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BetaNews.Com (10 non lus)

Torrent's not dead: First look at Myka set-top box

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 11:59pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

With as many set-top boxes as there suddenly appear to be in the home video market, as long as any one of them has a strong central feature, it could be the one that becomes a household name. Look at TiVo, Slingbox, and AppleTV: Each of these built a TV-based ecosystem around a single unique feature: TiVo's was the DVR, Slingbox was the place-shifting concept, and AppleTV was iTunes.
Now, IPTV startup Myka has designed its own media center STB, focusing on BitTorrent as its winning central feature. Betanews got an exclusive look at this new device.
Openness and simplicity do not often walk hand-in-hand, as anyone with a good deal of experience the various Linux distributions knows. Yet somehow, Myka has managed to deliver a Linux-based STB with a fantastic amount of customizability, and that still manages to "just work."
For example, it can be used as a simple home media server and be loaded with content such as movies, music, and pictures to be watched on the living room TV. Personal media players (it's iPod friendly) and mass storage devices can all plug into Myka via USB and be navigated with the remote control. Users can also browse streaming Web video sites such as YouTube and CNN, with more services expected in the near future.
Click the photo for more images of Myka's STB.
To set up torrent downloads, users can log onto my.myka.tv on their PC, type in their desired torrent's URL, and the STB automatically starts to download it. It ends up feeling a lot like the Netflix Instant Queue for the Roku set top box or Xbox Live.
Myka's Torrent Manager includes a weekly scheduler, which lets the user set limits on downloads so as to not trigger throttling or exceed bandwidth caps. The simple graph sets limits on upstream and downstream speeds and select times of day when full sharing, limited sharing, or no sharing is allowed.
While video quality will vary depending upon the file being played, Myka's default resolution is 720p at 60 Hz. When the device is connected via HDMI to a higher resolution screen, it automatically corrects itself. We tested the device at its maximum resolution of 1080p 59.94 Hz, and .MKV and .Xvid files played back in high definition with no lagging or crashing.
Beyond the simplicity, the device offers a number of features that will appeal to users looking for more control, or users who are familiar with Syabas NMT (Networked Media Tank), upon which Myka is based. The device includes a UPnP AV Server, myiHome Server, an FTP Server, Samba Server, NFS Server, its Torrent Client, and a Usenet Client, all of which can be turned off or halted as the user needs. Because of this server technology, Myka can be contacted via telnet, FTP, or simply through a Web browser connected to the home network.
Myka is available with either a 250 GB ($199) or 1 TB ($299) internal hard drive, and is shipping now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 2: Are bookmarks outmoded?

