are immune to friction, for example, because the buckyball wheels are a single molecule that cannot be easily pulled apart into its 60 carbon atoms.

Professor Tour said the research marked the first time anyone had demonstrated nanoscale structures that roll rather than slide across a surface. The current generation of vehicles can be set in motion by heating the gold surface on which they sit to about 200 degrees Celsius. Absent any outside force, it is unpredictable whether they will move forward or backward, but once they start they will continue in that direction as long as heat is applied.

But Rice's researchers have shown that they can control the direction by applying an electrical field. They have also built a tiny light-powered motor for the devices consisting of 30 carbon atoms and a handful of sulfur atoms, Mr. Tour said. But that motor does not capture enough energy to move the devices over the gold surface because the gold molecules absorb most of the light.

Yahoo fixes Web mail security flaw

2005-10-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has fixed a security flaw in its free Web-based e-mail service that opened the door to phishing scams, account hijacks and other attacks.

The flaw, known as a cross-site scripting vulnerability, existed because Yahoo's Web site did not detect certain script tags in combination with certain special characters, according to SEC Consult, which issued an advisory on the flaw Friday.

Cross-site scripting flaws are found regularly, including recently in Google's Web site and earlier this year in Microsoft's Xbox 360 site.

Flaws have also been found on Yahoo's site. An attacker could exploit this type of flaw to hijack user accounts, launch information-stealing phishing scams or even download malicious code onto users' computers, experts have said.

A Yahoo representative said it fixed the most recent flaws in the "last few weeks" and that its users are protected.

"Yahoo recently learned of an issue in Yahoo Mail and worked immediately to begin rollout of a server-side fix which does not require users to take any action," said Karen Mahon, a Yahoo spokeswoman. "We are unaware of any users who were impacted by this issue."(via by ZDnet)

Mission guide: Venus Express

2005-10-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

The European Space Agency's Venus Express mission will study the atmosphere and clouds of the planet nearest to Earth.

Scientists hope the probe will beam back the clearest-ever images of the planet and provide new insight into its atmosphere.

1. MAG: Magnetometer - measures magnetic, field strength and direction

2. Virtis: (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer)imaging spectrometer that operates in the near ultraviolet, visible and infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum

3. Planetary Fourier Spectrometer - measures atmospheric temperature and concentration of known and unknown minor atmospheric constituents

4. Spicav/Soir (Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Venus) Imaging spectrometer which detects ultraviolet and infrared radiation. Soir (Solar Occultation at Infrared) will observe the Sun through Venus's atmosphere at infrared wavelengths

5 . VMC wide angle camera which captures ultraviolet, visible and near infrared images

6. VeRa (Venus Radio science) Radio-sounding experiment which will examine the ionosphere, atmosphere and surface of Venus by means of radio waves transmitted from the spacecraft

7. Aspera (Analyser of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms) will study energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), ions and electrons in Venus' atmosphere

The mission is due to blast off atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 26 October. After a 153-day journey, the probe will reach Venus in April 2006.

Once there it will manoeuvre itself into an orbit that takes it looping round the planet's poles.

It is a peculiarity of Venus that the planet orbits the Sun much faster than it rotates, meaning a "day" lasts roughly 250 Earth days.

Its atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide with a small amount of nitrogen and other trace gases.

Abundant CO2 has led to runaway greenhouse warming on Venus, with temperatures of approximately 460C on the surface.

Atmospheric pressure is some 90 times that of Earth. Standing on the surface of Venus, a hypothetical visitor would experience the same pressure as they would diving below 1km of water on Earth.

The spacecraft shares its design and manufacturing team with the Mars Express mission. This reduced the amount of time and money required in the preparatory stages.

Podcasters prepare to launch video era

2005-10-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

Podcasting is on the verge of setting off a video revolution and users of Apple's new video iPod can expect a deluge of outspoken commentary, religious sermons and pornography.

Podcasting, a term based on the name for Apple's portable media player, allows customers to download audio -- and now video -- segments for free to their computers and portable devices. Radio shows are among the most popular podcasts, but amateurs have helped turn podcasting into an eclectic global phenomenon.

Apple's video-enabled iPod models, announced Wednesday, promise to stoke the fervor of home-grown broadcasters.

"I'm thrilled by the possibilities of combining devices," said 'Soccergirl,' whose opinionated and sexually suggestive program was listed among the 40 most popular podcasts on Apple's iTunes service.

The 26-year-old librarian, who chooses not to reveal her real name, already produces short video segments that can play on viewers' computers.

The new iPods "will make it easier for many of my listeners to watch my video as easily as they listen to my show," she said.

Other early adopters of video podcasting are likely to include clergy of all stripes.

San Francisco-area pastor Tim Hohm, whose audio podcast is one of more than 1,400 religious offerings available on iTunes, says the new iPods represent "a fantastic opportunity" and believes video has the potential "to inspire tens of thousands to embrace a message of inspiration and hope."

The current crop of audio podcasters also includes entrepreneurial-minded Web journalists, some of whom are struggling to find a workable business model.

Media analyst Rafat Ali, whose paidcontent.org Web site focuses on the economics of digital content, forecasts many such start-up projects will fail due to lack of expertise and funding.

"Producing interesting video content is really hard," he said.

Success will depend largely on programmers' resources and ability to grasp the complexities of a medium that is much more complicated than audio, Ali said.

"It's a matter of how good is the quality and how do they get funded," he added.

Historically, pornographers have a strong track record of adapting new imaging devices and formats in a commercially viable way.

Mark Kernes, a senior editor at the Adult Video News trade magazine, said the highly-visible video iPod would certainly be used for adult content, but that many consumers might not want to show off their new material in public.

"Anybody that's got a video iPod is probably going to want to have a couple of porn clips on there, just to have," he said. "But you're not going to be looking at it at the mall."(via by reuters)

Bell+Howell 10.0 Mega Pixel Flip-Out LCD

2005-10-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Super Advanced Digital Camera
Introducing the next generation in Digital Cameras – the Bell+Howell® 10.0 Digital Camera with flip out LCD!This Bell+Howell® Camera has tremendous features – from the high resolution digital shots to it’s giant 2 inch LCD screen and it’s unique 180° flip out LCD feature, that allows you to take pictures of yourself or you with your friends. Clarity is knifeedge sharp and color is brilliant — from up to an 8x digital zoom portrait to a distant landscape on select settings. You can even turn your favorite shots into crystal clear oversized prints.

Large 2 inch LCD screen flips out 180°
This unique LCD screen allows you to take pictures that are virtually impossible to take with other digital cameras. Just flip out the special 180° LCD screen and you can take pictures of yourself for a self portrait, as well as pictures of you WITH your family and friends. You can also get creative and take pictures without calling attention to yourself (what’s behind you, next to you, or even over your head.)

Small size, big memory
The Bell+Howell® camera is almost as small as a credit card — so small you can slip it in your shirt pocket (measures about 37/8" x 23/8" x 11/8" slim). Yet it comes with 16MB of built in flash memory to store up to 160 photographs, depending on resolution. Build a lifetime of memories by using the camera’s SD memory card slot for removable high-MB memory cards.

Don’t run out of batteries
No more expensive hard to find batteries that other digital cameras require. This camera uses ordinary alkaline AA batteries as well as rechargeable AA batteries. So you won’t run out of power at an important meeting, get together or on vacation.

Works as a Camcorder & Voice Recorder
Capture once-in-a-lifetime events as film clips: weddings, graduations, birthday parties, and vacations. You get 25 seconds of streaming video with built in flash memory and over 3 minutes on a 128 MB memory card (not included). It even has an amazing 6 minutes of voice recording!

$75-worth of FREE software & cables
Your purchase includes a TV cable and a USB cable for your PC as well as software to catalog and browse photos, add special effects, or create a slideshow with music. Display your pictures on your computer, TV screen, the camera’s own LCD, or print them almost anywhere.

Trust Bell+Howell® with your memories
For almost 100 years Bell+ Howell® has been a leader in providing fine photographic equipment and electronics. Now they have done it again! This is a precision-engineered camera you can rely on to capture and preserve life's most precious and treasured moments.

Loaded With Features: • 10.0 mega pixels
• Uses interpolation to achieve 10 mega pixels
• Giant 2” color LCD screen
• LCD screen special 180° Flip-out feature
• Up to 160 pictures in built in 16 MB memory
• Ultra small & slim (37/8" x 23/8" x 11/8")
• Up to an 8X digital zoom on select settings
• Uses 2 AA batteries (included)
• Built in flash
• Self-timer & continuous shots
• Still or video mode
• Doubles as camcorder
• Amazing 6-minutes voice recording
• Built in microphone and speaker
• FREE software: ArcSoft Photo Impression and Video Impression
• Supported O/S: PC with Windows 98SE/2000/ ME/ XP
• And more!

Yahoo adds blogs to its news section

2005-10-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Inc.'s online news search tool on Monday added Internet journal entries as a supplement to professional media offerings -- an experiment that figures to test the public's appetite for information from alternative sources.
Under Yahoo's new approach, a keyword search for online news will include a list of relevant Web logs, or "blogs," displayed in a box to the right of the results collected from mainstream journalism.

Google Inc., which runs the Internet's leading search engine, so far has treated blogs differently.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company last month introduced a specialty search engine that does nothing but sift through blogs. Meanwhile, Google's news section continues to focus on material from mainstream media.

Yahoo's inclusion of blogs in its news section represents another validation for a growing group of people that are bypassing newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets to report and comment on topical events.
Although many top bloggers lack formal journalism training, it hasn't stopped them from building loyal readerships or breaking news that the mainstream media either missed or ignored.

Those scoops have helped rally more support for "citizen journalism" -- a cause that Yahoo wanted to recognize by spotlighting some of the news appearing in blogs.
"The traditional media doesn't have the time or resources to cover all the stories going on," said Joff Redfern, a Yahoo product director.

But the blogging community, or "blogosphere," also is filled with rumors and inaccuracies. While the traditional media still faces the same problems, professional newsrooms ostensibly have more checks and balances to guard against incorrect or unsubstantiated information from being published.

That distinction is one of the reasons Yahoo is listing its blog results in a box separated from the roughly 6,500 "trusted" news sources tracked by its search engine, Redfern said.
Yahoo's news users can view blog results exclusively by clicking on the box.
That option also shows relevant images posted on Yahoo's photo-sharing site, Flickr. Amateur photos posted online have drawn particular heavy interest recently after major news events such as the terrorist bombings in London and Hurricane Katrina.

Redfern declined to specify how many blogs are included in Yahoo's news search. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is inviting bloggers to submit their sites to the Yahoo index.
He said the blog selection would be based on the most popular blogs among Yahoo users. (via by detnews.com)

The Wizard of Ads

2005-10-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

Google's Omid Kordestani conjured a formula that took its sales to $3 billion. Now he's rethinking the world of advertising again.

You've heard of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's(GOOG) famous co-founders. But there's another figure insiders know to be Google's "business founder": Omid Kordestani, the company's 12th employee and senior vice president for global sales and business development. He may be the only sales guy on the planet who's taken a company from zero to $3 billion in revenue -- and from all appearances, he's just getting started.

When Kordestani joined Google in the spring of 1999, the company had plenty of lava lamps, but no business model to speak of. Kordestani, a veteran Netscape salesman, recognized that the startup had one incomparable asset: its burgeoning Web traffic. Having overseen Netscape's lucrative banner-advertising deals, Kordestani was a pro at leveraging the value of traffic.

Advertising -- yes, those dead-simple text ads that appear alongside Google's search results -- accounts for 99 percent of the company's revenue, making his formula for success seem deceptively easy. But where users once signed up to buy text ads with a credit card, Kordestani, 41, now has to manage relationships with agencies that want more control over their clients' campaigns and with publishing partners who see Google as a prime source of online revenue -- and a long-term threat to their media businesses. Business 2.0 sat down with Kordestani to find out how he keeps Google's unstoppable sales machine rolling and what he sees coming next. (via by business2.com)

Nokia 6682 review

2005-10-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

Nokia's 6682 is the new flagship Series 60 smartphone for the US market. It was recently launched on Cingular Wireless, making it one of the most easy to obtain smartphones in America. We got a few weeks of quality time with the handset and have plenty to say. Read on for the full review.

Note: The 6682 is the American version of the 6681. Both phones are based off the 6680 which is a 3G handset that won't become available in the US. Any talk of features about the 6682 can be read as if they were for the 6681.

Features
Radio GSM 850/1800/1900
Weight 4.62oz
Size 4.27"×2.17"x.81"
OS Series 60 2nd Edition, with Symbian v8.0
Memory 8MB on board, comes with 64MB card
Screen 176×208 pixels with 262K colors
Data EDGE Class 10
Camera 1.3 megapixel with LED flash

Construction/design
Series 60 phones are a lot of things... Except small. The Nokia 6682 continues the trend though not to the degree of some past handsets. The handset is wider than most, see the photos at the end of this review to see this for yourself. For a real-world comparison, it's about a tenth of an inch wider than the Motorola RAZR (which is itself a wide handset--that's one of the reasons that it is so thin).

