Science, Gadgets & Technology

Cell Phones Make Great Warning Systems In Emergencies.

2008-01-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

When disaster strikes, you may have only a short time to make what may be a life or death decision.Rare events such as fires,tornadoes or chemical releases do occur.Traffic jams on the other hand are common.Although impossible to predict,we can minimize the damage these things cause by keeping people informed.

This is where cell phones enter the picture.With every adult in the US using one why not incorporate this device into an early warning system?The possibility of sending text alerts to cell phones in a specific area is being considered seriously after the 9/11 terror attacks, and more recently, after the Virginia Tech massacre. This move is being encouraged by policy makers in Washington.A2006 law requires the Federal Communications Commission to identify ways to provide location based emergency alerts on cell phones. Necessary rules in this regard are expected this year.

But some problems are certain to be faced.Different carriers use different devices with varying capabilities. They will have to agree upon certain common features and facilities. Moreover alerts cannot be sent to a user without tracking his phone, and doing this is an invasion of his privacy.

Several companies in the US are developing the necessary software to be installed in cell phones.This will allow users to receive text messages aimed at a specific geographical area.In order to distinguish them from normal messages, these alerts will have different ring tones and a vibration alert for deaf or blind users.The software will be given to users free of cost.The charges for the service will be borne by the localities where they are available.

Such services are expected to be available in California in about a year's time. The Japanese government is working with cell phone companies to use phones to provide an early warning system for earthquakes. Once the technology is perfected it can be used for local advertising, allowing companies to reduce charges for the emergency services provided by them.

China's Anti-Satellite Weapon Test Bothers U.S. And Allies

2007-11-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

On January 11th this year China carried out a successful missile attack on an old weather satellite.That the test was indeed carried out has been confirmed by NORAD the US surveillance agency.This is the first such test since 1985 when the US had carried out a similar test under its Star Wars anti-missile defense program while Ronald Reagan was President. Washington had halted such tests for fear of damaging military and civilian satellites with large clouds of space debris which drift about in space for decades.It is feared that the test may trigger a Star Wars space race.

What has come as a surprise to Western analysts is the sophistication of the launch and the weapon's ability to track and home in on a tiny satellite in the vastness of space.The US is most concerned with the test as it has demonstrated that China has the capability to knock out its military satellite system, which the Pentagon depends on for navigation and surveillance.Military analysts feel that a successful attack on 40 to 50 satellites in low orbit around the earth would seriously compromise US defense capabilities within a few hours.

Many feel that China has a right to challenge US monopoly of space. They point out that China has repeatedly urged the US to sign agreements outlawing arms in space,which Washington has refused to do.The reason given by the Bush administration for opposing a global ban on such tests, is that the US reserves its freedom of action in space. Arms control experts are not sure whether the test was undertaken to try and press the Bush administration into a global weapons treaty, or whether China was asserting its own interests in space. The timing of the test is significant as it came a few months after the Bush administration unveiled a doctrine asserting America's right to take action against any perceived threat in space.

The Soviets dismissed reports of the test as a rumor, but countries such as Canada, Britain, Japan and Australia have no doubt that it took place and plan to take up the matter with the Chinese government.China on its part denied that it had carried out any test and repeated its opposition to weapons in space.

Although the test poses no immediate threat to the US, it has once again demonstrated that China is extending its economic and commercial power to military areas. There is a strong lobby in the Republican government which perceives China as the main threat to the US. It believes that a confrontation could take place over Taiwan in future. The EU nations on their part are concerned that some kind of trade restrictions may be put in place which might affect exports of hi-tech equipment to China.

The test led Gen. T. Michael 'Buzz' Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff to order a wide ranging review of the vulnerability of US military satellites.What can the US do to protect its satellites?
High orbit satellites are safer as it takes several hours for a killer weapon to reach them.Low orbit satellites on the other hand would be difficult to protect.Methods which may be adopted are that that either such satellites follow sufficiently unpredictable orbits so that the enemy cannot launch a weapon on a collision course with them or they may be accompanied by decoys in nearby orbits. Deploying a large number of small satellites is also an option as it may not be technologically possible to knock out hundreds of satellites without allowing time for retaliation. The ability to launch replacement satellites quickly would also be an important deterrent. Laser weapons to detect and destroy such threats in time are still stories of science fiction.

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Love And Sex With Robots Are Inevitable

2007-10-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

David Levy, artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience that he believes humans could marry robots within the century and consummate those vows. He has forecast that the around 2050 the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriage with robots.He says that at first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, he'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.

This is because robots will become so human like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.It may sound a bit weird but it isn't, Levy says. Love and sex with robots are inevitable. Levy argues that psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love and almost all of them would apply to human-robot relationships.

Levy goes on to argue that when it comes to sex and love with robots the ethical issues on how to treat them are something we'll have to consider very seriously, and this is a very complicated issue. Levy successfully defended his thesis October 11.

Microsoft Boards Internet TV Bandwagon

2007-09-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

Earlier TV signals were only distributed by cable, satellite or terrestrial systems.Now with an increasing number of people online, Internet TV is set to become the future of entertainment.With increasing internet connection speeds and decrease in connection costs TV content is increasingly accessible over the internet. The models for Internet TV are streaming Internet TV or selectable video on an internet location, usually a website.It allows you to watch TV programs on your TV, PC or even your mobile phone. Sources can be free or subscription based or supported by advertisements.

Presently several broadcasters allow you to download content for a small fee.But this requires that that the file must be downloaded before it can be viewed and this may take time. Streaming on the other hand means a continuous flow of data which can be viewed before the whole file has been received.It will therefore open in a couple of seconds.But it is unlikely to remain saved on your computer.

So far the barriers to wider use of Internet TV included poor streaming technology.There is nothing more annoying than watching a favorite program and losing the stream midway.Added to this is the problem of poor video quality due to bandwidth limitations.The BBC launched the Dirac project to address this problem but it is still under development.The reason for this is that internet infrastructure was not originally designed to support video.But this problem is set to be overcome by mixing new P2P technology with the latest cache technology which will work together and combine the bandwidth of the two.

Given its future potential Internet TV is now attracting the attention of heavyweight corporations including Microsoft. On 28th September Microsoft launched the beta version of its Windows Media Center Internet TV feature.According to Microsoft US based users of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate will soon be able to download an update which will allow them to enjoy TV and video content on their PC's and TV sets.The PC will not require a TV tuner for this.The streaming content will be cost supported by an advertising platform provided by YuMe.So it seems that it will be free, at least to start with.The hit programs that are available are TV shows such as 'Arrested Development' music by artists such as Chris Cornell,Pussycat Dolls and others, news from MSNBC, sports from FOX sports and a host of other programs.It will be compatible with Microsoft and third party 'media extender' devices for Windows Media Center.These devices wirelessly connect a TV with a PC, delivering TV, music and online services to any TV set in a home.These devices, according to Microsoft, are designed to deliver the ultimate entertainment experience to every TV set in your home. Microsoft is thus set to take on You Tube, Joost and Apples' iTunes in the Internet video segment.

With problems of resolution and reliability likely to be solved Internet TV is set to take off in a big way.

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The $100 Laptop Is Almost Here

2007-09-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop,a technology that could revolutionize children's education world wide. This initiative was launched by faculty members at the MIT Media Lab.These innovative machines will be full color, full screen laptops which will use innovative modes of power.Given the fact that they are going to be used in the world's poorest countries these machines have a dual source of power.An electric adapter which can be plugged in if electricity is available and also a string powered wind up!They will be almost as capable as normal laptops except that they won't be able to store large amounts of data.

What makes these machines so cheap?They use a dual mode LCD display for one.Then these low cost computers contain flash memory instead of a hard drive and use Linux as their operating system.Although Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, offered to supply free copies of the company's operating system OS X for the machine MIT declined to accept it because it is not open source.The designers clearly want an operating system they can fiddle around with. Flash memory is a non volatile computer memory that can be electronically erased and re-programmed. Its advantage is that it can retain the stored information even when the power is cut off.Non volatile memory is usually used for the task of secondary storage, or long term persistent storage as it has limitations which render it unsuitable for use as primary storage.For primary storage we still have to rely on a volatile form of random access memory.The first computers will be powered by an AMD microprocessor.Costs are expected to fall significantly when mass production of these machines begins.

The computers now called XO laptops will cost $188 to produce initially but company officials insist that $100 remains a long term goal.Presently the aim is to sell it to governments in large volumes.At the same time there are plans to introduce a commercial version that will sell for around $200, the profits going to subsidize the educational project.

The big computer companies whose initial reaction was to laugh at the project are now watching the developments with interest.The machines are scheduled to go into production in October this year and the first computers will hit US stores in January or February 2008.

Although various governments have shown interest and are even running pilot projects to evaluate the machines and to find ways to distribute them, very few have so far made any financial commitments.Achieving the goal of distributing millions of these machines is still some distance away.

Why Is Apple Slashing Prices Of iPhones?

2007-09-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Apple launched the iPhone ,a cellular phone with computing and Wi-Fi capabilities on June 29th 2007.It was one of the most talked about and written about consumer electronics products ever.It had people camping in front of Apple stores to snap up the first phones to hit the shelves.

Ten weeks on people agree that most of the praise is justified as is most of the criticism.It does things no phone has ever done before, yet it lacks some features found in even the most simple and cheapest phones.

An average iPhone costs $499 for the model with a 4 gigabyte memory and $599 for one with an 8 gigabyte memory.It is thin and sleek and sturdy.If you think it is too expensive then you would do well to remember that the price includes a cell phone ,video,iPod,e-mail terminal,camera , web browser,Palm type organizer and an alarm clock.Of all the features built into it the cell phone is perhaps the least important part.

But the best part is its superb software.Its fast and simple to operate and you don't get lost.On the flip side you can't install new programs from anyone but Apple.The camera takes excellent photos but no video.The major problem however is that Apple is in an exclusive deal with AT&T.Their network simply isn't good enough and in fact ranks almost at the bottom.But this problem is expected to improve over time.All in all it rates as a good buy.

And here's the latest piece of good news from Apple.Clearly with an eye on holiday sales Apple cut the price of its iPhone Wednesday.The price of the $599 model was slashed to $399.The $499 ,4 gigabyte model has been discontinued.

Apple claims that it wants to widen the market for its popular phone which is considered to be simply too expensive.But one would do well to remember that this is because the cell phone part is the least important part of the gadget.

Steven P Jobs the CEO of Apple claimed that they would have met their sales target of a million phones in the US by the end of September even without a price cut.But experts are not so sure.They are quick to point out that Motorola Razr the world's best selling cell phone till now hit the market at $499 but now sells for less than $100.They say that the cell phone market is like that and steep price cuts are normal.They suspect that Apple was finding that sales are beginning to stall.

A lot of the people who bought the iPhone before the price cut was announced feel cheated now that prices have been slashed within merely 10 weeks of its launch.Apple has announced that those who bought the iPhone within the last 14 days can claim a full refund if they have not opened it.In case they have opened it they can still get a refund of the price difference.

Whatever may be the reason for the price cut it's A Merry Christmas from Apple.

Data Theft and How to Stop it.

2007-08-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

News stories of data theft are becoming increasingly and disturbingly commonplace.

Most of the data theft is deliberate and is usually done by employees when they are leaving their company.Protecting one's self from ones' own employees is a major challenge as employees are able to use a large range of sophisticated devices which can be simply plugged into office equipment to do the job.An insignificant looking device such as a pen drive has the potential to cause large losses to an enterprise.Surprisingly most of these employees have no guilt about stealing data.Many of them in fact feel that they had a right to use the data since they had helped the company collect it in the first place.Some of the most serious data theft occurs when hackers breach the security systems of a computer and gain unauthorized access to records.Then data theft is often accidental.Laptops are frequently stolen by robbers, usually from parked cars.Often these laptops belong to senior executives of important companies and contain vital information.

The data usually stolen is in the nature of databases of names and addresses of persons and their contact details.These can then be used by rivals to steal business from a competitor.Sometimes the data that gets stolen also includes credit card details,information about bank accounts,social security numbers etc. of an individual.This is more serious as it can lead to identity theft and also the the theft of a persons money.Finally even trade secrets can be targeted.The most celebrated case is the one in March 2005 when Lexar was awarded almost $400 million when it was proved that its trade secrets were stolen and used by no less a company than Toshiba!

Data theft is occurring more frequently now because there is a ready market for such information on the one hand and because companies have paid insufficient attention to data security on the other.The most dangerous trend that has emerged is that what was earlier being done just for kicks is now being done for money and organized crime seems to have entered the scene.

One of the reasons why companies have been slow to react is that there are no laws which make companies which collect such data, accountable for its security.Although customers who are victims of bank or credit card fraud usually don't lose money the company which collected the data is not held responsible for its security.We must understand that the return of his money to a victim is not sufficient in itself.The damage that may have been caused, say to his credit history may take years to repair.

So how do companies protect themselves?The basic procedures that need to be adopted by companies to protect themselves are multi layered identification procedures for customers and more importantly encryption of stored data.

But all these things take up both time and money,which means lower profits.Therefore it is time the state/federal regulators stepped in and made sensible laws for the protection of the people

Jurassic Park - It is Possible Now !

2007-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

After watching Spielberg's Jurassic Park one was quite thankful that the dinosaur was extinct, as one was not very confident of facing even a baby dinosaur in real life, let alone a full grown one. Reviving an extinct creature from a DNA sample embedded in ancient amber was simply the work of someone with a beautifully fertile imagination.

Now about a decade later suddenly one learns that scientists have succeeded in reviving microbes recovered from deep below the Antarctic glaciers in a laboratory. These microbes are as old as eight million years .

This achievement raises all kinds of questions. The first and foremost is that by accident our scientists could bring to life some creatures or even some disease to which the modern human race has no answer. Then it is also possible that as the polar ice gradually melts due to climate change these organisms could themselves come to life. This again highlights the necessity of preserving our environment and preventing climate change.

Finally the ability of organisms to survive in such harsh conditions raises the possibility that similar organisms also exist on other planets in our solar system. The only scary possibility is that instead of finding organisms on planets similar to our own we may end up finding organisms on far flung planets having far more extreme characteristics than we had bargained for.

These are not only scary thoughts meant to panic people but to emphasize the need for sensible action in the matter.

Apple Releases iTunes 7.3.2

2007-08-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

Apple released an update for iTunes on the 2nd of August 2007. According to Apple: " iTunes 7.3.2 provides bug fixes to improve stability and performance." Apple has not provided any other details.

A casual look at the new application does not reveal any major upgrades. However, users say that the music application now remembers the selected artist(s)/album(s) after navigating back to the library from a playlist.

iTunes 7.3.2 can be downloaded from Apple's Web site.

Top Back to School PC's

2007-08-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Back to School Shopping is just around the corner. Here is a list of PC's that you should consider when you go shopping.

1. Dell Inspiron 531

Cost = $709 and $899 if you tale a 19 inch wide LCD monitor.

2. Apple MacBook

Cost = $1099

3. Fujitsu Lifebook P7230

Cost = $1,799

4. Velocity Micro Vector GX Campus Edition

Cost = $999

5. HP Pavilion dv2500t

Cost = $,1049

6. Gateway E-100M (Core Duo)

Cost = 1,574

7. eMachines T5226

Cost = $550

Robots in Warfare

2007-08-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

The idea of artificial people is an old one. In fact Leonardo da Vinci is credited with making the first recorded design of a humanoid robot, a kind of mechanical knight.

It is this importance attached to winning wars that led to much of the development of modern robots. In ancient times the general led from the front and if we study history we find that in times of war nations paid a heavy price in terms of generals killed in battle. In modern times battlefield leaders are somewhat safer, advancing behind protective barriers of steel and artillery fire. Still casualties are high.

The ultimate dream weapon is a metal soldier which can fight the enemy thus minimizing human casualties. This is where modern robots can step in.Development in robotics have ensured that robots are now no longer confined to performing repetitive mechanical tasks in a workshop or factory. Although Bill Gates has said that personal robotics today is at a stage that personal computers were in the mid -70's, it raises the distinct possibility of an artificial human being within the next generation.

One can imagine the advantages of an army that is factory produced in various shapes and sizes according to the mission to be accomplished. There will be virtually no human casualties and the supply will be unlimited. The generals and other leaders will be miles away from the actual battlefield in safe locations. In fact the conduct of war will be in the hands of computer geeks rather than army generals.Presently, huge resources are required to provide training to army recruits and to supply food and medical aid on the battlefield. This will become a thing of the past.Training will be provided by a silicon chip and solar power would perhaps take care of the rest.

Even today, robots or mechanical devices are performing many functions, especially 'drones' which have the capability of even firing missiles.But the possibilities of their use in tasks such as clearing minefields etc. and also operating in areas with a high risk of chemical warfare or even more lethal forms of combat are endless.

Although the advantages are immense they have to be tempered with a word of caution. Once we have machines which have been given a sense of perception and the power of decision making to harm others, then what happens if something goes wrong?

Although we have not reached this stage as yet, this is a dilemma we may soon have to face and address.

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Nuclear Energy - Its Future in the US

2007-07-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Advances in nuclear technology , the rising prices of oil and gas and increasing dependence on foreign oil has set the US lawmakers thinking about whether the country's atomic energy program needs a re-look. Added concerns about global warming and resultant climate change due to use of conventional fuels has added some urgency to the matter.

There is no doubt that human progress depends on the availability of cheap and abundant energy. Conventional energy sources are not only going to run out in the foreseeable future but will also be responsible for severe ecological damage with yet unknown consequences for the human race. New technologies like solar power and using hydrogen as fuel are still in a nascent stage and far from perfect.Moreover solar energy is very costly. Indeed, presently it is difficult to imagine that these would be in a position to displace conventional fuels in the foreseeable future.

Given this scenario it is but natural that nuclear energy is given a second look. Not only are raw materials and technology available, but they are available on a large enough scale to make it a sustainable alternative.It is estimated that using breeder reactors we can have plenty of energy for some billions of years.

So, what is holding the US back from pursuing a more aggressive nuclear energy program. The cost for are one. A single nuclear power plant costs several billion dollars to build. Then there is the security angle. A nuclear power plant is very vulnerabe to enemy attack and also to natural disasters.Given the rise of global terrorism this risk is magnified several times over.The consequences of a "kamikaze"type attack would be catastrophic. Finally there is the problem of dealing with "spent fuel."Reprocessing of spent fuel is discouraged by many countries in the mistaken belief that it will prevent nuclear proliferation. It is very clear now that with the dissemination of technical know how many countries are capable of building a bomb. This raises the question as to whether or not advanced nuclear powers such as the US should actively involve themselves in their peaceful nuclear nuclear programs. Not only would this ensure the use of "safe technology "but may also persuade the nations to abandon their military nuclear programs. Several nations including the US are meanwhile considering storing nuclear waste in deep underground shelters.

No matter what the present concerns might be, nuclear energy offers advantages that are difficult to overlook and it is only a matter of time before US lawmakers come out with a program to support its development.

"Stun Gun"- Science Fiction or Reality

2007-07-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has watched Star Trek or any other science fiction movie could not have but been impressed by the small & highly effective Stun Guns used by the participants.It appears to the watchers that one doesn't even have to take aim. Just point it in the general direction and shoot and that is the end of the enemy.

Well , is it just pure science fiction or is there an element of reality in it.

For your information it is real. There are a several kinds of electroshock weapons that temporarily disable a person with electric shock. Some require physical contact while others are effective even from a distance.

The principle of operation is that it uses a temporary high voltage, low-current discharge to overcome the body's muscular mechanisms.The recepient feels great pain & can be temporarily paralyzed. But since the amount of current is low it is supposed to be safe,that is, it won't kill.The subject will experience pain, muscular contraction,dizziness and collapse if exposed to it for a long time.

Presently in use by police forces around the world are Electric Shock prods which need physical contact with the subject. Other weapons are Tasers & even long range wireless electric shock weapons are available.

Although they are safer to use than guns which fire bullets, these weapons can be extremely dangerous if the subject suffers from some medical condition. They are also not very safe during practice sessions, while being used on minors and when there are inflammable liquids around. They have also not proved to be very effective against physically strong and determined assailants as they need a bit of time to act.

Nevertheless given the rising number of police shootings in the US development of this technology raises hopes of an effective enforcement system where violence and fatalities will be minimized.

IBM triples performance of World's Fastest Computer and breaks the "Quadrillion" Barrier

2007-07-29T01:31:00.000-07:00

he world of computing continually throws up feats that are difficult to comprehend. If the world’s fastest car or world’s tallest building were suddenly to be outperformed by a factor of three, we’d be incredulous, yet such quantum leaps have become routine in the world of computing. IBM’s new Blue Gene/P is the second generation of the world's most powerful supercomputer. It triples the performance of its predecessor, Blue Gene/L while remaining the most energy-efficient and space-saving computing package ever built. Blue Gene/P scales to operate continuously at speeds exceeding one petaflop (one-quadrillion operations per second) and can be configured to reach speeds in excess of three petaflops. The system is 100,000 times more powerful than a home PC and can process more operations in one second than a stack of laptop computers 1.5 miles high (don’t try this at home folks).

The result is a machine that towers over other systems. It enables science and commercial supercomputing to attack vital problems in ways never before possible -- modeling an entire human organ to determine drug interactions, for example. Drug researchers could run simulated clinical trials on 27 million patients in one afternoon using just a sliver of the machine's full power.

IBM researcher Shawn Hall inspects a new Blue Gene/P supercomputer. The IBM system will be capable of up to three thousand trillion calculations per second.

"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. "A new group of commercial users will be able to take advantage of its new, simplified programming environment and unrivaled energy efficiency. We see commercial interest in the Blue Gene supercomputer developing now in energy and finance, for example. This is on course with an adoption cycle -- from government labs to leading enterprises -- that we've seen before in the high-performance computing market."

A Green Design Ahead of its Time

The Blue Gene supercomputer line was born from a visionary IBM initiative to develop a hugely scalable and highly reliable scientific computing platform. With Blue Gene, designers sidestepped two key constraints on state-of-the-art supercomputing -- power usage and space requirements. The Blue Gene supercomputer was purpose-built to fit in smaller spaces and use less electricity compared to other commercially available designs. Today, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer is at least seven times more energy efficient than any other supercomputer.

The influence of the Blue Gene supercomputer's energy-efficient design and computing model -- once considered exotic -- can be seen everywhere in the industry where people have attempted to lower energy use and get performance without traditional reliance on chip frequency. The breakthrough BlueGene supercomputer design uses many small, low-power embedded chips each connected through five specialized networks inside the system.

Some of the world's leading research laboratories and universities have already placed orders for Blue Gene/P supercomputers. The U.S. Dept. of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill., will deploy the first Blue Gene/P supercomputer in the U.S. beginning later this year. In Germany, the Max Planck Society and Forschungszentrum Julich also plan to begin installing Blue Gene/P systems in late 2007. Additional Blue Gene/P system rollouts are being planned by Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England.

"We view the installation of the Blue Gene/P system as the next phase of a strategic partnership furthering advances in computation in support of breakthrough science," said Robert Rosner, director, Argonne National Laboratory.

At FZ Julich, where researchers have been using a Blue Gene/L machine for two years, a Blue Gene/P system will allow for more breakthrough science -- in such areas as particle physics and nanotech, for example -- while keeping the research facility within acceptable power budgets. "The big computing power at low electricity rates allows us to boost the performance of very complex and computationally intensive algorithms," said Thomas Lippert, director of the supercomputing center at FZ Julich.

Inside the Fastest Computer Ever Built

Like its predecessor, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer is a modular design, composed of "racks" that can be added as requirements grow.

Four IBM (850 MHz) PowerPC 450 processors are integrated on a single Blue Gene/P chip. Each chip is capable of 13.6 billion operations per second. A two-foot-by-two-foot board containing 32 of these chips churns out 435 billion operations every second, making it more powerful than a typical, 40-node cluster based on two-core commodity processors. Thirty-two of the compact boards comprise the 6-foot-high racks. Each rack runs at 13.9 trillion operations per second, 1,300 times faster than today's fastest home PC.

The one-petaflop Blue Gene/P supercomputer configuration is a 294,912-processor, 72-rack system harnessed to a high-speed, optical network. The Blue Gene/P system can be scaled to an 884,736-processor, 216-rack cluster to achieve three-petaflop performance. A standard Blue Gene/P supercomputer configuration will house 4,096 processors per rack.

