Gregarius &#187; BetaNews.Com &#187; octobre 2009

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

Test Results

If Apple's Safari is going to make any kind of a challenge for best performing Windows-based Web browser moving into next year, it needs to be now. In Betanews' most extensive testing to date, involving tests that by anyone's guess should not have given it any special advantages, the latest stable edition of Google Chrome runs away with a three point lead over the latest stable Safari -- a lead that now grows by one-half point with each point release.

Chrome now posts test scores in certain heats of our revised CRPI 2.2 test battery that are virtually obscene -- so far ahead of competition that we have to validate our results on various machines to make sure we're not generating false results. For example: On the control flow element of the SunSpider test, both Chrome 3 and the dev build of Chrome 4 post record low time scores of 2.6 ms. This is an element that tests the JavaScript interpreter's capability to keep track of nested loops and its location in a twisted program. By comparison, the latest public Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 -- released late yesterday afternoon after a flurry of delays totaling over one month -- posts a score of 38.2 ms in that category.

Mozilla's team has been making efforts to better Firefox' control flow scores, evidently knowing how much they influence test results like ours. The evidence comes from the latest daily builds of Firefox 3.7 Alpha 1, on the "Minefield" track, whose control flow scores recently quantum-leaped down to 8 ms. That's almost a 5x improvement, but it will need another 3x blast to catch up with Chrome. The latest stable Apple Safari scores 3.4 ms on this element.

Another example: A factorial is the result of multiplying together all positive integers that are less than or equal to a number, and a new element of our testing battery includes a classic algorithm for obtaining the set of all factorials. On this heat, the higher number is better since the objective is to obtain as many factorials as possible over a set period of time, so the score is a relative index. While Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 scores a 17 on this heat, Chrome 3 scores a 150.4, and the latest dev build of Chrome 4 scores 164.5.

There are certain things that Chrome does where the score differences are factors of 10, where one might get the impression that Google is improving Chrome just to score better with Betanews (the company has been expressing its interest to us directly in recent days) or more likely, with its own internal test suite. Indeed, the company's V8 benchmark suite would have users thinking the browser is hundreds of times more capable than its competition -- a claim for which we just don't see the practical evidence just yet, which is why V8 isn't part of our tests.

That's why we've made an effort to pack our CRPI test suite with examinations of a multitude of real-world characteristics in various categories, now with 69 different "heats" in ten separate batteries, plus a multitude of derivative scores (e.g., average of 50 iterations, consistency between the fastest and slowest run, etc.) for each browser.

Once we include all these different elements, we get a much more practical and believable result. There are many reasons why a person chooses a favorite Web browser, with JavaScript performance being just one of them. But that factor is becoming more important now with the onset of applications delivered to you from the Web rather than your hard drive. So with regard to that factor alone, Betanews can say that Google Chrome delivers almost twice the performance (not quite 2x) of the latest stable Mozilla Firefox builds, with Apple Safari probably pulling close, and Opera being left in the dust until it comes time to be thinking about Opera 11...if not Opera 12.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index 2.2 October 30, 2009

"Probably" pulling close? What, Betanews can't do better than that with respect to Safari? Yea, unfortunately there's still trouble with that: Apple's test builds of Safari come by way of grafts of its daily WebKit engine onto the existing 531.9.1 browser. Usually, after applying one of these grafts, the updated Safari displays better if not superior rendering performance than even Chrome. But its ability to serve as a full-scale browser for other tests vanishes. However, over the last week while Betanews has been trying to resolve this problem, it actually only got worse: Windows testers reported through Apple's forums that not even the grafting mechanism was working.

We validated those claims, discovering that the manifest which the replacement executables were being shipped with (the embedded XML files that point to proper COM components in the System Registry) were pointing instead to incompatible versions of Windows Common Controls, versions that may have worked back in the 1990s. Apple is apparently already aware of this, but as is the company's policy with regard to any kind of problem with its software or hardware, will not publicly comment.

Next: The latest test scores broken down...

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index 2.2 October 30, 2009, broken down by Windows platform.