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 10:48pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Windows from Fileforum now.
It's a trend we're noticing more and more with folks who use Web browsers: Google Search is becoming so ubiquitous that people are comfortable with typing a query rather than referencing a bookmark, to relocate a page they remember. It saves them the trouble of having to save the page in the first place. You think I'm kidding? Two of the search phrases that land Google users on Betanews most often are "beta news" and "Betanews."
So for a lot of people, the bookmarks file is becoming almost atrophied, a disused collection of stuff so old that the Internet Archive might have to look up its contents in a box of floppy disks. When using the browser's bookmarks manager becomes more troublesome, or just simply more time-consuming, than a Google query, a user may simply choose the latter.
Perhaps Google already came to that conclusion, or perhaps it would simply prefer users to store their bookmarks on its Web-based service. This is the only explanation I can attribute to the fact that the Chrome browser is coming up on one year of everyday public use without its Bookmark Manager feature developing even the simplest functionality.
Here's what I mean: I went ahead and imported my version of the Ancient Historical Bookmarks file into both the latest beta of Google Chrome 3 and Tuesday's final release of Mozilla Firefox 3.5, so that they both have the same set of bookmarks (other than what the manufacturers install there automatically). Both browsers' Bookmark Managers have the same names, and their windows are laid out quite similarly.
Knowing I might want to consider weeding out any 10-year-old links to RealNetworks sound files in my archive, I started out conducting a search for real. Both browsers are capable of turning up entries that contain those four letters in that order, at some point. But right away, I see the difference: Firefox pulled up 13 items and Chrome only 12, from the same bookmarks file.
What's the extra bookmark? It's an item called "Simple Regression Page," which produces a line of a graph that best fits a set of variable conditions. The letters "real" don't appear in that page's title whatsoever, so why did Firefox pull it up? Because "real" appears deep in the page's URL. Since the title page of a Web site may not actually contain the title of the site (it's been known to happen), and a URL is presumably more likely to contain that title, Firefox's bookmark system searches both entries simultaneously.
However, Chrome 3 did pull up "RCP," which was my abbreviation for RealClearPolitics.com as it appears on my links bar. It didn't have "real" in its bookmark title, though it does appear in the URL. But not deep in the URL, as was the case with the Simple Regression Page.
When Firefox first pulled up 13 entries and Chrome 12, I wanted to know right away, which one was the odd man out? The easiest way for me to figure out would be to click on the Name bar at the top -- usually that sorts by name. And for Firefox, it does. Would you believe you can't sort bookmarks in Chrome 3; they can only appear in the retrieval space in the same order as they appear in the bookmarks list? You can click the Name bar in Chrome 3 until you've worn a hole in your mouse; it's not going to do anything.
Now, you have to wonder, how long has this obvious omission remained in Chrome -- a sort button that doesn't sort? Hasn't anyone reported this? Isn't the purpose of beta testing to find problems so they may then be remedied?
Or perhaps it's the purpose of Google's support forums to help users grieve and come to terms with omitted features. Here is a support thread topic header from December 2008: "There is no way to sort bookmarks in the bookmarks folder. By name, by most recent, or otherwise." There are dozens of responses to this complaint -- a litany of comments, all of them from Chrome users only, the final one in the set having been posted last May 10.
That entry contains a link to a Chrome plug-in -- quite literally, an independent British programmer last April created the bookmark sorter that Google neglected to include with its own browser.
To recap: In less time than it takes an entire corporation, using what is purported to be an open programming process, to re-insert a feature that has been an historical component of a competitive browser (which, by the way, is actually produced by some of the very same people, so they would have intimate knowledge of that component), a theology student in Monmouth, in his spare time in-between running a youth Bible study group and building motorsports racing simulations, comes up with a plug-in that, at least for some users, fills that feature gap. What is wrong with this picture?
Next: Can Chrome fight back with a versatile address bar?
Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Linux from Fileforum now.
Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Windows from Fileforum now.
At this point, Google might answer that users will probably prefer to search for long, lost bookmarks through Chrome's address bar. That particular tool does show some "real" capabilities, beginning with asking the user whether she wants to search for what she's typing (which obviously doesn't begin with http://) using her default search engine. Maybe real/ is a directory entry, and that shows up as possibility #2. Then three selections from the bookmarks database comes up, and these are plainly marked with gold stars, to distinguish them from sites you may never have seen before. Follow that up with a likely partial URL match, then a menu entry that takes you to a history page. That page is quite impressive, including pages recently buffered whose contents (not just their titles or URLs) contain the search item in question.
What would make Chrome's address bar perfect for this task is some more breadth in the bookmarks department. As we now know, there are at least 12 entries from bookmarks that Chrome can pull up, but it chose these three. There's no obvious reason why it chose (with apologies to Comcast) the first item with a gold star as the #1 entry, when it could also have pulled up the memorial page to Los Angeles disk jockey The Real Don Steele -- a page where "real" appears earlier in both the title and the URL.
When we try the same test with Firefox 3.5's "Awesome Bar" (a name which sounds more like a confection than a tool), the browser returns a scrollable list (ah, there's that missing element!) with all 13 of its bookmark entries. Now, it didn't offer to search Google for you first, but Firefox's tool isn't designed to be merged with its search box. For me, that's not a minus for Firefox, though others will appreciate Google's merger of the two functions and reclamation of screen space. It also didn't provide partial matches from URLs, which is a nice Chrome feature. And there's no link to history, but if you click the down-arrow to the very right in the address bar (not an obvious feature, I'll grant you), the list will switch from a bookmarks search to a history search, in place.
Usually in a showdown like this, I have to search for those little features and nuances that make one contestant better than the other by just a hair. In this particular instance, Google Chrome didn't even really come to the table with its game face on. If a software company is going to offer a feature, then it needs to be a complete feature, or else it should omit it altogether. Here, Chrome needs to decide whether its purpose is to direct users back to the search engine, or to help users with the functionality they expect to find in a browser, even though bookmarks, I'm told, are oh-so-'90s.
For this heat, score one very decisive round in favor of Firefox, which makes our running score suddenly lopsided: Firefox 3.5 (2), Chrome 3 (0).
Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Linux from Fileforum now.

