Gregarius » BetaNews.Com

BetaNews.Com (186 non lus)

Microsoft's deep-rooted Vine isn't just another social network

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 11:43pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

microsoft vine Let's get something clear up front: Whatever you've heard elsewhere, Microsoft doesn't intend for their Vine service to take over your Twitter or your Facebook or your texting or any of your other social networking tools. They've got bigger fish to fry.

Back in 2005, as we watched Hurricane Katrina upend our faith in America's emergency response system, some Microsoft folk started asking what software development might bring to the table in future crises. Tammy Savage, general manager for Microsoft's public safety initiatives, says that the original Vine team spent a lot of time thinking about "all aspects of crisis, from preparation to recovery -- all kinds of organizations, asking what Microsoft might uniquely be able to provide."

Note the word "uniquely," which would let out Twitter-replacement and the like. So is Vine an aggregator, combining a bunch of data streams in the way Facebook can include Twitter or Trillian combines all your instant messaging? Again, think unique, think bigger, and think about the company involved.

How large is your social network, anyway? Here's the answer: Smaller than Microsoft's, if you regard all the constituencies they touch as constituencies to which they are networked. Though, as Savage puts it, "we didn't go in with the assumption we can help," scrutiny of the organizations and entities involved in a disaster ("first responders, emergency management, humanitarian organizations, critical infrastructure, consumers..." and Savage's list went on) showed the Vine team a role they might undertake and "a sustainable investment" in filling it.

And so the Vine aggregation picture starts to become clearer -- Twitter and Facebook and instant messaging and text and e-mail and local news and weather data and... well, let's give Microsoft some air to figure that out. Right now, the project is entering what Savage refers to as "an old-fashioned" (private, access-controlled) beta, with approximately 10,000 participants drawn mainly for now from the Seattle area. Those participants include the City of Seattle, Boeing, Microsoft itself, national service organizations, neighborhood watch groups, Americorps, volunteer coaches, fire departments, and so on.

Front panel of Microsoft's first beta of Vine. [Photo credit: Microsoft Corp.] So it's also not the Emergency Broadcast System, which has also already been invented. "There are a lot of top-down alerts" out there, Savage notes. "This is a complement to that. Information from sources we trust isn't always top-down information." Your spouse, for instance, doesn't have the information one could get from the local traffic cameras, but s/he is the world's leading authority on whether s/he is running late for dinner, and Vine can adapt accordingly.

The service has three components. The dashboard -- the main interface -- is map-based and culls location-specific information from over 20,000 news and official information sources. Your main contacts appear there too when they post something or otherwise update their status.

Beyond the dashboard, there are alerts and reports, both of which can go out to individuals or, more usefully, contacts you're grouped together (e.g., The Neighbors, My Students, Family). Reports are sent dashboard-to-dashboard, while alerts can be sent to any device the recipient chooses, so you don't have to remember that Mom prefers text messages while your boss would rather get an IM in a crisis, and by Vine application, text or e-mail.

Now about crises, which is how this conversation started. For every individual in each of your groups, there's not only a different set of information sources with which one would want to keep in touch, but quite likely a different set of situations that would constitute a crisis. For instance, the chief of police probably doesn't care that your kids' usual soccer practice field is too muddy to use this evening, and your Facebook pals don't all need to know that you're heading out of town and need a neighbor to keep an eye on the house.

Vine can handle those variations, which is where some of the confusion over social networking comes in. In fact, variations are sort of the point. You may be someone who groups your IMs and Twitters and so forth for ease of perusal, but in an emergency, ease becomes a ruthless push to prioritize. Though no one will discourage you from trying, using Vine as currently conceived to simply ride herd on an unruly friends list seems a bit like taking an Uzi to a knife fight.

Or maybe not. For now, Microsoft doesn't have all the answers about how people will use Vine. Though Savage has some nice examples of using alerts in ordinary sub-critical situations, there's a lot to discover about real-world use as situations rise and fall. "Right now we're focused on listening," says Savage, explaining how the beta period will operate -- not open to just anyone, but if you've got an invite of your own, you can invite others. (Very, um, social.)

As the system develops, there will be myriad tech problems to address -- especially, considering its public emergency emphasis, the problem of staying connected if all hell really is breaking loose. Though the beta currently requires broadband, Windows, and a Live ID account, that won't always be the case, Savage says. Of equal significance is Vine's need to not rely entirely on Internet connectivity. "The product roadmap takes into account that some communications systems won't work," says Savage. "Internet, mesh networks, peer-to-peer, satellite mobile phones, landlines, SMS -- we need to create a system that's smart and inclusive."

Testing is expected to build out to other locations soon, and the site is taking signups for beta invitations. Pricing's uncertain, though as Savage points out, there's almost always concern with a project this big about "what the business looks like."

[Photo credit: Microsoft Corp.]

XP Mode is for real: First 'Windows Virtual PC' beta accompanies Windows 7 RC

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 10:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Microsoft Windows 7 story background (200 px) Validating the news we received last week of the existence of a virtualization layer, Microsoft this morning unveiled for MSDN and TechNet subscribers the first beta a new and special edition of its virtualization software specifically for Windows 7. Its first release candidate went live to those subscribers also this morning, and will be available to the general public next Tuesday.

Windows Virtual PC already has its own Web site. It's the next edition in the chain whose current version is called "Virtual PC 2007," although this time, the software is specifically geared for Windows 7, and for computers with virtualization support in hardware. That covers nearly all modern CPUs anyway, but specifically Intel-brand CPUs with Intel-VT and AMD-brand CPUs with AMD-V.

Think of the new "Windows Virtual PC" (WVPC) as Hyper-V for the client side. Although the technology credited with this innovation is still being called Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), the new Web site is reporting that WVPC will be supported on all Windows 7 SKUs including Home Basic and Home Premium. "XP Mode," however, will only work on Enterprise, Professional, and Ultimate SKUs.

A network application that requires Windows XP appears to run fine in Windows 7 under 'XP mode' virtualization. [Photo credit: Microsoft Corp.]

A network application that requires Windows XP appears to run fine in Windows 7 under 'XP mode' virtualization. [Photo credit: Microsoft Corp.]

Up to now, Virtual PC users have been accustomed to hosting guest desktops within a hypervisor layer. Betanews uses Virtual PC 2007 (and Sun VirtualBox for hosting 64-bit Windows and Linux systems) almost every day in testing. The new version is very obviously being geared for everyday use by general users rather than testers like us. Borrowing a cue from its application virtualization, sometimes called SoftGrid, the new WVPC will enable some guest environments to seamlessly integrate with the host desktop.

That feature will get the most use in conjunction with what's being called "Windows XP Mode." It will be distributed as a kind of drop-in, apparently containing the XP kernel. Setting up this drop-in with WVPC will apparently be "wizard-ized," with some functions automated -- so it won't be like installing Windows XP on a PC, a process that nobody in his right mind really wants to re-live. Once completed, users should have the ability to run Windows XP programs that have misbehaved in Vista up to now, within an envelope more conducive to XP, but without separating the "XP realm" from the "Windows 7" realm.

That's especially important because typical hosted environments run only from virtual hard drives. XP Mode will be able to coexist with the user's regular physical drive, sharing either or both drive letters and permitted directories, as well as contents of the system clipboard.

One way you will definitely be able to spot an XP program, however, is by looking for that cobalt-blue window frame we all remember...and grew a little tired of.

The new edition of the virtualizer software will also support XP, Vista, and Win7 itself in the traditional hosted desktop. But also according to Microsoft, "applications modes" for Vista and also Win7 (for instance, disabling a tested application's ability to contact the host OS) are also feasible, even though XP Mode will be the only drop-in available at present.

One very big question that Microsoft has not yet addressed -- and which Betanews is pressing the company on right this moment -- concerns licensing. While it appears WVPC itself will remain free just as Virtual PC 2007 has been, the XP Mode drop-in appears to contain the XP kernel. So will users who have already purchased and activated XP at some point in their lives, have to purchase it again? Or will they get a discount? Or can users who have a real XP installation disc use it to validate their ownership? Once Microsoft gets back to us on those questions, we'll let you know the answers.

Mobile broadband speeds creep up on fixed with HSPA growth

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 9:31pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

One year ago, market research firm In-Stat released a study that established the average home broadband connection in the United States. The study found that the comparatively small number of residential fiber customers against the high number of narrowband customers amounted to a national downstream average of 3.8 Mbps. Several months later, Broadband Expert released similar research data for the UK, which found the average fixed line broadband speed was 3.61 Mbps.

Similarly, results from Analysis Mason's Fixed Broadband Research Program published this week find that nearly 60% of the broadband connected homes within the 30 OECD member nations are connecting via DSL, where only "a small proportion" can achieve speeds around 8 Mbps.

Due to mobile broadband's limited reach and frequent reliance upon slower 2G connections to flesh out coverage, Broadband Expert analyst Rob Webber predicted that it would take another three years before mobile broadband became the leading connection for consumers. But reports from the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA...do forgive the "m," it's gone mobile) this week claim that the baseline for 3G wireless communication speeds has been set, and it's 3.6 Mbps.

In the GSA's annual report to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (PDF here), the group states that WCDMA (including HSPA) is the dominant 3G network protocol, with 286.9 million subscribers and a 71.8% global market share. The number of HSPA deployments has grown by more than 100% for the third year in a row, with 259 total networks against last year's 110.

WCDMA versus EV-DO

The group now says 91% of WCDMA operators have an HSPA deployment of some type, with the majority (71%) offering speeds of 3.6 Mbps and above, and 37% offering a peak of 7.2 Mbps and higher. In total, there are 82.8 million HSPA subscribers worldwide.

HSPA speed breakdown

The CDMA development group, meanwhile says that there are 271 1x EV-DO networks offering a peak downlink transmission speed of 3.1 Mbps.

So of 399.3 million 3G subscribers the GSA counts worldwide, 112.4 million have a peak of 3.1 Mbps with 1x EV-DO, 58.78 million subscribers have peaks of 3.6 Mbps and above with HSPA, 24.02 million have HSPA with a peak of 1.8 Mbps, and the rest of the 204.1 million WCDMA subscribers of various types have between 384 Kbps and 2 Mbps.

EcoFocus: PiSAT launches solar-powered 'green' lantern

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 9:25pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

PiSAT and its partner the Koinonia Foundation gave the K-Light its first big push at last night's EcoFocus show in Manhattan, demoing how the soda can-sized solar device can morph from a lantern to a flashlight in just a few seconds when you remove the side handles and the piece on top.

Like SunNight's solar flashlight, touted during the CEA's Greener Gadgets Expo last month, PiSAT's K-Light is set for distribution in a couple of different ways: through foundation subsidies in developing nations, and commercial sales in the US and elsewhere.

The K-Light gizmo currently for sale for $49.95 on PiSAT's Web site works great for both "recreational and emergency preparedness" uses, said Bennett Meyer, manager of PiSAT Solar, in a meeting with Betanews at Pepcom's EcoFocus press event. You might want to tote the solar lantern/flashlight along with you on a camping trip, or stash it inside a closet in readiness for the next electrical brownout to hit your neighborhood.

Through the Koinonia Foundation, though, PiSAT is also getting the solar devices out to African villages where people still rely mostly on air polluting and potentially dangerous kerosene lamps to light up their homes after dark.

PiSAT's solar-powered 'green' lantern Weighing in at 22 ounces, the K-Light is water-resistant, shatterproof, and mercury-free, according to Meyer. The side handles rotate 360 degrees, and can be locked into 12 different positions. Through the proverbial flick of a switch, you can set the 120-lumen LED for either maximum brightness, with a 10-hour runtime before solar recharging, or for less brightness, with a 20-hour runtime.

For purposes along the lines of economic sustainability, the Koinonia Foundation's Beacon Program is giving start-up "grants' of K-Lights to African women to sell in their villages. The K-Light recipients can then use 100 percent of the earnings from the initial sale to buy K-Lights at a vastly reduced price, thereby establishing local businesses that provide an "ongoing and sustainable source of income," Betanews was told.

PiSAT's solar-powered 'green' lantern

For every K-Light sold on its Web site, PiSAT donates part of the proceeds toward the foundation's solar projects.

A bit similarly, SunNight now sells 30% of its own solar flashlights directly in Africa, while another 30% are distributed through humanitarian groups and the remainder go to other destinations, ranging from police forces around the world to US retail chains like Target.

Although SunNight's flashlights last a much longer 750 to 1,000 hours without recharging, the SunNight gadget uses a mixture of solar and nickel hydride battery power. In contrast, PiSAT's lantern/flashlights are "100 percent mercury-free," according to Meyer.

This week in ZigBee: The low-power wireless standard gets a boost

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 7:38pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

ZigBee is one of several brand name specs for the 802.15.4 wireless personal area network standard that concentrates on simple, low data rate connections. In the roughly five years it has existed, it has found its place in home automation, smart metering and remotely controllable embedded systems.

Openness: As carbon waste reduction becomes a greater interest to the public, ZigBee has enjoyed improved adoption, and this week the ZigBee Alliance announced its latest spec will be even more diverse. The next draft will include Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards, which will add native IP support to ZigBee and in turn open the low-power wireless technology to new potential uses.

Laurent Giai-Miniet, general manager of the Low-Power RF division of Texas Instruments (one of the premier members of the alliance) said, "The ZigBee Alliance decision to expand its leading wireless networking standard to incorporate IP standards will solidify and accelerate developments and innovation of rapidly growing smart grid applications."

Power: Ember, maker of ZigBee systems, chips, and software, announced this week that its soon-to-be-released next generation of ZigBee semiconductors will be based on the 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 processor, instead of the aging 16-bit XAP-2 that its former System on a Chip solution utilized.

This improvement was fueled by a recent surge in venture capital which, when combined with previous investments from Chevron, STMicroelectronics, Hitachi and MIT, brought Ember to a total of $89 million in funding.

"ZigBee standards extend the developing 'smart grid' out to the billions of devices, appliances and equipment where most energy efficiency goals will be achieved," said Ember Chairman Bob Metcalfe earlier this month.

Accessibility: British ZigBee solutions vendor Vesternet today unveiled a dedicated ZigBee shop, where consumers can assemble a home automation and smart metering system that utilizes the wireless standard.

The store carries many prefabricated home metering solutions such as the Plogg smart meter, but it also has a good number of development kits and tools from companies such as Digi, Atmel, and Freescale.

Hulu gets Lost and Desperate (and Mickey)

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 7:21pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

They've got a mouse in the house: Hulu on Thursday announced that the scrappy streaming-video site has reached a deal with Disney in which the House That Mickey Built will take a 30% equity stake, and watching Scrubs and Ugly Betty online will take up everyone else's waking hours. The deal will include content from ABC Primetime, ABC Family, ABC Daytime, SOAPnet, Disney Channel, Walt Disney Studios and, of course, the archives thereof.

That's three of the four major networks (NBC, ABC and Fox; CBS as you'll remember went with YouTube) and over 150 content providers, for those keeping score at home. Of course, ABC also has a recent deal in place with YouTube. It's also not clear at press time what this will mean for ABC's own streaming service, which some prefer for its HD content and others dislike for its rather demanding player.

Windows 7 RC now being distributed to MSDN, TechNet subscribers

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 5:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Breaking News

Microsoft Windows 7 story background (200 px) The first "real" copies of Build 7100, the Windows 7 Release Candidate -- quite likely, the only one there will be -- were officially distributed to subscribers to Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet subscribers at 11:00 am EDT / 8:00 am PDT Thursday morning. Included in this morning's distribution are the 32- and 64-bit editions of the Ultimate SKU of the operating system, plus the all-new Windows Driver Kit Release 7 for those who'll be building device drivers for the new OS using the revised driver model; the Automated Installation Kit for remote deployments using servers; and the updated Windows 7 SDK RC in x86, x64, and Itanium editions.

Update banner (stretched)

11:15 am EDT April 30, 2009 - Almost immediately upon the RC's public release, the response time for Microsoft's Web services became extremely slow. It's a good sign for the company in one respect: Not all of Microsoft's developers took the bait and downloaded one of last week's leaks.

11:35 am EDT - The slowdown lifted about three minutes ago, and downloads resumed at a respectable pace -- fair enough when something this important and popular is happening.

5:08 pm EDT - Almost immediately after installing Windows 7, you're given some fresh hints and clues -- obviously quite deliberately -- that you're not using Vista (or XP) any more. One is the first notification of the existence of the Action Center, the new upbeat, centralized component for handling and monitoring system security matters. It lets you know it's there for the first time, in a fresh system, by reminding you that there isn't any antivirus software installed.

The Action Center panel introduces itself for the first time to the new Windows 7 user.

Another nice feature that hasn't gotten a lot of play, but which suggests folks at Microsoft have finally been listening to users: After installing applications and rebooting, Windows 7 is capable of restoring open applications to the state they were before the reboot. We've seen this behavior so far with Internet Explorer 8 and with other Windows 7 apps open, such as the new version of Paint (with the "Scenic Ribbon"), but we're interested in how deeply this behavior can extend to other apps including non-Microsoft brands.

Time Warner may or may not spin off AOL, says SEC filing

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 4:47pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Early morning news reports told readers that Time Warner has begun the process of spinning off its AOL division into a separate entity. The earliest versions of those reports did not this time cite unnamed or anonymous sources, or wireless microphones attached to rats traversing the air ducts of the headquarters building, but instead this morning's regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

As it turns out, that's not exactly what the filing says at all. A Time Warner analysts' briefing this morning will likely lay out the details, but here is what we know based on the source that was actually cited: Time Warner's board of directors has not reached a decision with regard to whether it wants to spin off the AOL unit to TW's shareholders or to anyone else, although the "Company" (read: executives) believe that such a move is probable. However, everyone acknowledges that there may be other possibilities in the works. Here is the complete passage in question:

During 2008, the Company announced that it had begun separating the AOL Access Services and Global Web Services businesses, as a means of enhancing the operational focus and strategic options available for each of these businesses. The Company continues to review its strategic alternatives with respect to AOL. Although the Company's Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner's stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company's review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL's businesses.

The final sentence in that passage implies that a formal review of the possibility of a spinoff has not even happened yet, and that's the first step that executives would actually need to take before going forward with a plan. While executives are probably in favor of that direction -- and with good reason -- there's still viable reason for hesitation, most notably the question of whether a detached AOL, even without its less profitable dialup services, would garner a high enough market value for trading in this dismal economic atmosphere.

Putting a damper on this plan (and perhaps having done so since the beginning of this year, as we've learned only now) is that back in January, Google exercised its right to ask Time Warner to sell its 5% equity stake in AOL in an initial public offering. This according to the SEC filing and not a blogged interpretation of the SEC filing. That's a sign that Google wants to cash out. According to the filing, Time Warner had the right to pre-empt an IPO of that 5% stake by issuing its own bid for the stock instead, which it has decided to do. That's probably smart if the company wants to eliminate any chance of market perception dragging that stock value lower, even though it means an expenditure on TW's part.

Kindle 2 and the unintentional acquisition of knowledge

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 3:08am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Amazon's Kindle 2 has received a great deal of acclaim for improving upon many of the shortcomings of its predecessor: shrinking its size, improving its usability, and adding a handful of new features such as rudimentary web browsing and the contentious text to speech function.

What's difficult to quantify is the effect it has on the user; that is, the degree to which it simplifies or improves one's life. Since I've had mine, my reading has gone from two books a month to eight, but because the majority of the books I read would best be classified as "light reading," I feel like the impact it has had on my personal improvement is negligible.

As it turns out, I've gained the most from one of the Kindle's most unlikely educators: the screensaver. Each time the device is put into sleep mode, a full-screen image of comes up, most frequently of famous authors and playwrights. Thanks to my daily use of the Kindle, my visual recognition of at least a dozen great writers has inadvertently gelled.

While someone's appearance is not exactly an important thing to remember, especially for writers, I cannot help but think of it as an accidental educational perk to an already highly regarded device.

kindle_screensaver_quiz

Mint.com spices up advice offerings, while Prosper.com gets a second wind

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 1:24am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

As of this week, ten percent of the members of Mint.com's personal-finance site are gaining beta access to a slick new tool that evaluates their financial picture and guides them through the months- or years-long process of getting financially fit. Meanwhile, for those for whom financial fitness requires some help, one of the Web's first microloan sites is back in the saddle after a six-month quiet period.

The Financial Fitness feature works as much like a personal trainer as a financial advisor -- not just suggesting wise paths down which you can take your money, but standing there with a clipboard and a checklist and a scale. The model's deliberate, according to fonder and CEO Aaron Patzer: "Like any goal -- from weight loss, to video game domination, or getting a promotion -- specific, actionable plans help people stay on track in the short term, and achieve more in the long term."

If you're one of Mint's million-plus members -- an estimated 1% of all American households -- the system already has a great deal of information on you and your spending habits. The new tools help users pinpoint and undertake tasks that'll improve their fiscal fitness, alerting them when they're getting out of shape (e,g., spending too much, not keeping an eye on their credit rating) and rewarding them with feedback and an improved "grade" when they're on track and reaching milestones.

It may sound a bit like Wii Fit for your money -- not that there's anything wrong with that. But the five principles at the core of Financial fitness are in fact quite traditional: know your money, spend less than you earn, use debt wisely, invest your savings, and prepare for the unexpected. With regard to those principles, Financial Fitness gives you tasks that can earn points that'll improve your 0-100% score, explaining how often you should do those tasks and why they're important. For instance, under "Know Your Money," I'm reminded today that this is the week to do my annual credit-report check and awarded 100 points for reviewing my monthly spending; under "Spend Less Than You Earn," I am complimented for saving money each month, having a credit card that pays rewards and having a no-fee bank account; I am chided for not coming in under budget this month (new computer!), and the system suggests that I look into getting a savings account with a higher yield.

Overall I have a 62% score for the month -- 3,350 points out of a possible 5,350 -- but that'll improve to 71% as soon as I tell the site I've done that free credit check. (No, that's not my account in the screenshot.) As the site moves through beta, I'd love to see it give points to those of us who check our credit report monthly, but I'm pleased that it correctly parsed my automatic monthly transfer from checking to savings.

mint financial fitness screen

The site also "knows" that I've slacked on getting health insurance. (One thousand points off for being an idiot.) In my defense, it's complicated and I procrastinate a lot. Mint, however, has built a number of procrastination-smiting tools into the Financial Fitness report, sending me to the government's AnnualCreditReport.com site and, for my insurance needs, to eHealthInsurance. There are calculators and other budgeting tools for other tasks, and good explanations of why various actions are suggested.

Assuming beta continues to go well, Mint expects to launch the Financial Fitness feature this summer.

Meanwhile, Prosper.com is on the march again -- if you're a California lender, anyway. The site, which specialized in highly transparent person-to-person loans, has been in lockdown a quiet period since October, while it waited for approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission. That process isn't completed yet, but the California Department of Corporations has given its stamp of regulatory approval to the site in order to get the money flowing again. (Disclaimer: Your reporter is a Prosper lender not based in California, so the money I have to lend is currently just sitting there doing nothing. I'm not bitter.) Borrowers, on the other hand, can participate from anywhere in the US.

On his blog, Prosper founder Chris Larsen celebrated California's decision to expedite the process. "We remain hopeful that the SEC, which until now has effectively hamstrung the growth of the peer-to-peer and micro-lending industries in the US, will start applying the same common sense approach as California's regulators," he wrote. "California has recognized that Internet auctions, just like the Google IPO, are the most efficient means of price discovery; that loan level transparency is better than the opaque loan pooling that brought the financial system to its knees; and that requiring regulatory filings every other day of Web site transactions that are already visible in real time, is redundant and cost prohibitive."

Prosper is also building out past its original person-to-person model, launching the Open Market Initiative. That program will allow Prosper lenders to bid on existing loans made by lending banks and credit unions (again, Californians only for now). The plan gives Prosper lenders another type of loan (professionally underwritten, pre-funded, less "personal" than the usual Prosper loan) to buy into, while freeing up some capital for the institution that made the original loan. It's securitization, sure, but done far more transparently than the kind of securitization that got us into this mess, with information about the loan and the originating institution prominently posted.

Prosper is also adding a secondary-market-style ability for Prosper lenders to sell their loans to other Prosper lenders, implementing a better credit-grading system and requiring that individuals seeking loans have a minimum credit score of 640. That's a definite change; previously, credit rating information was noted, but "high-risk" borrowers were free to ask and gutsy lenders were free to say yes. Times and lending climates have changed, of course; it'll be interesting to see how Prosper maintains its goals of openness, transparency and durability as the new economic reality unfolds.

AMD: We didn't say anything about Nvidia licensing

Publié: avril 29, 2009, 12:03am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Last week, after AMD's conference to reporters last Wednesday updating its roadmap for server CPUs, we reported that the licensing situation for Nvidia and Broadcom chipsets for use in AMD-based servers looked bleak. This afternoon, AMD spokesperson Phil Hughes contacted Betanews to say that the company made no comment with regard to licensing, and continues to make no comment.

"We haven't made any comment with regard to licensing," stated Hughes. He reiterated Server Business Unit Vice President Pat Patla's comment that AMD has only made a decision to go with AMD-branded chipsets for use in motherboards built for new Opteron processors. But when we asked Hughes whether licensing played any role in AMD's decision to only use AMD chipsets and not extend licenses to Nvidia or Broadcom, Hughes repeated that the company has made no comment with regard to licensing, only that it has chosen to use AMD chips for this purpose.

"Our decision to go with AMD chipsets is strictly a business decision," Hughes said.

We listened once again to the webcast, where Patla responded to a question from the audience. The question itself was inaudible, but Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Dessau told Patla, "Let me just repeat the question, it was about Nvidia, their chipset."

Here is how Patla responded entirely: "So for 2010 moving forward, the solutions coming out from AMD will be AMD and on AMD at this time. We don't expect to see new chipsets from Nvidia or Broadcom for server implementations in 2010."

The follow-up was clearer: "But they will continue to support those platforms?" "All existing platforms moving forward through 2010," Patla responded. Indeed, the words "license" and "licensing" were not used in Patla's response.

This afternoon, we reiterated our question to AMD's Hughes: The decision not to license chipsets to Broadcom or Nvidia has nothing to do with licensing? And Hughes reiterated his response, which is that AMD is not commenting on the licensing situation.

Sun sets quietly behind dim Q3 report

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:49pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

What can you say after you've said "Oracle made us an offer?" Nothing worth saying to analysts, apparently, as Sun on Tuesday canceled its Q3 earnings call. Still the earnings reports must be released, and one feels one ought to look.

Shall we start with the good news? Billings were up a combined 4% year-over-year in the Total Software, Open Storage, Solaris-based SPARC CMT Servers, and X64 Servers categories, and those billings in turn accounted for 40% of total billings, up 10%. Total Software and Open Storage billings were up 28% and 63% year-over-year respectively, and SPARC CMT Servers billings were up 3%.

The company ended the quarter with $2.990 billion in cash and marketable debt securities and generated cash flow from this quarter's operations of $178 -- "the third consecutive quarter of positive cash flow from operations in fiscal 2009, and following upon 19 consecutive years of positive cash flow from operations," a company representative noted only slightly wistfully.

Meanwhile, revenues for Q3 '09 were $2.614 billion, down $606 million from last quarter and $652 million from Q3 '08. GAAP-calculated net loss for the quarter was $201 million, or 27 cents per share, compared to $209 million (28 cents per share) last quarter and $34 million (4 cents per share) for Q3 '08.

For reasons that should be blisteringly obvious, the company did not release guidance for the upcoming quarter.

Verizon named a suspect in Microsoft's 'Pink' mystery

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:13pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

As we inch closer to the anticipated marketing launch that will reveal to the public exactly what the project code-named "Pink" is, Verizon has reportedly been in talks with Microsoft to secure a contract for the device central to the project.

Rumored to be the touchphone that will finally catapult Windows Mobile into competition with the Apple iPhone, HTC G1, BlackBerry Storm, and Palm Pre, "Pink" is believed to be the product of Danger Inc. makers of the Sidekick OS and part of Microsoft's new Premium Mobile Experiences team. The team is led by Roz Ho, formerly the General Manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, which developed and marketed Office for Mac.

Office 2007 SP2 is released, can indeed save ODF by default

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:11pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 from Fileforum now.

Now all Office users will have the option to load and save OpenDocument files, with today's distribution of Service Pack 2 of Office 2007. In something of a surprise -- contrary to what many at Microsoft led us to believe -- upon installing SP2 on our test systems, we immediately located an option for saving files in ODF by default. That means you don't have to "Save As" and export to ODF if you don't ever want to use Microsoft's OOXML or Office 2003 "compatibility mode;" you can at least try to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as substitutes for OpenOffice.

Not that Microsoft won't give you a little heck for it along the way, in classic Microsoft fashion. For example, after changing our default format to ODF, we tried saving a simple Word file that had nothing more than a single sentence of placeholder text, nothing else. Immediately we saw the first security warning, "Document1 may contain features that are not compatible with this format. Do you want to continue to save in this format?" The check box at the bottom of the dialog suggested to us that we would see such a dialog each and every time, unless and until we checked "Don't show this message again." That's Microsoft's little way of saying, don't blame us if your documents don't turn out 100% the way you expect them to.

The little warning that Microsoft gives you when you try to save an Office 2007 file as ODF.

The next little surprise is that the default save format is not the same as the default load format. So after you've saved your Word document as an ODT, clicking on the Office button and selecting Open gives you the usual list of files saved in Microsoft formats. In the file selector box, under Files of type, you have to scroll to the middle to see OpenDocument Text (*.odt) -- the list is not in alphabetical order, so that entry falls below XML but above WordPerfect.

Here's how to set the default save format in SP2: Click on the Office button (the big round logo in the upper left corner) and from the bottom of the menu, select Word Options. In the dialog box, from the left pane, choose Save. Then from the list box marked Save files in this format, choose OpenDocument Text (*.odt) (in Word 2007, or its equivalent in Excel or PowerPoint). Then click on OK.

We expected to see OpenDocument given equal treatment along with PDF, the portable document standard created by Adobe and now treated as vendor-neutral. While you cannot "open" a PDF document in Word (that's to be expected, Word and Acrobat aren't exactly in the same category), you can use Save As to export an open document to a .PDF file. If you're an Adobe Acrobat Professional user, you've already had an easier option added to your Office menu by Acrobat itself: Save As -> Adobe PDF. However, for non-Acrobat users who may only have Adobe Reader, this extra step does save you the hassle of installing something like "PDF Writer" as a printer driver, and printing as a means of exporting.

Office Live services have been obviously boosted in priority with SP2. Up to now, using the Office Live add-in has resulted in adding an extra place to your Save As dialog box, enabling you to directly load and store your Office documents to your personal storage space in Microsoft's cloud. Now with SP2, Open from Office Live and Save to Office Live become prominent selections in the Office menu, and the controls for signing into your online workspace are embedded into the menu -- no shoving off to IE just for the sign-in screen.

UPDATE 5:42 pm EDT April 28, 2009 - Or maybe not. Upon further testing, we learned that the Office Live functionality does not come with SP2 right away. Rather, in our first tests earlier today, the functionality showed up on virtual systems where Office Live had been installed before, and then uninstalled. But on systems where Office Live had never been installed before, we noticed no such new functions. So evidently the SP2 package updates systems where Office Live has been registered before by way of the Office Live add-in -- which, by the way, Microsoft now also offers through Automatic Updates.

Service Pack 2 rolls up a truckload of security-related attachments and bug fixes since December 2007 -- the release date of SP1 -- and also fills an important gap in Word's and PowerPoint's functionality.

Users of Microsoft Update this afternoon noticed "The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2," complete with the "The," as a high-priority or important update along with Internet Explorer 8, which is now being pushed as an operating system update for the first time.

Here's some advice for you: Download Office 2007 SP2 either from our Fileforum page or using Automatic Updates, and not from a link you find on Microsoft.com. The latter is what we did, and that choice prompted us to download the latest version of Microsoft Internet Download Manager, whose performance -- at least we hoped -- was not a foreboding of things to come. First, it crashed our Firefox browser, taking with it the active session (for that reason alone, you may want to just use IE to download SP2). But when the browser was restored, we were shown a page that merely asked us to execute the just-downloaded installer file before proceeding. Not a kind way to give us the message.

Anyway, we did that and restarted Firefox. Then we noticed that the Download Manager failed to properly register itself; had it been registered properly, it would have detected that it was supposed to handle the automatically triggered download. As it turned out, the Registry triggered Visual Studio 2008 instead, which doesn't make for a very good download platform. We exited out of that and patched the Registry manually. Then and only then were we able to make the download properly, except that for a reason we can't fathom, the Download Manager downloaded the file twice. Remind us to give Download Manager 5.17 a low Fileforum score when we get a minute.

We're continuing to dig into the new features of SP2, including the long-awaited addition of the module that adds the same new charting functionality introduced in Excel, to Word and PowerPoint. We're also looking forward to seeing whether a window updating bug that's peculiar to Nvidia drivers has been addressed. We're only moments into our examination of SP2, and we'll let you know more when we do.

Hulu rises to #3 in online-video race

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:32pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

It's another loss for Yahoo as Hulu in March rose to the #3 spot in total number of videos served, according to comScore numbers released Tuesday. Hulu served up 380 million videos during the month, or 2.6% of videos viewed. Yahoo continues to hold down the #3 spot in total unique users with 42.6 million, with Hulu just a million behind in fourth place.

Google, of course, continues to rule the video category as a whole, with 100.4 million unique viewers and 5.9 billion videos viewed. Fox Interactive holds down second place in both categories. But Hulu's growth -- it has been on a tear ever since their Super Bowl commercial -- has a couple of noteworthy angles. According to comScore, the service accounted for just 2.6% of videos viewed, but a very respectable 4.9% of all minutes spent watching online video. And with a deal with ABC-connected Disney Online (#9 in total videos, #10 in unique visitors, but they've got Lost) reputedly all but inked, expect continued good times for the video upstart. (Because that's how they roll.)

IE8 now being delivered as 'Important Update' for Vista, 'High Priority' for XP

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 8:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A few weeks ago, Microsoft made indications that it would be delivering Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 8 as important automatic updates to Windows users on the same day. That day ended up being today, and now many Windows users are being prompted for the first time to install IE8 as an update to their operating system. Since the product's release last month, upgrades have only been voluntary.

Though two-thirds of the world's Web traffic is attributable to browsers identifying themselves as Internet Explorer, according to the latest up-to-the-minute data from analytics firm NetApplications, under 5% of that traffic comes from IE8. In fact, only in the last week has IE8 traffic by NetApplications' measure eclipsed HTTP requests hailing from Apple Safari version 3.2, which runs on Mac, iPod Touch, and iPhone. Requests from Mozilla Firefox 3 accounts for nearly one-fifth of analyzed traffic; but now, with IE8 becoming an "in-your-face" update for the very first time, Internet Explorer traffic in total may experience a bump.

Download Internet Explorer 8.0 for Windows Vista from Fileforum now.

Hunch borrows a cue from Pandora, but for answering your deepest questions

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 6:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

I'm in the market for a bike, but as a skateboarder of more than twenty years, bicycling has been something of a taboo subject for me. Bikers were the guys who destroyed skate spots with their pegs and caused horrific skatepark collisions that could have been easily avoided if both parties involved were riding skateboards.

But now that I'm older, those prejudices have faded and I find that I know practically nothing about bicycles. I'm clueless about the kind of bike that will suit my needs, much less what brand would be best. However, I do know that I plan to ride more on paved roads than off-road, that I'll be riding for exercise, and that I plan on spending between $500-$900. I will take my case to hunch.com.

Hunch is a site currently in beta that is similar to Yahoo Answers, but is designed to inform and help make decisions based on community knowledge. Rather than submit a question to the big, cruel Internet and wait for an answer, users search Hunch for their question, and then take a quick test to receive an answer. For every test you take, Hunch learns more about you and how your tastes relate.