The runaway train you see at the bottom of your screen there is Google Chrome. And yes, that splash of orange at the bottom of the platform-by-platform breakdown very graphically illustrates what we've been saying for the last few months: Chrome's platform of choice is Windows XP, the one with the smallest footprint that's deployed on the greatest number of netbooks -- the hardware platform where Google is working to make a breakthrough.

Usually Microsoft Internet Explorer isn't even a topic of conversation with regard to performance tests, except to point out that the older IE7 is our baseline. But over the past few weeks, IE8 has made news by marching the opposite direction, with security fixes and a Jscript update bogging down IE8 speeds quite noticeably. It's also created the only situation where the Windows 7 version of a browser is faster than the XP version; as you can see elsewhere, XP typically provides the much faster platform, although with Opera of late the difference is more minor.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

Nowhere is Google's concentration on Windows XP more pronounced than in the Nontroppo CSS rendering test, where Chrome's XP scores continue to double its scores on Vista. Another trend worth pointing out here, though, is how well both Firefox and Opera perform on this test on Windows 7 (the blue line in the middle) compared with the other platforms -- for Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 and both stable and beta versions of Opera, XP is actually the slowest of the three Windows versions.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

Chrome's performance on classic benchmark scores in the new JS Benchmark battery is phenomenal; and here, Chrome 4 on Windows 7 posts a higher score than on XP, which is not Chrome's usual pattern. The new JS Benchmark is about the interpreter's capability to handle complex, highly nested mathematical problems, which is more related to how the browser will run Web apps than render Web pages.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

Mozilla's highest score yet on the Acid3 compliance test from the Web Standards Project comes from the latest Firefox 3.7 Alpha preview build: a 96%. Before long, we could be seeing all the non-IE browsers posting perfect 100% scores, making Acid3 almost a non-factor.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

Safari's most impressive scores have always come from the SunSpider test on Windows XP, which are much better than even Chrome's scores on Vista and Windows 7. But it's Chrome's scores here on XP that are the true phenomenon, and the real indicator that Google builds Chrome to fly on the most popular Windows for netbooks.

Next: The rest of the field...

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2. CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

We added the TestCube 3D battery earlier this month in deference to a number of Betanews readers who pointed out that we weren't paying enough attention to the browser's capability to plot and work geometry simultaneously. This test remains Opera's forte, especially on XP where Opera 10 Beta 1's numbers are better than double those of Google Chrome. There's something here about parallelism between rendering and math that Opera still gets and the others don't.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

The SlickSpeed test measures how well each browser manages a variety of different JS libraries, especially for managing layout elements in a page and arrays full of content strings. Firefox's scores for stable and beta versions are improving here, especially for XP, although it's interesting how Vista and Win7 scores are very close to one another. Safari is the king, for now, with JavaScript library management.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

The Nontroppo table rendering test examines how well the browser manages the <TABLE> element -- the part of HTML that CSS proponents would just as soon everyone forget about. But many old-style Web sites prefer the old HTML way of dividing pages over the more modern CSS, maybe just because CSS is just one more thing to have to learn. The surprise here is how Chrome 4's performance in this test on Windows 7 is actually quite poor; we ran this test several times, and the amount of time Chrome 4 consumed in attempting to find the start of the table sequence, was much slower than for Chrome 3. Version 4 made up for this by rendering the table faster, but it could not make up for the time lost.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

The third Nontroppo test in our suite evaluates how fast each browser renders a very ordinary page that does not use CSS -- a majority of Web pages still out there (though a declining one with Yahoo's recent closure of GeoCities). We just can't figure out the scores from Mozilla's latest preview build of Firefox 3.5.5 (the "Shiretoko" track), but there it is: a 9.90 on XP versus a 2.34 on Windows 7, even slower than Vista. Both 3.5.5 and 3.6 Beta 1 are actually slower at accessing the first element of the page in memory than even 3.5.4, but 3.6 makes up for this by rendering the page almost one-third faster.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

One of the two new additions to our CRPI suite is Delgado's Canvas rendering test, which evaluates how well the browser uses its internal Canvas object to render graphics in memory, rather than rely on the server to provide graphics for it. It's a two-part test where the outlines of the 48 contiguous United States are rendered in the first, and a detailed outline of Alaska is rendered in the second. Firefox is actually quite good with this -- we expected Firefox to be bested by Opera here, and it wasn't. But Chrome still has a clear advantage.

