AMD Sets Summer Ship Date for Quad-Core Chips

AMD's Barcelona is the first x86 CPU to integrate four cores on a single silicon die, according to the company. AMD on Friday confirmed it would ship Barcelona in August. Initial models will run at a range of frequencies up to 2.0 Ghz. By the fourth quarter of 2007, the company said it expects its native quad-core processors to scale to higher frequencies.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced Friday that it will begin shipping its quad-core Opteron processor, dubbed "Barcelona," in August. Enterprise-level server manufacturers including Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) have committed to using the standard and low-watt special edition (SE) versions of the chip, giving the chipmaker a much needed boost against archrival Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and its Xeon 5300 Clovertown quad-core chip.

"Barcelona represents a very important product for AMD," Shane Rau, an IDC analyst, told TechNewsWorld. "AMD's poor overall showing in [the first quarter of 2007] was partially due to Intel's recovery in the server processor space. After [the second quarter], we'll begin to see if Barcelona can stabilize AMD's server processor business."

The chip also marks the first time AMD will have produced both standard and low-power parts that are immediately available upon the launch of a new processor.

Barcelona Games

Previously called the "Quad-Core Opteron," Barcelona is the world's first x86 CPU to integrate four processing cores on a single die of silicon, according to AMD. The enhanced architecture enables the processor to deliver improved performance and performance-per-watt over existing processor architectures while at the same time offering backwards compatibility with existing AMD Opteron platforms, the company said.

Initial models, available in August, will run at a range of frequencies up to 2.0 Ghz. By the fourth quarter of 2007, the company said it expects its native quad-core processors to scale to higher frequencies in both standard and SE versions.

"Barcelona represents very high levels of integration," Rau noted. "It has four processor cores, three levels of cache and an onboard memory controller, features which illustrate how far process technologies have come."

Efficiency Counts

The chip, designed to operate within the same thermal envelopes as present generation AMD Opteron processors, can provide a performance increase of up to 70 percent on certain database applications and as much as 40 percent on certain floating point applications, AMD estimated. Subsequent higher frequency processors are expected to greatly add to this performance advantage, the company added.

"More than ever before, customers are expecting energy efficiency and performance-per-watt leadership as much as absolute performance. With this new reality of computing, greater performance at the expense of greater power consumption is no longer an option," said Randy Allen, corporate vice president of the server and workstation division at AMD.

"AMD has prioritized production of our low power and standard power products because our customers and ecosystem demand it, and we firmly believe that the introduction of our native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor will deliver on the promise of the highest levels of performance-per-watt the industry has ever seen," he continued.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets Now Has Folders!

The folks over at Google have made some nice improvements to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets internet application. In particular, there are now folders - something you may have been waiting for. After you create a new folder using the "New" drop down menu, you can move files into it through dragging and dropping. The default display is still a listing of all your documents, but the items are now grouped into sections, such as "Today", "Yesterday", "Earlier this months", etc., depending on when you last time worked on the files.

Wikipedia Cited Death of Pro Wrestler's Wife Before Police Knew

An anonymous posting on Wikipedia about the death of the wife of professional wrestler Chris Benoit appeared on the site several hours before authorities discovered her body. The mysterious posting raises questions of who knew about the deaths of Benoit, his wife and his son, and if so, when.

In what was a poorly thought through prank or an eerie forewarning, someone apparently reported the death of Chris Benoit's wife on Wikipedia Latest News about Wikipedia -- the online open source encyclopedia -- more than 14 hours before police discovered her body, along with her son's and husband's, at the pro wrestler's Fayette County, Ga., home.

An anonymous user edited the biography of the wrestler on Monday at 12:01 a.m., said Sandra Ordonez, communication manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia.

Authorities discovered the bodies at the Benoit's Green Meadow Lane home that afternoon, at 2:30 p.m.

The Mystery

The Monday morning posting said: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the [ECW] Extreme Championship Wrestling Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

Adding to the mystery, the anonymous poster used a computer whose Internet Protocol, or IP, address was traced to Stamford, Conn., where the headquarters for Benoit's employer, for World Wrestling Entertainment, is located.

Investigators think Benoit, 40, killed his wife Friday and his 7-year-old son Daniel Saturday. He placed Bibles next to their bodies, authorities say. Sometime Sunday he hanged himself using a weight-machine pulley.

The posting now raises questions of who, if anyone, knew about the deaths and if so, when.

True or a Hoax?

"We are looking at that, trying to track down the IP address," said Fayette Sheriff's Lt. Tammy Pope in a statement to WAGA-TV. "It's either true or it's a hoax."

Anyone can post and edit content on the Web encyclopedia. Furthermore, an IP address, which is a unique set of numbers that every machine connected to the Internet carries, does not necessarily have to be broadcast from where it is registered.

The IP address from which the 12:01 a.m. addition was made had been flagged for "vandalizing" other Wikipedia entries in the past, ABC News reported.

A Reliable Source?

Earlier this month, the same IP user also edited a post about WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero Jr., a close friend of Benoit's who reportedly was the recipient of at least one of the text messages Benoit sent over the weekend before the discovery of the bodies.

In that edit, the IP user took out a damaging description of Guerrero from the post, ABC News said.

Wikipedia does recruit volunteer editors who troll the entries to ensure that facts within posts are properly attributed.

According to a timeline posted on Wikinews, which is the news source of the nonprofit foundation, within an hour of the 12:01 post, the edit had been changed with the comment: "Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something."

A Locked Entry

Another hour went by. Then a second anonymous edit, using what appears to be an Australian Internet service provider, added the attribution: "according to several pro wrestling Web sites."

Again, the edit was changed after 20 minutes with the comment: "Saying 'several pro wrestling websites' is still not reliable information."

The posting was brought to the attention of the foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., and an employee left a message with Fayetteville, Ga., authorities about 11 a.m. Tuesday.

"We provided the IP address, and I guess they were investigating," Ordonez said.

The Chris Benoit entry, updated hundreds of times this week, has now been "locked" to prevent further edits by posters.

Beta Release of Google Desktop For Linux Available

Google has released the Linux version of its popular desktop search engine Google Desktop. Both RPM and DEB installation packages are available. Google Desktop officially supports Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, Fedora Core 6, Debian 4.0, and Red Flag 5, but will probably work on most modern Linux systems.

Viruses that start music in Windows Media Player and read the infected text

This week’s PandaLabs malware report looks at three new malicious codes designed to compromise the security of computers: two worms and a Trojan.

Gronev.A is a worm with a taste for music. On infecting a computer, it opens Windows Media Player and plays a song called ‘Lagu’. It also opens an MS-DOS window with the word ‘Vergon,’, when CMD console is executed. While showing this window, Gronev.A creates a new user account on the system, which cannot be accessed by the legitimate user.

It also creates several folders on the system called Backup, Doc, Secret and tools, and copies itself to them. In order to spread, this worm also copies itself to every system drive.

Finally, Gronev.A performs other malicious actions, such as closing Internet Explorer or modifying the Windows Registry to ensure it is run whenever the computer is started up.

Antihost.A spreads by copying itself to all the physical drives connected to the computer. If it copies itself to a USB memory stick, the worm will infect every computer that the device is connected to.

If no DVD or CD is inserted in the drive when it infects the computer, Windows shows a message asking user to insert it.

Antihost.A creates several hidden files on the infected computer and creates a key in the Registry Windows to ensure it is run whenever the computer is started up.

Finally, BotVoice.A is a Trojan that uses the Windows text reader to play the following sentence over and over again: “You has been infected I repeat You has been infected and your system files has been deletes. Sorry. Have a Nice Day and bye bye”.

While it uses this original way of informing users that they have been infected, BotVoice.A deletes all shortcuts from the desktop and from the “My Documents” folder, as well as all the files on the C drive until it finds something it cannot delete. Then, it stops eliminating files but continues to play the voice message.