Hunch bike question

After answering six questions, I am informed that a hybrid bike might be best, and I'm given three choices of brands and information about each, included user-submitted pros and cons of each answer. The content on Hunch isn't limited to shopping and commerce, and the questions are so diverse that you'll find yourself looking for answers to questions you'd never even considered. For example, to the question "Which animal should I find fascinating?" was answered with Platypus. I sort of scowled at this until I read the description and learned something I never knew about the bizarre animal: Males of the species are venomous. Now this may be common knowledge for any secondary school biology student, but it somehow slipped by me, and I found myself chuckling at how fascinated I was.

Another user submitted those topic questions, and created the tests that gave me my answers. The user chooses which test answers yield certain results.

Hunch home screen The site is still young, and there is a lot of space for growth as users submit more tests. However, user submissions are not the central attraction of Hunch. It was started as an exploration of machine learning and how it can be used in practical decision making. All user submissions and decisions are being used in a Hunch core algorithm that ranks results according to how appropriate they are to each user.

On Friday, a big addition was made to Hunch: the site's first bot user. This program has been given its own profile and goes by the name T-101; its job is to look at the tests that are taken, and learn which results earn the most favorable ratings, and tighten up those results which do not receive favorable ratings.

Eventually, Hunch will be something like Pandora, except for more than just music, and across categories. For example, your taste in music and your political predilections may lead Hunch to suggest you visit a certain city or eat a certain food.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4: Mozilla delivers the speed, as Beta 5 gets under way

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 5:41pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Test Results

There are now (once again) three simultaneous development tracks for Mozilla's Web browser, as the first public beta of Firefox to be numbered 3.5 has officially hit the streets; the first private Beta 5 of Firefox 3.5 is being distributed to Mozilla testers; and the latest Firefox 3.6 Alpha continues to make headway.

It would appear Mozilla developers learned a lot from last week's code-frozen version of 3.5 Beta 4, as Betanews tests indicate the organization kicked things up a gear. The last code-frozen version before the public build produced a composite performance index score of 9.19 -- that's 919% the performance of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not IE8) in the same system. But after refreshing our test virtual machine with the public Beta 4, that index kicked it above the 10.0 mark to place at 10.44.

How come the final build is faster? Much faster error handling, as shown by the browsers' scores in the Celtic Kane JavaScript test, which indicates that some of the temporary error handling code was likely removed; and generally better performance in all stages of the SunSpider benchmark.

Windows Web browser performance index scores April 28, 2009.

The public Beta 4 actually posted a slightly better performance score than the first nightly build of Beta 5, which posted a 10.33. Beta 5's Acid3 standards compliance score holds even with Beta 4 at 93%, and its Celtic Kane and HowToCreate.uk CSS rendering test scores hold up well against Beta 4. But the SunSpider scores show a general slowdown in most departments by 20 - 25%, which indicates that Beta 5 will be mostly focusing on features and usability rather than functionality.

And though the latest nightly build of Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 ("Minefield") gained a tick in speed with a 10.25 index score -- compared to last Thursday's 10.14 -- it's been bested by 3.5 Beta 4, thanks in large measure to its improved JavaScript error handling. Despite our early fears that the new TraceMonkey JavaScript interpreter wouldn't perform in the same league as Google Chrome and Apple's Safari 4 beta, Mozilla has been able to dial up the speed considerably, posting scores that are now 33% than in our first tests of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3.

Still, a score above 10.0 puts Firefox in a very competitive position against Chrome, currently the second fastest browser in our tests, but only by a small margin against the Safari 4 beta. Both Chrome's and Safari's index scores of 14.39 and 13.07, respectively, are helped by the fact that they post 100% compliance scores in the Acid3 test.

While all this is going on, Mozilla has now publicly announced the release of Firefox 3.0.10, which may now be automatically downloaded using older versions. We'd been noticing some poor performance since last week's release of 3.0.9, whose reign didn't last so much as one week. Since yesterday, we managed to trace the source of our hanging problems -- thanks in large measure to Mark Russinovich's Process Monitor -- to a corrupted bookmarks file, specifically places.sqlite. Deleting the file and having Firefox rebuild it appears to have solved this problem for now, though we cannot say for certain yet whether Firefox 3.0 or one of our add-ons is responsible for the corruption. Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 for Linux from Fileforum now.

Android 1.5: Two days and counting

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 5:16pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Two weeks ago, a developer preview of Android 1.5 SDK was released, promising developers an early look at what the OS update had to offer if they hadn't already. Now, RC 1 of the Android 1.5 SDK is available from Google for use by emulators, and from HTC for testing on the Android Dev Phone 1 (ADP1).

The SDK overview says the Android 1.5 production system image will be deployed starting in May, so there is a possibility of "Cupcake" coming to users even before the week is out.

The Netherlands, which was the first country to carry an Android-powered handset, will likely also be one of the first countries with the 1.5 update. An early press release from T-Mobile Netherlands yesterday promised an over-the-air software update to all users beginning "in early May." The Android Market in that country, along with a number of other EU nations, however, still lacks paid apps.

United States users have been running Android 1.1 RC33 for just under four months, and users in the United Kingdom and Germany have been running RC9 for just under two. The Cupcake branch, however, which promises to bring Video recording, a soft keyboard, improved browsing, Google Talk, live folder population, and improved widget creation, has been a topic of discussion in the Android user community since late last year.

Nokia axes 450 Ovi workers

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 4:11pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Nokia is doing some sculpting. Since last year, the Finnish mobile phone leader has been pressing hard in the field of software and services, and has rolled a broad range of outside services into its Ovi portal, such as Mapping, Gaming, Music, and cloud-based file sharing.

It's got a lot to offer, but apparently not obviously enough for users and at too great a cost for Nokia.

Today, the company announced that it is going to adjust its Services entities according to market demand, and eliminate about 450 employees. Additionally, the company says it will focus investments on fewer initiatives and more on integration with popular third party "enablers." Though Nokia did not list anyone by name, it noted that it would include a variety of image-sharing and social networking sites, and that all its mobile games would be included in the Ovi Store.

Its internal IT department, as well as its Compatibility and Industry Collaboration activities in its Corporate Development Office unit will experience cutbacks.

Further, when The Ovi Store debuts on Nokia smartphones next month, United States users will not have the option of carrier billing when purchasing apps, games, or music. When the company announced the Ovi Store at Mobile World Congress, it said that nine countries (Australia, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain, and the United States) would include operator billing. Now, every country except the U.S. will have the ability to shop this way when The Ovi Store opens.

Dear Time Magazine: Know when you're pwned

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:29am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

The editors of Time's current "World's Most Influential Person" poll would like you to think that their online poll wasn't owned hard by the denizens of 4chan's /b/ realm: "TIME.com's technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote," says the overview. Maybe, if by "extinguish" they mean "were kitten-helpless against." If you doubt the power of /b/, check out the first letters of the first 21 entries on the list.

Maybe the editors were making a meta-statement about the power of creative hacking, because the collection of exploits run against the poll are a nifty little set. Music Machinery's got a nice overview of how the multipart effort came off. So was Time asking for it by including 4chan founder moot (Christopher Poole) on their nominees list and implementing such slack security, or did they just include him for the lulz and get the excitement as a big /b/onus?

Quit swining and get the flu facts

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:11am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

If everyone will just calm down for a few minutes, there's plenty of good information out there on what's happening with the swine flu. (Yes, it's more fun to freak out, and your humble reporter wishes to report that children of her acquaintance are already using breathless news reports concerning the flu to beg for a day off from school. Note to children: When operating in pairs, try to get your story straight re your symptoms. I digress.)

First rule: Remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and resist the urge to gorge on me-too mainstream coverage or strained local angles on the situation. Instead, get your propagation information from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. Who's got a dedicated swine-flu page in place. So does the CDC, and they also have tips for keeping yourself and your overwrought friends and co-workers safer -- hand washing is recommendation #1. Their Travelers' Health page (on which the organization currently warns against nonessential travel to Mexico) is a good site for practical folk in any case. (WHO, by the way, advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders.)

If it's local news and alerts you want, go directly to your city or county public health department. Some areas, such as Seattle and Massachusetts, are offering updates by e-mail or RSS (though New York State is taking the yeah-right-that'll-scale phone-in approach).

If you simply must make yourself miserable, a couple of sites are mashing up Google Maps and various information sources. In the best, a biomedical researcher in Pittsburgh has been diligently updating his H1N1 Swine Flu mashup, which differentiates between suspected cases and those that are confirmed or probable, and indicates which have resulted in deaths. (Very few, frankly.) Don't just look at the pushpins -- click in. You'll see that some reports are far more tenuous than others; for instance, Russia's only case at this writing says that "airport recorded a temperature from 29-year-old passenger, arrived at Moscow airport Sheremetyevo flight from Mexico City with change in Paris." Wouldn't you feel silly getting your shorts in a bunch over "pandemic data" like that?

EC's Reding: Europe needs a 'Mr. Cyber Security'

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 10:22pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

After an apparent victory in her efforts to prevent the UK from establishing a central database for private citizen communications, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said she wants her government to create a post for a point-man for the continent's cybersecurity.

"Although the EU has created an agency for network and information security, called ENISA, this instrument remains mainly limited to being a platform to exchange information and is not, in the short term, going to become the European headquarters of defense against cyber attacks. I am not happy with that," stated Comm. Reding (PDF available here). "I believe Europe must do more for the security of its communication networks. Europe needs a 'Mister Cyber Security' as we have a 'Mister Foreign Affairs,' a security tsar with authority to act immediately if a cyber attack is underway, a Cyber Cop in charge of the coordination of our forces and of developing tactical plans to improve our level of resilience. I will keep fighting for this function to be established as soon as possible."

The news comes as Reding meets with other government leaders in Estonia this week, to debate not only a pan-European policy for Internet security, but also the broader topic -- one that's near and dear to her heart -- of the establishment of some form of Internet governance, a topic she'll have more to speak about next week.

In the meantime, the UK Home Office decided this morning to back down from its plans to establish a central database for logging communications between private citizens -- a database which would have been contributed to by the country's Internet service providers. This after the EC issued a formal warning to the British government last week that it could go so far as to take it to court in Brussels, to protect against the possibility of any individual misusing such a database for unauthorized purposes.

In a communiqué issued this morning by the British Home Office (PDF available here), Home Secretary Jacqui Smith essentially echoed some of the language of Comm. Reding's earlier statement: "For the police, the security and intelligence agencies, and other public authorities like the emergency services, being able to use the details about a communication -- not its content, but when, how and to whom it was made -- can make all the difference in their work to protect the public," states Sec. Smith. "It is no exaggeration to say that information gathered in this way can mean the difference between life and death. However, rapid technological changes in the communications industry could have a profound effect on the use of communications data for these and other purposes. The capability and protection we have come to expect could be undermined."

UK Security and Counter-terrorism Minister Vernon Coaker (L - Gedling) had suggested that the creation of a database was necessary in order to comply with an EU directive mandating that personally identifiable information be kept on hand for 12 months. Some saw that as a way of sneaking in new government oversight, while passing the blame onto a higher authority. Although this morning's communiqué cited the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8(1) ("Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence"), it then went on to say that the government ensures that the content of private communication may only be accessed by authorities under certain emergency circumstances.

Amid those circumstances, it listed maintaining the economic well-being of the UK in such instances where national security may be jeopardized, and assessing whether taxes are owed by an individual. Still, it maintains that safeguards are in place to determine whether such cases mandate privacy invasion; and when they do, only a certain specially trained team of elite investigators are allowed to dive into private communications -- a team that sounds like something out of a Jerry Bruckheimer series, and that uses an acronym that must have been unavoidably tempting.

"The single point of contact system (SPoC), extended beyond police to all relevant public authorities following the enactment of RIPA, created trained and accredited experts in each public authority who understand how to interpret the information that is held by communications service providers," reads the communiqué. "This group, trained partially by industry to know what data is available to support investigations, helps to ensure effective working relationships between investigators and companies."

Already, the UK government has a kind of "tsar" in place to serve as the single point of contact, if you will, in cases where the government's authority may be under dispute, says the communiqué. This is the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who by law must have served as a judge. However, if a citizen feels her or his private data has been abused by authorities, he may seek redress before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The Tribunal's own Web site describes itself this way: "The Tribunal can investigate complaints about any alleged conduct by or on behalf of the Intelligence Services -- Security Service (sometimes called MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (sometimes called MI6) and GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). Because the Tribunal is the only appropriate place you can complain about the Intelligence Services, the scope of conduct it can investigate concerning them, is much broader than it is with regard to the other organizations under its jurisdiction."

Rural America, your WiMAX is waiting

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 9:38pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Soon, funds from the 7.2 billion dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be available, with $2.5 billion going to fund rural broadband projects through the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS). This funding is intended to be used in the construction, improvement, or acquisition of facilities to provide broadband to unserved and underserved locations in the US.

The 2008 Farm Bill (1.5 MB PDF available here) defines eligible rural communities as any area other than a city, town, or unincorporated area with a population greater than 20,000 inhabitants, or a city, town or unincorporated area with fewer than 50,000.

For those of us living in areas served by fiber-to-the-home and 3G wireless, any venture outside of our coverage blanket feels like a journey into the past. But in truth, if you cover your eyes and point to a United States map, the odds are in favor of your finger hitting an underserved rural area where the adoption of new technology is hampered by its lagging infrastructure.

The FCC categorizes the possible rural broadband options -- and certainly those in the whole of the US -- as: DSL, cable, satellite, fiberoptic, BPL (Broadband over Power Line) and wireless. A crucial debate thus far has been over which method of connection is the most advantageous, but wireless has been getting strong support in recent months.

Thanks to test deployments of WiMAX in extreme locations like the remote Ta Van village in northern Vietnam, and in under-connected African countries like Benin and Cameroon, deployments can begin quickly, cheaply, and in spite of harsh conditions. Unlike fiber and copper, no digging is required in a WiMAX network. Base stations can be set up, moved, or upgraded with relative ease.

Because the guidelines for receiving stimulus grants are still very unclear, and Congress has stressed that it wants practical solutions as quickly as possible, WiMAX is in a unique position. American WiMAX supporters like Airspan Networks are eager to show that it is "ready to roll" with both back-end and CPE hardware available, economically viable, flexible, and able to support the capacity and speed minimums that will be laid down by the government in the upcoming grant programs.

Even though early supporters of the wireless standard such as Nokia have grown skeptical of its potential as LTE has gained major support in the mobile sector, WiMAX still has much to offer and could experience a big boom as early as next month.

One week later, it's time for Firefox 3.0.10

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 9:22pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

It's only been six days since the emergence on the scene of Mozilla's Firefox 3.0.9 -- ostensibly a major security and bug-fix update to the world's #2 browser -- and already the organization is preparing another update. Once again, no formal announcement has been made, though version 3.0.10 has appeared on the organization's FTP site for final preparation.

The emergence of yet another update follows a week of lackluster performance from the production version of Mozilla's browser in Betanews tests. Not only did release 9 lose some speed and performance, we noticed -- as we have from time to time with Firefox 3 -- the re-emergence of a memory leak that can leave the entire browser in the online equivalent of a coma. Release 10 may not have come too soon; already, we noticed a kick in its step, gaining back what it lost performance-wise in Betanews tests, especially in the SunSpider benchmark. Release 10's performance score now stands at 5.19, which is actually higher than for Release 7 -- meaning, combining multiple tests, we find Firefox 3.0.10 to perform 519% better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not IE8) in the same system.

It's been a tough week for Mozilla, as planners decided to push back the Beta 3 release of its Thunderbird e-mail client by an indeterminate number of weeks, on account of unresolved bug issues ("blockers"). We also still await word on Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, a public release that could be the organization's best performing browser to date.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.10 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.10 for Linux from Fileforum now.

Judgment: Apple is a patent infringer

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

A patent infringement suit filed against Apple by California integrated circuit company OPTi two years ago has been decided, and Apple has been declared the loser.

The suit was filed in the heartland of patent litigation, the Eastern District of Texas, where Microsoft was sued over its JPEG patent, Sony was sued for its Cell Chip technology, Google was sued for its Database technology, and countless others are sued every day.

US District Judge Charles Everingham handed down a $19 million patent infringement ruling, which determined that Apple had violated OPTi's patent for "Predictive Snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses," which describes a method of high-speed communication between a physical bus and L1 cache memory.

Apple attempted to contest the validity of OPTi's patent by citing prior art and obviousness, but the jury was not convinced, and determined that Apple's infringement was willful and therefore worth $19,009,728 in damages to OPTi, the company which has sued a handful of notable tech companies in Texas, including Nvidia and AMD.

It's finally settled: Broadcom and Qualcomm lay down their swords

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:51pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The mobile communications industry can now pursue 3G technologies without fear of being caught in a whirlwind patent dispute. That's the outcome reached last weekend when Qualcomm agreed to settle its remaining disputes with Broadcom, in a deal which (at least at first glance) will net Broadcom $891 million over four years.

Qualcomm's incentive to settle was becoming obvious. In the current economy, a business plan built on the hopes of revenue from a big settlement from Broadcom or an unprecedented judgment in its favor, were becoming untenable. That point was driven home this morning when the company released its quarterly revenue numbers: Though revenue only declined by a mere 5.8% annually -- actually a noteworthy achievement -- net income could have ended up as high as $702 million, a decline of 22%. But the cost of putting this case behind it -- which only includes its initial payment to Qualcomm -- cost Qualcomm $748 million in this quarter alone, forcing it to post a net loss of $46 million.

So did Broadcom win? If it has, then it hasn't won very much, certainly not in terms of prestige or honor or upholding the principles it tried to appear to stand up for not so long ago.

As it turned out, this case followed what's now becoming a familiar pathology: One side claims it was wronged, and is acting for the good of the entire industry by standing firm against the designs of an evildoer. Then the other side countersues, and in so doing, exposes the dirty laundry of the plaintiff, creating an ironic twist that makes it difficult for anyone to stand on principle only. Eventually, both sides call it off out of embarrassment, and in an effort to diffuse the bombs they themselves have created, jointly proclaim their principles weren't so big a deal after all.

Had either Qualcomm or Broadcom actually "won" this dispute, the rules which govern the production of 3G cellular communications would have changed drastically. But after nearly five years of this battle, the best either side was managing to achieve was a calculated stalemate.

If all you had read about this case was last night's joint statement, you'd never know that at the center of this argument were many of the same issues that gave such color to the debate over Microsoft's effort to standardize its Office software file format: Can a corporation use its influence over standards agencies to force an industry to adopt proprietary technologies? The first sign of a real crack in the dam came in August 2007, when US District Judge Rudi Brewster effectively ruled that Qualcomm did use its influence as a member of the industry-wide Joint Video Task force to drive adoption of certain elements of the H.264 video encoding standard that led directly to the use of Qualcomm patents. Then it used litigation tactics to shield that misconduct. That much of Judge Brewster's finding did survive appeal last December.

But the issue at the center of Qualcomm's countersuit was similar: Although both Broadcom and Qualcomm manufacture components for all types of 3G handsets, Qualcomm has been the champion of CDMA while Broadcom is perceived as the standards-bearer for the European preference, GSM. Both standards are capable of utilizing the same alternative approach to a concept proposed by Motorola for enabling the same spectrum to carry more simultaneous signals. But that approach, called time-division multiple access, is part of the heart of GSM technology, while it may or may not be a co-existing add-on to CDMA (code-division multiple access). Think of CDMA as spreading signals over a wider spectrum, while TDMA allocates time-slices for specific signals within a given band.

Qualcomm claimed it had developed TDMA first, and that Europe's and Broadcom's adoption of it without compensating its rightful creator, was unfair. Meanwhile, Broadcom has been working since the previous decade to utilize the same concept in 4G technologies, as Advanced-TDMA (which can co-exist with DOCSIS 3.0), demonstrating that TDMA was not simply a solution to a dilemma specific to CDMA.

While some observers have stated their belief that the whole 3G topic is dying anyway, and that's why both sides decided to give things a rest, the fact is that when you look at the growth of portable technologies with respect to how much data they deliver, 3G is growing faster than 4G, and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This was a conclusion drawn last February by Cisco, which sees global traffic growth for both 3G and 4G technologies growing pretty much in proportion with one another, at a rate of over 100% per year up through 2013, with 4G growing at a slightly greater rate. That's not so much a factor of the number of users as how much data they consume.

So last weekend's settlement sets up the new rules for a continuing market in 3G technologies. Both sides agree that if a manufacturer builds a handset or a device using either Broadcom or Qualcomm products, that manufacturer does not immediately become the customer of the other manufacturer. That may be the most important decision the two companies have made, for one reason because now manufacturers such as Motorola and Nokia -- Qualcomm's other favorite courtroom nemesis -- won't have to set aside funds in case they end up owing back fees for licenses they didn't know they'd have to purchase.

But the other reason is because the two companies have established clear boundaries for themselves, enabling the 3G technology market to flourish and grow at least as fast as Cisco predicts it will.

To mark the occasion this morning, Broadcom announced it would create a $50 million fund to support math and science educational programs around the world. Consider this the ceremonial tree planting, in a midst of a burnt and ravaged forest.

Finally, a non-HTC Android phone

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 4:43pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Samsung today announced its first Android mobile handset, becoming the first company since HTC to come forth with a completed piece of mobile hardware supporting the open source operating system.

Samsung i7500 android

The I7500 is a GSM and HSDPA touchscreen phone that includes most of the same accouterments as HTC's G1, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, and the full host of Google tools. However, it ups the ante on HTC's products considerably by supplying a 5-megapixel camera, 8 GB of onboard memory expandable to 32 GB via microSD, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microUSB port.

At Mobile World Congress 2008, the South Korean company said it would be bringing an Android-powered device to market by early 2009. By the time MWC 2009 came around in February this year, the company said it had to delay production while negotiations with mobile carriers continued.

The I7500 will be launched in "major European countries" in June, according to Samsung, but does not yet have a gimmicky product name.

The Broadcom/Qualcomm war is over

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:43am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The Hatfields and McCoys of the wireless chipmaking industry, Qualcomm and Broadcom, today announced that they had laid down their long legal feud and entered into a multi-year patent agreement.

Since 2006, the two companies have been bouncing in and out of U.S. Courts and U.S. International Trade Commission hearings over patent infringement and licensing of WCDMA technology.

In the settlement, Qualcomm will pay Broadcom $891 million in cash over the next four years; $200 million of which will be paid before the end of June. Additionally, both companies agree to not sue each other for their respective integrated circuit products, and Qualcomm's existing licensing revenue model for 3G and and 4G technologies will remain unchanged. All claims within the International Trade Commission, U.S District Court, European Commission, and South Korean FTC have been unequivocally dropped.

In a statement this evening, Scott A. McGregor, president and CEO of Broadcom said, "We have set aside our differences while addressing the needs of our customers, our shareholders and the industry. In addition, the companies have worked together to achieve their mutual goals of improving the competitive dynamics of the industry."

Confirmed: Windows 7 RC to the public on May 5

Publié: avril 26, 2009, 12:52am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Leaving not much time for folks to stew in the rumors over the latest "leaked" builds (plural) numbered 7100 of the Windows 7 release candidate -- one of which may have been legitimate -- Microsoft decided late Friday night to officially confirm that May 5 is the official public release date for the Win7 RC.

"I'm pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc in a corporate blog post late yesterday.

News of the public release comes as disseminators of the real Build 7100 discovered the existence of a virtualization envelope that may enable at least the Ultimate SKU of Windows 7 to run applications meant for older versions of Windows. This may be how the company executes its transition plan to a fully 64-bit platform.

Windows 7 to include "XP mode" virtualization

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 5:46am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

The news that Windows 7 -- release candidate on track for April 30, thank you very much -- will have available a virtualized version of XP that will run right right alongside 7 apps is exciting stuff for those of us who have shaken our heads at Microsoft's backward-compatibility problems over the years. It means very nearly 100% compatibility with current Windows apps; it means side-by-side XP and 7 apps (dogs and cats living together!); it means that Vista was all just a bad dream. (Okay, maybe not.)

News of "Windows XP Mode" hit on Friday afternoon more or less simultaneously with Microsoft's post on The Windows Blog announcing that the RC is looking good for next Thursday. Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, who are hard at work on Wiley's Windows 7 Secrets book and were briefed on the tech back in March, describe XPM as host-based virtualization, and suggest that this might mean that going forward, client versions of Windows may include a Hyper-V-based hypervisor.

It's not exactly included in 7, though. XPM (which will consist of that virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of XP with Service Pack 3) will be downloadable for those Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate Editions users who want it. But once it's installed, it's notably well-integrated -- install an app inside the XP environment and without further ado it's published to Windows 7 as well. That's right, XP and Win7 apps running on a single desktop. (This ought to sound familiar to Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization users, but you Virtual PC users have some joy to look forward to. It may also ring a bell with users of Parallels on the Mac.)

Release of XPM is expected to be simultaneous with Windows 7's release later this year.

Windows 7 to include 'XP mode' virtualization

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 5:46am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Release of XPM is expected to be simultaneous with Windows 7's release later this year.

'Deep packet inspection' could become the target of legislation

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 12:14am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The two biggest threats to Internet users' privacy, from the point of view of Rep. Rick Boucher (D - Va.), come from behavioral advertising technology and from deep packet inspection (DPI) -- the ability for an ISP to scan the contents of IP packets, and make determinations as to their handling based on those contents. But the specter of another company using both of these technologies together, like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, spelled out a more explosive danger. Chairing hearings of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet yesterday, Rep. Boucher made that clear:

Congressman Rick Boucher (D - Va.) "What services that consumers consider essential to the safe and efficient functioning of the Internet are advanced by DPI?" asked Boucher during his opening remarks yesterday. "Since the death of NebuAd's DPI-based behavioral advertising service last year, are other companies using DPI to deliver behavioral advertising? What, if any, safeguards are in place to ensure that consumers are giving meaningful consent to the tracking of their activities on the Internet?"

The nation's broadband providers would like to be able to use DPI as a method for implementing traffic control, especially for narrowing the bandwidth allowed for applications such as BitTorrent. In instances where they're involved in programming and content services, they'd also like to at least not be barred from implementing behavioral advertising, perhaps as a way of checking which clips viewers are watching online and targeting ads to parallel those clips.

But both weapons in the arsenal of the same companies could spell disaster, which is why NCTA President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow tread very carefully during his prepared opening remarks yesterday, acknowledging the existence of both but only exclusively and individually.

"Packet inspection serves a number of pro-consumer purposes," read McSlarrow (PDF available here). "First, it can be used to detect and prevent spam and malware, and protect subscribers against invasions of their home computers. It can identify packets that contain viruses or worms that will trigger denial of service attacks; and it can proactively prevent so-called Trojan horse infections from opening a user's PC to hackers and surreptitiously transmitting identity information to the sender of the virus. Packet inspection can also be used to help prevent phishing attacks from malicious e-mails that promote fake bank sites and other sites. And it can be used to prevent hackers from using infected customers' PCs as 'proxies,' a technique used by criminals, in which user PCs are taken over and used as jumping-off points to access the Internet, while the traffic appears to be generated by the subscriber's PC. As a result, the technology can be used in spam filters and firewalls."

Never mind, for the moment, that the whole concept of proxies was relegated to the realm of the malicious user. For Georgetown professor and Electronic Privacy Information Center Executive Director Mark Rotenberg, even if ISPs use DPI responsibly and not in concert with behavioral ad targeting, that doesn't make it right. From his perspective, breaching privacy bounds in the name of traffic control simply isn't ethical.

"In the communications context, service providers and their businesses partners also have an obligation not to intercept the content of a communication except for the purpose of providing the service, to comply with a court order or other similar legal obligation," read Rotenberg's prepared testimony (PDF available here). "It is possible that the techniques being developed by these firms may help in some ways to safeguard privacy if they are robust, scalable and shown to provably prevent the identification of Internet users. But the essential problem is that they simply do not have the right to access communications traffic for this purpose. Also, I would not recommend that you alter current law or enable consent schemes to make this permissible."

Though no new bill has been drafted, Rep. Boucher said up front it's his intent to draft one this year. He told the Subcommittee Thursday, "It's my intention for the Subcommittee this year to develop legislation extending to Internet users that assurance that their online experience is more secure. We see this measure as a driver of greater levels of Internet uses such as e-commerce, not as a hindrance to them."

Apple lays off 1,600 workers but keeps stores afloat

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 11:40pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Ten percent of the full-timers in Apple's newly mushroomed total of 250 stores got handed pink slips between January and April, according to Apple's latest 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Apple dubbed the laid off salespeople "full-time equivalents," reporting a headcount of 14,000 Apple store employees. That's slashed from the 15,600 number listed in its 10-K filing just last January.

Skating on stellar increases in iPhone sales, Apple turned in its "best non-holiday quarter" in history from January through March. Now, an examination of Apple's 10-Q filing by Betanews reveals that overall sales for Apple stores shot up, too -- albeit only to the tune of 2 percent, or $58 million -- between the first six months in Apple's respective 2008 and 2009 fiscal years.

But Apple also grew its number of stores to 250 from 203 the year before, meaning that average store revenue dropped from $15.5 million to $12.8 million between those two six-month time frames.

Meanwhile, though, Apple doesn't seem interested in shuttering many -- or possibly any -- of those stores, whether old or new.

"Expansion of the Retail segment has required and will continue to require a substantial investment in fixed assets and related infrastructure, operating lease commitments, personnel, and other operating expenses," according to Apple's 10-Q document.

Apple would "incur substantial costs if it were to close multiple retail stores and such costs could adversely affect the Company's financial condition and operating results," company officials conjectured.

Twitter more of a siren in March, says comScore

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 9:13pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

It has been experiencing double-digit growth for months now, but in March Twitter Web traffic went boom in a big way, jumping 131% to 9.3 million unique visitors. It was the fastest growing Web property last month according to comScore, which released its March numbers this week.

(Remember this as we wait for next month's comScore numbers. Those will reflect April's strange celebrity infatuation with the service -- Ashton Kutcher's competition with CNN to garner a million followers, not to mention Oprah's imprimatur -- yes, other people care about Oprah even if you don't.)

But that's April's news; what happened in March? ComScore analyst Andrew Lipsman, writing on the company's blog, hypothesizes that it's ascribable to some combination of Twitter's presence in the news and news junkies' presence on Twitter. He points to substantial overlap between Twitter visitors and those visiting major news sites such as CNN.com, and says that Twitter's older demographics were a clue that such might be the case.

Still, all this activity still makes Twitter only the 114th most popular site in comScore's survey. The top five remain Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Fox Interactive; in the ton ten, Facebook moved up one spot to #9.

Of more interest are the seasonal upstarts. As you might expect during tax season, visitors have their mind on their money, and FreeCreditReport.com and Bankrate.com showed growth of 6% and 12% respectively. Concerns over the highly publicized Conficker worm gave AVG's grisoft.com site an 82% jump.

More cheerfully, travel sites are beginning to show seasonal upticks; as a category, travel-site traffic grew 18%, with car-rental and airline sites both up 11%. Baseball's back too, with MLB.com expecting a 35% upswing.

Red Hat: France is the most 'active' open source country, Moldova the least

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 8:56pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Landing ahead of the US for "activity" in Red Hat's Open Source Index this year were these countries, in the following order: France, Spain, Germany, Australia, Finland, the UK, Norway, and Estonia. Also among the 75 countries surveyed by Red Hat and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Denmark took tenth place.

At the opposite extreme of the open source spectrum, the study found these ten countries to be the least active, in descending order: Algeria, the Philippines, Morocco, Cameroon, Yemen, Latvia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Kenya, and Moldova.

Red Hat's activity index measures the amount of open source now present in a country based partly on existing open source and open standards policies, along with numbers of users and producers of open source software. The annual survey also ranks countries on environmental factors that "may further, or coexist with, open source activity," including a high number of Internet users.

But a country's index scores for activity and environment can fall quite far apart from each other indeed. In spite of its rather lowly ninth place ranking for open source activity, the US was bested this year only by Sweden for open source environment, for example.

Although the small Eastern European nation of Moldova ended dead last for activity, it ranked 34th for environment. And regardless of its status as a software development outsourcing hotbed, India took only 23rd place for activity and 53rd place for environment. Yet Ireland, another big outsourcer, rated 19th for both activity and environment.

The survey results also broke out the two main scores into separate categories for the six areas of government, industry, and community education activity; and government, industry, and community education environment.

France, the most active country overall, also earned first place for government activity. But on community education, France ranked third, and on industry activity, only 25th.

The US took second place on community education activity and 13th on industry activity, doing better than France on both those measures. But on government activity, the US -- with its ranking of 28 -- fared far worse than France and a lot of other nations.

Yet the intent behind the survey is to spur global collaboration, not competition. "Red Hat hopes the Open Source Index will serve as a resource for those within the open source community along with others who are curious about open source to start building relationships and further foster worldwide open source growth," said Red Hat VP for Corporate Affairs Tom Rabon, in a statement earlier this week.

Red Hat's annual Open Source Index uses a framework developed by researchers at Georgia Tech.

Also this week, Red Hat announced plans to hold a virtual event called the Open Source Cloud Computing Forum on July 22.

Adobe builds a social network around Photoshop

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 8:04pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, Adobe has introduced Photoshop Marketplace a site that is part e-commerce, part social network, and part knowledge base for the company's famous photo editing software.

Adobe hopes to create the definitive site for Photoshop-related resources, tools, and services. To populate the Marketplace by its scheduled launch later in the summer, Adobe encourages partners to sign up and contribute their plug-ins, extensions, educational resources, communities, or event listings to the site. Once launched, users will be able to review and recommend these submissions based upon functionalism and popularity.

Photoshop Marketplace will be launched alongside the Adobe AIR Marketplace, an identical destination built around Adobe's cross-platform runtime environment.

Irony, thy name is Nvidia

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 6:20pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The Fujitsu-Siemens Celsius H270 promises "No more compromises on graphics performance" (PDF available here) That is, unless you're running Linux.

This week, Nvidia and Fujitsu released an alert that some Linux graphics drivers for the Celsius' Nvidia Quadro FX 770M cause a corruption of the notebook's Extended display identification data (EDID). Basically, the EDID tells the graphics card important information about the computer's display, such as its size, pixel mapping data, filter type, and supported timings.

No more compromises, indeed.

"Using earlier NVIDIA Linux drivers on the Celsius H270 notebook will result in a corrupt EDID, which will persist across reboots," the warning said. "NVIDIA and Fujitsu recommend that all Linux Celsius H270 notebook users use NVIDIA Linux graphics drivers 180.51 or later, and that anyone repackaging a 180.xx NVIDIA Linux graphics driver upgrade to 180.51. This interaction problem is also resolved in the 185.19 beta release."

The debate over DVD backups begins, with RealNetworks in the courtroom

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 5:28pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Within a month of its release, RealNetworks' RealDVD was involved in two simultaneous lawsuits with the MPAA, who sought an injunction on the DVD ripping software they farcically called "StealDVD." Sale of the software was halted in October after only a few days of commercial availability.

Today, the software comes up in court before Judge Marylin H. Patel, the same district court judge who presided over the case late last year, and is most famous for her decision to shut down peer-to-peer music swapping service Napster nearly nine years ago.

The hearing will review the DVD Copy Control Association's motion for a preliminary injunction against RealNetworks' RealDVD product, which rips commercial DVDs into a proprietary pure digital format about 9 GB in size which, like Apple's iTunes accounts, can be authorized to work on as many as five devices.

It is believed, however, that this case is not about a $29.99 piece of software that does what any number of freewares do already, but about securing a valuable legal precedent that will allow Real to license the production of archiving DVD players. Real's project known as "Facet" is a Linux-based DVD player environment that copies DVDs to the player's internal hard drive, like Kaleidescape's home media products.

Apple counts 1 billion app store downloads

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 1:07am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

It's not every day that Apple throws numbers around. The company only sparingly uses them, and when it does, it's only to illustrate its most distinguished achievements. Today, the company dropped a couple: Nine months, and One billion downloads.