For Programmers, Friendlier Interfaces & Application Compatibility Speed Productivity

There are some key differences between Blue Gene/L and Blue Gene/P supercomputers. In hardware, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer moves to more (four vs two) and speedier (850 MHz vs 700 MHz) processors per chip; more memory and an SMP mode to support multi-threaded applications. This new SMP mode moves the Blue Gene/P system to a programming environment similar to that found in commercial clusters. The Blue Gene/P supercomputer dramatically scales up collective network performance to minimize common bottlenecks inherent in large parallel-computing systems. Software marks the third key upgrade for the Blue Gene/P solution -- system management, programming environment and applications support have all been refined in Blue Gene/P.

In Germany, a Blue Gene/P supercomputer will become the platform for new applications scaled for petaflop-level performance at the Max Planck society. "The next-generation Blue Gene system will improve our capacity to prepare, develop and optimize applications from the Max Planck Society for future peta-scale computing," said Hermann Lederer, head of application support at Max Planck's RZG/Garching Computing Center.

The Blue Gene supercomputer operating system is based on the open-source Linux operating system. Applications are written in common languages such as Fortran, C and C++ using standards-based MPI communications protocols. The Blue Gene/P supercomputer is compatible with the diverse applications currently running on the Blue Gene/L supercomputer, including leading research in physics, chemistry, biology, aerospace, astrophysics, genetics, materials science, cosmology and seismology.

A variety of independent software vendors have plans to port existing tools and applications to the Blue Gene/P supercomputer. These include Gene Network Sciences, TotalView Technologies, Inc., Tsunami Development LLC and Visual Numerics, developers of IMSL.

A robot that walks on water

2007-07-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

The NanoRobotics team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are working on a robot that walks on water, mimicking the Basilisk, or "Jesus Lizard" that's famous for its ability to dash across a water surface on its hind legs. Researchers see amphibious potential in the water-walking robot, as well as a possible efficiency boost in comparison to a boat, because a vehicle that runs across the surface of water experiences very little viscous drag. Computer simulations have been encouraging, demonstrating a few possible efficiency gains in the design and motion over the evolutionary model provided by the Basilisk, particularly with the option of using two or more sets of running legs. Several leg designs have been tested (see one in action in this video (MP4)) but the researchers are still working on an operating prototype.

The basilisk is well known for its ability to run across the surface of a body of water at a very fast rate of up to 1.5 metres per second. Check out this amusing video of the "Jesus Lizard" in action to see how it manages this. It's distinguished from other water-riding animals and insects by the fact that it doesn't use surface tension to keep it afloat, instead elevating and propelling itself by the slapping motion of its large, webbed feet.

The Water Runner Robot is designed to operate using the same principles. The CMU NanoRobotics research team spent a lot of time studying the motions of the basilisk to learn to mimic and then optimize the water-running motion to generate enough lift and thrust to sustain and move a robot far heavier than the lizard itself.

See the full research paper here (PDF).

Fujifilm announce 12-megapixel compact digital camera

2007-07-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

Just when it looked like the headlong rush towards more MegaPixels had slowed down in favor of greater optical zoom capabilities in the compact camera arena, Fujifilm has announced the upcoming release of the F50fd - a compact unit that boasts a staggering 12 MegaPixel image resolution and crams in a raft of cutting edge features including Dual Image Stabilization, enhanced Face Detection and improved automated flash capabilities that include a two shot flash mode which takes two shots in quick succession in low light - one with flash one without - to ensure optimum results with minimum effort and takes full advantage of its extremely sensitive ISO levels of up to 6400 (1600 at full resolution). The F50fd is among four new additions to the FinePix F series due for release in September and will retail for around US$300 - compare this to the more than $10K outlay required to purchase a 1.3 megapixel camera like the Kodak DCS-100 in the early 1990's and it's clear just how very far the industry has come in less than two decades.

The compact F50fd features a 3.0x optical zoom, with consumers seeking higher capabilities in this area having the option of another new member of the FinePix stable - the SLR-styled 8-MegaPixel S8000fd which features an impressive18x Optical Zoom. Among the key enhancements in the the new F50fd is improved Face Detection. Like previous models the camera can detect up to10 human faces in a scene and automatically identify and optimize focus, exposure and white balance to ensure that the selected face is captured in the shot. This is achieved in just 5/100's of a second no matter where the subjects are located within the frame and unlike previous versions Face Detection does not require frontal shots - it can identify profiles at up to 90 degrees and work with angles to 135 degrees if the subject is leaning forward or lying down.

The F50fd utilizes a 7th generation FinePix Super CCD-HR chip and the RP Processor II delivering optimum results in poorly lit situations with ISO settings of up to ISO1600 at full resolution and ISO 6400 at reduced resolution (3MP or lower). The "Intelligent Flash" takes advantage of the high speed capabilities by automatically adjusting its intensity to minimize wash-out and the Dual Shot mode provides further versatility by shooting two images in rapid succession - one with the flash and one without - and saves both for later comparison. Red- Eye Removal functionality has also advanced with automatic correction of red-eye immediateley after taking the shot - in this instance both the original and corrected file are saved so that comparisons can be made later.

Viewing is via a 2.7" high-resolution 230,000 pixel wide angle view LCD and up to 100 small images can be displayed on the screen at one time to speed-up the navigation process.

Usability is further enhanced by the inclusion of a Dual Image Stabilization mode - this combines a mechanically stabilized CCD sensor with high ISO sensitivities designed to deliver reduced blur from hand shake and subject movement.

The FinePix F50fd will debut in September 2007 at a retail price of US$299.95. Additional models include the FinePix S8000fd, an 8- MegaPixel, SLR-styled 18x Optical Zoom camera US$399.95, the 8-MegaPixel, 4x Optical Zoom FinePix F480 US$179.95 and the 9-MegaPixel entry level model with a 4x Optical Zoom FinePix A920 US$199.95.

Othe key specs of the FinePix F50fd include:

CCD Sensor: 1/ 1.6-inch Super CCD HR

Movie : AVI (Motion JPEG ) with sound

Lens: Fujinon 3 x Optical zoom lens

Lens Focal Length (Rated) / f=8.0mm - 24.0mm, Equivalent to (35mm Equiv.) 35-105mm on a 35mm camera

Aperture Range: F2.8 -F8

Digital Zoom: Approx 8.2x (Max)

Focus Auto focus: (Area, Multi, Center)

Color Control Modes: B/W, Standard, Chrome

Shutter Speed 8 sec. to 1/2000 sec. (depending on Shooting mode)

Power Source: NP-50 Li-ion battery (included)/ CP-50 with AC power adapter AC-5VX (sold separately)

Camera Dimensions: 3.6(W)× 2.3(H)× 0.9(D) in. / 92.5(W)× 59.2(H)× 22.9 (D) mm

Weight: (not including accessories, batteries & xD Card) Approx. 5.4 oz. / 155 g

Shutter Lag Time: Approx. 1/100th sec.

Movie Recording: 640 x 480 pixels, 320 x 240 pixels, 25 frames/sec. with monaural sound

Memory Type: Internal memory (approx. 25MB) / xD-Picture CardTM (16MB - 2 GB) / SD memory card (512MB to 2GB)/ SDHC memory card (4GB to 8GB )

Further info is available via the FujiFilm site.

Intel accused of breaching European antitrust rules

2007-07-27T03:34:00.001-07:00

The European Commission has accused Intel Corp . of abusing its dominant position in the microprocessor market to exclude its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc ., in breach of European antitrust rules.

The Commission sent Intel a Statement of Objections on Thursday, giving it 10 weeks to reply. A Statement of Objections is a formal accusation of antitrust violations.

Intel abused its position in three ways, according to the Commission: by offering rebates to PC manufacturers that buy the majority of their processors from Intel; by making payments to some manufacturers to encourage them to delay or cancel products using AMD processors , and by selling processors below cost when bidding against AMD for contracts with server manufacturers.

After Intel replies to the charges, it can request an oral hearing. If the Commission remains convinced that Intel has abused its market position, it can fine the company and order it to stop the anticompetitive practices, the Commission said in a statement Friday.

Representatives of the Commission, Intel and AMD could not immediately be reached for comment. AMD has already filed antitrust complaints against Intel in Europevarious parts of the world.

Smart video advertising at the petrol pump – rolling out in 115 countries globally

2007-07-26T07:28:00.001-07:00

Pay-at-the-pump petrol is a great convenience for drivers, but it sucks profit away from the retailer, who makes the majority of his profit from convenience store sales. Petrol buyers are the perfect target for point-of-sale advertising – they’re already out of their car, and what’s another five dollars of snacks or coffee on top of a $50 fill-up? To catch more of these disposable dollars as they come through, a global partnership between three market giants is about to target every petrol customer in 115 countries with a sophisticated video advertising campaign right at the pump, and it promises to change the gas station experience for good.

Fuel sales account for 70 percent of convenience store revenues, yet 68 percent of the industry's gross profit dollars come from in-store sales, according to a recent survey. With only 53 percent of gas customers visiting the convenience store, there’s a clear opportunity to raise profits just by getting people in the door – and a new partnership between digital merchandising specialists EK3, software giant Microsoft and petrol pump manufacturer Dresser Wayne is about to go all-out to convert gasoline buyers into convenience store customers.

Using video screens built into the petrol pump apparatus, the partnership will display targeted video advertising to highlight in-store deals and promotions and draw people into the store. The EK3/Dresser Wayne partnership allows station owners of any size to customize promotions, offer printable coupons, build brand loyalty and engage in "day-parting" - such as promoting coffee and breakfast foods in the morning and soft drinks and snacks in the afternoon.

The media is loaded through a simple Web interface that enables new promotions to be put together and trialed very quickly – opening up opportunities for store owners to sell advertising space to other local businesses as a further revenue stream. Owners of multiple stores and national petroleum networks can “narrowcast” their nationwide or network-wide offers with similar ease.

Under the new partnership, the system will be rolled out in a massive 115 countries around the world through Dresser Wayne’s gas pump distribution networks. It’s already being utilized in some chains, such as BP sites and The Home Depot gasoline stations and the Army Air Force Exchange Services in the USA. It is due to launch in Europe in September.

Research Data Drives Effective Creative Strategy

2007-07-26T06:55:00.001-07:00

It's that time again . . . time to get the ball rolling on your new membership recruitment campaign, or your seasonal ad campaign, or your annual meeting promotion. You need an idea, a direction, an inspiration to guide your creative mind to a result that will be executable, will reach and resonate with the intended audience, and come in within budget. Where do you turn? Hopefully, you turn to the potential customer, in the form of primary research.

The more you know about the audience for any marketing effort, the more effective that effort will likely be. You know the challenges they face, you know the mindset they use on a daily basis, you know what they need, and can make your concepts, copy and offers sing to the audience in a way that creates action, but only if you have the information you need. The way to get that information, in a reliable way that you can use to make decisions, is to be in regular contact with the audience. One of the most effective ways to do that is with periodic in-depth phone research.

Get a Reality Check
In-depth phone research, when combined with some written survey work on a periodic basis, can help you get an accurate feel for your members or target audience on an ongoing basis, unfiltered by the "pick the middle choice" phenomenon of printed surveys. Done in a truly blind fashion, where the audience has no idea your organization is behind the questions, customers feel secure enough to answer honestly and directly. Even so, most respondents in a small, highly specific prospect pool, especially in a member-based organization, figure out that the word will filter back to your organization eventually, so they feel that this may be an opportunity to air their gripes and get something done on their behalf without complaining directly to you. You can also gather information on the positive side as well, as compliments are far more rare then complaints from customers or members of the organization.

Customer service benefits aside, true primary research generates not only anecdotal information on your current customers or members, but if you include ex customers or former members in your scheme, there is quantitative data generated that can be projected accurately over the entire audience or prospect pool. And in that data is where the creative inspiration hides.

Draw Comparisons
Inspirational data often comes from the most unexpected numerical comparisons. Most marketing data mirrors the expectations that were built into the questions in the phone survey. In the face of that effect, there is often one set of data that stands out as an unexpected result, either very positive, or extremely negative compared to your own "feel" for that issue.

The other comparison that lends itself to driving a creative "hook" is the comparison between the data from your current constituents and your former constituents. Not only will this comparison show you what facets of your organization are working well and retaining customers, but it will also show some of the reasons why the ex-customers left. Those are the things you can address in your creative strategy to shore up those perceptions that could be discouraging potential customers from doing business with you.

Often an issue you feel is of little consequence turns out to mean an awful lot to the constituent audience. If you find that unexpected "key to their heart", that should inspire a creative approach that will yield considerable success. Both in the concept and in the copy, hitting that high note repeatedly based on solid research is usually a home run.

Careful reading and interpretation of that collected data is key to going in the correct direction. Sometimes some additional follow-up research with a small but representative audience to drill down on that unexpected issue can generate some additional, more leading data. That clarification can mean the difference between a home run and a wiff.

Occasionally, the opposite scenario plays out, and something you've been promoting as a benefit all along turns out to have little importance to the audience. That lack of "resonance" is a disconnect that you now know you can avoid in your copy. That frees up some room to play up the positive aspects you've verified with the research data.

Use The Data You Gather
Without the underpinnings of that research, there is little basis for decision-making in the creative process. The data can give you a more sturdy brand profile, it lets you make a persuasive case to senior management, and gives you something to backstop your creative direction. The temptation is often to take the data and twist it to meet the "gut feel" that exists in the collective mind of the organization.

Ignore the data at your own peril. If the study is conducted by professional researchers, and there are no clear flaws in the list of respondents and its reflection of the audience is accurate, then let the data drive your decisions.

The data doesn't lie. It's very easy to discount research data when you compare it to your own perceptions, or the preferred perception of the organization, and it doesn't match. It's tougher to stick to your guns, believe the data and act upon it. Once you see it work predictably and successfully, you learn to trust the numbers.

Prioritize the Issues
Once you have the data collected, and the analysis done, how do you make the leap to a creative direction? The secret is in the numbers. The basic strategy is that you determine the type of approach based on the read of the top 5 factors in the survey in order of importance. If the top three involve emotional issues, rather than the rational, or intellectual, then the creative approach leans toward a more emotional appeal.

For example, if the survey indicates that your organization is not producing results for customers in a particular area, maybe customer service or responsiveness - those are largely emotional issues, as no one likes to feel ignored or not served adequately, but they are not functional issues or operational issues within the organization's functional mission. The creative approach in that case might involve imagery and copy that plays upon the warm, service-oriented nature of the organization, a one to one approach that is more welcoming and almost apologetic. Of course, you can also pass the info on to the customer service department and improve there operationally as well.

If you uncover among your top five factors that numerically your satisfaction level among customers is 3 times higher than your ex-customer dissatisfaction ratio, there's a set of numbers to crow about, and you can take a more rational, numerical approach to the concept and the copy - show you're keeping customers happy and keeping them longer than ever before. The data still drives the point home, and works to provide you with a creative direction, a springboard toward a winning concept that resonates with the audience.

Use A Metaphor
One of the simplest ways to make the leap from data to concept is to use a metaphor that explains what the data reveals. If you're trying to illustrate that your company grew its customer base by 200% in the last quarter, or that your customer satisfaction rating improved by 3x over the last year based on some changes you've put in place, showing images of outrageous growth - beanstalks, elephants, Cyclops giants, etc.; or show images of size disparity - big bones with little dogs, big sandwiches with little kids, an Oreo cookie so large it won't go in the glass of milk. The metaphor gives you a way to explain the concept that the data revealed in a way the audience can relate to easily.

Now, on to those meeting ads, or those membership recruitment ads. Let the data be your guide in these cases as well. If your data shows that 80% of your members don't go to your annual meeting because it's too expensive, takes too much time away from the office and the same people go every year and it's turned into a good ole' boys club, its time to break out the big guns. They are not finding the value in your meetings. Time to fight the perceptions with your own reality and show the members in your ad or brochure that there are benefits to spending the money, taking time away and meeting those good ole' boys face to face. Imagery in this case should be very rational, practical, businesslike, and copy should be extremely benefit-laden, addressing those concerns head on in a way the audience can relate to.

In many cases, if you get one good lead, one good tip, meet one solid useful connection at a meeting, you've made the trip a worthwhile endeavor. Now multiply that by the "possibilities" of the number of typical attendees (some latitude allowed here, no accountants in the wings), and show how the value multiplies with the number of participants - sort of a "you have to show up to win type of approach".

Destination "X"
Ads focused on the destination are destined to fail for at least a portion of the audience, yet they persist and even proliferate in the member organization landscape. Everyone knows it's great to go to a meeting in "X" city, if you like that city, and if it has something inherently beneficial or relevant to the meeting's purpose. If not, you'll lose the folks who are farthest away and those that are the most cost conscious, almost automatically. No matter what city you pick, those two audiences are lost if the content isn't up to snuff. You can't have a meeting good enough to get them to go there. For those who are having trouble finding value in the content, the city is irrelevant. If the content is good and the results beneficial, you can have the meeting in a train station and people will attend.

Use Testimonials
For those organizations hunting for new members, there are many approaches where the data can give you some insights to follow. Testimonial approaches are a very strong framework from which to build value for prospective members. They humanize the organization, provide benefits the audience can relate to easily, and put a face to the issue of keeping members involved and active. Your research data sets showing the biggest challenges members or customers face are the key to crafting solid testimonials that answer these challenges.

You can use the top 3-5 problem areas the data reveals and create a series of ads or brochure pages featuring members explaining how their involvement in the organization helped them solve the problem or meet the challenge. They would be highly credible, they would show the organization at work, and they would outline very relevant benefits that would resonate with the audience to a high degree - all driven by a few questions in your phone research survey.

Use Everything Available
There are many creative approaches buried within your primary research, and there are many sources of data that can be used to augment, support and reinforce your primary data and the subsequent analysis. Member application data, tradeshow or annual meeting attendee data, industry atlases or SIC code studies published by the U.S. Department of Labor, can all shed light on your target population. There are other kinds of research as well that will generate data, including focus groups, written or e-mail surveys, web surveys, live interviews at meetings or tradeshows, and live long-form personal interviews at a research facility equipped with one way mirrors and camera equipment.

All these are viable forms of information gathering, and each has their place in providing you data you can use to form a creative approach to your outreach marketing. The key is to believe the numbers and use them in conjunction with your internal organizational knowledge to drive an effective creative strategy.

Video Marketing For Free Traffic

2007-07-26T01:19:00.001-07:00

Using video marketing to drive traffic to your web site is an online marketing strategy many small business owners and internet marketers are beginning to embrace, with much success. Having a traditional website only allows you to reach those people who first find your website. However, combining video, social networking and some simple video marketing techniques can drive hordes of qualified visitors to your website.

First, let’s forget the silly videos you’ll find all over YouTube of kids running into fences and demonstrating the newest dance move. While that kind of video can bring in hundreds of thousands of views, it won’t bring the targeted traffic you need.

Instead, consider making a video tightly targeted towards your niche. A real estate agent might make a video introducing herself and showcasing a few of her available homes for sale. A night club might make a video “commercial” with soundbites from partygoers. A software developer might make a video demonstrating his latest application.

Because Google and other search engines are beginning to give videos hosted on sites like YouTube preferential search engine ranking, it’s quite possible your video could end up on the first page of search results for your targeted keyphrase. This is incredibly powerful and not to be overlooked, as this is what will make your video marketing efforts well worth the time you invest in them.

Consider that YouTube itself may not have a huge market of people looking for videos on “Oakland real estate.” But if your video titled “Oakland Real Estate” made the first page of Google search results (again, due to the preferential search results video is receiving in the search engines) you’d benefit from the hundreds of people who search for that term in Google seeing your video as the #1 result and ,in turn, watching your clip.

With the preferential treatment videos are receiving in search results, the question then becomes, “How do I move people from watching my video on YouTube to actually visiting my website?”

This is simple. Bribe them, at the end of your marketing video. What follows are some ideas:

* Offer them something for free at your site (a consultation, a report, free drink, demo version, MP3 download, etc.)
* Poll them or ask them a question they need visit your site to answer. People love to give their opinion. You can combine with the free offer, above, by giving them the freebie upon completion of the poll or question. This is invaluable for market research.
* Leave ‘em hanging. Don’t tell the whole story on your YouTube hosted video – instead, tell them just enough to incite curiosity. Then, instruct them to visit your site for the complete story or answer.

Each of these ideas are intentionally broad can be focused indefinitely and molded to fit your target market.

The key here is catching your audience while they’re hot; directly after having watched our video and giving them a reason to continue on to your website. The truth is that if you don’t, most will simply click through to another video or search result. Capitalize on their attention and tell them where to go and what to do next – you’ll be surprised at how many will comply!

Even if you’re no Spieldberg (I know I’m not) you can produce traffic sucking videos with these simple methods.

Linux phone goes on sale

2007-07-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

TWO VERSIONS of a truly open Linux mobile phone, the Neo, have gone on web sale in the US, made by FIC of Taiwan.

The site warns heavily that these phones are for developers not the general public.

It's based on an official standard for a Linux mobile called Openmoko, although FIC does appear to be driving this standard.

There's basically two versions of the Neo – a Base model for $300 and the Advanced version for $450. Each model comes in either black/silver or white/orange.

They're both very carefully described as 'developer preview' phones. That means that lots of bits haven't quite been integrated yet.

Perhaps the most important missing feature is integrated GPRS data access. The site also says that you shouldn't expect a reliable means of making phone calls, either.

Other fairly vital bits missing including an inability to send or receive texts; proper Bluetooth integration and an ability to set network preferences.

But – hey – this is the open source world and it shouldn't be long before people start to work out how to fix such things.

Slightly more worrying, however, is the fact that integrated GPS (satellite) isn't mentioned although it was a major feature when the phone was first announced.

So only the brave will be logging onto the official Openmoko site to buy one.

Teensurance Tracks Teens on the Road

2007-07-19T01:45:00.000-07:00

The technology to track where a car is and how fast it is going is available, but parents of new teen drivers have not been quick to adopt it. One insurer may change that. Safeco is offering Teensurance, a GPS tracking and reporting system in the 44 states where it provides car insurance.

With the GPS unit installed, parents and teens can set speed, distance, and time limitations and be notified via text message, email, and phone calls if and when any are crossed.

Surveys show "every 16 year old and 17 year old thinks they are a better driver than mom and dad, but they get easily distracted," says Jim Havens, Safeco's vice president of customer solutions. With cell phones in the hands of inexperienced drivers, there are even more ways for new drivers to become distracted. A survey of more than 1,000 16- and 17-year-old drivers by AAA finds that 61 percent of teens admit to risky driving habits; of them, 46 percent say they text message while driving and 61 percent say they talk on cell phones.

With my oldest a few years away from driving, suddenly a tool like this makes some sense—if it's used as a way to help teens monitor and adjust their driving behavior as they take to the road. If parents use it to revoke driving privileges at the first sign of a surpassed speed limit, then it's just a Big Mother tool and not very useful.

Of course, it is easy to disable. But parents will get a message telling them when Teensurance is offline, Havens said. He says the company has anecdotal evidence that the system is helping teens become more aware of their driving behavior and adjusting it when needed. Still, there is not enough data yet to prove its effect on teens warrants lower premiums for families with teens who use the $14.99-a-month service. For the extra $15, families with teens also get the ability unlock a door remotely if keys are locked in the car and access to roadside assistance in case of an emergency.

Congress to Examine Google-DoubleClick Deal

2007-07-18T22:50:00.001-07:00

Google executives are expected to be called to testify before House and Senate subcommittees about the company’s planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a deal that is already facing close scrutiny from federal antitrust regulators.

Within days of the deal’s announcement in April, companies including Microsoft, AT&T and some in the advertising industry, began to complain that the merger of Google and DoubleClick would limit competition in the online advertising market. Privacy groups, meanwhile, voiced concerns about the deal’s impact on consumer privacy. In May, the Federal Trade Commission began an investigation into the proposed merger.

Now, a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee is planning to call a hearing to explore the antitrust and privacy issues raised not only by the Google deal but also by recent consolidation in the online advertising market, according to a person familiar with the planned hearing.

Bobby L. Rush, the Illinois Congressman who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee on consumer protection, said he had opened an investigation into the privacy and competition issues raised by the Google-DoubleClick deal and also planned to call a hearing.

“There is widespread concern about the proposed merger between Google and DoubleClick that the Federal Trade Commission currently is reviewing,” Mr. Rush wrote in a letter to the commission, which is posted on his Web site. “I share these concerns and am writing to notify you that the subcommittee is considering holding a hearing when an appropriate date becomes available.”

Without addressing the planned hearings directly, Google said in a statement that it believed that the deal would not harm competition and would withstand scrutiny.

No date has been set for either the House or Senate hearings.

The Google-DoubleClick deal precipitated a wave of consolidation in the online advertising industry, including Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of aQuantive, a DoubleClick rival, and Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media, which runs an online advertising marketplace.

But while those last two deals were quickly cleared by antitrust regulators, the Google-DoubleClick merger has drawn more intense scrutiny.