It also modifies the Windows Registry in order to prevent any program from running, rendering the computer unusable.

BotVoice.A spreads like most Trojans, that is, it is downloaded by other malware or via a malicious web page, through storage devices, such as USB memory sticks, CD-ROMs or floppy disks, via email, via P2P networks, etc.

With iPhone Launch, a Hacker's To-do List

When Apple Inc. introduced the latest version of its Safari browser two weeks ago, it took the hacking community just hours to start reporting bugs in the beta code. On Friday, the iPhone is likely to get even closer scrutiny from many of the same security researchers. Here's a list of the top items on the typical iPhone hacker's to-do list.

1) Fuzz the Web browser

Apple has made it clear that if you're an independent software developer that wants to write programs for the iPhone, you're going to have to write Web applications rather than software that runs on the iPhone itself. And as the introduction of the Safari 3.0 beta showed last week, Web browser flaws are easy to find.

Security researcher Tom Ferris says he's paid someone to stand in line for him in order to get an early crack at the iPhone. He believes that the iPhone's Safari browser will be similar to the 3.0 beta. And thanks to the iPhone's Wi-Fi support, he expects to be able to run "fuzzing" software that can bombard the iPhone with data over his local network, looking for errors that will cause it to crash.

Ferris says that Safari's support of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Portable Document Format may provide other avenues for Web attacks. "I'm ready to go," Ferris said. "I've already found some SVG bugs in OS X."

Hackers like Ferris said they discovered nearly 20 bugs in Safari, just hours after the 3.0 release. How many of those will cause the iPhone browser to crash is unclear, but the bigger question is whether or not they will lead to malicious code that the bad guys can actually run on the iPhone.

2) Find a way to debug

Because it wants non-Apple applications to run through the browser, rather than on the iPhone itself, Apple isn't releasing software development tools for its new phone. From a security perspective, this may actually be good news for iPhone users because without any debugging software to tell them what's really going on inside the computer's memory, it will be hard for hackers to develop malicious exploit code to run on the platform. So most iPhone bugs won't do much more than crash the browser.

Though sophisticated hackers could conceivably develop debugging tools for the iPhone it will take more time for real threats to emerge, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye Digital Security. "What you end up having to do is hardware-based debugging which requires physically taking apart the iPhone and using specialized... equipment," he said. "This raises the bar on being able to successfully execute code and hack an iPhone."

3) Take a close look at iPhone's networking technologies

David Maynor, the chief technology officer of Errata Security Inc., made headlines (and enemies in the Mac community) last year by claiming to have discovered wireless bugs that affected the Macintosh. He says that the iPhone's wireless stack is one of the first things that he will be looking at Friday. "I have yet to meet a driver that hasn't had bugs, " he said.

But Maynor is also interested in taking a look at how the iPhone uses Bluetooth, which has been a common source of security problems in other devices.

Because Apple hasn't previously developed its own mobile phone, there is bound to be lots of new and possibly buggy networking code in the device. "One of the things we'll look at as well is the new code that will have to be developed for a phone platform," said Neel Mehta, a researcher with IBM Corp.'s Internet Security Systems division. "With any piece of new code there's always a risk that there could be vulnerabilities in it."

Web Space Where Religion and Social Networking Mee

Caitlin Todd enjoys making friends on social networking Web sites, but is turned off by content that she believes is inappropriate on a number of popular pages.

So Caitlin, 16, meets people only on Christian social sites like www.hisholyspace.com and www.xianz.com, where profanity is prohibited, prayer is urged and content is strictly monitored.

“I use Xianz because it is a place that I can come to and have fellowship with friends. Sharing God’s word and helping others," Caitlin wrote in an e-mail message. “Xianz is like a big church!”

Numerous religious-themed social networking groups are now on the Internet, allowing users to create prayer groups, discuss movies and find potential significant others. Creators and users say the sites are family-friendly alternatives to networking sites like MySpace, which says it has more than 100,000 religious groups but also contains content that some, like Robbie Davidson, founder of Xianz.com, find offensive.

“There’s a lot of people tired of seeing half-naked women in ads” on networking sites, said Mr. Davidson, who started his site last year. He says it has about 30,000 members. “I wanted to provide a safe alternative that was family friendly for the Christian demographic,” he said.

Xianz.com bills itself as a “Faith-Based MySpace,” while www.mypraize.com calls itself a “Christian MySpace Alternative.”

Not all the sites are Christian-oriented. Muslim users can log onto www.muslimspace.com, www.naseeb.com and www.muslimsocial.com. Jewish sites include www.shmooze.com and www.koolanoo.com.

Many of the sites are patrolled by users or employees who report users who post obscenities, sexually explicit content or derogatory language. Mr. Davidson said he had kicked people off the site and, in one instance, reported a user to the authorities.

Last month, MySpace agreed to hand over the names, addresses and online profiles of convicted sex offenders after attorneys general from eight states demanded that the site, which is owned by Fox Interactive Media, do so. MySpace also deleted the profiles of 7,000 convicted sex offenders.

Judith Donath, an associate professor at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies social networking, said many users of social networks explored only parts of the sites that were of interest of them. New niche networking Web sites are an extension of that and part of that, she said.

“I imagine groups that break off find social-networking technology useful and want to maintain a fairly closed group that is not interested in interacting with a large group of people whose lives are antithetical to their own,” Professor Donath said. “This might happen especially if someone has a very specific set of cultural mores and wants a particular symbolism, reminding everyone what the site stands for and believes in.”

Susan Botros of Louisville, Ky., joined www.muslimspace.com last year after receiving some “nasty e-mails about the religion” on MySpace, which she had joined to promote the Muslim faith.

Ms. Botros said she felt comfortable on muslimspace.com and delved into religious topics that non-Muslims would be unfamiliar with.

“I like it for the simple fact that I feel like I’m part of a big family,” she said. “I can post things there that if I posted on MySpace people wouldn’t understand.”

Reuven Koret, an Internet entrepreneur who founded www.shmooze.com, got the idea for the site after helping to create an African-American-focused Web site.

“I thought this seems like something good for far-flung Jewish people to explain and connect people to the state of Israel,” Mr. Koret said.

The site has about 5,000 members and allows them to delve into different aspects of the faith.

“It gives us the ability to get a little more into the diversity of Jewish content and Jewish groups,” Mr. Koret said. “People who meet at Shmooze have at least one thing in common, and that creates a feeling of intimacy.”

While the Web sites allow users to branch into a larger religious network, some worry that it might weaken local faith communities.

“Can this diminish the person’s experience of their local community and local church?” asked Mark Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ms. Botros said she considered muslimspace.com to be an extension of her religious community, and often shared some of the things she encountered on the site with members of her mosque and children at the Muslim school where she teaches.

“I take what I get online and bring it back to the people here,” she said.

Shawn Ireland, 22, of Mishawaka, Ind., uses www.holypal.com, to discuss matters of faith with others, and learns from people who might not agree with him.

“I just like being able to talk to other people about the Lord,” Mr. Ireland said. “It’s a place you can go and always have someone to talk to, whether you agree or not.”

Cybercriminals Playing Mind Games With Users

Think mind games are only for dating and creepy movies?


Think again. According to researchers at McAfee, a new study shows that cybercriminals use psychological games to scam users. In his study, "Mind Games", Dr. James Blascovich, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, focuses on multiple common spam scams and looks at how cybercriminals use fear, greed, and lust to steal personal and financial information.

"Scam spam works best by providing recipients with a sense of familiarity and legitimacy, either by creating the illusion that the e-mail is from a friend or colleague, or providing plausible warnings from a respected institution," Dr. Blascovich wrote. "Once the victim opens the e-mail, criminals use two basic motivational processes, approach and avoidance, or a combination of the two, to persuade victims to click on dangerous links, provide personal information, or download risky files."