In the nine months that the iTunes App Store has been open, more than a billion applications have been downloaded, according to the company. That means iPhone/iTouch owners were downloading an average of 3.5 million applications per day, or roughly 33 applications per user.

It's an illustrious accomplishment indeed, and quickly follows Apple's recent earnings report, where the company said its net income had risen 15% to $1.21 billion, and that more than 37 million iPhones and iPod Touches have been sold.

Apple dedicates a section of its site today to the most popular applications by download. The top 20 money-earning apps of all time include 15 games, including Tetris, iShoot, Bejewled 2, and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. The rest of the top paid apps include Ocarina, Pocket Guitar, iBeer, and iFart Mobile. The most-downloaded free apps are mostly non-game, including Facebook Mobile, The Weather Channel, Google Earth, and Shazam.

Earlier this month, based upon T-Mobile figures, it was determined that the Android Market was averaging around 40 apps per user, but as Pinch Media explained, the app store model is designed for maximum turnover. That is, apps are designed to have maximum impact on "day one," since most apps are never used after the first day.

Nvidia's licensing situation with AMD is just as bad as with Intel

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 12:45am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

During yesterday's unveiling of its accelerated roadmap for 12- and even 16-core processors, an AMD executive said he did not believe the licensing situation between his company and Nvidia would enable Nvidia to produce chipsets that support future AMD platforms. Specifically, it appears Nvidia is not yet licensed to produce motherboard chipsets that support AMD's next-generation processors, reducing the likelihood for multi-GPU SLI support for AMD's "Istanbul" and future generations.

"For 2010 moving forward, the solutions coming out from AMD will be AMD and on AMD at this time," stated server business unit vice president Pat Patla. "We don't expect to see new chipsets from Nvidia or Broadcom for server implementations in 2010. But they will continue to support all existing platforms moving forward through 2010."

Anyone spreading the rumor that Nvidia is looking to invest in Via Technologies may be thinking Nvidia could use a friend -- any friend -- about now. Its ability to produce chipsets for Intel's Nehalem platform remains on hold, perhaps permanently now that it has countersued Intel over its rights to say it supports Nehalem in interviews to the press. Perhaps Patla's statement that Nvidia will "support existing platforms" can be interpreted as the closest thing to an olive branch it's going to get, especially from the CPU maker that now owns its principal competitor.

The plan to get AMD Opteron back in sync

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 12:25am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Two years ago, after AMD promised to deliver the best performing CPU to data centers, its Barcelona architecture found the company trying to explain to customers why they shouldn't want performance, in an explanation that looked just as embarrassing as it sounded.

For AMD's last quarter, it actually managed to heal some of the ill effects of the negative economy on its desktop and mobile CPU segments, but not yet in the data center. Server CPU revenue is still hurting, though the company now declines to provide a specific breakdown. The way back for the company, it believes, is to create a marketing position that's similar to where it was in 2006, where system builders and partners started perceiving AMD as "one-upping" Intel.

For that reason yesterday, the company unveiled something it's calling Direct Connect Architecture 2.0, an upgrade to the way its processor cores are directly linked to memory by means of the HyperTransport bus. It's this architecture which will enable a 12-core processor to enter production as soon as next year. But to make sure next year happens on time, the company is moving up the availability date for its "Istanbul" architecture -- hopefully a much happier place for AMD -- from what some had feared to be this fall, to next month.

"This Istanbul native six-core product is once again going to be the world's first native Direct Connect Architecture-based product," said AMD server business unit VP Pat Patla yesterday, at times fumbling for the right superlatives. "And just like we've done with all of our past introductions, this is a six-core product that's going to be available for the two-socketed systems, four-socketed systems, and eight-socketed systems that are available and in market today."

A tactic we've seen before with AMD, and which we're seeing again to no one's surprise, is to create one generation of processors which slips into the motherboards of its forebear with no problem. The next generation, then, will require a platform shift. In this case, Istanbul will slip into systems with Barcelona-era CPUs, and AMD can't be too eager for customers to do just that.

"With Istanbul, we'll be bringing out 30% more performance into that same [Barcelona] thermal range, as we launch this product in June," said Patla.

AMD 4/22/09 platform update slide [Courtesy AMD Corp.]

From there, the company can resume its focus on kicking out the current generation, and moving toward the next one. Currently, Opteron processors have two clustering categories as designated by their numbers: the 2300 series for two-way systems (two processors, for eight cores) and the 8300 series for four- and eight-way systems (4P and 8P). Beginning next year, AMD will unveil two new architecture series with different numbering: The 4000 series ("San Marino") will play to 2P servers, and the 6000 ("Maranello") to 4Ps, including its first eight-core line, called "Magny-Cours" but pronounced "many-core." Uh, gentlemen...did you forget something? Having been burned once before by the lack of a Barcelona part that could sustain 3.0 GHz, you can't help but be too careful about what AMD omits these days.

"The four-way market's been compressing for years because of the multi-core capabilities, because of the throughput we're bringing into that space. There's been a little compression of the high-end two-way market and the four-way market, starting to converge a little bit, for the areas of server consolidation, for the areas of virtualization," reported Patla yesterday. Though he might have benefitted from a trimming of verbiage, his point was that virtualization has been driving up utilization rates for CPU cores, to the extent where it's becoming more practical to run four-way quad-cores than not only eight-way dual-cores but even eight-way quad-cores.

When asked directly yesterday why 8Ps weren't mentioned on the Magny-Cours roadmap, Patla responded, "At this time, we think [because of] the thread count and the server density, the Magny-Cours product in the 6000 series will be aimed at the four-socket and the two-socket space moving forward."

The first 45 nm Magny-Cours products are being sampled now, AMD executives said yesterday. The 32 nm drop-in replacements for Magny-Cours and "Lisbon" on the 4000-series side will come in 2011. But beyond that, AMD says it's planning what it describes as a completely new generation of x86 architecture; and 2012 would be just about the right timeframe for allies like IBM to unveil their master scheme: a 28 nm part made with simple fine-tuning to 32 nm processes.

AMD 4/22/09 platform update slide [Courtesy AMD Corp.]

Up until that point, AMD is promising about 30% performance gains with each new generation, meaning 30% better performance for Istanbul over Barcelona, 30% more for Magny-Cours over Istanbul, and at least 30% more again, if not more, for the 16-core DCA 2.0 architecture it's calling "Interlagos" for 2011. Likewise, similar shifts will be seen in the 4000 series, with plans to implement its eight-core "Valencia" architecture in 2011.

Nevertheless, AMD is omitting any hint of its frequency numbers for all its new parts, although this time it's prudently avoiding the step it took last time of claiming frequency was unimportant and attempting to explain why. This time, Patla advised reporters attending yesterday's announcement event to "pay more attention to the performance jumps." Indeed, those jumps will be noteworthy, but while AMD talks about 30% per generation, Intel is in the midst of implementing another seismic shift with Core i7. Making this new game plan work means betting that Intel's shift in its timing reflects the stumbling of the giant. If Xeon continues its gains in the server market, neither Istanbul or Valencia or anyplace else on the map may end up any more gratifying than Barcelona.

Yahoo to close GeoCities

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:58pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

AOL took down its Journals and Hometown services, and now Yahoo's following suit with its own GeoCities, the hosting service that once upon a dot-com bubble seemed to include half the personal sites on the Web.

Yahoo isn't currently providing a lot of detail about what users can expect from the shutdown process, other than that it'll happen "later this year," probably in the summer timeframe. As that unknown date nears, says GeoCities Help Page, "We'll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time."

Long before MySpace, GeoCities was responsible for a great number of sites put up by ordinary folk, often operating with more enthusiasm than design sense. ("Eye-searing" is a word that comes to mind.) The firm was one of the big buys of 1999, as Yahoo picked up the company, which was founded in 1994 as "Beverly Hills Internet," later "Geopages," for $2.87 billion. (Which even at the time we thought was a lot to have one's eyeballs seared.)

The "Cities" part of the name came from the early conceit of choosing a city appropriate for one's pages -- "Hollywood" for a fan site, for instance. Over the years the site hosted tens of millions of pages, though traffic has dropped in recent years as users switched to even simpler (and less eye-searing) blogging sites.

geocities watermark

Rest in peace: The infamous GeoCities watermark from 1999.

As of today, GeoCities is accepting no new users. The Help page suggests that current users consider switching to the (paid) Yahoo Web Hosting service.

Judge's impartiality questioned in Pirate Bay trial

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:51pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Tomas Norström, the Stockholm District Court Judge who presided over the Pirate Bay copyright infringement trial in Sweden is now himself under scrutiny for being a member of two copyright protection organizations, the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU), and Swedish Association for Industrial Property (SFIR).

While the guilty verdict against the four keepers of the Pirate Bay has already been appealed, Pirate Bay attorney Peter Althin said he has filed for a re-trial on the grounds that the court was biased.

The groups to which Norström belongs are outspoken advocates of copyright law reform. SFU's membership includes members of the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau, and members of the IFPI, the organization which earlier this year claimed that 95% of all music downloads are unauthorized.

"Every time I take a case, I must assess whether I am personally involved. I did not feel that I am biased because of those commitments," Norström said in an interview on Sveriges Radio P3.

"It's quite clearly a delicate balance, " said Leif Silbersky, one of Sweden's most famous lawyers and legal pundits. In Swedish law, the concept "Delikatessjäv" (lit: "Delicate Shuffle") refers to the understanding that in important matters, it is practically impossible to be fully impartial, so the next best thing to be is flexible. If someone is capable of bias in one way, he must be equally capable of bias in the opposite way.

Since the judge is responsible for evaluating the bias in jurors, he must also weigh his own bias and decide whether he is capable of being swayed in either direction, or else recuse himself. During the jury selection, Norström dismissed a potential juror on the grounds that he had some degree of personal involvement with copyright organizations.

Rick Falk Vinge, head of the Swedish Pirate Party, said, "This is corruption and decay on a completely inexcusable level. The judge in the most high-profile legal case of the whole year turns out to be a member of a highly partial interest group for one party in the proceedings, and also spent time privately with the prosecuting lawyers. The whole trial must be declared a material loss and redone from scratch."

For the desktop, AMD covets the budget enthusiast with 3.2 GHz quad-core

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 9:48pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a Nissan Z car (I've owned two in my lifetime), you understand the extra feeling of confidence you get from still being able to afford your house, your clothes, and food. They're very solid performers, they look presentable in a crowd full of Porsches and BMWs, and yet their owners are conscientious folk who can also maintain a budget.

Every time I tell the fellows at AMD that I've been a Z owner, they shout back at me, "Well then, you know what we're talking about!" They're hoping that there's a certain niche of enthusiast system builders who aren't all that interested in displaying the measurements of their disposable income in public. For them, on time, AMD released its next version of sensible high-performance: the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU.

The "Black" theme is to give the buyer an image of high-class. It's also perhaps to dim the lights a bit on the whole theme of competition, which is usually what enthusiasts like to do most with their systems. Despite the fact that AMD is now comfortable with clocking its Shanghai series processors above 3.0 GHz -- the 955 is set at 3.2 GHz, and AMD encourages overclocking -- its principal competition from Intel is the sixth CPU down on its most recent price list, well within the upper-middle-class of its product range, and not nearly its best competitor.

At $245 for 1,000-unit quantities (street prices may be higher, though Newegg.com isn't charging a nickel more), the quad-core 955 is priced well below Intel's current $999 premium (in 1K units) for its Core i7 965. AMD is very happy to remind you that you're paying one-fourth the price. But in Tom's Hardware tests published today, the 965 performs generally better -- for example, about 11% better in the 3DMark overall score, and nearly 19% better in the PCMark suite score. Still, that's not four times the performance; and anyone whose Z car has been beaten in a drag-race by a Maserati, but not by a full body length, knows what it's like to stand toe-to-toe with legends and not feel ashamed.

AMD Phenom II X4 CPU set against Phenom II wafer

Today, the Phenom II X4 955 takes its place at the top of AMD's Dragon platform, which features its 7-series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. When AMD premiered the Phenom II X4 series back in January, its goal was to keep its best performing platform components under $1,000. If you're investing in a Core i7 platform, a buyer's component prices put together may end up doubling his investment in the Dragon platform. And AMD's move today knocks $40 off the price of the same 2.8 GHz model 920 CPU it introduced in January.

But today's entry adds a new wrinkle to the equation: The 955 uses AMD's new Socket AM3. This means you can purchase a 955 and drop it into a motherboard to replace the 920, or any other Socket AM2+ CPU. But despite the way things sounded back in September 2007 when AMD announced Socket AM3, you cannot drop a Socket AM2+ CPU into a Socket AM3 motherboard. AMD issued a nasty little warning about this earlier this month.

So what would you really be spending to take full advantage of Socket AM3? Checking today's prices at Newegg.com, we were able to put together a system that includes the 955 Black Edition, Asus' M4A78-E motherboard with AMD's 790GX chipset, Asus' version of the Radeon HD 4890 card with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, a pair of Corsair 4 GB DDR2 memory modules (the Dragon platform does not yet use DDR3), and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB hard drive. That gave us a subtotal of $879.95, which doesn't give us much breathing room for extras such as power supply, case, lights, cooling, and cabling if our aim is to stay under $1,000.

On the other hand, what would our price be for an Intel system that's comparable in performance to the new Black Edition -- not Intel's premium CPU, but something that performs about as well as the 955. Tom's Hardware tests reveal that the closest performer in the Intel category is the 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad Q9550, which Intel sells for $266 (Newegg's markup isn't that high at $269.99). And yes, you read right, Intel's 2.83 GHz model is matched with AMD's 3.2 GHz model.

Right now, Newegg is selling an Asus motherboard with Intel's P45 chipset, for $99 after rebate. That more than compensates for the CPU price premium, since with this motherboard we can still use DDR2 memory. I can keep the other Dragon components and still save ten bucks, paying $869.94.

At that point, the question becomes whether I want to go up against Maseratis and lose by a length, or go up against a Chevy Caprice Classic and get beaten by a nose. AMD's new platform components may have the "Black Edition" theme, but until they catch up to Intel in the architecture department, the source of that blackness may be smoke.

Microsoft net income tumbles over 30%; are layoffs ahead?

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:35pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

For the company's fiscal third quarter ended on March 31, Microsoft on Thursday is unveiling some highly unattractive numbers, including a net-income drop of 32% and an EPS decline of 30%, to 33 cents per share (in GAAP earnings; non-GAAP earnings weighed in at 39 cents/share, precisely as had been predicted). Revenues for the quarter were $13.65 billion, a decrease year-to-year of 6%; net income was up by 3%, to $4.44 billion.

As the company prepped for its 2:30pm EDT phone call, a skim of the earnings-report press release reveals that compared to the third quarter of last year, the Online Services and Entertainment and Devices divisions had a rotten few months, with operating-income losses of $575 million and $31 million respectively. Online Services has a history of bleeding out -- they lost $226 million this time last year -- but the folks who bring you the Xbox 360 and other amusements are normally profitable, showing $106 million in operating income a year ago.

The Client division's not exactly in the red, reporting $3.404 billion in revenue and $2.514 billion in income for the quarter, but that compares to $4.033 billion and $3.115 billion last year. Only the Server and Tools division shows year-to-year improvement, reporting $3.467 billion in revenue and $1.344 billion in income for the quarter. Consolidated numbers for all divisions were $13.648 billion in revenue and $4.438 billion in income.

Considering those numbers, it's easy to understand why the great question winging around Seattle today is layoffs, how many?. Rumors aren't proof anything's going to happen, of course, and the numbers one hears batted around in conversations with Redmond folk vary radically (though most seem to have four figures).

Still, in a week that opened with Sun and Oracle's new mind-meld and included Apple's best-ever non-holiday quarter, these are interesting times for The House That BillG Built. We'll have the details as the call unfolds.

Public Broadcasting joins the streaming pack

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:19pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

PBS Video Beta PBS has unveiled the beta site for online consumption of its most popular programs in the way that network counterparts ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW have already done.

Like Hulu, both clips and full-length episodes are presented in Flash, however, they are not embeddable in other sites, as they are through PBS' YouTube page. Videos include a pre-roll sponsorship slot and no in-video advertisements.

Currently, featured programming is limited to 13 PBS shows such as Nova, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, and The NewsHour, and the remaining content is linked off of a program's respective sub-site. NerdTV, for example, requires that programs be downloaded (either directly or from a Torrent site), and all PBS Kids programming is first routed through PBS Kids Go!

Seeking refuge in Asia, EBay makes moves in South Korea

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 7:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Earlier this month, eBay began to jettison its mismatched properties, such as content location service StumbleUpon, and VoIP messenger software Skype to concentrate on its original strength, the online marketplace.

In the current economy however, those marketplace properties -- which include eBay, StubHub, and Shopping.com -- are actually creating significant drag on the company's revenue. EBay's first quarter earnings report yesterday showed that while the company's overall revenue dropped about 8%, revenue from its marketplace segment dropped nearly 18%. This was attributed to the strengthened US dollar devaluing overseas transactions, which account for more than half of eBay's business.

"Yes, internationally the business is growing faster than it is here domestically", said eBay CFO Bob Swan.

Shortly after it announced its divestitures, eBay made a public tender offer of $1.2 billion to gain a controlling stake in Korean auction site Gmarket.

CEO John Donahoe said yesterday, "We are focusing our portfolio by divesting assets that are not closely aligned with our two core growth businesses...And we are strengthening our core eBay business by signing an agreement to acquire Gmarket, Korea's largest marketplace." (Our thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript.)

South Korea's antitrust watchdog group, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, issued a statement today that conditionally approved eBay's acquisition of Gmarket, provided that eBay does not raise sales commissions for at least three years, and that measures are taken to protect independent sellers.

EBay's current Korean marketplace is called Internet Auction Co. (IAC), and it will be combined with Gmarket, ensuring a foothold for growth not only in Korea, but in the broad Asia/Pacific region.

This move looks like an attempt to further entrench eBay in the fixed-price secondary market, dealing in closeouts and out-of-season goods. Donahoe said, "North Asia, Korea, and China have always been primarily fixed-price markets, so IAC has been a truthfully fixed-price market. Gmarket in essence is fixed-price."

More speed to come from the first Firefox 3.6 alpha

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 6:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

While awaiting the first public (non-nightly build) copy of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, we noticed this week the first nightly alpha build of the Mozilla browser to come afterward: the first 3.6 Alpha 1 builds. In Betanews initial performance tests of some of Mozilla's very latest code, there's a lot of room for encouragement: The latest code-name "Minefield" build posted 11.7% better performance overall than the last code-frozen nightly build of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, and 232% the overall performance of the latest Firefox 3.0.9, released just yesterday.

Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 posts the highest Acid3 test score for Mozilla. Our tests pit the latest Windows-based Web browsers in a virtual Vista system, and combine the Acid3 standards test with three trusted performance tests for CSS rendering and JavaScript speed. Nearly all the early news for the 3.6 alpha was good, including posting Mozilla's best-ever score on the Acid3 test -- a 94% -- and posting a Betanews cumulative index score for the first time above 10.0, which means this alpha performs over ten times better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not the current version, IE8, but the previous one).

This news comes as we also noted that Google's latest bug-fix update build 172.8 for its Chrome 2 series browser (Chrome 1 is the release version, Chrome 2 is the beta) slowed down over version 172.6. Still quite fast, but now at an index score of 13.07, Chrome may see something coming up in its rearview mirror, as the latest Minefield score of 10.14 pulls Mozilla's browser to within the 25% range of Google's speed. With Google's release build not yet scoring a 12, it's conceivable that the final Firefox 3.6 could pull even with Chrome 1 while Google keeps working on tuning Chrome 2.

Comparative test scores for browser performance show Firefox 3.6 gaining, Google Chrome 2 receding a bit.

It's not so good news for users of the release builds of Firefox 3, as the latest 3.0.9 actually slowed down a bit overall. While 3.0.8 had scored a 4.7, 3.0.9 only scores a 4.37.

The new time-based history deletion dialog in Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1. Once we stop tinkering with the accelerator pedals for a minute or two, we might get a chance to play with some of 3.6's new features. We did stumble across one of them right away: When clearing your history and the contents of the browser cache, you can now specify generally how much time you want to wipe clean -- the last hour, two hours, four hours, today, or everything in the cache. Now, at the moment, this comes at the expense of specifying what you want to wipe clean -- history, cache, cookies, passwords -- but perhaps the team is looking for a way to integrate those choices into the new setup.

Full Disk Encryption for notebooks launches in beta

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 4:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Security company Check Point Software has begun accepting testers for its ZoneAlarm Full Disk Encryption for Laptops beta program, a program designed to make sensitive data saved on notebooks more difficult to extract if the computer is stolen.

While Full Disk Encryption is turned on, the user must enter an additional password before Windows starts up. Once in Windows, the software encrypts unused files, including even deleted and temporary ones, and decrypts only the files currently in use.

Users of ZoneAlarm Extreme Security beta available in Fileforum will have to uninstall their prior version to be able to participate in this beta, and as usual, users are advised to only install this beta on test systems, because certain common practices (such as creating new partitions) can result in data loss.

Presto, and your PC is on

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 3:21pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Instant-on capability isn't entirely unknown on Windows machines, but those who spend too much time around Mac or Linux folk may find that its availability -- mostly laptops and tablets, mostly higher-end gear -- is too limited to countenance. To the rescue comes Xandros' Presto Instant-On -- as long as you're willing to apply yourself to a bit of setup effort. (Think of it as making time to save time.)

Xandros has been making a name for itself on various fronts, most interestingly as part of the software that made the first Eee netbooks such a kick in the pants for the PC market. They're good at interoperability across Windows and Linux, and the Presto software takes good advantage of Linux's speed and light system load while behaving -- we found -- as politely as one might hope for a Windows app.

We tried it on a fairly bad-tempered XP machine; the software-only Presto works on Vista as well. The download's a whopping 463 MB, and setup's no joke either. You'll want all your favorite usernames and passwords handy, since you're going to need to configure the stuff you use -- Skype, IM, Wi-Fi access and so on, depending on what you like to do with your machine. The download also includes a multimedia player (specifically, RealPlayer for Netbooks), a document editor, and a browser. More apps are available through the Presto Applications Store.

Once installed, you'll see a new start screen when you switch on your machine, asking you to choose between the Presto environment and the usual Windows. (If you don't choose, it'll kick over to normal Windows startup in 30 seconds.) We found that after the initial bout of configuration, Presto did indeed boot rapidly; in under 10 seconds, we had a funky toolbar loaded along the left side of the screen, and our files and applications were ready to go. Shutdown was even quicker -- a few seconds at most.

xandros presto screen

And that's it. The utility is an .exe and, as such, behaves as Windows executable files do. We found it perfectly simple to remove from our system using the usual Add/Remove Programs tool in XP (in Vista, Programs and Features). Meanwhile, the company tells us that Presto is not subject to fragmentation, so speed should remain constant over a long period of use.

It's not right for every machine -- an attempt to load it on a beloved tablet was a failure, since the screen drivers weren't available. (Your reporter suggests taking a spin through the support forums to see if your specific machine has any known difficulties running the Presto utility.) But if yours does, frankly, it's hard to imagine what you'd need to run under most circumstances that couldn't be run through Presto. (The company estimates that it can fulfill 95% of user needs.) I was able to edit Word docs, play my music and video clips, and hop onto Skype.

There's a free seven-day trial version available; the full version goes for $19.95. The lucky system will need 4 GB of free disk space.

At last, Windows Live Messenger has a Web interface

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 1:49pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Better late than, um... what took so long, again? Never mind: Microsoft's release this week of a Web interface to its Windows Live Messenger instant-messaging service is good news for users in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US. (The rest of you are going to have to wait.)

ms im screen

The interface can be reached from one's Windows Live Hotmail or People pages -- in other words, from any computer that can get online. (It worked fine from my Mac and Linux boxes, and from within Firefox.) Sign in as usual and there's a Messenger option in the upper-right corner; you can sign in or, if you need your privacy at the moment, you can ignore it.

If you choose to operate from the People page, you can use your contact list to speed things along; clicking each contact's icon gives a picklist, and on that picklist is a send-IM option that shows that person's status. From Hotmail, you can see the IM status for anyone who's sent you mail, as long as you've already become one of their Messenger contacts.

Our light testing on Tuesday revealed that it's functional if not yet as slick as that offered by, for instance, AIM or even Gchat. It's not yet a multimedia tool; there's no video and no photo sharing. We'd like to have seen the ability to sort our contacts by availability, too. And we noticed some quirky behavior with displaying which of our pals was and wasn't online. (It's possible that the display inconsistency had more to do with our friends' antics, though.)

Being a Microsoft offering, it's a good bet that the functionality will indeed be smoothed over time. In any case, it's a tiny welcome nod to increased openness coming from Redmond; if Messenger is your IM of choice, this ought to simplify quick-and-dirty messaging in a pinch.

Yahoo earnings down, but this time there's a $@)#! plan

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 12:55am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

No surprises in the Yahoo earnings call on Tuesday, but not much joy either: EPS for the search giant for Q1 weighed in at a feather-light 8 cents, down 29 cents (or 78%, if you prefer) year-over-year. Net income was $118 million on revenue of $1.58 billion.

Also: CEO Carol Bartz dropped the f-bomb near the end of the call. It may not be the most upbeat hour of the earnings-report season these days, but under Bartz's charge Yahoo's calls are, heaven knows, never dull.

The take-no-prisoners CEO -- she kicked cancer's butt, she can do as much for you, pal -- described her first 99 days at the company as "amazing and busy," stating that she has framed three goals to make Yahoo big and strong again: globalizing the platform, investing in the ads business, and rolling out better products for the users. That does not include random investments in non-core businesses, and Yahoo will continue to slim down its portfolio, as they say.

The company also said during the call that it plans an additional 5% staff reduction, which works out to around 700 employees. Most of those staffers will get their notice within the next two weeks.

The quarter ahead doesn't look much better. Blame the seasonal downturns or the economy or what you will, but the company says it expects to bring in between $1.425 billion and $1.625 billion. Income from operations is expected to come in between $80 million and $90 million.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz About about that Anglo-Saxon language excursion there near the end: The subject was engineering, or more specifically how the people who actually do something useful at Yahoo are currently crushed under the weight of multiple layers of product managers -- one manager for every three engineers, she estimates. Bartz agrees that it's excessive: "We have a lot of people running around here telling engineers what to do, but no one is f*****g doing anything."

Well put and well observed, most Yahoo-watchers would say -- and if the changes she's shepherding through are going to fix those problems and by extension the bottom line, it's hard to imagine shareholders or anyone else begrudging her some frank language.

VMware launches 'cloud OS' for SMBs, hosters and enterprises

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 12:20am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

At a large-scale rollout today, VMware and blue-chip partners filled in the details on a cloud-oriented "virtualization operating system" that's been hinted more and more about since its initial preview at an EMC customer conference last fall.

Essentially, vSphere 4 "slides in a new layer of software" for bringing together "islands" of server software running in different operating environments, said VMWare CEO Paul Maritz, speaking at an event that also featured live appearances by top brass from allies Intel, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.

"It's de rigeur these days when giving a presentation to talk about 'the cloud," Maritz admitted. "I'm going to be no exception," he added, asserting that, to him, "cloud" is simply "shorthand" for "cutting the complexity" out of computing.

Reiterating a long-term strategy of virtual "private clouds" articulated in Cannes, France during February, Maritz said today that vSphere 4 will be followed by a "steady tempo" of related announcements over the next 18 months. Under the long-term scenario, customers will be able to create clouds that keep the security, manageability, and high availability of the internal computing environment while also accessing applications and services from one or more external clouds.

Specifically, the product announced today allows up to eight Intel Xeon 5500 processors to function as a single virtual machine (VM), for operating database and other mission critical applications, said VMware CTO Jeff Nick.

But beyond Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus versions, VMware will also offer an edition for SMBs known as "Essentials Plus," to be "affordably priced" at $166 per processor.

With Essentials Plus, smaller businesses will be able to build virtualized "mini data centers" on just a few servers, said Nick. The CD for the "virtual OS" went gold today, and shipment is slated for later this quarter.

In addition to greater scalability than VMware's earlier virtualization software, vSphere brings a new user interface and capabilities across areas that include efficiency, control and choice, said Nick, who also talked about the benefits of virtualization for cutting costs through server virtualization.

On a Sun Fire 15K server, Nick demo'd new features such as vCenter Host Profiles, for quickly rolling out configuration changes to multiple servers, and vStorage Thin Provisioning.

In a reference to Oracle's surprise buyout of Sun on Monday, a VMware staffer playfully replaced an "IBM" sign attached to the Fire server with an "Oracle" placard. "I like the 'Oracle Fire.' That's good," Nick quipped.

Maritz contended that while IBM has sometimes taken credit for "inventing virtualization," VMware was the first to recognize -- soon after its founding in 1998 -- the potential for virtualization across multiple servers.

But IBM -- a company that was in talks to buy Sun before Oracle entered the picture -- was among a long list of VMWare hardware, software, and hosting partners making video testimonials for vSphere 4 at the event.

"BlackBerry users tend to think of BlackBerry as a mission critical application," remarked Peter Walker, senior director of software product management at RIM, in one of the testimonials.

Maritz also mentioned that VMware continues to work on a client-side initiative called VMware View, for installing "software to people" independently of whether they're using a "thin client" or "a thick client like a laptop."

Speaking live, Dell Inc. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said that his company plans to expand support beyond the four Dell products now supporting VMware View.

Taking note of individual efforts of various VMware partners, Joe Tucci -- VMware's chairman of the board, and CEO of EMC -- maintained that Dell is in "excellent position" to take advantage of VMware's client-side virtualization.

In announcing its own x86-based cloud storage system earlier this month, EMC -- which holds a majority interest in VMware -- said that the will be available for VMware first, and on Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform later.

AMD: Six-core Istanbul server CPUs moved up to May

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 11:31pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

During the early part of this afternoon's conference call with analysts this afternoon, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer told analysts -- one day ahead of a momentous product call scheduled for tomorrow afternoon -- that strong reception and testing for its Istanbul-architecture server CPUs will enable the company to start orders for its first six-core products next month. This will enable shipments of six-core systems from suppliers as soon as June, said Meyer.

This despite a continuing, if somewhat diminished, loss for the first quarter of the year of $416 million, on revenue that was 21% lower annually. The server side of the business, Meyer admitted twice, was something of a downer for the quarter, while sales of CPUs and graphics chips in the desktop and mobile segments rose to compensate. The company continues to be cautious about its outlook, and disputes Intel's claim earlier in the week that the fallout in the technology industry had hit bottom.

Update banner (stretched) 7:00 pm EDT April 21, 2009 - Tomorrow afternoon, AMD will announce significant accelerations in its technology roadmap, one portion of which will be an early introduction of the company's 45 nm six-core server processor, code-named Istanbul. This news came late this afternoon from CEO Dirk Meyer, during his quarterly conference call.

"I am pleased to announce that, because of our strong engineering execution, we are pulling in revenue shipments of Istanbul into May, for system availability in June," Meyer told analysts. When Istanbul was originally announced in March 2008, it had been scheduled for sometime within the second half of this year. That move comes on the heels of Intel's announcement last week that it was moving up the shipment dates of its 32 nm Westmere processors, but also extending its window of availability out further, changing Intel's notorious "tick-tock" timing. AMD lost some ground in the server CPU department last quarter, though its executives deny it lost market share to Intel -- they contend it's a bad market for enterprises all around.

"Server was definitely a weak spot," noted AMD CFO Bob Rivet this afternoon. "Spending has been clamped down pretty hard, so server was actually a decline quarter-on-quarter. Strongest growth was in notebooks, then desktops were reasonable but still grew positively quarter-on-quarter."

Revenue from CPU sales overall was still down annually by 21%, but up 7% over the disastrous fourth quarter of last year, to $938 million. Graphics processor sales declined 15% annually to $222 million, in the only market segment where average selling prices (ASPs) actually rose a bit. But with costs out of the way, even with lower prices, gross margins bounced back a full twenty points to 43%, besting AMD's target of 40%. That made this last quarter's loss not nearly as dreadful as the holiday economic storm. (AMD's numbers incorporate the initial operating figures for Global Foundries, its spinoff that now produces chips for AMD.)

"A bunch of moving parts," as Meyer characterized it. While server ASPs were up sequentially, he stated, "On the desktop side, ASPs were flat to actually up a little bit; on the notebook side, ASPs were down, mostly driven by a mix shift in the marketplace towards lower-end machines. In addition, we walked into the quarter with a pretty big inventory position, so we clearly found opportunities to move inventory, which was also part of what drove the quarter-to-quarter ASP decrease. Finally, [when we] stand back and look at it, our server business was down a little bit quarter-on-quarter, while both the desktop and the notebook businesses were up quarter-on-quarter, which affects the overall ASP and moves it down."

So is it over, as Intel indicated it was? Meyer wasn't ready to go that far, telling one analyst, "I would say that the inventory correction is largely behind us, and what we're left with is just uncertainty about end user demand, with seasonal patterns and the overarching economic question playing off against each other.

"What I would characterize the rest of the year as, [is] one of a technology leapfrog," Meyer told another analyst. "Intel came off their [analyst call] and announced the availability of Nehalem. Of course, that's going to take quarters to ramp across the marketplace. Meanwhile...Shanghai, the quad-core Opteron part, plays extremely well and offers great value, particularly against highly scalable systems and high-density cloud computing installations." While Intel's tack last week was to project a fuzzy picture of the future as though it were clearer and upbeat, AMD's strategy today was not to project much of a picture at all, but to stay upbeat nonetheless.

"We are executing well on every major element of our strategy," stated CFO Rivet, "from launching Global Foundries to reducing our cost structure to delivering a growing portfolio of platforms tuned to today's increasingly value-conscious end user mindset...We entered 2009 a very different company than the one you were following as recently as a year ago. AMD, the product company [as opposed to Global Foundries] is a much nimbler operation, right-sized to respond to today's economic uncertainty, as well as the dynamic demands of our world-class global customer base."

1080i Amazon on Demand comes to TiVo

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 10:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

TiVo was definitely an early adopter with Amazon's movie download service, equipping its Series2 and Series3 set-top boxes with Amazon Unbox more than two years ago. As streaming video-on-demand has gained popularity, TiVo's roster of services has grown substantially.

Today, TiVo's version of the Amazon Video on Demand service gains more than 500 high-definition titles from major studios, including new-release films "Frost/Nixon," and "Twilight," and popular TV shows like "Gossip Girl," and "Californication."

Single HD television episodes are available for purchase at $2.99, and HD movie rentals cost between $3.99 and $4.99, and are available in 1080i, with a majority also offering Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

MySQL 5.4 gets bigger anyway, encroaching on new parent Oracle's turf

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 10:17pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

When Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced his acquisition of Sun Microsystems yesterday morning, he didn't mention MySQL at all -- his company's principal competitor in the small systems database space. Maybe that was just for spite: It's no secret that Ellison wanted MySQL; he said so explicitly three years ago. It was one of the key missing elements in the top-to-bottom stack he's been looking for, a way to create a line-up of pre-configured systems with everything customers need right out of the proverbial "box."

But MySQL's place in Ellison's stack doesn't extend to the enterprise, where the Oracle DB still rules -- at least in his mind. Eleven million installed MySQL customers plus a resurgent Microsoft SQL Server aside, Oracle DB is, from Oracle's perspective, an unstoppable juggernaut.

While participants in this week's MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Clara were debating the meaning of changing the flags over the front entrance once again (it was acquired by Sun only last year), the community for the world's principal open source database maintained the course it had set last week. Today, the group heralded the official release of MySQL 5.4, whose principal improvement is bigger and better support for the InnoDB transactional storage engine. That engine will help MySQL enter more enterprises by removing version 5.1's limitation of four cores per instance, moving all the way to 16-processor ("16-way") support for x86 servers with multiple cores per processor, and 64-way support for Sun's SPARC-based CMT servers.