Google, which dominates the business of placing text ads alongside search results and on sites across the Web, is expected to capture 27.4 percent of the $21.7 billion in United States online advertising in 2007, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The acquisition of DoubleClick would turn Google into a dominant player in the business of serving banners and other graphical ads that appear on Web sites.

Xbox chief defects to games firm

2007-07-18T08:16:00.001-07:00

Peter Moore oversaw the launch of the Xbox 360

Peter Moore, the head of Microsoft's gaming business, is leaving to join game maker Electronic Arts.

For the past four years Mr Moore has been the public face of Microsoft's Xbox and PC gaming business, and oversaw the launch of the Xbox 360.

He will join Electronic Arts as the head of its sports games division which makes some of its most popular titles.

He will be replaced by Don Mattrick, a former EA senior executive who has worked as a consultant at Microsoft.

The news about Mr Moore comes only weeks after Microsoft announced it would be spending $1.15bn to fix faulty Xbox 360 consoles.

Microsoft said nothing should be read into the timing of Mr Moore's departure.

On joining the game firm Mr Moore will receive a $1.5m golden handshake to offset future bonuses he was due from Microsoft.

At the EA division he will oversee the development of popular game franchises such as Madden NFL football, NBA Live and Fifa Soccer. About one-third of EA's revenue comes from sales of sports-related games.

Mr Moore, a Liverpudlian, joins EA shortly after a major re-organisation that saw it split into four divisions in a bid to become more competitive. In its last quarter, EA reported losses of $25m.

Before joining Microsoft in 2003, Mr Moore was president of Sega America and prior to that head of marketing at Reebok International.

He is scheduled to join EA Sports in September whilst Don Mattrick will be on Microsoft's fulltime payroll in August.

How to Find A Cheap Digital Camera

2007-07-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

Advances in modern science ushered in a wave of new technology that the world can enjoy. In the old days, photographers used actual bulbs for camera flash. Only photographers carry cameras because lugging them around isn’t really fashionable at that time. Discoveries and development of cameras produced the digital camera, wherein taking pictures isn’t so cumbersome anymore. It is less expensive because you can see the images before printing them so you could choose what to actually print. The images could also be uploaded to your computer for storage and further manipulations. These days, it not unusual to carry a compact digital camera. It’s perfect for capturing those random wacky moments with your friends.

The only problem it seems is finding a cheap digital camera. Can you even find one? Because of the features that are offered by digital cameras, they are often costly. That is enough to make any person have second thoughts about buying one. But for someone who considers photography a passion, affordability is relative. You just have to set a budget before buying a camera. You can find a cheap digital camera that is just right for you if you look hard enough. Don’t buy one that is more than you can afford, even if it has a lot of features. Make sure that you can actually use these features so that you can get your money’s worth. Consider your lifestyle and your objectives. Do you plan to spend a lot of time taking pictures or do you just want something small that can fit in your bag? If you are still a beginner, don’t buy a high-end professional camera just for the assurance of image quality and zoom performance. Instead, buy a cheap digital camera that is compact but has powerful features and easy to carry around. Explore the basics before cashing out on expensive professional cameras.

Though these are very important points to ponder when buying a cheap digital camera, you also have to consider the performance and features of your camera. Check the megapixels, zoom capability, image quality, type of media and battery. These are actually features that digital cameras highlight in advertisements.

· Megapixels – They are not the be-all and end-all of digital cameras. Salespeople like to throw this information to you because it promises clearer images. But this is just one factor that comprises your digital camera. You have to check the megapixels’ quality. Most image sensors can only find certain hues like red, blue and green. They can’t detect all three at the same time.

· Zoom capability – You’ve seen advertisements like 10x digital zoom or 5x zoom capability. While it is true, advertisers often forget to highlight optical zoom, which is actually more important. The difference is that with digital zoom, your image gets broken into small pixels if you enlarge it on your computer. If your camera has high optical zoom, you would not see pixelated images if you enlarge the image.

· Image quality – Check the quality of your image after you take a picture. Is it fuzzy or pixelated? Sharpness of colors is very important.

· Type of media – This is the memory of your digital camera. Find a memory card or stick that is compatible with your other equipment so it is easier to upload your images.

· Type of battery – See to it that your cheap digital camera doesn’t require expensive batteries or that it allows rechargeable batteries.

These points would help you decide on what kind of cheap digital camera to buy. Like what was mentioned earlier, affordability is relative for the passionate photographer. Find your niche by choosing the best but cheap digital camera.

Microsoft Photo Technologies Aim Big

2007-07-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp . is working on a variety of innovative photo projects, ranging from experiments with its 3D maps offering to massive panoramic photos that users can zoom into for details.

Developers who work in the company's research arm showed off the technologies on Tuesday during the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington .

HD View is one photo project that definitely has the "wow" factor.

The technology allows users to combine hundreds of photos to create one massive picture that users can zoom in on to see clear details. In one example, a panoramic photo of the city of Seattle includes 800 images, each 8 megapixals in size, stitched together to create a 3.6 billion-pixel image.

On a computer screen, it looks just like a panoramic photo. So, what's the point of combining so many photos? The massive file includes incredible detail.

Michael Cohen, a researcher at Microsoft working on the project, zoomed in to the roof of a building where a clay owl peers around a corner. With the picture zoomed out, a viewer doesn't even see a pin prick in the spot where the owl sits.

Another large photo of a mountain in Canada looks like a standard nature snapshot. But Cohen zoomed in to discover that climbers are scaling the rock wall. After finding the first climber, he followed the climbing ropes up to find the second one above him on the wall. When the photo is zoomed out, it's hard to imagine there might be climbers on the wall.

Microsoft offers the tool to build HD View photos for free on its Web site. Creating an HD View panorama image, however, isn't for just anyone. Such images are quite large and may require special cameras.

Another Microsoft project, unveiled last year and built in collaboration with the University of Washington , collects images of a site such as Rome's Trevi fountain from public photo-sharing Web pages such as Flickr . The Photo Tourism technology combines the photos into a 3D image so users can look at the object from any view. The idea was to take advantage of the potentially billions of images that are online, said Noah Snavely, a researcher at the University of Washington who works on the project with Microsoft researchers.

Microsoft also demonstrated at the summit some experiments with Virtual Earth. Eyal Ofek, a Microsoft researcher, demonstrated a 3D map of San Francisco that is made up of 10 million images, including 50,000 aerial photographs as well as pictures taken at street level. All the photos are stitched together so a user can navigate from a bird's-eye view seamlessly down to street level. The view is different from the street view capability in Google Maps , which doesn't combine the street-level pictures with aerial shots.

About 800 workers are developing projects at Microsoft Research. Some technologies they develop may become commercial Microsoft products, and others could be sold to other companies. The summit, which ended Tuesday, was an opportunity for Microsoft and its partners in academia to show off some of their projects.

In Battle of Consoles, Nintendo Gains Allies

2007-07-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

In the competition among the makers of video game consoles, momentum is building for the Wii from Nintendo among its crucial allies: game developers and publishers.

Inspired by the early success of the Wii, the companies that create and distribute games are beginning to shift resources and personnel toward building more Wii games, in some cases at the expense of the competing systems: the PlayStation 3 from Sony and Xbox 360 from Microsoft.

The shift is closely watched because consumers tend to favor systems that have many compelling games. More resources diverted to the Wii would mean more games, and that would translate into more consumers buying Wii consoles later.

Jon Goldman, chairman and chief executive of Foundation 9 Entertainment, an independent game development company, said that he was hearing a growing call for Wii games from the publishers and distributors that finance the games that his firm creates. “Publishers are saying: Instead of spending $15 million or $20 million on one PS3 game, come back to me with five or six Wii pitches,” he said.

“We had one meeting two weeks ago with a publisher that was asking for Wii games,” said Mr. Goldman, who declined to identify the video game publisher that he met. “Three or four months ago, they didn’t want to hear Word 1 about the Wii.”

Nintendo said that titles would be coming from several major developers, like Activision and Ubisoft, that are making an enhanced commitment to the platform.

The interest in the Wii follows a period of uncertainty about the console by developers and publishers. They were initially cautious because the Wii was less technologically sophisticated, and they worried that consumers would not take to its unorthodox game play, which uses a motion-controlled wand that players move to direct action on the screen. For example, to serve balls in the tennis game, players circle their arms overhead as they would in real tennis.

History gave developers and publishers reason for caution, too. Nintendo’s last system, the GameCube, was initially a hot seller, but was ultimately outsold — and by a considerable margin — by the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Also, Nintendo has historically made many of the popular games for its own systems, in a way that has discouraged heavy participation by other developers and publishers.

The shift does not represent any shunning of the Xbox or Sony consoles, but rather an elevation of the Wii’s status — one that was clear in many conversations with developers and publishers at E3, the video game industry’s annual trade show in Santa Monica, Calif.

It is early in the current console product cycle, given that these machines are intended to be on the market for more than five years. Industry analysts say they do not expect to declare a victor anytime soon. Nevertheless, the trend is clear: Nintendo is getting growing support from game developers.

“We’re seeing a big shift at E3,” said John Davison, editorial director of 1UP Network, a network of video game Web sites and magazines, “and we’ll see more later this year.” He said he was seeing some game publishers putting less emphasis on the PlayStation 3. “But they’re not going to talk about that,” he added.

Since its first appearance in stores in November, the Wii has been outselling the Xbox 360 and PS3, which came out the same month, and it continues to be in short supply. The NPD Group, a market research firm, reported that as of May, Americans had purchased 2.8 million Wii systems, compared with 1.4 million PS3s. About 5.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have sold, but it hit the market a year earlier.

The Wii has clearly benefited from a price advantage; it costs $250, compared with $300 for the least-expensive Xbox 360 and $479 for the top-of-the-line machine. The PS3 sells for $500, after a price cut by Sony to clear inventory in advance of the Christmas selling season, when its new $600 device will be offered. Microsoft has been hampered of late by widespread product failures, and the company said it would spend $1.15 billion to repair individual machines.

While the growing size of the Wii’s customer base is attractive, developers are favoring Wii for other reasons. They are able to create games in less time than is needed for rival systems, because Wii’s graphics are less complex.

Colin Sebastian, a video game industry analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, said that in rough terms, it cost around $5 million to develop a game for the Wii compared with $10 million to $20 million to make a game for the Xbox 360 or PS3. Mr. Sebastian said that given the cost differences, a developer would need to sell 300,000 copies of a Wii game to break even, compared with 600,000 of a game for the PS3 or Xbox 360.

“Wii development costs certainly are cheaper than the other consoles,” said Scott A. Steinberg, a vice president for marketing at the game developer Sega of America. The company has a number of original Wii projects under development and uses 15 to 25 programmers to develop a Wii title, compared with 50 or more for a PS3 or Xbox 360 game.

Because of its simpler graphics, development times for Wii games are also shorter. A Wii game can be created in as little as 12 months, said Kelly Flock, executive vice president for worldwide publishing at THQ, a video game developer based in Agoura Hills, Calif. Games for the two competing consoles typically take two to three years.

He said that the budget for a Wii game ranges from $1.5 million to $4 million, compared with the $10 million to $12 million the company spends on a PS3 or Xbox 360 game.

“The Wii is a godsend,” Mr. Flock said. “We are aggressively looking for more Wii titles.”

By this holiday season, Nintendo will have added 100 games to its existing 60 titles. Sony has said that it will double the number of titles for the PS3 to 120 by the end of March, while Microsoft said it would have 300 titles for the Xbox 360 by the Christmas selling season. “I don’t think you’ll see any big shifts to one platform because you’re supporting so many,” said Kathy Vrabeck, president of the casual entertainment division of Electronic Arts. That said, she added that there had been a clear shift in mood at the company toward the Wii.

“There is a clear sense of excitement about the Wii at E.A.,” she said.

George Harrison, Nintendo’s senior vice president for marketing, said, “Electronic Arts is doing much more for us than they have in the past.”

Sony counters that, to some extent, Wii developers, publishers and game players will get what they pay for: games with less-complex graphics.

“There is some truth to the fact that you can make games for Wii for less than the PS3,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president for marketing at Sony. “But we still believe that our job is to develop big-budget games.”

5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

2007-07-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.
The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Microsoft Research Explores Location Technologies

2007-07-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Corp . researchers are working on a variety of location-based tools, some of which could turn into interesting commercial applications.

In one project, the researchers lent out cheap GPS (Global Positioning System) devices to drivers and asked them to leave the devices on the dashboards of their cars for a couple of weeks, said John Krumm, a researcher at Microsoft Research . He discussed the results of his work at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington , on Monday.

Krumm's group examined the data they collected from the GPS units for a number of different factors, including what time of day people were most often in their cars and where they most commonly were going at what times, such as to commercial or residential areas.

That data was perhaps most relevant to the group's efforts to create a model to predict where and when users would stop and get out of their cars. Krumm imagined a number of reasons why that information might be useful. For example, the provider of a navigation system might be able to predict that because a user is near the airport, the user is likely to go there, and so offer the user a coupon for airport parking.

An intern on Krumm's team is working on determining whether hybrid cars could use such predictive modeling, which could predict the length of a trip as well as hills and the speed of the vehicle during the trip, in order to efficiently allocate the car's resources.

Scott Counts, another researcher, is working on a community application that would let fitness enthusiasts share exercise routes. SlamXR users carry a small device that includes a range of sensors such as heart rate monitor, temperature sensor, altimeter, GPS receiver and Bluetooth radio. Users of the device can collect data along their favorite bike route, for example, and upload that data onto the Web site. The site shows the route on the map and includes data such as speed and altitude along the route. Other users can search for routes based on difficulty, distance, target heart rate, elevation change and activity. Users can also tag the routes for easier searching.

Technologies developed at Microsoft Research could become commercial products from Microsoft , or the company may sell them to external sources. More than 700 researchers work in the group in five labs around the world.

The event in Redmond is an opportunity for Microsoft Research workers to spend time with members of academia, in part to discuss issues in computer science research.

Google cookies will 'auto delete'

2007-07-16T19:03:00.001-07:00

Google has said that its cookies, tiny files stored on a computer when a user visits a website, will auto delete after two years.

They will be deleted unless the user returns to a Google site within the two-year period, prompting a re-setting of the file's lifespan.

The company's cookies are used to store preference data for sites, such as default language and to track searches.

All search engines and most websites store cookies on a computer.

Currently, Google's are set to delete after 2039.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said in a statement: "After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies."

He said the company had to "find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time."

So if a user visits a Google website, a cookie will be stored on their computer and will auto-delete after two years. But if the user returns to a Google service, and each time the user returns, the cookie will re-set for a further two years.

Privacy campaigners

Privacy campaigners want to give users more control over what the search giant holds on to and for how long.

Google has pointed out that all users can delete all or some cookies from their web browser manually at any time and control which cookies from which websites are stored on a computer.

There are also tools online which can prevent the company and other firms leaving cookies on a computer.

In recent months, it has introduced several steps to reassure its users over the use of personal information.

In March the search giant said it would anonymise personal data it receives from users' web searches after 18 months.

The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 month

None of the other leading search engines have made any statements over anonymising IP addresses or shortening cookie lifespan.

Google Engineer Reveals New Tag & Best Strategies for Getting Indexed

2007-07-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

We love it when Google Engineers spill the beans... on just about anything Google especially when it comes to revealing juicy secrets on improving your ranking position in Google. Or better yet ways that they recommend getting your site indexed that are not your typical suggestions.

A recent thread on SEW is talking about a post on high rankings that covers what Google Engineer, Dan Crow, Director of Crawl Systems at Google has to say about getting your site lovingly indexed by the most popular search engine.

Some juicy tidbits from Dan:

New "unavailable_after" Tags - This little gem will allow webmasters the ability to tell Google when to stop indexing a page at a certain time. For example this might be useful for people with ecommerce sites with lots of coupons that have expired, older news items, and just about anything that is temporary and not permanent in nature on a site. While I really like this planning type tag, I don't see how much better it would be than just disallowing the page, or using a META robots tag to tell Google. Or better yet, using Webmaster Central URL removal feature. I see this tag probably having wide usage on news sites where there is a large number of pages that would need to expire at certain times.

Nosnippet & Noarchive tags - He details that these tags are not generally recommended, because he says "snippets are extremely helpful to visitors, as is showing the cache". Essentially these tags eliminate some problems associated with Google caching and improperly displaying the snippets below the titles in the search results. Google is fine with their use but would rather you not. This we know but its good to hear it again.

Avoid Walled Gardens - Dan used this term from the HR article and I thought it a nice way to explain how a group of pages are linked only to each other and not to anywhere else. He said you could put one of the links from that group in a sitemap and Google would index it and follow the other links. I think pointing an external link to those pages would be a much better idea. He says "those pages would be likely to be indexed via the sitemap...but considered low quality since they wouldn’t have any PageRank. Google is working on a way to change this in the future." Interesting.

How to Remove Spyware From Your PC

2007-07-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

These days it may seem as though the short list of unavoidable perils ought to be expanded to include death, taxes, and spyware. But if you ever do get infected with some nasty piece of malware, all you need to get rid of it are the right free tools, some time, and a little know-how.

A couple of warnings first: Removing spyware is as much art as it is science. The rogues who create spyware make removing their malicious programs as difficult as they can. In addition, some types of spyware download and install additional components, often hiding pieces of code from Windows to make removal even harder. The instructions below will wipe out most forms of spyware, but your machine's infestation may resist these measures. If so, you may have to consult a professional PC repair person. Or you can start afresh by reformatting your hard drive and then reloading Windows, your apps, and your data files (browse to our article "Windows Rejuvenated" for instructions).

Note too that if you perform certain removal steps improperly, your PC could become inoperable. Our instructions call out these danger spots, but if you don't feel confident about performing them, ask for help from a knowledgeable friend or from the experts on a spyware-removal Web forum such as TomCoyote, Geeks to Go, or SpywareInfo.

Make Sure It's an Infection
How do you know whether your PC has an active spyware infestation? Slower-than-normal performance is the most common symptom people report, but such behavior can also be due to any number of factors unrelated to spyware, such as running too many applications with too little system memory, having a full or very fragmented hard drive, or running buggy software that fails to free up the memory it uses after you close the application. Your first task is to determine whether you have a spyware-related problem or just a slow machine.

Download the latest versions of these tools:

Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool. This program is updated monthly, so always download the latest version before you use it.

Microsoft's Windows Defender. Windows Vista has Defender built-in, but if you suspect that you have spyware on your PC, update the program so it can find the newest bad stuff.

Avira Antivir PersonalEdition Classic, a free antivirus program--if you don't already have up-to-date antivirus software.

Since some spyware applications prevent you from downloading these tools, or from visiting the Web sites that host them, download the programs to another PC that you know is free of spyware. Then copy the installers to a portable USB drive, and plug that drive into the machine you suspect is infected.

Start by running the Malicious Software Removal Tool. This program is designed to search for and destroy only a small fraction of malware, but the ones it finds are the most serious strains of spyware and virus you can get.

If that program doesn't find anything, run the installer for Windows Defender (if it isn't already installed on your PC) and make sure that the program downloads its updates. Then click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the word 'Scan' at the top of the Defender window and choose Full Scan. If Defender finds malware, follow the on-screen instructions to delete the harmful files. This may require one or more reboots, because some spyware won't let you uninstall it while Windows is running.

If Defender fails to find anything, or if it finds spyware that it can't delete, it's time for a full antivirus scan. If you're using an antivirus program that is already loaded on your system, make sure that it's updated. If you're using AntiVir, run the installer, and then reboot. When AntiVir is running, you'll see an icon in your system tray showing an open umbrella inside a red square. Right-click the icon and choose Start AntiVir. Click the Start Update link in AntiVir's program window, and when the update is complete, click the Scanner tab, choose the Local Drives option in the lower pane, and press the key to begin scanning your hard drive. If it finds anything, AntiVir will pop up a dialog box. Select either Quarantine or Delete to remove the suspect files that it identifies.

Manual Analysis
One of these three programs should detect and remove any spyware on your PC. In the unlikely event that you have picked up a brand-new specimen that isn't yet included in the antispyware databases, you'll have to do some cyber-investigating to find and eject the interloper.

First, examine every process running on your machine to determine whether any of them is a piece of spyware. Window's Task Manager isn't up to this job because many spyware apps specifically hide themselves from it. Fortunately, they are less skillful at hiding from the many Task Manager alternatives. Two of my favorites are Process Explorer (which is free) and Security Task Manager (which comes in free and paid versions). Currently, only Process Explorer, which is now owned by Microsoft, is compatible with Windows Vista. A Vista-compatible version of Security Task Manager is coming, according to its producer, A&M Neuber Software. Either of these programs will show you everything that's running on your PC, and will help you determine whether a particular application should be there.

Warning: Stopping system processes and applications in this manner is risky. In some cases, if you kill the wrong program, Windows will shut down and reboot as a safety measure. While you probably won't render your system unworkable, you should back up all important documents and set a System Restore point (click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, and follow the on-screen instructions).

Start one of the alternative Task Managers mentioned above, and closely examine the list of running applications on your PC. You're looking for something that's either out of place or behaving oddly. If you're using Process Explorer, unzip the archive you downloaded and double-click the ProcExp.exe program. Click OK after you read the initial dialog, and you'll be presented with a color-coded list of everything that's running: Programs highlighted in pink are Windows services; those in gray-blue are applications. Right-click the bar with the column names (it's just above the list of programs), and choose Select Columns. Check the Command Line box and click OK. A new column will appear, showing you the full path to each running app.

If you're using Security Task Manager, double-click the installer and step through the dialog boxes to complete the installation. The first time you run the program, it will take a moment to scan your PC. Unlike Process Explorer, Security Task Manager doesn't list Windows' own system processes (other than Explorer.exe) on this initial page. If you want to see those, click the Windows Processes button on the toolbar. The higher the utility's rating for a program, the more suspect it is. As you click the entries, the program tells you why it rated the selected application as it did. However, many legitimate programs engage in activities that Security Task Manager views suspiciously, so don't just assume that anything with a rating above 50 is dangerous; instead, use the rating as an indicator of what to look at first.

Here's where it gets tedious: If you don't know what a particular program is, what it does, or where it's supposed to live on your hard drive, you'll have to do some research. Check out the list of processes that are known to be either benign or malevolent at Uniblue Systems' WinTasks Process Library. Alternatively, you can enter the filename in a search engine and look through the results for a description of the process. Some legitimate processes get a bad rap as spyware, so it's important to corroborate any negative reports you discover.

Remove the Reprobates
If the program you want to remove from your PC doesn't have an entry in Windows' Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel, it has probably changed your Registry to make itself difficult to find and eradicate.

Enter HijackThis, a free program designed to remove Registry entries and other settings that spyware uses to take over your PC. Rather than removing the programs, HijackThis deletes the Registry entries that prevent you from deleting the software yourself. To familiarize yourself with how HijackThis works, read the Quick Start guide, but beware: HijackThis, if misused, can render your system unbootable. Be sure to proceed deliberately, and keep those essential backups close by.

It's a good idea to consult experts before making any changes with HijackThis. To do so, run the program by double-clicking HijackThis.exe, and then click Do a system scan and save a logfile. HijackThis will make a record of everything it finds and--in a few seconds--will create a text-file report that you can post online or send to your expert. Volunteers who use the message boards at TomCoyote, Geeks to Go, andSpywareInfo will help you sort through the log if you post it to the Malware Removal message board on any of those sites.

If you want HijackThis to dislodge a program, fill in the check box next to it and click Fix Checked at the bottom of the program window to delete the appropriate Registry entries. Then manually delete the related file. Reboot your PC into Safe Mode (press at the beginning of the reboot cycle, before the Windows logo appears), navigate to the unwanted file on your hard drive, right-click it, and select Delete. Easy as pie.

Rid Yourself of Rootkits
The nastiest spyware specimens--the worst of the worst--are rootkits. These programs hide themselves from Windows, from antispyware tools, and from utilities such as Process Explorer and Security Task Manager. If you suspect that a rootkit has invaded your PC, you still may triumph. A free utility called IceSword can find and remove many kinds of rootkits. The only downside (for all but about 1 billion of us)? The tool's instructions are in Chinese.

Fortunately, some smart people have created an illustrated guide in English for using IceSword. If you're considering using the program, read this guide carefully before you begin. As with HijackThis, a wrong move can cause serious problems.

Intel and $100 laptop join forces

2007-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop.

The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.

In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine his initiative.

He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate PC - below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world.

"What happened in the past has happened," Will Swope of Intel told the BBC News website. "But going forward, this allows the two organisations to go do a better job and have a better impact for what we are both very eager to do, which is help kids around the world."

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: "Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children."

Intel inside

The new agreement means that Intel will sit alongside the 11 companies, including Google and Red Hat, which are partners in the OLPC scheme.