Construction wise the handset feels very solid except for the sliding lens cover which I found cheesy and too thick. There is a silver colored door that holds the memory card in. I found that opening this was a bit tedious, but since you don't change memory cards too often this isn't a big deal.

Reaction to the design fell in two camps: love it or hate it. The color is unusual for a phone and is evidently divisive. Personally I think the phone looks sharp, but as they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I found the keys a bit small and close together, but after a few days I adjusted and was able to text with pretty normal speed. However I think they could have expanded the keypad somewhat if they made the soft keys a bit smaller--they are huge in comparison to the other keys on the phone. But at least the keypad is in a standard design, unlike some other models in Nokia's past. If you have large hands make sure to play with the 6682 in a store somewhere before buying it.

Camera
The camera performs well for megapixel resolution. I'm a bit spoiled by Sony Ericsson's 2 megapixel camera module (that also has autofocus) so I wasn't blown away by the quality, but it's superior to most other camera phones. However, I accidently deleted the photos after sending my unit back to Nokia so there are no example photos attached to this review.

Videos are stored as 3GP files and are only limited by available storage.

OS, Navigation
Since the Nokia 6682 is a Series 60 handset it will feel familiar to users of past models. However it's running Symbian 8.0 which many users will have no experience with. The UI has been refined somewhat and there is a new feature that lists a limited number of applications on the home screen of the phone, instead of just blank space (this feature can be turned off though).

Reception, battery life
Nokia is known for great reception and the 6682 didn't disappoint. I didn't have any dropped calls and was able to get a signal everywhere I went. Voice quality was very good, both in my ear and on the end (according to my friends at least). The speaker is also very loud which is a nice plus, though my young ears don't need a loud speaker unless I'm in a noisy environment.

SAMSUNG Introduces Another Modernistic Mobile - D600

2005-10-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

Samsung Electronics introduces new sleek slide-up phone ( Model name: SGH-D600) to the European market. This phone will be soon launched to other Southeast Asia , Middle East , and African markets.

The D600 is the upgraded version of Samsung's bestseller D500 which has been sold more than 7 million units worldwide. This new model has been upgraded for a slimmer and more refined look and has adopted new high-tech function s such as 2 megapixel camera with flash and document-viewing capability. The body color has been also upgraded. To complement it's the gray-black frame, a tint of pure black and new textures have been added for an improved look and feel of the phone.

Furthermore, w ith the adoption of Quad Band, the D600 can be used across all the different GSM frequency bands, whether in Europe , the US or Asia . The LCD screen has also been broadened to 2 inches, and with the QVGA technology, the definition of the screen has been greatly improved. A greater convenience has been added by enabling the external memory , T-flash, option in addition to its 76MB internal memory. President Ki t ae Lee of Samsung Electronics' Telecommunication Network Business said, “This new model is the elegantly designed solution for everyone from the fashion-conscious consumer to the classy businessman.” He added, “We expect the D600 to be the next bestseller, succeeding the popularity of its younger brother, the D500 (The Blue Black Phone). ”

SGH-D600 Specification
GSM / GPRS (850 / 900 /1800 /1900MHz)
2 Megapixel Camera / Flash
Bluetooth Printing / PictBridge
Video Recording (MPEG4) & Messaging
MPEG4 / H.263
Display: 264,144 color TFT (240 x 320)
MP3 / AAC / AAC+ Player
Dual Speaker & 3D Sound
External Memory: TransFlash
Bluetooth / USB
TV output support / Document Viewer
MMS / JAVA / WAP2.0
E-mail Client / Sync ML DS
Video Caller ID
Voice Recognition
Size: 95.7 x 47 x 21.8 mm
Weight: 103g

Everythig About Canon PowerShot G6 Digital camera

2005-10-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

A modest update to the G5, the 7-megapixel PowerShot G6 faithfully follows in the footsteps of previous Canon G-series models. With a powerful, enthusiast-oriented feature set and very solid photo quality, it gets most of the same high marks as its predecessors.

Design

After a stint in basic black with the G5, it's back to silver metal and plastic for the Canon PowerShot G6. Although it's a bit more compact, this model still weighs a healthy 1.1 pounds including the CompactFlash card and the battery, and Canon increased the grip's depth for a more solid, stable feel. It has most of the same controls as its predecessor, albeit rearranged for a smoother shooting experience.

As with the G5, the controls covering the camera provide quick, easy access to almost every important feature, although they may put off novices. Even advanced users will want to skim the manual to figure out when to use the mode dial instead of the four-way navigation pad and to learn what the button labeled with an asterisk does. You can easily and efficiently jump between capture and playback using the power switch. And the G6 lets you save two groups of custom settings, which are accessible from the mode dial, now sitting next to the optical viewfinder.

Features

The Canon PowerShot G6's feature set remains relatively unchanged from the G5's; notable exceptions include the 7-megapixel sensor and PictBridge support. With the exception of a real-time histogram (the G6's is available only during playback), this device has everything you could wish for in a camera of its class--and then some.

The G6's fast f/2.0-to-f/3.0 lens offers a focal range of 35mm to 140mm (35mm-camera equivalent) and the ability to focus as close as two inches, so you're covered for both landscapes and macro shots. If you need a broader range, the camera accep

ts the same lens converters as the G3 and G5, in conjunction with a new, optional lens adapter.

Shutter speed drops as low as 15 seconds; it can be as fast as 1/1,250 of a second at all apertures and 1/2,000 of a second at f/4.0 and higher. You can opt for first- or second-curtain flash timings for night shooting, and there are two types of flash-exposure control: compensation in 1/3-stop increments and a simpler low/medium/blowout selection. The hotshoe on top of the G6 works with Canon's EX Speedlite external-flash line.

The shooting options alone could fill an entire spec sheet. The G6 has Stitch Assist, Movie, Portrait, Landscape, and Night Scene modes; automatic, program AE, aperture- and shutter-priority, and manual exposure; exposure bracketing; and Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Sepia, and Black And White effects settings. You can also customize combinations of contrast, sharpness, and saturation. There's even focus bracketing, which we rarely see. In addition to automatic white balance, you get presets for taking photos in daylight, in cloudy conditions, under tungsten and two types of fluorescent lights, and with the flash. You also have two menu slots in which to save manual white-balance settings.

Performance

With a couple of notable exceptions, I found the Canon PowerShot G6's performance comparatively run-of-the-mill for an enthusiast model. Since this camera houses Canon's first-generation Digic processor, however, I confess I'm not surprised. It takes about 3 seconds to wake up and snap the first shot--good but not stellar. The camera imposes a shutter lag of about 0.8 to 0.9 second, depending upon scene contrast. That's not bad for digital cameras overall, but many competing 7- and 8-megapixel models manage to drop lag to a half-second or lower. It's certainly not speedy enough to keep up with a curious cat trying to poke his nose at the lens. Likewise, it takes 2 to 3 seconds from one shot to the next, not quite up to the speed of the competition

Image quality

The Canon PowerShot G6 delivered some first-rate photos. Using both the tungsten preset and the manual white balance, it yielded neutral, accurate colors on out tests under strong tungsten lights. As per usual for Canon, the automatic white balance didn't even approach acceptable under those lights, but it fared very well under fluorescents and in daylight. The camera's dynamic range and exposure are very good; I spotted some blown-out highlights, but the shadow detail was there.

Japan to Boost Use of Linux

2005-10-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

"This is not intended to exclude a particular software nor to recommend a particular one, but it reflects the recent development of open-source software as reliable systems," a state official said.

The Japanese government aims to switch some of its computers to the free Linux operating system and reduce its dependence on Microsoft Windows, officials have indicated.

The government is drawing up guidelines for its ministries, recommending open-source software such as Linux as an "important option" in procurement, said an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Options Now Acceptable

"This is not intended to exclude a particular software nor to recommend a particular one, but it reflects the recent development of open-source software as reliable systems," the official said.

"Currently our procurement of software is dominated by commercial software," the majority of which is Windows, the official added.

Linux is freely available to the public and has the support of major companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard .

Although Windows is used on about 90 percent of the world's personal computers, some governments and other large organizations have switched to Linux or have threatened to do so to get discounts from Microsoft.

Build-Your-Own OS

Separately, Japan, China and South Korea agreed earlier this year to jointly develop a new computer operating system based on Linux, called Asianux, as an alternative to Windows, the official said.

"Apart from the procurement issue, this project is intended to develop an operating system that supports languages that have Chinese characters," the official said.

AMD v. Intel: More companies subpoenaed

2005-10-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

Advanced Micro Devices said on Thursday that it served more than 15 companies with subpoenas this week as of part of its antitrust lawsuit against rival Intel.

Computer makers and a dozen distributors and retailers--including three companies that hadn't been subpoenaed by AMD before--were served papers as AMD seeks information related to its claims against Intel.

AMD filed suit against Intel in June, alleging that Intel has a monopoly on microprocessors and used targeted discounts and strong-arm tactics to cut AMD out of the market. Intel denies AMD's claims, saying its dominance in the market is due to its investments in research and development and in manufacturing.

AMD spokesman Michael Silverman said AMD is not suing the subpoenaed companies but trying to extract evidence.

"AMD views these third parties as victims of Intel's misconduct and therefore hopes to obtain these documents in the manner least burdensome to them," he said, noting that many of the companies receiving subpoenas have already been notified that they would be questioned.

Among those receiving requests this week to produce documents were Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo Group, Gateway, Sun Microsystems, NEC and units of Fujitsu, as well as retailers Circuit City and Best Buy. Many of the companies have already agreed to protect their correspondence with Intel.

Three new names were also added to the list: Appro International, based in Milpitas, Calif., and MPC Computers and Egenera, both out of Wilmington, Del., Silverman said, but gave no specific reason for their addition to the list.

Lawyers for both sides mutually agreed to delay their exchange of evidence despite a request by the judge handling the case, Joseph J. Farnan Jr., of the Delaware District Court, that AMD and Intel exchange pertinent information on the case by Thursday.

The delay was due to the large number of documents that both parties are sifting through, Silverman said.

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said he had not heard back from his legal team in Delaware on when the exchange would be rescheduled.

People familiar with the lawsuit say it is not expected to come to trial until 2007 at the earliest.

In its complaint, AMD claimed that Intel imposed scare tactics and coercion on 38 companies, including large-scale computer makers, small system builders, wholesale distributors and retailers.

Intel countered with a 63 page reply in September, emphatically denying having a monopoly on PC microprocessors and locking out AMD from deals with computer manufacturers through threats and targeted rebates.

Secrets to boost your Wi-Fi

2005-10-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

Step 1: Get faster, stronger Wi-Fi
When you first set up your Wi-Fi network, you probably assumed you'd get a strong signal no matter where you wandered. Now you're having trouble surfing in the sunroom and Googling in the garden.

You don't need a smaller house, you just need a wider-ranging network. Here we show you how to upgrade your existing network to extend your wireless signal and perhaps even increase your data-throughput speed.

Step 2: Wi-Fi-enhancing hardware
An 802.11g access point and repeater

Step 3: Upgrade 802.11b to 802.11g
Our aging home Wi-Fi network consisted of a desktop PC, a Wi-Fi-enabled notebook, and an 802.11b wireless router. Though 802.11b is a tried-and-true standard, its throughput maxes out at around 11Mbps. In addition, its range isn't as far as that of newer standards. We consistently had problems picking up a signal in the backyard or even at the other end of the house.

To remedy the situation, we replaced the router with Buffalo Technology's 802.11g WRB2-G54K wireless router. The kit includes a WBR2-G54S router, a WBR2-G54C repeater to increase the router's coverage area, and an extra crossover Ethernet cable to communicate with both devices while you're setting everything up. We were also looking forward to much faster throughput; 802.11g's theoretical max is 54Mbps.

Before you proceed, you'll need to record your old router's Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption settings and have them handy. It's also a good idea to grab a few extra Ethernet cables just in case you need them.

Step 4: Configure your Wi-Fi router
To get started, remove your old 802.11b router from the network and connect your desktop PC to the first Ethernet port on the back of the new router via an Ethernet cable. Next, using another Ethernet cable, connect your cable or DSL modem to the router's WAN port. Now, plug the router into an AC outlet, power on your PC, and wait for the router to come online; this should take a minute or two.

On your PC, open a Web browser window and type in the Buffalo router's default IP address. (You'll find it in the manual.) When the router's configuration screen appears, you can change the router's Service Set Identifier (SSID), WEP key, and channel settings to match your old router's. Leave the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) feature enabled and select one channel the router will always use. Apply your changes, then exit.

Tip
Change a new router's factory SSID settings and add encryption immediately to ward off unwelcome Wi-Fi freeloaders.