If you remember the days when "Toyota Truck" was an oxymoron in the heavy load division, you know how it feels when barriers are shattered. This puts MySQL into the heavy load category, which isn't exactly inside the boundaries of Larry Ellison's nice little stack.

But Ellison is rarely without an ace up his sleeve, or at least an ace somewhere handy; and in this case, he made sure he had one back in October 2005. That's when Oracle purchased Innobase OY, the makers of the InnoDB database engine. See, MySQL is officially a database management system, which means it's quite capable of managing data stored by other open source engines. While MyISAM is the one designed for MySQL and intended to work with it by default, Innobase developed InnoDB not just for MySQL, but as an open source engine for transactional data. It's through the expansion of MySQL's support for InnoDB that version 5.4's embrace of 16-way servers has come about. Understanding how this particular innovation got started requires us to review a little bit about the ISAM methodology -- specifically, why it's been such a lucky charm for MySQL, up until the point where it needs to expand into the enterprise. For more on that, I'll cite...well, myself, from a textbook I wrote in 1998:

ISAM [Indexed Sequential Access Method] is not another trademark, nor does it represent some proprietary technology invented just for the sake of the cute acronym. Instead, it refers to a technique for locating an entry in a database table. In short, an ISAM driver or server uses a separate table called the index to look up a key number for a record. A key number is a unique entry used to identify that record, such as a serial number or purchase order number. Having found that, the index then points the server in the direction of the true record in the database, thus saving some search time.

ISAM relies on a couple of conditions being met before it can work properly:

No two records in a table may be identical to one another. If you think about it, no properly conceived database table would have any need for identical records. Even if your table were a catalog of baseball cards and a given collection contained two identical cards, both cards should be given unique identifiers, making their respective records unique.

At least one column of the database table must contain fields whose contents are unique for each record. Generally, a serial number qualifies as such a column. This column serves to contain the key field that uniquely identifies each record.

For ISAM, at least one separate table is generated for each field column. This table is the index for the database table. It contains two and only two columns: a duplicate of the key field column, and a separate column recording the location of the record in the table whose key field matches the duplicate in the index. The theory here is that because the index table is smaller, it's quicker to search through it than through the main table. But generally, ISAM drivers "cheat" and sort the index column, then employ a binary search instead of a sequential search...which is far faster. So why isn't it called "IBAM" rather than ISAM? Sometimes it's just too difficult to ditch a cute acronym.

Next: MySQL's road around ISAM leads to Oracle, but not the way it planned...

Fast-forward eleven years: MyISAM isn't really all that sequential either, which is why it's so fast. But because it's still algorithmic search grafted onto the sequential model, it's not very well adapted to distributed processing. That's okay if you're dealing with a Web-based server where text searches, for example, are executed from one location -- MyISAM is very well suited for that. But for accounting purposes especially, a database architect needs a way for multiple tables to appear to be updated simultaneously, as well as for those updates to be rolled back simultaneously in case of an error.

A common example for a transactional database involves a system where there are multiple bank accounts. If money is transferred from one account to another, from a sequential standpoint -- the "S" in ISAM -- that's two queries: one withdrawal and one credit. But should the power go out on the server in-between those two queries, the withdrawal might disappear. (That's the secret reason why early database writers performed the credit first.) With a transactional database engine, although both queries are written as though they were sequential, the update appears to take place in parallel. In case of an error, the update doesn't appear to have taken place at all, which is better than the alternative.

InnoDB is a transactional engine; MySQL developers can create tables "in" InnoDB instead of "in" MyISAM. When they do, the texture of their programs changes somewhat to take advantage of the transactional model. And in some cases, searches actually slow down because InnoDB has a larger overhead. But the payoff comes in the form of fuller functionality and greater reliability -- and Larry Ellison knew three years ago that such a payoff would be necessary for MySQL's evolution. He said so explicitly, and that's why he purchased Innobase OY.

Now the MySQL community marches forward, with what was a plan to take on Oracle head-on by supporting a tool...owned by Oracle. Now it's a plan to make a bigger place for itself than just a slot in the Ellison stack.

The early numbers for MySQL are dramatic, with easily measurable performance improvements of about 56% in workload tests, and as much as triple the performance in distributed connectivity tests, thanks to that 16-way support. In a December 2008 test of a MySQL 5.4 beta by Sun's Robin Schumacher, the new engine's capacity for subquery optimization -- a smarter way to break down queries nested within queries -- led to speed improvements in subquery benchmarks of as much as 40,000%. That's not a typo; that comma is in the right place.

As MySQL senior software architect Mikael Ronstrom reports on his blog today, "We have consistently seen improvements in the order of 30-40% of sysbench top numbers and on large number of threads 5.4.0 drops much less in performance than 5.1. The new InnoDB Thread Concurrency patch makes the results on high number of threads even more impressive where the results have gone up by another 5-15% at the expense of 1% less on the top results (there are even some DBT2 runs that gave 200% improvement with the new algorithm)."

Version 5.4 would have been released today had Larry Ellison never entered the picture; in which case, our headline might have read, "MySQL gets bigger: Now what will Oracle do?" If making MySQL bigger makes it better, Ellison's 2005 move may be his insurance policy.

'Covered Campus' looks to be the first logical use of WiMAX

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 8:34pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, Taiwan's Tatung University became the first university campus to be covered entirely by Mobile WiMAX (802.16e). The wireless broadband network launched today, and is accessible by more than 4,000 students and professors.

Considering analysts' suggestions that WiMAX is best used for fixed networks, and the opinion of industry leaders that it is not a viable mobile wireless standard, Tatung's experimental network could be the first wise and thoughtful deployment of the misunderstood mobile standard.

The network, like the one Clearwire is building in Silicon Valley, is intended to serve as a platform for research and development and stimulate creative minds into developing products that utilize its functionality.

Alcatel-Lucent provided the wireless infrastructure, and in today's press conference, such companies as Accton Wireless Broadband, ASUSTeK, China Television, dmedia, D-Link, Gemtek, Intel Taiwan, Polycom Asia Pacific PTE, MOXA Technologies, Quanta Microsystems, and ZyXEL Communications announced their participation in the project.

X86 chipmaker Via Technologies announced it would be contributing its OpenBook WiMAX netbooks to the project, the chassis reference design was open-sourced by Via last year, and includes space for WiMAX, HSDPA, EV-DO, W-CDMA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and AGPS radios.

Today's network launch displayed some of the banner functions of mobile WiMAX, such as its ability to deliver consistent indoor signals, mobile and handover coverage, as well as beamforming. Like the ill-fated Municipal Wi-Fi networks attempted by Earthlink which were scrapped last year, the first WiMAX deployments in the United States attempt to cover a large metropolitan area.

The Tatung University network, however, follows the model that proved to be more successful in deploying community-level Wi-Fi, and that is the smaller area with denser network coverage.

Firefox 3.0.9 is publicly available, announcement to come

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 6:26pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

After a weekend of stability testing, version 3.0.9 -- the latest security update to the Firefox 3.0 browser series -- can now be downloaded. As usual, Mozilla isn't making the new version's release public for at least another day, so if you select Check for Updates from the Help menu, you won't see the new version just yet, though you can download it from Fileforum and install it manually without problems.

When the company releases its list of addressed security issues -- perhaps as soon as tomorrow -- expect a larger than normal list. Among the general bugs the organization is addressing is one we've experienced ourselves, especially since many of us use Firefox for communicating with our Betanews CMS: Submitting data content in large forms can sometimes be a real bear, and we've noticed this since version 3.0.7. This issue, among others, has apparently been addressed and fixed.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.9 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.9 for Linux from Fileforum now.

Video: Is this the state of the Android netbook?

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 6:18pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

German site Netbooknews.de posted a video today displaying a quick demo of the I-Buddie ultra-portable running Android. Though a number of manufacturers have openly discussed the idea of an Android netbook, and testers proved it could be loaded onto a standard Eee PC, none have yet displayed even a working prototype of a purpose-built Android netbook, until now.

There has been a recent spate of rumors about Android netbooks, speculating on a product from anyone from Acer to Nokia, but again, no commitments. The video from Netbooknews.de may show why.

While it does show a mostly working Android environment on what claims to be an Atom N270-based 10.2" netbook, the errors are frequent and functionality is low. In under a minute, there are three force-close messages, and there's really no show of any applications running -- arguably the most important facet of platform adoption.

So there's now video proof that Android netbooks are possible, but there's still no proof that it's viable.

Pirate Bay verdict appealed, party mobilized

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 5:43pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The District Court of Stockholm's judgment against the Pirate Bay has been appealed, say reports. The keepers of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracking site were each sentenced to a year in prison and a combined 30 million kronor for violating copyright law and enabling others to do the same.

Legal representatives for the Pirate Bay's Carl Lundström are contesting the validity of the District Court's ruling. Their argument is based upon the notion that Lundström was charged as an accessory to copyright infringement without proof that he was aware of crimes being committed.

Representatives for the other three Pirate Bay defendants are expected to file similar appeals in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the PirateBay.org Torrent tracker remains in place, but has been turned into a tool for political mobilization, calling for emergency action against amendment 138 of the European Telecoms Package.

As a result of the media frenzy surrounding the Pirate Bay's trial, the Swedish Pirate Party gained 19,636 new members, according to leader Rick Falkvinge. The challenge now, Falkvinge says, is not to win in the polls, but to get people active in the field of telecommunications reform.

"The establishment dictates who is good and evil," the party head said in his blog, "but none are made to be as evil as those who challenge that very establishment's power."

Interview: Former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz on paying for online news

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 5:38pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Interview

For newspapers that have seen their advertising revenue -- especially in classifieds -- cut in half or worse by the rapid acceleration of Internet news as an alternative, publishers are faced with a situation where they must transform themselves in order to survive. Just over the last few days, we've learned that Gannett, publisher of USA Today and The New York Times Co. are posting losses for the last quarter at an annual rate of as much as one-fifth, on account of declining ad revenue. Some may not be able to sustain similar losses through the rest of the year, and the Times Co. is threatening the shutdown of the Boston Globe.

Maybe newspaper publishers can save some form of their print media products, and maybe they can't; but in any event, they will need to find some way to make their online operations workable, because print alone will no longer sustain the newspaper business.

There are some who feel the newspaper business isn't necessarily entitled to be sustained. On the opposite side of that issue are congressmen who are proposing legislation to grant newspapers non-profit status, lowering their tax rates as a way of keeping them alive. But newspapers have been threatened before, first by the onset of network radio news in the late 1930s and into World War II, and second by the rise to power of network TV in the 1960s. They adapted and thrived, and one veteran publisher believes it's time for a repeat performance. He is L. Gordon Crovitz, formerly Publisher of The Wall Street Journal and currently partner in JournalismOnline.com, a venture founded with publisher Steven Brill and investor Leo Hindery whose objective is to save print publishers by giving them a single portal for cultivating alternate revenue streams.

Crovitz spoke at length with Betanews last Friday.

Scott Fulton, Betanews: I'll start with what I think would be the most important question that any business entrepreneur would probably be asked by [your partner] Leo Hindery if they were to have a meeting together: How much do you believe, in this economy, an Internet news reader would be willing to pay for a legitimate online news service?

JournalismOnline.com co-partner and former Wall Street Journal editor L. Gordon Crovitz. [courtesy JournalismOnline.com] L. Gordon Crovitz, partner, JournalismOnline.com: A lot has changed since the commercial beginning of the Internet. Consumers now are very happy to pay for digital downloads of music, they pay for ringtones, when they're playing video games. They're happy to pay for virtual shields and virtual swords. So consumers, unlike the beginning of the early years of the Web, are quite willing to purchase digital access, digital content, digital entertainment. I remember in the first years of The Wall Street Journal Online, one of the barriers we had was, people did not want to conduct commerce on the Internet. And PayPal and services like that have created trusted digital transactions, and has also created a transaction business online -- much easier than it was ten years ago.

Now, the situation for news publishers is pretty simple: Many news publishers, until very recently, thought that online advertising would continue to grow at 20 to 30% per year, and it's very clear that even though online advertising is a powerful driver of revenue, that in a cyclical downturn of the kind we're in now, advertising will not be as strong. And as a consequence, all the news publishers we've spoken to have said that they are looking at all of their revenue opportunity, including the prospects of charging some amount for access to content or other services.

Scott Fulton: Isn't part of the problem there, with regard to revenue from advertising, the fact that unlike any other news medium up to now, this particular online model is dependent upon advertising that comes from a couple of shared platforms that all these news publishers collectively rely upon -- Platform-A, Google AdSense -- so that revenue tends to flatten out the more popular [a publisher] gets?

Gordon Crovitz: Most news publishers derive the bulk of their online revenue from display advertising online, as opposed to some other category. And display advertising has been growing at the slowest rate, or even contracting. So that's become a much less reliable source of revenue, and [in cases] where it's the only source of revenue online, many publishers are finding it challenging to support a news staff.

Scott Fulton: You mentioned earlier that there are other online businesses which have successfully tested the waters, which suggests that there is some disposable income out there. I think your point is, that if there are some customers that are willing to spend money on the use of virtual shields and swords, maybe they'd be willing to spend some money on hard evidence and hard facts. But I remember that prior to the launch of iTunes, there was a lot of research and concern about, what is the proper level to be charging for a song? And that 99¢ figure wasn't pulled out of the air, that was determined through serious research as to the nature of the relevant market. So I'm wondering whether a similar amount of research is being put into your endeavor? In other words, do we know how much other expendable income there is out there, to be spent and that should be spent and that isn't being spent, on online news products?

Gordon Crovitz: Well, a couple of things: One, consumers do spend a lot of money to access news. They spend that money through print subscriptions, through cable [TV] subscriptions, and others. So people do pay to access news when asked. But the broader answer is, I think, the right model, the right price for one publisher won't be the right publisher won't be the right answer for another one. And part of our model is to allow publishers to set their own terms, their own price, their own products, because it will defer from one to another. What we'll be able to do is collect research and data on what access content services are successful and are popular among consumers, and be able to share that research with the affiliates that belong to our program.

So you're right, in the case of news, I don't think it's going to be one-price-fits-all by any means. And the opportunities we're offering news publishers is to work with them, to help them determine the best model for their brands and content.

Next: How does a publisher build an audience while charging that audience?

How does a publisher build an audience while charging that audience?

Scott Fulton, Betanews: I know your partner, Steven Brill, last November presented a memo to The New York Times, in support of going to an online subscription model...Mr. Brill's comment to the Times was essentially, "You've already done Step 1, you've built an audience. Now it's time to do Step 2, to monetize that audience." That seemed to suggest to me that the business model for online news, as presented at least to the Times, is first to build an audience, and then to charge it. Well, isn't that a little counter-productive? That seems to say to me that the only way to build an audience is to give away your product? I would think that you'd want to start selling...

Gordon Crovitz, JournalismOnline.com: [I think the model Steven suggested] was quite constructive. The launch of the online Journal was presented as free, but there would be a subscription paid. Large audiences gathered, and over time, subscribers were much larger than the number of people who had accessed it for free.

Scott Fulton: I want to cite a paragraph you wrote for a column in the Journal last February: "For years, publishers and editors have asked the wrong question: Will people pay to access my newspaper content on the Web? The right question is: What kind of journalism can my staff produce that is different and valuable enough that people will pay for it online?"

When you were working more directly with Dow Jones, you were the founder of Factiva, [a subscription-only custom business news service]. And that would be an answer to that second question, but it's also an obvious customer-driven, very customer-centric service that produces superior news quality on request for individual customers. Does a news producer, in order to meet the criteria suggested by your second question, the "Right Question," have to be capable of being a Dow Jones, of being a Factiva -- that your staff must produce distinct quality?

Gordon Crovitz: No, no, no. I think every news brand has got its own brand attributes, and there are certain things that its reader expects of it. It might be local news, it might be sports news, it might be some other kind of news. So I think that most, maybe all news publishers, for some fraction of the audience -- I'm not saying for everyone, but for some fraction of their audience -- they will have the ability to craft services that some percentage of their unique visitors will access.

I find that a lot of news publishers don't track this, but what we expect will be the case is that news publishers will continue to provide a lot of content services without a fee. The opportunity is for some percentage of the unique visitors from us to generate subscription revenue. So the online Journal may be indicative, anyway -- there are 20 million monthly unique visitors to the online Journal, 1.1 million are paying subscribers. So about five percent of the total. So if people think of the online Journal as everything behind a paid wall, that's not accurate. It's very much a hybrid model, and I would expect that those publishers would pursue that kind of hybrid model.

[ME's NOTE: In our story last week on the founding of JournalismOnline.com, I inadvertently transposed a few words and never caught myself in the copy edit. So for a while, I stated that Mr. Crovitz had announced his intentions to make The Wall Street Journal online free, when the word I meant to include was Murdoch, as in Crovitz' new boss at the time, Rupert Murdoch. My guest copy editor who finally located my error was one L. Gordon Crovitz, whom I thank very sincerely and to whom I also apologize for the transposition.]

IBM feels good, if not 'Sun-ny,' about the months ahead

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 2:01am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Here's something unusual: A company that actually wants to talk turkey about its financial outlook for the next year or so. That would be IBM, which brought forth on Monday a slightly softer than expected revenue report for Q1, but which is confident of returns of "at least $9.20" for the 2009 fiscal year and between $10 and $11 EPS -- at least -- for 2010.

Earnings per share for Q1 2009 work out to $1.70.

Yeah, great. Your reporter's with the Barclay's analyst who couldn't believe it took four whole questions into the Q&A to ask what the heck happened with IBM failing to acquire Sun and What It All Means. CFO Mark Loughridge took that inevitable query with a shrug: "Oracle and Sun have been partnering for two decades, and what's the result? The result is that we've picked up 14 points of [market] share since 2000. We now have 32 points... What's really changed? I think nothing. They have the same address, they have the same mailbox, but we're talking about the same team we've been competing against for some time." Meow, sir.

Q1 earnings weighed in at $2.3 billion, down one percent year-to-year. That's not terribly disconcerting in this climate; the revenue drop -- down 11% to $21.71 billion, or 4% if you account for that pesky strong US dollar -- is wince-inducing. Failing to meet Street expectations in most categories isn't something to write home about, but there was plenty of good-looking stuff in the report for those thinking past immediate circumstances.

Flash
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player nowif (typeof(embedWikichart) != "undefined") {embedWikichart("http://charts.wikinvest.com/WikiChartMini.swf","wikichartContainer_4542C3B3-E061-1E18-2B82-C689E350BECD","570","365",{"endDate":"20-04-2009","ticker":"IBM","startDate":"20-10-2008","showAnnotations":"true","liveQuote":"true"});}View the full IBM chart at Wikinvest

Gross margins were in a full percentage point above expectations at 43.4%. The $10-$11 forecast beats analyst estimates for FY2010 of $9.78, but Loughridge says the company's outpacing even its own higher guidance. Debt's down nearly $3 billion, to $31 billion. And, as some analysts have already noted, these days when a revenue drop is smaller than expected, it's considered a pretty good sign. The patient isn't fully recuperated yet, but sitting up and sipping broth beats the heck out of coma.

Loughridge ended the call briskly: "We hope to see you at our May investor meeting, but for now, as always, it's back to work." And so it was for the after-hours traders, who sent IBM down 1.87% in after-hours trading to $98.55, from its close at $100.43.

Google debuts even more unbelievably helpful labs

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 11:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Google Labs today officially announced the "Similar Images" and "Google News Timeline" tools, which have been deepening the well of useful search apps from the number one search provider since late last week.

Similar Images does exactly as its name suggests. When in Google Image search, queries for common or ambiguous terms frequently yield a lot of undesired results. A search for "colt," for example, could return images of a gun, a horse, a car, or an American football player: quite disparate results. By clicking the "Similar Images" tag under an appropriate picture, the search is narrowed to only the pictures that look similar to the chosen result.

Sometimes the results are humorously off the mark, though, especially when the chosen image is black-and-white. Google determines similarity based largely upon the color and "temperature" of a photo, so when it's a greyscale image, almost anything is fair game. For example, a search for "Martin Scorsese" yields a black and white portrait within the first dozen images. If I wanted to find another portrait of the director in a similar fashion, I'd be out of luck, because clicking on Similar Images returns almost exclusively pictures of George Harrison of the Beatles. Photos of Harrison are tied with those of Scorsese because of a documentary film the director was working on about the Beatle several years ago.

Google News Timeline is a Google News lab that takes a search topic and arranges resulting news stories on a scrollable graphical timeline. The timeline provides a good degree of granularity, and can list results by the day, week, month, year, or even decade. The timeline can be scrolled far back into modern history, with news article coverage beginning in the 19th century. The timeline can even be rolled well into history, showing Wikipedia entries chronologically where news stories are not available.

This kind of depth, too, offers some humorous results. A search for "OJ Simpson" by the decade shows all of the coverage of the infamous former football player and actor from about 1968 to the present. Scrolling the timeline back, however, shows search results with both "OJ" and "Simpson" all the way back to the early 1800s. Because many historical documents are scanned and cataloged via text recognition software, the longhand lowercase "F" is recognized as a capital "J", so "oJ" is a commonly occurring word in old scanned documents in place of "of". So a search for "OJ Simpson" reveals a several hundred year long historical timeline, including "Simpson's History of the Gypsies" from 1866, and classified ads from Flinders-era Australian newspapers.

Sure they're both somewhat imprecise, but they're labs, Google's real beta testing ground.

Sun goes down: Larry Ellison disrupts the software landscape again

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 11:37pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Analysis

There were two business models for the software industry, and now once again, there are two respective champions of those models: In one corner is the undisputed master of the "embrace and extend" principle, perceived worldwide as looking after itself and its own interests, while recently opening up its communications protocols to free licenses, supporting developers with free tools, and giving away the software needed for users to build its platform. In the other corner is a seasoned dealmaker, stalking after prey sometimes for years before trapping it into a deal it can't refuse, preaching the principle of openness while clearly and even transparently acquiring the components for a comprehensive platform where all roads lead through the company and into the company, not even hiding the fact that it rarely creates its own technology.

Pop quiz: Which one's Microsoft and which one's Oracle?

There is nothing the least bit secret or fuzzy about Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's business strategy. He is plain, simple, even brutal, but in recent years very effective. In a 2006 interview with the Financial Times Richard Waters, Ellison was asked point-blank whether he believed the open source business model would be disruptive to Oracle's plans.

Point-blank question, point-blank answer: "No. If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it...Once Apache got better than our own Web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it -- a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all --you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane."

Waters' interview was ostensibly about whether Oracle would acquire Linux maker Red Hat -- something which Ellison most obviously considered for a time. Though Oracle ended up spitting out Red Hat after a taste, Ellison stated at the time -- once again, without hesitation -- that he was looking for something called a stack, a complete system that he could sell to customers ready-to-go, top-to-bottom. Red Hat may have been one way to acquire such a stack. But what would he do with Red Hat after he got it, Waters asked? The answer at the time was to fill the stack with the last component he'd require for a straight flush:

"If I were running Red Hat, the first thing I'd do is bring in MySQL," Ellison told Waters, straight up. Then he pre-empted Waters' next question: "This is a two-edged sword: You further alienate IBM, you further alienate Oracle by doing all of this, but then you get your stack."

Another reason why he'd go after MySQL? Simple: To keep IBM from doing the same thing.

Like Babe Ruth pointing at the spot on the outfield wall where the ball would be streaking over, Ellison called his play before he made it. And while analysts today struggle with reconstructing some kind of near-term strategy that deals with the cloud, Ellison's swoop kept IBM from making a key play that would have given it a more competitive position against Oracle -- and Ellison's reasoning was probably pretty much that simple, just as he explained it three years ago.

As our independent analyst Carmi Levy told us today, now Ellison can start grinding it in: "Hardware-software customization is a huge draw for enterprises looking for turnkey solutions that don't require extensive in-house tuning. Oracle puts itself in position to take on IBM -- which uses its own server lineup as the basis for tweaking database and business intelligence solutions -- and other vendors that have tightened their partnerships in this area in recent years," Levy told Betanews. "More tightly integrated offerings allow Oracle/Sun to target not only the enterprise market with higher performance offerings, but also the mid-sized enterprise space with more cost effective solutions that were previously the exclusive domain of larger shops."

The deal also keeps IBM from getting Java -- which would have been a powerful combination -- while giving Ellison something to fuse with his Fusion middleware, which is Java-dependent anyway.

"Java could potentially be the issue that either makes or breaks this deal," stated Levy. "It's easily the shining light that attracted Oracle to Sun in the first place. The question revolves around how willing and able Oracle will be to invest the resources necessary to bring integrated solutions to market. The acquisition theoretically points Oracle toward end-to-end domination of the Java space, but execution remains the major sticking point. It's too early to tell whether Oracle has what it takes to ensure Java's relevance going forward."

Yet Oracle President Charles Phillips, in this morning's joint announcement, made it clear that his company does have a plan in mind for Java...even though the "Java space" to Oracle may not be the "Java space" as Sun had envisioned it:

"Last week, we held our CIO advisory board [comprised of] our largest customers...and they applauded our move into database machines and storage vis-à-vis our recent Exadata announcement. But now they're asking us to step into a broader role by delivering a highly optimized stack from app to disk, based on standards. The general feedback was that they wanted more than standard components," stated Phillips. "They now want standardized deployments and configurations, and fully and consistently instrumented software and hardware to manage their systems, diagnose issues, and audit uses."

Too much of Oracle's money is being spent on diagnosing software/hardware compatibility issues, Phillips went on, which would not be a problem if the software came pre-configured to start with. In other words, if Java would just find its proper place in the stack, everyone would be happy because costs would be structured lower.

"With this acquisition, we can engineer a true system with consistency across all of these products...Oracle already has a successful embedded software business, with the number one embedded database in the world," said Phillips. "Java is embedded in over a billion devices. We will also now have the largest software development community in the industry, and...Java is also the platform for future applications."

Larry Ellison wanted a stack, and now he's got one. And IBM doesn't -- at least, not this one. Typically, fuzzier company strategies with two or three possible outcomes make for more intriguing analysis stories. This time around, the handwriting was on the wall for several years, and this morning, the handwriting is on the dotted line.

Eighteenth W3C tackles the Web at 20

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 10:15pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

w3c09 logo As we mourn the passing of the first great Internet company (into the maw of Larry Ellison), academics are gathering in Barcelona for the eighteenth World Wide Web Conference. Underway already but officially kicking off Wednesday, W3C will look both forward at where researchers believe the Web to be heading, and back at its 20-year history.

In the beginning, of course -- when Sun's sunsite.*.* efforts were supporting the first great explosion of Web creativity -- things were moving so fast they had to have W3C twice a year. (Your reporter was in attendance for the second, "Mosaic and the Web;" for a blast of real nostalgia, check out the best-of-the-Web awards given at the very first W3C, held five months previous.)

Things are a bit more orderly these days. In fact, such conferences are now presentable enough to be opened officially by royalty -- in this case, the Prince of Asturias, Felipe de Borbon y Grecia (crown prince of Spain), to be followed immediately by a keynote from our own Web royalty, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Sir Tim will look back on the past 20 years and speculate on the next 20.

Reasonable speculations: We're still going to be attempting to figure out the semantic Web; fretting about improving search, architecture and mining techniques; wondering if there's any privacy left (ooh, let's ask Ellison and Scott McNealy!); and figuring out how to monetize it all. Perhaps more ephemeral, but certainly promising to be lively this week, are conversations about how new media will affect old media, the use of mashups, the problem of credibility, and social networks.

Sounds great, but Barcelona at the last minute's just not feasible? Quit crying; your reporter's not going either. (Your reporter's not even going to RSA, though that security conference is being held in the rather more convenient though less desirable city of San Francisco.) Fortunately, papers and slides are being made available for your remotely located convenience. You could also resolve to do better next year, attending WWW2010 in glamorous... um, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Microsoft: All netbooks will run any Windows 7

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 10:12pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

There will very likely be some netbooks shipped in the US and other developed markets this year that will feature the Windows 7 Starter Edition SKU announced in February. But this version will have some limitations to it that go beyond the inability to display the Aero front-end using Windows Presentation Foundation -- the direct implication of a statement made by a Microsoft spokesperson to Betanews this afternoon.

But that will not mean that premium editions of Win7 will not be able to run on netbooks, the spokesperson continued, but rather that OEMs may end up choosing to pre-install this limited edition on netbooks for sale.

"Any SKU of Windows 7 will be able to run on netbooks, which means that the hardware limitations of a netbook won't affect the functionality of Windows 7 regardless of SKU," the spokesperson told us. "With Windows 7, Microsoft is on track to have a smaller OS footprint, an improved user interface that should allow for faster boot-up and shut-down times, improved power management for enhanced battery life, enhanced media capabilities and increased reliability, stability and security."

The Journal article suggested that one of the other limitations a Starter Edition user may be faced with is the ability to multitask only a limited number of applications simultaneously -- a feature, we pointed out to Microsoft's spokesperson, that would require a fairly sophisticated application of group policy and therefore, arguably, a more elaborate SKU of Windows than one that omits such a limitation altogether.

The spokesperson would not deny the existence of this or any other specific limitation for Starter Edition, but went on to say that this edition should not be perceived as "defeated" or encumbered (agreeing with our contention that it would need to be elaborate to effectuate the limitation) because it enables customers to choose systems that may be better suited to their needs. Last February, the company announced that Starter Edition would be available in developed markets through retail channels, although Windows 7 Home Basic -- a version which will likely contain limited features -- will only be available in developing markets.

"These engineering investments allow small notebook PCs to run any version of Windows 7, and allow customers complete flexibility to purchase a system which meets their needs," the spokesperson told us. "Small notebook PCs can run any version of Windows 7. For OEMs that build lower-cost small notebook PCs, Windows 7 Starter will now be available in developed markets at a lower cost. For the most enhanced, full-functioning Windows experience on small notebook PCs, however, consumers will want to go with Windows 7 Home Premium, which lets you get the most out of your digital media and easily connect with other PCs."

Starbucks Wi-Fi deja vu, now in British Isles

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 9:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Starbucks really had its hands full with T-Mobile and AT&T hotspots last year. After the giant coffee seller dropped T-Mobile for AT&T, T-mobile then sued over a breach of contract, and the two mobile carriers ended up effectively splitting their Starbucks hotspot coverage between company-owned stores and franchises, with a goodly amount offering connectivity from both.

Now, more than 650 Starbucks in the UK and Ireland will undergo the same hotspot carrier swap, abandoning T-Mobile in favor of British Telecom. BT broadband, BT FON Wi-Fi, iPass, Boingo, and BT Openzone users will gain access the Internet at any Starbucks location in Britain, additionally, O2 iPhone users will have access included within their contract.

As a part of the BT Openzone network deal, British Telecom users will have access at 7,000 AT&T-supportive Starbucks in the United States.

Microsoft promises Web-based 1080p with 'Smooth Streaming'

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 8:31pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, Microsoft announced updates to its "Smooth Streaming," which is a set of technologies for IIS and Silverlight designed to allow consistent full-screen high definition streaming.

Among Web servers, Microsoft's IIS enjoys about 33% market share (and slipping slightly) against market leader Apache, according to Netcraft analysis. Smooth Streaming leverages IIS Media Services (formerly known as IIS Media Pack) and Silverlight 3 to provide on-demand high-def media (720p to 1080p), or live adaptive streaming. The technology was first used with the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

The technology will be put to use once again for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics on NBCOlympics.com. Utilizing Silverlight 3, streams will be offered both live and on-demand in 720p resolution. Other groups such as HSN, RAI, TV 2, and CTV have announced support for the platform.

The king of streaming Web video, however, continues to be Adobe Flash. In mid-March, CBS Interactive's TV.com beta tested 1080p streams based upon Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5, and YouTube rolled out 720p streams last December.

Now an Oracle product, what happens to MySQL?

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 7:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Attendees at the open source database's annual developers' conference in Santa Clara this morning are waking up to the incredible news that their own product, whose value to Sun Microsystems was to have been lauded by none other than Sun co-founder Andreas von Bechtolsheim in a keynote address scheduled for Thursday, is now owned by Oracle Systems.

The initial value of MySQL to Oracle -- up until this morning, its biggest competitor -- was obvious by its absence from this morning's joint press conference featuring Sun and Oracle executives. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz mentioned MySQL along with OpenOffice as part of what he now calls the world's largest supplier for open source software. Until Oracle's SEC filings are made public, we won't know whether MySQL even factored into its valuation of Sun.

LinuxQuestions.org editor Jeremy had, well, Linux questions this morning after the news was announced: "With much of Sun's revenue coming from hardware, will [Oracle] spin that division off or use it to focus more on a complete Oracle stack, that includes everything from hardware to database?" Jeremy wrote. "Moving to the individual parts of that stack, will Oracle continue with the SPARC CPU line or be interested in the more commodity x86 lines? At the OS level, will Oracle continue to focus on Linux and their Unbreakable implementation or will they attempt to keep Solaris alive? Oracle has been contributing to Linux in a significant way recently, and it would be a huge loss for that to go away."

Independent analyst and Betanews contributor Carmi Levy believes the deal could enable some intriguing opportunities for Oracle, which up to now has had more difficulty breaking into the lower end of the database market. There, MySQL rules among open source users, and Microsoft SQL Server has had a stronghold among the commercial set.

"This thinking extends into the lower end of the market as well, given how the Sun acquisition gives Oracle access to MySQL," Levy told Betanews. "While no one could ever rightfully claim that MySQL threatens Oracle's higher-end database offerings, its addition to the portfolio gives Oracle additional leverage in a market with significant growth potential. The MySQL installed base of approximately 11 million gives Oracle sales teams fertile opportunity to have conversations they haven't previously had."

But MySQL's support base is comprised in large part by independent developers, and that's by design. Already, those independent developers are waking up to a new world, including software engineer Ryan Thiessen. An 11-year MySQL veteran, Thiessen is scheduled to speak at the MySQL Conference this week; and in a blog post this morning entitled simply, "Stunned," he reveals his bewilderment:

"Last time this year I was cautiously optimistic about Sun's purchase of MySQL. But not this year -- it's fear and disappointment over what this means for MySQL," Thiessen wrote. "When I read this as a rumor a few weeks ago I thought it was a joke of an idea. Why would a high margin software company want to buy a declining hardware business, even if that hardware is great? As for their software, I cannot imagine that Oracle is interested in Java, MySQL, etc as revenue generating products, it would just be a tiny blip for them." Surprisingly, Java and Solaris were mentioned by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as the key motivating factors, not the SPARC business -- in fact, it was SPARC that failed to generate a blip. MySQL got at least that much -- this for a business that was worth at least a billion to Sun just 15 months ago.

MySQL's founders have remained on the record as fiercely against the use of software patents, as detrimental to the spirit and ethics of open source. Oracle is not diametrically opposed to that line of thinking, having made statements in principle throughout this decade opposing the creation of patent portfolios for predatory purposes.

Oracle's 2000 statement on the issue, which is essentially unchanged, reads, "Patent law provides to inventors an exclusive right to new technology in return for publication of the technology. This is not appropriate for industries such as software development in which innovations occur rapidly, can be made without a substantial capital investment, and tend to be creative combinations of previously-known techniques."

But Oracle does support the use of patents for defensive purposes, particularly when a company is attacked by a company with a big portfolio. That fact alone does not mean Oracle can't, or hasn't, used its software assets very aggressively. In October 2005, the company acquired its first widely used open source database component: Innobase, whose InnoDB contained enterprise-class features that were actually rolled into MySQL 5.0. By acquiring InnoDB, Oracle ended up owning a part of MySQL anyway, in a move that InfoWorld's Neil McAlister astutely reasoned may be to keep the lower-class database snugly in the lower class, while siphoning customers into Oracle's upper class.

"That's why when Oracle snapped up Innobase in early October it was easy to interpret the move as a major offensive on Oracle's part," McAlister wrote then. "By taking control of one of MySQL's vital internal organs, Oracle gains the power to crush the upstart at a whim, simply by closing its grip around Innobase. But, seriously, why would Oracle do that?"