It will also join rival chip-maker AMD, which supplies the processor at the heart of the $100 laptop.

"Intel's apparent change of heart is welcome, and we're sure they can make a positive contribution to this very worthy project for the benefit of children all over the world," read a statement from AMD.

Software developed for the Classmate could run on the XO

Initially there are no plans to switch the processor to one designed by Intel. However, the servers used to back-up the XO laptops, as they are known, will have Intel technology at their core.

Decisions about the hardware inside the XO laptop would be made by OLPC, said Mr Swope.

"OLPC will decide about which products they choose to offer or not offer," he said.

OLPC, however, indicated that it would consider using Intel chips in its machines in the future.

Walter Bender, head of software development at OLPC, told the BBC News website that he believed OLPC would eventually offer different computers with different hardware.

"I think we will end up with a family of products that run across a wide variety of needs," he said. "Intel will be part of that mix."

Price test

In addition, the partnership will have a practical pay off for software developers.

"Any software you build is going to run at least on our two platforms," said Mr Swope.

An application developed for the XO laptop should work on the Classmate and vice versa.

"That's the exciting thing for me," said Mr Bender.

Currently both laptops are being tested in schools around the world. In parallel, OLPC is finalising orders for the first batch of computers.

Participating countries are able to purchase the XO in lots of 250,000. They will initially cost $176 (£90) but the eventual aim is to sell the machine to governments of developing countries for $100 (£50).

Intel says it already has orders for "thousands" of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).

Like the OLPC machine, Intel expects the price to eventually fall.

Google Wants Testers for Mobile AdSense

2007-07-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. has begun inviting mobile Web site developers to display Google ads on their sites as part of a limited beta test.

The offer extends to the mobile environment Google's AdSense program which lets Web site developers earn revenue by placing advertisements on their sites. Google runs the backend network that places ads on the sites relevant to site content. Site owners earn revenue when visitors click on the ads.

Sites must be written in one of three mobile markup languages including WML (Wireless Markup Language), XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CHTML (Compact HTML) in order to use AdSense for Mobile, according to a Google AdSense for Mobile help page. That's because Google's crawlers must be able to read the page in those languages to determine page content and serve up relevant ads.

A blogger at Self Made Minds said that he received an e-mail invitation from Google on Thursday night to test AdSense for Mobile.

In a statement, Google confirmed that it is conducting a limited beta to test AdSense for mobile. The company plans to evaluate the beta and refine the product based on feedback from users, it said.

Late last year, Google began delivering advertisements along with its mobile search results.

Online giants like Google are increasingly interested in the potential revenue stream from mobile users. "Mobile advertising is a huge opportunity for us starting with the basic premise that there are something like 3 billion or so handsets in the world," said Dilip Venkatachari, director of product management responsible for mobile monetization efforts at Google, in a recent interview. That compares to just around 1 billion PC users on the planet, making for an even larger target market.

No price cut for Euro PS3 console

2007-07-13T00:16:00.001-07:00

Sony is not cutting the price of the PlayStation 3 in Europe, but will offer free games and accessories instead.

There is also no word of plans for an 80GB version of the console in Europe.

Last week Sony said it would drop the US price of the 60GB PS3 by $100 (£50), and introduced a new 80GB version at the original price of $599 (£300).

In Europe gamers will get a "starter pack" at an unchanged price of £425 for the 60GB machine, with two games and two controllers included.

The new pack was announced at the E3 games conference in Santa Monica, in California. Sony says it is offering gamers £115 worth of added games and controller, for no extra charge.

But the firm could face criticism from gamers for deciding not to reduce the price of the 60GB PS3 and not announcing the 80GB machine.

Earlier this week, Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said he thought the US price cut would at least "double" the sales of PS3 in the country.

In the UK, the PlayStation 3 remains £125 more expensive than the equivalent Xbox 360 bundle of console and games and £225 more expensive than the Nintendo Wii with two games.

Griffin debuts Streamline armband for iPod

2007-07-12T23:06:00.001-07:00

Griffin Technology today announced yet another iPod in its Case Collection: Streamline for iPod is described as "the ultimate sport armband for iPod and earns its name from its low profile and clean lines that "look great wherever and however you wear it. Elegantly minimal design keeps your iPod handy and protected, without adding bulk. Streamline manages its sleek look without sacrificing functionality." It includes a clear, full-face screen protector that safeguards the face of the iPod from scratches and smudges without restricting visual access and includes a reflective trim that makes the armband more visible to traffic while out in low-lighting environments. The washable, two-way adjustable band fits any arm with a "breathable, comfortable" fit for both the iPod or iPod nano. Streamline for full-size iPod and iPod nano joins the previously-announced Streamline for iPhone. The company said a choice of colors is planned for a follow-up release, while it is immediately available basic black for $30.

Sony, Microsoft see games key to console race

2007-07-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

After years of arguing over whose video game machine has the best bells and whistles, Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. agree the battle boils down to which one has the best games.

"The (game) lineup is critical this holiday because it's the first time all three consoles will be in unconstrained supply at retail," Peter Moore, Microsoft's vice president of interactive entertainment, said in an interview at the E3 video game show, the industry's most important event, which officially kicked off on Wednesday.

About a year and a half after Microsoft introduced its Xbox 360 and eight months after Sony and Nintendo introduced their next-generation consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Wii, developers are only just starting to regularly roll out the franchise titles that can make a game system a must-have. Some games are exclusive to one machine, while others are cross platform.

Sony cut the price tag for its PS3 by 17 per cent on Monday, leaving it comparably priced to the Xbox 360. Many expected Microsoft to follow suit with a price cut on the 360, but the company on Tuesday held firm on the console's pricing for now.

The new PS3 price tag of $500 (U.S.) is just $20 more than the priciest Xbox, which has a 120-gigabyte hard drive. When Sony announced a year ago the PS3's $600 price tag, gamers howled.

The cost and lack of must-have games put many consumers off the PS3 despite Sony's insistence that the price was fair, considering it has a supercomputer processor, a 60-gigabyte hard drive and a Blu-ray high-definition DVD player.

With one of the fastest price cuts in video game history, Sony admitted its bet on the extra features had not paid off.

Still, great games could make it a formidable antagonist for Microsoft.

"If all we had was a price move, then we should have held that until our E3 press conference," Jack Tretton, head of Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Reuters last week. "But really, we've gotten that out front, and while we think it's substantial, we think the real news is the games."

Yet while this holiday season will be the first with all three consoles fully rolled out, some supply problems remain. A senior Nintendo executive said on Wednesday that Wii consoles, as victims of their own success, could still be scarce at the end of the year.

SONY TRAILS

Although Sony was the dominant player in the previous generation console battle, it has trailed Microsoft coming to market and in sales this time round.

Microsoft said it had shipped 11.6 million consoles worldwide by the end of June, missing its target of 12 million.

In the United States, Microsoft has sold about 5.6 million consoles, compared with 2.8 million for Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii, and 1.4 million for the PS3, according to data from NPD, a market data firm.

Microsoft's highly anticipated games — "Halo 3," "Grand Theft Auto IV" from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and "Madden 08" football from Electronic Arts Inc. — are all due out this year for the 360.

Games cost as much as $20 million to develop, and many publishers wait for machine sales to ramp up in order to insure they have a critical mass of buyers.

All the positioning over price, however, may be moot until the consoles fall to $200 or so. That's the magic point at which past console sales have exploded beyond the hard-core gamers into the mass market.

"Where these boxes get interesting is, 80 per cent of all consoles sold are $199 or cheaper. Consumers aren't going get interested until they get to $199," Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told Reuters last week.

Microsoft's Moore told Reuters on Wednesday that this generation of consoles could have the longest lifecycle ever as price cuts bring in more and more customers.

"The indications we're seeing right now with the strength of sales of the PS2 shows the classic long tail of consumers coming in at the right price point," Moore said. "Just to throw a price out there — $149 — many years from now seems like a great price point to sell millions of units to consumers coming in."

Robot unravels mystery of walking

2007-07-12T03:53:00.000-07:00

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.

Runbot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.

"Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine," said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.

Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.

Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, "local circuits" did most of the command and control work.

The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.

The basic walking steps of Runbot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine.

These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time.

Information from sensors is constantly created by the interaction of the robot with the terrain so that Runbot can adjust its step if there is a change in the environment.

As the robot takes each step, control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched and that the next step begins.

But if the robot encounters an obstacle, or a dramatic change in the terrain, such as a slope, then the higher level functions of the robot - the learning circuitries - are used.

The latest findings of the robot research study are presented in the Public Library of Science Computational Biology journal.

Four other scientists - Poramate Manoonpong, Tao Geng, Tomas Kulvicius and Bernd Porr - are also involved in the project, which has been running for the last four years.

Professor Woergoetter, of the University of Gottingen, in Germany, said: "When Runbot first encounters a slope these low level control circuits 'believe' they can continue to walk up the slope without having to change anything.

"But this is misguided and as a consequence the machine falls backwards. This triggers the other sensors and the highest loop we have built into Runbot - the learning circuitry - and from that experience of falling the machine knows that something needs to be changed."

Dynamic process

He said human walking was a dynamic process.

"About half of the time during a gait cycle we are not doing anything, just falling forward. We are propelling ourselves over and over again - like releasing a spring.

"In a robot, the difficulty lies in releasing the spring-like movement at the right moment in time - calculated in milliseconds - and to get the dampening right so that the robot does not fall forward and crash.

"These parameters are very difficult to handle," he said.

Runbot walks in a very different way from robots like Asimo, star of the Honda TV adverts, said Prof Woergoetter.

"They are kinematic walkers - they walk step by step and calculate every single angle, every millisecond.

"That can be handled through engineering but it is very clumsy. No human would walk like that. All these big machines stomp around like robots - we want our robot to walk like a human."

The first step in building Runbot was creating a biomechanical frame that could support passive walking patterns.

Passive walkers can walk down a slope unaided, propelled by gravity and kept upright and moving through the correct mechanical physiology.

Prof Woergoetter said: "Passive walking looks pretty realistic - but that's level one. On top of this we have local circuits, nested neural loops, which operate between the muscles (the joints of the robot) and the spinal cord (the spinal reflex of Runbot)."

He said Runbot learned from its mistakes, much in the same way as a human baby.

"Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.

"Only when it comes to more difficult things - such as a change of terrain - that's when the brain steps in and says 'now we are moving from ice to sand and I have to change something'.

"This is a good model because you are easing the load of control - if your brain had to think all the time about walking, it's doubtful you could have a conversation at the same time."

Nervous system

The principle was first discussed in the human nervous system by Russian physiologist Nikolai Bernstein.

Prof Woergoetter said: "He said it made sense that local agents, local networks, do the basic job, but the brain exerted control whenever necessary."

So using the information from its local circuits Runbot can walk on flat surfaces at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second.

Prof Woergoetter said Runbot was able to learn new walking patterns after only a few trials.

"If walking uphill, the gait becomes shorter, the robot's upper body weight shifts forward," he said.

The key lesson from the study, he said, was that the nested loop design first proposed by Bernstein more than 70 years ago "worked and was efficient".

He said the challenge was now to make Runbot bigger, more adaptive and to better anticipate situations like change of terrain.

Frames 1 - 3: The robot's momentum causes the robot to rise on its standing leg and a motor moves the swinging leg into position

Frame 3: The stretch sensor of the swinging leg is activated, which triggers the knee joint to straighten

Frames 3-6: The robot falls forward naturally, with no motor functions being used, and catches itself on the next standing leg

Frame 6: As the swinging leg touches the ground, the ground contact sensor in the foot triggers the hip extensor and the knee joint of the standing leg and the hip and knee joints of the swinging leg to swap roles

Google Lets Users Overlay Data on Personalized Maps

2007-07-11T18:40:00.001-07:00

Google Inc. will introduce on Wednesday a new feature that lets users create personalized maps which plot the locations of everything from cheap gas locally to the latest earthquakes worldwide.

MyMaps, as the new feature is known, allows consumers to select from more than one hundred mini-applications created by independent software developers. These allow users to overlay data on top of Google's popular online map service.

Visitors to http://maps.google.com after Wednesday at 6 a.m. PDT (1300 GMT) will find a new tab that contains links to dozens of the mini-applications, which Google calls Maplets.

One map application allows users to watch YouTube videos based on the locations where they are uploaded. One could switch from the video confessions of a teenager in Ohio to tourist videos shot in the Andes mountains of South America.

Among the applications created by software developers over the past month are programs that allow users to link famous photos taken in locations around the world to Google Maps.

Alternately, photos that have location information on the Flickr photo sharing service can be found on a Flickr Maps application. Users can map local real estate prices, plot hotels or locate the cheapest gas station nearby.

"We are putting the Web into maps," said John Hanke, a product manager for Google Maps, said of the diversity of information users now will be able to locate geographically.

Furthermore, users can overlay multiple applications on top of Google Maps to find interesting geographical correlations.

Before buying a house, a potential property owner could overlay local crime statistics on their new neighborhood.

Tourists could check out photos posted by other tourists to sites such as Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr to figure out what the hotel or the surrounding region looks like before they book a reservation.

Consumers who have signed up for a Google Gmail account can save personalized maps. Users who choose not to sign into Google services can remain anonymous but use the service, Hanke said.

Microsoft Plays Up Family Appeal of Xbox

2007-07-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

As Microsoft executives played down the impact of an extensive repair program for defective Xbox 360 game machines, they announced several efforts to broaden the appeal of their machine to families.

Opening the annual E3 game conference here, Microsoft executives announced a deal to distribute films from the Walt Disney Company on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Internet service and outlined a broader array of games focused mostly on children and families.

Executives predicted that the company’s recently announced plan to spend up to $1.15 billion to fix defective Xbox 360 game machine would improve, not undermine, the system’s image with consumers.

“The important impact for us is that our customers know we’re going to support the console and support them and if they have issues, we’ll take care of it,” said Robert J. Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, in an interview. “It won’t change what’s happening in the marketplace because the industry is about the games and we think we have the games that will get people really excited this year.”

As the game industry’s growth has slowed in recent years, game developers have tried to reach beyond the young male players who have been the target audience.

“We believe we have the best game lineup in video-game history for the holiday season,” said Mr. Bach. “You can look top to bottom and we think we have the goods to please any type of gamer.”

Part of Microsoft’s strategy has been to position the Xbox 360 as a living room media hub and an essential element of that plan has been allowing users to download films and television shows to the machine. Adding Disney to the roster of companies distributing movies and video programming over the Xbox Live service should help broaden the appeal of the game system to families with children.

The same could be said of the new games Microsoft announced here, including a new installment of the company’s Viva Pinata game and a version of the Scene It? board game. Scene It? will come with a new controller for the Xbox 360 with large buttons and a simple layout that game novices, intimidated by a traditional game controller, may find easier to use

“Part of our strategy is we want to win this generation and in order to do that we have to expand beyond the core gamer audience that we’ve had success with and that means appealing to the broad consumer market,” said Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios.

The company also said it was developing a keyboard for the Xbox 360 controller. Currently, Xbox Live users send text messages using an on-screen keyboard. The company recently announced plans to integrate the popular Windows Live Messenger service with Xbox Live.

But even as Microsoft hopes to appeal to new sorts of users, the company wants to avoid neglecting the serious player. So Microsoft also said that the next version of the popular Resident Evil series from Capcom of Japan would also be designed to run on the Xbox 360.

In the past, Resident Evil games have run only on Nintendo and Sony consoles. Persuading Capcom to develop games for the Xbox 360 underlines the success Microsoft has had recently in attracting Japanese developers who had shied away from the American console.

Nintendo Wii May Be Scarce for Holidays

2007-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s hit Wii video game consoles will still be scarce this holiday season, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

Nintendo promised that some 100 new games for the Wii, known for its motion-sensitive controller which can be swung like a bat or brandished like a sword, will debut by the end of the year. It also showed off a pistol-style controller and motion-sensitive pad for dancing and walking.

But not everyone may be able to get even the basic console in time for the year's main buying season.

"There is no guarantee that we are not going to have 'out-of-stocks' this holiday season," George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications for Nintendo of America, said in an interview. "If you see one, buy it. Don't assume that you can come back later and find one."

Harrison added that the company was ramping up production, but that parts manufacturers were still trying to gauge how much they need to produce to keep up with demand.

"We're trying to figure out what's the reasonable monthly level, and as we've seen every time we ship product to the market, whether it's in Japan or here in the U.S. or in Europe, it sells out in a matter of days," Harrison said.

The Wii's quirky remote and a relatively low price tag have made the Wii stand out compared with the powerful Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. and PlayStation 3 from Sony Corp.

At the kick-off to E3, the industry's most important event of the year, Nintendo rolled out a number of new controllers.

The Wii Zapper, which forms a gun from Nintendo's standard controllers, will debut this year and offer better play for shooting and war game fans, a hard core audience that has been secondary to Nintendo's focus on casual games.

A new pressure-sensing mat, dubbed the Balance Board, will come out next year -- after this year's holiday buying season. The mat can sense when a person moves and leans, letting players head virtual soccer balls "thrown" at them, for instance.

A steering wheel for racing games is due out in the first half of next year.

Digg iPhone Beta launches

2007-07-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

Digg.com has launched Digg iPhone Beta, an iPhone-compatible version of the Digg.com user-driven news website. Digg.com founder Kevin Rose alongside two associates sat down last weekend to white-board the Digg iPhone application. Rose told the developer that he would purchase an iPhone for him if the application was completed within 48 hours, according to the company founder's blog post. That developer finished the job, offering features like native iPhone-like story scrolling with mini permalink pages that include the top five comments. Digg iPhone Beta allows iPhone users to login and digg stories, supports "pagination," and allows visitors to jump to any topic. Digg.com has also promised top stories 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a forthcoming version of Digg iPhone Beta.

Sony refines PSP console design

2007-07-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

Sony has unveiled a re-designed PlayStation Portable which is slimmer, lighter, and comes with a video-out port for watching content on TVs.

The form factor of the portable console is virtually unchanged but the device is now 33% lighter and 19% slimmer.

Sony has shipped more than 25m PSPs since its launch in 2004.

No release date or price was given for the new PSP. It lags behind sales of the Nintendo DS, which has shipped more than 40m units worldwide.

At a press conference in California, Sony also said it was working with Epic Games to optimise its Unreal graphics engine for use on the PlayStation 3.

Unreal Tournament 3, which uses the engine, will be available exclusively on PS3 in the Autumn. Seven developers, working on 20 more games, will use the optimised engine.

Sony also said it had secured exclusivity for much-hyped shooter Haze, at least for the "holiday season".

Nintendo conference

The firm also ended speculation that Metal Gear Solid 4, from veteran developer Hideo Kojima, would appear on the Xbox 360 as well as the PS3.

Sony said the game was "set for a simultaneous worldwide launch in early 2008 exclusively on PS3".

The press conference was also used to demo upcoming games, such as Killzone 2, and the latest iteration of the online portal, PlayStation Home.

Nintendo also held a press conference, at which it announced more games that it hopes will continue to broaden the gaming demographic.

Games announced included exercise title Wii fit, a new Mario Kart game for the popular console and the first Zelda game to appear on the Nintendo DS.

Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, said: "We're building on that foundation with games and accessories appealing to our current fan base and drawing in even more new players."

UK computer history gets new home

2007-07-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

Plans are taking shape to set up a museum that celebrates Britain's role in the origins of the digital age.

The National Museum of Computing will be based at Bletchley Park where World War II code breakers built the first recognisably modern computers.

The museum's centrepiece is the rebuilt Colossus computer that broke high-level German communications during WWII.

The museum's founders are seeking funds and backers to exhibit more machines from its extensive collection.

Working history

Set up in partnership with the Bletchley Park Trust the museum aims to become a showcase that will let visitors stroll through the history of early computers.

"I cannot think of a better place than Bletchley to put the museum," said Andy Clark, one of the founders of the Trust trying to establish the museum. "It's a key part of the modern history of the computer."

The museum's Trust has leased several buildings for its collection at Bletchley, including Block H where Colossus No. 9 was sited during WWII.

Mr Clark stressed that the museum would not simply be rooms full of old machines in glass cases.

Tony Sale has spent 14 years re-building Colossus

"This is not a museum of computers but of computing," he said. Every machine on display would be restored to show how it worked, said Mr Clark.

"Where else would you be able to surf the net on a machine from 1976?" he said.

According to Tony Sale, another Trust founder and who has led the Colossus re-build project, the Museum has "800 square metres" of historically important computers to put on show.

Machines in the collection include a DEC PDP 8, an Elliott 803, several ICL mainframes, air traffic control terminals and a variety of early desktop machines.

The highlight of the collection was the rebuilt Colossus Mark 2 that Tony Sale has spent the last 14 years re-building using photos and wiring diagrams scavenged from engineers who worked on the original.

Mr Clark said the Trust was seeking funds of £250,000 to safeguard the future of this collection and realise its plans to put on show the most significant computers in the collection.

In total, said Mr Clark, about £6m would be needed to create an institution that could do justice to the UK's role in the early days of the computer.

The Museum gets an unofficial opening on 12 July 2007 when the British Computer Society stages a conference at Bletchley on the history of early computers and efforts to preserve them.

The Museum also plans to make some money by restoring old computers for other museums around the world but, said Mr Clark, most of the funding would have to be found from other sources.

Without more funds and backing, said Mr Clark, there was a danger that the early history of the computer age would be lost.

Top 8 Tips for Wireless Home Network Security

2007-07-11T03:09:00.000-07:00

Many people setting up wireless home networks rush through the job to get their Internet connectivity working as quickly as possible. That's totally understandable. It's also quite risky as numerous security problems can result. Today's Wi-Fi products don't always help the situation as configuring their security features can be slow and non-intuitive. The recommendations below summarize the steps you should take, in order of importance, to improve the security of your home wireless LAN.

1) Change Default Administrator Passwords (and Usernames)

At the core of most Wi-Fi home networks is an access point or router. To set up these pieces of equipment, manufacturers provide Web pages that allow owners to enter their network address and account information. These Web tools are protected with a login screen (username and password) so that only the rightful owner can do this. However, for any given piece of equipment, the logins provided are simple and very well-known to hackers on the Internet. Change these settings immediately.

2) Turn on (Compatible) WPA / WEP Encryption

All Wi-Fi equipment supports some form of "encryption." Encryption technology scrambles messages sent over wireless networks so that they cannot be easily read by humans. Several encryption technologies exist for Wi-Fi today. Naturally you will want to pick the strongest form of encryption that works with your wireless network. To function, though, all Wi-Fi devices on your LAN must share the identical encryption settings. Therefore you may need to find a "lowest common denominator" setting.

3) Change the Default SSID

Access points and routers all use a network name called the SSID. Manufacturers normally ship their products with the same SSID set. For example, the SSID for Linksys devices is normally "linksys." True, knowing the SSID does not by itself allow anyone to break into your network, but it is a start. More importantly, when someone finds a default SSID, they see it is a poorly configured network and are much more likely to attack it. Change the default SSID immediately when configuring your LAN.

4) Enable MAC Address Filtering

Each piece of Wi-Fi gear possesses a unique identifier called the "physical address" or "MAC address." Access points and routers keep track of the MAC addresses of all devices that connect to them. Many such products offer the owner an option to key in the MAC addresses of their home equipment, that restricts the network to only allow connections from those devices. Do this, but also know that the feature is not so powerful as it may seem. Hacker software programs can fake MAC addresses easily.

5) Disable SSID Broadcast

In Wi-Fi networking, the access point or router typically broadcasts the network name (SSID) over the air at regular intervals. This feature was designed for businesses and mobile hotspots where Wi-Fi clients may come and go. In the home, this feature is unnecessary, and it increases the likelihood an unwelcome neighbor or hacker will try to log in to your home network. Fortunately, most Wi-Fi access points allow the SSID broadcast feature to be disabled by the network administrator.

6) Assign Static IP Addresses to Devices

Most home networkers grativate toward using dynamic IP addresses. DHCP technology is indeed quick and easy to set up. Unfortunately, this convenience also works to the advantage of network attackers, who can easily obtain valid IP addresses from a network's DHCP pool. Turn off DHCP on the router or access point, set a fixed IP address range, then set each connected device to match. Use a private IP range (like 10.0.0.x) to prevent computers from being directly reached from the Internet.

7) Position the Router or Access Point Safely

Wi-Fi signals normally reach to the exterior of a home. A small amount of "leakage" outdoors is not a problem, but the further this signal reaches, the easier it is for others to detect and exploit. Wi-Fi signals often reach across streets and through neighboring homes. When installing a wireless home network, the position of the access point or router determines it's reach. Try to position these devices near the center of the home rather than near windows to minimize this leakage.