Step 5: Boost your Wi-Fi with a repeater
With the router up and running, it's time to configure the Buffalo repeater device. Start by connecting it to the router's second Ethernet port. Attach the repeater's power cord to an AC outlet, then wait a few minutes. Because the repeater is now physically part of your network, you should have access to its Web configuration screen.

Open a browser window on your desktop PC and type in the repeater's static IP address (found in the manual). Once the repeater's configuration page appears, change its SSID name and WEP settings to match those of your router. Also make sure you set the repeater to operate on the same wireless channel as your router.

The repeater operates via a standard wireless technology known as Wireless Distribution System (WDS) or Wireless Bridge. Because the router and repeater come bundled as a kit, both devices' WDS settings are preconfigured. Were they not, you'd have to manually enter Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for the router and repeater in each of their setup wizards. Finally, apply the changes you've made and exit the configuration screen.
Tip
Setting the router and repeater to the same Wi-Fi channel, WEP encryption key, and SSID ensures stable interoperability.

Step 6: Maximize your Wi-Fi range
Now that you've set the repeater correctly, you need to deploy it properly to maximize your network's range. Using a Wi-Fi-equipped notebook, make sure you can easily connect to the router's wireless signal. While still connected, carry the laptop toward the area to which you'd like to extend Wi-Fi coverage.

Walk as far as you can while still maintaining a reliably strong signal (usually anywhere from 20 to 50 percent signal strength). This is where you want to install the repeater, provided there's easy access to AC power. Plug in the repeater's power cord. After a few minutes, the repeater should begin interoperating with the router and effectively double the reach of your home network.

Tip
Resist the urge to set up the repeater outdoors; it won't survive the rigors of the elements.

Step 7: Check your Wi-Fi signal strength
The range of your Wi-Fi network will depend on the layout of your house. In an ideal environment, such as the wide-open expanse of a parking lot, a Wi-Fi network's theoretical range can exceed 500 feet. Inside the typical home, however, expect anywhere from 75 to 150 feet, depending on the layout and the amount and density of obstacles.

In our repeater-equipped setup, we were able to achieve close to 100 percent signal strength in a distant corner of the house where the signal had been either very weak or nonexistent. We tested the signal strength using Buffalo's included AirStation Client Manager software, which we installed on our notebook. The handy applet, which takes control of your notebook's Wi-Fi radio, displays such pertinent information as the name of your network, its IP and MAC addresses, and, of course, the signal strength.

If necessary, you can extend your signal strength even further by adding repeaters. The WDS protocol allows you to link six repeaters to a central router. Just keep in mind that each time you add a device, you cut your maximum bandwidth in half. An extended 802.11g network consisting of a router and a repeater will have a maximum speed of 27Mbps, for instance. The same Wi-Fi network with a router and two repeaters will top out at 13.5Mbps.

Tip
Dense building materials, such as stone or concrete, will block Wi-Fi's relatively weak radio signals. Try placing the router and repeater so that their transmissions won't be hindered by such obstacles.

LCD TV Set Fall Preview-Toshiba 27WL56P

2005-10-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

The 27WL56P represents the new generation of 27-inch LCD TV sets from Toshiba. Not long ago we tested a 32-inch set by the same maker, and it didn't leave an indelible impression. But our test of the 27WL56P showed more promise.

Design And Finish
Toshiba has put a very top-of-the-line finish on their 27WL56P. The materials used are of high quality and the plastics are excellently crafted. The lines are the classic ones shared by all the brand's Stasia TVs. Again, the speakers have been moved under the LCD panel to make for a more compact volume.

Ergonomics
The set's remote control is classic and effective. Toshiba knows their business - this is a practical, fast and no-frills remote.

Connectivity
The 27WL56P, to put it simply, has everything. And it's also the first TV set we've tested in this price range that has HDMI connectivity! In that department, nothing's been left out.

AT&T rings up another contract

2005-10-05T23:55:00.000-07:00

AT&T has won a multimillion-dollar networking contract from Raymond James Financial Inc.

Contract terms were not disclosed.

The two-year contract provides up to 2,100 participating Raymond James affiliate offices access to a full portfolio of AT&T data, voice and Internet access services.

The agreement offers a tangible cost savings to Raymond James, said Karl Schoellnast, vice president of telecommunications, in a release.

Raymond James can monitor the performance of its network and applications through the secure AT&T (NYSE:T) customer portal.

Raymond James Financial (NYSE:RJF) is a St. Petersburg-based diversified holding company providing financial services through its subsidiary companies.

Microsoft: No Office software for Linux

2005-10-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp. is not going to release a version of its Office suite software for open-source rival Linux, although the company is actively studying how Linux works and how it can integrate with the platform, a Microsoft representative said.

"The simplest way I can answer the question is that Microsoft is 100% focused on Windows," said Nick McGrath, director of platform strategy for Microsoft in the U.K. "We have no plans at this present moment in time to deploy or build a version of Microsoft Office on Linux."

McGrath participated in a roundtable debate at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that started Wednesday in London on whether free software development leads to proprietary software or if the flow works in reverse. The lone representative from Microsoft, McGrath handled a fair amount of ribbing from emotional open-source advocates who used the forum to question how Microsoft plans to deal with what advocates say is increasing market share of the Linux platform.

Open-source software allows anybody who has a great idea to "stand on the shoulders of giants," whereas in the commercial world it has to be patented, the underlying infrastructure has to be licensed, and the idea has to be tried, said Mark Shuttleworth of the Ubuntu Foundation.

Shuttleworth wasn't the only one who forecast hard times for commercial software developers. But Matt Asay, director of open-source strategy at Novell Inc., said that rather than focusing on why Microsoft isn't developing programs for Linux, developers should be focused on customer value.

Ingram Micro to sell Linspire's Linux system

2005-10-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

Computer product distributor Ingram Micro Inc. said Wednesday it has signed a deal with Linspire Inc. to sell its desktop Linux operating system and other products.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Linspire said Ingram Micro's distribution network of resellers and retailers around the country will give thousands of new customers and markets access to its version of desktop Linux products and services.

Linspire Inc., of San Diego, was founded in 2001 and provides Linux-based desktop software.

Santa Ana-based Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) offers computer products to 165,000 reseller customers around the globe.

LG FLATRON L3000A

2005-10-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

LG's Flatron L3000A is a 30in flat-panel LCD display designed for group presentations or for displaying information in company reception areas.

The new monitor, available now, is one of the largest displays so far tested by IT Week Labs. We felt the size of the screen, coupled with its high brightness, would make it well suited for giving presentations to large groups of people.

The screen might also find a use in dealer rooms and trading floors, but LG ships the Flatron L3000A with only a temporary stand, actually little more than a metal bracket, on the assumption that all buyers will want to mount the Flatron L3000A against a wall. We think that this is a mistake, because many professionals might like to use such a large screen as a desktop display. By comparison Samsung's 24in SyncMaster 240T screen, which IT Week evaluated some time ago, is provided with a desktop stand to make it more flexible.

We found that our Flatron L3000A review unit had an impressively bright screen. With its display brightness left at its default setting of 80 percent, the screen was noticeably brighter than the selection of other monitors used in IT Week Labs.

The Flatron L3000A has a relatively low native resolution of 1280x768 pixels, perhaps due to its intended role as a presentation display. As a result, text and icons appear very large when it is used as a standard computer monitor. However, the Flatron L3000A's widescreen 16x9 format could enable two Windows applications to be comfortably viewed side by side, and it could also allow a wider-than-usual view of an Excel spreadsheet, for example.

LG supplies a remote control with the Flatron L3000A that lets the user switch the display on or off and access the on-screen display (OSD) menu. The OSD can alternatively be accessed via a handful of buttons built into the monitor itself, but these are inconveniently located on the bottom edge of the display bezel.

Users must access the OSD to adjust the brightness and contrast, and there are also controls to adjust the colour settings.

Two colour temperatures, 9300K and 6500K, are supported, and users can also adjust each RGB primary individually. However, there is no support for more advanced rendering features such as adjustment of secondary colours.

The Flatron L3000A supports input from several display sources, including a digital video (DVI) connector, composite video and S-Video, as well as the standard 15-pin VGA-style PC graphics connector.

A picture-in-picture (PIP) facility allows a video feed from one source to be viewed in a smaller secondary window overlapping the main display. The OSD can be used to set the size and position of this window, as well as to separately adjust its attributes, such as the settings for contrast and brightness.

The Flatron L3000A measures 73.4x 48.7cm, and is 9.6cm deep. The product weighs 18kg, which includes the built-in power supply unit.

Four screw holes at the rear of the case allow mounting on a wall bracket, but we would like to see LG offer customers at least the option of a tilt-and-swivel stand for use with this display.

Using the supplied temporary stand means that the monitor's bezel has to rest on a flat surface such as a desktop.

How to get your PC media onto your TV

2005-10-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

It's no surprise one of the hottest trends in consumer electronics products today are designed to bring all media into the family room -- and wirelessly, too!

Who could've guessed even five years ago that our beloved PCs - a machine once reserved strictly for productivity programs, Web surfing and email - would soon become a hub for all entertainment , be it music, TV, feature films, home movies, high-end video games, or radio and digital photos.

But while more and more PC users are turning to their Internet-connected computer to collect and store all of this digital content, the den isn't the most comfortable way to enjoy it. After all, who wants to bring the family to hover around a small monitor to see new pictures of the kids? Why listen to music on small, tinny speakers when you have a home theatre in the other room? Why watch DVD movies in an office chair when you can be reclining on the couch with your feet up on the coffee table?

So it's no surprise one of the hottest trends in consumer electronics products today are designed to bring all of this media into the family room -- and wirelessly, too.

Here's a few examples of what's available:
D-Link MediaLounge Wireless Media Player
In a nutshell, the DSM-320 distributes audio and video content from a PC to a TV via a wireless network. Think of it as a set-top box that connects to a television, enabling users to access music, pictures and videos all stored on the computer's hard drive in another room. It can also be used to stream select Internet radio stations and services to the home theatre via its 802.11g/b technology (up to 54 Mbps).

At the back of this slim, silver digital media adapter are a handful of audio and video output options: composite ("RCA"), component, S-Video and optical audio.

The bundled remote lets you navigate through all of this content, divided into its own sections for music, videos, photos and Internet radio with support for Radio@ AOL, Napster and RealNetworks' Rhapsody (limited trial versions of each are accessible from within the MediaLounge Entertainment Network software).ViewSonic Wireless Media Adapter and Wireless Media Gateway
ViewSonic, a company best-known for its computer monitors, also offers a solution for sharing media over a wireless network.

As with the abovementioned D-Link product, the Wireless Media Adapter ($300) lets you access all your PC-based media on a nearby TV.

However, the ViewSonic Wireless Media Gateway product is even more interesting as it's a 802.11g (54 Mbps) wireless router that houses a 120GB hard drive so you can store thousands of photos, songs or video files.

This means any PC in the house can access all of the media because of the external and wireless hard drive. Similarly, the Wireless Media Adapter that is connected to your home theatre can access it all, too.(via bye msn)

Techniques for Shooting Cityscapes at Night

2005-10-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Soon many of us will be heading out on summer vacations, visiting unfamiliar cities in other parts of the country, or around the world. Very often, a city's downtown skyline is one of the most striking scenes, particularly at night. You can get some truly beautiful shots if you remember these tips for taking photos in low light.

Timing and Perspective
Many of the most dramatic night photos are taken when the light in the sky is still casting a warm glow. The sunset reflecting off of a building, punctuated by city lights, can make for a stunning image. Once the sun goes all the way down, there are still plenty of great shots to be found.

Be on the lookout for unusual perspectives. Looking up at a tall building from the ground will distort the building, curving it at the top. A wide-angle lens will increase this effect. Finding higher ground - a publicly accessible neighbouring building, a nearby hill or a bridge - provides another striking perspective. Up close, you can find architectural features that come alive when bathed in light and shadow. Try finding multiple angles and distances from which to photograph your subject.

Darkness and Light
Use the camera's light meter to adjust your exposure. If you have spot metering, be careful to avoid the darkest or brightest spots in the frame. If you don't, your camera may overcorrect, making blacks grey or over-saturating colours and light.

You will probably still have to compensate for your camera's light meter. If the frame is quite dark, try reducing the exposure by two or three stops. If the frame is medium-dark, with a number of illuminated buildings in the shot, adjust by just one stop. If your camera has auto exposure bracketing, it can do some of the experimenting for you.

A higher ISO setting (400 and up) will help in low light. Remember that a higher ISO setting might create some visual noise on your image, particularly when using cameras with lower resolutions.

Your camera's autofocus may also have trouble in low light. If so, focus on the brightest point in the image, holding the shutter release button half way down, then recompose your image and complete the shot.

Be sure to turn off your flash unless you want to focus on a foreground subject. Most importantly, use a tripod or another solid support to avoid unwanted blur.

Check the image on your LCD to make sure the colour balance is correct. Most cameras let you adjust the white balance to ensure colours come out accurately. You usually have a choice of white balance settings, including tungsten (common in spotlights) and fluorescent. In general, a tungsten setting will cool the light, enhancing blues, while the fluorescent setting will enhance warmer red values. Try experimenting with different settings to see which ones work best.