He also added that by scamming $20 from just half of 1% of the U.S. population, cybercriminals can earn $15 million each day and nearly $5.5 billion in a year. That rings up to be a powerful attraction for scam artists.

One key to the scammers' success is familiarity, according to Blascovich's study, which was backed up by a similar report that McAfee commissioned. One example is phishing scams, which fraudulently acquire sensitive information, like usernames, passwords, and financial data, by disguising the phony e-mails as being from a familiar or nationally recognized bank, credit card company, or even an online auction site.

McAfee reported in an online release that its Avert Labs researchers discovered that the number of phishing Web sites increased by 784% in the first half of 2007.

Popular sites also are increasingly victimized, according to the Blascovich report. For example, in December 2006, cybercriminals targeted the MySpace site and used a worm to convert legitimate links to one that lured consumers to a phishing site designed specifically to steal personal information.

"Along with the alarming increase in phishing e-mails, we are also seeing more sophisticated messages that can fool all but the most highly trained surfer," said David Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee Avert Labs, in a written statement. "While earlier phishing e-mails often included typos, awkward language, and minor graphical mistakes, newer scams appear to be more legitimate, with slicker graphics and copy that closely mirrors the language used by respected institutions."

But scammers aren't just going with feigning familiarity. Some are trying a different tactic -- fear.

Subject lines like "Urgent Security Notification" and "Your billing account records are out of date," make people worry that if they don't respond, they'll get into financial trouble. Other lures, like "Must Complete and Submit" or "You Are Missing Out," are less blatant but similarly trick users into thinking that without taking action, they're going to lose out, the report added.

And, of course, still other scammers take advantage of the lovelorn. Blascovich reported that a subject line like, "Why spend another week lonely?" preys on people who are feeling lonely and insecure. McAfee offers information about phishing scams and other security threats on its Web site.

Why I'm Not Getting an iPhone

The iPhone hype is so intense right now, I think people will be buying this phone based on hype alone. I mean, is the phone really that great? Our duty is to keep you informed regarding details we come across, so the more I read about the iPhone, the less I want it.

At a glance, the device looks fantastic, features sound fun, and there's no doubt this phone is the "it" phone this year. But realistically, would you pay $500-$600 for any other phone? Like many of you, I'm still debating whether to buy an iPhone or not, so I've compiled a list of cons (since the pros are obvious) just to give myself a reality-check come Friday night.

  • Price/Storage: Probably the biggest reason to wait is the price.The iPhone will retail in stores for $500 (4GB) and $600 (8GB) — AND you still have to sign a new two-year agreement. Don't expect this phone to replace your iPod either. The top-of-the-line $600, 8GB iPhone only holds 2,000 songs, and only a handful of videos and full-length movies. I also don't understand why you have to buy the iPhone at full price, and still sign a two-year contract. You could easily get a comparable phone actually running on a 3G network like a Treo 750 for $199 with a two-year contract, or an 80GB video iPod for almost half the price.

  • Plans: What's really bothering me about this is AT&T is playing into all this hype too, forgetting about its customers. I called AT&T today to find out more details about switching carriers, and the rep was clueless. Come on guys, we needed pricing details about a month before the phone went on sale so we could estimate costs. Why is the company being so secretive? We know the phone is launching on Friday, and we know what it does. So why did it wait so long to reveal service plans? At least now we know getting an iPhone isn't going to be cheap. Chris Null outlined the cost of each service plan, the cheapest plan being $60/mo for 450 minutes. He says that in two years, you'll end up paying close to $2,000 for service alone. Plus there is that $36 activation fee, and a two-year contract on top of that. Those who already have an AT&T account can expect to pay an additional $20-$30 for the "iPhone plan" which includes Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS text messages, and unlimited data since there is no voice-only plan. And if you think you can get the iPhone to use without service, think again. Apple's web site says a two-year agreement is required for iPhone activation including iPod features.

  • Network: Surprisingly, the iPhone does not run on a third-generation (3G) network, instead it runs on the slower EDGE network. Forbes thinks Apple opted for the slower network because AT&T's EDGE coverage spans across 13,000 cities and towns nationwide, compared with only 165 major U.S metro areas that have 3G coverage. It also brings up another excellent point. Since 3G devices are interchangeable between faster and slower networks, why did Apple still choose EDGE? Other AT&T smartphones like Samsung's BlackJack and Treo 750 run on 3G, and for what I understand AT&T is slowing moving away from EDGE. So perhaps a second- or third-generation iPhone will have 3G capability. And while the iPhone may have Wi-Fi capabilities, realistically, looking for a hotspot when you're out can be a challenge, unless you pay an extra $10 for T-Mobile access at Starbucks.

  • First Generation: A geek's rule of thumb is to never get a first generation gadget. Apple is one of the few companies that revamps its products at such a quick pace, that in this case, they actually make it quite bearable to wait for the second revision. Look at all the improvements they've made on iPods and MacBooks. It may seem like waiting for a new iPhone will be an eternity, but I bet it'll be a matter of months before we see a better, faster version.

  • Long Lines: I love technology as much as the next guy, but no gadget is worth standing in line days in advance for, not even the iPhone. People have already started to line up, and some are even betting real money that someone will get trampled. I would add getting shot at, beaten, mugged, and possibly being hospitalized to the list.

On top of all the above reasons, there's still some doubts about about the lack of keyboard, inability to sync with corporate internal email systems, and battery life. So lets get this straight. We're expected to pay for an overpriced phone, an expensive service plan, sign a new two-year contract, and still wait in line hoping to get one? No thanks.

Still getting an iPhone? Why or Why not?

If you must:
How to Dump Your Current Cell Phone Contract to Be iPhone Eligible

Real Cost of iPhone: Service Plan Revealed

Lightning and Sunbird 0.5 released

The newest versions of Lightning and Sunbird, released simultaneously by Mozilla yesterday, include 38 new calendars as well as support for Google Calendar, a viable print function, enhanced support for Outlook displays and numerous other upgrades.

Lightning is an extension that integrates with Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client, most useful for those who send and receive meeting invitations by e-mail and who prefer to customize the application via add-ons. The 0.5 release offers tighter integration with Thunderbird for certain key functions -- printing, undo/redo, copy/paste.

Sunbird is a stand-alone application for those who don't use Thunderbird and don't need or want to customize a calendar.

The new versions, finally out some two months after the originally scheduled release dates, are already generating positive buzz in the blogsphere. "I was really beginning to wonder if we were going to ever see another Sunbird/Lightning release," said Rob Williams on the Techgage blog, "but here it is, and it looks sharp."

"First 30 second impressions are slightly nicer UI and it's a little bit faster," said Brian Ghidinelli on Orange is My Favorite Color. "Uninstalling 0.3 and installing 0.5 preserved all of my data with no issues. Nice work Mozilla!"

The new releases claim enhanced performance, reliability and usability. The working hours feature has returned to both, and there is now automatic migration of data in Sunbird 0.2, iCal.app, and Evolution. And for the first time, Mac users will find a Universal binary. Complete details can be found, as usual, in the release notes for Lightning and Sunbird.

Both applications are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages. Download Lightning or Sunbird from the Mozilla Foundation servers.

Chiefs Defend Slow Network for the iPhone

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28 — On the eve of the Apple iPhone’s sale, the top executives of Apple and AT&T defended their decision to rely upon AT&T’s slow Edge wireless data network, rather than a faster network that is less widely available.

Early reviews of the iPhone, while positive, have faulted the slower network because it will limit the palm-size wireless computer’s greatest strength — making the Internet easily accessible on the go.

“It doesn’t concern me,” said Randall L. Stephenson, the new AT&T chief executive, in a joint telephone interview on Thursday along with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive. The fact that the iPhone offers faster Wi-Fi networking would more than make up for the relatively slow 300-kilobit-a-second pace of its cellular data network, he suggested.

The phone goes on sale Friday at 6 p.m. at Apple and AT&T stores.