8) Turn Off the Network During Extended Periods of Non-Use

The ultimate in security measures, shutting down the network will most certainly prevent outside hackers from breaking in! While impractical to turn off and on the devices frequently, at least consider doing so during travel or extended periods offline. Computer disk drives have been known to suffer from power cycle wear-and-tear, but broadband modems and routers can easily handle this treatment occasionally.

Xbox revamp hits Europe in summer

2007-07-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

A revamped Xbox 360, designed to store and display high-definition video, will go on sale in Europe on 24 August.

The black Elite console has a 120GB hard drive and outputs high definition video through a digital connection.

Microsoft's Shane Kim said he did not think recent reports of faulty Xbox 360s would damage future sales.

Speaking ahead of the E3 games show, he added there were no plans for an Xbox 360 price cut, saying they were "very comfortable with the price".

"We are selling the Elite console as fast as we can make them," he said of the black Xbox 360, but was unable to give specific sales figures.

He said Microsoft felt no need to reduce prices in light of Sony's cut of $100 (£50) from the cost of the 60GB PS3.

"Since our rivals launched last year, in the US we are neck and neck with the Wii and we are just about double the sales of PlayStation 3," he added.

Mr Kim, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, said he did not feel Sony had genuinely cut prices as the firm had maintained a $600 (£300) price point for the 80GB PS3.

"We really feel like we are driving the next generation console market," he said.

Mr Kim assured consumers that the firm had taken steps to resolve concerns over many Xbox 360s being returned because of faults.

The firm has set aside more than $1bn (£500m) to cover the cost of offering extended warranties.

'Remove concerns'

"It's been somewhat positive because we had been able to remove people's concerns and show that we are standing behind the product.

"Customers have responded very well - reaction has been neutral to positive."

A new Halo 3 trailer was shown

Microsoft also used the E3 press conference to reaffirm its commitment to a video download service for Xbox users in Canada and Europe.

"We're launching in UK and Ireland, France and Germany first and then rolling out to other countries as soon as we can," he said.

In the US, Xbox Lives' video marketplace offers more than 2,100 hours of content from 28 networks and studios, with nearly 500 hours of high definition content.

A Microsoft press conference in Santa Monica highlighted some of the key titles being launched on Xbox 360 this year, including Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV.

A new trailer for Halo 3 was shown, featuring some of the first video of the single-player campaign in action.

Microsoft also unveiled a "digital short film" made by Neill Blomkamp, who had been ear-marked for the stalled Halo movie, in conjunction with Peter Jackson's special effects wizards Weta Workshop and Origami Digital.

The company also trumpeted another title to move to the Xbox 360 after years of Nintendo and PlayStation exclusivity: Resident Evil 5 will make its debut on the console next year.

The award-winning first-person shooter Gears of Wars was also unveiled for Windows PCs.

US could approve clones as food

2007-07-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

The US could approve cloned animals for use as food in two to three years, according to experts.

But cloned meat is unlikely to appear on supermarket shelves in Britain or elsewhere in Europe anytime soon.

Currently, most cloning is carried out for scientific reasons, but it could one day be used to help improve the quality and efficiency of livestock.

However, observers say cloning is not likely to supercede any of the other techniques used by livestock breeders.

At a news conference in London, scientists said they could think of absolutely no health risk to consumers from eating cloned meat.

Elite animals

Following a five year study, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft ruling last year that meat and milk from cloned animals was safe for human consumption.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is also carrying out its own investigation into the safety of cloned food. EFSA will also look at its impact on animal welfare, biodiversity and the environment.

The first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was Dolly the sheep, born at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh more than 10 years ago.

Since Dolly, cattle, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, horses, mice and rats have all been cloned.

Chris Warkup, director of Genesis Faraday, a scientific partnership based in Edinburgh, said that cloning "elite" animals to breed from might prove useful in the meat and dairy industries. "If the FDA say what they seem minded to say, you might expect meat and milk from the progeny of clones - not clones themselves - to be on the US market in the not-too-distant future," Mr Warkup said.

"There is a pyramid structure in animal breeding. All the breed improvement occurs to a few elite animals at the top of the pyramid."

But Mr Warkup added that cloning was likely to be used in combination with other techniques such as artificial insemination.

Meat and milk

He continued: "The big advantage of the Dolly technology (somatic cell nuclear transfer) is that you know what the animal's potential is, because you are taking the DNA from an adult."

"You could even take cells from a beef carcass on the slaughterline and recreate the animal that produced that very impressive carcass."

However, researchers said there needed to be more research on some of the stillbirths and abnormalities which are more common in cloned animals compared to those born naturally.

The efficiency of the cloning process remains a key issue in the viability of commercialisation. Early attempts at cloning produced very few viable clones; most of the animals died during gestation or shortly after birth.

Nikki Osborne, senior science officer at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), said: "We are totally opposed to the cloning of animals for food production purposes.

"The process is inefficient, and has a huge potential to cause the animals involved unnecessary pain, suffering and distress - for absolutely no valid reason."

Professor Keith Campbell, from the University of Nottingham, one of the original Dolly scientists, said some groups had reported an efficiency of 80% in terms of successful births and embryo transfers for cattle.

Dr Simon Best, chairman of the BioIndustry Association, warned that labelling cloned food for no scientific reason risked delaying the introduction of cloned meat in Europe and would be unhelpful and confusing for consumers.

"It's a Pandora's box and we could end up with the kind of meaningless labels you have on cigarettes, for instance," he said.

Do Commercial PSP ROMs Exist?

2007-07-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of discussions on how PsP ROMs could be played on either the PsP or the PC. A lot of people don't know that there are no legal commercial PsP games that can actually be downloaded over the internet. If there are, they are bootlegs and are covered by the law.

First off, Sony played it safe by using Universal Media Discs (UMD) for the PsP. So this means, it is impossible to just download full (commercial) PsP games and burning them to regular mini discs then playing then on your PsP. Much more so on the PC. There has been no fully functional emulator that has been able to play a PsP Rom fully.

Sony has made it very tough for people to make a backup of their games and there are no UMD burners and readers available in the market. Sony has bared that it has no intentions of releasing these UMD writers and readers so as to curb piracy. But time will tell, past security developments have been tried and done by other gaming companies and some people have found ways of going around these measures.

What PsP owners can look forward to are PsP game demos or PsP games that are created by unlicensed PsP game developers. By installing an emulator to your PsP, you will be able to play PsP ROMs in it. But first, what you need to do is to find the PsP ROMs that you will install.

As our title suggests, it is very hard to find commercial (full) PsP ROMs if they do exist, if they do, they are probably illegal. What you can find however are game demos. So, the next thing you will do is to download the PsP ROM that you want and save it to your computer first. This may require a little research to look for the websites that offer downloads of PsP ROMs.

After saving them on your computer, what you need to do now is to find an emulator that you will be able to download and install to your PsP. As a reminder, make sure to find an emulator that works with the version of your PsP, so it would be wise to first check what version your PsP is.

After downloading the emulator file, you need to extract the files in a folder, make sure you remember where you put it. Next step is to connect your PsP to your computer. You then go to the USB options area of your PsP. Then on your computer, open up the drive that represents your PsP. Open the PsP folder. Inside you will find the game folder, double click to open it. Drop inside the game folder, the unzipped files of your emulator from your computer. Drop inside the emulator folder your saved PsP ROMs.

The next step is to disconnect your PsP from your computer then go to your memory stick. Inside, look for your emulator folder. Usually it is found at the top since it has just been newly installed. Run your emulator by clicking the X button and look for your PsP ROMs inside. Then it's just a matter of playing and enjoying your PsP ROMs.

Sun Accused of Putting Users at Risk

2007-07-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems Inc. is putting millions of Java users at risk by staggering the release of security patches for the software, security vendor eEye Digital Security Inc. said Monday.

To illustrate the problem, eEye points to a recent flaw in the Java Runtime Environment, used to run programs that are written in Java.

In January, eEye discovered a serious bug in the Java Network Launching Protocol, which is used to run Java programs over the Web. Hackers could exploit this flaw by setting up a malicious Web site that could install unauthorized software on any Java-enabled PC that visited it, according to eEye.

The flaw was patched in late June, but Sun has yet to push out the fix to its millions of Java users worldwide.

Instead, Sun has made a developer release available on its Java.sun.com download page and is holding off on a more widespread release of the fix.

The reason? So that developers can make sure that the update itself is bug-free. "There's an additional round of testing that happens before we blast it out to consumers," said Sun Spokeswoman Jacki Decoster.

The problem with this approach is that a staggered release schedule gives criminals a window of opportunity to reverse engineer the Java bug and then create attack code that can be targeted at the millions of unpatched users, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye.

"Sun has such a horrible update process that they released patches for this flaw a couple weeks ago, and more patches for different versions [after that]," he said via instant message. "If people were reverse-engineering the patch a few weeks ago, they have a head start on the good guys."

Microsoft Corp. releases security patches for all versions of its products simultaneously, but Sun is not the only company to stagger updates. Oracle Corp., for example, habitually releases database patches for some of the less-popular operating system platforms weeks after its initial security updates.

Leaving Java users unprotected like this not a good idea, said Cesar Cerrudo, CEO of Argeniss Information Security, in an instant message interview. But with Sun expecting to push out a fix for the problem later this week, hackers are not getting a lot of time to develop attack code, he said.

MSN Streams Live Earth to 8 Million People

2007-07-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Corp. says it set a record for streaming an online event to the most customers after offering the Live Earth concerts on MSN over the weekend.

About 8 million people watched at least parts of the concerts live over the 36 hours that the shows took place in ten locations around the world. At the peak, 237,000 people watched simultaneously, Microsoft said.

That's more than what Microsoft thinks is the previous most-watched online broadcast, the Live 8 concerts in 2005. According to AOL LLC, which streamed those ten concerts, 5 million people around the world watched live.

Teams in London, China Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington supported the Live Earth streaming effort on MSN. Those workers were primarily content editors and programmers who were constantly updating the Web page with live and on-demand content as well as details about which artists were performing live and who was up next, said Lisa Gurry, MSN senior director at Microsoft.

Microsoft relied on its existing server farms around the globe to support the stream but beefed up those facilities in preparation, Gurry said. "We used a lot of our existing capacity and purchased additional to ensure we were prepared for the massive amount of traffic we were expecting," she said. Akamai Technologies Inc. helped support the streaming, she said.

MSN signed the deal with Live Earth to stream the concerts last year and began preparations to support the event in February, she said.

MSN looked back to other popular events it has streamed, such as the NCAA Final Four basketball games, in order to estimate how many people might tune into Live Earth. Although that preparation paid off, MSN did find some surprises, Gurry said. MSN had expected that the U.S. show would produce the most traffic, but it came in fourth. The U.K. concert was the most viewed, followed by Australia, Germany Japan, she said.

MSN expects viewers to continue to visit the site to watch archived video of the concerts on demand. In the week after the Live 8 concerts, AOL surpassed the number of live watchers, recording 8.5 million unique visitors who requested more than 25 million on-demand plays of the concerts.

80GB PS3 takes a step back on backwards compatibility

2007-07-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

It looks like gamers stuck in the past may want to think twice before throwing down the $600 for a shiny new 80GB PS3, as it's now been revealed that the system has dropped the PS2 "emotion engine" chip in favor of the software-based solution currently employed in the 80GB Korean PS3 and existing Euro PS3s. As you can sort of make out in the image from the 80GB box above, that means "limited backward compatibility" with PS1 and PS2 games, not to mention a likely endless series of software updates to slowly expand that compatibility. No word if the 60GB PS3 will also be going the software-only route, although that $100 price drop could possibly be a sign of things to come. On a side note, our pals at Joystiq also got the official word from Sony on that mysterious red light emanating from the SIXAXIS on the 80GB PS3 box. According to Sony's Dave Karraker, "it is just a lighting trick. Nothing different or new about it."

Breathe Air Helmet Makes You One Intimidating Cyclist

2007-07-10T08:54:00.001-07:00

Apparently, hay fever sufferers make dangerous cyclists, as if they sneeze they oftentimes send themselves careening into ongoing traffic. Solving that problem and also making cyclists look totally badass is this Breathe Air helmet. It's got a filter over the nose and mouth that's designed to filter out particles that will cause problems for people with allergies and asthma. Oh, and you'll look like you just biked out of a sci-fi movie, but I guess that's just a bonus.

There's no manufacturer as of yet, but when one is found expect for the Breathe Air helmet to retail for around $220.

Spielberg's gaming vision emerges

2007-07-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

Two video games developed with director Steven Spielberg are to be shown off at the E3 conference in Los Angeles.

The filmmaker has collaborated with Electronic Arts, the world's largest games publisher, on three titles.

The first, codenamed LMNO, is a contemporary action adventure, said Neil Young, general manager of EA's Los Angeles studio.

The second, with the codename PQRS, is a puzzle game designed for Nintendo's Wii console.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Spielberg said the puzzle game "seemed like a great thing for the entire family to play together over Christmas; although you don't need the excuse of a holiday to enjoy it."

The game has been described as a mix of Saturday-morning cartoon and Jenga.

'Chemical reaction'

Mr Young said: "Of course just playing with blocks does not a game make.

"Now imagine there are up to 50 different properties that can be associated with them. They can explode or form a chemical reaction."

In LMNO, being designed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the player partners with a female character who evolves over time depending on how she interacts with other characters in the game.

Newsweek described the title as "North by Northwest meets ET".

Spielberg told Newsweek: "The challenge is, can the game have an emotional impact on players while they are actively manipulating the world?"

In a separate statement about his involvement with EA, he said: "I am truly enjoying the creative collaboration and we hope that gamers will be as excited as we are about what we can bring to the medium through our shared vision."

No details about the third game Spielberg is working on were released.

Google to buy Postini for US$625 million

2007-07-09T06:50:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. has agreed to buy messaging security company Postini Inc. for US$625 million in a move to increase the appeal of Google's hosted applications among big businesses, the companies announced on Monday.

Postini provides messaging security, archiving, policy enforcement and other services to about 35,000 business customers around the world, Google said. The vendor plans to use the technology to boost the security and compliance features of Google Apps, its hosted suite of productivity applications.

Google said around 1,000 small businesses are signing up for Google Apps every day. But it admitted that big businesses have been reluctant to use such hosted services because of concerns about security and corporate compliance. Buying Postini will help to relieve those concerns, the company said.

The cash deal is subject to customary closing conditions and expected to close by the end of the third quarter, Google said.

Google plans to make Postini a wholly owned subsidiary and said it will continue to support Postini customers and invest in Postini products.

Game world gets ready for E3 show

2007-07-09T02:50:00.000-07:00

The E3 show always attracted big crowds

The video game world is gearing up for the E3 Expo - one of the biggest events in the gaming calendar.

Although smaller than in previous years the three-day event will be a showcase of the latest and greatest in the gaming world.

The focus in 2007 has shifted from hardware to games and attendees will expect to see previews and launches of some keenly-awaited titles.

But, despite the revamp, some wonder if E3 is being eclipsed by other events.

Top titles

In 2006 the E3 show attracted more than 60,000 visitors to the LA conference centre where more than 400 companies showed their wares.

In 2007 the event, which runs from 11-13 July, has moved to Santa Monica. Exhibitors are spread around a series of venues and the show has become invitation-only. It is now aimed at the industry's professionals rather than the game-playing public.

But, said Rob Fahey, editor of gamesindustry.biz, this downsizing may not have had the desired effect.

"The new E3 is a very provincial event," he said. "Formerly, E3 was the world's games trade show - now it's very distinctly North America's games trade show. "We've been seeing a lot of smaller companies getting squeezed out of the new event," said Mr Fahey, "and the bigger publishers (including Sony and Nintendo) are focusing their resources elsewhere, on their own private events or on other shows around the world."

Phil Elliot, UK Editor of GameSpot, agreed that the revamp has changed E3 significantly.

"The idea was sound but the execution is a little unclear," he said, "and the impact on the industry outside of North America is proving larger than most anticipated."

Many European game makers would avoid E3, said Mr Elliot, and instead were saving themselves for the Games Convention that takes place in Leipzig in late August.

"It's a public show which will surely take on the mantle of biggest show on the calendar," he said.

Mr Fahey said the fact that E3 had shrunk was a good thing. "It will focus more attention on the European show in Leipzig, and the Asian shows in Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul, and should hopefully help to emphasise the importance of non-US markets.

Assassin's Creed lets people play as a medieval killer

A separate event for the public, called the Entertainment for All Expo, will take place from 18-21 October in LA.

In 2006 the big announcements at the show were about hardware - in particular Sony's PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii as these next generation consoles had yet to launch.

However, in 2007 with all three next generation consoles now on shop shelves the focus has switched to games.

In particular, this year industry watchers are looking for titles that harness the raw computer power of the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

One of the most eagerly anticipated games is Assassin's Creed from Ubisoft for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The game, set in the time of the Crusades, is gaining attention for its huge environments, life-like crowds that react to the player's actions and the acrobatic way the main character gets around towns and villages.

Another PS3/Xbox 360 title that is widely anticipated is Grand Theft Auto IV - the latest instalment in the best-selling franchise that lets players take on the role of a modern-day criminal.

This instalment is based in a revamped Liberty City and follows the fortunes of career criminal Niko Bellic.

Killzone, Guitar Hero III and Rockband are also expected to win attention at the show.

Online auction for security bugs

2007-07-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

Many hi-tech criminals covet loopholes in Windows software

Security researchers who find holes in software can now sell their findings to the highest bidder.

An online auction house has been created to bring together those who find the loopholes with the companies that can do something about them.

It aims to close the gap between the small number of bugs investigated and the huge number thought to exist.

By rewarding researchers, the auction house aims to prevent flaws getting in to the hands of hi-tech criminals.

Hard cash

Many malicious and criminal hackers rely on loopholes in widely used software, usually Windows, to get access to the valuable information on users PCs.

There is known to be a ready market for these vulnerabilities on the digital underground and significant sums of money can be made by selling them.

In early 2006 anti-virus firm Kaspersky Labs revealed that Russian hackers had been selling the Windows WMF vulnerability for $4000 (£2,000).

The loophole was offered for sale weeks before it was widely known about and long before Microsoft moved to close it.

Many criminal groups prefer to use vulnerabilities for their own ends to steal information or hijack computers rather than have any and every malicious hacker using them.

The independent auction house, called WabiSabiLabi, aims to staunch the flow of vulnerabilities to the underground by giving security researchers a legitimate marketplace for what they find.

"Our intention is that the marketplace facility on WSLabi will enable security researchers to get a fair price for their findings and ensure that they will no longer be forced to give them away for free or sell them to cyber-criminals," said Herman Zampariolo, head of the auction site.

He added that it could tempt many researchers to report findings they would otherwise keep quiet about. In this way it hopes to ensure many more vulnerabilities get reported.

"Very few of them are able or willing to report it to the 'right' people due to the fear of being exploited," said Mr Zampariolo.

Once a vulnerability is reported, WSLabi will confirm it is real and that it can be exploited. After this it will be placed on the auction site where it can be sold to the highest bidder or sold to just one firm.

WSLabi said it would ensure that all those who buy the vulnerabilities were legitimate.

The first vulnerabilities posted to WSLabi are selling for between 500 (£340) and 2000 (£1,350) euros.

Many other companies, such as iDefense and Tipping Point, run schemes that give cash rewards to security researchers who find serious loopholes in widely used software.

The Mozilla Foundation, which oversees development of the Firefox browser amongst other things, gives a t-shirt and a $500 (£250) bug bounty to anyone finding a critical vulnerability in its software.

eBay Quietly Launches Craigslist Competitor Kijiji

2007-07-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

In addition to its investment in Craigslist, eBay has acquired a number of classified marketplace sites over the years.

eBay owns 25% of Craigslist and has a seat on its board of directors. Yet the auction giant has just given Craigslist some competition, in the form of Kijiji.com, a free online classified marketplace.

Kijiji.com -- a name your Swahili-speaking friends may recognize as the word for "village" -- has been operated abroad by eBay since March, 2005, when it launched in Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. It opened for business in the U.S. last week.

Kijiji was developed by a small group of eBay employees and launched under the oversight of Alex Kazim, then senior VP of new ventures at eBay. Kazim is currently the president of eBay's Skype IP telephony service.

In addition to its investment in Craigslist, eBay has acquired a number of classified marketplace sites over the years including Kijiji, Gumtree.com, LoQUo.com, Intoko, Marktplaats.nl, and mobile.de. Intoko has since been merged with Kijiji.

eBay also owns another Craigslist competitor, Rent.com, which it acquired in February, 2005.

Kijiji is the only one of eBay's classified sites promoted with a link on eBay search results pages, at least in the U.S.

Currently, Kijiji has far fewer listings than Craigslist. Kijiji's "computers, software" category, for example, shows just 24 Bay Area listings posted since July 3. Craigslist's Bay Area "computers & tech" category includes over 700 posts just for July 5.

In May 2007, Craigslist had 20.6 million U.S.-based unique visitors, according to Internet metrics firm comScore, enough to place first among the 25 classified sites most visited by U.S. users and a 75% increase over May, 2006.

Kijiji sites, ranked 25 out of 25, saw 388,000 unique U.S. visitors in May. Given that Kijiji just launched in the U.S., those U.S.-based Internet users represent visitors to Kijiji sites in other countries.

Craigslist appears not to care much about potential competition from eBay. "We assume that eBay will continue to be a steadfast member of our board, and conduct themselves honorably and appropriately," spokesperson Susan MacTavish said in an e-mailed statement.

An eBay spokesperson acknowledged that Kijiji competes with Craigslist and said the company is retaining its board seat and equity position in Craigslist at present.

Microsoft facing $1bn Xbox bill

2007-07-05T19:44:00.001-07:00

Some Xbox Live gamers have complained about fraud

Microsoft has said that it is facing a bill of more than $1bn to cover the cost of offering extended warranties, after failings with its Xbox 360.

The company admitted it had been forced to make "an unacceptable number of repairs" to the consoles after key hardware failed.

Customers who suffer the problems will now be given a free three-year warranty, the company said.

The failures are indicated by three red flashing lights on the console.

Microsoft, has not revealed how many of its machines have suffered the problem, but said the number was "bigger than we are comfortable with."

It added that the move - which will also see some people reimbursed for postage and repairs on consoles which were out of warranty - was aimed at keeping the loyalty of its customers.

"The majority of Xbox 360 owners are having a great experience with their console and have from day one," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division.

"But this problem has caused frustration for some of our customers and for that, we sincerely apologise."

It added its Xbox division was still expected to make a profit during the financial year beginning 1 July 2007.

Migration manoeuvre

Separately the company has announced an October launch of its advanced version of the Xbox - the Xbox 360 Elite - in Japan, where it lags behind Nintendo and Sony in the console market.

And the company has also unveiled plans to open a software development centre in Canada which it said was a way of hiring talented people from abroad who would struggle to obtain a US working visa.

The Vancouver location would "allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the US", Microsoft said.

A sysadmin toolbox for Web site maintenance

2007-07-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

I run a small but fairly active Web site from a home server, as was commonly done back in the early days of the World Wide Web. What started as a learning project soon grew to be my primary hobby. It takes a bit of knowledge of Linux systems, various open sourced applications, and how the Internet works to start a Web site from scratch. Here are some of the applications and tools that help me stay on top of things.

A stable and reliable operating system is the foundation of any server. I used Gentoo Linux at first, but soon learned that a source-based distribution wasn't the best choice for a Web server with my system's limited resources. I switched to Debian GNU/Linux and have never looked back. It was easy to set up and has been even easier to maintain. As a bonus, my server runs better; memory and CPU management is much more efficient under Debian than I experienced with my homebrewed Gentoo.

Nano

Text editors are among the most fundamental applications on any system. If you do any work from the command line, a terminal-based editor is a must. Nano is extremely easy to use and always functions the same across any implementation or system. Having previously used Vi, I'm much happier with Nano.

Roaring Penguin (RP-PPPoE)

My Internet connection is a business-class Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line from Bellsouth. I have a modem that syncs to the connection, but I need a Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) client to actually log on. RP-PPPoE has never let me down. It is as easy to set up as it is to use; just run the setup script and answer some fill-in-the-blank questions. RP-PPPoE starts the connection at boot time and maintain it as long as the system is running. It's one of those carefree "set it and forget it" applications.

iptables

I built my network firewall using iptables. At first I was intimidated by the task, but I found a useful tutorial that I read from cover to cover. Once I understood what I was doing, I constructed the rules I felt I needed to manage the network traffic coming into and going out of my local network. iptables is one of the most important tools on my system.