KEEP SCORE ALONG WITH BETANEWS:
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?: Firefox 3.5 (1), Chrome 3 (0) after 1 heat
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Mr. President, this is your BlackBerry upgrade

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 7:33pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

BlackBerry Tour, the latest smartphone from Research in Motion, will be heading to Verizon on July 12 for $199.99 in two different forms: one with a camera and one without. The device was officially announced earlier in June on both Verizon and Sprint, but Verizon is the first carrier to offer a launch date.
Also known as the 9630, the BlackBerry Tour is a world phone with voice support in over 220 countries and push e-mail support in 175. It is equipped with GPS and can also be used as a tethered 3G modem (2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA, or 800/1900 MHz CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A) for Verizon Mobile Broadband Connect Subscribers. With BlackBerry as the dominant brand in enterprise smartphone deployments, the ability to buy the latest model with no built-in camera is crucial for secure work environments where no cameras are allowed, especially including government installations.
Assuming it could be retrofitted for security standards, the Tour would actually make an ideal upgrade to President Obama's now-famous BlackBerry 8700c, a 2G device from roughly five years ago equipped with an Intel PXA901 312 MHz processor and no camera. The Tour has a dual core Qualcomm MSM7600 528 MHz processor which makes for an appreciably faster in-phone experience to complement faster wireless connections.
The Tour also makes no great departure from the familiar BlackBerry design. Of course, the President is still using a jogwheel-era BlackBerry and hasn't made the jump to the trackball, which was ushered in by the Pearl in 2006.
Verizon customers (such as the Obamas) can pre-order the Tour today through Verizon's Web site.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Firefox 3.5 is live!

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 5:17pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

On schedule, the Mozilla organization has now officially released its Firefox 3.5 Web browser to the general public, containing the first stable version of its TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Since Firefox is essentially a JavaScript app in and of itself, the overall performance of the browser on all platforms we've seen should be visibly, and in some cases dramatically, improved over Firefox 3.0.
Naturally, Betanews is beginning its first round of performance tests on the final build of 3.5, especially to see whether that last boost of speed we saw in the final private preview builds was integrated into the final product. We'll let you know what we find out later today.
Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Windows from Fileforum now.
Download Firefox 3.5 Final for Linux from Fileforum now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
'Extreme' beta news: Pirate Bay may or may not be streaming videos

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 4:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

While Swedish company Global Gaming Factory X looks to turn the Pirate Bay into a legal business, the torrent tracking site's founders have taken the wraps off of their HTML5 project site called The Video Bay, a streaming video service in the vein of YouTube and, what else, The Pirate Bay.
Even though The Video Bay has been in development for two years, it is still extremely rough. The team recently rolled out an "extreme beta" version (like a public alpha) which carries the warning: "Don't expect anything to work at all." Indeed, even the site itself doesn't load for all the traffic it's currently shouldering.
Users may attempt to access the site through HTML5-compatible browsers such as Firefox 3.5 beta 4, Safari 3.4+, Opera 9.52 preview, or Chrome 3, and browse and share content as they would on YouTube. True to the spirit of The Pirate Bay, copyrighted content will be the commodity on The Video Bay.
The site's front page says, "[The Video Bay] aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly [sic] the <video> and <audio> tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don't bug us too much if the site ain't working properly."
And the site certainly wasn't working properly as of Tuesday morning, when it wouldn't survive in our browser even long enough for a screenshot. All the factors leading up to this "extreme beta" give the site an air of abandonment. With the ownership of The Pirate Bay in a state of flux, and the copyright retrial in Swedish Courts out of the question, the premature release of The Video Bay make it feel more like a full disclosure than a pre-beta; sort of a "Well, here's what we were working on before we got sued for 30 million Kronor and had to sell ourselves off."
Peter Sunde, the same man who said Nothing would happen to The Pirate Bay has been widely quoted as saying: "It will be done when it's done, in the future, in like a year or five".
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
China delays Green Dam filter rollout after failed beta test

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 4:33pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