CRPI 2.2 10/30/2009

The second addition is actually a very old library that tests how well the interpreter executes individual JavaScript instructions in a sequence of 1,000,000 iterations. There were two surprises for us here: First and most obvious is the poor performance of Opera, a clear indicator that Opera slows down exponentially as a task gets heavier and heavier. If Opera's developers can concentrate on this alone, Opera 11's performance could start to rival at least Firefox's. The second surprise was Firefox itself, whose scores were right in line with those of Safari and Chrome -- quite competitive, in fact -- except for Chrome on XP, where Google once again runs away with the show.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index 2.2: How it works and why

Publié: octobre 31, 2009, 2:11am CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

We did not have the Comprehensive Relative Performance Index (CRPI -- the "Creepy Index") out for very long before we found it needed to be changed again. The main reason came from one of the architects of the benchmark suites we use, Web developer Sean Patrick Kane. This week, Kane declared his own benchmark obsolete, and unveiled a completely new system to take its place.

When the author of a benchmark suite says his own methodology was outdated, we really have no choice but to agree and work around it. As you'll see, Kane replaced his original, simple suite that covers all the bases with a very comprehensive, in-depth battery of classic tests called JSBenchmark that covers just one of those bases. For our CRPI index to continue to be fair, we needed not only to compensate for those areas of the old CK index that were no longer covered, but also to balance those missing points with tests that just as comprehensively covered those missing bases.

The result is what we call CRPI 2.2 (you didn't see 2.1, although we tried it and we weren't altogether pleased with the results). The new index number covers a lot more data points than the old one, and the result...is a set of indices that are stretched back out over the 20.0 mark, like the original 1.0, but whose proportions with respect to one another remain true. In other words, the bars on the final chart look the same shape and length, but there are now more tick marks.

General explanation of the CRPI

Since we started this, we've maintained one very important methodology: We take a slow Web browser that you might not be using much anymore, and we pick on its sorry self as our test subject. We base our index on the assessed speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista SP2 -- the slowest browser still in common use. For every test in the suite, we give IE7 a 1.0 score. Then we combine the test scores to derive a CRPI index number that, in our estimate, best represents the relative performance of each browser compared to IE7. So for example, if a browser gets a score of 6.5, we believe that once you take every important factor into account, that browser provides 650% the performance of IE7.

We believe that "performance" means doing the complete job of providing rendering and functionality the way you expect, and the way Web developers expect. So we combine speed, computational efficiency, and standards compliance tests. This way, a browser with a 6.5 score can be thought of as doing the job more than five times faster and better.

Here now are the ten batteries we use for our CRPI 2.2 suite, and how we've modified them where necessary to suit our purposes:

Nontroppo CSS rendering test. Up until recently, we were using a modified version of a rendering test used by HowToCreate.co.uk, whose two purposes have been to time how long it takes to re-render the contents of multiple arrays of <DIV> elements and to time the loading of the page that includes those elements. The reason we modified this page was because the JavaScript onLoad event fires at different times for different browsers -- despite its documented purpose, it doesn't necessarily mean the page is "loaded." There's a real-world reason for these variations: In Apple Safari, for instance, some page contents can be styled the moment they're available, but before the complete page is rendered, so firing the event early enables the browser to do its job faster -- in other words, Apple doesn't just do this to cheat. But the actual creators of the test themselves, at nontroppo.org, did a better job of compensating for the variations than we did: Specifically, the new version now tests to see when the browser is capable of accessing that first <DIV> element, even if (and especially when) the page is still loading.
Here's how we developed our new score for this test battery: There are three loading events: one for Document Object Model (DOM) availability, one for first element access, and the third being the conventional onLoad event. We counted DOM load as one sixth, first access as two sixths, and onLoad as three sixths of the rendering score. Then we adjusted the re-rendering part of the test so that it iterates 50 times instead of just five. This is because some browsers do not count milliseconds properly in some platforms -- this is the reason why Opera mysteriously mis-reported its own speed in Windows XP as slower than it was. (Opera users everywhere...you were right, and we thank you for your persistence.) By running the test for 10 iterations for five loops, we can get a more accurate estimate of the average time for each iteration because the millisecond timer will have updated correctly. The element loading and re-rendering scores are averaged together for a new and revised cumulative score -- one which readers will discover is much fairer to both Opera and Safari than our previous version.
Celtic Kane JSBenchmark. The very first benchmark tests I ever ran for a published project were taken from Byte Magazine, and the year was 1978. They were classic mathematical and algorithmic challenges, like finding the first handful of prime numbers or finding a route through a random maze, and I was excited at how a TRS-80 trounced an Apple II in the math department. The new JSBenchmark from Sean P. Kane is a modern version of the classic math tests first made popular, if you can believe it, by folks like myself. For instance, the QuickSort algorithm segments an array of random numbers and sorts the results in a minimum number of steps; while a simplified form of genetic algorithms, called the "Genetic Salesman," finds the shortest route through a geometrically complex maze. It's good to see a modern take on my old favorites. Like the old CK benchmark, rather than run a fixed number of iterations and time the result, JSBenchmark runs an undetermined number of iterations within a fixed period of time, and produces indexes that represent the relative efficiency of each algorithm during that set period -- higher numbers are better.
SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. Maybe the most respected general benchmark suite in the field focuses on computational JavaScript performance rather than rendering -- the raw ability of the browser's underlying JavaScript engine. Though it comes from the folks who produce the WebKit open source rendering engine that currently has closer ties with Safari, though is also used elsewhere, we've found SunSpider's results to appear fair and realistic, and not weighted toward WebKit-based browsers. There are nine categories of real-world computational tests (3D geometry, memory access, bitwise operations, complex program control flow, cryptography, date objects, math objects, regular expressions, and string manipulation). Each test in this battery is much more complex, and more in-tune with real functions that Web browsers would perform every day, than the more generalized, classic approach now adopted by JSBenchmark. All nine categories are scored and average relative to IE7 in Vista SP2.
Mozilla 3D cube by Simon Speich, also known as Testcube 3D, is an unusual discovery from an unusual source: an independent Swiss developer who devised a simple and quick test of DHTML 3D rendering while researching the origins of a bug in Firefox. That bug has been addressed already, but the test fulfills a useful function for us: It tests only graphical dynamic HTML rendering -- which is finally becoming more important thanks to more capable JavaScript engines. And it's not weighted toward Mozilla -- it's a fair test of anyone's DHTML capabilities.
There are two simple heats whose purpose is to draw an ordinary wireframe cube and rotate it in space, accounting for forward-facing surfaces. Each heat produces a set of five results: total elapsed time, the amount of that time spent actually rendering the cube, the average time each loop takes during rendering, and the elapsed time in milliseconds of the fastest and slowest loop. We add those last two together to obtain a single average, which is compared with the other three times against scores in IE7 to yield a comparative index score.
SlickSpeed CSS selectors test suite. As JavaScript developers know, there are a multitude of third-party libraries in addition to the browser's native JS library, that enable browsers to access elements of a very detailed and intricate page (among other things). For our purposes, we've chosen a modified version of SlickSpeed by Llama Lab, which covers many more third-party libraries including Llama's own. This version tests no fewer than 56 shorthand methods that are supposed to be commonly supported by all JavaScript libraries, for accessing certain page elements. These methods are called CSS selectors (one of the tested libraries, called Spry, is supported by Adobe and documented here).
So Llama's version of the SlickSpeed battery tests 56 selectors from 10 libraries, including each browser's native JavaScript (which should follow prescribed Web standards). Multiple iterations of each selector are tested, and the final elapsed times are rendered. Here's the controversial part: Some have said the final times are meaningless because not every selector is supported by each browser; although SlickSpeed marks each selector that generates an error in bold black, the elapsed time for an error is usually only 1 ms, while a non-error is as high as 1000. We compensate for this by creating a scoring system that penalizes each error for 1/56 of the total, so only the good selectors are scored and the rest "get zeroes."
Here's where things get hairy: As some developers already know, IE7 got all zeroes for native JavaScript selectors. It's impossible to compare a good score against no score, so to fill the hole, we use the geometric mean of IE7's positive scores with all the other libraries, as the base number against which to compare the native JavaScript scores of the other browsers, including IE8. The times for each library are compared against IE7, with penalties assessed for each error (Firefox, for example, can generate 42 errors out of 560, for a penalty of 7.5%.) Then we assess the geometric mean, not the average, of each battery -- the reason we do this is because we're comparing the same functions for each library, not different categories of functions as with the other suites. Geometric means will account better for fluctuations and anomalies.