Bind

Name servers allow Internet users to use Web site names such as www.linux.com instead of IP addresses like 66.35.250.177. Either you or your hosting service must provide naming services for your Web site in order for it to be found by its domain name. I use Bind as my name server. It allows a server to be integrated into the Web by informing secondary root servers of its IP address and domain name. I thoroughly read the documentation in order to configure Bind.

Apache, MySQL, and PHP

Along with Linux, these three packages make up the LAMP stack. Together they provide the foundation of my Web server.

Apache is the most frequently used Web server on the Internet, and for good reason. It offers a wide range of features along with stability while retaining a high level of security.

The MySQL database holds my Web site's data. MySQL is flexible and scalable. I chose it because it is widely used and has loads of documentation.

PHP is a scripting language that can be used in any number of applications. In my case, it is the language in which my content management software is written, where it not only supports the visual components, but also interacts with the database. I didn't actively choose PHP, but I couldn't run my Web site without it.

Drupal

I use Drupal as the content management system for my site. I chose it primarily due to its appearance, but soon found out how powerful, customizable, and scalable it can be. Drupal is as appropriate for simple blogs as it is for high-traffic commercial sites. It is limited only by your knowledge of PHP. Since my PHP knowledge isn't advanced, my site is largely composed of included and third-party modules, of which there are many available. Recent Drupal versions have an installer, a non-destructive upgrade script, and improved performance. I recommend it to anyone who would like to create a Web site of any size.

Gallery

I needed an easy and attractive way to display lots of screenshots. HTML would have been too tedious and slow to write. Gallery offers easy image uploading along with the appearance and functionality I want for my image collections. Like Drupal, its newest versions have improved functionality and performance.

Pure-FTPd

Pure-FTPd is the easiest full-featured FTP server I have found. Many folks recommend Proftpd, but I couldn't get it to work in my early days. Now I stay with Pure-FTPd because it does all I require, and offers SFTP for those who need it.

Postfix

I had always used Sendmail as my mail server until I changed distributions to Debian Etch, after which I could not get Sendmail to work anymore. A friend suggested I try Postfix, and my mail server headaches disappeared. Sendmail has drawbacks, and Postfix seems to address most of them. It was so easy to set up that I had it running in less than a minute.

OpenSSH and Samba

OpenSSH and Samba are among the first applications I set up after installing a new system. OpenSSH is an open source secure shell server. I use it to log in to and work on my server from other machines. For me it offers convenience; for many others with remote servers, it could be the only pathway to root access.

I use Samba to transfer files between local machines. Samba was initially written to enable Linux and Windows clients to share files, but it's convenient for Linux-to-Linux sharing as well.

Setting up a Web site from scratch can seem overwhelming at first. It wasn't something I accomplished overnight the first time, but it afforded me the opportunity to learn many new things. Much of what I learned will be helpful even if I choose to move my site to a hosting company.

Microsoft to open doors in Vancouver

2007-07-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

U.S. technology giant Microsoft Corp. will skirt Washington's tough stance on immigration by opening a new software development centre in the Vancouver area this fall.

The Microsoft Canada Development Centre will serve as a base for the company's core business — software development. When the company initially opens its doors, likely in September, it plans to hire between 200 and 300 people from around the world. The facility could eventually employ as many as 1,000.

“It is about recruiting the best and brightest, and right now, the majority are coming from overseas,” Marc Seaman, a spokesman for Microsoft Canada, said in an interview.

“The U.S. has immigration quotas and some limitations for bringing in people from outside the country,” he said. “That challenge is an opportunity for Canada, in the sense that this will bring the top software developers to Canada.”

Mr. Seaman noted, however, that Canada is the third-largest source of Microsoft recruits, after India and Japan.

Microsoft, founded by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, is the world's largest software company. The company is based in Redmond, Wash., outside of Seattle. The proximity to the Vancouver area is one reason why it was chosen, along with its reputation as global gateway, its diverse population, solid infrastructure and high quality of life, Mr. Seaman said.

The company is in the process of negotiating a lease for up to 100,000 square feet of space in Richmond, Burnaby or the city of Vancouver. “It will be in the multi-million per year range,” Mr. Seaman said.

Microsoft said the Vancouver area facility will be one of a handful of development centres outside the company's Redmond base. The others are in North Carolina, Ireland, Denmark and Israel. The company also has research and development centres in the United Kingdom, India, China and Silicon Valley.

The company's Canadian operations are headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, although it has eight regional offices scattered across the country.

Palm Pushes Linux Smartphone Release to Next Year

2007-07-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

"We will deliver some new smartphone products through the rest of this calendar year on Windows Mobile and Palm OS," said Palm chief executive Ed Colligan. "Products based on the new Linux platform will not [arrive] until some time next year." Colligan declined to provide a more detailed road map, but did stress that Palm will continue to unveil new devices before the launch of its Linux platform.

Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) will not ship its Linux smartphone until next year, the company's chief executive Ed Colligan disclosed during an earnings call.

The maker of the Treo smartphone revealed in April that it is developing a Linux-based operating system for its mobile phones.

Colligan promised at the time that Palm had "system software that we will roll out before the end of the year."

Next Year

However, Colligan said in a conference call with financial analysts on Thursday that the software will not reach consumers until next year.

"We will deliver some new smartphone products through the rest of this calendar year on Windows Mobile and Palm OS," he said. "Products based on the new Linux platform will not [arrive] until some time next year."

Colligan declined to provide a more detailed road map, but did stress that Palm will continue to unveil new devices before the launch of its Linux platform.

Target Markets

Palm's Linux software will replace Palm OS 5 that appeals primarily to consumers and small business users.

The operating system has not seen any major upgrades since February 2004, when PalmSource released Palm OS 5.4 Garnet. A much delayed update to Palm OS 6 Cobalt was finally canceled in June 2005.

Enterprises, meanwhile, tend to prefer Windows-powered Treo models because they can be integrated more easily with other systems and applications.

After a multiyear exclusive commitment to Palm OS, Palm unveiled its Windows Treo in September 2005. Windows models currently account for nearly half of all Palm's Treo sales

Warning of data ticking time bomb

2007-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Microsoft UK Managing Director Gordon Frazer running Windows 3.1 on a Vista PC

The growing problem of accessing old digital file formats is a "ticking time bomb", the chief executive of the UK National Archives has warned.

Natalie Ceeney said society faced the possibility of "losing years of critical knowledge" because modern PCs could not always open old file formats.

She was speaking at the launch of a partnership with Microsoft to ensure the Archives could read old formats.

Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age".

National Archives welcome program to read legacy formats

Costly deal

He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole."

Research by the British Library suggests Europe loses 3bn euros each year in business value because of issues around digital preservation.

The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.

Ms Ceeney said: "If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.

"If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it."

"Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper," warned Ms Ceeney.

She added: "The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.

"We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper."

But Ms Ceeney said some digital documents held by the National Archives had already been lost forever because the programs which could read them no longer existed.

"We are starting to find an awful lot of cases of what has been lost. What we have got to make sure is that it doesn't get any worse."

The root cause of the problem is the range of propriatorial file formats which proliferated during the early digital revolution.

Technology companies, such as Microsoft, used file formats which were not only incompatible with pieces of software from rival firms, but also between different iterations of the same program.

Mr Frazer said Microsoft had shifted its position on file formats.

"Historically within the IT industry, the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats. We have worked very hard to embrace open standards, specifically in the area of file formats."

Microsoft's legacy pledge

Costly deal

Microsoft has developed a new document file format, called Open XML, which is used to save files from programs such Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Mr Frazer said: "It's an open international standard under independent control. These are no longer under control of Microsoft and are free for access by all."

But some critics question Microsoft's approach and ask why the firm has created its own new standard, rather than adopting a rival system, called the Open Document Format.

Instead, Microsoft has released a tool which can translate between the two formats.

Ben Laurie, director of the Open Rights Group, said: "This is a well-known, standard Microsoft move.

"Microsoft likes lock-ins. Typically what happens is that you end up with two or three standards."

The agreement between the National Archives and Microsoft centres on the use of virtualisation.

The archive will be able to read older file formats in the format they were originally saved by running emulated versions of the older Windows operating systems on modern PCs.

Data on floppy discs may be in unreadable formats

For example, if a Word document was saved using Office 97 under Windows 95, then the National Archives will be able to open that document by emulating the older operating system and software on a modern machine.

Ms Ceeney said the issue of older file formats was a bigger problem than reading outdated forms of media, such as floppy discs of various sizes and punch cards.

"The media it is stored in is not relevant. Back-up is important, but back-up is not preservation."

Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library, praised Microsoft for its adoption of more open standards.

He said: "Microsoft has taken tremendous strides forward in addressing this problem. There has been a sea change in attitude."

He warned that the issue of digital preservation did not just effect National Archives and libraries.

"It's everybody - from small businesses to university research groups and authors and scientists.

"It's a huge challenge for anyone who keeps digital information for more than 15 years because you are talking about five different technology generations."

The British Library and National Archives are members of the Planets project which brings together European National Libraries and Archives and technology companies to address the issue of digital preservation.

He said that open file formats were an important step but there was still work to be done.

"Automation is a key area to work on. We need to be able to convert hundreds and even thousands of documents at a time," he said.

Crowd's wisdom helps South Korean search engine beat Google and Yahoo

2007-07-04T10:09:00.001-07:00

SEOUL: Park Hye Ran, a 15-year-old high-school girl, wanted to know the shortest route from a bus terminal in the southern port city of Busan to a fish market to the east.

That is precisely the kind of question Cho In Joon, 50, a seller of lottery tickets in Busan, loves to answer.

Sitting at a computer installed at his street kiosk, Cho posted a reply for Park - and for other Naver.com users who might one day ask the same question - with instructions on where she should switch trains, where she should disembark, which station exit she should take and how long it would take to walk from there to the market. He even attached a map of the market area.

"When people I have never met thank me, I feel good," Cho said. "No one pays me for this. But helping other people on the Internet is addictive. I spend three hours a day on this work by cutting down on my sleeping time."

Thanks to Cho and tens of thousands of other volunteer respondents, Web users in one of the world's most-wired countries seldom "Google" anything - they "Naver" it.

Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country. It handles more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, thanks largely to content generated, free of charge, by people like Park and Cho.

Daum.net, another South Korean search portal, comes in second with a 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo's Korean-language service with 4.4 percent.

Google, which became the world's top search engine based largely on its spare, no-frills interface, barely registers in the country's online consciousness, handling just 1.7 percent of Korean Web searches, according to KoreanClick, an Internet market research company.

"No matter how powerful Google's search engine may be, it doesn't have enough Korean-language data to trawl to satisfy South Korean customers," said Wayne Lee, an analyst at Woori Investment and Securities.

Naver's success surprised many. When NHN, an online gaming company, set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found that with few people other than Koreans using the language, there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business.

"So we began creating Korean-language text," said Lee Kyung Ryul, an NHN spokesman. "At Google, users basically look for data that already exists on the Internet. In South Korea, if you want to be a search engine, you have to create your own database."

The strategy was right on the money. In this country, where over 70 percent of a population of 48 million use the Internet, most of them with high-speed connections, people do not just want information when they log on; they want a sense of community and the kind of human interaction provided by Naver's "Knowledge iN" real-time question-and-answer platform.

Each day, on average, 16 million people visit Naver - whose name comes from the English words neighbor and navigator - keying 110 million queries into its standard, Google-like search function. But Naver users also post an average of 44,000 questions a day through Knowledge iN, the interactive Q & A database. These receive about 110,000 answers, ranging from one-sentence replies to academic essays complete with footnotes.

The format, which Naver introduced in 2002, has become a must-have feature for Korean search portals. The portals maintain the questions and answers in proprietary databases not shared with other portals or with search engines like Google. When a visitor to a portal does a Web search, its search engine yields relevant items from its own Q & A database along with traditional search results from news sites and Web pages.

Naver has so far accumulated a user-generated database of 70 million entries. Typical queries include why North Korea is building a nuclear bomb, which digital music player is best, why people have hair whorls and what a high-school boy should do when he has a crush on a female teacher.

Lacking the full-time editorial oversight found on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, some Naver entries are of dubious veracity and attract vigorous rebuttals. But many respondents, keen to build and maintain an online reputation, do careful research to provide useful answers.

"I am no scholar, but I know how to get from place A to B in my town," said Cho, who so far has answered 2,520 Knowledge iN questions, mostly about traffic routes in Busan. "The best thing about Knowledge iN is that you can pick people's brains whenever you want."

Leveraging the so-called "collective intelligence" of Web users has become a way of life in South Korea, and has dramatically changed people's assumptions about what they can accomplish online.

Thanks to its success in the search engine market, NHN is now the country's most profitable Internet firm. The company, which employs 27,000 workers, posted 299 billion won, or $325 million, in profit out of 573 billion won in sales last year. It has a market value of nearly 8 trillion won.

The company also runs a popular online gaming site, known as Hangame in South Korea and Japan and Ourgame in China. But its Naver search engine - which sells advertisements and links to commercial Web sites that pop up when a user searches for certain words - generated 52 percent of NHN's revenues last year. Naver took 61 percent of all Web search-related ads last year in South Korea, according to the company.

As with the product reviews found on Amazon.com or the seller feedback mechanism on eBay, Naver users are invited to rate the quality of posted answers. Naver and the other Korean portals also have monitors who screen out pornography, libel, copyrighted material and advertisements.

Park, the high-school girl, gave Cho's answer a perfect five-star rating and thanked him through Naver's instant messaging service. To reward Cho's active supply of quality answers in the past two years, Naver recently named him an "honorary intellectual," a status coveted among Naver contributors.

When Daum, Naver's largest local competitor, began making a big push into the Korean search engine market last year, it turned to its 6.7 million virtual "Internet cafés," which are not the physical structures the term usually refers to but online user groups built around shared interests.

The biggest cafés, which have up to three million members, create massive pools of material supplied by people who, for example, went to the same school, support or oppose a free-trade agreement with the United States or share an interest in hiking in the mountains.

Opening up its cafés to its search engine, Daum's market share increased by nearly 30 percent in two years. It took in 22.8 billion won in ad revenue in the first quarter of this year, up 42 percent from a year ago.

Google, which started its search service in the Korean language in 2000, is not just sitting back.

"It's obvious to me that Korea is a great laboratory of the digital age," Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in Seoul on May 30, when Google unveiled an upgraded Korean-language service. It also opened a research lab here in 2006 and is in talks with Daum about the possibility of sharing content and technology.

Google's new Korean version deviates from the search engine's celebrated bare-bones style. Its simpler-is-better approach never caught on in South Korea, where people prefer portal sites that resemble department stores, filled with eye-catching animation and multiple features.

"Rather than depending solely on a mechanical formula, South Korean portals also use people to monitor keyword trends and determine which category of information should be placed at the top of the screen when displaying the search results," said Kim Hyun Min, an analyst at Korea Investment and Securities.

Yahoo Korea, once the country's top portal but now a distant third in the search market with a 4.4 percent share, is not only adopting the local taste but is exporting it to Yahoo services elsewhere in the world. Yahoo Korea's Q & A service, started after Naver's, has become the basis for similar Yahoo services in 21 countries, including the English-language Yahoo Answers.

"We find that we can catch advanced Internet trends in South Korea and develop better services and introduce them to Yahoo operations elsewhere in the world," said Kim Jin Su, Yahoo Korea's chief executive.

Hackers lift the bonnet on iPhone

2007-07-04T09:18:00.001-07:00

Within hours of going on sale the devices were being probed

Hordes of hackers and security researchers have been poring over Apple's iPhone in an effort to discover vulnerabilities in the handsets.

Top of their list has been cracking the code that ties the phone to operator AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive network.

If successful, it would allow iPhone owners the ability to use their handset on other networks, including in Europe.

Some have already worked out ways to activate the phone without having to register it with AT&T through iTunes.

One prominent hacker, Jon Lech Johansen, has published an activation tool on his website.

Mr Johansen - better known as DVD Jon - rose to fame at the age of 15 when he wrote and distributed a program that cracked the encryption codes on DVDs.

Although the new tool allows people to switch on the device and use many of its functions, it does not allow users to make phone calls.

"There are people who want an iPhone to use it as an iPod and wi-fi device without having to enter into a two-year AT&T contract," wrote Mr Johansen on his blog.

Video nasty

He is one of a community of technophiles probing the much-hyped gadget. Researchers at Errata Security say they have exposed a flaw in the gadget's web browser that could allow a hacker some control over the phone.

The flaw in the Safari browser is the same as one Errata discovered earlier this year in a test version of the program designed to run on Microsoft Windows.

However, the firm's chief executive Robert Graham noted that the handsets were less vulnerable than other products.

"We think the iPhone is inherently more secure than competing smartphones - such as those based on Windows Mobile or Symbian," he wrote on his blog.

In particular, Mr Graham said that the phone's ability to receive updates when connected to iTunes was a "good sign" and a measure that would provide an extra level of security to the phone.

But not all investigations of the long-awaited gadget have been so measured.

Within hours of it going on sale, photos and videos appeared on the web showing the inner workings of disassembled phones.

Apple parts and repair site Ifixit.com, conducted one of the most clinical dismantling, posting numerous of high-quality photos alongside technical commentary.

But others were more amateur. One video on YouTube called iPhone smash showed two people taking the phone apart with a hammer.

The video has so far been viewed over 300,000 times and has generated a mixture of support and outrage.

Microsoft Apologizes For Silence On Windows Extras

2007-07-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Director Barry Goffe said work was continuing on the remaining offerings, which would be available by the end of the summer.

Microsoft has apologized for its silence on delivering all the add-ons promised in January to people who bought Windows Vista Ultimate, the premium version of the operating system.

To date, Microsoft has delivered four sets of "Extras," Windows Hold'EM, 16 Language Packs for the Windows multi-language user interface, Secure Online Key Backup, and the Windows BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool. Missing are an expected full range of Windows DreamScenes, which are full-motion video desktop wallpapers; and the remaining 20 Language Packs. (An initial Dreamscene content pack was released earlier this year and is available here.)

Barry Goffe, director of Windows Vista Ultimate, said Thursday on his group's blog that work was continuing on the remaining offerings, which would be available by the end of the summer.

"We apologize for taking so long to provide a status update to customers," Goffe said.

Microsoft also plans to deliver additional add-ons over the next couple of years. "We cannot identify dates or provide details at this time -- but one we ship Windows DreamScene and the remaining Language Packs, we will provide more information about the next Extras," Goffe said.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled Extras in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. The downloadable features are meant to enhance the premium version of Vista with business-oriented and consumer-friendly tools.

Extras are among the perks Microsoft gives to buyers of Vista Ultimate, which carries an upgrade price of $260. The premium OS targets sole proprietors and small-business owners who want to do work and personal tasks on the same PC.

BitLocker in Vista Ultimate is considered a major enhancement because it provides whole disk encryption for a PC's hard drive, a feature increasingly applied by enterprises to lock down data. This is important to protect information in mobile PCs that might be lost or stolen.

Microsoft Gets Foot in Mass. Office Door

2007-07-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts has already set in motion plans that will require the use of open source applications in state offices. Requiring they use free and open programs is seen by some as a way to free government from Microsoft's virtual monopoly in the office. However, with the software maker's own Office Open XML format in the running as a potential government standard, the company could still score a win.

In what could be a victory for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and a blow to the open source community, the state of Massachusetts has added Microsoft's Office Open XML standard to its list of potential standards it will allow for government use.

The inclusion of Office Open XML came in the latest version of Massachusetts' Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM), a regularly-updated state list of permitted standards. The new ETRM includes "Ecma-376 Office Open XML Formats (Open XML)" as a potentially acceptable open format.

The "Ecma" refers to Ecma International, an industry standardization organization that standardized Office Open XML in December. Office Open XML, often abbreviated as OOXML and sometimes called just Open XML, was created by Microsoft for Microsoft Office 2007 as a proposed open standard for word-processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets that can work on multiple platforms.

Send Those Cards and Letters

OOXML was standardized by Ecma International as Ecma 376 in December 2006, and it is currently being being reviewed by international standards organizations ISO and IEC. The Massachusetts proposal to accept OOXML, even before the ISO and IEC take action, is now open for public discussion and comment. The discussion period ends July 20, and public comments can be submitted to standards@state.ma.us.

Massachusetts is one of several government entities that are requiring the use of open source applications for tasks including document creation. Forcing workers to use free and open programs, such as OpenOffice, is seen by some as a way to free government from Microsoft's virtual monopoly -- with Microsoft Office -- on office productivity.

At Least They're Trying

While Microsoft says OOXML is a true effort to give an open source alternative to Office, critics say the program is not truly open, despite the Ecma endorsement. Nevertheless, open source expert and advocate Andy Updegrove believes the Massachusetts Information Technology Department (ITD) should not be harshly criticized for its proposed inclusion of OOXML as an approved platform.

"After all the ITD has been through, perhaps we should just say, 'Thanks, you deserve a rest,'" Updegrove told LinuxInsider. "Massachusetts clearly got the bandwagon rolling, and if OOXML stays in the new draft, the ITD can take credit not only for giving ODF [open document format] credibility, but also for moving Microsoft from where it was this time two years ago -- with a proprietary standard -- to one that is at least in Ecma and backed by a patent non-assert covenant."

Those passionate about the issue should focus their energy on urging the Massachusetts Legislature and governor to get involved in the matter, Updegrove believes. It's not fair, he said, to ask non-elected bureaucrats, such as Bethann Pepoli, the ITD's chief technology officer, to bear the brunt of public pressure on one side and corporate lobbying on the other.

Under Pressure

"How much pressure has the Massachusetts ITD been under to accept Ecma 376? I've been told by those in the know that the contacts reached all the way to Deval Patrick, our new governor," wrote Updegrove in his blog. "Here, as in the states where legislation was introduced, the point was forcefully and repeatedly made that Microsoft is the kind of company that can provide jobs and other economic support where and as it pleases. And, to be fair, the same points were been made in the past by representatives of IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sun when they have spoke out in favor of ODF."

There remains a chance that Massachusetts' proposed action will be approved and will give state office workers no real reason to use anything other than Open Office XML, Updegrove said. "Office still commands a huge lead in the marketplace, and its ability to outspend the new entrants (many open source) into the office productivity suite marketplace will be enormous," he wrote. "If no one is buying ODF-compliant products, no one will develop them. And if no one is developing them, no one will be competing with Microsoft."

However, Updegrove told LinuxInsider he prefers to look at the bright side.

"I'm a bit more optimistic than that," he said. "This is a comment draft, and if the comments are vigorous enough, wide enough and persuasive enough, they will give the ITD cover. Don't forget this happened once before, when OOXML was in an earlier draft of the ITD and the public comments were what pushed it back out again."

Many niche search engines have emerged in the shadow of Google

2007-07-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

PARIS: Does the world need another Google? Naima and Daniel Moore, a husband-and-wife team based in Atlanta, believe it does. On Monday, they unveiled Megaglobe, an international search engine that comes in 45 languages whose claim to fame is that it is designed to fight "click fraud," where advertisers get ripped off when hits on their ads are not from genuine consumers.

The fraud-fighting mechanisms are under the hood at Megaglobe, hidden from the average searcher. What you see at the site instead is a strong resemblance to Google, the world's dominant search engine, including the plain home page, the typeface and the way the search results are displayed.

But Daniel Moore, the company's chief financial officer, said Megaglobe has no false pretentions.

"We're not trying to be Google," he said in an interview in Paris, where the couple introduced their business. (Naima, Megaglobe's president, is French).

"We're not trying to get the entire market - we'll get our 1 percent, 2 percent share. But look at the fast-food industry - McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King. In the search industry, you need options," he added.

For those of us stuck in the rut of Googling everything we need to know online, there is no shortage of options. To find them, just type "search engines" into, um, Google.

Or you can browse Search Engine Watch, the granddaddy of the Web sites that follow this corner of the Internet - it started in 1996. SEW, as it is known, lists countless search services in various specialty categories, including news, shopping, image, audio, video and kids (see (searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=links). It even lists blasts from the past, "Search Engines We've Known and Loved," like one of my old favorites, Magellan.

More fun is www.altsearchengines.com, which each month arbitrarily compiles a list of the "top" 100 alternative search engines. The most recent top service was Dialogus.ru, which in English or Russian searches for answers to user's questions, like, "How much does a cottonwood tree grow per year?"

Altsearchengines also gives a nod to Quintura Kids (kids.quintura.com), which likewise has a Russian connection but operates in English. It is a refreshing, entertaining and safe - at least in theory - search service for kids. If you search for "fisheye," for example, you get just one result, but it is a gem: the Fisheye View Cam that gives views of coral reefs and fish at www.FisheyeView.com.

Another family-friendly site, Picsearch, based in Stockholm, is strictly for images and other non-text multimedia. Its most popular image searches of the week as of Wednesday were Rihanna, the Transformers, Bruce Willis and the Sydney Opera House.