Both executives said they were not certain what to expect at the stores on Friday evening. Lines have begun to form in some parts of the country, but there is uncertainty whether a $500-to-$600 consumer product can attract millions, rather than tens of thousands, of early customers.

“We’ve certainly built a lot of iPhones, although it may not be enough,” Mr. Jobs said. Changing a forecast in the consumer electronics industry is difficult, he said, because of the long lead times necessary to build components like semiconductors.

And Mr. Stephenson said, “I think it’s going to be an exciting evening.” He said his company had added about 2,000 employees in an effort to handle what it expects will be large crowds.

Mr. Jobs said Apple planned to limit sales to two for each customer, and Mr. Stephenson said AT&T would restrict purchases to a single phone.

Concern surrounding the AT&T network could be one of the biggest unknowns as the product rolls out. That did not diminish Mr. Stephenson’s enthusiasm.

“I got to tell you, carrying this thing around and experiencing those kinds of speeds on a wireless handset, your imagination begins to run in terms of what’s possible,” he said, “and by the way, there’s not a 3G network available in Ottumwa, Iowa,” referring to the so-called third generation of Web-enabled cellphones that require faster networks. “If you want to sell these devices in a variety of places, Edge is the only opportunity you have.”

AT&T has invested $16 billion in its network over the last two years, and the network is now designed to handle the expected increase in wireless data users, he said, adding: “Capacity won’t be an issue. The network is ready.”

Mr. Jobs said the decision to hold off on using AT&T’s faster HSDPA network — shorthand for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access — was a trade-off.

“Edge is good, but you’d like it to be faster,” he said, suggesting that the availability of local Wi-Fi networks would make up for the Edge network’s slower speed.

Mr. Jobs also said Apple’s hardware design team had decided against using the more advanced 3G chip sets because they were relatively power-hungry. As a result, Apple improved the battery life of the iPhone.

“We felt it wasn’t the right trade-off now,” he said. “I’m sure that will all change in the future.”

The iPhone could have an effect on the cellphone industry akin to the influence the Macintosh computer from Apple had on the personal computer industry in 1984, Mr. Jobs said.

He said he thought that the iPhone’s “multitouch” control system, in which the fingers are used to scroll through data or enlarge photos on the screen, was the biggest shift in a computer’s user interface since the Macintosh was introduced.

“It’s the first thing to come along since the mouse and the bit-mapped display and take things to the next level,” he said.

Mr. Jobs seized on the multitouch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a “safari pad,” a portable Web surfing appliance. Instead, he saw the technology as something that could be used for a similar purpose in a cellphone, a former Apple employee said.

The two executives said they were comfortable with the unexplored implications of the business relationship they have forged. In a break with the tradition of the cellphone industry, Apple is taking responsibility for the activation of the iPhone as well as account maintenance through its iTunes software on a customer’s Mac or PC. Account control has been jealously guarded by the cellphone carriers.

Mr. Stephenson remarked: “That’s what the customers want, and you can give them a good experience. Why would we not do that? I like this model a lot.”

And Mr. Jobs said, “We’re doing the front end, and AT&T is doing the back end on the same computers they would normally use to manage their network.”

The new system, he said, would permit store personnel to help people more rapidly by letting customers handle the setup themselves at home.

Mr. Jobs hinted that there would be announcements about services for corporate users within several weeks. “There’s already corporations who have been running pilots hooking up to exchange servers and other kinds of mail servers, and they have gone very well,” he said.

Neither man was willing to describe where the partnership between the companies might lead if it turned out to be a success. AT&T has joined with Microsoft as part of its effort to enter into direct competition with cable companies.

Mr. Stephenson acknowledged that he was intrigued by Apple’s TV system.

Recently, Mr. Jobs referred to the system, which is intended to transfer Internet video to television sets and computers, as a “hobby,” suggesting that Apple was still refining its strategy in the market.

Mr. Stephenson, however, said, “AT&T is interested in anything that drives more bandwidth requirements, and Apple TV drives significant bandwidth, and the iPhone drives significant bandwidth, and so I think it’s a very logical fit.”

Apple's iPhone makes it to stores

Apple's much-hyped iPhone finally goes on sale in the US today.

Some people have been queuing for days outside Apple and AT&T stores across the US to ensure they get hold of one of the devices.

Hundreds more are expected to start queuing during the day because stores will not start selling the iPhone until 1800 local time (2300 GMT).

Apple said buyers visiting its stores would not be able to walk out with more than two iPhones each.

Costly deal

The iPhone will be available in Europe in 2007 and Asia in 2008.

Since the iPhone was announced at Macworld in January 2007 the gadget has won a huge amount of coverage.

That interest has continued up to the launch with bloggers reporting live from queues outside some stores. Gadget site Gizmodo is broadcasting live video from the Apple store in San Francisco.

The quad-bandphone has a 3.5in (9cm) touch screen, wi-fi, no keyboard, a camera and a web browser on board. It is also intended to be used as a media player to listen to music and watch video uploaded to it via iTunes.

It is available in two versions sporting either four or eight gigabytes of memory.

Apple said the iPhone's battery was good for eight hours of talktime, six hours of net use or seven hours of video watching.

Early reviews of the iPhone have been broadly positive but those who have played around with it said touch screen typing took some getting used to and data download speeds were very slow.

The handset has also been criticised as it does not use the 3G network, does not support instant messaging or voice-activated dialling and does not let people choose ringtones beyond the 25 pre-installed on it.

Apple said it hoped to sell 10 million iPhones by 2008 and grab itself a 1% share of the mobile phone market.

To do this it will face significant competition from well-established handset makers such as Nokia and other touch screen phone makers such as Samsung and HTC.



However, some commentators thought that the high price of the gadget could put people off.

The device costs either $499 or $599 and buyers must also commit to a two-year contract with AT&T that will cost them a minimum of $59.99 per month.

As with many Apple products prices in Europe for the device are likely to be higher than direct currency conversions would suggest.

In a company-wide message relayed to Apple employees on 28 June, Steve Jobs said every worker who had been at the company for more than a year would get one of the devices for free.

The iPhone going on sale on 29 June is likely to be just the first of a long line of gadgets with future models adding the features and software lacking in the original.

An iPod Has Global Value. Ask the (Many) Countries That Make It.

Who makes the Apple iPod? Here’s a hint: It is not Apple. The company outsources the entire manufacture of the device to a number of Asian enterprises, among them Asustek, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn.

But this list of companies isn’t a satisfactory answer either: They only do final assembly. What about the 451 parts that go into the iPod? Where are they made and by whom?

Three researchers at the University of California, Irvine — Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Jason Dedrick — applied some investigative cost accounting to this question, using a report from Portelligent Inc. that examined all the parts that went into the iPod.

Their study, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, offers a fascinating illustration of the complexity of the global economy, and how difficult it is to understand that complexity by using only conventional trade statistics.

The retail value of the 30-gigabyte video iPod that the authors examined was $299. The most expensive component in it was the hard drive, which was manufactured by Toshiba and costs about $73. The next most costly components were the display module (about $20), the video/multimedia processor chip ($8) and the controller chip ($5). They estimated that the final assembly, done in China, cost only about $4 a unit.

One approach to tracing supply chain geography might be to attribute the cost of each component to the country of origin of its maker. So $73 of the cost of the iPod would be attributed to Japan since Toshiba is a Japanese company, and the $13 cost of the two chips would be attributed to the United States, since the suppliers, Broadcom and PortalPlayer, are American companies, and so on.

But this method hides some of the most important details. Toshiba may be a Japanese company, but it makes most of its hard drives in the Philippines and China. So perhaps we should also allocate part of the cost of that hard drive to one of those countries. The same problem arises regarding the Broadcom chips, with most of them manufactured in Taiwan. So how can one distribute the costs of the iPod components across the countries where they are manufactured in a meaningful way?