Four years later, we have a closer glimpse of an answer to McAlister's question: By taking control of the geography of enterprise databases over a larger area, Oracle maintains MySQL safely within its own continent, either locked away or funneling new customers across the channel. Maybe no one could ever rightly claim that MySQL was a genuine threat, but today, Oracle's move ensures that it never can be. And that's the new world that developers in Santa Clara are waking up to.

Flash it up: Adobe moves even deeper into TV

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 6:27pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Adobe's already dominated the Internet with Flash, and now, the company has begun its move to the next connected platform: the home theater. This morning, Adobe introduced Flash for the Digital Home which is designed for use on connected HDTVs, set-top Boxes, Blu-ray players, and other such devices.

Familiar Flash-based videos, apps, and widgets will be available on home theater devices as soon as the second half of this year, Adobe says. Since the company has a strong backing from OEMs, chipmakers, cable companies, and content creators in its Open Screen Project, the delivery of Flash-based content is going to become much more uniform.

A simple litmus test of Flash's penetration into the realm of television is YouTube. While the video site has the dominant market share in online video consumption, its jump onto the telly has only been provided by niche services such as TiVo and Apple TV, and hacky products like DivX Connected. With an industry-wide Flash solution, services like YouTube will become practically a standard feature in connected TVs and DVD/Blu-Ray players.

Furthermore, Adobe's press release this morning contained a statement from Vice President of Business Development at Netflix, Bill Holmes, who said, "Adobe's Flash Platform for the Digital Home offers great promise as Netflix continues its expansion directly to the television with our consumer electronics partners."

This statement lends more credence to the speculation that the Roku Netflix player will soon include YouTube support.

Sun launches cost-conscious x86 servers for clouds

Publié: avril 18, 2009, 4:18am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Sun's new x86 hardware is designed to bring speed, simplicity, and "obviously savings, [as we] deliver the same application performance as before," said Sun CTO John Fowler, in a rollout this week at Sun's North American Partner Summit in Las Vegas.

Sun's latest Fire servers and blade systems support not just the Sun Solaris OS but also Windows and Linux. The hardware also works with virtualization solutions from multiple vendors, including VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Sun's own xVM Ops Center and Solaris Containers.

The Xeon 5500-enabled hardware includes four Fire servers -- the X4170, X2270, and X4275 servers, for the enterprise and Web, and the X4270, for branches offices and horizontally scaled data centers -- along with two server modules: the virtualization-oriented X6270, and the quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand-driven X6275, for high performance computing (HPC). The X6275 departs from tradition with a dual-node blade architecture, allowing two complete servers to share a single server module.

In addition to working with the OS and virtualization software that companies already have, the blade systems also support multi-vendor hardware, since the existing 6000 blade chassis is able to accommodate Sun Sparc processors as well as x86 processors from both Intel and AMD.

With the X6275, Sun is also introducing a new chassis, the 6048, which builds the chassis directly into the rack for higher density.

Analysts agreed on the cost-saving potential of Sun's latest servers. By supporting multiple virtualization technologies, Sun is giving customers a range of choice in the use of virtualization for reducing bottlenecks, consolidating servers, and gaining "better control of applications on a single server," suggested Kenneth Clayton, an IDC analyst.

"Systems that are underutilized are being looked at to understand how to better make use of server investments. One solution is to increase usage through virtualization and consolidation," according to Clayton. "This results in fewer systems with a smaller footprint and lower energy costs."

Also in the interests of lower energy costs, Sun unveiled a new local cooling option called the Sun Cooling Door, available in two flavors, noted Gordon Haff, an Illuminata analyst.

"One flavor, the Sun Cooling Door 5600, uses R134A refrigerant and is compatible with Liebert SD pumping and chiller units. In this case, water is still only piped to the datacenter chillers: refrigerant lines then connect to the rack," according to Haff. "The Sun Cooling Door 5200 is a straight chilled-water version. It connects to water sources in either the floor or the ceiling, and is intended primarily for data centers that can simply and cost effectively extend an existing chilled-water system."

For now, only Sun's 6048 rack/chassis supports the Sun Cooling Door. But Sun also plans to extend the new cooling system to other blade enclosures.

Sun also expects to offer its Netra systems with Xeon 5500 processors later this year, Sun officials said during the launch.

Zoho gets widget-y on iGoogle, Facebook, more

Publié: avril 18, 2009, 12:44am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Zoho may never have the name recognition of a Google or even an OpenOffice, but the company's quest to provide a comprehensive, extraordinarily Web-friendly business application suite continues. Widgets are the latest addition to its stable.

The six Zoho Gadgets -- Docs, Mail, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and Planner -- are available for Facebook, iGoogle, and Orkut, as well as sites cognizant of OpenSocial XML (e.g., MySpace, Blogspot, Zoho or other wikis), and there's a generic embeddable version as well. The company says on its blog that more will come.

As the saying goes, it does exactly what it says on the can. I spent some time with gadgets for Docs, Calendar, and Planner loaded on my iGoogle page. They behaved well, with updates made through the gadget appearing instantly and accurately on Zoho. I was vaguely annoyed by the super-short lines for to-do items in Planner -- if you look at the screen shot, you'll notice that they're truncated at my somewhat narrow browser width. They look fine when the browser window is wider, but I do wish there was an option to see those list entries wrapped for us screen-estate-frugal types.

I chose iGoogle as my mail testing forum specifically to see if oAuth support worked correctly, meaning that simply logging into iGoogle (or Gmail) would suffice for logging onto Zoho and retrieving my information. It worked perfectly.

Similarly, adding the Zoho Calendar gadget to my Gmail screen was smooth and problem-free. Adding gadgets to Facebook is almost too simple; the gadget pops onscreen and appears in your Applications list with no further confirmation or action needed. Very smooth, unless you expected more... hubbub.

Like any system, if you use it regularly you're apt to find a number of how'd-I-live-without-this? uses for the ease of use Zoho Gadgets represents; if you're only lightly committed to Zoho's application suite, the usefulness of widgets to get at them will be diminished. (You don't see my Zoho Docs widget in that screen capture; I loaded it and it works well, but the most recent document is a month old. It makes me look lazy.)

The company plans to add additional gadgets corresponding to other Zoho applications, though no timetable has been announced.

Analysts: While 3G gadgets thrive, only five mobile 'App Stores' will survive

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 11:33pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

The small subset of software 'app stores' most likely to survive includes Apple's download site, Google's Android Store, and RIM's new BlackBerry App World, according to recent analysis during a webcast featuring Andy Castonguay, Yankee Group's research director.

But outside of downloadable apps, other big differentiators in the increasingly crowded broadband gadget space will include size of the device, connectivity, keyboard, screen, and user interface.

Software apps and slick phone features will help sell 3G/4G services for US mobile carriers, which are counting on text messaging charges as a "cash cow," according to the analyst.

Where Sprint has lagged behind AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile on the whole, the underdog is starting to catch up now, first with the Instinct phone and soon with the Palm Pre, noted Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer for Yankee. Sprint's 3G connectivity is also "tremendous" in comparison to competitors, contended Castonguay, who claimed the ability to travel by train from New York to Boston while scarcely dropping a call all the while.

Due to the smoothness of Palm's Linux OS and the phone's easy navigability and search functionality, the Pre will supply an even "crisper experience" than Apple's 3G iPhone, the analyst predicted. For its first two quarters of availability, the Pre will be sold exclusively through Sprint.

T-Mobile's Android-based, HTC-made G1 has "sold tremendously," and the G2 -- a "thinner device" with more connectivity -- is slated for launch during the third week in May.

Meanwhile, RIM's BlackBerry Storm, sold only by Verizon Wireless, is pulling "new customers [into] the RIM space," he said. Conversely, the BlackBerry Bold, available strictly through AT&T, is conveying old-time BlackBerry fans into the 3G era.

Nokia's 3G-enabled N97 will be sold by US carriers, too, and new, non-subsidized unlocked versions will be offered for around $600 in forthcoming Nokia stores, he forecast.

At the same time, although Apple hasn't said so yet, third-party partners are pointing to a June launch for an "iPhone 4G," a video-capable gizmo with a 3.2 megapixel cmaera, 32 GB capability, removable battery, standard headphone jack, and a lot of other new niceties, envisioned as standing 4.5 inches tall and weighing in at 4.4 ounces.

A June rollout of the 4G would coincide with the "Worldwide Developer Conference, iPhone 3.0 software, and expiration of AT&T [iPhone 3G] service contracts," according to the two Yankee analysts.

But as Yankee sees it, the name "iPhone 4G" is actually a "bit of a misnomer" -- since to qualify as a 4G device, a gadget needs a 100 Mbps downlink speed, a level the Group believes the future Apple device won't meet.

Also during their talk, however, Ayvazian and Castonguay mentioned the 4G devices now under way from some 80 manufacturers for Clearwire's broadband network, once the deployment moves past Portland, Oregon.

These devices include USB dongle modems from Motorola and some seven other manufacturers; Intel Echo Peak embedded WiMAX modules; Clear Spot Personal Wi-Fi Hotspots; desktop modems; the Samsung Mondi mobile Internet device (MID); and WiMAX-ready netbooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Toshiba.

Mobile carriers are now finding that it's actually cost-effective to subsidize netbooks, Castonguay maintained, citing that AT&T already subsidizes netbooks from Acer, LG, and Dell.

But he also hinted that Samsung's Mondi might fare better than either phones or netbooks in the 4G world, due to its combination of a pocketable form factor, a 4.3-inch screen, and the ability to run real applications and documents on Windows Mobile 6.1.

Also in terms of software, although mobile 3G and 4G phones might only get a lot of use out of three or four software applications each, their users might easily download ten times as many or more, Ayvazian suggested. "If they're $1 or they're free, it's really no sweat," Castonguay agreed.

But just posting the apps in an online store won't guarantee success, the webcast viewers were told. "Many of the announced initiatives will fail," according to the analyst. "What makes a successful app store platform? A large base of devices, a vast developer community, [and] similar device specifications."

On the business side, the list of leading mobile device platforms is somewhat different, Ayvazian observed. While Apple is gaining ground, CIOs are looking keenly at Windows Mobile, RIM, and the "robust" Nokia environment, he elaborated.

Windows Mobile 6.5 to launch at TechEd 2009

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 9:18pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Microsoft's annual TechEd conference, which is taking place in Los Angeles this year from May 11 to 15, will play host to the official debut of Windows Mobile 6.5, the Windows Mobile Team Blog said today.

On The opening day of TechEd at 2:15 pm PDT, Stephanie Ferguson, the General Manager of Business Experiences at Microsoft, will lead the launch presentation of the Windows Mobile release that is meant to bridge the gap between old key-and-D-pad-driven interface with the touch-based interface.

Blu-ray Today: An analyst predicts 2009 will finally be its year

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 8:55pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The most recent quarterly analysis from Futuresource Consulting estimates that 12 million non-PlayStation 3 Blu-ray players will ship this year, showing the substantial increase in support for the format which from July 2006 to January 2009 shipped only 10.7 million players, according to DisplaySearch.

Futuresource is putting a lot of stock in this year's holiday season, expecting shipments to exceed six million units in the fourth quarter alone.

"In the last quarter of 2008, average retail prices for standalone Blu-ray players fell by 15% in most major markets, and we're going to see them fall by another 25% during the course of this year," said Futuresource Research Consultant Jack Wetherill. "Add to that the raft of movie titles being issued on Blu-ray -- over 1,100 at the end of last year, on track to more than double this year -- coupled with the increase in promotional activity and the continued benefit of growing PS3 ownership, and we'll see Blu-ray continue to gather momentum in all major markets across the globe."

Adams Media Research shared in the Blu-ray optimism this week, noting that 2009's first quarter Blu-ray hardware sales growth was double that of last year, performing well despite persistent economic trauma.

RIM finally distributes BlackBerry System 4.5, enables Pandora

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 8:49pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The real reason people started buying Windows 3.0 wasn't really because of the wealth of new software made for Windows for the first time. Seriously, that wasn't the reason. By the time people learned about stuff like Lotus 1-2-3G and WordPerfect for Windows -- which were both going to change the world, if you'll recall -- they were already sold on Windows 3.0 for another reason: the smooth on-screen fonts. Because let's face it, Windows/386 looked like it belonged on an 8-bit computer, compared to Macintosh.

Late last night, the BlackBerry System 4.5 upgrade finally came through for users of those older-style units that actually look like BlackBerrys. In it, you'll find relief...in the form of the replacement of the thing that made the 8800s and older units look pale compared to the (slow) Storm, or the iPhone: the disgusting looking default system font.

BlackBerry System 4.5 running on an 8800 World Edition handset. Okay, so the font file itself is still in the system, but you won't actually use it or want it. The old system fonts looked like something spat out of a Centronics dot-matrix printer, circa 1978. I remember selling dot-matrix printers in the early days, including one of the first to offer a switch that converted you from "sans-serif" to "serif," or in that particular case, from "legible" to "illegible." Until today, we 8800 users had something called "BBClarity" (which at least meant, devoid of junk) and "BBMilbank," which looked like it belonged on one of those programmable highway warning signs, shouting, "BEWARE OF ZOMBIES."

The new fonts in System 4.5 -- BBAlphaSans and BBAlphaSerif -- are both pleasant, legible, and non-offensive. Most importantly, they actually enable the use of some applications that have been either available for multiple BlackBerry models, or waiting around until someone finally gave the word. BlackBerry System 4.5 running on an 8800 World Edition handset. One of those apps is the mobile edition of Pandora, the original programmable radio stream that learns your musical tastes as you listen. Having Pandora in my pocket is reason alone to own a mobile handset; my friend Angela can have her YouTube, thank you, I'll stick with my own channel of music made by musicians and not machines.

BlackBerry System 4.5 running on an 8800 World Edition handset. The Mobile Pandora isn't as conversational as the PC edition -- for instance, you can't go into your profile and load up all your bookmarks. You can get an explanation why you're hearing the song you're hearing, and this little feature alone shows you why the System upgrade was necessary -- on the old system, there's no way this information would be the least bit legible in a single alert box.

But this version appears to have been built with the understanding that Pandora users will most likely use their PCs to program their personal stations, not their BlackBerrys. And that's fine, because while we're working out in the gym or riding our bicycles or tuning out the noise of something else purporting to be music, you don't really have that much time to go poking buttons.

BlackBerry users take note: You shouldn't try to upgrade your systems using your BlackBerry Desktop Software for Windows until you've upgraded that too. The only way you can move up from version 4.2.x to 4.5 safely is to use Internet Explorer (not Firefox or any other browser, thanks to the use of an ActiveX control), and link to this address. Download the new version of the ActiveX control, which will then bootstrap a process that will enable you to download the new version of the Application Loader for your desktop. The old Application Loader will not work for this purpose, and you might find that out the hard way unless you upgrade this way. Then be sure to exit IE and unplug your BlackBerry from the USB cable for a moment (the software should tell you when), then reconnect it before starting the upgrade.

What passes for entertainment in BlackBerry App World. The upgrade process will back up your existing calendar, e-mail, media, and personal applications automatically, and will restore them after the new modules are loaded in and verified. The verification process, for some reason, is the longest stage -- be prepared to wait as long as 45 minutes. The process in its entirety could take an hour, maybe a little longer.

Not all your old applications may work in the upgraded system without being replaced. Most surprisingly, BlackBerry App World is one of them. You'll need to manually uninstall it, then reinstall it from this address.

BlackBerry System 4.5 running on an 8800 World Edition handset. You'll notice some differences right away, some thanks to the new system, others on account of smart users who truly appreciate the low value of farting apps. The catalog is much more pleasant to read, even if -- sadly -- some of the entries haven't changed all that much since App World's premiere earlier this month. The "before" and "after" pictures above tell the story. ("ECOE" isn't very self-explanatory, is it? It's a Ticketmaster application, so you'd think it would have been named something like "Ticketmaster Application.")

Nothing makes a smartphone user happier than not being embarrassed. So much applause to the folks at RIM who, while they've been busy concocting all sorts of new goodies for the Storm (I hear something called speed is in the works), they decide to throw us old-timers from '07 and '08 a bone every now and then.

The Pirate Bay loss: What it could mean

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 6:21pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The four men behind the Pirate Bay torrent sharing site were sentenced to one year in prison and fined 30 million Kronor in damages this morning, after having faced charges from the Stockholm District Court of "promoting other people's infringement of copyright laws."

The court's statement to the media said, "By providing a Web site with...well-developed search functions, easy uploading and storage possibilities, and with a tracker linked to the Web site, the accused have incited the crimes that the filesharers have committed."

But the war of ideals in the Internet age rages on, and the real victor in this could be the political Pirate Party.

Daniel Goldberg of ComputerSweden traces the beginning of the Pirate Bay's struggles to March 2005, when the Economic Crimes Bureau and the National Police began to review law enforcement practices in the field of internet software piracy. It wasn't until nearly a year later that the Pirate Party entered the political arena on the platform of copyright and patent reform.

By politicizing the Pirate Bay's trial, the Pirate Party secured a guaranteed outlet for evangelism and party-building rhetoric. For example, calling today's sentence a miscarriage of justice, the head of Sweden's Pirate Party Richard Falkvinge has organized large-scale demonstrations for tomorrow in Stockholm and Lund.

Meanwhile, he says that membership in Sweden's pirate party has "gone vertical at ultrasonic speeds." More members have signed up for the party in the four hours following the trial than have in the last three years of its existence.

"As it is right now," said Falkvinge, "the 'Young Pirates' will be Sweden's largest youth organization when the clock strikes midnight on Saturday, and will probably have more members than the Liberal Party."

Today's ruling and the process of appeals could add significant muscle to the Party as the June 4-7 EU Parliamentary elections approach. There, the Pirate Party's Christian Engström is making an all-or-nothing bid for a seat. The Party is funded only by member donations, has no paid employees, and needs at least 100,000 votes to secure a seat among the 785 Parliamentary representatives in Brussels. The last time the party ran in 2006, it only had 35,000 votes.

If the Pirate Party joined the EU's Parliament, it would be another leftist group to balance out the current right-leaning majority. It would have to contend or ally with majority groups the European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialist Party, which hold 249 and 209 seats respectively.

But really, what does all this have to do with file sharing?

At this point, very little. Think of the impact a major drug bust has on the consumption of illegal substances: While it puts a crimp in the supply chain, the demand is starkly unaffected.

Peter Kolmisoppi, also known as Brokep said on Twitter today, "Stay calm - Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing what so ever. This is just a theater for the media."

True. The Pirate Bay was not taken down, and the group is expected to appeal the ruling, which could spin out the hearings as much as another three years. So it has been a media theater indeed, but one that could successfully help the Pirate Party into Parliament, however small an accomplishment that may be in the end.

Sony Ericsson holds on for better days, or until the Idou release

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 3:01pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Later this year, perhaps, Sony Ericsson might have some good news -- maybe from the release of its Idou phone, with its rumored 12-megapixel camera. But that better day is a long way off as the partnership posts its third straight quarter of losses on Friday, this time to the tune of $387 million.

Analysts expected losses in about that range after the group gave out preliminary guidance last month, so the effect of bad news on the company's stock was minimal. The announcement that the company would also lay off 2,000 workers probably didn't hurt either.

An acerbic observer, however, finds herself wondering if justice wouldn't best be served by first canning the management that has so utterly fallen down on either getting better Sony Ericsson smartphones to market or finding a market that doesn't care as much. Apple, Research In Motion, Palm, and even Microsoft (in its capacity as owners of the Sidekick handset) are charging toward market with high-end, buzzworthy gadgetry. Nokia, on the other hand, has put a great deal of effort toward establish itself in developing markets -- not a short-term strategy, as those reading the company's Q1 report yesterday will agree, but a strategy nonetheless.

Sony Ericsson, meanwhile, has focused mainly on more developed markets. Analysts have been quoted here and there saying that the firm is refocusing on the smartphone market, but other than the Idou, there's not a smartphone expected from Sony Ericsson for the rest of 2009. Meanwhile, the company's current handset offerings retail for about twice as much as devices from rivals such as Nokia (dropping not at all over the course of the last year), and the company reports that it's lost market share -- down two points to about 6%.

The company further reported that it shipped 14.5 million handsets last quarter, down 9.7 million from the Q4 2008 holiday season and down 7.8 million year-over-year. In an interview with Reuters, CEO Hideki Komiyama said that at least that situation appears to be stabilizing, with the US and Europe showing "signs of correction" for demand. That claim matches up with Nokia's assertions during its quarterly earnings call on Thursday.

T-Mobile kicks off Sidekick pre-sale, announces ship date

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 1:44pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

T-Mobile, America's sole purveyor of the Sidekick, begins taking pre-orders today for the new LX version of the well-liked, swivel-screen handset. Customers reserving a unit by the end of the month including through this T-Mobile address will receive theirs May 12 -- one day before the device goes on sale to the general public.

Service-provider improvements to the latest version of the Sidekick include 3G support on T-Mobile's HSDPA network and better data-migration options for those switching from another T-Mobile handset. Inside, there's new GPS functionality; integrated Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter support via Skick-customized applications, including the ability to directly upload photos from the camera (now shooting at 3.2 megapixels) to MySpace and video to other social-networking sites; ShoutCast streaming-radio and YouTube video support; upcoming support for Microsot Exchange; and a 3.2" F-WVGA screen with 854x480 resolution.

And friends, they fixed that annoying on-off switch positioning problem. I know. I made a point of checking while I watched a Warren Zevon video on YouTube, flipped the screen up and down, and chattered about the unmistakable hand position of the devoted Sidekick user. Sometimes these companies get more nerd than they bargained for at these demonstrations, you know?

Your reporter is, like many Sidekick owners, a loud longtime fan. I still have a working Sidekick 2 in my gadget stash, and the current LX is literally the first gadget I interact with in the morning, since it also serves as my alarm clock (and first eye on Google News). I also share the Sidekick fan's tendency toward detailed, very precise ideas about how the device ought to change and what will cause me consternation, frustration, and hotly worded comments to the editor at hiptop3.com.

Welcome to Leslie Grandy's world. The vice-president for product development is well aware of the balancing act between attracting new users to the device and keeping the faithful from frothing. She graciously allowed me some quality time on Thursday with a pre-release version of the gadget, and pointed out a number of changes designed to serve both audiences. (She also managed not to panic or laugh when I started chirping with joy about a few tiny adjustments that only a several-hours-each-day user might notice immediately; she's apparently used to that, since Sidekick owners send and receive an average of 600 text messages and over 3,000 IMs each month.) Among the highlights I saw on my playdate:

- The screen is beautiful. At 3.2", the viewing area's a bit larger than that of the current Sidekick LX; at 854x480, it's also brighter, sharper and clearer than many larger and more expensive devices (can you guess which netbooks I'm think of?). Sharp's the hardware provider as usual, and Grandy suggests that that firm views the Sidekick as a nice showcase for what they can accomplish with high-definition LCD tech.

- The keyboard is unharmed. Old-timers will remember the unfortunate decision with the Sidekick 3 to make the keys hard and slippery. The company edged back to the slightly soft, slightly textured model with the Sidekick ID, and returned to more-or-less orthodoxy with the LX, but some of us get very nervous with T-Mobile messes with a keyboard widely considered to be the best ever shipped on a handset. On the other hand, a slimmer device requires adjustments, and T-Mobile's been wrestling with that design imperative for years. I'm pleased to report that the keyboard I used was much like that of the current LX; there's been a slight change in key shape, but otherwise I found thumb-typing to be much the same.

- Social networking is go. The company regularly evaluates what sorts of sites users visit through the browser, and found that two-thirds of all traffic is currently going to social networking sites, generating 15 million requests each day. (Grandy told me that Sidekick traffic on AIM is so heavy that that service can detect a network outage almost before T-Mobile does.) In addition to the usual IM triumvirate of AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Live (sorry, kids, no Gtalk), the handset now integrates Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter support. Integrating that support means good things for both performance and presentation -- most obviously in my brief time with the gadget, update notifications right on the status bar, as happens now with mail and IM and such.

- It's curvy in all the right places. The handset continues its evolution to a slim silhouette, and this time around it adds a few beautiful bevels, most notably along the screen where the index fingers go when holding the Sidekick to type. The infuriating on/off switch placement is solved, and some of the assorted jacks and ports have been rearranged around the edge of the device. In informal side-by-side tests, the new LX is several millimeters slimmer than the current model, and even a bit thinner than a G1 we had handy. The case has changed a bit too, with a nicely tactile rubberized coating (something like that on the keys, I thought) making it very pleasant to hold. (A new model means new case colors, by the way -- this time, the choices are "carbon" and "orchid." I'll let you figure out from the photos which is which.)

- Let there be light. There's a slender notification light along the edge of the screen now, a bright blue bar that signals when you've got a message or your browser page has loaded. I noticed that it gives the keypad an subtle, appealing glow as well. The trackball, meanwhile, continues to double as a multicolor signal.

- Seriously, YouTube right there in the conference room. Grandy tells me that battery life is up considerably, to two days' standby. I'll know more about that when I have sustained testing time; when I get that, I suspect I'll be using YouTube to drain that sucker. Repeatedly. Strictly for professional testing purposes, you understand.

I expect to receive a testing unit within the next few weeks, and at that time I'll be looking at a number of other improvements. Among those are the new GPS integration, which should make the handset's Live Search services (currently executed on the device by cell-tower triangulation) faster, more accurate, and more capable. Grandy spoke of new testing procedures that have led to a radical upgrade in strength for the screen's swivel mechanism, and I'll be dropping the device repeatedly to see how that works out for me. (Alas, it probably won't be intentional; your reporter has an unfortunate knack for that sort of thing.)

New personalization options -- sideload a new ringtone or record your own -- are also on my must-see list, and I hope to see some of the fancy case-customization options T-Mobile first explored with last year's Sidekick 2008. And down the road, I look forward to looking at upcoming support for Microsoft Exchange, an addition that should help attract more users to the funky, capable device.

For now, the pre-order period runs until April 30. For pre-ordering customers, the cost of the new Sidekick LX is $199 with a two-year service agreement.

Guilty verdicts in Pirate Bay case

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 12:32pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

We'll have more on this story later today, but be advised that the Swedish court has returned with four guilty verdicts in the Pirate Bay trial. Founders Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde have been sentenced to a year each in jail and millions of dollars in damages.

The BBC has an early report, and Sunde, who was made aware of the verdict several hours before its official announcement, tweeted the results and noted that "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media." Needless to say, an appeal is in the works, as is a press conference by TPB.

Court blocks webcast of RIAA file sharing case against Harvard student

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 12:50am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Sony BMG, Warner, Atlantic, Arista, and Universal Music Group have been battling an intrepid group of Harvard Law scholars after 25-year old grad student Joel Tenenbaum was hauled into court for alleged copyright infringement through illegal file sharing.

In January, Tenenbaum and his counsel moved to invite the Courtroom View Network in to webcast the trial, feeling that it would be an issue of "keen public interest." While the motion was approved in the District court, the record labels involved in the case took the issue to the Court of Appeals, which today denied the District Court's ruling.

The Appellate Court's opinion today said, "Here, we think that the limits of the district judge's discretion were exceeded; her interpretation of Local Rule 83.3 is unprecedented and, in our view, palpably incorrect."

Of the decision, Tenebaum's counsel said, "We are disappointed by the First Circuit's decision and maintain that Joel is being denied a constitutional right to a public trial in the age of the internet. We believe that Judge Gertner was within her authority to make decisions regarding her own courtroom. We intend to explore every legal option available to Joel."

Time Warner retreats from plan to test capping subscriber bandwidth

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 12:25am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

After delaying its plan to test capping subscriber bandwidth usage, Time Warner has opted to retreat from the approach altogether.

In a statement today, Chief Executive Office Glenn Britt said, "It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met."

Organizations which stood in opposition to the trials, such as Free Press, claim this as a major victory for consumers. Campaign director for Free Press Tim Karr said, "We're glad to see Time Warner Cable's price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition. Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path. Consumers are not going to stand idly by as companies try to squeeze their use of the Internet. This is a major victory, but the fight for a fast, open and affordable Internet is far from over."

But Time Warner's statement clearly says this was not a response to unified consumer action, but rather a response to widespread consumer ignorance. Before delaying its capping tests, the company tried to break down its tiered pricing scheme to consumers by comparing broadband usage to overeating, and gas consumption, two things Americans have a reputation for understanding quite well.

COO Landel Hobbs said "When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?"

Moving forward, Time Warner will be providing the "gas gauge" to consumers first, so they can have a firmer grasp on how a tiered billing plan would affect their daily life.

Founders Fund opens nominations for $50,000 TechFellow Awards

Publié: avril 17, 2009, 12:22am CEST par Nate Mook

By Nate Mook, Betanews

Whether it's a new investment tack or simply goodwill to the technology community in a down economy, early-stage venture capital firm Founders Fund is taking a unique approach to the tired award ceremony with TechFellow. Instead of celebrating a product or company, Founders Fund wants to draw attention to those behind the scenes who actually make the innovation happen.

12 fellows will be selected by a panel of 21 judges, which reads like a who's-who of Silicon Valley, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Flickr's Caterina Fake, MySpace's Chris DeWolfe, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, Esther Dyson and Marc Andreesson, among others. Nominations (including self-nominations) will be accepted until May 8, with an awards dinner slated for June.

What does a TechFellow receive for his or her selection? Founders Fund will be providing the individual with $25,000 to invest in a startup of their choice, even if it's their own startup. The firm will also match that figure, bringing the total initial investment to $50,000. Founders Fund calls it "Genius Grants for Geeks," and will request the right to invest another $250,000 if the startup raises another round of capital.

In total, Founders Fund will be devoting up to $3.6 million to the TechFellow Awards. The initiative is being co-promoted by TechCrunch, which isn't contributing financially, but whose founder Michael Arrington will serve as one of the judges. Fellows will be selected based on four categories: engineering leadership, product design and marketing, general management and disruptive innovation.

I spoke to Founders Fund managing partner Sean Parker this afternoon, who was quick to note that the TechFellow Awards aren't really about the money, but about the people. The goal, Parker said, is to recognize the achievements of those who are often overlooked while CEOs and corporate identities receive all the praise (something which Parker -- who was involved in creating Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, but rarely shared the limelight -- knows all too much about). The grants are designed to encourage these individuals to innovate further with their own efforts, or invest in other early-stage ideas they support.

Founders Fund got started in 2005 by bringing together a small group who were at the forefront of technology and investing in companies they felt were on track to become future industry leaders. In a way, the firm is replicating that model with the TechFellow Awards, turning the innovator into the investor.

You can build your own photo mosaics with National Geographic

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 11:39pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

You know those composite picture mosaics, where thousands of individual photographs are combined into a single, large image? National Geographic Digital Media has debuted a photo community tool that creates an infinitely zoomable loop of that sort called Infinite Photograph.

The application takes between 200 and 500 user-uploaded photographs from the My Shot public database and turns them into the finished mosaic which can be endlessly zoomed through. Eventually, National Geographic says the tool will be turned over to users to let them build an infinite photograph out of solely their own photos.

Google posts its first-ever revenue decline

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 11:38pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Describing the current economic landscape as "uncharted territory," Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged that his company hasn't been immune from the prevailing mayhem as he announced the search giant's first-ever quarter-to-quarter revenue decline for Q1 2009.

Google on Thursday reported year-to-year growth of 9% -- the first time since IPO the company hasn't posted double-digit growth -- and gross revenue of $5.5 billion. Quarter-to-quarter, gross revenue dropped about $200 million, but it beat market estimates. Operating income was up a bit to 34% of revenues, or $1.88 billion, and free cash flow's in the $2 billion range.

As you might expect, advertising's taken a hit as the recession deepens, though SVP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg was enthusiastic about the effect (for both Google and advertisers) of recent AdWords improvements such as the search terms suggestion tool. Search improvements are making waves on the consumer-facing side too; Rosenberg noted that the company recently rolled out internationally the correction-suggestion tech so beloved of those of us who can't spell. The company found, he said, that visitors have over 800 ways of spelling "Britney Spears."

Today's news of a purse-snatcher nabbed by Google Latitude also made the brag list. The company sees searches (e.g., "auto repair") that indicate that visitors have frugality on their minds no less than advertisers do. "That's what they should be doing," noted Schmidt.

Seasonality is also a factor as the company enters the traditionally slower summer months -- revenues decrease, but payroll expenses and the like do not. (Of course, the recently announced layoffs of about 200 sales and marketing folk will be reflected in Q2, not Q1.) The relative strength of the dollar contributed $120 million of unpleasantness to the final numbers.

Looking forward, the Google execs on the call spent a significant amount of time in the interesting position of talking about the next announcement of the day without actually saying what it will announce. That press conference, which is believed to reveal YouTube's upcoming response to Hulu, is slated for 2:30 pm EDT.

Flash
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player nowif (typeof(embedWikichart) != "undefined") {embedWikichart("http://charts.wikinvest.com/WikiChartMini.swf","wikichartContainer_C5376CA2-5CF9-A5F5-0BFE-B0DD3AB684C4","570","365",{"ticker":"GOOG","startDate":"16-10-2008","liveQuote":"true","showAnnotations":"true","endDate":"16-04-2009"});}View the full GOOG chart at Wikinvest

Earnings per share worked out to $4.49, an increase of 37 cents/share from Q1 2008, or $5.16/share excluding certain employee compensation costs. That worked for the analysts, who expected $4.93 for Q1; the market agreed, sending the stock up about $2.75 in after-hours trading.

There will be an Office 2010 public beta sometime, reasserts Microsoft

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 11:34pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The news from Microsoft Tuesday evening of the first technical previews of Office 2010, coming in the third quarter of this year, referred to being limited to several thousand testers -- Exchange product manager Julia White told us perhaps a few hundred thousand, after all the invitations were processed. But a technical preview is not exactly a "public beta," so when a prepared Q&A Monday with Microsoft's senior VP Chris Caposella failed to mention a public beta for Office 2010, some bloggers and journalists came to the conclusion that there wouldn't be one.

So when Microsoft reported today that there would be a public beta, it was reported in various locations that the company had changed its mind. In fact, as a Microsoft spokesperson verified for Betanews this afternoon, not only was there no change of mind, but no statement regarding the lack of a public beta was ever made. Microsoft told Betanews earlier this week that there would be a public beta of Office 2010, though the company has not yet finalized a date.

Simple economics: Week one of the iTunes price change

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 10:39pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Billboard magazine today said that sales of newly-priced iTunes tracks are trending downward as a result of last week's price increase. The publication's figures pertain to tracks that were formerly 99¢ and are now $1.29. A price increase of roughly 30% correlated to a 12.5% drop in sales. Meanwhile, tracks that were unchanged in price actually sold 10% more than the previous week, and sales were up 3% overall.

It is a path that labels do not want sales to follow. Before the changes went into effect, a major label executive who wished to remain anonymous, told Reuters, "If we can gain traction with $1.29 that will be good for greater margin."

So there's no traction yet. But it's only been a week, and all these stats show is that MP3s too are subject to the laws of the demand curve. It's one of the most simple concepts in economics: As the price of goods increases, the demand decreases. Adjustments take place until the market clearing price is reached, that is, the point at which supply and demand are equal.

But the prices didn't only increase, and Billboard failed to focus on tracks that actually went down in price to 69¢, shrinking the margin. 69¢ tracks were forecast to sell at a rate ten times greater than $1.29 tracks, also quite directly following the demand curve.

Nokia looks up from bottom of well, sees the sky

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 10:37pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

For all those who find the stock market maddening, here's something else to add to your list: After digesting reports that mobile-phone makers Nokia saw a 90.6% year-to-year drop in net profit, the stock market sent shares in the Finnish firm up ten percent.

A few things are happening in this latest financial snapshot from the company. First, as you may have heard, things are tough all over. We're just hours away from the announcement of first-quarter results from Sony Ericsson, another major player in the mobile market, but no one's expecting miraculous growth for this or any other player in the sphere not named Apple, Research In Motion, or Palm.