This morning, China's Xinhua news agency announced that the country's IT ministry has decided to indefinitely delay the rollout of its "Green Dam for Escorting Children" Internet filter software, which was supposed to have been mandatory for PCs sold in that country beginning tomorrow. This after reports that the software -- whose code US-based software firm Solid Oak software claims was pilfered from its own filter products -- didn't actually work very well in real-world tests.
As Reuters reported earlier this morning, prior to China's announcement, Garfield the cartoon cat was a particular target of Green Dam's image filter, as was the face of actor Johnny Depp. However, actual pornography managed to get through just fine.
The problem -- extremely ironically -- may have to do with what the software thinks it's focusing upon, particularly skin color. A kind of volume knob in the software apparently turns up or down the image filter's sensitivity to certain shades of skin. However, certain other skin colors may be breaking through the filter, and perhaps you know where this topic is headed.
Meanwhile, the executive in charge of Jinhui, the software company responsible for Green Dam (and accused by Solid Oak of stealing its code) may not be readily available to help fix the problem. As Zhang Chenmin told Xinhua last week, he and his family have been receiving anonymous death threats. Translated into English, Chenmin told China's press authority, "I never expected the software to have brought us so many troubles. Our aim is simply to protect children from Internet pornography."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
TweetPsych wants to get inside your head

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 4:05pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

We spent some enjoyable time earlier this week playing with TweetPsych, a site that puts linguistic analysis algorithms to work figuring out just what's with the most compulsive Twitter users out there. Currently in beta, the for-entertainment-only analysis still provided us with some amusing insight into Twitter talk -- and into the brains of three Betanews staffers.
The site, developed by Dan Zarrella of HubSpot (home of the addictive Twitter Grader), builds a "psychological profile" of a given Twitter user based on his or her last 1,000 tweets by running the text against two algorithms that look not at what topics people are talking about but at the cognitive processes they seem to be using. The RID (Regressive Imagery dictionary) algorithm sifts texts for their primary (free-form, associative, creative), secondary (logical, problem-solving), and emotional content, while the LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) algorithm matches words against 82 language categories that can roughly estimate the writer's mindset. The LIWC is a widely used linguistics database; the RID is less so.
Your reporter is one of those people who stubbornly refuses to read her daily horoscope, as her day is already filed with enough vague bunkum. (I'm in the media, after all.) Still, getting to know my colleagues via an online application is much more convenient than having conversations with them or even reading their tweetstreams, so I happily shoved a couple of co-workers's usernames into the maw of the site.
Co-worker #1 -- no names, let's call him Tate -- is actually a mediocre candidate for TweetPsych analysis, as he has tweeted just 703 times. (The service works best with at least 1,000 tweets to crunch.) Still I persevered. According to TweetPsych, that's what Tate would do; the analysis describes him as someone who tweets more than the average person about work, cognitive processes, and the past and future. He's also apt to post insights and use similes in his tweets. He makes a lot of temporal references -- typical publisher -- and engages in a lot of abstract thought and constructive behaviors. He thinks about glory and moral imperatives, and the guy's a little anxious.
Amused, I looked at another staffer, whom we'll call Jim. Jim is a slacker -- not according to the analysis, but according to his pitiful history of just 41 tweets. (Sorry, Jim, I know you probably have a life or something.) I threw him in anyway, and TweetPsych did what it could; it tells us Jim also talks a lot about time and motion, along with sensations, particularly audio and taste sensations. (It also says he has an oral fixation, but that most likely comes from tweeting about food and cigarettes and sore throats.)
And your reporter? I swear a lot, but that's not news. I talk a lot about cognitive processes, speak more of the past than of the future, use a number of similes and metaphors, and tend to tweet abstract thoughts more than items of temporal import. I'm more social than my co-workers (on Twitter I certainly am, with 1,687 tweets so far) and I'm more likely to express affection or positive feelings -- when I'm not swearing, and sometimes when I am.
The analysis also delivers a short list of other Twitter users who "think like you." I found its results remarkably useful, giving me five remarkably well-chosen follow recommendations. Interestingly, one of the five recommended Twitter users is a friend of a friend with whom I lost touch years ago.
The head-shrinking was all in good fun, though nothing I'd take much more seriously than those unread daily horoscopes. But a recommendation engine so specific and fine is worth further scrutiny. Twitter has experimented over the past few months with ways to get new users following high-profile Twitter users they might enjoy, even as reports indicate that most users try the service once or twice and drop out. Right now TweetPsych works best with a frequent user such as myself, but what if new users could write a paragraph or so about themselves and get back highly personalized suggestions? Seen in that light, TweetPsych is an intriguing glimpse into one possible direction for the highly hyped, yet weirdly underutilized, microblogging service.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
What's Next: The first signs of improvement for the tech economy

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 3:00pm CEST par Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff, Betanews