To answer this question, let us look at the production process as a sequence of steps, each possibly performed by a different company operating in a different country. At each step, inputs like computer chips and a bare circuit board are converted into outputs like an assembled circuit board. The difference between the cost of the inputs and the value of the outputs is the “value added” at that step, which can then be attributed to the country where that value was added.

The profit margin on generic parts like nuts and bolts is very low, since these items are produced in intensely competitive industries and can be manufactured anywhere. Hence, they add little to the final value of the iPod. More specialized parts, like the hard drives and controller chips, have much higher value added.

According to the authors’ estimates, the $73 Toshiba hard drive in the iPod contains about $54 in parts and labor. So the value that Toshiba added to the hard drive was $19 plus its own direct labor costs. This $19 is attributed to Japan since Toshiba is a Japanese company.

Continuing in this way, the researchers examined the major components of the iPod and tried to calculate the value added at different stages of the production process and then assigned that value added to the country where the value was created. This isn’t an easy task, but even based on their initial examination, it is quite clear that the largest share of the value added in the iPod goes to enterprises in the United States, particularly for units sold here.

The researchers estimated that $163 of the iPod’s $299 retail value in the United States was captured by American companies and workers, breaking it down to $75 for distribution and retail costs, $80 to Apple, and $8 to various domestic component makers. Japan contributed about $26 to the value added (mostly via the Toshiba disk drive), while Korea contributed less than $1.

The unaccounted-for parts and labor costs involved in making the iPod came to about $110. The authors hope to assign those labor costs to the appropriate countries, but as the hard drive example illustrates, that’s not so easy to do.

This value added calculation illustrates the futility of summarizing such a complex manufacturing process by using conventional trade statistics. Even though Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod, the export of a finished iPod to the United States directly contributes about $150 to our bilateral trade deficit with the Chinese.

Ultimately, there is no simple answer to who makes the iPod or where it is made. The iPod, like many other products, is made in several countries by dozens of companies, with each stage of production contributing a different amount to the final value.

The real value of the iPod doesn’t lie in its parts or even in putting those parts together. The bulk of the iPod’s value is in the conception and design of the iPod. That is why Apple gets $80 for each of these video iPods it sells, which is by far the largest piece of value added in the entire supply chain.

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.

F.T.C. Urges Caution on Net Neutrality

WASHINGTON, June 27 (AP) — The chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission recommended on Wednesday against additional regulation of high-speed Internet traffic.

The chairwoman, Deborah Platt Majoras, said policy makers should proceed cautiously on the issue of “net neutrality,” which is the notion that all online traffic should be treated equally by Internet service providers.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Ms. Majoras said that without evidence of “market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

In separate remarks prepared for delivery to a lawyers’ group Wednesday, Ms. Majoras said the agency was unaware of any market failure or consumer harm in the high-speed Internet market, according to a written copy of her speech.

Ms. Majoras’s comments provide support for telecommunications companies like AT&T and Comcast, which oppose so-called net neutrality regulation. They would like the option of charging more for transmitting certain content, like live video, faster or more reliably than other data.

Supporters of net neutrality rules, including consumer groups and content providers like Google, are concerned that Internet access providers could slow or block content in the absence of such rules, particularly as Internet providers offer their own services.

Ms. Majoras also said the agency’s report concluded that such competition concerns could be addressed by antitrust laws.

The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department have jurisdiction over high-speed Internet access, while Congress has considered legislation that would mandate network neutrality.

The report grew out of a workshop the agency held in February on Internet access and net neutrality issues.

Oracle’s Revenue Climbs 20%, Helped by Acquisitions

SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 — Fourth-quarter revenue at the Oracle Corporation, the software company, beat Wall Street’s projections on Tuesday as it continued to ride its three-year buying spree, leading its executives to claim substantial gains over its competitors.

The company reported revenue of $5.83 billion for the period that ended May 31, an increase of 20 percent from $4.85 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Net income was up 23 percent, to $1.6 billion.

Oracle, which is based in Redwood Shores, Calif., and makes computer database software and business applications, has spent more than $20 billion in the last three years to buy two dozen companies.

“They’ve consolidated the industry, and the strategy appears to be working,” said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.

Analysts had projected revenue of $5.6 billion, at the high end of Oracle’s guidance. Earnings, excluding one-time items, were 37 cents a share, which topped analysts’ forecast of 35 cents, according to Thomson Financial. The fourth quarter is typically Oracle’s strongest.

Oracle’s annual revenue increased $3.6 billion to $18 billion.

Overall sales of new software licenses, a closely watched measure in the corporate software business, grew 17 percent to $2.48 billion. New license revenue from database and middleware increased 18 percent, while license revenue from its application software was up 13 percent, somewhat lower than some analysts had expected. Services revenue increased 26 percent, to $1.1 billion.

Oracle’s co-president and chief financial officer, Safra A. Catz, told analysts that she expected sales of new software licenses to increase 20 percent to 30 percent in the first quarter compared with the quarter a year ago, and that revenue would increase 19 percent to 21 percent.

The company expected earnings of 21 cents a share, excluding items, in the first quarter, largely in line with estimates.

Shares of Oracle rose more than 1 percent in after-hours trading, after release of the report, after declining 32 cents to close at $19.16 in regular trading. The stock has risen about 12 percent this year and last week closed at a 52-week-high.

In recent weeks, several analysts issued research notes speculating that Oracle had closed several large transactions that would buoy its fourth-quarter results. But Ms. Catz largely dismissed the reports. “Q4 was very broad-based and not dependent on any very large transactions,” she said.

Oracle executives said that the company appeared to be taking market share from SAP of Germany and I.B.M., as well as from BEA Systems.

Charles Phillips, Oracle’s co-president, said the strategy of combining technology from acquisitions was proving more successful than SAP’s strategy of “trying to build everything themselves using a 1970s-era proprietary programming language.”

The quarter’s strong performance was attributed in part to revenue from products that Oracle did not own last year, as well as to sales of technology Oracle acquired through its purchase of Siebel in 2005 and PeopleSoft in 2004. In the quarter, Oracle closed its acquisition of Hyperion Solutions, a maker of software for reporting financial information that it bought for $3.3 billion.

In May, Oracle announced plans to purchase the Agile Software Corporation, a maker of product tracking software, for $495 million.

Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive, told analysts in the conference call that Oracle would continue acquiring companies to enter new markets and bolster its product line.

In March, Oracle filed suit against SAP and accused it of intruding into its computer systems to carry out corporate theft. The companies are fierce competitors in the market for software that corporations use to manage finances, human resources and sales.

Cyber-bullying gathers pace in US

One third of US online teenagers have been victims of cyber-bullying according to research by the Pew Internet Project.

The most common complaint from teens was about private information being shared rather than direct threats.

Girls were more likely than boys to be targets and teens who share their identities online are the most vulnerable, the survey found.

But teenagers still think that the majority of bullying happens offline.

Social networks

Some 32% of teenagers questioned had experienced one of more of the following: having a private e-mail, IM or text messaging forwarded or posted where others could see it, the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message, having a rumour spread about them online or having an embarrassing photograph posted online without permission.

As more and more young people join social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, so they are opening themselves and their personal information up to more people.

The survey found that 39% of social network users had been cyber-bullied in some way, compared to 22% of online teens who do not use social networks.

The sites themselves offer new avenues for bullies, the survey found.

One 16-year-old girl said: "There's this boy in my anatomy class who everybody hates and some girl started up this I Hate [Name] MySpace thing. So everybody in school goes on it to say bad things about this boy."

Sites such as MySpace and Bebo employ security and safety officers to trawl the site for inappropriate content.

"E-thugs"

The survey attempted to find out why teenagers go online to bully.

"Bullying has entered the digital age. The impulses behind it are the same, but the effect is magnified. In the past, the materials of bullying would have been whispered, shouted or passed around.

"Now, with a few clicks, a photo, video or a conversation can be shared with hundreds via e-mail or millions through a website, online profile or blog posting," concluded report author Amanda Lenhart.