But as bad as it is -- for Q1, net sales are down 26.7%, operating profits are down 96.4%, and you'll look long at the numbers before you find any division of the company that didn't report double-digit drops -- the company believes that it has reached a plateau, or perhaps the bottom of the well. The company stated on Thursday that it expects the mobile industry as a whole to be flat or maybe a bit up during Q2 (with greater improvement during the latter half of the year), and that it expects to increase its market share.

It's an interesting claim, since the company did not announce plans to change its name to Apple, Research In Motion, or Palm. But Nokia doesn't seem to feel it's lacking a contender in the high-end smartphone market; instead, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo spoke on Thursday of the company's pleasure with early sales results for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the company's first touchscreen offering. The company has shipped more than 3 million 5800s since November, 2.6 million of those during Q1, and Kallasvuo estimates that Nokia now already owns nearly 20% of the touchscreen-phone market.

There's also the delicate art of managing expectations, and Nokia's done that well. Analysts in recent days spoke of sales expectations for Nokia that were fairly cataclysmic, so when results were only relatively bad, the analyst community felt relatively good. (To experience the exciting world of stock analysis at home, take two hammers and start smashing them into either side of your head. Then put down one hammer. See how great that feels?)

The company says it sold 93 million mobile phones in Q1; analysts expected somewhere between 90 and 92 million. (Q1 2008, which was an excellent quarter for the company, saw 115 million Nokia phones move, though the market being what it is those 2008 phones were about $7 more expensive on average than the offerings now. In other words, lower sales were made worse by lower revenues per sale.) Nokia's networking unit also saw decreases, and the company now says that business (a partnership with Siemens) will decline by around 10%, a steeper drop than the 5% previously predicted. Using today's analyst-management example as a guide, networking could now drop by 8 or 9% and still -- hey, better than expected.

Flash
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player nowif (typeof(embedWikichart) != "undefined") {embedWikichart("http://charts.wikinvest.com/WikiChartMini.swf","wikichartContainer_9B7AF75E-11F6-FF3D-10E0-B0E3F166A4F1","570","365",{"showAnnotations":"true","liveQuote":"true","ticker":"NOK","rollingDate":"1 year"});}View the full NOK chart at Wikinvest

And expectations are a third factor in making sense of the numbers. Nokia said today that it believes that the worst is over -- flat or slightly up for Q2, as mentioned -- but also that things are getting more predictable again. Predictable sales numbers mean more predictable expenses, more predictable dealings with suppliers, and a general sense that we're not all taking cover under our desks wondering what we're supposed to do after the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, and the pros form a league.

Nokia's a big firm, and an expectation of calm emanating from a big firm can make investors feel calm, and then maybe even a little optimistic. Maybe it's the return of sunlight and warmth to Finland's northern tundras, but on the whole, the mood at and around Nokia isn't as bleak as a 90.6% drop would have you think.

Code-frozen Firefox 3.5 beta gains 4% more speed against Chrome 2

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 10:13pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

We may see the latest Mozilla Firefox 3.5 public beta -- now with the whole numbering thing straightened out -- as soon as next Wednesday, and quite likely a Firefox 3.0.9 update in the same timeframe. In the meantime, as Mozilla's developers test the final nightly build prior to the opening of the floodgates, Betanews tests reveal that regular Firefox users should appreciate about double the speed and performance of Firefox 3.0.8, and 450% the performance of the final release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.

But as Mozilla's developers make tweaks to its rendering engine and its new TraceMonkey JavaScript interpreter, Google's developers (some of whom, admittedly, are the very same people) are making tweaks to its development series browser, Chrome 2.0.172.6. (Google's development browser now co-exists with its Chrome 1 series, which represents finalized code.) As a result, our latest tests show Apple may not hold claim to "the world's fastest browser" for much longer, as Chrome 2 pulls within 2% of Safari's general performance, and as Firefox 3.5 makes up some ground.

The latest performance scores for the April 16 Firefox 3.5 nightly build (intended for private testing) in Betanews tests are 17% better overall than for Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, a public beta released last month. This is on the strength of 18% better CSS rendering performance, 13% better JavaScript object handling, and 27% better overall JavaScript processing scores, in a suite of performance tests produced by independent developers and collected by Betanews.

So as Chrome 2 improves, Firefox 3.5 improves even faster...though it still has quite a lot of ground to make up. Using Betanews' cumulative index scoring in which a 1.0 score represents the performance of Internet Explorer 7, the latest 3.5 nightly build scored a 9.19 -- meaning, when all the tests are ironed out, 919% the speed and performance of IE7, which even Microsoft has acknowledged to be something of a dog. Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 scored a 7.85 in these same tests, which were conducted on a Windows Vista-based Virtual PC environment (not the fastest, but still sufficient to gauge relative performance).

The Safari 4 Beta scores from last month still represent the latest available index scores, with a 14.39 -- and Apple maintains the lead. But not by much, as Chrome -- the #2 chariot being driven by Charleton Heston -- pulls up uncomfortably close with a new score of 14.09, nearly 10% better than last month's build.

Now, do you remember the non-competitive days of Web browsers, so very long ago...2008? Imagine if Web browsers got faster at a rate of 10% per month, every month? Real competition can certainly change the landscape.

Smartphone malware: Still the next big thing?

Publié: avril 16, 2009, 7:43pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Microworms (courtesy BuyMicroWorms.com) Conficker may have dominated security headlines this quarter, but Finnish security company F-Secure says the lesser-known "Sexy View" worm represented a new threat: the SMS and phone-based worm and the mobile botnet.

Sexy View is a social engineering worm which uses a device's contact list to spread. It sends a text message to all contacts with a link to a Web site that installs a malicious application that shares the phone's information (like its serial number) with the virus' creators. It targets devices running Symbian S60 3rd edition and was first found on Nokia 3250 handsets.

"It is the first text message worm ever." said F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen. "It's also the first mobile phone worm that circumvents the signature checks that are meant to secure the latest smartphones. And the motive behind it seems to be to collect information for mobile phone spamming purposes. Mobile phone spam is already a big problem in some parts of the world -- eventually it will be an issue everywhere."

But there have already been hundreds of malwares for Symbian besides simple text messaging, and the opportunities for them to be fruitful and multiply extend further than mere spam. Last week, Visa introduced the world's first Near Field Communications technology for "wallet phones," where an NFC chip with the owner's bank information is installed in the phone, allowing simple SpeedPass style use in transactions.

Fortunately, the first handset to use the technology is the Nokia 6212, which runs Nokia S40, a non-Symbian operating system that does not let the user install new applications.

F-Secure is understandably concerned with mobile threats of this nature, as it's been the default anti-virus software provider for a number of Nokia devices since 2004. Hypponen has repeatedly warned the public that the increasing connectivity of mobile devices provides new ingress for malware.

Shortly after signing a deal with F-Secure, Nokia enlisted the help of Symantec for the protection of S60 and UIQ devices, and Trend Micro offers a number of mobile virus protection services, which includes not only protection for Symbian devices, but also for Windows Mobile for both PocketPC and Smartphone.

There's a catch to this, though, and perhaps you've already spotted it.

Most of the alarmist reports of mobile infections in the last few years have come from companies that also happen to make mobile virus protection software, spawning the question: "Are Symbian and Windows Mobile mobile devices actually in danger, or is this simply a case of manufactured demand -- nay, fearmongering -- by security providers?"

Fortunately, there is now more nonpartisan conviction to back up the fear. A recently published study funded by Deutsche Telekom examined anomaly detection in smartphones, and came to this conclusion: "We believe that the evolution of malware for mobile devices will take a similar direction as the evolution of PC malware. Thus, similar problems will have to be encountered, e.g., missing signatures for unknown threats and new malwares appearing at high frequency."

The group tested several different malware classes on a Nokia E61 running Symbian OS 9.1, a Nokia 7610 running S60 7.x, and an HTX TyTN B running Windows Mobile 5. One virus the group tested took a picture through the Nokia E61's front camera when the keypad was being used, guaranteeing a shot of the user. This picture was then sent via MMS to a pre-defined mobile number. Another malware was remotely controlled by SMS messages which could delete the user's entire phonebook when the SMS was opened.

However, these malwares are not likely to be encountered in the wild, as they were created by the research group. The group said that, despite their best efforts, they had to make their own to produce realistic results because there is actually a sufficient lack of available smartphone malware for newer platforms.

Nonetheless, the group finds that protection is absolutely needed, but as is the case with PC anti-virus software, signature-based protection methods are simply not good enough.

[Picture of real micro-worms courtesy of BuyMicroWorms.com]

Dozens of corporations float to the Amazon cloud on RightScale

Publié: avril 15, 2009, 3:56am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Big businesses are now moving to the clouds "en masse," through a deal between Capgemini and RightScale. The 50-or-so corporations are all clients of IT consulting firm Capgemini's emerging Cloud Computing Center of Excellence, said RightScale CEO Michael Crandell, in a briefing with Betanews.

After starting to migrate the customers' existing Web sites to "cloud-style, elastic-type applications and grids" in Amazon's EC2, Capgemini turned to RightScale's pre-configured templates for assistance.

"There's a large demand among enterprises to use clouds more effectively to their own advantage," Crandell told Betanews. "Capgemini's Cloud Computing Center of Excellence gives them a focal point for figuring out issues such as cost reduction and agility."

In unveiling the Cloud Computing Center of Excellence last year, Capgemini announced Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the initial focus. The center's services range from "technical services focused on migrations, deployment and integration of AWS into existing applications and infrastructure to more business-oriented services, such as understanding the return on investment to be gained from leveraging cloud computing and facilitating change management," said Ben Pring, an analyst at Gartner Group.

Crandell told Betanews that RightScale's templates provide pre-configured cloud solutions -- including initial server configurations -- based on best practices. "You've got predictable performance," according to the CEO.

With 50 big businesses involved, Capgemini's customer migration represents one of the most significant deals yet for RightScale, a well funded start-up that also provides Linux-based tools for ongoing monitoring, alerts, auto-scaling, and front end load balancing in both single- and "cross-cloud" environments.

"We're really excited about the market reach this will provide. It is a magnifier, and another sign of the incredible growth we've seen in the cloud market," Crandell contended.

Although RightScale initially targeted only Amazon's public EC2 cloud, support has since been added through the company's plug-in API architecture for GoGrid and FlexiScale, with additional support now on the way for RackSpace and Eucalyptus clouds.

While many RightScale customers have already started using RightScale's tools to support "hybrid" mixes of public and private clouds, lots of customers in this category at the moment -- such as ForeclosureRadar.com -- tend to be on the small side.

But Crandell said it's his understanding that some of Capgemini's corporate cloud clients might ultimately expand into cross-cloud deployments.

Capgemini's establishment of its cloud center "shows good timing -- worsening economic conditions are adding further momentum to the cloud-computing trend," Gartner's Pring wrote in a research note. "This is also a smart move by Amazon, which will face greater interest but also greater scrutiny from enterprises during the next few years as the scale, reach and traction of its offerings increase. Capgemini will provide Amazon with enhanced credibility among Capgemini's typically cautious, conservative clients."

It's Office 2010: First technical previews due in Q3

Publié: avril 15, 2009, 3:36am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Microsoft confirmed to Betanews Tuesday that the first technical previews of the applications suite we can now call Office 2010, will be distributed to special participants -- probably in limited number at first, just like before -- in the third quarter of this year.

Julie White, a product manager for the Exchange Server team (which also has a major announcement this week), told Betanews that this limited number of initial testers will probably still number in the hundreds of thousands, suggesting that it will go beyond the usual MSDN and TechNet subscriber crowd. In tandem with this development track, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 will all also enter technical preview during the same timeframe, especially since they will need to be tested together in order to take advantage of new features.

Today's news is piggy-backed alongside the announcement, made official Tuesday night, that Exchange Server 2010 will enter its first public beta phase on Wednesday. Betanews will have more information to share about this news the moment the gates are officially opened, though we were told that many of Exchange Server's new features will make use of what could be a dramatically changed Outlook 2010 component.

That could make Exchange difficult to test for now, especially since Outlook 2007 -- many of whose originally planned changes didn't make the final cut -- will not have facilities for new Unified Communications features. Many of those UC features have yet to be announced, though we can expect them to turn up in Outlook 2010. Radically improved handling of voice mail capability is slated for both ES 2010 and the next Outlook, White told us. Even the very first betas of ES 2010 will include the ability for Outlook to show textual previews of voice mails, with the server translating voice messages into text.

As a result, your first peek at what Outlook 2010 could actually look like may come from ES 2010's Outlook Web Access. As ES admins know quite well, OWA is a management console for Web browsers designed to look and work just like Outlook. In the case of ES 2010, OWA will look just like Outlook 2010 is supposed to look.

It's not the optimum state of affairs for Microsoft, which had to delay Office 14's progress last February for still undisclosed reasons. But it does show the company has had the courage to proceed with its Exchange rollout plan on schedule, including its emphasis on the server as a development platform for communications tools, using a newly turbo-boosted PowerShell as the basis for that platform.

The first technical previews of Office 2010 will include native support for OpenDocument Format as an alternative default for the first time, along with revised support for the new ISO 29500 format that arose from Microsoft's OOXML standardization effort.

ODF, PDF become part of Microsoft Office on April 28

Publié: avril 15, 2009, 1:11am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In a post this afternoon in an unusual location -- the Microsoft Update blog rather than the Office blog -- the company officially gave its heads-up message that Office 2007 SP2 will be officially released in two weeks, on April 28. In it, users will have the ability to export their open OOXML and "compatibility mode" documents to Open Document Format and to Adobe's PDF format, in the company's first implemented stage of its support for alternate and interoperable document formats.

This will not yet be the same as adopting .ODT documents, .ODS spreadsheets, and .ODP presentations as alternate standard formats for Office applications -- that feature is coming in the next edition of the suite, now due sometime next year. Up to now, the ability for Office 2007 apps to save to PDF and to XPS -- Microsoft's own try at an interoperable display format -- has been available as a downloadable add-in. Now, that functionality will be available to new users without the add-in needing to be installed.

"The 2007 Office Suite SP2 has been tested and is supported for Internet Explorer 8," reads today's announcement. "Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7, and Windows Server [2008] R2 will all be supported upon their release."

Amid other enhancements in SP2: Long-time testers will recall how the new charting object model created for Excel 2007, failed to make the cut for Word and PowerPoint 2007, and then failed the cut again for SP1. Finally, SP2 bridges that gap, so the charting functionality for the main three applications is now evened out.

And in an improvement that has been even longer in coming, the newly patched Access for business users will include the ability to export reports to Excel spreadsheets. Access is no longer among the more widely used database management products, being highly localized in this world of distributed data; yet many business classes including legal and real estate need a way to produce reports from queries that filter a database, in order to export that data yet again to a new line-of-business application. This addition will help those businesses lay stepping stones for such transitions.

The pendulum swings toward Microsoft in the Alcatel-Lucent IP battle

Publié: avril 15, 2009, 12:20am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The intellectual property war which at one point had Microsoft owing Alcatel-Lucent a penalty of over $1.5 billion, may end up with the latter actually owing the former. First that penalty was reduced in light of new Supreme Court guidelines, and then last September an appeals court overturned the jury verdict, ruling in favor of Microsoft.

Yesterday, Microsoft was handed another victory, as first reported by my friend and colleague Liz Montalbano at PC World, with the US Patent and Trademark Office overturning the validity of two Alcatel-Lucent patents, concerning methods for how a user selects calendar entries from an onscreen menu. Microsoft had owed the France-based holder of the Bell Labs patent portfolio some $357.7 million, which has since accrued interest.

But should a federal court act on the USPTO's decision and throw out that verdict -- the last chunk of that billion-and-a-half -- all that may be left is the subject of Microsoft's counterclaim, for which it seeks a half-billion: a way to charge remote multimedia users for quality of service rather than for bytes downloaded. Whether Alcatel-Lucent would have any fight left in it to be willing to play defense, is doubtful.

Skype to be spun off, not sold off, from eBay

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 11:37pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Skype 'S' logo Repeating his belief that the synergies between Skype, eBay, and PayPal would be and are limited, eBay CEO John Donohoe announced today his company will spin off Skype in an initial public offering in 2010. That will mark the five-year anniversary of eBay's acquisition of Skype.

Comments from Donohoe during an earnings call in January of this year caused speculation that auction company eBay was looking to offload popular VoIP service provider Skype. Donohoe said, "I think we're now confident that the synergies between Skype and the other parts of our portfolio are minimal...We are going to continue to run and operate the business. It's not a distraction currently and at such time when we have further announcement to that, we'll let you know, but for now, we are very pleased with the momentum of the business and it's not a distraction."

This announcement follows the news that eBay sold the recommendation service StumbleUpon back to its founders, as the company continues to focus on its principal money making property PayPal, and its relationship to the eBay auction site.

EMC launches cloud storage for VMware first, Microsoft's Hyper-V later

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 11:33pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Built on an entirely new architecture known as the Symmetrix Virtual Matrix Architecture, EMC's new VMax departs from more customary data center storage arrays such as its own DMX-4 through its unprecedented scalability, contended Dave Donatelli, president of EMC's Storage Division, in a webcast today. The new Symmetrix V-Max storage array is designed to scale to tens of thousands of terabytes of storage and tens of millions of I/O operations per second.

The new array also uses APIs from VMware -- a company in which EMC holds majority ownership -- to automate provisioning of storage across hundreds of thousands of VMware virtual machines running on PC servers. But EMC will also provide a set of parallel capabilities for deployments of Microsoft's Hyper-V, predicted Simon Robinson, an analyst at the 451 Group.

"It would be silly for [V-Max] to work only on VMware," agreed Bob Woo, an IDC analyst, in a breakout session today. Many mid-market customers "have made a commitment to Hyper-V." Meanwhile, EMC and VMware have "maintained absolute independence," according to Woo.

"EMC [also] enables customers to intermix drives," EMC's Donatelli said during the webcast. Specifically, the V-Max will support these three storage tiers: EMC's tier 0 SSD Enterprise Flash Drives; tier 1 Fiber Channel drives; and tier 2 SATA Drives.

Based on a virtual matrix interconnect known as RapidIO and EMC's Enginuity storage OS, EMC's new storage architecture consists of commodity components that include 2.3 GHz Intel quad-core Xeon-based storage processors, and 16 host server and 16 disk I/O ports.

A feature called the Director is used to consolidate front-end and back-end functions with global memory, for faster I/O operations. EMC is offering iSCSI, gigabit Ethernet, and 4 Gbps FICON and Fibre Channel connectivity.

Analysts concurred that EMC's extensive support for three tiers of storage is a big breakthrough: "Tiered storage for large organizations used to be a choice between putting data on high-cost disk or low-cost tape. More recently, those disk options have expanded so that performance-oriented data can reside on faster Fibre Channel drives, with less critical data residing on slower but higher-capacity drives such as Serial ATA," according to the 451 Group's Robinson.

"Meanwhile, the emergence of [SSD] drive technology is establishing a new tier of storage, offering super-fast performance for the most demanding applications."

Tiered storage can save money for customers, but only "with careful planning and better understanding of your data types," IDC's Woo said today.

In a related set of enhancements, EMC plans improvements to Virtual LUN functionality that will provide the ability to move data across the tiers "non-disruptively," partly in hopes of spurring more SSD adoption. "Most interesting is that the Virtual LUN technology can migrate between any RAID type and any drive type, from flash through SATA drives," Robinson observed.

In still another pioneering move, EMC is enhancing its SDRF support with EDP, a capability that will use a combination of SRDF/S and SRDF/A technology for protection of both local and geographically remote storage.

"The new SRDF/EDP requires a total of three Symmetric [arrays] (the source Symmetrix, the target, and a third Symmetrix in the middle that acts as a 'pass-thru' array)," Robinson noted in a recent report.

"The unique feature of SRDF/EDP is the use of a pass-thru array...[which] requires no hosts and is used for what EMC claims is a 'no data loss' RPO (recovery point objective) since the local replication is synchronous. The pass-thru array essentially caches in-flight transactions on the way to the remote Symmetrix."

Innovations like these, together with EMC's expanding reach across the data center, are helping to position EMC better in relation to IBM and other competitors, Woo suggested.

"IBM has always been very open, [but] EMC is more than [just] a storage company," the analyst said today, pointing to EMC's buyout of security vendor RSA along with activities in consulting, backup and recovery, and content management. "EMC is likely to give IBM a run for its money."

Amid the minus signs, Intel says there's a bright side

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 11:05pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If it wasn't the general state of the economy taking a toll on Intel this quarter, the numbers from Santa Clara would send stockholders racing toward the nearest open window: Operating income nosedived 68% over the prior year's first quarter, to $670 million on $7.1 billion in revenue -- and that revenue number is less than three-quarters of what Intel was making this time last year.

But in desperate need of a plus sign, Intel is seizing upon one this afternoon: After all that cost-cutting is taken into account, net income was up 176% over the disastrous fourth quarter of last year, to $647 million. That's enough to have CEO Paul Otellini proclaiming the worst is over, telling investors, "We believe PC sales bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns."

We'll see whether that theory holds up after the company's quarterly analysts' call later this afternoon, where we could learn what type of adjustments accounted for that bounce. However, we've already seen evidence that one type of adjustment didn't yield the bounce that Intel usually hopes for: Even though it lumped together sales of its Atom processor -- which should be higher given the greater demand for netbooks and cheaper form-factor PCs -- with its chipsets, sales in that merged department fell 27% over the prior quarter, to $219 million.

Chipsets are not one of Intel's strong suits, and typically contribute to low margins (and 45.6% is a big tumble from 53.1% in the prior quarter), so the fact that Atom wasn't contributing enough to help flatten the losses in the small components department, is not a good sign.

Flash
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player nowif (typeof(embedWikichart) != "undefined") {embedWikichart("http://charts.wikinvest.com/WikiChartMini.swf","wikichartContainer_35E1A901-6F10-FD2D-6645-A673F0FD5484","570","365",{"showAnnotations":"true","ticker":"INTC","liveQuote":"true","rollingDate":"1 year"});}View the full INTC chart at Wikinvest

MotionPlus Wii controllers: The most expensive in console gaming

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 10:23pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Nintendo announced last summer that it would be updating its Wiimote controllers with an add-on called MotionPlus that promises "true 1:1 response in gameplay." Now, the peripheral has a price and a US launch date.

Wii MotionPlus

Similar to the way Wii Play was packaged with an additional Wiimote, the $49.99 Wii Sports Resort will include the MotionPlus controller add-on, and will ship on July 26. It will also be available individually for $19.99. The unit, which plugs into the bottom port on the Wiimote, will not enhance the control of all games. Rather, it will only affect MotionPlus-compatible titles, which with the exception of Red Steel 2 by UbiSoft, will likely all be sports games.

MotionPlus adds an additional rotational sensor to the Wiimote to allow finer-tuned movements on screen. While many have praised the add-on for making the Wii's controller even more accurate, just as many have criticized Nintendo for creating the potential for the most expensive four-player controller setup out of all the consoles.

Based upon Amazon's prices, for example, a single Wii remote with MotionPlus and Nunchuck would cost $73.92. Even without the Nunchuck portion, the controller would still retail for $55.96. By comparison, a new PlayStation 3 Dualshock 3 Wireless controller costs $42.99, and an Xbox 360 wireless controller costs $36.99.

Ooma's service provider denies a role in outage

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 10:20pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

During yesterday afternoon's complete service outage at private VoIP service provider Ooma, along with the simultaneous hold-up of e-mail delivery for some BlackBerry customers, the provider's chief marketing officer, Rich Buchanan, told both customers and reporters through his Twitter feed that Internap, a data co-location services provider, was to blame. But in a statement to Betanews this afternoon, an Internap spokesperson denied any kind of service problem on its side of the network.

The spokesperson told Betanews, "There was a ticket opened with Ooma at Internap regarding this issue...Our NOC personnel determined that there was nothing happening within our network and that it probably was a problem after the hand-off was made from Internap to the Ooma network itself. The Ooma personnel are still investigating...The packet loss they were experiencing during the approximate 90 minutes they were having issues, likely caused dropped calls to their customers (as VoIP is very sensitive to packet loss)."

UPDATE Late this afternoon, Internap's spokesperson added that Ooma's personnel are stating the matter is still under investigation, and that they're not ready to state the incident entirely happened on its side of the network.

At one point via Twitter yesterday, after the service outage had largely subsided, San Francisco Business Times reporter Patrick Hoge questioned Ooma's Buchanan, "Are Ooma's issues linked to more widespread Internet problems in the Valley today?" Buchanan responded, "Ooma issues were linked to an outage at Internap. It also affected RIM, Google, Yahoo, Blue Cross, [T-Mobile], Verizon, and others."

But Internap's spokesperson denied that any service ticket was opened with any other customer yesterday besides Ooma.

Another Twitter user suggested to Buchanan, "Can I suggest some redundancy on voicemail at least, so if this happens at least vmail gets through?" His response: "You certainly can. Failures like this expose the corner cases and we sure found one today."

Quadruple play: The big four touchscreen phone makers make new game plans

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 9:52pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Each of the major US mobile carriers has its own exclusive touchscreen smartphone, and they are providing the fuel for the smartphone market's continuing growth. We are closing in on an all-fronts update, so prepare for another round of comparisons and competition.

AT&T leads the pack with the Apple iPhone, which will receive its 3.0 software update at an unspecified time this summer. T-Mobile has the Android-based G1, which will be updated to Version 1.5 at the end of this month.

An over-the-air firmware update to Verizon's flagship touchphone, the BlackBerry Storm, has been expected for several months, and comments from Verizon representatives this week suggest that it could take place "within the next few weeks." Version 4.7.0.113 of the touchscreen BlackBerry OS has been available in beta for a a while, but remains an "install at your own risk" version. OS .113 is the version that Verizon is expected to roll out, which adds no fewer than 100 bug fixes and feature upgrades, including the absolutely vital fix to the portrait mode soft keyboard. When used in portrait mode, the Storm's onscreen keyboard features keys with two letters instead of one (a la Pearl), making typing quite unintuitive.

Finally, Sprint's eagerly awaited launch of the Palm Pre has been slated to take place some time in the first half of 2009, which technically ends in June. A recent batch of rumors, however, suggest that the device's pre-availability launch could be as early as May 17, with general availability expected on June 29.

For Palm, a lot is riding on the success of this launch. The surprise unveiling of the Pre at CES 2009 took much of the focus off of the company's crippled margins and cash exsanguination, and trained all eyes on the company's revitalization. This alone helped nearly triple the value of Palm's stock in the short four months since the Pre's introduction.

EC may sue Great Britain to stop a sweeping data interception law

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 9:44pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

"Do you want the Internet to turn into a jungle?" asked European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media Viviane Reding, to open her weekly English-language address this morning. "This could happen, you know, if we can't control the use of our personal information online."

Comm. Reding's message accompanied an announcement that the EC has launched the first stage in what could be a long, drawn-out series of proceedings against one of its own member nations, the United Kingdom. At issue is the UK's handling of online privacy laws, under the nearly two-year-old administration of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The surface issue is what made news in the UK, at least in the general press: The EC has been concerned that the behavioral advertising service Phorm, a service built in association with leading UK carrier BT, may be enabling data collection policies that go beyond the limits mandated by EC directives.

But if the EC's problem was with Phorm, it could have made its complaint to BT, which hasn't been even partly state-owned since the early 1990s. No, the EC's complaint against Britain itself runs somewhat deeper than that, although this morning Comm. Reding was only willing to show the proverbial knife with the blade withdrawn. A paragraph deep down in this morning's announcement from the Brussels government shows how even the EC can bury the lede:

"Under UK law, which is enforced by the UK police, it is an offence to unlawfully intercept communications. However, the scope of this offence is limited to 'intentional' interception only," reads the EC statement. "Moreover, according to this law, interception is also considered to be lawful when the interceptor has 'reasonable grounds for believing' that consent to interception has been given. The Commission is also concerned that the UK does not have an independent national supervisory authority dealing with such interceptions."

Although the EC's concern may have been triggered by an investigation into the Phorm matter, as the announcement suggests, nothing about Phorm's behavioral advertising scheme has anything to do with government interception of private messages. British subjects will readily point out that the "interception" language more likely points to a sweeping new extension to existing law proposed last March 16 by Security and Counter-terrorism Minister Vernon Coaker, in a presentation to a key parliamentary committee. That extension is part of what was introduced last year as the Intercept Modernization Programme.

Under the UK's interpretation of the IMP, the new law would force ISPs in the UK to submit communications data regarding its users to a central database maintained by the government. As MP Coaker explains it, the IMP is necessary in order to carry out the EC's directives, which mandate that communications data regarding who speaks with whom, be kept on file for as much as two years. Coaker calls the creation of the IMP a "transposition" of EU law to the UK, as well as an extension of existing UK law regarding telephone traffic to Internet traffic.

The purpose of a centralized database, MP Coaker explained to committee, would be to cut through all the red tape: "To minimize the bureaucratic burden on businesses, particularly small businesses, we want to avoid four or five different communications service providers retaining the same data. So, in discussions with the communications service providers, we will look at who has the various data sets and we will specify through the notice who is required to retain what."

In his speech, MP Coaker suggested that the UK would only need to retain communications data for as little as 12 months. ISPs would only need to retain data in instances where they were specifically requested by government to do so, he said, although it seems impossible for a business to be able to present any data to authorities over a period of time if it had not been retaining that data to begin with.

What some ministers are concerned about is whether the law would extend to communications traffic over social networks, like MySpace or Facebook. Coaker stated that might step beyond the boundaries of the "transposition," though in this particular case, he left the door open, saying he'd welcome working with other ministers in perhaps extending the transposition in that direction.

European Commissioner for the Information Society Viviane Reding, in a weekly address April 14, 2009. Comm. Reding addressed one aspect of the social networking data problem in her address this morning: "Social networking has a strong potential for a new form of communication and for bringing people together, no matter where they are. But is every social networker really aware that technically, all pictures and information uploaded on social networking profiles can be accessed and used by anyone on the Web? Do we not cross the border of the acceptable when, for example, the pictures of the Winnenden school shooting victims in Germany are used by commercial publications just to increase sales? Privacy must in my view be a high priority for social networking providers and for their users."

But this morning's statement from the EC bolsters Reding's comments with some principles that could be used in a pre-emptive proceeding against the UK. Specifically, it alludes to the possibility that if the centralized database created through the IMP revealed something about a person "unintentionally," perhaps by tying together that person's contacts across different media, that information may be justified by law enforcement officials the same way "plain sight" information in the US is deemed admissible in court without a warrant. And if the data behind such a revelation was compiled by someone or something outside of law enforcement entirely...say, a behavioral advertising service, then authorities could give themselves plausible deniability.

"European privacy rules are crystal clear: A person's information can only be used with their prior consent," stated Comm. Reding. "We cannot give up this basic principle, and have all our exchanges monitored, surveyed and stored in exchange for a promise of 'more relevant' advertising! I will not shy away from taking action where an EU country falls short of this duty."

Today's action against the UK marks the first stage of infringement proceedings. The government has two months to respond, after which the EC may issue a formal opinion. If that opinion is challenged or let stand, a formal court case may begin in the European Court of Justice.

New desktop virtualization scheme will enable hybrid Windows deployment

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 7:22pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Just one month after its acquisition of a partner company called Kidaro, which produced desktop virtualization software, Microsoft yesterday announced the immediate availability of a greatly enhanced version of its own desktop virtualization package for its volume license customers. As part of its latest update to Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), Microsoft's new Enterprise Desktop Virtualization software (MED-V) will let companies deploy software running in older versions of Windows, to appear on clients running newer versions such as Vista.

What this means is, software that ran fairly well in Windows XP or Windows 2000, and Web-driven software that runs using Internet Explorer 6 but not IE7 or IE8, can now run in a virtual envelope that leverages Virtual PC. Meanwhile, clients' users won't notice anything unusual; legacy apps' icons will appear on clients' desktops as though they were installed on their local systems.

"MED-V builds on top of Microsoft Virtual PC to run two operating systems on one device, adding virtual image delivery, policy-based provisioning and centralized management," reads a blog post yesterday from the MDOP team's Ran Oelgiesser.

Now, application virtualization is nothing new for Microsoft; two years ago, its acquisition of SoftGrid enabled server-driven apps to appear as though they were installed on the client, including apps for older Windows. What MED-V adds to the picture is a way for virtual envelopes to host legacy apps either way: through the server or through the client, whichever happens to be most convenient at the time. The management software -- part of the latest Kidaro acquisition -- introduces a centralized platform for software management, so even the applications running within the envelope can be governed by policies administered outside the envelope.

Under the architecture of the new system, a central server governs all the images of virtual systems -- "partial desktops," if you will, that run in virtual envelopes. Those images are then distributed in whole or in part through Internet Information Server, depending on whether those images are to be run on the client or through the server, respectively. The client user only sees the products of the virtual image integrated with his regular desktop.

Besides MSDN and TechNet subscribers, MED-V will be available only as part of MDOP, and only through Microsoft's volume licensing service. The terms of those licenses had to be adjusted last week, easing some restrictions so that customers running older OS platforms under virtualization don't have to get charged for those older systems all over again.

Popular Chinese MMO to open in US for free

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 6:14pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Mo Siang aka Titan Online Korean software company EYA Interactive announced the upcoming "Grand Opening Beta" of its Free MMORPG called Titan Online, which is the English-language version of "Mo Siang," a martial arts-themed MMO based in China (both in story and server) and popular in Southeast Asia.

On April 28, Titan Online will open to the public in an unlimited beta, and will let users download and play the game until its commercial launch, which does not yet have a date. All players will begin the game at the same level to foster an environment of fair competition, and once the software has officially been launched, nothing on the player's end will change.

Since the game is based on traditional Chinese folklore, however, it faces a challenge when being brought into a different culture. Many highly nuanced games have faced brutal editing when being ported to a new language and culture for the sake of "audience appeal," which is frequently misunderstood.

One can't help but be reminded of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a series of games based on one of the four major classical novels of Chinese history that has spawned more than 50 different versions, and has its own MMORPG that was released early last year called Sangokushi Online.

Of the vast number of versions of that particular game series, only a handful were released in English, and while not commercially unsuccessful, they are a deep, deep niche product.

However, Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games are themselves a niche product. For each player, there is essentially only one game. An empirical study of 20 MMO games published in Electronic Commerce Research last month found that the average MMORPG player commits 22 hours per week to a game, and will typically stick to playing only that game. So longevity for MMOs is not the problem, it's attracting the initial crowd to provide that long-term participation.

Making it free certainly helps these days, and Titan Online faces competition from Jagex Limited's Runescape, the most popular free MMORPG today. Runescape has a 6.3% market share of MMOs, and is the number four overall in terms of participants, behind World of Warcraft, Lineage II, and Lineage. More than half of those players, according to a 2006 survey, were based in the United States and Canada.

iPhone 3.0, meet Android 1.5

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 5:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Google released a developer preview of the next version of Android, officially adding the "cupcake" features to the operating system's SDK that have been a vague reality for Android users since late last year.

Yesterday evening, Android developer Xavier Ducrohet announced that developers can now download an early version of the Android 1.5 SDK, based upon the Cupcake branch of the Android Open Source Project.

While not as prolific as Apple's iPhone 3.0 update, Android 1.5 introduces APIs for a large number of top-notch features, such as soft keyboards, home screen widget creation, live folder population, interactive MIDI playback, video recording, and support for speech recognition libraries.

"Cupcake" was a development branch of Android that mirrored what was being worked on by Google privately, which the company promised to merge into the main code at an unspecified date. Cupcake was open sourced in the fourth quarter of 2008, so some developers have already created products available to Android users that offer skeletal versions of the features promised in Android 1.5.

Alternative home screen programs such as aHome have already given users a taste of what this update will offer, by including an on-screen keyboard, velocity-based screen swap, a "side drawer" for applications, and the promise of new "add to home screen" functions like Live Folders and Applications.