Pandora silenced abroad, which LimeWire gains an exec
Monday, June 29, 2009 • The strikes and gutters of digital music advanced another frame on Monday, with users in France reporting that their Pandora feed is gone while LimeWire scores an executive fresh from TotalMusic.
Jason Herskowitz blogged Monday that he's on his way from Virginia and TotalMusic to Brooklyn and LimeWire, that mysteriously-still-standing download site. Before TotalMusic, Mr. Herskowitz spent time at AOL as Director of Music Products (WinAmp!) and at -- Web 1.0 veterans, brace yourselves -- DigiScents, the company that meant to bring scent to the Web back in the day. [And what would the Web smell like? I always suspected cedar and feet, but perhaps you have other ideas. -- AG.] We wish Mr. Herskwitz the smell smell of success, minus the feet.
As for Pandora, reports are still thin on the ground, Slashdot participant randalotto reports that when s/he attempted to sign on from France, s/he received the following message: We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the US. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative. ... The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.' I'm not sure what the deal is or what licensing requirements suddenly changed, but Pandora in France is no more...
Ow and good luck to the thousands of international users coping with withdrawal at this writing.
YouTube's new citizen journalist resource
June 27, 2009 • Top video sharing site YouTube opened the YouTube Reporters' Center, a resource that provides some basic how-to information for the potential citizen journalist.
Historic photographs and videos are increasingly coming from cell phones and low-resolution point and shoot cameras; and with streaming services such as Qik, we can already watch live, unfiltered news happen right in front of us. With this technology available to practically everyone, anybody equipped with a phone could be the next Abraham Zapruder.
Now, YouTube has made helpful video tips available which can help improve the overall quality of citizen reports, including tips on interviewing by Katie Couric, investigative journalism tips from Bob Woodward, and other videos such as "How to Capture Breaking News on your Cell."
NewTeeVee said Monday that mobile video uploads have increased 1700% in the last six months, and the post-electoral upheaval in Iran clearly illustrated the riveting news that comes when everybody is "at the right place at the right time."
IPhone backs getting toasty
The last seven days • Just because people buy a marshmallow-colored iPhone doesn't mean they want it toasted, but that's apparently happening with some of the new 3G S units. Brian Chen at Wired says faulty battery cells may be the problem, and speaks to one expert who predicts a recall of us to hundreds of thousands of units. Erika Morphy at MacNewsWorld, on the other hand, says it's not clear yet that anything's happening, let alone anything necessitating a recall on that scale. Stay tuned.
Teenager explores ancient technology: a Sony Walkman
It was 30 years ago... • Scott Campbell is 13, and before a few weeks ago he thought of the iPod as the norm in portable music. Somehow, the BBC reports, his father Alan convinced the lad to carry a first-generation cassette Walkman around for a week -- the iconic artifact is turning 30, believe it or not -- and compare it to his usual player.
The result is wonderful, funny ("It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape.") and wince-inducing ("Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"). The kid's hamming it up in spots -- no, dear, the eject button doesn't generally lead to eye injuries -- but it's just too much fun to miss.
Outsourcing in of the news
May 26, 2009 • This story's slightly venerable, but if your organization is grappling with the thought (or the aftermath) of outsourcing, check out what happened when the Hartford Advocate outsourced an entire edition of its weekly paper. Will you surprised to hear that it was neither as cost-saving or as trouble-free as outsourcing advocates would have you believe? The staff tells the story.
In his grief, a turn to Twitter
Sunday and Monday • Losing a parent unexpectedly is a surreal experience, and that's what Billy May III is going through in the wake of the death of his pitchman dad. Over the past couple of days, he's been tweeting as he goes along, and the thread has been an amazing thing to see. Attend if you will.
Analysts: Tech economy will get better while it gets worse
Fall 2009 > Here's the outlook for the US tech economy, as forecast by Forrester analysts yesterday, and let's play this out because maybe it makes sense: The firm revised its prediction for the overall downturn in business technology spending down a few ticks for the year 2009, from 3% to 5%, acknowledging that businesses' declining investments are a bit worse than they thought.
But then the firm is improving its outlook for 2010, using this theory: Once businesses realize the economy isn't as bad as they thought it was, they'll reinvest at such a rate that the tech economy will grow by 7% next year. So let's back this up: Things are worse than we thought, but not as bad as businesses thought. Is that what we're supposed to be reading into this forecast?
Producers: Tech economy is already getting better, but may get worse
July 2009 > Meanwhile in Taiwan, where a huge chunk of the world's semiconductors are being produced, one of the world's largest build-to-order chip makers, SMIC, is revising its business outlook for Q2 2009 upward -- and not just by a few ticks, either -- based on, get this, robust demand.
In other words, businesses and consumers are, um, investing.
What's going on? Well, the fear is that when tech device manufacturers reduced their orders for parts late last year, they over-estimated the downturn in demand (which sounds a lot like Forrester's theory, applied to production). So as demand did not slip by as much as folks thought it would, inventories reduced too quickly, and now manufacturers' orders are picking up to fill the void. But analysts (not with SMIC) are actually worried about this trend, because they believe that once suppliers and manufacturers over-purchase to fill inventory gaps, they'll reduce their purchases down the road to compensate.
Can studying macro-economics make one seasick?
Tuesday's tech headlines
Technology Review
• Researchers in Dresden have an idea for improving magnetic storage media -- both information density and functional lifespan. It's all in the theoretical stage right now, but if you dig materials science, you'll like this piece.
• Simson Garfinkel, calling privacy an inalienable right even in the Facebook era, puts for a long and detailed argument for smarter protections, including clearly articulated federal policies (makes sense) and a strong electronic identity system (say what?).
• Robert Lemos delves into Content Security Policy, the tech Mozilla helps will finally quash cross-site scripting attempts when it turns up in Firefox in 6-12 months.
TechCrunch
• Jason Kincaid expects word today of new Call-to-Action overlay technology, which allows paid advertisers to put a link to any site they wish directly on a video.
• Michael Arrington looks at a financial battle shaping up between VC and the company's founder and employees at Mochi Media, the advertising and payments network for developers of Flash games. It's not likely to end well however it ends. Do these things ever?
New York Times
• Leslie Kaufman looks into the rise of recycling centers for consumer electronics. Currently a patchwork of state laws governs the process, much to the frustration of manufacturers (and just about everyone else, really).
• That wily Palm Pre -- recipient of yet another firmware upgrade yesterday, by the way, including mysterious security fixes -- is starting to make certain skeptics feel more warmly toward its parent company. Matt Richtel explains how that plays out for one analyst.
San Jose Mercury-News
• Intel showed off some futuristic new stuff from its research department at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View recently. Steve Johnson saw devices getting better at touching delicate objects, aiding the prosopagnosia (face-blind) community, and spatial navigation.
• The annual Cybernet Expo was held in San Francisco last week, and the vendors at the adult-services conference agreed on one thing: You know the recession is for real when even boobies aren't selling. Video web sites are also cutting into profits, attendees told John Boudreau.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Swedish firm looks to acquire The Pirate Bay, may take it legit