Some teens felt that the insulating nature of the web was distancing bullies from their actions.

"People think they are a million times stronger because they can hide behind their computer monitor," one teenage boy said in his response to why teens bully online.

Describing those indulging in cyber-bullying as "e-thugs" he followed old-fashioned advice to avoid getting involved.

"Basically I just ignored the person and went along with my own civilised business."

Government guidelines.

In the UK, schools such as Helston Community School in Cornwall, have experienced cyber-bullying first-hand.

It fought a battle to have offensive comments about pupils and a teacher removed from UK social networking site Bebo.

Bebo said that it froze accounts that were used inappropriately but the school felt it didn't act quickly enough and banned the site from school computers.

Last year the UK government issued guidelines to help parents and pupils deal with the issue of cyber-bullying after the Anti-Bullying Alliance found that one in five UK schoolchildren had been the victim of some form of online and mobile abuse.

Its recommended that schools included cyber-bullying in their anti-bullying policies and undertook regular monitoring of communication technology used in schools.

It advised youngsters not to give out personal contact details or post photographs of themselves online.

Supercomputer steps up the pace

The world's fastest commercial supercomputer has been launched by computer giant IBM.

Blue Gene/P is three times more potent than the current fastest machine, BlueGene/L, also built by IBM.

The latest number cruncher is capable of operating at so called "petaflop" speeds - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Approximately 100,000 times more powerful than a PC, the first machine has been bought by the US government.

It will be installed at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois later this year.

Two further machines are planned for US laboratories and a fourth has been bought by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council for its Daresbury Laboratory Cheshire.

The ultra powerful machines will be used for complex simulations to study everything from particle physics to nanotechnology.

Expansion pack

Currently the most powerful machine is Blue Gene/L, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Used to ensure that the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable, it has achieved 280.6 teraflops or trillions of calculations per second.

The machine packs 131,072 processors and is theoretically capable of reaching 367 teraflops.

By comparison the standard one petaflop Blue Gene/P comes with 294,912-processors connected by a high-speed, optical network.

However, it can be expanded to pack 884,736 processors, a configuration that would allow the machine to compute 3,000 trillion calculations per second (three petaflops).

"Blue Gene/P marks the evolution of the most powerful supercomputing platform the world has ever known," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing, IBM.

Cell division

The new Blue Gene computers form just a part of IBM's supercomputing portfolio.

The world's biggest computer-services company has built almost half of the 500 fastest supercomputers.

It is also currently building a bespoke supercomputer for the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.

Codenamed Roadrunner, it will be able to crunch through 1.6 thousand trillion calculations per second.

The computer will contain 16,000 standard processors working alongside 16,000 "cell" processors, designed for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

Each cell chip consists of eight processors controlled by a master unit that can assign tasks to each member of the processing team. Each cell is capable of 256 billion calculations per second.

The power of the cell chip means Roadrunner needs far fewer processors than its predecessors.

Another contender for top supercomputer has been unveiled by Sun. Its Constellation machine will be able to run at a maximum speed of 1.7 petaflops.

The first Constellation machine, called Ranger, is being put together for the University of Texas at Austin and will run at a modest 500 teraflops.

Google Seeks Ruling on Microsoft Oversight

SEATTLE, June 25 (AP) — Google is pressing for an extension to the Justice Department’s oversight of Microsoft’s business practices, which for the most part is set to expire in November, according to a court filing Monday.

“Microsoft’s hardwiring of its own desktop search product into Windows Vista violates the final judgment” in the United States government’s antitrust case against the software maker, Google said in the court document.

Over the last year, Google has complained to state and federal regulators that Microsoft’s Instant Search program, which helps Windows Vista users search their hard drives, slows down third-party desktop search programs. Google has also said that Microsoft makes it hard for PC users to choose alternatives to the built-in search, including its own free Google Desktop program.

The search company’s claims were meant to show that Microsoft was not complying with the antitrust settlement, reached in 2002 after the government concluded that Microsoft used its near-ubiquitous Windows operating system to suppress competition. Microsoft is now bound by a consent decree that requires it to help rivals build software that runs smoothly in Windows.

In a report published last week, the Justice Department and Microsoft detailed a compromise response to Google’s complaints that would let Vista users set a non-Microsoft program as the default desktop search engine.

For Google, those changes did not go far enough. The company asked Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court to extend beyond November parts of the consent decree that govern “middleware,” or software that links different computer programs.

Social sites reveal class divide

Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study.

A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.

By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

Site-seeing

The conclusions are based on interviews with many teenage users of the social networking sites by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.

In a preliminary draft of the research, Ms Boyd said defining "class" in the US was difficult because, unlike many other nations, it did not map directly to income.

Instead, she said, class in the US was more about social life and networks - how people define themselves and who they define themselves with.

"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'," she wrote.

Broadly, Ms Boyd found Facebook users tend to be white and come from families who are keen for children to get the most out of school and go on to college.

Characterising Facebook users she said: "They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities."

By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tends to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.

Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".

"MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers," she said.

Teenage users of both sites have very strong opinions about the social network they do not use, she noted.

Ms Boyd was wary of drawing too many conclusions from her research and calling Myspace "bad" or Facebook "good" or condemning social networks out of hand.

She wrote: "This division is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values."

In some ways, Ms Boyd wrote, social networking sites are helping teenagers cope with the stresses of 21st Century life.

"Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers," she said. "And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life."

Readers Are Key Ingredient as Virtual Kitchen Heats Up

IT’S getting hot in the Internet’s kitchen.

Food and recipe sites have ratcheted up their competition in recent months, with publishers like Epicurious, Martha Stewart, Time Warner and others introducing new features and redoubling offline promotional efforts to attract visitors.

The reason, executives said, is simple: recipe searches are among the most popular online endeavors for women, and major advertisers want to be there to greet them.

“When people want to find a new recipe these days they go to the Internet, more so than cookbooks, magazines or anything else,” said Kenneth Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings. “The Internet has fundamentally changed the way people do that.”

Roughly 50 million people, or one-third of active Internet users in the United States, visited food sites in May, Mr. Cassar said, with sites like foodnetwork.com and kraft.com attracting more than seven million people. If recent and expected changes are any indication, these visitors are looking for friends as much as they are seeking recipes.

Condé Nast’s epicurious.com late last month introduced My Epi, a set of online tools perhaps best characterized as Facebook for foodies. Readers have long been able to compile their own recipe collections on the site. But now users on Epicurious, which was among the earliest recipe-sharing destinations on the Web, can search the virtual recipe boxes of other users, create profile pages for themselves and sift through profiles of other users with whom they may share similar interests.

People who are interested in cooking for children, say, or in recipes with chocolate, can easily find the personal pages of others who have expressed similar interests, and leaf through some of the nearly 50,000 Epicurious recipes those users have collected.

Tanya Wenman Steel, the editor in chief of Epicurious, said the site is also working on a service that would allow users to post their own blogs on the site, including photographs. “Nobody has anything out there like this,” Ms. Steel said.

Not at the moment, at least. Last month, Time Warner introduced myrecipes.com, a Web site that supplanted AOL.com’s food channel as the company’s primary food offering. Bruce Akin, president of SPC Digital, the Time Warner division that oversaw the creation of MyRecipes, said the site will also soon introduce more so-called community services to help its users connect.

Mr. Akin said the offline publications that most heavily fuel the site’s database of recipes, like Cooking Light and Southern Living, have long histories of connecting readers through contests, schools and reader-submitted recipes.

“The community aspect is not new to us,” Mr. Akin said. “It’s just time for us to take it to the Internet, and another level.”

In the coming months, marthastewart.com, the online division of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, will also allow users to collect, share, rate and review recipes with other users on the site. “And that’ll just be the beginning of our community and personalization initiative,” said Jody Jones, the editorial director of the Web site. “These are big growth areas for us.”