Be Safety Conscious
Scout out potential locations during the day, so you won't get lost at night. Wear clothing that can be seen easily by motorists and cyclists. Be sure to check from time to time to see who is around you. If you're new to a city, ask the locals or tourist information if there are areas you should avoid at night. Also, bring someone along, or make sure that someone knows where you plan on going.

Nighttime photos will impress your friends and are perfect for framing and displaying at home. Spend a bit of time experimenting with your camera and you're sure to get great results.(via by msn)

Cisco to Acquire Nemo Systems

2005-10-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

Cisco Systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Nemo Systems of Los Altos, Calif. Nemo Systems has developed leading-edge technology in the network memory space that will offer enhanced performance on Cisco's core switching platforms and service modules. Once incorporated into Cisco's products, the technology will allow customers to scale network systems and line card bandwidth while reducing the overall cost of high-performance networking systems.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay up to $12.5 million in cash for Nemo. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2006 ending October 29, 2005.

Upon close of the transaction, Nemo will become part of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group (DSSTG) reporting to vice president and general manager Tom Edsall.

DVD dispute burns at PC makers

2005-10-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

After quietly heating up over recent months, the battle over next-generation DVD formats boiled over Thursday, as Dell and Hewlett-Packard assailed Intel and Microsoft, which have lined up in the opposite camp.

Earlier this week, Microsoft and Intel announced that they were backing the HD-DVD format, saying its approach will spur easier home networking of movies and make it simpler to distribute hybrid discs containing both high-definition and traditional DVD movies. Dell and HP shot back Thursday, saying the world's largest software and processor makers were spreading "inaccurate" information. They also reiterated their backing for the rival Blu-ray format.

"From a PC end-user perspective, Blu-ray is a superior format," HP personal-storage unit general manager Maureen Weber said in a statement. Weber said Blu-ray offers anywhere from two-thirds to 150 percent more storage capacity, as well as higher transfer rates, and fits easily into slim notebooks. "The technical merits and consumer benefits of Blu-ray Disc make it the ideal solution for HP's customers."

Dell founder Michael Dell also lashed out at Microsoft and Intel during Wednesday's lanch of a new premium PC line.

"Which version of Windows was the first to support DVD drives? The answer is none," Dell said, "because there is no DVD codec in Windows, because manufacturers have always provided their own codecs."

Both formats use blue lasers to pack more data onto a disc than is possible with today's DVDs, which are scanned by red lasers.(via by zdnet)

Apple's Minuscule iPod Nano Dazzles

2005-10-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Slender, lightweight music player has a bright color display and 4GB of resilient flash memory.

The first thing you notice about the flash-based iPod Nano, of course, is its tiny size. But what's really impressive about the Nano--and represents a breakthrough for the category of lilliputian MP3 players--is its bright, crisp color display, which makes navigating your tunes a snap.

The slim Nano costs $249 for the 4GB version; a 2GB model sells for $199. It weighs 1.5 ounces and is about 0.25 inch thick--so small that you scarcely feel it when you have the Nano in your shirt pocket. Surprisingly, its size was no impediment to functionality: I navigated the Nano's menus, displayed on its barely-larger-than-a-postage-stamp display, without difficulty.

But as good as the display is, you shouldn't get too excited about the Nano's ability to display photos: The shots I viewed looked dark, and even high-quality photos don't look so great when they are shrunk down to 1.5 inches across.

Like other iPods, the Nano uses a rechargeable battery that you can't replace. It ships without an AC adapter, so you have to charge it through the included cable and your USB port. That process takes about 3 hours, and a single charge should last you 14 hours, according to Apple.

My chief complaint about the Nano involves the unfortunate design decision of positioning its headphone jack at the bottom of the player. This arrangement prevents users from standing the player up on a table while listening to it.

But if you're an iTunes devotee already--or if you want a featherweight, fashionable MP3 player--you'll find plenty to love about the iPod Nano.

A New Look for the Next MS Office

2005-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

At the Microsoft Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Gates and company unveiled the new interface for Office 12. Among the changes you can look forward to are a less cluttered tab-style interface and a redefinition of the word "gallery."

Office 12's new menus will look cleaner and more orderly than in previous versions, thanks in large measure to a rethinking of the way content boxes are divided within the various Office applications. Where the menus in past versions were densely packed with buttons that looked remarkably similar, the new version will set aside the entire upper portion of the screen for a spacious array of buttons. The new layout will also include more intuitive buttons that are easier to navigate when you're in a rush.

Cyber-shot DSC-W7 Digital CameraspacerDSC-W7

2005-10-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

With a huge 2.5 inch LCD screen and large 7.2 Megapixel image capture the Cyber-shot® DSC-W7 digital camera give your pictures the big screen treatment.

7.2 Megapixel (3072 x 2304 Pixels)
3X optical zoom lens
2.5" LCD monitor
Compact rangefinder design
32MB flash memory built-in

It combines a high quality 1/1.8" Super HAD CCD imaging device with a precision built Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens in a traditional rangefinder design that feels great and is amazingly easy to control.

The DSC-W7 features a 3X optical zoom with 2X digital zoom for great photos both near and far, Sony’s own Real Imaging Processo for ultra-fast start-up times and shutter speed, and 32 Megabytes of internal memory so you can still capture images even without your Memory Stick media. Running out of power is never an issue thanks to its incredible battery stamina. You can capture up to 380 shots with the supplied AA NiMH rechargeable batteries.

Like all Cyber-shot digital cameras, the DSC-W1 features a number of optional accessories that extend your photographic possibilities. From conversion lenses, lens filters, external flashes, and even underwater cases, Sony has exactly what you are looking for.

NEC launches world's thinnest foldaway phones

2005-10-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

NEC Corp. (6701.T) has launched the world's thinnest foldaway mobile phone in Hong Kong in a bid to underscore its technological prowess, the Japanese electronics conglomerate said.

The new cell phone, which is 11.9 mm thick when folded and slimmer than an AA battery, is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel digital camera, 1.9-inch color display and music player function, the Tokyo-based company said.

Following the Hong Kong launch in mid-September, NEC plans to offer the mobile phone soon in Italy, Australia, Russia and China.

NEC declined to comment on expected retail prices or sales targets for the new phone, which works on GSM/GPRS networks, widely used in Europe and Asia.

NEC, a pioneer of high-speed third-generation phones, is the largest cell phone supplier in Japan's domestic market with a 16.2 percent share in the first half of 2005, according to research firm Gartner.(via by reuters)

Dr. Scalzo on Oracle Linux disk Optimization

2005-10-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

Dr. Bert Scalzo (MBA, PhD) has published a superb benchmark titled “Optimizing Oracle 10g on Linux: Non-RAC ASM vs. LVM”. Bert has a valid test-case using the “Benchmark Factory” tool to simulate real-world data loads and provides expert tips for optimizing Oracle 10g on Linux:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8539

Bert shows the differences in performance between disks mapped with Oracle 10g Automatic Storage Manager (ASM) and the Linux Logical Volume Manager LVM using a TPC-C (online) and TPC-H (warehouse) benchmark. Bert concludes:

“For people doing RAC, ASM is a viable and credible approach for disk space management, with numerous administrative and maintenance benefits to its credit.

But for those simply doing non-RAC database deployments, ASM is not yet as scalable as the Linux ext3 filesystem using an LVM. . .

for people not doing RAC who care more about performance than
administrative ease, for now you should stick with the Linux filesystems
and an LVM.”

Adobe Introduces Photoshop Elements 4.0 and Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0

2005-09-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced two new products for digital photo and digital video enthusiasts. Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 4.0 for Windows®, a new version of Adobe's No. 1 selling consumer photo editing software*, adds powerful and intuitive ways to organize, edit and share photos. For video hobbyists, the award-winning Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 software for Windows brings unparalleled control, ease of use and more options for creative digital video editing with a self-adjusting workspace, support for all video types and DVD customization.

Available together in a single retail package, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Plus Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 delivers the powerful and affordable software integration consumers need to be creative and impress friends and family with their digital photos and home videos. Photoshop Elements 4.0 and Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 also are available as separate products.

Photoshop Elements 4.0 delivers more editing power with the new Magic Selection Brush that allows consumers to select specific parts of photos for easy color, lighting and contrast adjustments. The Magic Extractor easily extracts subjects from photos, with advanced edge defringing, for great composites.

Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 offers the perfect combination of superior control, new self-adjusting workspace ease and reliability to help automate tedious video editing tasks so that consumers can be creative more quickly. Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 makes it easy to import video clips from all digital video devices, experiment with hundreds of professional transitions and effects, and burn videos to DVD.

Photoshop Elements 4.0 is part of a complete family of Photoshop products that meet the needs of a diverse spectrum of digital photographers: the free Photoshop Album Starter Edition for the novice digital camera user; Photoshop Elements for the digital photography enthusiast; and Photoshop CS2 for the professional or the most demanding amateur photographer. Similarly, Adobe offers Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 for superior quality home-video editing and Adobe Premiere Pro for the more advanced professional or the most demanding amateur videographer.(via by adobe)

Next generation from Siemens- SFG75

2005-09-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Video calls, music downloads, video streaming, MMS and much more – multimedia on the move is now really good fun with the Siemens SFG75. This stylish clamshell mobile for the fast UMTS mobile telephony networks provides everything necessary for mobile communication and entertainment. Two color displays, a 1.3-megapixel camera with flash and digital zoom, Bluetooth as well as an MP3 and video player satisfy every wish. Moreover, the compact mobile phone in the classic sophisticated look is exceedingly good value for money.

A slender shape and versatility are central characteristics of the compact SFG75 UMTS mobile from Siemens. Quality materials and a sophisticated appearance underpin its stylish, classical design.

Top-of-the-range multimedia provides for good entertainment on the move. Precious moments can be captured effortlessly either in pictures using the built-in 1.3 megapixel camera (with flash and 10x digital zoom) or as short film clips.

The SFG75 with integrated MP3 player as well as a music and video player that enable the memory-saving AAC and AMR formats to be played back also displays musical talent. Listening to favorite songs any time is easy now – whether doing sports, in the train or at the dentist’s.

No mobile is like the other. With elegant background pictures, fantastic logos and cheerful animations, the SFG75 can be given its own very individual character. Those with a playful bent can also try their hand at exciting Java games like tennis or Extreme Racing.

A stereo headset and a USB data cable for synchronizing data with a PC are also supplied with the SFG75.

Sales of LCD-TVs accelerating

2005-09-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Declining prices, rising consumer acceptance and increasingly efficient panel production results in LCD TV sales that are climbing faster than market researchers initially had expected. According to a new report released by iSuppli, 16.7 million TVs will be sold this year, and 55.1 million in 2009.

LCD-TVs are slowly losing their reputation to be a generally unaffordable luxury item, mainly caused by a circle of events that includes more efficient productivity, increased competition, falling prices and greater consumer demand.

According to iSuppli, especially expected growth for the 30- to 34-inch segment, gave reason to revise a market forecast for LCD-TV sales for the next four years. "This is due to the commencement of production in 2005 at four or more sixth-generation fabs, which are suited for producing panels in that size range. The operation of all of these fabs will result in greater output of larger-sized panels at more economical costs," iSuppli said.

The average selling price (ASP) of LCD-TVs in the 30- to 34-inch size range is expected to decline to $1548 in the fourth quarter, down 22.5 percent from $1997 in the first quarter of this year.

Overall worldwide LCD-TV shipments are estimated to rise to 61.2 million units in 2009, expanding at an average annual growth rate of 47.2 percent from 8.9 million units in 2004. For 2005, the firm puts likely sales at 16.7 million units, 23.8 million for 2006, 32.1 million for 2007, 42.2 million for 2008 and 55.1 million for 2009.( via by tom )

Innovations from Simens

2005-09-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Siemens Building Technologies’ fire safety, building automation and security systems improve the performance of more than 20,000 North American facilities
High voltage systems from Siemens have helped U.S. utilities increase capacity on existing transmission lines by up to 24 percent
Siemens' postal automation systems process more than 90 percent of the mail for the United StatesPostal Service (USPS)
Radiation therapy systems from Siemens treat more than 30,000 cancer patients every business day in the U.S.
Every tenth telephone call in the world is connected by a Siemens switching system
Power generation systems from Siemens Power Generation generate one-third of the nation's electricity
Siemens' technologies and systems can be found protecting many public areas including airports, hospitals, stadiums, universities and commercial buildings
Siemens systems can also be found monitoring and protecting our communications networks, our medical records and our energy grid
Siemens is a leading provider of consulting and managed IT outsourcing services, serving approximately half the top 100 Fortune 500 companies
The 2004 Fortune Global 500 ranked Siemens AG number one in the world's electronic industry

Sub-$100 Laptop Design Revealed by MIT's Negroponte

2005-09-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs showed designs for a sub-$100 laptop for kids in 3rd world countries.