Then there are the search engines that are not search engines. Technorati, which was started to monitor the blogosphere, in May introduced an "integrated search" that includes Flickr photos, YouTube videos, music, podcasts, events and blog posts all on one page.

Technorati maintains that even though Google's new Universal Search does much the same thing with a vaster index of Web content, Technorati's search is "platform agnostic and pulls from all social media sites," providing an up-to-the-minute snapshot of online chatter.

The four most widely used search engines - Google (55 percent), Yahoo (22 percent), MSN (9 percent) and AOL (5.4 percent), all according to Nielsen/Net Ratings) - don't leave a lot of market share for the specialty sites.

But they are there. It will take you some time, effort and experimentation to check them out, bookmark them - and then resolve to use them regularly. Google, by building itself into some of the world's most widely used Internet browser software, has certainly made it easy to be the default search engine, and our inertia lets us keep it there.

Not that Google is the bad guy, or at least it is no more evil than Microsoft. Google is a terrific search engine that often gives me what I'm looking for on the first or second try. But as Moore of Megaglobe said, we need options. Any company that dominates its field would benefit from some old-fashioned, upstart competition.

NetSuite Files for IPO

2007-07-03T09:40:00.001-07:00

NetSuite, an on-demand applications company controlled by Oracle's Larry Ellison, has filed for an auction-style initial public offering, according to a Monday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company, which hopes to raise $75 million based on its registration filing fee, is currently controlled by Tako Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lawrence Investments that is owned by Larry Ellison, Oracle founder and chief executive.

Ellison affiliates and family members, which hold a 74 percent stake in the company, are expected to retain control of the company post-IPO, raising questions about whether that control would dampen investor enthusiasm.

Under Ellison's controlling interest, a future buyout of the company could be nixed, even if NetSuite's management and other investors deem it in their best interest. Also, a controlling interest of 50 percent or more makes NetSuite exempt from having to adhere to certain corporate governance standards imposed by Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.

Nonetheless, the timing may be good for an IPO.

The second quarter has been one of the biggest for IPOs since 2004, based on number of offerings, said Matt Toole, an analyst at Thomson Financial. Of the 26 public offerings in the second quarter, 13 were tech-related.

NetSuite provides hosted customer relationship management, or CRM, software and is viewed as a competitor to Salesforce.com. It also offers software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and e-commerce.

Last year, the company generated $67.2 million in revenue, up 84.6 percent from the previous year. In quarter ended March 31, the company raised $23.2 million in revenue, up 71.8 percent, according to company's SEC filing.

But the company has suffered a history of losses, running into the red to the tune of $23.4 million last year. And in the March quarter, it sustained a net loss of $3.7 million. NetSuite has accumulated a deficit of $193 million, as of the March quarter, according to the filing.

NetSuite, which has yet to set the number of shares it will sell or the price range for those shares, plans to use the proceeds not only to create working capital, but also to repay the outstanding balance on its $20 million secured line of credit with Ellison's Tako Ventures. As of March, NetSuite owed Tako $7.5 million on the line of credit.

NetSuite and Oracle have managed to do a few deals as well. In 2005, NetSuite signed a $2.5 million deal for a perpetual license for some of Oracle's software and services. And last year, NetSuite, in an arm's-length deal, provided $542,000 of software to sailboat-racing syndicate Oracle Racing, in exchange for marketing and promotion as an official supplier.

SAP Admits Data Was Taken From Oracle

2007-07-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

BERLIN, July 3 — SAP, the world’s largest maker of business software, acknowledged today that employees at an American subsidiary made “’inappropriate” downloads from the Web site of Oracle, a competitor, but denied using the information for commercial gain.

In its response to a lawsuit filed by Oracle in the United States in March, SAP conceded that employees at its TomorrowNow unit, a Texas company that SAP bought in January 2005, downloaded Oracle data last year as Oracle had claimed in a lawsuit in March. But in a conference call from SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, Henning Kagermann , SAP’s chief executive, said the information was not shared with or used by executives at SAP America, SAP’s United States headquarters in Newton Square, Pa. Mr. Kagermann declined to describe the data that TomorrowNow employees had downloaded.

“’SAP did not have access to Oracle materials downloaded by TomorrowNow,” Mr. Kagermann said. “’However, some TomorrowNow activity went beyond what is appropriate and contravened our high standards and business procedures.”

Mr. Kagermann apologized for the impropriety and said he had ordered an investigation into the incident and installed a top manager to oversee compliance issues at TomorrowNow.

Mr. Kagermann said SAP and TomorrowNow had also received subpoenas from the United States Department of Justice for documents in the case. He did not say whether the subpoenas were in connection with a civil or criminal investigation.

TomorrowNow, which had 157 employees and $15.7 million in sales last year, provides maintenance for business software systems sold by Oracle and by companies Oracle has acquired, including PeopleSoft, a maker of personnel management software, and Siebel Systems, a maker of customer relations software for sales forces.

In its legal response, SAP denied it had stolen business secrets and said Oracle was trying to intimidate SAP in the increasingly competitive software maintenance business. “’This case is really about competition and a customer’s right to choose its software services providers,” SAP said in its affidavit.

Stefan Kuppen, a software analyst in London at JPMorgan, said Oracle was clearly trying to maximize public relations gains with its lawsuit against SAP, whose TomorrowNow unit has been successful at luring Oracle customers. Mr. Kuppen said the lawsuit could probably be settled out of court for a sum that could reach millions but would not materially affect the value of SAP.

“’On one hand, SAP is admitting it did something wrong,” Mr. Kuppen said. “’On the other hand, this is the latest installment from a couple of companies that are pretty good at fighting P.R. battles.”

While they did not start out as direct rivals, SAP and Oracle have increasingly gone head to head in the lucrative business of providing all-inclusive corporate software systems to large multinational companies. SAP’s comprehensive enterprise systems became the corporate standard and market leader in the 1990s.

But over the last decade, the competition has increased as Oracle, which began as a database software maker, constructed a similar top-to-bottom package after buying PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, both leaders in their respective niches.

After detecting the downloads, Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., filed a suit against SAP in federal court in San Francisco, alleging industrial espionage.

In a legal response filed Monday evening in California, SAP cast the downloads as the actions of a few renegade employees. Mr. Kagermann said SAP had set up a computer ’firewall’ when it acquired TomorrowNow that had prevented the transfer of inappropriate data to SAP’s United States headquarters.

Oracle, however, said Mr. Kagermann’s admission proved its case.

“Henning Kagermann has now admitted to the repeated and illegal downloading of Oracle’s intellectual property,” Geoff Howard, a lawyer for Oracle at the law firm Bingham McCutchen, said in a statement. “’Oracle filed suit to discover the magnitude of the illegal downloads and fully understand how SAP used Oracle’s intellectual property in its business.”

Barring an out-of-court settlement, lawyers for Oracle and SAP plan to meet in United States District Court in San Francisco on Sept. 4 to lay out a legal timetable for the case.

One reason Oracle has made a big deal about the downloads is that through the TomorrowNow subsidiary, SAP has had access to large corporate customers of Oracle. As the software industry has matured, and most major corporate clients have already bought and installed vast internal software systems, software makers like TomorrowNow are trying to get an edge by selling support for products made by their competitors.

Besides providing revenue, the maintenance contracts also give software makers access to potential new long-term customers. Even Oracle last fall began selling discounted, 24-hour maintenance for Suse Linux operating systems sold by Red Hat, a rival based in Raleigh, N.C., that is the leader in open-source software.

Under their maintenance contracts, TomorrowNow’s customers gave the company their passwords to Oracle’s Web site, which TomorrowNow used to obtain software updates and fixes, Mr. Kagermann said. But during late 2006, according to SAP’s legal filing, TomorrowNow employees representing contracts with Honeywell, Merck, OCE, SPX, Metro Machine and Yazaki performed downloads from Oracle Web sites that exceeded those authorized by Oracle.

Some industry analysts downplayed the significance of Oracle’s lawsuit, noting that the downloads were probably for application fixes and updates for discontinued Oracle software — nothing of a nature that would give SAP a competitive advantage.

A new, improved Nero Linux 3

2007-07-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

Last month, Nero released version 3.0 of Nero Linux. Since we tested version 2.1 last year, the software has come a long way. Nero Linux 3 supports not just CD and DVD burning but claims to be the first Linux application to support Blue-Ray and HD DVD recorders as well.

Nero provides binaries for 32- and 64-bit systems in DEB and RPM packages. A requirements page notes hardware and software requirements and supported distributions.

Unlike the old version, the Nero Linux 3 front end looks the same as that of Nero's Windows application, so users who are familiar with Nero for Windows shouldn't have any problems using it on Linux as well.

When you start Nero (see Figure 1) you're asked for a type of compilation do you want to burn. Your choices include data, audio, mixed mode, and boot CDs, with support for multisession CDs, and there are several more choices for DVDs. When specifying a disc to burn you can give your disc a name and choose your burn speed.

In the next step you choose the files that you want to write on your disc by dragging and dropping them from a pane on the right that represents the files on your system to the left pane, which represent the blank disc. However, you can drag and drop only one file at a time; you can't select multiple files to drag to the disc area pane at the same time. The only way to transfer a lot of files is to put them in one folder and drag and drop that folder to the new compilation. Nor can you select multiple files and choose copy from the menu -- when you use the paste command, it will only paste the latest file selected. This seems like a bug, since both drag and drop and cut and paste worked fine in the previous version of Nero Linux. This is a big minus.

The Nero application seems a bit slower than the previous version (and slower than K3b or GnomeBaker, two popular open source CD burners for Linux, as well). Testing on the same hardware, menus are slower to appear.

When you have all the files that you want to burn in place, click on the Burn button on the main toolbar. You can than choose final options like writing speed, number of copies, if you wish to verify written data, a name for your new compilation, and more. Click the Burn button again to begin the writing process.

Writing audio CDs works out of the box. In the previous release of Nero, you had to have the mpg123 package installed in order to write audio CDs -- not anymore. File encoding speed and burn times are comparable to those of K3b and GnomeBaker. However, it took Nero about 5 minutes to stop writing a DVD from the moment I canceled a burn. By contrast, K3b and GnomeBaker stops the burning process immediately.

You can download and try a fully functional Nero Linux 3 for 30 days for free. If you decide to keep Nero Linux 3, a serial number costs $25.

Compared with K3b and GnomeBaker, Nero Linux 3 has it all, from creating data and music CD and DVDs to burning ISO images to writing on Blue-Ray and HD DVD -- and Nero can run on 64-bit machines. Its price is reasonable if you need to burn Blue-Ray and HD DVD disks and you don't wish to wait for K3b or GnomeBaker to implement support for those formats.

Wii outselling PS3 'six to one'

2007-07-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Nintendo's Wii console outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan last month by six to one, says research.

Nintendo sold 270,974 Wii consoles last month while Sony sold 41,628 PS3s, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese publisher that tracks console sales.

Nintendo has sold about 2.76m Wii consoles in Japan since the launch last December, while Sony has sold 970,270 PS3s since it debuted last November.

About 17,616 Xbox 360 consoles were sold in June.

Last week, Phil Harrison, PlayStation's head of worldwide studios, told US Game Informer magazine that pundits should not judge the success of the console based on the launch software line-up.

Struggled

He said: "You only have to go back to the games that launched PlayStation 1 and Playstation 2.

"If you took those few dozen titles and analysed them, you would never have imagined that either of those formats would have on to sell over 100m units each."

Globally, Sony has struggled so far to replicate the success it had with the first two PlayStation consoles.

The machine has also suffered from a lack of "killer" exclusive titles which showcase the power of the machine.

PlayStation fans are still awaiting some of the biggest franchises on the machine to emerge, such as Metal Gear Solid, Killzone 2 and Gran Turismo.

Business software makers SAP, Oracle clash over data 'theft'

2007-07-03T07:07:00.000-07:00

FRANKFURT - Germany's SAP -- the world-leading business software group -- on Tuesday rejected accusations by its US rival Oracle that it had stolen software, but admitted "some inappropriate downloads."

The group said its US subsidiary TomorrowNow had legally downloaded support documents from the website of Oracle but had also made "some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents."

SAP stressed however that the rest of the group did not have access to the intellectual property downloaded by the US unit.

"What was downloaded at TomorrowNow stayed in that subsidiary's separate systems. SAP did not have access to Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow," the group said.

SAP said these comments were contained in a response filed on July 2 after Oracle lodged a complaint in a federal court in San Francisco March 22.

Oracle complained that SAP had violated US and Californian fraud legislation and engaged in unfair competitive prices.

SAP also said the US Department of Justice had requested it and TomorrowNow provide certain documents. Both intend to fully cooperate with the request.

"Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred," said SAP's chief executive Henning Kagermann.

SAP said TomorrowNow, which provides system maintenance, often downloaded Oracle support materials for and on behalf of its customers, some of which run Oracle rather than SAP applications.

Third-party maintenance providers like TomorrowNow have access to Oracle customer service and support materials through their customers' passwords.

SAP said that it had intentionally created an organisational structure that separated TomorrowNow and the rest of the company to ensure it did not have access to Oracle material legally downloaded by the US subsidiary.

SAP said it was satisfied that neither SAP in Germany SAP America accessed Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow.

Google Purchases Web Phone Service

2007-07-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

Google said yesterday that it had bought GrandCentral Communications, acquiring a service that lets people use a single number for all their phones.

Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

GrandCentral users can also create a single mailbox, accessible over the Internet, for all their phone messages, Google said on its Web site.

Users register their phones and can set all or some of them to ring based on who is calling.

GrandCentral, based in Fremont, Calif., was founded in 2005 by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, two executives who worked for Dialpad Communications, a Web phone company that was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

“GrandCentral’s technology fits well into Google’s efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users,” said Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

GrandCentral’s investors include Minor Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco, according to its Web site.

Russian download site shut down

2007-07-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

The controversial Russian music download site allofmp3.com has closed.

The service, which sold songs at a fraction of the cost of other sites, claimed to be the second biggest seller of music downloads after iTunes.

It was the subject of countless lawsuits from UK and US record labels that claimed it violated copyright law.

The site's owners, MediaServices, maintained the site was legal under Russian law and has subsequently set up a new service called mp3Sparks.com.

The closure of the original site has been welcomed by the record industry.

"Allofmp3.com violated copyright law in Russia and internationally by ripping off artists and creators, taking music that it had no right to reproduce and selling it worldwide," said John Kennedy, president of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI).

"If this is the end of allofmp3.com, this is good news."

Legal position

The Russian government has come under fierce criticism over its apparent lack of action against allofmp3.com

During talks on Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2006, Susan Schwab, the US Trade Representative, said that the site must be closed before entry.

Numerous lawsuits were also started against the site's owners MediaServices.

In 2006, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol and UMG recordings.

The record labels said the company was selling songs without permission.

Allofmp3.com maintained it paid royalties to a Russian licensing body and said that it made clear on its website that users should check copyright laws in their own country before using the site.

Similar suits had also been filed by the British Phonographic Industry, on behalf of UK record labels.

Under increased pressure, Moscow finally signed an agreement in October last year to shut down the site.

It is not clear whether its closure is the result of action by Russian authorities.

Copy cats

Users of the site have been unable to log on for the last week, although the Russian version, allofmp3.ru, loads but "is undergoing maintenance".

MediaServices has also launched a new website that seems to offer a very similar service.

Like allofmp3.com, mp3sparks.com warns customers to obey their own government's laws on downloading. It also claims that it is authorised to distribute music and pays license fees.

Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch, wrote on his blog: "The fact that closing down allofmp3.com simply resulted in the opening of a copy cat site by the same company shows that this requires some more fundamental action by the Russian authorities.

"However, it could also be interpreted as cosmetic action by a government that is intent on satisfying WTO accession requirements but less keen on changing Russian new media copyright practices."

Toshiba Web-Enables HD Disc Player

2007-07-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

The PC maker is working with studios, which are anxious to add content and bonus features that consumers could download from the Web while watching a movie on a DVD.

Toshiba has made its high-definition DVD player into a Web device that Hollywood studios can use to offer interactive content to movie buffs.

The consumer electronics company last week released firmware that could be downloaded to its players to support Web-based content and interactive applications embedded in movies that support the HD DVD format. Very few studio-produced DVDs have those capabilities, but there are some, such as "Blood Diamond" from Warner Home Video.

While rare today, studios are anxious to add content and bonus features that consumers could download from the Web while watching a movie on a DVD. Movie distributors could use the feature, for example, to update trailers for future movies, offer premium content for an additional charge, or give consumers a chance to participate in polls or promotions.

Toshiba offers an Ethernet port in all its HD DVD players, as well as some storage. To participate in the Web-enabled features, a person would first have to download Toshiba's firmware.

Chris Roden, analyst for Parks Associates, told InformationWeek Monday that a consumer would have difficulty finding a Web-enabled DVD today, "but it's something that's very important to studios down the road." The biggest hold up is consumer reluctance to buy a high-definition player, because of the ongoing battle between Toshiba-backed HD DVD and Sony-supported Blu-ray. Each company, along with their supporters, wants to make their favored format the market leader.

The battle has taken its toll on Toshiba. The company last month slashed its sales target for the year for its high-definition DVD player by 44% to 1 million, primarily due to weak sales in the United States.

Once the format war plays out, high-definition players being developed by Toshiba and competitors could move quickly to becoming a kind of entertainment hub for the home. "Right now, it's about getting them in the home," Roden said of HD players. "In time, they could move toward a set-top box form factor."

Before that can happen, however, the industry will have to end the standards battle that's reminiscent of the VHS-Betamax wars in the early days of VCRs. VHS eventually won, while Sony-backed Betamax disappeared.

Sony, which is heavily invested in Blu-ray, is trying to avoid a second defeat by including a Blu-ray disc player in PlayStation 3, the latest version of its popular videogame console. While too soon to declare a winner, Blu-ray currently has an advantage in the market.

Most iPhone Owners Gush, But Some Have Glitches

2007-07-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

San FRANCISCO - Proud owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhone raved about their first day with the device Saturday, but a glitch took the shine off the year's most anticipated device for a few unlucky customers.

Of 11 iPhone owners contacted by Reuters Saturday, nine reported little or no trouble setting up their handsets, a combined cell phone, music player and Web browser.

"It's awesome, it's the best thing I ever saw in my life," said New York private detective Jerry Gregory. "Once people see this phone they are going to want one. Everybody I show this phone wants one, even people who were anti-iPhone."

But Brad Bargman of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, who waited in line 9 hours Friday to buy his phone, said excitement turned to dismay when the device stubbornly refused to activate, meaning it can't be used.

"It's a real buzz kill," said Bargman, adding that repeated calls to AT&T failed to get the device to work. "Now I'm soured on it a little bit."

David Clayman, the third person in line at Apple's flagship Manhattan store, said he was still unable to activate his iPhone a day later, probably because he couldn't update the Apple software on his computer needed to start the process

The iPhone, which costs $500 or $600 depending on memory capacity, is activated through a process handled by AT&T Inc. , the phone's exclusive carrier for two years, in Apple's iTunes online music store.

In a sign of strong initial demand, AT&T said it had sold almost all its phones within hours of the device going on sale at its 1,800 stores. The company did not say how many units it had sold.

Asked about problems some buyers were having, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the "vast majority" of customers were able to use their phones within minutes.

"There are some whose activation process is being delayed and that's something that can happen in a launch like this and we're resolving those on a case-by-case basis," Siegel said.

Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock declined to comment on the number of iPhones sold at its 162 outlets, saying only: "So far we've seen a lot of excitement and buzz."

Apple aims to sell 10 million units in 2008, giving it 1 percent of the global mobile phone market. The company is banking that the iPhone will become its third pillar product alongside its popular iPod music players and Mac computers.

By mid-afternoon on Saturday, Apple's store in downtown San Francisco was crowded with shoppers interested in the iPhone display. The store was sold out of the $600 models and about 10 $500 models were visible on shelves.

Indeed, the iPhone's inclusion of so many features into a sleek package triggered a sort of nerd rapture among enthralled gadget freaks.

"It's not like it's a computer, it's not like it's a phone, it's like a living sculpture in my hands," said Dale Larson, a mobile business consultant in San Francisco.

Buyers cited the large screen, full-blown Internet browser, ability to play music and video, and camera quality as among the phone's best features.

Two of the top concerns raised prior to the phone's launch -- the on-screen keyboard and quality of AT&T's network -- were annoying to some people, but no one said they regretted buying the device.

"At first I tried to use my thumbs to type but it didn't work so well. But if I use my finger it's okay," said software developer Tim Brown.

Visa Gets More Personal With Data

2007-07-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

Visa plans to roll out new, highly customized incentive and reward programs based on more detailed consumer information, including data on purchases, buying habits, and retailer loyalty.

Having completed a multi-year upgrade and modernization of its payment processing systems, credit-card giant Visa plans to roll out new, highly customized incentive and reward programs based on more detailed consumer information, including data on purchases, buying habits, and retailer loyalty, company officials said during a tour of the company's central-United States data center.

Crafted two years ago and known as "account-level processing," the plan will enable Visa's payment processing system to manage transactions in real time using the entire 16-digit credit card number, rather than the six-digit bank identification number (BIN) that has traditionally been used. It will allow consumers to carry their account numbers with them if they move up to pricier and more exclusive cards, and merchants to offer new services and benefits, such as loyalty programs, to customers, said senior VP Jim McCarthy, head of consumer products for Visa USA: "This allows us to take a specific action in real time based on consumer behavior at a specific merchant and a specific location."

The shift to account-level processing coincides with Visa's preparation to go public by early next year, a move that is expected to raise billions of dollars to help Visa compete in the increasingly competitive and litigious credit-card processing business.

Last Tuesday, the world's largest credit card network said it had hired Hans Morris from Citigroup Inc. to fill the new position of president of Visa Inc., the new combined entity that will result from the IPO. John Philip Coghlan resigned as president and chief executive of Visa USA, a post he had held since July 2005, the company said.

The move also comes as credit-card processors and financial institutions are under increasing scrutiny and threat of litigation thanks to several massive and well-publicized thefts of consumer credit card information. Earlier this month TJX Companies, the parent company of a family of retailers that includes T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and other nationwide chains, said it took a $20 million computer-intrusion-related charge for its most recent quarter, related to an IT security breach in which 45 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. Thieves later used fake cards based on the data to steal $8 million in merchandise from Wal-Mart stores in Florida.

Following huge credit-card data losses from payment processor CardSystems Solutions and from Lowe's hardware stores, the TJX case "was a stark reminder to all of us that such events can have vast reach and consequences," said Coghlan, the former Visa USA CEO, at a data-security summit in March.

Visa has spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars annually modernizing and upgrading its transaction system, known as Visa Integrated Payments. The company processes some 6,800 transactions per second during the peak holiday season, and its transaction volume is growing at around 20% a year. The central-region data center -- the precise location of which Visa requires visitors not to divulge -- replaced an older data center on the West Coast in 2006 and will process some $1 trillion in transactions this year.

Among other things, the re-engineering of the global authorization engine involved replacing legacy code with new, streamlined software, resulting in a modular architecture that allows Windows Visa to add new functions and deploy new technology on the fly. The Operations Center Central, as the data center is called, is one of two centers in the U.S. and includes Z9 IBM mainframe CPUs running 2500 million instructions per second each, along with disc drives from a variety of vendors. The OCC actually has two separate data center buildings connected by two self-healing SONET rings.

Account-level processing will include sending immediate discount offers and the like to merchants serving eligible customers, to "enhance and improve the customer experience at the point of sale," as McCarthy put it. But Visa will not share actual consumer information with merchants at the edge of its network -- a practice that would automatically increase the risk of fraud since most security breaches take place at the retail level, not in the Visa system proper. While the platform will be able to make instantaneous judgments about customer behavior and qualifications for specific benefits, and alert the merchant based on that information, "the data resides in the same safe walls as all our data does," said Visa spokesperson Elvira Swanson.

The system also will provide what McCarthy calls an "in-flight scoring engine" that rates specific transactions by specific users for the risk of fraud. Using real-time fraud scoring based on certain risk conditions (whether the transaction matches up with past purchasing behavior, for instance), the system can provide a "fraud index" that calculates the likelihood of chicanery. The card issuer can then make a determination about whether to allow the transaction to proceed -- all within milliseconds.

"We build this stuff into the cloud so that issuers and merchants can take action faster," said McCarthy. "It's not good enough anymore to identify negative patterns 15 minutes after the fraud occurs," added Swanson.

The new Visa Inc. will comprise Visa USA, Visa International, and Visa Canada. Visa Europe plans to remain a traditional member association owned by the financial institutions. Visa Inc. will become the third standalone, publicly traded credit-card processor along with MasterCard Inc. and Discover Financial Services LLC. MasterCard shares have more than quadrupled in value since that company went public in May 2006.