Like other major food sites created by offline media companies, marthastewart.com, whose newly redesigned site appeared in March and was the seventh most popular food site last month, works closely with its magazine and television units on content and advertising initiatives.

For instance, Ms. Jones said the Web site is converting videos from 10 years of company archives into two-to-three-minute online features. Marketers like General Electric are buying packages that feature similar promotions on air, in print and online. The fact that advertisers can link their campaigns in all three realms, versus one or two mediums, “is a big differentiator for us,” Ms. Jones said.

True, perhaps, but executives of other food sites say they are having little trouble attracting marketers. Christine DeMaio, the publisher of Epicurious, said the site is on pace to increase advertising revenues by more than 30 percent from last year. Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, Condé Nast’s online division, said the site has had annual increases in that range for the past four years.

That growth is partly fueled by household goods advertisers, like Kraft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Mr. Cassar of Nielsen said that as of late last year, online advertising among these so-called consumer packaged goods companies had jumped by 34 percent from the prior year — a rate equal to that of the overall online advertising market last year. In years past, these huge advertisers had generally lagged behind the market.

The online atmosphere is friendlier for marketers who want to blur the line between advertising and editorial, according to Jane Goldman, editor in chief of chow.com, a food site owned by CNet Networks. “For good or evil, there’s a lot more opportunity for marketers to get their message across,” Ms. Goldman said.

Christopher Parr, consumer marketing manager for Sub-Zero and Wolf, an appliance manufacturer based in Madison, Wis., agreed. Mr. Parr said his company has designed campaigns on large media sites, like The Wall Street Journal Online, The New York Times, Epicurious and others. Often those campaigns include past articles from the site that have mentioned the company’s products, surrounded by company advertisements and links to sections of the Sub-Zero and Wolf Web site for people to learn more.

The number of ads he has bought “isn’t in the millions,” Mr. Parr said. “But our leads are through the roof.”

Like many other sites in the food category, allrecipes.com, which last month ranked third among the most popular food sites, would not disclose its advertising revenues. But according to Esmee Williams, the company’s vice president of marketing, the Web site has spent nothing on its own advertising.

Because its links often populate the top search results of Google and Yahoo, Ms. Williams said, it has not had to purchase advertisements anywhere to attract visitors. Nor has it spent much to create content, since the site’s 40,000 recipes come from users. (Site editors review the recipes before posting them.)

Ms. Williams said allrecipes.com is creating new features, like one introduced earlier this month that allows users to search the site’s recipes from a mobile phone, and another planned service that will feature popular local recipes.

“It’s 55 degrees here in Seattle, so I probably won’t grill tonight,” Ms. Williams said. “But in Austin, they’ve been doing it since February.”

Hollywood Seeks Ways to Fit Its Content Into the Realm of the iPhone

LOS ANGELES, June 24 — The iPhone doesn’t go on sale until Friday, but Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, is already changing the perception of the mobile phone, from a quick way to call a friend to a hip, media-friendly device. In doing so, he has forced mobile phone and Hollywood executives to react by chasing hungrily after the newest thing or face being left behind.

Mobile phone makers are scurrying to offer new products to compete with the iPhone’s touch screen. Wireless carriers also seem more willing to listen to their partners’ advice. And in Hollywood, where Mr. Jobs’s convention-defying tactics are all too familiar, media executives are eagerly preparing for a new era as they hope to position more content where consumers want it: in their hands.

Two years ago, David Ulmer, senior director of entertainment products at Motorola in Sunnyvale, Calif., and his colleagues got a “no, thank you” from wireless carriers when they tried to pitch a mobile phone with a touch screen. “Now, we are finding it easier to get people to talk to us,” Mr. Ulmer said. “Apple has changed the perception of how sexy a phone can be. Now, everyone wants to get in. It’s a whole new world. We’re in talks with everyone, Universal Studios, Time Warner, you name it.”

But perhaps the biggest shift is the notion that in the not-too-distant future, these various groups — which have worked together uneasily so far — could find themselves as competitors as consumers demand more and better access to media and care less about how they get it.

For years, mobile phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint have closely controlled what cellphone users watch, when they watch it, and on what kind of screen they watch it — much the way the networks did with television before new technologies loosened their grip. Many in Hollywood and Silicon Valley hope the iPhone’s multimedia features will make it easier for any mobile-crazed consumer to do the same things they do on the Web: watch their favorite television shows, download maps, send e-mail messages to friends and swap videos.

In what is the beginning of many attempts to make the cellphone more Web friendly, Apple has designed its own application so consumers can receive YouTube videos through a Wi-Fi network. Industry executives predict that as it becomes easier to get information via Wi-Fi networks, more consumers will bypass traditional wireless networks altogether. That prospect, while helpful for phone makers and media concerns, is frightening for service providers if consumers begin to regard them as irrelevant.

“Video, particularly, has largely been behind a wall,” said John Smelzer, the general manager of mobile operations for Fox Interactive Media, referring to the limited and clumsy access most consumers have to news, sports and entertainment on traditional cellphones. “It’s the antithesis of what’s happening on the Web. Any device that replicates the experience online is good for the entire industry. It will help us reach a mass audience,” he said.

Even Mr. Jobs’s competitors, who are quick to point out that the iPhone has limitations, like its sole availability through AT&T, say that it will nudge resistant wireless carriers to pay more attention to their customers’ wishes. “The iPhone is a fantastic device, but they don’t control the network,” said Craig Shapiro, head of content strategy and acquisition for Helio, the mobile phone maker and service company. “For these things to work, though, everyone has to get with the program.”

Communications companies know they have to adapt or risk being left behind. Glenn Lurie, president of national distribution for AT&T’s wireless business, said in an interview that it took an outsider like Mr. Jobs to generate interest in mobile’s potential that the industry could not muster itself. “The wireless industry has been around 20 years, and people have found the industry to be somewhat complex,” Mr. Lurie said. “Steve Jobs and the Apple team come at it from a different perspective.”

Most important, owners of Apple products stay faithful. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review said, by contrast, that in the consumer electronics category, customers of mobile phone services were among the most dissatisfied. Pricing plans and services were too confusing. Contracts were restrictive. Service among some carriers was unpredictable. And early attempts to offer video proved more frustrating than compelling.

“They don’t make it easy,” said Bill Sanders, vice president of mobile networks programming at Sony Pictures Television International. “Everyone I talk to says, ‘There are all these things that are wrong with the iPhone.’ But consumers can’t wait to get their hands on it. That’s because Apple makes it easy.”

This will not be Mr. Jobs’s first experience in redefining an industry. Many executives in the beleaguered music business hailed Mr. Jobs as a savior when the iPod was introduced in 2002 because it was an alternative to the illegal online sharing of songs. Three years later, though, they derided him in a war over pricing.

Film executives, who watched Mr. Jobs’s relationship with the music industry sour, have been more cautious in their dealings with him. In particular, major studios, including Warner Brothers Entertainment and 20th Century Fox, have resisted Mr. Jobs’s overtures to put movies on the video iPod unless he guaranteed copyright protection and reduced prices.

So far, Apple and AT&T are getting along. But even Hollywood blockbusters can have a surprising ending. “All I can speak to is that working with the Apple team for two years, the relationship has been terrific,” Mr. Lurie said. “I can’t speculate what will happen down the road.”

To be sure, all the parties in the three industries involved are circling each other warily as they seek to protect their overlapping interests. But as their ambitions collide, rivals are hiring talent from disparate fields to navigate through a unsettling era.

Cingular Wireless, which merged with AT&T, has lost a number of executives who left to join start-ups or television production companies. Among them is Jim Ryan, who helped develop mobile video at Cingular. He left in May to become chief executive of Mobile Campus, a messaging service for college students. Last year, Jon Vlassopulos, a former senior director of business development at Cingular, joined the television production company Edemol USA as a new-media executive.