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 12:47pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

With a statement telling visitors, "We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die," the proprietors of The Pirate bay confirmed on Monday that they expect to be acquired by Global Gaming Factory X. It's a Swedish firm that wants, according to its ownership, "to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site."
The acquisition, which would lead to GGF operating The Pirate Bay site, is expected to close in August according to GGF. Profits from the sale, according to The Pirate Bay, will go to online projects expanding freedom of speech, information and access.
The company also intends to acquire Peerialism, a technology company developing new file-sharing tech. Pereialism CEo Johan Ljungberg stated in the GGF release that the company's tech, which is compatible with existing file-sharing methods, is to be introduced on The Pirate Bay. That technology is based on work done at the Swedish Institute for Computer Science and Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan.
The Pirate Bay knows the sensibilities of its userbase, and its version of the announcement was emphatic that this is in the founders' eyes a Good Thing. "If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And -- you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat [off] us."
That was, naturally, not remotely enough to calm the waters. User comments poured into the site, with some users concerned that their account information was no longer safe and others operating more in the "THIS IS A KNIFE IN THE HEART FOR DEMOCRACY!!" vein. (A direct quote.)
More information is expected after a scheduled joint press conference.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
2010 will be the breakthrough year for Micro USB

Publié: juin 30, 2009, 12:28am CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

To cut down on electronic waste and increase interoperability, ten mobile phone makers have signed a European Commission Memorandum of Understanding that commits them to using Micro USB as their standard mobile phone charger and data connection by 2010.
Many of the companies that signed the agreement, which include Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Texas Instruments, are members of the OMTP Forum which agreed on standardizing micro USB for charging and local data exchange last February.
"I am very pleased that industry has found an agreement, which will make life much simpler for consumers," said EC Vice President Günter Verheugen, "I am also very pleased that this solution was found on the basis of self-regulation."
Micro USB is already found in a number of popular devices, such as Amazon's Kindle, and differs from the commonly found Mini USB standard because it allows mobile devices to be connected to each other without the need for a host computer.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009