Ducrohet encourages developers to dig in, but warns that the APIs are not finalized, so any applications based upon this first look may not even work when the final 1.5 SDK is released at the end of this month.

VoIP provider Ooma recovers from complete service outage

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Update banner (stretched)

12:45 pm EDT April 14, 2009 - This afternoon, a spokesperson for the data center co-location service Internap -- a name brought up in connection with both the Ooma and RIM service failures yesterday, which took place at approximately the same time -- denied any service outage, though admitted to some routine router replacements and maintenance.

Ooma's single data center, mentioned by its technical VP in his blog post yesterday, is located on the West Coast -- Internap, meanwhile, is located in Atlanta. Any service issues related to both services may have had to have been incidental.

11:00 am EDT April 14, 2009 - From the very beginning, its value proposition has been to enable businesses to rapidly create its Internet telecommunications infrastructure through the deployment of network hubs, sold for a one-time fee of $250. But yesterday, the complete hub infrastructure of the Ooma network failed completely for as much as four hours during lunchtime on the West Coast, in what its VP and technical chief late yesterday called an "event."

"Between 2PM and 3PM [PDT Monday], Internet connectivity was slowly being restored to our service," wrote Dennis Peng on the company's blog. "However, the flood of ooma Hubs coming back online created an immense amount of load on our provisioning systems. We rushed to add capacity to the system, but the nature of the network outage had interfered with the system's ability to recover by itself."

While VoIP competitors such as Skype rely on the variable P2P capacity of users' PCs to provide the network at large with the bandwidth it requires, Palo Alto-based Ooma's system relies on separate VoIP hardware clients -- the Ooma hubs. They're devices sold through outlets such as Amazon, and after paying the $250 and installing it themselves, customers pay no other fees for the lifetime of the product. Calls may be placed through Ooma to any telephone number -- not just Ooma users.

As the company's sales pitch puts it, traditional phone companies "limit your choices and charge exorbitant fees for the luxury of using outdated services. Instead of answers, the phone company gives you dead ends. They have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into a system meant to lock you in." As Peng described yesterday, however, in a rather honest mea culpa, yesterday's outage appeared to be something related to the general Internet -- something that was out of Ooma's control. Though service engineers rushed to mitigate damage, he says something about this particular Internet outage made it impossible for the self-healing nature of the service's hub networks to repair their own damage. The long-term solution to prevent a reoccurrence of this problem, he added, may be to invest some money into the system.

"Discussions have already started on how to make the service resilient to a similar event in the future. Ooma currently has one data center located in west coast," wrote Peng. "We have planned to light up a second data center in the midwest or east coast this year, and this outage has served as a stark reminder for us to get moving on that. This has also served as a good opportunity for us to re-evaluate our contingency and business continuity plans."

Participants in Ooma's ongoing Twitter discussion yesterday blamed the service outage on a bigger service failure at Internap, a data center, co-location, and content delivery services provider based in Atlanta. They said such an outage affected multiple VoIP services and other major businesses, including Google's Gmail and RIM's BlackBerry service. Indeed, BlackBerry users did report a service backlog, during roughly the same timeframe yesterday, though no mail ended up being lost. Internap has not made any public statements regarding a service outage, and Betanews has contacted Internap for clarification.

eBay to unload StumbleUpon, and that might not be all

Publié: avril 14, 2009, 12:01am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

According to a statement today from its chief architect and founder, Garrett Camp, the business relationship between content location service StumbleUpon and auction service eBay has ended.

"This change will help StumbleUpon move quickly and stay true to its focus: helping people discover interesting Web content," Camp wrote. "Our goal is to make StumbleUpon the Web's largest recommendation engine, and we think this is the best way to get us there."

Accelerating growth, ironically, was the reason Camp gave for eBay's acquisition of his company, upon completion of that deal in May 2007.

According to reports from TechCrunch and others, eBay had hired Deutsche Bank last September to scout for a buyer for the content location service. That's the same Deutsche Bank that has frowned from the very beginning at eBay's acquisition of Skype, the P2P conferencing service. The bank's complaint has always been that Internet VoIP is a low-margin business -- too low for anyone investing in it for growth purposes.

Last January's financial figures tell the tale. eBay's full-year revenue was nicely higher, by 11% annually to $8.54 billion, though revenue for the final quarter of the year dropped by 7% annually -- not a surprise in this economy. But income tapered off more sharply than eBay would have liked. The problem: low margin businesses putting a drain on the company's resources. GAAP operating margins for the final calendar quarter subsided from 28.7% to 22.3%.

So StumbleUpon is one low-margin business off the books. Perhaps there will be another one: This morning, The New York Times reported that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the fellows who sold Skype to eBay in September 2005 for a reported $2.6 billion, are seeking help from private equity firms to buy the service back.

eBay's next quarterly report comes a week from Wednesday, with the annual stockholders' meeting planned for the following week. The time may be ripe to get rid of some more of those low-margin resources.

Bluetooth 3.0 coming next week

Publié: avril 13, 2009, 11:10pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

One week from tomorrow, Bluetooth 3.0 will be unleashed upon the wireless world.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group confirmed to Phone Scoop late last week that next week's All Hands Meeting in Tokyo will be official unveiling of the updated Bluetooth spec.

Bluetooth technology is as convenient as it is ubiquitous, that is to say, it's quite common (installed base: more than 1.5 billion devices) and moderately useful (it has five different categories of use: headset, printing, transfer, music, human input devices). The 3.0 update to the 11-year-old short-range wireless standard, however, will improve upon one of the critical shortcomings of prior versions: its transfer speeds.

Since the Bluetooth 2.1 standard, the Bluetooth SIG has touted the upcoming availability of a technology called Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP). Simply put, it lets Bluetooth piggyback on Wi-Fi. AMP architecture uses Bluetooth to discover a compatible Wi-Fi peer device, authenticate it, then initiate a Wi-Fi connection on 802.11 radios if high throughput is needed. The trick is that it will allow an on-demand Wi-Fi connection while maintaining the low power consumption of Bluetooth, establishing a dynamic, high-speed, personal area network.

This feature will be a cornerstone in the Bluetooth 3.0 specification, and the a big question that will be answered at the AHM in Tokyo next week will be whether devices already equipped with both Bluetooth and 802.11 will be able to perform a firmware upgrade to incorporate the AMP architecture.

Rather than submit to new Korean law, YouTube turns off user uploads

Publié: avril 13, 2009, 10:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In the midst of a Draconian new South Korean law passed April 1 that could force some ISPs to enable lawmakers to suspend their customers' Internet accounts or face fines, Google's YouTube division has turned off some features that could, if misused under the new law, land its customers in prison.

The South Korean National Assembly narrowly passed a sweeping new law whose purpose was to create a system of accountability for the nation's Internet users. While ostensibly the new law is designed to discourage piracy, Korean journalists such as Korea Times' Kim Tong-hyung provide evidence that the law's true purpose may be to enable government authorities to keep tabs on all kinds of online behavior, including political and social networking.

The new law, whose translated bill title was the Orwellian sounding "Comprehensive Measures for Information Protection on the Internet," literally makes it a crime for someone to post defamatory information against another person, should that person register a complaint. In order to make the law workable, the country is instituting a "real-names" login system for all its ISPs, in an attempt to create some kind of audit trail leading every kind of transaction back to a traceable source. All this, ostensibly, in the name of protecting piracy.

The English-language Korean news provider The Hankyoreh quotes the Internet division chief for the Korea Communications Commission, Lim Cha-shik, as heralding the law's passage as a way to calm citizens' fears "about an increase in the disadvantages associated with Internet use, such as personal information leaks and the spread of harmful information."

Rather than find itself in the middle of a future political and civil rights debacle with another Southeast Asian nation, Google yesterday decided it would suspend the ability for its Korean users to upload any videos, or post any kind of commentary whatsoever alongside videos. The changes were announced last Thursday on the YouTube Korea blog.

Also that day, the company's VP for global communications, Rachel Whetstone, posted a lengthy explanation, which also amounted to something of an apology. Translated into English, it loses a lot of its grace, although it quite clearly says that Google does not wish to be used as an instrument for governments' dissemination of information about its users.

Whetstone also called into question the need for governments to monitor certain categories of communications, noting that while Germany has banned the practice of Nazism, it encourages communication about Nazism in order for citizens to be conscientious of how evil the practice actually is.

This afternoon, Google sent Betanews an English-language human translation of the company's blog post, which includes this: "We have a bias in favor of people's right to free expression in everything we do. We are driven by a belief that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual. We believe that it is important for free expression that people have the right to remain anonymous if they choose."

The Hankyoreh also did a much better job of translating Whetstone's Korean statement than Google's automated service, citing her as having written, "Google thinks the freedom of expression is most important value to uphold on the Internet. We concluded in the end that it is impossible to provide benefits to internet users while observing this country's law because the law does not fall in line with Google's principles."

Users may still be able to overcome YouTube's roadblocks -- if they want to take the risk -- by changing their country of origin in their profiles to any other country. A YouTube blog page actually explains this. However, users may still be taking a risk, especially if the new real-names login system takes account of uploads at the ISP level. It doesn't seem likely that such a bypass would completely absolve YouTube, under the new law, from conspiracy to commit an insult.

Amazon, where being gay makes you invisible

Publié: avril 13, 2009, 9:33pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

What's being called a "glitch" on Amazon.com has exclusively affected books dealing with gay and lesbian themes.

On one side, Amazon's Kindle 2 is the central element in the civil rights conflict between authors and those with reading disabilities. On the other side, Amazon.com is now accused of de-ranking and re-classifying content as "adult literature" simply because it contains homosexual themes or characters. Specifically, the complaint is that listings for some books with homosexual content are not displaying comparative sales rankings.

Amazon's Director of Corporate Communications Patty Smith issued a statement yesterday that said, "There was a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed. We're working to correct the problem as quickly as possible."

Calling it a "glitch" caused immediate fallout, as bloggers discovered that titles that were removed from sales rankings did not include actual adult literature, and instead affected books with central themes of coming to terms with one's sexuality like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, and Paul Monette's Becoming a Man. Even titles such as Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which is a satire of gender roles in Victorian literature, and the biography of comedienne and talk show host Ellen Degeneres were included.

In Betanews tests this afternoon, we checked a handful of books with very mature themes, including the classic Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. Its listing contained a sales ranking. We also checked some titles which clearly passed the Justice Potter Stewart test for pornography (no, we won't provide links). Those too contained sales rankings. (Next time our spouses come near our computers, we'll have an excuse..."It's a Betanews test, dear.")

But several very legitimate, non-pornographic works of fiction with gay and lesbian themes had omitted their sales rankings. And searches of author names typed into the Search field also failed to turn up listings for non-pornographic lesbian-themed material, even though that material actually does exist in the catalog. However, when that material is located in the catalog by other means, clicking on the author's name does turn up a list of all available works from that author.

The specificity of this "glitch" has caused many to suspect it was an act of homophobic censorship.

Of course, this suspicion is not helped by the the fact that the first titles returned by a query of "homosexuality" on Amazon include A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, and 101 Frequently Asked Questions about Homosexuality, in which a "former homosexual" uses biblical scripture to answer those questions.

While no unified action against Amazon has taken place yet, individual protests to the glitch have been wide and diverse. A petition objecting to Amazon's treatment of the situation has gained more than 13,600 signatures, with a goal of 100,000, and a number of Twitter groups such as #amazonfail, and #glitchmyass have popped up.

The nation's largest independent book retailer Powells.com reacted to the news yesterday via Twitter, saying, "That certainly is disturbing. Fortunately, Powell's will never censor this material." Similarly, leading booksellers BN.com and Borders.com have not de-ranked the titles that were affected in the Amazon glitch.

Author Craig Seymour says he has been dealing with this issue since February, when his Amazon Sales Rank disappeared, so that when a user would search for his book by name, nothing would come up. He then received a notification that said, "The sales rank was not displayed for the following reasons: The ISBN #1416542051 was classified as an Adult product." Seymour says that his book was effectively "coded out of circulation."

Update banner (stretched)

7:45 pm EDT April 13, 2008 - In a statement to the Seattle P-I this afternoon, Amazon spokesperson Drew Herdener acknowledged the cataloging error once again, but added that it was inaccurate to characterize the problem as being limited to gay and lesbian titles. "In fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica," Herdener wrote.

We happened to test a few book titles in some of those other categories (again, with apologies to our respective spouses), and did not notice search rankings being omitted from the non-pornographic, heterosexually themed titles we chose.

[Scott M. Fulton, III contributed some testing to this article.]

IE8 automatic update option likely to begin next week

Publié: avril 13, 2009, 6:13pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In a heads-up message on the company's IE blog over the Easter weekend, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 lead program manager Eric Hebenstreit warned users that as soon as next week, some Windows users will be automatically given the option of downloading IE8. It will not be a massive land rush, and as Hebenstreit repeated, the company's new Web browser will not automatically install itself.

"IE8 will not automatically install on machines," the program manager wrote, emphasizing what will be Microsoft's general policy in this new and more careful era of interoperability. "Users must opt-in to install IE8."

So although users with Automatic Updates turned on may receive something next week, that something will not be the Web browser itself. Instead, it will be a "High Priority" (for XP and Windows Server 2003) or "Important" (for Vista and Windows Server 2008) "Welcome to Internet Explorer 8" message, giving the user the option of bothering her about the matter later, installing IE8 now, or not installing IE8 at all. Automatic Update won't bother the user about it again, Hebenstreit wrote, though she'll still be able to install IE8 manually if she changes her mind later.

Last January, Microsoft began distributing for larger enterprises an IE8 Blocker Toolkit, a policy-based mechanism enabling admins to prevent their clients' automatic updates from receiving the Welcome Message package if they elect to remain with IE7 (or earlier). However, general users need not download this toolkit if they want to block the automatic update themselves. As the instructions reveal, the policy simply creates a new Registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\8.0\DoNotAllowIE80. If that key exists and its value is set to 1, then automatic distribution of the IE8 Welcome package will be blocked, according to the company.

Novell rolls out its Service-Driven Data Center initiative

Publié: avril 11, 2009, 2:54am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

An offshoot of its Linux and open source software activities, Novell's new Service-Driven Data Center initiative revolves around three components: SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) 11, PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, and Novell Business Service Management tools.

Announced at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) last month, SLES 11 features data center enhancements such as the Xen 3.1.1 hypervisor, for virtualization; a new Swap over NFS capability for remote storage; and new control groups and CPUset features for more fine-grained management of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources.

Novell's PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, on the other hand, are based on technology obtained through the company's acquisition of PlateSpin in February of 2008.

In a conference call to announce the buyout, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian said that PlateSpin's technologies fit into multi-operating system virtualization and physical infrastructures with support not just for Xen, but also for hypervisors from Microsoft and VMware.

Platespin and its flagship PowerConvert product are "now owned by Novell and the key thing to understand is [the] principal of 'workload portability,' where a 'workload' is a server/application/data combination on a server or virtual machine," wrote Simon Gallagher, a senior technical architect for Novell partner ioko, in a blog post last fall. Gallagher described PowerConvert as allowing systems administrators "to be totally flexible in how you provision, change or decommission server instances by removing almost all dependencies on underlying hardware or hypervisor choices." Novell has since changed the name of PlateSpin PowerConvert to PlateSpin Migrate, noted Patrick van der Veen, a Novell PlateSpin engineer.

Novell's new Business Service Management tools -- also announced in March, but a couple of weeks before the OSBC -- are designed to help organizations reduce costs, manage complexity, and mitigate risks. The tools include Business Service Manager; Business Service Level Manager; myMO Executive Dashboard, for role-based visualization; Business Experience Manager, for application performance monitoring; and myCMDB, for IT infrastructure configuration modeling and analysis. Novell's Service-Driven Data Center will also use blueprints for ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), a set of standardized concepts and policies for managing IT infrastructure, development and operations.

YouTube + Universal = Vevo

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 11:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Another day, another arbitrarily-named video service.

Though Vevo is a name that could very easily be lost among the likes of Veoh and TiVo, the soon-to-be launched music video site has backers that are far from forgettable: Google and Vivendi, or, more specifically, YouTube and Universal Music Group.

The two companies hope they will be able to use their brand power to create a site that can attract and keep advertisers. Though YouTube is the Internet's most visited video site, it has been less than efficacious in capitalizing on its high traffic. Sites such as Hulu have become just as profitable (if not more, in some cases) than YouTube, with a market share 20 times smaller.

This is because user engagement with advertisements on YouTube is much lower, and content quality is much lower. On Hulu, for example, users are given access to high-quality/value content only after they have been shown a sponsor's message. YouTube's overlaid ads can be clicked off, and the advertisements outside of the viewing window don't demand your attention in order to give you the video you're there to see. Vevo will take a similar tack to Hulu in offering "premium music video content."

Vevo will be fully owned by Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of French media giant Vivendi, and the technology will be provided by Google. Revenue from Vevo will be shared between YouTube and Universal, as will revenue from Universal content hosted on YouTube.

The title "premium music video content" should sound familiar, as it's the same content that YouTube blocked from view in the UK due to a spat with the Performing Rights Society. PRS proposed a royalty rate hike that would have made videos too costly to display.

But if YouTube commanded more advertising income, it may have been more accommodating to the demands of the publishers, writers, and performers in that instance.

Analyst Roger Kay takes a cue from the NAB, with the 'Mac Tax'

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 11:42pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger L. Kay It should be no surprise, especially to long-time Mac users, that noted analyst Roger L. Kay, currently with Endpoint Technologies, is a supporter of the Windows "ecosystem." His opinions with regard to Windows are very much on the record, and he and I have often joined together with our colleagues, in brisk, lively, but fair discussions about the relative value of software and hardware on different platforms.

So frankly, Kay's latest white paper (PDF available here) which is a cost examination for home users planning complete at-home networks on Windows vs. Mac platforms (which Microsoft admits to having sponsored), comes to conclusions which should be no surprise to anyone on two fronts: First, Kay illustrates how much more individuals are likely to pay for Apple versus brand-name equipment from suppliers such as Dell and HP. Second, Kay takes Apple to task for charging a premium, and that he's done so isn't news either.

Not even Kay's key metaphor is particularly new for Kay; those of us who've carried on conversations with him have heard it before. But this week, Microsoft has been pushing Kay's white paper by attaching itself to that metaphor -- one that has the strange ring of a similar political approach being taken by the National Association of Broadcasters, on a completely separate issue. Kay -- and Microsoft -- are calling the extra money some customers are willing to pay for Mac equipment an "Apple tax."

"For the past several years, Apple has been gaining share based on improved product offerings and an aggressive advertising campaign as well as Microsoft's stumble on Vista," Kay writes, shocking no one. "The combination of Apple's great execution and Microsoft's missteps has led a lot of converts to the Apple world. Mac is in flood tide. Cool is in... Or was in. Until the economic landscaped changed. Now, formerly carefree spenders are taking a sharper look at how much that cool really costs. And, oh, by the way, is it really so cool, while we're at it?"

Endpoint Technologies analyst Roger L. Kay Kay's current message plays very well to Microsoft's current marketing message for Windows-based PCs...eerily well. In the last several days prior to the release of Kay's white paper, we've heard and read a lot about the Mac tax, whose symbology is apparently designed to convey the impression that Apple users are paying more for essentially the same equipment and performance. Kay himself has been part of the buildup, writing in BusinessWeek last month that Apple has been a victim of its own success in recent months, as evidenced by the rising number of malicious attacks against the Mac platform.

One can't help but notice how well-produced Microsoft's own presentation of this message is being handled, including the IRS tax form mockup featured in Brandon LeBlanc's blog post yesterday.

There's a certain political ring to Microsoft's metaphor of choice, an unavoidable resemblance to the NAB's campaign against the removal of performance royalties exemptions from terrestrial radio stations, a subject of heated deliberations in Congress for the last three years. The NAB's campaign this week was given the name "No Performance Tax," and paints the recording industry as a cartel conspiring against the entire music promotion business, to collect from broadcast radio what it collects from Internet radio.

It's not a real tax, of course, but the way it's portrayed has made some believe that Congress is truly deliberating a real tax, a surcharge. Kay's language in his white paper isn't that sneaky, but the metaphor can be construed to present a picture that Apple is the principal recipient of a windfall surcharge -- in his hypothetical case, nearly $3,400 more being spent for a complete Apple-based home network, over comparable Windows-based products selling for under $2,700.

But there's a few key facts that Kay left out. First of all, nothing at all about his hypothetical family's PC system of choice -- comprised of Dell and HP PCs, and accessories from notables such as Linksys, LiteOn, and Iomega -- is as hard-wired to Windows as the Apple-based system's parts are to Mac OS. To be fair, Kay's comparison is one between an x86-based platform where Windows is pre-installed, and one where Mac OS is installed -- and in the former case, a home user could choose Linux.

If Linux entered this discussion, then Microsoft's typical argument against Linux could kick in. I've heard it before, even recently: Users will willingly pay something extra for reliability, for performance, for having real companies backing them up when problems arise, for having the better software. If there's a premium, then at least it's worth something. Now, if that argument sounds familiar, it's because it's the same argument Apple has used since the early 1990s to back up the "Mac premium;" and if Microsoft's avoiding echoing that argument, it's probably playing it smart.

Secondly, the tax metaphor gives the impression that Apple is reaping a huge surplus for essentially the same equipment. It's not. Gross margins for Apple aren't terrible, but they haven't been great in recent months. At about 33% overall and flat, Apple does make more for its equipment than competitors such as Dell (18%), but it's not 74% -- which is a conclusion one could draw from Kay's numbers if he were to do the math the wrong way.

Perhaps more importantly, though, it seems a little sad that after all these years of allowing others to make its case for it, Microsoft's first serious charge at Apple is based around something as plainly obvious to everyone who's ever purchased a Mac as its relative expense. By avoiding the qualitative side of the argument -- and I actually believe there is one -- Microsoft is leaving itself open to a counter-attack. And my fear is that Apple, clever as it may be, will create a professorial, number-crunching, metaphor-generating character to represent Microsoft's case...a character who, to some of us, at least, might look a little familiar.

Google's Street View vehicle trounced by law of physics

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 9:43pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left -- and, sometimes, two rights make a wrong. Take, for instance, Google's Street View function, well-liked by the uncertain motorist. Take, also, the idea of focused concentration on the road, a very good idea for drivers. Unfortunately, those two good ideas didn't combine so well for a Street View photo van in Pittsburgh.

As noted by Gawker and displayed by Google, a recent pass by the vehicle not too far from the baseball stadium was going well -- sunny day, everything's A-OK -- until the pole-borne camera attempted to occupy the same space as a low bridge overhead. The aftermath is visible online; not so useful for mapping purposes, but a nice warning as to how not to go about the journey.

Time Warner Cable responds to bandwidth cap complaints with price cap plan

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 7:21pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

In a statement this morning, Time Warner COO Landel Hobbs announced a $150-per-month pricing tier for high volume users, which he says is meant to stem user complaints over Time Warner's tests of capped bandwidth usage.

"We've heard the passionate feedback and we've taken action to address our customers' concerns," according to Hobbs. In a controversial early trial in Beaumont, Texas, Time Warner has been charging customers between $29.95 and $54.90 a month based on data consumption and connection speed. Customers have then been charged an extra $1 for each gigabyte over their plan limit. The ISP had planned to use the same general price structure in an expanded trial of capped bandwidth usage in the cities of Rochester, N.Y., Greensborough, N.C., and San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

But now, in the four new test cities, high volume users will be offered a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month with speeds of 10 Mbps downstream / 1 Mbps upstream. The Turbo package also calls for a $1 per GB overage charge. But all overage charges will be capped at $75 per month, so that for $150 per month, usage will be virtually unlimited. Time Warner will also test a pricing tier for light Internet users offering 1 GB per month for $15 at speeds of 768 / 128 Kbps, with an overage fee of $2 per extra GB. In addition, the ISP is stepping up the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for its Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, while retaining the same pricing. Time Warner will also charge overage fees of $1 per GB per month on those plans. Trials of the new pricing tiers announced today are slated to start in Rochester and Greensborough in August, and in San Antonio and Austin in October.

Another round of AnyDVD improvements cracks more BD+ discs

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 7:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download AnyDVD HD 6.5.4.0 from Fileforum now.

In what's becoming a monthly affair for Slysoft, the makers of the DVD and Blu-ray backup disc system AnyDVD have released another update, this time with the capability to back up even more discs with the more sophisticated BD+ protection scheme.

What was supposed to be the beauty of BD+, from publishers' perspective, was its versatility and adaptability in the face of new cracks. But as it turns out, much of the software being used to break protection is like AnyDVD HD -- used mostly for non-malicious purposes, by folks who want to protect the media they legitimately paid for. As a result, breaking the protection is becoming a viable commercial enterprise, making content publishers run faster to adapt broken encryption schemes.

Early adopters are reporting today that use of AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD on systems with Avast Anti-virus software are receiving false positives that can be ignored. There's also a small, though growing, number of BD+ encoded discs that still cannot be copied yet, including the North American (Region A) edition of the Academy Award winning film, The Wrestler.

Live Labs will be a little less live, as Lindsay moves to RIM

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 6:02pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Restructuring is a process that a great many companies, both big and small, are going through in recent days. But Microsoft isn't accustomed to being one of those companies that shares its pain with its users -- case in point, the 2006 announcement of Windows Vista's delay, which was announced to the public as being "on track," in an unscheduled "road map update."

The sad fact this morning is that Live Labs, the Microsoft project responsible for one of the most innovative promotions in all of software this year -- the synthesizing of hundreds of simultaneous photographs of Pres. Obama's inauguration -- is being downsized. This morning's announcement from Microsoft was an effort to say it's not painful and it doesn't mean too much and everything's fine, which in and of itself is an indicator that it's not.

"A number of teams from within the lab will be joining product groups around the company," reads this morning's announcement. "For instance, the social streams team will be joining MSN. Some of our engineers will be helping out with the next generation of Windows Mobile. And others are off to Live Search and Microsoft Advertising. The rest of us will continue our work on building new web experiences, as we always have. But moving great people and projects into the product groups has always been part of our process, so today's news is entirely consistent with what we've always done."

Maybe, if you count Research In Motion as a "product group." Don Lindsay, Live Labs' former high-profile director, is now listed on his own LinkedIn page as the Vice President for User Experience at RIM -- a huge win for the BlackBerry maker.

In a January 2008 interview with Long Zheng of I Started Something, Lindsay described the work he was doing with Photosynth as creating the model for product development that could be accomplished incrementally and seamlessly, without the end user having to be too concerned with the stark and surprising nature of changes.

"New technologies can be intimidating," Lindsay told Zheng, "so the challenge with something like Photosynth is figuring out how to best package and deliver it such that the technology effectively 'disappears' and users can simply dive in, be rewarded and not have to concern themselves with what is new or different. If the capabilities the technology enables are conspicuous, are valuable to the user and we don't consciously put roadblocks in their way, then we've been successful."

It was a very non-Microsoft philosophy that Lindsay was building, and he was actually doing a pretty good job of it. He might not have made a very good fit at Google. But in joining RIM, Lindsay could be placing himself in the position of producing a trademark look-and-feel for a handset class that desperately needs it. Reports have inaccurately placed Lindsay at Apple during the time it was developing the iPhone; in fact, Lindsay's tenure at Apple only stretched to 2003. But during that time, he led the team that developed Aqua, the trademark appearance of Mac OS that remains the envy of Microsoft...which may continue for the foreseeable future.

The Live Labs team was also responsible for Seadragon, the well-reviewed experimental system for picture browsing for mobile devices, most ostensibly and surprisingly the Apple iPhone. Those Live Labs engineers joining the Windows Mobile team may not be producing any more iPhone apps. And Matthew Hurst, the fellow behind the intriguing Social Streams aggregator of content from social networks, tells the world this morning, that he's excited to join MSN. He claims to be taking Social Streams with him, though MSN has never been known to be a developmental utopia.

Silicon Valley phone and Internet service down, sabotage suspected

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 12:56am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Service to Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint customers in the southern San Francisco Bay area was lost today in an incident being blamed on sabotage. Phone and Internet access went down on Thursday morning when four underground fiberoptic cables in San Jose and two cables in San Carlos, California were cut.

The outage also disrupted 911 emergency services. NETCOM, the dispatch center for local fire and policies agencies, has been able to receive 911 calls placed from landline phones today, but not from cell phones, according to the Mercury News. Police said they are investigating how the cables were cut. Service was expected to be fully restored by this evening. A smaller Comcast outage impacting 4,500 customers in San Jose started at around 1:00 pm PDT today.

EU to debate whether the Internet has outmoded public broadcasting

Publié: avril 10, 2009, 12:51am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In what could be a long, but fundamental, rethinking of the role governments play in subsidizing the public dissemination of information throughout Europe, the EU Parliament will begin considering a possible redrafting of regulations passed in 2001 regarding the role of public broadcasters -- which in Europe means the corporations subsidized by taxes or licenses rather than advertising. At issue is a new question brought about by the evolution of the Internet: As long as private entities are spending billions to make broadband and wireless information services available, why should public broadcasters get all the breaks and be subsidized to compete on the same level?

"It must be noted that commercial broadcasters, of whom a number are subject to public service requirements, also play a significant role in achieving the objectives of the Amsterdam Protocol to the extent that they contribute to pluralism, enrich cultural and political debate and widen the choice of programmes," reads the latest draft of an EU commission report (PDF available here). That report calls for public comment on the role of public broadcasters' subsidies, during a period slated to begin in July.

"Moreover," the report continues, "newspaper publishers and other print media are also important guarantors of an objectively informed public and of democracy. Given that these operators are now competing with broadcasters on the Internet, all these commercial media providers are concerned by the potential negative effects that State aid to public service broadcasters could have on the development of new business models."

Up until the 1980s, Europe's public broadcasters (for example, the British Broadcasting Corp.) were widely perceived as the caretakers of culture for their native countries. Commercial competitors, while encouraged, were often viewed as infusing prurient, objectionable, and gratuitous elements into popular media, leading to the image (however false) of a national culture that's consistently at war with what amuses people.

But the introduction of the Web led to a blurring of the distinctions between public and private media producers, such that the public itself appears to be neglecting to apply the usual distinction between the "cultural" side and the "popular" side. At this time last year, the European Commissioned opened up public comment for precisely this same debate, essentially asking whether there remains a class of media provider that's entitled to public assistance.

At that time, a public media advocacy group called The Open Society Initiative, in a submission that is likely to be repeated again this year, argued that any perception that it's the public broadcasters that have the advantage is a false one. As the OSI wrote, "All public service broadcasters today -- even those performing most successfully -- are caught in an unsustainable and vicious circle whereby on the one hand they need to justify their privileges by offering standard-setting output in mainstream strands, while at the same time also provide services that commercial rivals do not offer, notably in cultural, educational, children's, and minority programming."

Many public broadcasters have an intent to provide service over not just the Web, but the continent's growing mobile digital TV service. Should they qualify for state aid to do so, even though they may be making the same profit as commercial competitors? A controversial 2003 European court decision referred to as "the Altmark case" ruled that, mainly for diplomatic purposes (but also for appropriations bills), when a state government gives help to a public broadcaster or other utility to run its service, it's not officially state aid at all. In other words, think of it as the government fulfilling its civic duty, not running a media company.

But since the EU is made up of many nations, and since all those nations do business with one another, the fact that public broadcasters are media companies mean they must do business internationally. Case in point again: the BBC, which distributes the rights to one of the US' most popular TV shows, "Dancing with the Stars," and operates the commercial BBC America cable channel in the States. Those are both commercial deals; so whatever you choose to call the money the BBC receives, is it still entitled to it...especially since the commercial products in these cases are exports, and therefore not vital to its nation's cultural health?

"As the Court of Justice has observed: 'When aid granted by the State or through State resources strengthens the position of an undertaking compared with other undertakings competing in intra-Community trade the latter must be regarded as affected by that aid,'" reads this week's draft document from the EU commission. "This is clearly the position as regards the acquisition and sale of programme rights, which often takes place at an international level. Advertising, too, in the case of public broadcasters who are allowed to sell advertising space, has a cross-border effect, especially for homogeneous linguistic areas across national boundaries. Moreover, the ownership structure of commercial broadcasters may extend to more than one Member State. Furthermore, services provided on the Internet normally have a global reach."

So now, the question becomes whether public broadcasters are entitled to...something, when competing against private entities in international markets, as opposed to cultural affairs? If the tide of public opinion shifts in favor of market forces, member states could foresee a time when they spin off all or part of their interest in public broadcasters and Internet content providers, perhaps in acquisition deals with existing media giants. And then the whole question of reducing competition rears its ugly head again.

Protesters confront Author's Guild over Kindle text-to-speech

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 10:38pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

By taking Amazon to task over the text-to-speech function of the Kindle 2, the Author's Guild has put itself in an undesirable position. Whereas the feature was originally open for use on any text contained within the device, the Author's Guild is now pressuring Amazon into letting publishers decide on an individual basis whether a book should be enabled with "voice performance" abilities.

At the end of March, twenty groups representing visually and cognitively impaired individuals, such as the American Council of the Blind, the International Dyslexia Association, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, joined together and formed the Reading Rights Coalition to oppose the action of the Author's Guild.

The Coalition's mission statement says, "Sadly, the Authors Guild does not support equal access for us. The Guild has told us that to read their books with text-to-speech we must either submit to a special registration system (that not all may qualify for and that would expose disability information to all future eBook reader manufacturers) and prove our disabilities -- or pay extra."

This week, the coalition, led by the National Federation of the Blind protested in front of the Offices of the Author's Guild in New York, shouting "Stop the Greed, We Want to Read!"

The Guild issued a statement following the protests, explaining its position: "The Authors Guild will gladly be a forceful advocate for amending contracts to provide access to voice-output technology to everyone. We will not, however, surrender our members' economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can't afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights."

If the guild is trying to gain sympathy, it will have a very difficult time when it pits "economic rights" against civil rights.

Will Windows XP keep ruling the netbook?

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 10:32pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Since the shipment last year of the earliest netbooks, Linux has fallen drastically behind Windows XP, according to new research by two industry analyst groups, Ovum and the NPD Group. Meanwhile, some people are touting both Windows 7 and the Android variant of Linux as future replacements of sorts for the existing netbook operating systems. Specifically, XP's share of netbook units shipped soared from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February 2009, according to data released this week by NPD Retail Tracking Service.

"After a strong start, Linux netbooks have been overtaken by Windows," concurred Laurent Lachal, an Ovum analyst, in summing up the results of a new netbook report by Ovum.

But the Ovum analyst also pinpointed Google's Android as a Linux distribution that might work out better than its predecessors as a netbook OS.

Just this week, an Acer executive cast doubt on the notion that either Android or Windows 7 has reached readiness yet for netbooks.

Undoubtedly, the massive shift to XP is partly due to the late arrival of viable Windows-based netbooks. Asus led the way with a Linux netbook at the start of 2008. By November, however, Asus' emphasis had turned to XP -- in the United States, at least.

"Linux is going well for us, especially in Europe. But now we're focusing on Windows XP, becauuse a lot of people find it easier to use," Josh Norem, senior technical marketing specialist at Asus, told Betanews at a pre-CES press event in New York City in January.

The reversing tide impacted other vendors, too. In September of '08, when Dell rolled out with its first netbooks, only the Windows XP edition shipped initially.

But observers of various persuasions -- ranging from Microsoft to Canonical, the vendor supporting the Ubuntu flavor of Linux -- have reported high return rates for Linux PCs.

"Users simply expect the Windows experience. When they realize their Linux-based netbook PC doesn't deliver that same quality of experience, they get frustrated and take it back," contended Brandon LeBlanc, a "Windows Experience" blogger for Microsoft.

"Here's a telling stat: In the UK, Carphone Warehouse dropped Linux-based netbook PCs, citing customer confusion as a reason for a whopping 1-in-5 return rate."