Negroponte's non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.
The Linux based computer is inside a rubber case and has a hand crank to generate power. Wi-fi and USB ports are also available.
I think this is a great idea to give kids all over the planet access to computer technology and the Internet. This can help change the world.(via by i4u.com)

Toyota to Offer Smart Key Wristwatches

2005-09-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Nikkei.net (subscription) reports that Toyota will introduce a Citizen Wristwatch with a smart key inside to lock and unlock cars automatically.

For new Toyota Crown car owners the fumbling for the car key has an end. The Toyota wristwatch (developed together with Citizen) transmits via a radio signal a code to unlock the wearers car.
There is also a button on the watch to manually lock or unlock the car from a distance. The Toyota wristwatch will be available starting next week in Japan, where else.

New Sony AIBO ERS-7M3 Robot Dog

2005-09-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Sony updates it's AIBO robot dog line with the ERS-7M3.

The Sony AIBO ERS-7M3 has compared to the AIBO ERS-7M2 now voice integration. The AIBO ERS-7M3 features a 1,000 word vocabulary that enables the robot dog to react to voice commands.
The ERS-7M3 is also Sony's first Spanish-speaking robot that responds to 35 Spanish-language commands.
The champagne brown AIBO Entertainment Robot model ERS-7M3/T will sell for about $2,100. The pearl white and pearl black models (ERS-7M3/W and ERS-7M3/B, respectively) will both sell for about $2,000.

The new AIBOs will ship end of October.

A Pro Camera That Amateurs Can Afford

2005-09-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

PREDICTING the future just by extrapolating from current trends can be risky business. One megabyte of memory in 1985, for example, would have cost you about $400. By 1995, the same amount cost about $35. You might conclude that memory makers will eventually have to start paying you.

Still, watching prices of popular technologies crash to earth is always exciting while it lasts. Take the highly regarded digital single-lens reflex cameras from Nikon, for example. Over the years, prices for Nikon S.L.R.'s hit $5,000 (the D1 in 1999), $4,000 (the D1H in 2001), $2,000 (the D100 in 2002), $1,000 (last year's D70) and $900 (last month's slightly upgraded D70S).

Nikon's latest data point represents a delicious addition to the line: the D50, due next week. It takes the same spectacular photos as the bestselling D70S - for a list price of $750.

Now, $900 may still sound like a lot, but these are professional cameras - or were, until amateur shutterbugs started snapping them up. And that price frees you from the teeth-grinding annoyances of everyday consumer cams.

What you can't do with a digital S.L.R., though, is capture digital movies, compose shots using the back-panel screen (you must look through the viewfinder) or put the camera in your pocket; a digital S.L.R. is bulky. Harsh trade-offs, yes, but that's the ballgame.

What does "family friendly" mean? It would be easy to say that the D50 is just a stripped-down D70, but that wouldn't be accurate. The D50 is certainly a modified D70, but it adds as many new features as it takes away.

The lower price is a key feature. But so is the reduction of size and weight, made possible in part by a switch in memory format (from Compact Flash to SD card). In conjunction with its new, compact 18- to 55-millimeter starter lens (a 3X zoom, the equivalent of a 28- to 80-millimeter zoom lens on a film-based S.L.R.), the fully assembled D50 makes a much less intimidating-looking package than its predecessor. (It's 5.2 by 4 by 3 inches, vs. 5.5 by 4.4 by 3.1 on the D70.)

If you can afford a second lens, Nikon's new, equally compact 55- to 200-millimeter telephoto lens (equivalent to an 80- to 300-millimeter lens on a film camera) makes a great choice at $250. Its zoom picks up where the starter lens leaves off, bringing you 11 times closer to soccer goals, school plays and shuttle launchings.

The D50 also features an improved autofocus system; in sports mode (one of its six scene presets), for example, it can track a subject as it moves. The D50's rubber eyepiece is larger and more comfortable than the D70's.

The displays have been rewritten for better clarity; the confirmation message when you delete a photo, for example, now tells you not only which button to press to proceed, but also which button cancels the operation. And the scene dial's new child mode is supposed to offer a magical combination of vivid clothing colors and natural flesh tones, although the pictures are generally indistinguishable from those of the auto setting.

The four-way controller's left and right arrow buttons now summon the previous and next photos. (On the D70, it was the up and down arrows, which always felt wrong.) Zooming in on a photo is still an awkward two-handed procedure that should send Nikon back to the drawing board - but at least on the D50, you can scroll through your pictures at the same magnification level, without having to rezoom each one.

So Nikon giveth, but it also taketh away - in this case, a bunch of tweaky features that nonprofessionals, it believes, won't miss. The D50's fastest shutter speed is 1/4000th of a second (slower than the 1/8000th of the D70). You can't choose any I.S.O. (light sensitivity) settings between 800 and 1600. The D50 can't drive a wireless flash attachment, as the D70 can. And the D50 lacks its predecessor's compositional grid option for the viewfinder, clip-on plastic screen protector and depth-of-field preview button. (The D.O.F. preview button closes down the lens aperture before shooting to give you an accurate view of what foreground and background elements will be in or out of focus at the selected aperture setting.)

In most cases, Nikon was right; for the amateur, most of these omissions are of advanced, fussy or obscure features. But in two cases, Nikon slipped with its scalpel, hacking off features that you may indeed miss in everyday shooting.

First, the burst mode captures only 2.5 frames per second, down from 3. That may not seem like a radical difference. But when you're trying to snap just the right instant in a skydiver's flight, the dog's trick or the children's ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl, every little frame helps.

Second, the L.C.D. status window on the top of the camera is no longer illuminated, which means you can't read it in dim light. To change flash, ISO or white-balance settings, for example, you're supposed to turn a dial - but without being able to see the status display, you have no idea how far you've cycled through the choices. (Note to D50 buyers: keep a keychain flashlight in your camera case. Note to Nikon: O.K., fine. Put the backlight back in, and raise the price 85 cents.)

Sold on the idea of a digital S.L.R. but not sure which one to buy? If you already own lenses for a certain brand, well, then, your decision is made. (Technical note: Remember though, that because a digital S.L.R.'s sensor is smaller than a frame of 35-millimeter film, traditional lenses act as though they are 1.5 times as long when they are mounted on a digital camera body. A 200-millimeter lens, for example, will give you an effective focal length of 300 millimeters.) )

NIKON D50 Smaller, lighter and easier to use than the D70. The status-panel back light is the most serious missing frill. Price, with lens: under $900. (Discounting online hasn't yet begun.)

NIKON D70S Greatest photographic flexibility. Loaded with features that come in handy, if only occasionally. Best battery life (2,500 shots per charge). Wireless flash option. Awkward playback controls, slow U.S.B. transfer. Online price, with lens: $1,120.

CANON DIGITAL REBEL XT Highest photo resolution (8 megapixels, vs. 6.1 on the Nikons), yet least expensive. Shortest battery life (600 shots) and smallest screen (1.8 inches vs. 2.0 on the Nikons). Inferior starter lens. Awkwardly shrunken handgrip. Online price, with lens: $835. (The older, slower, larger original digital Rebel is still available, too, for as little as $660 online.)(via by nyt)

Nokia Mobile Push email Client

2005-09-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Blackberry, RIM’s succesfull mobile email device, has paved the way for many a competing device. Aside from devices that support a variety of email protocols, there is one obvious other weapon in the battle for the corporate email customer. This weapon, of course, is the ability to offer a portable email client, aimed at business email users. Nokia has recognised this and acted on it. Nokia Business Center was conceived, a push email solution for all java enabled phones. It is cost effective, partially because there will be no need to invest in new phones for all staff. Or at least, this will be the case for all phones that Nokia will certify.

Nokia Business Center is designed to expand the universe of potential mobile users by leveraging the broad availability of standard mobile phones and by providing a two-tier client strategy. The standard client will offer the ability to compose, read and delete email, manage local folders, and provides support for working offline, in addition to push-email and security. It will support for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish; and will be licensed on an unlimited basis with each Nokia Business Center server. A more richly featured professional client will be available for a minimal upgrade fee. It will offer all the features of the standard version as well as a rich, graphical email experience similar to using desktop email. Other professional client version features will include support for handling meeting requests, sorted views, full attachment support, the ability to access any employeers contact information from the company's corporate directory, the ability to search local folders, and more.

First Ever Handheld Version of Settlers of Catan Arrives On The N-Gage Platform

2005-09-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

Nokia announced that it has started shipping Capcom's first game on the N-Gage platform - Catan. Inspired by Klaus Teuber's award-winning board game, Settlers of Catan, which has sold over 15 million copies, the N-Gage version finally takes the game mobile. Catan fans now have the opportunity to discover, settle and trade on the go. Catan on the N-Gage platform offers turn-based strategy multiplayer gaming for up to four players via Bluetooth wireless technology.

"Catan on the N-Gage platform is highly anticipated by the original board game fans. We believe the new mobile multiplayer version of Catan will be very popular with new fans as well," said Gregg Sauter, Director, Games Publishing, Nokia. " Fans also get great Japanese pop-style artwork, created by well-known illustrator Susumo Matsushita, as well as some very colorful characters."

In Catan gamers can compete with each other to build roads, settlements and cities. Gamers will occupy new land to develop into communities with the aim of expanding their civilization and squeezing out competitors. The N-Gage Arena provides tips and hints to gamers as they roll the dice to get the commodities they need to build new roads, cities and settlements. Players can also upload their high score to the N-Gage Arena. Catan offers a balanced mix of tactic, strategy, interaction and - of course - luck.

About Capcom

Capcom is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment. Founded in 1983, the company has created world renowned franchises including Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Mega Man, Breath of Fire, Devil May Cry and the Onimusha series. Headquartered in Osaka, Japan, the company maintains operations in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Tokyo and Hong Kong. More information about Capcom and its products can be found on the company's website at www.capcom.com.

About Catan GmbH

The Catan GmbH is the original licensor of the Catan brand and works closely with Capcom on promoting the Catan brand. The Catan designer Klaus Teuber has founded the Catan GmbH company in 2002 to promote and maintain the Catan brand, which has manifestations in board games, electronic games, literature and more. The Catan games alone have sold 11 million copies worldwide since 1995. More information about the Catan GmbH and Klaus Teuber can be found at www.catan.com and www.klausteuber.com

About N-Gage

The N-Gage game deck is an innovative mobile device that is creating an entirely new market for the games industry. Built for active gamers, the N-Gage platform is the first mobile and connected game deck to feature online high quality 3D multiplayer game play over Bluetooth wireless technology and GPRS. The N-Gage device also offers unique online games services as well as a comprehensive and growing games catalogue from the leading game publishers. Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications. Nokia and N-Gage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nokia Corporation.

Solar-Power Cars Set off Across Outback

2005-09-25T15:44:00.000-07:00

Twenty-two bug-shaped solar cars designed and built by corporations and universities from around the world set out across the vast, inhospitable Australian outback on Sunday in the eighth World Solar Challenge.

Japan’s Sky Ace Tiga car, from the Ashiya University in Osaka, led off after qualifying fastest for the 3,000 km (1,860 miles) race across the center of Australia from the tropical north city of Darwin to Adelaide in South Australia.

Ashiya University’s Professor Kunio Nakagawa said his team’s car, one of the race favorites, was capable of speeds averaging 95 kph (59 mph).

“The first target is hoping to finish this race with safety and the second target is to get a top-three position,” Nakagawa told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Dutch team Nuna 3 returns after winning the past two races in 2001 and 2003 and is joined by entrants from 10 other countries, including the United States, France and Canada.

Nuna 3 set the race-record time of 30 hours 54 minutes in 2003.

Race leaders were expected to reach Adelaide by mid-week.

The race was devised as a challenge to design and build solar-powered cars using the most innovative application of alternative energy and transport technologies.(via by reuters)

China Sets New Rules on Internet News

2005-09-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

China set new regulations on Internet news content on Sunday, widening a campaign of controls it has imposed on other Web sites, such as discussion groups.

"The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately.

The news agency did not detail the rules, but said Internet news sites must "be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests."

Established news media needed permission to run a news Web site, it said. New operators had to register themselves with government information offices.

China has a dedicated band of cyber police who patrol the Internet with the aim of regulating content. Postings that criticize the government or address sensitive topics are quickly removed.

Registration was a feature of rules imposed earlier this year aimed at not-for-profit Internet activities, such as personal Web sites and blogs.

Since March, university on-line discussion groups have been restricted to students, removing a once popular outlet for Chinese keen to publicize their views on sensitive issues. Student users and site managers must register using their real names.(via by yahoo)

Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006

2005-09-24T03:29:00.000-07:00

At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple® announced plans to deliver models of its Macintosh® computers using Intel® microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007. Apple previewed a version of its critically acclaimed operating system, Mac OS® X Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac® to the over 3,800 developers attending CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address. Apple also announced the availability of a Developer Transition Kit, consisting of an Intel-based Mac development system along with preview versions of Apple’s software, which will allow developers to prepare versions of their applications which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It’s been ten years since our transition to the PowerPC, and we think Intel’s technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years.”