A background in movies is proving valuable, too. Sherry Lansing, the former chairman of the motion picture group of Paramount Pictures, was elected to Qualcomm’s board last year, sought after for her keen knowledge of Hollywood. More recently, Christine Peters, the producer of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” was named to the board of Xero Mobile, a fledgling cellphone service aimed at college students.

“Filmmakers are not going to be happy having their films downloaded to cellphones with poor quality,” Ms. Peters said. “That’s the beauty of the iPhone. It’s simple and it looks good. Half the people who have these fancy cellphones don’t know how to use them.”

Gadget Geeks Geared Up for IPhone

Microsoft Surface Parody

SarcasticGamer. com presents a twisted take on one of Microsoft's latest and greatest announcements. Truth be told, We actually WANT a Surface Computer, but since we can't afford one, we thought it might be fun to make fun of it.

Hitachi designs office big brother

HITACHI SAID it will develop a system that monitors the state of "interpersonal communication" among its workers.

If it catches on, a busybody will monitor who you speak to, for how long and who you ignore. Sensor-equipped name tags will detect when conversations take place and note the participants.

When these sensors recognise one another's identification information, the system assumes a conversation has taken place. Once recognition is made the sensors begin automatically measuring the length of conversations.

The measurement data are transmitted to a server, where they are analysed and presented in graphical form. The quantity of conversations by persons and groups is plotted on a curve, with the most-active talkers at the apex and the most-isolated persons at the base.

So, presumably, chatterboxes are to be encouraged. What if most of your conversations take place at the drinks machine, or in the kitchen. How does the quality of conversation vary as it moves from the terminal, to the toilet? They don't say. This needs further investigation, we would suggest.

A quick glance at a graph can show which persons and groups are not communicating enough during the course of work, according to Hitachi.

In one test of the system using 37 workers, Hitachi's graphs gave an indication of the exact time, during a development project, when a problem arose. This was when managers had not been interacting very much.

Hitachi plans to commercialise the system as early as next fiscal year.

Vista's failures explained

DEAR MICROSOFT,

Please stop your whining, it is getting quite annoying. We do realise you have an OS called MeII (aka Vista) and it isn't selling. Please accept my sympathies but not my dollars, you lost me and all my clients as a customer. I am going Linux now wherever possible, and from the sound of things, that is in many more places than you find comfortable.

Why? There are a bunch of reasons, some of which I will outline here. First, MeII brings me as a consumer nothing but a pretty shell. There may be a bunch of nuance things that are better, but under the skin there is really nothing to write home about.

You then raised the price quite a bit while hurting consumers with activation. I have yet to meet anyone who has a positive view of this technology, but most aren't informed enough to realize how badly they are being hurt. You don't feel this way because it fattens your already 80+% margins.

Security is a valid scare tactic, but I found the UAC so annoying in the beta inflicted on me that I stopped using the OS. It has been thoroughly defeated and your ultra-secure OS has had enough security related patches already to burst that particular balloon. Still you bang the drum, and just look silly doing it.

When it comes to security, people with access to the full MeII source tree, many with code in XP and MeII itself, tell me the security tacked on is just that, tacked on. They tell me there are no fundamental changes to the security model, just in their words, "Windows(TM) dressing". Throw white papers at me until you get bored, but I will take their word for it any day, I actually trust them.

Then comes compatibility or lack thereof. I installed MeII on about 10 client machines, and so many things broke that most were removed within a week. Two remain, the rest are drawing up plans for Linux migrations, the first server goes in the week after next replacing an old Windows 2000 Server box.

The whole point of backwards compatibility is to run the legacy software that people use and have enough invested in to override the massive markup and attendant costs that come with MeII. If you are going to have a case to sell the new OS, you need seamless backwards compatibility.

If you don't have the backwards compatibility, you need to demonstrate a damn good reason not to have it. Security is more than a good enough reason, and I should be congratulating you on your choices, but you cheaped out on the security while breaking compatibility. This is a complete worst of both worlds situation.

If thing are not compatible, and they are not, then you have the choice to go with a new OS and new software or stick with the old. Most of my clients are sticking with the old, but when an upgrade is necessary, MeII will be the last option. Creative types are looking at Macs, servers are all going Linux, and quite possibly there will be a few MeIIs put in, but I will not be maintaining them. My clients have a long memory, and so do I.

Then comes the DRM infection, baked in to the very DNA of MeII. Why you did this is beyond me, software like AnyDVD and countless others has comprehensively trounced any DRM you have on the OS. You are left with a user antagonistic forced upgrade cycle where you are in a release war with the anti-DRM crowd. You have lost this kind of fight every time, you will lose this one, and all the end users get is pain. Why should I like this again? Where is the benefit to me?

Then there is the speed, or lack of it. If you put MeII head to head on anything but the latest high end hardware, it is notably slower than XP. If you wonder why people are not rushing out to shell out the dough for this, that is an easy one to show potential customers.

The list goes on and on. In the end, what it comes down to is that people don't trust you as a company any more, and you are not demonstrating that MeII gives them anything that is a clear benefit. For their money, there are lots of easy ways to show how it is demonstrably inferior to its predecessor though.

From the increasingly desperate screed emanating from your spinners, it sounds like you are getting the message where it counts, in your wallets. Good, maybe this will catch your attention more than trifling lawsuits that you can buy your way out of with campaign contributions. For me I am gone, Ubuntu is quite nice, and with ATI opening up their Linux drivers, well, I don't need anything more.

The arm twisting sales days are over, there are several credible alternatives now. When you try and force upgrades like you are doing with DX10 and games, you will lose more than you gain. I want to play Shadowrun and others, but instead I bought a Wii. Windows is no longer considered a gaming platform for me.

So, you can't force things, there is no benefit, and there are lots of negatives. Microsoft faces an uphill battle to convince IT managers like me that they are relevant in the face of Google and Linux. If MeII is your best response, well, it hasn't been all that nice knowing you.

Vista-only game cracked

ONE OF THE FIRST games released to be played only under Microsoft's Windows Vista, has been cracked to play on a legacy operating system known as Windows XP.

The infamous warez and hacking group 'Razor1911' has successfully hacked Shadowrun to be played under XP, without any need for DirectX 10.

Apparently the crack just demands that you overwrite a few files in the installation folder with the ones provided by Razor and the game will run happily under XP.

The information text file that ships with the crack states: "Tired of waiting for Falling Leaf to produce drivers so that you can playShadowrun in XP? The wait is over, because Razor1911 already has the remedy! Yes, you read right. This game will also function in Windows XP".

Falling Leaf Studios had previously reported that they were working on the 'Alky Project' that would contribute 'Alky Compatibility Libraries' to allow the successful running of Halo 2 and Shadowrun on Windows XP machines.

Looks like it was a lot simpler than that.

Murdoch 'in talks' on Yahoo deal

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is considering selling social networking site MySpace to internet search company Yahoo, the Times newspaper has claimed.

The News Corp-owned newspaper said its parent firm was mulling offering some of its internet assets to Yahoo as part of a broader deal.

The Times said that News Corp would want a 25% stake in Yahoo in return for MySpace, which it bought for $580m.

Yahoo's direction is in question after chief executive Terry Semel quit.

MySpace could be a valuable tool in Yahoo's battle against internet search rival and market leader Google, analysts said.

'Tentative'

New chief executive Jerry Yang, who co-founded Yahoo, has pledged to revive the business but some analysts believe the firm is now a bid target.

The Times said discussions over MySpace and News Corp investing in Yahoo were tentative and may lead to nothing.

Yahoo is currently worth $37bn, meaning that News Corp would need to pay in the region of $12bn for a 25% stake.

News Corp has invested heavily in its own internet presence in recent years but a stake in Yahoo would give it influence over one of the world's leading internet businesses.

Despite seeing profits fall and losing market share to Google, Yahoo still has more than 500 million users around the world.