In a post on the Microsoft blog last Friday, LeBlanc also declared that, over the year ahead, the next generation of netbook PCs will be outfitted with Windows 7, for "even richer experiences and greater utility."

At the very same time, Ovum has forecast a "new generation of lower-priced, but less easy to use and less capable netbooks" for later in 2009, according to Ovum's Lachal.

Linux vendors intrigued by this new, "sub-$200" netbook market should concentrate on "the netbook as an appliance and on specialized distributions, especially Android (which is currently focused on smartphones). These are more likely than generic distributions like Ubuntu to make it in the netbook MID (mobile Internet device) space," Lachal suggested.

Asus and FreeScale Semiconductor both revealed Android netbook plans in February, "And more will follow," the analyst predicted, in a March 16 blog post on telecomseurope.net.

Yet if consumers were frustrated by earlier $400 Linux netbooks, will those high return rates really get any lower for sub-$200 Android netbooks, especially when carriers like AT&T are already selling subsidized Windows netbooks from Acer, LG, and Dell for under $100?

Acer, for one, does not seem to be leaning in an Android direction at the moment for netbooks, despite its announcement of an Android smartphone in February and its reported activities in testing Android on bigger devices. At an Acer launch of new PCs earlier this week in New Jersey, Jim Wong, an Acer senior VP, maintained that Android doesn't yet provide the ability to "view a full Web" on netbooks.

Wong added that Windows 7 Starter Kit might not be a "good environment" for netbooks, either -- not at this point, anyhow.

But Android and Windows 7 are both still in the early stages -- and Microsoft is definitely undeterred about the future role of its 2009-model OS on netbooks.

"Looking forward, we can confidently say that no matter how netbook PC hardware evolves, we're gearing up to ensure that Windows 7 will run great on them," asserted Microsoft's LeBlanc. "We've been testing Windows 7 on netbook PCs since before Windows 7 was feature complete, and our plan is to enable these small notebook PCs to run any edition of Windows 7."

New hope for US memory maker Spansion after big Samsung settlement

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 9:09pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Bringing to a quiet end a case where one of America's brightest hopes for competing in microprocessors had vowed to go down swinging, Spansion -- the producer of flash memory born from an AMD spinoff -- settled its case brought last November against global NAND flash powerhouse Samsung. Spansion will receive a one-time payment of $70 million in cash, and the two companies have agreed to share each others' patent portfolios.

The news is exactly what Spansion needs right now to survive, having filing for bankruptcy just last month. A few weeks ago, the company reported fiscal first quarter revenue of about $400 million, which isn't small change by any means. But that's a 15% annual drop, and the flash memory business has notoriously thin margins.

One of the restructuring options on the table for Spansion -- at least as of a few weeks ago -- was the sale of some or even all of its manufacturing facilities, retaining only its IP portfolio and maintaining an "asset light" strategy. But if that's the type of division Spansion wanted to become in the first place, AMD might never have sold it off.

In a press report this afternoon, Jim Handy of Objective Analysis said he believed the settlement was good news for Samsung as well. The crown jewel of Spansion's portfolio is a charge trapping technology that enables a single bit of memory to hold three possible states instead of just two. Now, that one-time payment, Handy said, may end up reducing Samsung's allotment for royalty payments over time.

"The settlement is probably...a really good deal for Samsung's semiconductor business, since they will only make a one-time payment for Spansion's key charge trapping technology instead of an ongoing royalty stream which would most likely have been a percentage of sales, payments that could rise to considerably more than this one-time payment," Handy wrote. "Meanwhile, Samsung's cell phone group, who has awarded Spansion with vendor awards for a number of years, can feel more comfortable about the future of a valued supplier."

As for Spansion, Handy said last November he thought the company would be forced to explore a merger, perhaps with a company like Broadcom with the muscle to compete against Samsung. But this agreement -- which Handy now concedes was "nervy" though fruitful for Spansion -- may have delayed or averted such an outcome.

Microsoft used software activation without a license, jury finds

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 6:56pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In a unanimous and complete decision by a Rhode Island US District Court jury yesterday, Microsoft was found guilty of willfully infringing upon an inventor's 1996 patent for a continual software activation and licensing system -- effectively saying that Microsoft stole the technology for preventing users from stealing its technology. The inventor -- an Australian named Richard B. Frederickson, III, of Uniloc Private, Ltd. -- was awarded $388 million USD, or more than half a billion Australian dollars.

The records on Frederickson's suit, dating back to 2005, are too old for public online availability, otherwise we'd do our usual citation of the original suit. But the single patent that Frederickson was defending was for a system that only enables software to run at any time at all, only if the licensing mechanism lets it do so. It's the software activation scheme that has become one of Windows' and Office's trademarks -- the very system that Microsoft first introduced to Betanews in 2001. At that time, the company emphasized the discovery it claimed to have made, of a system that can detect when the underlying hardware for the software has been changed from the original point of licensing, to disable images of that software from being copied and run on multiple PCs.

As Frederickson's 1996 patent summary describes it, "In broad terms, the system according to the invention is designed and adapted to allow digital data or software to run in a use mode on a platform if and only if an appropriate licensing procedure has been followed. In particular forms, the system includes means for detecting when parts of the platform on which the digital data has been loaded has changed in part or in entirety as compared with the platform parameters when the software or digital data to be protected was for example last booted or run or validly registered."

The jury verdict showed that Microsoft's defense was not that Microsoft had discovered the concept of software activation for itself -- as it has claimed in 2001 -- but that Frederickson's patent was invalid due to prior art. Specifically, Microsoft claimed that another inventor came up with the basic distribution principle in a 1983 patent for a software distribution mechanism invention. The jury unanimously voted "No" on Microsoft's defense claim. Microsoft also claimed that the whole notion of software activation was obvious enough not to require an invention. Granted, Microsoft did not cite any patents it may have held -- if it had, it could have countersued on the basis of their validity. Again, the jury voted "No."

In a statement first issued to Reuters this morning, Microsoft stated it will ask the court to overturn the verdict, but did not give any indication that it might appeal. A willful infringement victory, if upheld, does not necessarily mandate that Microsoft must now obtain a license to use the technology from its inventor; the $388 million may be seen as effectively covering any license fee.

French battle back on restrictive HADOPI copyright law

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 6:24pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Liberty, equality, fraternity... money? France's National Assembly has tossed out the HADOPI bill approved late in the night last week by 16 members of France's Senate. The bill, amended, is apt to be re-introduced later in 2009.

The sticking point on Thursday for the "Creation and Internet Law," known as HADOPI after its French acronym (la Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet), wasn't its notorious graduated-response / "three strikes" aspect, which states that after three accusations of piracy the government may take away an accused person's Internet access for up to a year.

Nor was it the lack of judicial process for managing accusations. As the law currently stands, there is still no appeals process for addressing piracy accusations, nor substantial burden of proof on accusers to show that the alleged piracy was committed by the person whose account is to be cut off. (That may yet cause trouble from HADOPI in the broader EU community. The European Parliament has already in fact asked for an amendment forbidding the suspension of Internet access, and has voted three times against the "graduated response" as set forth in the bill.)

No, the final straw apparently concerned money. An amendment to HADOPI would have required that users cut off from the Internet under the three-"strikes" rule continue to pay their ISP for Internet access. Even in a nation of Jerry Lewis fandom, some ideas are simply too silly to tolerate; Assembly members previously friendly to the legislation changed their votes, and the bill fell by a vote of 21-15.

The defeat was followed quickly by calls from members of the Socialist Party, which has undertaken a sustained attack against HADOPI, to concede defeat and drop the whole thing. That's not likely. According to Numerama, which has been following HADOPI closely, a revised version of the bill might be introduced as soon as the end of the month.

You're a Mac, you're a PC...Now it's our turn, says Linux

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 5:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

The Mac vs. PC viral video and advertising war continues to rage, but now Linux has gotten involved. The nonprofit Linux Foundation began a contest in December challenging users to design a commercial for Linux that would take the "I'm a Mac....I'm a PC" self-branding campaign and spin it to fit the open source community: "WE are Linux."

The contest winners were announced today, just about a week after the latest salvo of Microsoft ads where computer shoppers are followed around as they look for their perfect machine. The first of these viral ads caused an explosion of blogospheric proportions at the end of March, when the cute girl in the commercial said, "I guess I'm just not cool enough for a Mac."

Unlike Microsoft and Apple's advertising campaigns, the winners of the Linux Foundation's contest did not attempt to out-snark or outspend competitors. In reality, how could they? As an admirer of the open source OS community (I use Ubuntu and KDE, but I don't contribute to the development of anything), I believe these videos summed up my idea of the Linux ethos in unspoken ways: They are amateur but not unprofessional, and they each highlight a different aspect that is favorable about Linux.

Besting some 90 other commercials, the grand prize-winning video came from 25-year old Israeli Amitay Tweeto, and is called "What does it mean to be free?" For his contribution, Tweeto won a trip to Japan for the Linux Foundation's Japanese Linux Symposium next October.

Tweeto's work is whimsical without being quixotic, and simple without understating the point that Linux (since that is a blanket term about as vague as "PC") is whatever you need it to be. Would a polished up version of the same commercial ever catch the public's eye when The Yankees and Red Sox of personal computing are busy calling each other names in their own commercials?

Unlikely, at least in the US, but one of the runners-up may be onto something with its Tux-as-the-hero theme. It's lighthearted and yet surprisingly effective, as it targets a tremendously sized portion of the population: users of aging hardware.

An accidental alert triggers a Live Messenger uproar

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 4:56pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If one of your friends or business contacts on Windows Live Messenger has a different handle now than he did a few days ago, the reason may be because he received a message from Microsoft telling her she needed to do so, on account of a "recent system enhancement."

A blog post on Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger site yesterday explained that an unknown number of Messenger users may have received this alert in the center of their desktops. But the blog post apologized, saying the message was sent in error. "You will be able to continue to use your current e-mail address," the post read, "and there is no reason to make any changes."

But users were unlikely to have read the blog post before having clicked the link on the message, which sent them to this 2006 set of instructions. A user following its instructions would have been taken to a page where she's asked to replace her "sign-in ID." Now, for Microsoft's purposes, that's the user's e-mail address with which her ID is associated; but the instructions clearly said that failure to associate the Live Messenger account with a different e-mail address could result in not being able to use Messenger.

"If you receive an important service announcement from the Windows Live Messenger Service Staff that says you must change your sign-in ID in order to continue signing into Messenger, then you're affected by this change. We recommend that you take this action immediately upon receiving the notification. The process to change your sign-in ID is simple. If you don't make this change in the near future, you'll receive an error message when signing in, and won't be able to use the Windows Live Messenger Service until you change your sign-in ID," the instructions read.

Those instructions, sadly, applied to the initial deployment of Live Messenger 2005 SP1, back in August 2006. That service pack was supposed to have been a security enhancement, but ever since its deployment, some users -- certainly not all, but still a good number -- have reported periodic service disruptions.

Users who fill out the complete sign-in ID changing form may also end up changing their profiles as well -- the link to do so is included -- even though profile changes were unnecessary, even three years ago.

So yesterday's rerun of the SP1 deployment message from three years ago ended up triggering users who have had this problem ever since that message premiered, to voice their concerns to Microsoft as comments to yesterday's blog post.

"I just spent an hour trying to figure this problem out but can't with your endless links to nothing [but] support pages, and [I] finally come across this!" wrote one Messenger user yesterday. "Thanks! For wasting everyone's time!"

Some users reported not being able to log on in recent days, and suspected this issue may be related to it. Many others, upon receiving the message, suspected it was some kind of phishing scheme or hoax. And more than one made this suggestion: Why couldn't Microsoft use the same mechanism for sending the original false alert, to send another one that says, please ignore?

"I got one of these messages also, and if it weren't out of luck, I probably wouldn't have found this post," another user wrote. "Microsoft/Windows/whoever responsible, needs to make sure that all users know that this is simply an error. Sure, nothing happens when you do click, but people deserve an official explanation."

Another user gave up after her Messenger started sending sporadic porn links to all her Messenger contacts, and assumed that this message was simply part of the malicious Trojan reposnsible. "Most of my contacts have blocked me, she wrote, before adding, "Thanks MSN for the wonderful experience."

Apple sued in 'exceptional' case of multi-touch infringement

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 1:39pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Elan Microelectronics, a Taiwanese integrated circuit design firm, has sued Apple in the Northern District of California for infringement on two of its US touchscreen patents.

Observers can file this one under "should have seen it coming."

In January, when Apple obtained a patent for heuristic-based multi-touch recognition, Elan issued a press release to its investors saying that the patent would not affect the company in any way: "Apple Computer to date has 949 approved patents which fall far short of the two at the same time."

"The two" to which Elan referred in that passage are the two patents that are the subject of its lawsuit, meaning that Elan's press release in January was in effect an affirmation that a lawsuit could still happen.

Elan submits that the trackpad on all of Apple's iBooks, Powerbooks and Macbooks violate its patent (#5,825,352), "Multiple finger contact sensing method for emulating mouse buttons and mouse operations on a touch sensor pad," and likewise, so do the iPhone and iPod Touch.

"Each of these devices includes a touch-sensitive input device capable of detecting the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers or other capacitive objects using structure and methods claimed in the '352 patent," the complaint read.

Further, Elan claims that the iPhone and iPod Touch also violate its (#7,024,353) patent for "Capacitive touchpad integrated with key and handwriting functions."

Not only does Elan seek an injunction on the products and damages, but since the company believes it is "an exceptional case," it also demands that Apple pay Elan's court costs, expenses and attorney fees incurred in the suit.

...Exceptional, eh?

Rumors gel around a possible BlackBerry Storm sequel

Publié: avril 9, 2009, 1:00am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

As Research In Motion's first all-touchscreen BlackBerry, and one of the "Big Four" in the touchphone market that has dominated smartphone sales, the BlackBerry Storm is a formidable device.

Director of Research at ChangeWave, Paul Carton, said in a Web conference yesterday, "This market is overwhelmingly dominated by two companies: Apple and RIM." Nearly all of ChangeWave's consumer smartphone survey statistics were dominated by the iPhone and the Storm, and by proxy their US carriers, AT&T and Verizon.

One figure from the company definitely stood out, though: Most people said their next phone purchase is likely to be a BlackBerry. Some 37% of those surveyed said they were either "very likely" or "likely" to buy a BlackBerry, while only 30% said the same of iPhone.

While these figures do not address the Storm directly by name, it is interesting that BlackBerry remains such a strong draw after the Storm was so emphatically panned by the media, and the Bold repeatedly pulled from stores for overheating. Maybe the public is holding out for the Storm to improve in its second generation.

On Monday, SlashGear cited "a source very close to the issue" in saying that the second generation BlackBerry Storm will be released in September 2009, complete with Wi-Fi and an improved touchscreen.

Today, Dutch site Tweakers said the as-of-yet-unnamed "Storm 2" will include, among other things, "a new way of entering text," attributing the information to RIM sales Manager Alain Segond von Banchet.

Both of these refer to the device's clickable touchscreen, which works well for big onscreen buttons, but poorly for a small virtual keyboard. The latter of the two rumors includes the additional claim that the "Storm 2" will be sold through Dutch mobile carrier KPN in addition to Vodafone, the current Storm's exclusive carrier.

The Dutch report did not, however, speculate upon whether this will simply be an incremental upgrade or a fully new handset.

Acer observes 'new market trends,' releases an all-in-one

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 11:21pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

At the end of 2008, according to iSuppli, notebooks finally took the crown for top-selling PC form factor, edging out desktops by a mere 100,000 units. Laptops may have finally taken the lead, with worldwide sales of 38.6 million units, against 38.5 million for desktops.

Of course, Current Analysis has noted times in 2003, 2004 and 2005 that laptops have outsold desktops, generally constituting a 3-7% market share advantage; but market share endgame was never declared. It's generally assumed that at some point desktops will officially be the minority, but no one has yet declared it.

Acer today said it has been attentively following new market trends, and believes that it's time for "different" desktops. At its product premiere in New York, it announced a low-power nettop product called the Revo, and an all-in-one touchscreen PC called the Aspire Z5600. The company said, "All-in-one no longer needs to command the extraordinary price premium seen today."

Acer Aspire Z5600

No doubt, the company is referring to the steady stream of all-in-one PCs that has been coming out for the last couple of years, which have mostly been marketed as desktop replacements, offering power and upgradability in a space-saving form. These have lately expanded to include touch capabilities with such lines as the HP Touchsmart PC which costs between $1,299 and $2,099, and can be wall-mounted and used with no keyboard or mouse.

But Asus has already approached the desktop/quasi-portable market from the cheapness angle, with its Eee Top line that falls under the $1000 mark. Judging by Acer's hardware announcement today, though, it doesn't look like the Aspire Z5600 will be in competition with Asus' Eee Top. The touchscreen all-in-one is maximized for Windows 7 and will offer a much larger screen size than the Eee Top line (24" versus 15") and be geared more toward media consumption, making it more competitive with HP's 20"-25" Touchsmart.

Carrying up to 2 TB of built-in storage, an integrated TV tuner and DVD/Blu-Ray reader/writer, the device could be classified in the burgeoning "smart TV" market. Acer says that the device will be equipped with an MXM graphics processor like most Acer notebooks offer, but it did not specify which type. Acer also did not announce pricing or availability of the unit, since its release is contingent upon the release of Windows 7.

FCC's McDowell: Careful that 'national broadband' isn't just for cable

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 10:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Normally, Congressional legislation regarding broadband Internet service takes the time to define its terms. Right now, for purposes of US law in a rapidly changing technology climate, the law itself defines the term rather broadly. For example, 7 USC 31 section 950bb defines the phrase this way: "The term 'broadband service' means any technology identified by the Secretary as having the capacity to transmit data to enable a subscriber to the service to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video."

The keyword there is any, letting broadband effectively mean anything that serves the Internet at high speed and bandwidth. But appropriations bills are laws in a very different sense -- they don't amend US Code. They simply say, here's some money, and here's what it will be spent on...and maybe they give definitions, and maybe they don't.

In the case of H. R. 1, the massive federal stimulus bill signed into law last February 13, an appropriation was made for the FCC to build some kind of national broadband policy. As the final form of the bill reads: "That of the funds provided under this heading, amounts deemed necessary and appropriate by the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), may be transferred to the FCC for the purposes of developing a national broadband plan or for carrying out any other FCC responsibilities pursuant to division B of this Act, and only if the Committees on Appropriations of the House and the Senate are notified not less than 15 days in advance of the transfer of such funds."

There's nothing in the bill that says what "broadband" means; and for FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell -- one of only three active commissioners during a long transition period -- that sent up a red flag. Though yesterday begins a long public response period, during which the FCC is seeking advice and input from the general public, Comm. McDowell cautioned that the new team -- perhaps five members strong before too much longer -- should refrain from presuming, as lawmakers have done in the past, that broadband is provided by cable TV providers.

FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell "It is critical that our plan be competitively and technologically neutral," wrote McDowell yesterday (PDF available here). "Given the incredibly diverse nature of our country -- both in terms of geography and demographics -- our plan must not favor one particular technology or type of provider over another, even inadvertently. Broadband deployment throughout America simply is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Wireline, wireless, and satellite technologies are meaningful alternatives, each worthy of our attention. For instance, to deny the people of Alaska the benefits of broadband connectivity via wireless and satellite would be tantamount to isolating the tens of thousands of Americans who live on Native lands and in subsistence villages. Thus, as we proceed, we must be mindful of the law of unintended consequences before making any new rules."

McDowell went on to suggest that new rules be left open-ended, in order that new technologies such as white space transmission can be utilized by smaller companies that can get more done with less investment. The alternative, he warned, would be to repeat the usual pattern of the government (by way of the FCC) deciding who wins and who loses, and in so doing crafting laws whose rules are bound so much to the technology of the moment that they lead to a kind of red tape he called "whimsical regulatory arbitrage."

McDowell's warning comes in response to the FCC's call yesterday for public comments regarding the nature of a national broadband plan, to be delivered to Pres. Obama on February 17, 2010. The stated goal of the plan is to advise the President on "the most effective and efficient ways to ensure broadband access for all Americans." But what has yet to be determined is whether the plan will be limited to funding the builders of new network infrastructure, or whether it will go further and potentially grant municipal-bypassing national licenses to major players. Three years ago, legislation that Congress failed to pass would have created a national licensing scheme, using language that appeared to favor CATV providers such as Comcast and Cox over telecommunications carriers such as Verizon and AT&T.

Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps' statement appears to give a nod to McDowell on this matter, saying, "Our Notice of Inquiry seeks to be open, inclusive, outreaching and data-hungry. It seeks input from stakeholders both traditional and nontraditional -- those who daily ply the halls of our hallowed Portals, those that would like to have more input here if we really enable them to have it, and those who may never have heard of the Federal Communications Commission. It will go outside Washington, DC to rural communities, the inner city and tribal lands. It will go where the facts and the best analysis we can find take it. It will look at broadband supply and broadband demand. It will look at broadband quality and affordable prices. It will endeavor to better understand, and hopefully build upon, the cross-cutting nature of what broadband encompasses, beginning with an appreciation that it brings opportunities to just about every sphere of our national life.

"And it can also consider, in addition to the many opportunity-generating characteristics of broadband, how to deal with any problems, threats or vulnerabilities that seem almost inevitably to accompany new technologies," Chairman Copps continued. "Ensuring broadband openness, avoiding invasions of people's privacy, and ensuring cybersecurity are three such challenges that come immediately to mind. We have never in history seen so dynamic and potentially liberating a technology as this. But history tells us that no major technology transformation is ever a total, unmixed, problem-less blessing."

Amazon and others follow iTunes' lead in hiking MP3 prices

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 8:28pm CEST par Tim Conneally

First tracks went DRM-free, now they're variably priced. The digital music economy is finally getting its bearings.

German gov't fines Microsoft for 'influencing' Office resale prices

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 6:00pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

This morning, Germany's Bundeskartellamt -- the anti-cartel department of the country's executive branch -- has issued a €9 million fine against Microsoft for what it describes as illegally and anti-competitively influencing the retail sales value of Office Home & Student Edition 2007.

The news doesn't want to be free

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In this era of apparently free information over the Internet, is there still a value to journalism that one can pin a price tag on? The AP says yes.

Amazon launches the first third-party Xbox Live store

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 4:36pm CEST par Tim Conneally

While downloadable content has become the norm in home video gaming, a gamer who wants to purchase new games or add-in content via download has very limited options. Generally, it has been limited to the console's built-in app store, or direct from the console manufacturer. With the PlayStation 3, it's the PSN Shop, Wii it's the Wii Shop Channel, and with the 360, was the Xbox Live Marketplace or on Xbox.com.

New Pirate Bay service takes aim at EU intellectual property law

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 3:56pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Pirate Bay-developed services promises anonymity above and beyond VPN levels.

Lenovo's new multimedia PCs set for April rollout

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 3:53pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Lenovo's latest laptop, desktop, and netbook consumer PCs will be hitting the shelves of Fry's stores and multiple Web sites this month.

Beta, as explained to the masses

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 12:58pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Library of Congress posts 1891 film footage (and ancient LOLcats)

Publié: avril 8, 2009, 12:12am CEST par Angela Gunn

Not-remotely-live, from Thomas Edison's New Jersey labs, it's...

New Obama DOJ claims sovereign immunity in wiretap case

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 11:21pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

An ancient, unwritten principle that the Constitution itself failed to waive, is the basis for a Justice Dept. petition to dismiss a FISA-related civil suit.

Intel and Asus pick 'crowdsourced' design PC finalists

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 11:18pm CEST par Tim Conneally

In October, Intel and Asus began a project called "WePC," where users could submit their own notebook designs. The project allowed users to submit suggestions for their dream design in the Gamer, Notebook, and Netbook categories with the idea that Asus would eventually build the most popular design. It is a sort of experiment in crowdsourced design.

Australia's future is in broadband, says PM

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 9:55pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The Australian government plans to connect 90% of the country with a 100 Mbps fiberoptic network.

Red Hat CEO sees open source as a 'model for government'

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 9:34pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Jim Whitehurst also applauded the Obama administration for recognizing "the value of open source beyond software."

Social networks get more social as spring springs

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 8:44pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Facebook's up 23.4% to over 91 million users, and even shaky MySpace, which has seen declines of about 11% over the past year, got a 4% bump to 55.6 million users, and standoffish LinkedIn is up 13.1% to 12.7 million users. And the URL-shortening services crucial to microblogging are showing great gains too; tinyurl.com, is.gd and bit.ly are all up by double digits (21.6%, 21.8% and 48.8% respectively), with wee is.gd showing 3721% growth over the last twelve months. (Rainn Wilson photo courtesy of Stacy D of Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons.)

The micro-cell era finally has a standard: Is femtocell finally a go?

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 6:56pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Now that 3GPP has created a standard, it may be time for AT&T to launch the nation's first 3G femtocell product.

The new Nehalem-based Apple Xserves promise a price advantage

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 6:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

One doesn't always get the opportunity to tout Apple in a discount category leader, so one takes all the opportunities one can get...and this is one.

Spybot Search & Destroy competitors are trying to force its removal

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 6:15pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III, Nate Mook and Angela Gunn

It's hard enough to make a name for yourself as an independent anti-malware company, without competitors demanding your software be uninstalled.

Google extends search localization to the desktop

Publié: avril 7, 2009, 5:07pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Users of Google's mobile services on handsets are familiar with how its search service can assume they're looking for something in its own general vicinity, even using GPS location. That level of detail hasn't always been available through desktop searches, though in recent months, I've noticed Google had been testing the concept off and on. I'd assumed the company was judging my approximate geography using my IP address.

Thanks for the DSi, GameStop, and sorry for contributing to your irrelevance

Publié: avril 5, 2009, 9:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Tim Conneally marks the midnight launch of the Nintendo DSi with a hint of sadness about the future of video game stores.

AT&T Terms of Service changed, then unchanged for third-party video

Publié: avril 4, 2009, 4:13am CEST par Angela Gunn

Terms of (diminished) Service would have caused serious trouble for Slingbox users.

Open Cloud Manifesto: The concept looks good on paper, many say

Publié: avril 4, 2009, 3:30am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

A lot of people at this week's Cloud Computing Expo favored the notion, even some Microsoft partners.

NEC lets employees track carbon footprint online, and compete with their colleagues

Publié: avril 4, 2009, 12:30am CEST par Tim Conneally

Proof that the Japanese can turn anything into a game, NEC and BIGLOBE have done it with energy conservation.

In the dead of night, 16 French lawmakers approve bill that punishes accused downloaders

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 10:25pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Do not cue the stirring and courageous strains of La Marseillaise: In an unscheduled late-night vote with just a few lawmakers present, French Secretary of State Roger Karoutchi pressed the National Assembly to vote immediately on HADOPI, the controversial "Creation and Internet Law" that would deprive citizens of Net access for up to a year if they're accused of illegal file-sharing. The bill passed 12-4.

Cloud Expo: How will Microsoft's Azure handle old software applications?

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 10:19pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Businesses will find it "quite transparent" to move some -- but not all -- older applications to Microsoft's new cloud, said at speaker at Cloud Computing Expo.

Virus Power: MIT completes nanomachine battery

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 10:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Using engineered viruses, MIT researchers have created a "living" battery.

Linux game console beta opens, includes 100 test units

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 10:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The Linux-based EVO Smart Console is now available for testing, if you're lucky.

Outcry and complaints come after carriers threaten to block Skype on the iPhone

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 6:41pm CEST par Nate Mook

Should wireless operators have a right to ban VoIP applications from their data networks, or even public hotspots?

Anti-piracy law linked to massive traffic drop in Sweden

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 5:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Internet traffic has dropped 40% since Sweden introduced a tough anti-piracy law earlier this week.

Zero-day vulnerability in PowerPoint spawns Microsoft alert

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 11:07am CEST par Angela Gunn

Ah, the life of a security reporter: You ask Microsoft's communcations managers if the new PowerPoint vulnerability announced Thursday evening is a zero-day vulnerability, currently being exploited in the wild with no patch to shield us, and a spokesperson responds that "At this time, Microsoft is only aware of limited and targeted attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability." In other words, yes.

How many e-book readers do we need to make a market?

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 4:42am CEST par Angela Gunn

The Kindle's blazing and Sony's making bold moves, but there's no iPod-sized market in the wings for these gadgets.

Online goof-off time during the workday can boost productivity, says study

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 3:10am CEST par Angela Gunn

Tell your boss the University of Melbourne says it's probably a good thing for you to hang out on Facebook (or in our comments threads!) today. A study released on Thursday found that people who spend part of their workday surfing the fun stuff online are actually more productive than employees whose networks (or habits) are too buttoned-down.

1 million and counting download Skype for iPhone

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 2:52am CEST par Tim Conneally

Skype blogger Peter Parkes posted a quick update today announcing that within two days of availability, Skype is now one of the fastest-downloaded apps of all time in the iTunes app store at around six downloads each second.

Clearwire plants WiMAX seeds in Silicon Valley, hopes apps grow

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 2:45am CEST par Tim Conneally

WiMAX needs innovative products that exploit its speed, so Clear is free for Silicon Valley developers.

ASP.NET MVC framework makes the jump to open source

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 1:44am CEST par Angela Gunn

It may have cooled its heels for over a year in preview limbo, but Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC made the open-source leap rather quickly -- rolled out as 1.0 last month at MIX'09 after a quick RC2 in early March, the code is now open-source as per the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL).

France gets closer to banning accused downloaders from accessing the Internet

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 1:02am CEST par Nate Mook

French lawmakers have approved a provision in the "Creation and Internet Law" that will revoke Internet privileges from alleged downloaders of copyrighted material.

Cloud Expo: Librato's alternative to server virtualization

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 1:00am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Companies don't need to invest in hypervisor virtualization to get the most from server hardware, according to Librato chief.

BlackBerry looking mighty tasty as RIM reports record Q4 earnings

Publié: avril 3, 2009, 12:30am CEST par Angela Gunn

Research in Motion is in motion, all right, beating even the analysts' best estimates.

Cloud Expo: RightScale adding RackSpace, Eucalyptus to 'hybrid clouds'

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 11:10pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

RightScale founder and CTO says he's seeking to prevent 'cloud lock-in.'

Opera becoming the de facto browser everywhere you don't expect the Internet

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 10:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Opera today announced a few more places it found to stick its browser.

NPD reports changes in teen music habits: Less buying, less downloading

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 10:10pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Curmudgeonly types may have something to say about results of January 2009 survey.

Tesla rakes in over $2.6 million from Model S reservations

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 9:56pm CEST par Nate Mook

Orders flow in for a car scheduled to arrive in 2012 -- if Tesla can get funding to build it.

Hulu whips up its own DRM to block people from watching videos outside browsers

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 9:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

JavaScript is used to encode the HTML, but third-party apps have already bypassed the trick.

IBM's acquisition of Sun: Down to the details?

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 9:00pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Rumors are flying at the moment that IBM and Sun are down to nickels and dimes in negotiations for the former to acquire the latter. And it really is pocket change -- the difference between $10-$11 per share and $9-$10 per share -- until you remember that it's still an eight-figure transaction.

CA expands VMWare virtualization partnership

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 8:20pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

At the Cloud Computing Expo in New York City this week, CA announced certification of its CA Advanced Systems Management (ASM) software as VMWare Ready Optimized. CA also teamed with VMWare and Empowered Networks to launch the CA Partner Communicty for Business Transformation Through Virtualization Management, a new community for resellers and technology partners focusing on integration, development, product, and joint marketing support.

Android tethering is back, just not for those in the United States

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 6:55pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Applications that allowed Android-based phones to act as 3G modems were pulled from the Android Market earlier this week, only to be returned again to everywhere...except in the U.S. According to a report from a developer of one of the apps that was pulled earlier in the week, Google found that the applications were a violation of T-Mobile's terms of service.

Want to watch Slingbox on your iPhone? You may need to buy a new device

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 6:48pm CEST par Nate Mook

Sling Media is offering a $50 rebate to those who upgrade, but long-time customers aren't happy.

Windows Live mobile app updated, portal revamped for phones

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 6:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Separately, all non-Windows Mobile devices will enjoy the upgrade to the Windows Live Mobile portal. The mobile page has been upgraded with a brushed-up UI and has received support for full HTML in Hotmail, a feature that Google's Gmail's mobile client does not yet offer.

Nokia: WiMAX is the new Betamax

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 5:34pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Nokia executive vice president thinks WiMAX is a dead end, as the company decides to support LTE.

Netflix hits 2 billion shipped milestone with a Blu-ray disc

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 5:18pm CEST par Nate Mook

It took Netflix over 7 years to ship 1 billion DVDs to subscribers. It has now doubled that milestone in another two. The company announced Thursday that a Blu-ray disc of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist was its 2 billionth delivery, and to celebrate, subscriber Clay Shannon will receive a free lifetime subscription to Netflix.

OneRiot unleashes a fresh take on Twitter searches

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 3:00pm CEST par Angela Gunn

The real-time social-web search turns its attention to the microblogging service.

Amazon launches Elastic MapReduce service for easy crunching

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 12:05pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Palm expands Mojo SDK program, drops Pre hints at Web 2.0 Expo

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 2:51am CEST par Angela Gunn

There was Pandora and Fandango news for the civilians, but the real love on Wednesday was for developers.

Obama names Baker to VA CIO post

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 2:01am CEST par Angela Gunn

Roger Baker, a veteran of the DC merry-go-round, climbs aboard again at the request of President Obama. Baker, who served as CIO at the Department of Commerce from 1998 to 2001, now joins the Department of Veterans Affairs in the same position pending confirmation by the Senate. Baker has also held executive-level positions at Dataline, General Dynamics Information Technology, CACI International and Visa, and served on the administration's transition team. he holds BS and MBA degrees from the University of Michigan.

Yahoo chases spammers, builds Webmap on Hadoop open source framework

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 2:00am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Although Hadoop is based on Google technology, Yahoo has contributed the Pig Latin programming language.

Senate will debate one more Obama 'czar,' this time for cybersecurity

Publié: avril 2, 2009, 12:20am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III and Angela Gunn

A bill that moves responsibility for the nation's online security outside the auspices of the Homeland Security Dept., was introduced on the Senate floor today.

IBM gets more social with LotusLive Engage

Publié: avril 1, 2009, 10:49pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Major features of Engage include a Web meeting space, with desktop sharing, recording, and security; instant messaging, with photo and file sharing; online file storage and sharing; and project tracking, to-do lists, and brainstorming. Price Waterhouse Coopers, Nortel Networks, and Penn State University are a few of the early users.

Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » avril 2009

Canaux

BetaNews.Com (186 non lus)

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 11:43pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 10:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 9:31pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 9:25pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 7:38pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 7:21pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 5:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 4:47pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 3:08am CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 30, 2009, 1:24am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 29, 2009, 12:03am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:49pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:13pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 10:11pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:32pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 8:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 6:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 5:41pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 5:16pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 4:11pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:29am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 28, 2009, 9:11am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 10:22pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 9:38pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 9:22pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:51pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 4:43pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 27, 2009, 5:43am CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 26, 2009, 12:52am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 5:46am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 5:46am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 25, 2009, 12:14am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 11:40pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 9:13pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 8:56pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 8:04pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 6:20pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 5:28pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 1:07am CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 12:45am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 24, 2009, 12:25am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:58pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 10:51pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 9:48pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:35pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 8:19pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 7:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 6:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 4:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 23, 2009, 3:21pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 1:49pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 12:55am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 22, 2009, 12:20am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 11:31pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 10:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 10:17pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 8:34pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 6:26pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 6:18pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 5:43pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 5:38pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 21, 2009, 2:01am CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 11:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 11:37pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 10:15pm CEST par Angela Gunn

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 10:12pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 9:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 8:31pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 7:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Publié: avril 20, 2009, 6:27pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Publié: avril 18, 2009, 4:18am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

Publié: avril 18, 2009, 12:44am CEST par Angela Gunn