“We are thrilled to have the world’s most innovative personal computer company as a customer,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel. “Apple helped found the PC industry and throughout the years has been known for fresh ideas and new approaches. We look forward to providing advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on new initiatives, to help Apple continue to deliver innovative products for years to come.”

“We plan to create future versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit. “We have a strong relationship with Apple and will work closely with them to continue our long tradition of making great applications for a great platform.”

“We think this is a really smart move on Apple’s part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors,” said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe.

The Developer Transition Kit is available starting today for $999 to all Apple Developer Connection Select and Premier members. Further information for Apple Developer Connection members is available at developer.apple.com. Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple.

Intel (www.intel.com), the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning desktop and notebook computers, OS X operating system, and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital music revolution with its iPod portable music players and iTunes online music store.

Crisis Communications Network Criticized

2005-09-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

With Hurricane Rita bearing down on the Texas coast, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin said yesterday that the nation's emergency first responders need a mobile, wireless system that allows them to talk to one another in times of crisis anywhere in the country.

The lack of such a system slowed recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. Police, fire and rescue personnel struggled to work together after electric power failed and the telecommunications network in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama was extensively damaged.

Yesterday Martin called for developing more rugged first responder networks and making greater use of satellite technology that does not depend on vulnerable ground infrastructure. "When radio towers are knocked down, satellite communications may be the most effective means of communicating," Martin said at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee. "If we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it is that we cannot rely solely on terrestrial communications.",

Telecommunications companies yesterday positioned mobile equipment to be ready for the new storm.

Bethesda-based satellite company Iridium Satellite LLC worked to get 8,000 to 10,000 of its phones delivered after Katrina hit, but this time, the company called FedEx Corp. in advance to distribute phones to areas near Rita's projected path, said Greg Ewert, an executive vice president.

Ewert said that it was difficult to get as many phones to Texas because some are still being used in the New Orleans area and that he hopes many will travel with the emergency workforce into Texas. "It's definitely putting pressure on us," he said. "If it's just as bad as Katrina and it hits Houston, then we'll be strained to get the same amount of phones out there."

Calls by military and emergency workers caused satellite phone traffic to spike to 3,000 percent of usual levels after Katrina, Ewert said. To get more airwave frequency to accommodate that volume, Iridium had to get approval from the FCC and other similar agencies around the world.

Microsoft seeks global domination with Xbox 360

2005-09-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

The first time around, Microsoft Corp. wanted to establish a beachhead in the video game business. Now, with its much anticipated Xbox 360 console, it wants to rule that $25 billion global market.

The world's largest software company aims to break even in the first year or two after it starts selling the Xbox 360, the successor to the first-generation Xbox, as it tries to knock rival Sony Corp. from its position of market leadership.

Analysts have estimated that Microsoft had operating losses of more than $4 billion from the first Xbox, which it introduced nearly four years ago.

In an interview with Reuters in Tokyo on the eve of one of the industry's biggest trade shows, Microsoft Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach said the advanced console and the lineup of games for it would give the company an edge over Sony.

As of June, Microsoft had sold nearly 22 million of its original Xbox consoles -- fewer than one-fourth the number of PlayStation 2 units sold by Sony. Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s GameCube is the third biggest seller in the console market.

Now Microsoft wants to get many more of its next-generation consoles to market faster, buoyed by a wider selection of titles and an improved ability to keep costs in check.

"We will wind up cost-reducing the product every year," Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president of the Xbox product group, said in a recent interview.

Microsoft is working to break-even on the Xbox 360 hardware in the the first year or two -- roughly the first third in its expected six to seven-year console cycle.

Lifting a page from Sony's PS2 launch, Microsoft plans to have the Xbox 360 on U.S. store shelves November 22 -- months before the upcoming PS3 -- giving it a leg-up in market share and an edge with hard-core gamers willing to pay top dollar for the latest technology. Last time around, Sony beat Microsoft to market by slightly more than a year.

Like Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft will own the intellectual property inside the console -- buying performance and pricing flexibility because it can shop around for chip manufacturers and reduce costs as technology advances.(via by reuters)

Voice Over Internet Both Simple, Complex

2005-09-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

We have more ways than ever of communicating, but trying to keep up with family and friends can be exasperating. Our overlapping free time seems to shrink. We constantly play phone and voice mail tag. And e-mail, in its tone-deaf impersonality, barely helps.

One of the most unorthodox and intriguing among 32 new products launched onstage at this week's DEMOfall conference, a showcase of tech innovation, was a Web-based tool with a mission: to encourage emotional connection via audio messages.

Not two-way conversations, mind you. Just me telling you my news. Click, talk and send.

The product is called YackPack because the user creates groups, or packs, of people who can be audio-messaged individually or collectively. Each member of your pack gets an icon with his or her picture on it. An e-mail notification tells you when a Yack has arrived.

"It turns out that asynchronous audio is the secret sauce for what keeps relationships alive and fresh," said B.J. Fogg, the company founder and chief executive. Much of YackPack's recipe came from the year Fogg spent with a focus group of women over age 50.

Unlike Fogg, the typical tech startup CEO will bend your ear with metrics on market potential while spouting technobabble that would befuddle all but us geeks.

Such people abounded at DEMOfall, where other promising products pitched to an elite crowd of investors and press also sought to better manage relationships: by turning a cell phone into a conference-call manager, helping eBay users place bids wirelessly, protecting the privacy of online consumers.

Fogg, on the other hand, was more apt to be accused of psycho-babble. He is, after all, a Stanford psychologist in addition to being a computer scientist.

The company's newly launched DeleteNow product will, for $2.99 per month, remove information about you from more than 100 online sources — search engines and databases including Google Inc. — and check those sites daily to make sure the information stays off.

However, plenty of sites that might contain personal information about you, such as Claria Corp., aren't cooperating, says chief executive Chaz Berman. The more customers UniPrivacy acquires, the more clout it will have, and Berman says it plans to eventually "out" those sites that refuse to cooperate.

After all, "When you join we become your legal agent."

Touche! (via by FRANK BAJAK)

Publishers may throw book at Google

2005-09-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

BRITISH book publishers are considering legal action against Google over the search engine company’s plans to create a virtual library by digitising millions of books held in public libraries and universities.

The Publishers Association yesterday refused to rule out taking legal action over Google’s Print Project, saying that it was holding a “full and frank debate” with the company and other parties.

The comments came after it emerged that the Authors Guild, which represents 8,000 authors, has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the internet company of “massive copyright infringements” at the expense of the rights of individual writers. The suit, filed in a district court in New York, demands damages and an injunction against further alleged infringements.

Nick Taylor, president of the Authors Guild, said that Google’s library scheme represented a “plain and brazen violation of copyright law . . . It is not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

Five of the world’s most famous libraries, including the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, have agreed to have books scanned by Google and posted online. However, after complaints from several groups about potential copyright infringement, Google has agreed to stop scanning copyright protected books until November.

Although the Bodleian says that it has chosen 19th-century books to avoid issues over copyright, other participants, including Harvard, plan to provide randomly selected shelves of books for scanning. Some groups fear that Google will be unable to ascertain which books are still copyrighted.

Generally, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, but in Britain new editions of otherwise out-of-copyright works enjoy a further 25-year protection period.

Google said that the scanning break would give publishers time to alert it to books they “prefer we would not scan”. It emphasised that it was respecting copyright.(via by Elizabeth Judge)

Apple, record labels to face off over pricing

2005-09-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

The love affair between record labels and Apple Computer Inc. could be headed for the rocks as they bicker over prices ahead of licensing renegotiations set for early next year.

The licensing agreements between Apple, maker of the wildly popular iPod digital music player and operator of the most widely used music download service, and the record labels are set to expire next spring.

Both sides, which have benefited enormously from music sales created by the iPod phenomenon, are jockeying for position.

Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs, believed by some to be the savior of the music industry, insists that prices should be uniform at 99 cents a song and $9.99 an album, saying that the buying experience for consumers should be simple.

Record executives, however, are seeking some flexibility in prices, including the ability to charge more for some songs and less for others, the way they do in the traditional retail world.

Hit hard over the past five years by the rapid spread of illegal song copying over the Internet, record companies -- Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Group Plc and Warner Music -- have struggled to revamp their business as sales shift to more legal digital downloads from physical CDs.

The music industry was also aided by key legal victories against so-called peer-to-peer services, which allowed users to use the Internet to download music from one another's computers without permission from artists and labels.
(via w.post)

NASA goes back to the future

2005-09-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

NASA has finally unveiled its plans for carrying out the ambitious space exploration program that was announced by President George W. Bush in January 2004 but left vague and undefined ever since. The proposed new space vehicles look like a sensible way to put astronauts and cargo into space after the shuttle fleet is retired and will be built to facilitate landings on both the Moon and Mars. Michael Griffin, the new administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, deserves credit for putting real flesh on what had been little more than an aspiration. Unfortunately, the new plan lacks the pizzazz to inspire public support and will be operating under budget constraints that make delays or overruns likely.

The new crew exploration vehicle will be built around well-known space technologies, with booster rockets and engines derived from the shuttle program and a crew capsule like the one used in the lunar program, only bigger. That has the advantage of letting NASA use much of its current shuttle work force on the new program and the disadvantage of making the technology look retrograde. This approach will not excite those looking for cutting-edge hardware, but it seems reasonable at a time when reliability is the main goal.

The configuration largely eliminates the two hazards that destroyed the Columbia and the Challenger. NASA calculates that the new vehicle should be 10 times safer than the shuttle, with perhaps a 1 in 2,000 chance of a catastrophe.

The plan pays only the barest lip service to international cooperation; Europe, Japan, China and India all have lunar programs of one kind or another under way. Griffin said NASA hoped to send Americans back to the Moon by 2018 under its own program but was open to partnerships on what to do or build on the lunar surface. Given that most experts say international collaboration will be imperative on a high-cost mission to Mars, it would seem desirable to enlist international partners very early.

It is hard to see how NASA can complete all the tasks on its agenda while operating on a constrained budget, which is scheduled to grow only at the rate of inflation. The safety valve is that NASA will carry out the exploration program on a "go as you can afford to pay" basis, without raiding money from other space programs. That means that cost overruns may stretch out the completion dates, and leave the exploration vision a more distant prospect.
(via nyt)

Opera nixes banner ads in free version

2005-09-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

The latest free version of Opera Software's namesake browser will be available without an advertising banner.

With version 8.5 of the Opera browser, which was released Tuesday, the company said that it has removed banner ads from its free edition. Until now, Opera customers had the option of paying to eliminate the ads and receive premium support.

With the licensing change, Opera hopes to accelerate uptake of its browser, the company said.

"Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser," Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, said in a statement.

Premium support via e-mail is still available from the company for $29 per year.

Version 8.5 also addresses some security vulnerabilities and includes a feature called Browser JavaScript, which automatically fixes out-of-date browser scripts.
(via cnet)

Microsoft to reorg; Allchin to retire

2005-09-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

The plan calls for a reorganization of Microsoft into three large divisions led by individual presidents, each reporting to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive.

• Jeff Raikes will head up the company's Business division, which will house Microsoft's Information Worker group (which includes its Office product line), and its Business Solutions packaged applications group.

• Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin will be co-presidents of the Platform Products and Services division, which will comprise Windows Client, Server and Tools and the MSN division. Microsoft said Allchin will hold that new position until he retires, once the company ships Windows Vista at the end of next year.

• Robbie Bach will be president of the Entertainment and Devices division, which will oversee games and mobile device development.

The huge reorganization is designed to streamline the company's decision-making process and improve product development, Ballmer said in a statement.

"Our goal in making these changes is to enable Microsoft to achieve greater agility in managing the incredible growth ahead and executing our software-based services strategy," Ballmer.

Game Review: '187 Ride or Die' full of stereotypes

2005-09-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

You'll find plenty of both in Ubisoft's "187 Ride or Die," a Mature-rated game that fuses urban racing a la Need for Speed with plenty of gang warfare and gunplay found in titles such as the Grand Theft Auto series.

The 187 in the title, by the way, refers to the section of the California penal code relating to homicide.

The paper-thin story surrounds Buck, a youthful black tough guy who is commissioned by Dupree, a portly godfather of sorts, to go after his Mexican mafia nemesis, Cortez.

Buck is given the task to defend Dupree's 'hood against Cortez and his gang by racing and shooting through Los Angeles' busy streets.

As if the premise of this combat racing game isn't lame enough, the dialogue will turn you off before the rubber hits the road.

As Buck, you ride shotgun in a number of vehicles, including muscle cars, vintage roadsters, SUVs and pickup trucks and must blow away the competition. The X button is reserved for shooting weapons forward and B is for aiming behind you (for Xbox version).

Players may also use the right analog stick for a 360-degree range of motion. Weapons, ammo and other power-ups, such as health packs, appear as floating icons on the roads, which must be driven over to access.