Zelda game named 'greatest ever'

2007-07-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has topped a poll of readers of Edge magazine and industry experts to find the top 100 games of all time.

The 10-year-old videogame for the Nintendo 64 games console helped usher in a new era of 3D gaming.

It is also one of only five games ever to receive a 10 out of 10 review score from Edge magazine.

Five of the top 10 titles were made only for Nintendo machines, including Super Mario 64, in third spot.

The full list of 100 titles has been compiled for a special edition of Edge magazine.

Tony Mott, editor-in-chief of Edge, said: "If you were new to video games and were going to go out and buy 100 games to make an instant collection, then these would be the games to buy."

He added: "Ocarina of Time is nearly 10 years old, but its position at the top slot in Edge's 100 Best Videogames shows that great game design does not age.

"In visual terms, it obviously cannot compete with today's Xbox 360 and PS3 productions, but, as with many classics, its appeal is about so much more than its appearance."

Only one PC game makes the top 10 - classic first person shooter Half Life 2. Microsoft's Xbox also has only one representative in the elite list - with Halo: Combat Evolved at number seven.

Only five games for the next generation of consoles have made the top 100 - Pro Evolution Soccer 6, at number 15, Oblivion, at number 19, Virtua Fighter 5, in 38th spot, Virtua Tennis 3 at number 80, and Crackdown at 100.

Tony Mott said: "Crackdown hasn't been around long but has proved itself to be a very good game. It will be interesting to see people's reaction to that.

"If we did this poll in five year's time, I would hope to see more PS3 and Xbox 360 games in the list. But I don't think anyone would argue we have seen that many classics in this new generation."

The list was drawn together in three stages - thousands of reader votes, combined with expert opinion in the games industry and finally input from Edge's own editorial team.

Mr Mott said Ocarina of Time was the reader favourite as well as the overall winner.

'Brilliantly well'

He said: "It appeared not long after games made the shift to 3D; everyone was wondering if it could make the transition.

"It was a very ambitious game. The way they were able to engineer it in a 3D context was a success; it worked brilliantly well."

But he said the intention behind the poll was not to create a "nostalgia festival".

"These games had to stand up today. People will be surprised by the small amount of very old games that have made it through.

"Often these types of lists are full of games like Space Invaders and Pong - which we recognise as classics, as important games - but they don't necessarily stand up to play today."

He added: "I love the fact that old games are being made available to audiences via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and through compilations but I am not convinced that younger players will play them and appreciate them in the way we did the first time round.

"It's very hard for younger players who play something graphically-rich like Gears of War to then play something like Robotron.

"I think it will be for the greater good of the industry when more effort is put into the content of games than the way it is presented visually."

The five titles to have received a maximum review score from Edge are: Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life 2, Gran Turismo, Super Mario 64 and Halo.

Online Customized Ads Move a Step Closer

2007-07-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Yahoo will announce new tools for online advertising today that could pull the company ahead in the race for what is called “behavioral targeting,” that is, the ability to better tailor online advertisements to the people most likely to buy.

The product, Yahoo SmartAds, would help marketers create custom advertisements on the fly, using information on individual buyers and information on real prices and availability from the vendors. For example, a person who had recently searched for information about blenders might see an ad from Target that gives the prices for the blenders that are on the shelves in the store closest to that person’s home.

The Internet has long promised this kind of one-to-one marketing, but it has often been difficult for advertisers to customize display advertisements with a broad reach.

“Ad agencies have been really struggling with how to scale the value proposition of the Internet,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of display marketplaces at Yahoo. “We now can get scaleable one-to-one marketing.”

The announcement of SmartAds also comes while Yahoo is recovering from an extensive reshuffling in the executive offices, including the departure of its chief executive, Terry S. Semel, and Wenda Harris Millard, the company’s longtime chief sales officer. Yahoo has struggled to catch up with Google in search advertising and has disappointed investors with its ad sales the past few quarters.

SmartAds is one attempt to catch up. Although the technology is complex, the goal of SmartAds is simple: show the right advertisement to the right person at just the moment that he is about to pull out his wallet to make a purchase.

SmartAds is being tested on Yahoo’s network of sites — which includes local newspapers as well as its own portal — by two major airlines, although Mr. Teresi would not name them. He said the system will be offered to other industries in the coming months, including automobile companies and retailers in the fall.

The technology will also be applied for free across advertisements bought on Right Media, the online ad exchange that Yahoo purchased this spring (although the deal is still pending). The new feature may give Right Media a competitive advantage over other exchanges — like a new one created by DoubleClick, the online company that Google agreed to purchase for $3.1 billion in April. (The Google-DoubleClick merger is pending an antitrust review by the Federal Trade Commission.)

This is how Yahoo’s new system works: the advertiser (or its agency) would provide Yahoo with the components of its display ads — including the logos, tag lines and images. The retailer would share information from its inventory databases that track the items on the shelves in each of its stores. Next, Yahoo would combine that data with the information it has about its users’ demographics and actions online to create a product-specific advertisement.

For airlines, SmartAds uses Yahoo’s information about its Web surfers to create display advertisements for each person that feature ticket offers with actual prices listed. In time, Yahoo plans to offer rich media advertisements where users can buy the ticket at that price right within the ad unit, rather than having to click through to another Web site.

Mr. Teresi said Yahoo hopes to work directly with creative agencies as they design their online advertisements. Large advertisers, he said, can buy entire sites, and Yahoo will step in to create the right advertisement for individual consumers.

“We’re doing real-time creative assembly that leverages what we know about our audience,” Mr. Teresi said. “You can buy the entire Wall Street Journal site, and when a female shows up, we will create a different ad or when someone from New York shows up, another one.”

Display advertisements have lagged behind search and text advertisements in the ability to send consumers specific product messages. Instead, much of display advertising online has been brand messaging. Yahoo’s new product may help ad agencies begin thinking of display ads differently, said David W. Kenny, chairman and chief executive of Digitas, a digital agency in the Publicis Groupe.

“This fills a need that some advertisers have needed for a while — applying personalization to display ads, so they work like search and listing ads,” Mr. Kenny said. “Yahoo has a real advantage in SmartAds because of the data from their big and engaged audience, the combination of deep display and improving search capabilities, and the new changes to work with us at the technology level instead of just selling inventory.”

The grep Command - A Regular Expression Search And Extraction Tool

2007-07-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

Linux / Unix command "grep" allows you to search for a pattern in a list of files. Such patterns are specified as "regular expressions", which in their simplest form are "strings", such as words or sentence fragments.

The Syntax of Using grep

The way we search for a string with grep is to put the words we are searching for together in single quotes.

The syntax: % grep pattern file-name-1 file-name-2 …file-name-n
An example: % grep 'mountain bike' sports hobbies

As a result of entering this command the operating system will print all the lines in the file "sports" and the file "hobbies" that contain the string "mountain bike". By default the line will be printed on the computer screen (in the shell window, where the command was issued).

Save Search Results

To save your search to a file, you need to redirect the information in the following way:

The syntax: %grep pattern file-name1 file-name2 > results-file
An example: % grep 'mountain bike' sports hobbies > results

Here, we saved the results to a file, which we named "results". We can then open this file and look at it either using emacs, vi, or similar programs.

Some Options

The following is a list of some of the most useful grep options:

-h if you search more than one file at a time, the results contain the name of the file from which the string was found. This option turns off that feature, giving you only the lines without the file name.
-w restricts the search to whole words only
-b precedes each matched line with its file block number.
-c displays only a count of the number of matched lines and not the lines themselves.
-E causes grep to behave like egrep.
-e pattern specifies one or more patterns for which grep is to search. You may indicate each pattern with a separate -e option character, or with newlines within pattern. For example, the following two commands are equivalent:
grep -e pattern_one -e pattern_two file
grep -e 'pattern_one pattern_two' file
-F causes grep to behave like fgrep.
-f patternfile reads one or more patterns from patternfile. Patterns in patternfile are separated by newlines.
-i - tells grep to ignore case so that it treats "the" and "The" as the same word
-l lists only the file names that contain the matching lines.
-n - precedes each line with the line number where it was found
-q suppresses output and simply returns appropriate return code.
-s suppresses the display of any error messages for nonexistent or unreadable files.
-U[b|B|l|L] forces the specified files to be treated as Unicode files. By default, these utilities assume that Unicode characters are little-endian. If a byte-order marker is present, that is used to determine the byte order for the characters. You can force Unicode characters to be treated as big-endian by specifying -Ub or -UB. Similarly, you can force them to be treated as little-endian by specifying -Ul or -UL.
-v displays all lines not matching a pattern.
-x requires a string to match an entire line.

The option (always preceded by a "-") goes between the grep command and the search pattern.

The syntax:
% grep -option pattern file-name1 file-name2 > results-file
Example of using a single option:
% grep -h 'mountain bike' sports hobbies > results
Example of using multiple options:
% grep -hi 'mountain bike' sports hobbies > results

Remember: There can be any number of options, but you should use only one "-".

Two Variations of grep are "fgrep" and "egrep"

fgrep searches files for one or more pattern arguments, but does not use regular expressions. It does direct string comparison to find matching lines of text in the input.

egrep works similarly, but uses extended regular expression matching. If you include special characters in patterns typed on the command line, escape them by enclosing them in apostrophes to prevent inadvertent misinterpretation by the shell or command interpreter. To match a character that is special to egrep, a backslash (\) should be put in front of the character. It is usually easier to use fgrep if you don't need special pattern matching.

Important: Use the man command (% man) to see how a command is used on your particular computer.

Mozilla Releases Sunbird and Lightning in Version 0.5

2007-07-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

The calendar application Sunbird has been modified and improved significantly in this version. Lightning, based on Sunbird code, is a calendar extension of the e-mail client Thunderbird. Improvements have been made to the user interface, meeting invitations, and support for Google Calendar.

Sunbird is a Mozilla project to build a cross-platform calendar client based on the open iCal standard. The application is targeted at Mozilla based browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and the Mozilla Application Suite. At the project website you can look at screenshots, download the latest version, and read about plans for future releases. It also contains information how developers and non-developers can contribute to the Sunbird project.

Sunbird is Open Source and licensed under the Mozilla Public License, the GNU General Public License, and the GNU Lesser General Public License. Builds haven been released for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Europe mulls human launch system

2007-07-02T04:17:00.000-07:00

Industrial groups in Europe are about to look in detail at ideas for a new launch system to put humans in space.

The meetings have been convened by the European Space Agency (Esa) under a development study that involves Russia - with Japan also eager to contribute.

The discussions at industrial level will formally start in July.

Europe is keen to see a crew transport system that is independent of the US Orion vehicle, which is set to replace the space shuttles in the next decade.

The new Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS) could be an updated and enhanced version of the venerable Russian Soyuz approach or an entirely new concept.

"We need two transportation systems; we cannot rely on only one," said Daniel Sacotte, Esa's director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

"We want to have parallel systems, to be cooperative; so that if one system has a failure there is another one that allows space exploration to continue," he told BBC News.

Back to the future

The industrial partners on the project in Europe include EADS-Astrium (which leads the production of Ariane rockets and built the Columbus space station module) and Thales Alenia Space. For Russia, which will lead the study, Soyuz manufacturer RKK Energia will be involved.

The investigation hopes to provide some conclusions that can be taken before Europe's space ministers when they next meet in 2008.

Esa has released about 18m euros for the work. If ministers approved further development of a CSTS, they would have to commit many hundreds of millions of euros more.

The Americans are returning to some of the Apollo heritage for their new Orion project - a flight capsule and service module launched on "single stick" rockets, in contrast to the spaceplane configuration used in their current shuttle system.

The purpose of the Esa-backed feasibility work is to find the most appropriate architecture for the CSTS. This will depend on the type of missions for which it will be used - flights in low-Earth orbit to the space station or to carry people to the Moon, and even beyond.

Russia's Soyuz experience is key, but Europe believes its recent efforts also bring important competencies to the project.

Key skills

Mr Sacotte was speaking at Esa's technical facility, Estec, in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, from where Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is about to be despatched to a spaceport for launch to the International Space Station (ISS).

The ATV - essentially a 20-tonne cargo ship - incorporates advanced automated rendezvous and docking systems that could be employed in some future CSTS.

"It will be a system with different components - one classical launcher probably, systems derived from the ATV; and if we want to go to the Moon, something that will have to be specific to that. We have in mind something very modular," Mr Sacotte said.

EADS-Astrium has already had preliminary discussions with the Russians on the topic. Philippe Berthe, a systems engineer who works on advanced projects, told the BBC: "We would like for the ATV to be used as a source of know-how and experience for future European vehicles.

"It masters a lot of complex systems and sub-systems that must interact with each other. Once you develop something as complex as the ATV, you are very close to developing a human system.

"We would like to see, given the combined capabilities of Europe and Russia, if we could come up with a vehicle capable of performing a human mission for exploration to the Moon as a first step."

A Closer Look at NAS Virtualization

2007-07-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

NAS islands today suffer from the "weakest link" phenomenon -- the least secure resource in the environment can be a gateway to a security nightmare. In a virtualized NAS environment, a single security policy can be applied to the entire environment, because all access is controlled via the virtualization appliance.

Virtualization literally comes in all shapes and sizes, but because users and administrators enjoy an inherent feeling of confidence that comes from knowing where their data lives, network-attached storage (NAS) virtualization is often treated differently from other forms. NAS virtualization tends to upset that sense of place and ownership.

To a varying extent, NAS islands exist in every IT organization. While consolidation does not imply or resolve management or provisioning consolidation, it does offer an opportunity to provide seamless data access under a single namespace.

End-users benefit from not having to map multiple shares from different resources -- these are masked behind a single presentation layer: the virtualization appliance. No longer does the IT administrator have to worry about mapping or mounting a long list of network drives from different filers.

Data Mobility

The key benefit of virtualization appliances is data mobility. Data mobility in a traditional environment is a double-edged sword. It allows the consolidation of various shares onto a single location and applies a single set of policies on it; however, a single human error when relocating data from one resource to another can have a ripple effect on the environment. Enter the virtualization appliance, which is able to seamlessly move data between physically separate resources without user downtime or reconfiguration.

Data mobility in a virtualized environment allows the administrator to create storage pools and storage tiers. Data classification policies can then be applied to relocate data from one tier to another, depending on the retention or access policy for the file type.

NAS virtualization also provides the ability to replicate data to or from a remote location using a single mechanism. It allows the IT organization to move away from a per-vendor, per-product solution to something that works across the board -- i.e., regardless of the number of physical resources, all replication occurs within the appliance. As a result, the two copies of data are maintained using a single console.

Single Unified View

"Global namespace" is a term that is associated with NAS virtualization. What it really means is the ability to provide a single unified view of NAS resources. In user terms, it is the creation of a virtual but unified directory structure where all resources are under a single parent directory, eliminating the need to have separate mount points for individual resources.

In technical terms, most vendors tout the use of a virtual file system that forms the foundation of the entire NAS virtualized landscape. The virtual file system allows objects from physically disparate resources to be merged and appear as one to clients or users.

One relatively new aspect of NAS virtualization is the ability to abstract Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) resources, as well. Almost all NAS vendors offer iSCSI with their NAS appliances -- the iSCSI logical unit (LUN) resides on the file system as a special file.

For example, a 100-GB iSCSI LUN would reside on the file system in the form of a 100-GB file with special attributes. If the virtualization appliance treats this LUN as a special file and represents this LUN via its own network ports as an iSCSI LUN, all of the features of virtualization -- data mobility, migration and security -- can be "mapped" in the same fashion as file virtualization.

Most NAS vendors have some form of virtualization capabilities available in their product portfolio. Using a virtualization appliance from the same vendor as the attached physical resources has some benefits, especially related to integration, support and manageability.

If the goal is to consolidate multivendor, multiplatform NAS islands into a single unified space, however, the evaluation should be based on the interoperability matrix and not, for example, a single vendor solution.

Consider Scalability

The other important consideration is scalability. How many physical resources can the appliance support? What about the total amount of data and the number of files? Keep in mind that file-sharing environments tend to serve many small files, sometimes millions. Find out if the appliances being evaluated have any hard limits.

How integration of the new solution is planned with the existing backup environment is critical to a successful implementation. Rarely is implementing a new backup solution to support a virtual NAS environment a wise idea. Implementing a new backup solution to support a new technology is a "one-off" and introduces a risk to the storage environment because staff now has to maintain two disparate backup environments.

Part of this decision also rests on how quickly data can be restored in the event of a user error or a catastrophic component failure. Finally, ensure that the virtual filer metadata is backed up independent of the actual user data and can be restored in the same manner.

The evaluation of a NAS virtualization appliance should factor in the level of integration required to make it work with the existing backup environment with little or no additional investment.

If there is a single authentication infrastructure across the environment, whether it is lightweight directory access protocol or Active Directory, ensure that the virtualization appliance not only supports but fits in nicely with this authentication mechanism. A "veiled" new NAS environment will need to seamlessly migrate from the old one with user profiles and permissions intact.

If security is paramount to the infrastructure, check to see if the appliance supports encryption at source and in motion. Confirm that the appliance will fit well within current security parameters.

Spy Sweeper 5.5 with Antivirus

2007-07-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Version 5.2 of Webroot Software's Spy Sweeper added antivirus support from Sophos, a well-regarded enterprise-oriented antivirus firm. Version 5.3 made the product compatible with Windows Vista. The latest version, Spy Sweeper 5.5 with AntiVirus, adds antivirus scanning of e-mail attachments as well as a variety of other enhancements. The price hasn't changed—$39.95 (direct) gets you spyware and virus protection for a year. You can pay $10 more for a three-pack, or $10 less for spyware protection without antivirus. Whichever way you choose to pay, however, Webroot's latest offering is well worth paying for.

Sophos's own AV products have received all the independent lab certifications I look for and more. Now Virus Bulletin has awarded VB100% certification to SSAV itself, and ICSA Labs has certified it for virus detection - as of this writing testing for removal certification hasn't finished. West Coast Labs hasn't finished evaluating SSAV, but the corresponding Sophos product received Checkmark certification for virus detection and removal, as well as the additional Trojan-horse-detection Checkmark. Sounds good to me!

You won't notice much difference in the combined virus/spyware scan. But the real-time protection "Shields" have changed a bit. The new System Services shield prevents unauthorized changes to the numerous system services that are essential for correct operation of Microsoft Windows, and the Email Attachments Shield catches threats in e-mail. The old Spy Installation Shield is replaced by the dynamic duo of Execution Shield and File System Shield, which block malicious programs from executing and from reading or changing files. And the Behavioral Genotype protection mentioned above also helps keep malware off your system. At least, that's the theory. How well does all this new code work, and does it play well together? I fired up my test machines to check just that.I fired up my test machines to check just that.

I loaded SSAV on a set of virtual machines infested with my latest collection of malware—adware, spyware, Trojans, rootkits, even rogue antispyware programs. This must be a tougher gang than my previous collection, as I had to install SSAV in Safe Mode on two of the systems because the malware interfered with normal installation. I had to run the scan in Safe Mode on a third because malware interacting with SSAV put the system into a blue-screen death spiral. Fortunately SSAV has no problem at all with installing or running in Safe Mode.

I give a product full credit for removal if it eliminates all the executable elements of a threat, even if it leaves behind data files or Registry keys. Products get half-credit for detecting a threat but not managing to clean out the executables. Total annihilation of the baddies is worth 10 points. On that scale, SSAV initially scored a disappointing 7.9. Webroot advised me to turn on rootkit detection and a couple of other normally disabled settings and retest. That raised the score to 9.0—much better! Webroot leaves these settings off by default because they can make the scan take longer; also, in rare instances, rootkit detection can turn up legitimate programs using rootkit-style techniques. Spyware Doctor 5.0 scored 9.1 against that same set of threats. I did notice that SSAV left behind the vast majority of the Registry keys associated with my samples. I'd prefer a more thorough cleanup. In a similar test using commercial keyloggers SSAV scored 6.3 (compared with 7.1 for Outpost and 7.9 for Spyware Doctor)—not the most impressive of results. But then, I don't give nearly as much weight to removal of commercial keyloggers. If someone has managed to get physical access and install one of these on your system, you've got problems that software alone can't handle.

A combined spyware and virus scan took just under 30 minutes using default settings (about the same as a similar scan by Norton Internet Security 2007). And although Webroot mentioned that turning on the rootkit detection and other recommended options might slow the scan, I couldn't measure any difference. The latest version of Spyware Doctor took over an hour for a similar scan, so a half-hour doesn't seem too bad.

I ran into one oddity that I don't remember from previous versions. Like many other antispyware products, Spy Sweeper often finds it necessary to reboot in order to clean out pernicious malware. Each time I accepted its offer to reboot automatically, the system gagged, reporting that SSAV itself didn't want to shut down. But if I declined the automatic reboot and chose to restart manually, there was no problem. That's clearly a glitch that needs fixing, especially if Webroot wants to appeal to the mom-and-pop type of customers who will doubtless be put off by this kind of hi-jinks.

As always, Spy Sweeper's "Shields" offer multiple layers of protection to keep malware from installing on a clean system. For testing I used all of the recommended shields as well as the keylogger shield, which is turned off by default. The first line of defense is the Internet Communication Shield. This shield blocks your browser (or any other program) from accessing sites associated with malware. ICS blocked access to only about a quarter of the sites hosting my samples—it has done better on my tests in the past. About half the samples got whacked by the Execution Shield the moment they tried to launch or by the File System shield when they tried to install files. The BHO Shield, ActiveX shield, and others kicked in as needed. Overall, SSAV scored 8.1 out of 10 in the spyware-blocking test. That sounds pretty good, but both Outpost and Avira AntiVir Premium Security Suite scored 9.1 against this same collection, and Spyware Doctor racked up an amazing 9.8 points.

I expected SSAV to do especially well against my separate set of commercial keyloggers, since it has a shield specifically designed to protect against them. It came in with a disappointing 6.4 points. Fully half of the samples installed at least enough to log keystrokes; not one was blocked by the keylogger shield. Other products didn't do a lot better—Outpost and Spyware Doctor both got 7.1 points. I don't give as much weight to protection against commercial keyloggers, but I did expect Spy Sweeper's keylogger shield to do something.

For each threat that was knocked out before installation by the Execution Shield, I tried again using a modified version of the installer. I renamed each installer, changed some non-executable bytes, and appended null bytes to the end to change the size. In the past Spy Sweeper has fared well in this type of test, but apparently the size change threw off its ability to identify these threats on sight. Almost every one of them at least started to install. Fortunately the other layers of protection kicked in, and only two of sixteen modified samples managed to install.

Though the antivirus portion of SSAV gets accolades from the independent testing labs, it was better at blocking and removing existing spyware infestations that at preventing new ones. Spyware Doctor 5.0 was slightly more effective both at removing entrenched spyware and more effective at preventing malware installations. But Spyware Doctor 5.0 is a complete rewrite and has just too many "new product" problems to be Editors' Choice material. Its scan is very slow, it seemed to impair performance, and it detected a simple text file as a malicious executable, among other problems. Spy Sweeper 5.5 with Antivirus remains our Editors' Choice—but just barely. It'll be very interesting to see what happens with the next iteration of these two leading apps.

AMD Sets Summer Ship Date for Quad-Core Chips

2007-06-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-30T18:58:00.001-07:00

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.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a convenient Internet service for writing and saving documents independent of the computer you use to connect to the Internet. Documents that are stored in this way won't be lost, for example, if your hard disk crashes, and it has the additional advantage that you can easily share documents with friends or colleagues.

If you do most of your work on the Internet, it is also easier to switch to a new computer and to a different operating system, since all you need to get up and running is a browser and Internet connection.

There is no limit specified for the total amount of disk space you can use in your Google Docs & Spreadsheets account, but the limit for each document is 500KB plus 2MB per embedded image. Spreadsheets are limited to 10,000 rows. These generous allotments are made possible is large part by Google's extensive use of Linux servers and Open Source software.

You can download your documents to your local computer in various formats, including OpenOffice, HTML, RTF, Word, PDF, and plain text, and you can upload OpenOffice, HTML, Word, PDF and text documents.

Google asserts that all your documents are private and only readable and accessible by you, unless you make them public or share them with others. For more information on setting up your own Google Docs & Spreadsheets account, go here.

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

2007-06-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

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 -- 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

2007-06-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Alternative desktop search engines for Linux are Beagle and Recoll. Such search tools enable you to easily find documents, emails, instant messenger conversations, notes, source code, images, etc. Besides the source code, binary installation packages of Beagle are available for most major Linux distros and can be downloaded here. Recoll downloads are available here.

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

2007-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

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."