The maps twist and turn through urban neighborhoods, each one littered with obstacles including exploding fuel tankers, street signs and strewn boxes.

For better traction, drivers are urged to "skid" with each sharp turn by hitting the brakes while steering. Skidding also adds juice to your boost gauge (the A button) to use when faster speeds are needed to edge closer to the finish line.

Winning races will unlock new locales, cars and story-based missions, such as protecting another car by escorting it and, likely inspired by the action flick "Speed," maintaining a specific speed to avoid a car bomb from going off.

In the game's defense, "187 Ride or Die" does offer a number of game modes.

Along with the single-player story campaign, players can play against one another on the same TV (via horizontal split screen) or online over the Xbox Live service.

Other modes include Death Race (the slowest driver per lap is blown up), The Hit (a target car with an escort of three cars must be destroyed), Po-Po Chase (with indestructible police cars that try to ram you off the road) and a challenging game type that puts minefields on the streets.

The hip-hop soundtrack is quite good as well. But it's not enough to save this offensive racer.

It is as embarrassing in its concept as it is uninspiring in its delivery.
(via cnn)

Google plans WiFi service

2005-09-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

Internet search leader Google is preparing to launch its own wireless Internet service, Google WiFi, according to several pages found on the company's Web site on Tuesday.

The launch of a WiFi service would move Google away from its core Internet search service and into the competitive world of Internet service providers and telecommunications giants.

Speculation about a forthcoming Google WiFi service has been rife since August, following an article in Business 2.0 magazine, but the company has refused to discussed its plans.

WiFi is an increasingly popular technology that is used to provide high-speed wireless Internet access in homes, business and public spaces like airports and coffee shops. Google launched a sponsored WiFi "hotspot" in San Francisco's Union Square district in April with a start-up called Feeva.

The FAQ says that the Google Secure Access service is in "beta," meaning that the company does not consider it a fully finished product -- similar to the company's Gmail e-mail service.

Google, which is rapidly expanding beyond its core Internet search service, introduced an instant messaging and telephony service called Google Talk in August.
(via cnn)

U3 Flash Drives Debut, Run Apps As Lilliputian PCs

2005-09-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Startup U3 LLC on Monday launched its smart drive U3 technology that lets USB-based flash drives not only store files, but also run applications.

A pair of U3 partners, Verbatim and Memorex, rolled out Store 'n' Go- and TravelDrive-branded drives, respectively, at the Demo conference, which opened Monday in Huntington Beach, Calif.

The U3 platform is aimed at mobile users or those who frequently share PCs with others, since the resulting drives are touted as complete workspaces on a key fob-sized device.

"This marks the first available plug-and-play way for consumers to carry and access their personal workspace without having to lug a laptop around," said U3 chief executive Kate Purmal in a statement. "Whether on the home or office PC, computer at a family member or a friend's house, hotel business center, print shop or Internet café, consumers will enjoy the ability to check e-mail, edit a document, view photos, play a game, listen to music from their playlist or surf the Web, all in a safe and trusted environment that's completely mobile and all stored in just one place."

Off-the-shelf applications must be modified to run from the USB drives, but on Monday Purmal demonstrated anti-virus, music playing, IM, and VoIP software running from U3-compliant flash drives.

Several USB drive makers, including Memorex, Verbatim, Kingston, and SanDisk, will begin shipping U3 devices Oct. 15, added Purmal. Memorex's drive, for example, will ship in sizes ranging from 256MB ($30) and 1GB ($90) to 2GB ($180).

The U3 platform currently works only on Windows 2000 and Windows XP PCs.
(via TechWeb)

Google Won't Remove "Failure" Link To Bush

2005-09-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

Google says it won't manually manipulate its search results, even when pranksters push unwarranted links to the top of the results list with so-called "googlebombing" tactics.

The most recent embarrassment for Google? Type "failure" into the Google search field. The number one result: President George W. Bush's official bio hosted by the White House Web site. "We've received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part," wrote Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer products on the company's blog. "In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up."

Actually, googlebombing Bush is nothing new. In late 2003, for instance, 30 or so sites with the phrase "miserable failure" linked to the same bio page; earlier that year, another googlebomb led searches for the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" to a joke page that read "The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspector mandate."

"Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service," said Google's Mayer.

Google's not the only search service to be hit. Searches on Yahoo and Ask Jeeves using the words "miserable failure" return the same Bush bio in the first spot, while "failure" typed into MSN's search puts the bio as the number two result.(via techWeb)

IBM pushes math and science education

2005-09-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

International Business Machines Corp., worried the United States is losing its competitive edge, will financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers.

The new program, being announced Friday with city and state education officials, reflects tech industry fears that U.S. students are falling behind peers from Bangalore to Beijing in the sciences.

Up to 100 IBM employees will be eligible for the program in its trial phase. The goal is to help fill shortfalls in the nation's teaching ranks, a problem expected to grow with the retirement of today's educators.

Math and science are of particular concern to companies in many U.S. industries that expect to need technical workers but see low test scores in those subjects and waning interest in science careers.

"Over a quarter-million math and science teachers are needed, and it's hard to tell where the pipeline is," said Stanley Litow, head of the IBM Foundation, the Armonk, New York-based company's community service wing. "That is like a ticking time bomb not just for technology companies, but for business and the U.S. economy."

While many companies encourage their employees to tutor schoolchildren or do other things to get involved in education, IBM believes it's the first to guide workers toward switching into a teaching career.

The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail.

The workers would have to get approval from their managers to participate. If selected, the employees would be allowed to take a leave of absence from the company, which includes full benefits and up to half their salary, depending on length of service.
via cnn

Keyboard Click-and-Clack Reveals Passwords

2005-09-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Attackers armed with electronic equipment that costs less than $10 can sniff out what's typed on keyboards simply by recording keystroke sounds, a trio of researchers said in a soon-to-be-published paper.

In the paper, Doug Tygar, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and two PhD students, the husband-wife team of Feng Zhou and Li Zhuang, outlined how they came up with software and used off-the-shelf tools to record keystroke sounds, then turn them into a transcript that's accurate 96 percent of the time.

At the least, said the researchers, password security should be beefed up to take into account possible audio-based attacks like the one they described. "The practice of relying only on typed passwords or even long passphrases should be reexamined," wrote Tygar, Zhou, and Zhuang.

Their research is based on the fact that each key makes a slightly different sound when struck, thanks to the angle at which it's pressed and its location above the keyboard supporting plate.

Once the different sounds had been recorded, Tygar and his associates separated them into classes, then mapped them to the most likely keystrokes based on the English language's constraints, including the limited number of key combinations to make words and the limited number of words because of its grammar. Finally, they used spelling and grammar checking software to refine the transcriptions.

"The key insight in our work is that the typed text is often not random," said Tygar.
via TechWeb

Yahoo Begins Testing E-Mail Upgrade

2005-09-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

"Last year was the year of storage in e-mail, but now the real competition seems to be about who has the coolest user interfaces," Radicati Group analyst Marcel Nienhuis said.

Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday will begin testing a sleeker version of its free e-mail service, shifting to a more dynamic design that mimics the look and feel of a computer desktop application like Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook.

The company plans to invite a "sizable" portion of its current e-mail accountholders to experiment with the retooled service, said Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon, who declined to be more specific.

If the test goes well, all of Yahoo's e-mail users -- an audience that spans tens of millions -- eventually will be converted to the new system.

For the past two years, Yahoo and its main Internet rivals -- Google Inc. , AOL and Microsoft's MSN.com -- have been unveiling a series of upgrades aimed at attracting and retaining their Web audiences so they remain appealing outlets for advertisers.

Yahoo's test audience also will use a computer mouse to "drag and drop" e-mails from one folder to another and search all the content, including attachments, stored in the inbox.

"Our competition has been doing some interesting things in e-mail, but we think we have leapfrogged them all with all these new features," said Ethan Diamond, an Oddpost co-founder who works for Yahoo as a director of product management.

The Next Internet Gold Rush?

2005-09-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

When online auction giant eBay said on Monday that it was purchasing Internet telephone provider Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion, reactions fell largely into two camps: Those who saw the deal as recognition of the money-making potential and transformative power of Internet telephony; and those who questioned the wisdom of paying billions for a company whose sales hover in the tens of millions.

The wisdom of the purchase will be debated for some time, but what's not debatable is how hot the Internet phone business is, and how mainstream tech giants are scrambling to get a piece of the action.

"The next several years should be full of these kinds of acquisitions," says independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan. "Telephone service is a great add-on service to a variety of businesses. The rules have changed. Since companies offering VoIP can be acquired by non-phone companies, there are many more possibilities."

There is certainly no lack of acquisition targets. There are more than 1,100 Internet phone providers in North America alone, according to telecom-gear maker Sandvine. And there's demand to match: Right now, there are about 2.8 million residential local VoIP subscribers in the US, according to the Yankee Group, and that number should more than double to seven million in 2006 and explode to 17.5 million by 2008.

Who might be interested in buying these providers? Internet phone service is a natural fit with e-mail and instant messaging tools offered by companies like Microsoft. All three companies reportedly had discussions with Skype before eBay made its move. They've also made other purchases of companies with VoIP technology. In June, Yahoo! bought Milpitas, Calif.-based Dialpad Communications, and in August, Microsoft bought Teleo, a small San Francisco-based VoIP provider.

In June, telecommunications service provider IDT announced its intention to buy the outstanding shares of Newark, N.J.-based Net2Phone that it didn't already own.

Of course, buying a VoIP provider isn't the only way into the Internet phone business. You could always build your own.

"The barriers of entry in the phone business used to be prohibitively high, and the phone companies were in effect monopolies," says Synergy Research Group President Jeremy Duke. "VoIP technology brings down the barriers to entry and levels the playing field. You and I could start up a VoIP phone company tomorrow, and the product we would offer would not be any different than Skype's or Vonage's."

Companies like Skype and Vonage do have an advantage, though--they're already up and running, and their services have brand recognition and considerable buzz. It's a virtual certainty that more of the 1,100 VoIP upstarts will be bought or will fold as the market grows. The market may be big, but not so big that it can support 1,100 companies with low barriers to entry.

South Korea Pushes Mobile Broadband

2005-09-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take a visitor long to notice that South Koreans have some of
the best telecommunications in the world. Cellphones work flawlessly, even
in the depths of Seoul's subway system. Head-phoned teenagers hunch over
virtual battlefields displayed on multimedia PCs in cramped Internet game
rooms known as "baangs," which are themselves tethered to the Net by optical
fiber.

Meanwhile, at more laid-back cafés, open laptops are the norm, as fast Wi-Fi
signals share the air with the fragrant scent of fresh-brewed coffee.

It's hard to imagine South Korea needing even more connectivity. Yet the republic is making a collective bet that it does. Even as leading carriers like SK Telecom, in Seoul, are investing heavily to improve data rates on their cellular networks, which already are state of the art, the government—with the full support of the nation's wireless providers and equipment makers—has pushed a competing technology called "wireless broadband," or WiBro for short.

A mobile version of regular broadband—take a DSL modem, cut its copper umbilical cord, and put it on wheels—WiBro is fundamentally similar to the standard known as WiMax, which is being developed by the IEEE 802.16 working group [see News, "WiMax and Wi-Fi: Separate and Unequal," IEEE Spectrum, March 2004]. But WiBro allows the user to work a spreadsheet or watch a movie while trucking along at near-highway speeds, whereas WiMax users must stay put.

WiBro promises much higher data rates than you can get even from a third-generation (3G) cellular system—an initial rate of 1 to 3 megabits per second, versus the 384 kilobits per second typical in advanced mobile phone networks today. And the WiBro download rate may eventually rise to about 18 Mb/s, fast enough for even high-definition television, as well as voice, video, and old-fashioned e-mail and Web traffic.

Betting that many of its mobile data-services customers will not be content for long with mere 3G speeds, SK Telecom plans to establish WiBro service in South Korea's major cities. Users, as they roam, will be able to toggle between WiBro and 3G, says Joo Sik Lee, vice president of the company's Network R&D Center, in Seoul. Thus, bored bus and subway commuters will be able to tune in to their favorite radio stations, watch on-demand movies, and play games online.

Additionally, a major Internet service provider without a physical network of its own, such as EarthLink or AOL Broadband, could go for WiBro. In January, for example, SK Telecom and EarthLink announced a partnership that could eventually bring WiBro service to EarthLink's 5 million U.S. customers.

Japan's Probe within 12 miles of Asteroid

2005-09-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Bringing Japan's most complex space mission near its climax, a probe is within 12 miles of an asteroid almost 180 million miles from Earth in an unprecedented rendezvous designed to retrieve rocks from its surface.

The Hayabusa probe, launched in May 2003, will hover around the asteroid for about three months before making its brief landing to recover the samples in early November. The asteroid is located between Earth and Mars.

"The mission is going very smoothly and proceeding as planned," Atsushi Wako, a spokesman for JAXA, Japan's space agency, said Tuesday.

The asteroid, informally named Itokawa, after Hideo Itokawa, the father of rocket science in Japan, is only 2,300 feet long and 1,000 feet wide, and has a gravitational pull one-one-hundred-thousandth of Earth's.

Though it took two years to get there, the asteroid is among the closest neighbors to Earth other than the moon.

The probe's first mission will be to survey the asteroid with cameras and infrared imaging gear. It has already begun sending back images, Wako said.

When Hayabusa moves in for the rendezvous, expected to be over in a matter of seconds, it will pull up close enough to fire a small bullet into the asteroid and collect the ejected fragments in a funnel-like device. It won't be coming back with much - the amount of material planners hope to capture wouldn't even fill a teaspoon.
Associated Press

Sun Micro announces new AMD Opteron-based servers

2005-09-12T00:55:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems Inc. introduced new industry-standard servers that it said will more than triple the amount of the computer server market it can address as the computer maker seeks to rebuild momentum lost to rivals since the dot-com bust nearly five years ago.

The servers, named X2100, X4100 and X4200, use Opteron microprocessors - the brains of computers - from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. , Intel Corp.'s principal rival in the microprocessor business.

The new servers, which can house up to two dual-core Opteron chips, are in addition to two-processor and four-processor Opteron servers that Sun already sells. The company said that the X2100, X4100 and X4200 are cheaper, faster, use less power and take up less space than comparable servers made by rival companies, such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

"We decided to get much more serious about the industry-standard server market," said John Fowler, who runs Sun's network systems group, which includes the new products.

Industry-standard servers, also known as x86 servers are those that use either Intel, AMD or Intel-compatible chips as their data processing engines. Sun, along with rival International Business Machines Corp., also sells higher-end servers that use their own in-house designed processors.

The servers run Sun's Solaris operating system, which the company recently open-sourced to the software developer community, as well as commercially available versions of Linux, the freely available operating systems, among other operating systems.

"Sun now supports 10 operating systems because that's what the market expects," said Andy Bechtolsheim, chief architect and senior vice president in Sun's network systems group.
posted by reuters.

Which one is the best mp3 player ?

2005-09-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

Apple iPod 60 GB

The features of the machine are Intuitive photo viewing; displays album art; adds color to your iPod experience; mammoth 30GB or 60GB hard drive; lets you view photos and listen to music simultaneously; speedy performance; latest firmware update along with optional Camera Connector will allow direct digital-camera transfers of photos, which will be viewable on iPod; solid battery life.

Package doesn't include iPhoto 4.x, FireWire cable, A/V cable, or dock; slightly heavier and thicker than fourth-generation iPod.

It is for listening to MP3, AAC, Audible, and other audio files; viewing photos and slide shows accompanied by music; storing contacts, calendar, and other personal data.

It is for persons who are Photo enthusiasts and those who want the most expensive and most capable iPod to date.

Business use of it is storing images and slides for slide-show presentations.

Essential extras are that nice, big headphones; iPod Camera Connector; digital camera; latest firmware update that allows digital photo transfer; iPhoto 4.x; A/V cable; dock; better carrying case.

The iPod Photo is a beautiful and versatile device with a new, affordable price. The 30GB version is a particularly good value at only $50 more than the audio-only 20GB version.

Its price is $399.99

Archos Gmini XS200

The good features are 20GB of storage for a 5GB price; blazing file transfers; excellent on-device playlist creation; includes bookmark/resume feature.

The bad features are
not recognized by popular desktop music managers; no voice recorder or FM tuner; so-so battery life; uncomfortable earbuds.

It is for listening to music and transporting data files.

It is for anyone seeking a high-capacity music player for a bargain-basement price.

Business use of it is transporting or backing up data.

Essential extras are comfortable headphones.

The Gmini XS200 doesn't have a lot of extra features, but it's still an incredible bargain.
Its price is $214.99

Sony Network Walkman NW-HD5

Sony's 20GB NW-HD5 and the iPod are both dead simple to use, but the HD5 is smaller, and its removable battery lasts much longer.

The good features are supercompact and durable design; excellent sound quality; intuitive tactile interface; removable battery; stellar battery life.

The bad features are no extra features, such as FM radio or recording; ATRAC3 is the only DRM option; must use SonicStage software for music transfer.

It is for listening to MP3 and ATRAC3 files.

It is for person who looking for a stylish and compact high-capacity player that has excellent sound quality and battery life, and those who use Sony's Connect music store. People who want a laundry list of features should look elsewhere.

Essential extras are nice, big headphones; real carrying case.

If you want a slick alternative to the iPod and you're into Sony's Connect music store, then the NW-HD5 is a stellar choice.

Its price is $279.95

Creative Zen Touch (40GB)

The good features are awesome battery life; innovative Touch Pad; excellent sound quality; simple and durable design, decent value.

The bad features are that battery is not removable unlike another Zen model; some convenient menu features found in past Zens not included; LCD contrast could use work.

It is for storing and listening to lots of MP3, WMA, WAV, and data files.

It is for anybody who wants to carry their entire digital music collection on a long-lasting, great-sounding device.

Essential extras are
optional FM tunervoice-recording remote; good heaphones.

Lately, Creative has been churning out players with great battery life and excellent sound quality. The Zen Touch offers all this and more, making it a legitimate challenger to the Apple iPod.

Its price is $259.99

Cowon iAudio X5 (30GB)

The good features are small size; video player with 260,000-color LCD; customizable wallpaper; FM radio; line-in and voice recording; photo viewer; text-file reader; excellent sound quality; reads photos directly from digital cameras; compatible with OGG and FLAC formats.

The bad features are must plug in an adapter to attach AC, line-in, and USB cables; so-so control layout; can't autosync music with a PC; can't browse by artist, album, or genre; must convert videos to a special format before playing; no slide-show mode or music while viewing photos; no auto presets for FM radio; no compatibility with online music stores or subscription services (yet).

It is for listening to music and watching videos on the go; viewing photos; reading text files; listening to FM radio; recording voice memos or audio from a separate source.

It is for
Music and video lovers who want to play their media on the road; anyone looking to record from a separate audio source.

Business use of it is recording voice memos, interviews, or speeches.

Essential extras are nice earbuds or headphones; A/V cables.

The iAudio X5 looks like an iPod killer on paper, but this palm-size video and music player suffers from poor music browsing and some key design misste ps.
Its price is $329.99

Everything About IBM Lenova ThinkPad

2005-09-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

An interlocking frame around the display distributes pressure evenly, so there is less chance of breakage, dead pixels and those nasty imprints on your screen.

Why is ThinkPad is black ?
The human eye is drawn more by white on black than black on white. So it is easier to read white letters on black keys than the other way around. Also, it looks cool.

The blue button helps users get back up and running by themselves after a system crash or virus. It is a built-in help desk. Only smaller.

ThinkPad in space
After several months exposed to the vacuum of space, when a compartment of Mir was punctured, the only damage ThinkPad suffered was a burned-out back light.

ThinkPad at 29,035 feet
On May 17,2003, Atsushi Yamada's ThinkPad was the only functional notebook at the summit of Everest.

The Embedded Security Subsystem protects your data from hackers by storing the master decryption key in silicon. If the chip is removed, the data is destroyed.

The Antidote Delivery Manager lets IT deliver patches to every user on the network after a virus attack, whether they are switched on or not. Even if they already down and effected.

The TrackPoint took two years of user research to perfect. It is raised to protect the wrist. And it comes in there shape options to suit every user's individual preference.

The HDD shock absorber acts like a car bumber, cushioning the hard drive to help protect your data, whether your ThinkPad is on or off. It provides 30% more protection than the case alone.

An integrated fingerprint reader means you don't have to memorise hundreds of passwords. Combined with the embedded security chip, it makes ThinkPad the most secure standard notebook there is.

A keyboard tray helps keep spills from reaching the circuits underneath and a drain hole helps to siphon liquid safely away from the motherboard and out tour ThinkPad.

The UltraConnect antane works with tri-mode technology to increase mobility.It supports frequencies for improved wirelwss LAN connectivity.

A virtual magnifying glass lets you magnify portions of the screen at the touch of a button, easing eye strain.

The ThinkLight is an LED light built into the ThinkPad frame. It uses less battery power than a USB light, so you can work in the dark on long flights without draining your battary or disturbing those around you.

Secure Data Disposal is like a shredder for old hard drives. It securely deletes all information, so you don't have to destroy used drives when you upgrade your notebooks.

The award-winning keyboard has been subjected to a series of ergonomic tests, to make it one of the most comfortable you will ever use.

Doors on the PC card slots protect against dust and paper clips. Other notebook use removable plastic covers, which are easily lost or fotgotten.

ThinkPad is in the permanent design collection of tte Museum of Modern Art in New York. Why? 1000 design awards. 50 patents. One of the best-selling notebook in the history of personal computing. That is why.

Automatic data backup sends your saved data to a hidden area on your hard drive, where it is harder for viruses (and hackers) to reach

Stainless steel hinges keep the ThinkPad display upright, even during airplane turbulance. They also help resist breakage.

Sony Fights Apple IPod by Offering New Walkman

2005-09-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Sony said Thursday that it would sell advanced Walkman portable music players this year, aiming to move out of Apple Computer's shadow in a market that Sony created a quarter of a century ago.

The announcement came hours after Apple introduced the pencil-thin iPod nano digital player and a long-anticipated mobile phone that plays music in a bid to extend its domination of the market.

"We are not at all satisfied with where we are now," said Koichiro Tsujino, co-president of Connect, a Sony unit that makes portable music players and offers online music distribution services.

"I understand a certain company made an announcement earlier today," he added at a news conference. "We will accelerate our challenge with these new models."

Sony, which created the portable music market with its cassette-playing Walkmans, has lost out to Apple in the portable digital era as it focused on its mainstay CD and Mini Disc players.

Sony will offer two music players based on hard disks - one with a storage capacity of 20 gigabytes and the other with 6 gigabytes - and three flash- memory-based players that will keep the existing models' perfume bottle appearance.

The 6-gigabyte model is Sony's first hard-disk player with a small capacity. Apple's iPod nano comes in 2- and 4-gigabyte capacities.

Sony's new models will add the ability to select and play the songs a user listens to most, and also to pick songs released in a certain year - a function Sony calls the "time machine shuffle."

The models will go on sale in Japan on Nov. 19 and overseas by the end of the year.

The 20-gigabyte hard-disk model, able to store up to 13,000 songs, is expected to be priced around $320 in Japan, Sony said.

Sony aims to sell 4.5 million hard-disk and flash-memory portable music players in the year to next March, up from 850,000 a year earlier.

Apple has sold about 22 million iPods worldwide in four years.
By Reuters.

Taiwan Court Imprisons Operators of MP3 Download Website

2005-09-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

Three operators of a Taiwan website offering MP3 music downloads have been imprisoned for two to three years each for copyright infringement, and one user received a lesser term.
ADVERTISEMENT

The executives of Kuro -- Taiwan's largest music file-swapping Internet site -- were also each fined three million Taiwan dollars (91,600 US dollars), said Liu Shou-sun, a spokesman for Taipei district court.

"Kuro has violated copyright law in offering its members programs to download MP3 music," Liu said Friday.

Chen Shou-teng, the president of Kuro, received a two-year jail sentence, while chief executive officer Chen Kuo-hua and general manager Chen Kuo-hsiung each were handed a three-year jail term, Liu said.

A Kuro member who had downloaded more than 900 songs was sentenced to four months' jail with a three-year probation period, he said.

The ruling, Taiwan's first crimial verdict for illegal MP3 music downloads, came days after file-swapping site Kazaa lost a similar case in Australia.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Taiwan -- which filed the copyright infringement suit on behalf of several local music companies -- immediately hailed the ruling.

"We have warned Kuro to stop its invasion of copyright and urged all Kuro members to stop using its services," said a spokesman for IFPI Taiwan.

Kuro said it would appeal the case.

"We wanted to cooperate with the record industry, but we were denied," said Chen Kuo-hua, the CEO.

Intel Narrows Income Target Range

2005-09-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

Intel Corp , the world's largest microchip maker, on Thursday narrowed the range of its quarterly revenue forecast but left the midpoint unchanged, saying business remained within expectations.

Intel said it expects third-quarter revenue to be in the range of $9.8 billion to $10 billion, tightening a forecast it issued in July calling for revenue of $9.6 billion to $10.2 billion.

"The company continues to see double-digit year-over-year growth driven primarily by strong demand for notebook PC platforms," the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement.

The news came the same day as another bellwether chip maker, Texas Instruments Inc. , raised its financial targets for the current quarter, citing broad-based demand. TI is the world's top maker of semiconductors used in mobile phones.

Also on Thursday, National Semiconductor Corp. , a maker of analog chips used in cellular phones and other electronics, reported quarterly results that handily topped expectations and forecast revenue well above what Wall Street had been expecting according to reuters.