Next: The other five elements of CRPI 2.2...

The other five elements of CRPI 2.2

Nontroppo table rendering test. As has already been proven in the field, CSS is the better platform for rendering complex pages using magazine-style layout. Still, a great many of the world's Web pages continue to use HTML's old <TABLE> element (created to render data in formal tables) for dividing pages into grids. We heard from you that if IE7 is still important (it is our index browser after all), old-style table rendering should still be tested. And we concur.
The creator of our CSS rendering test has created a similar platform for testing not only how long it takes a browser to render a huge table, but how soon the individual cells (<TD> elements) of that table are available for manipulation. When the test starts, it times the duration until the browser starts rendering the table and then ends that rendering, from the same mark, for two index scores. It also times the loading of the page, for a third index score. Then we have it re-render the contents of the table five times, and average the time elapsed for each one, for a fourth score. The four items are then averaged together for a cumulative score.
Nontroppo standard browser load test. (That Nontroppo gets around, eh?) This may very well be the most generally boring test of the suite: It's an extremely ordinary page with ordinary illustrations, followed by a block full of nested <DIV> elements. But it allows us to take away all the variable elements and concentrate on straight rendering and relative load times, especially when we launch the page locally. It produces document load time, document plus image load times, DOM load times, and first access times, all of which are compared to IE7 and averaged.
Canvas rendering test. The canvas object in JavaScript is a local memory segment where client-side instructions can plot complex geometry or even render detailed, animated text, all without communicating with the server. The Web page contains all the instructions the object needs; the browser downloads them, and the contents are plotted locally. We discovered on the blog of Web developer Ernest Delgado a personal test originally meant to demonstrate how much faster the Canvas object was than using Vector Markup Language in Internet Explorer, or Scalable Vector Graphics in Firefox. We'd make use of the VML and SVG test ourselves if Apple's Safari -- in the interest of making things faster -- hadn't implemented a system that replaces them with Canvas by default.
So we use Delgado's rendering test to grab two sets of plot points from Yahoo's database -- one outlining the 48 contiguous United States, and one set outlining Alaska complete with all its islands. Those plot points are rendered on top of Google Maps projections of the mainland US and Alaska at equal scale, and both renderings are timed separately. Those times are compared against IE7, and the two results are averaged with one another for a final score.
Testnet.World JS performance test. A decade ago now, someone tried to make a respectable JavaScript benchmark suite out of estimating how long the engine took to execute common math instructions. To be able to count the estimate, each test would run a thousand or so iterations. For today's computers, they have to run 1,000,000. But at the time the test was released, it was criticized by many who thought timing just the single instructions over and over, didn't represent overall performance. It doesn't, but it does represent the efficiency of small parts of the engine, and it's precisely the part we needed to fill in after Sean P. Kane changed his benchmark suite. So this battery -- a rewritten version of the code at this address -- times how long it takes the engine to process 15 common keywords and regular functions, from if branches to for loops to string concatenations, one million times each. Results are rendered in milliseconds, and scores in each heat are compared to those from IE7 in Vista SP2. The results are 15 per-heat relative index scores, which we then average out to gain a final score in the battery.
Acid3 standards compliance test. The function of the Acid3 test has changed dramatically, especially as most of our browsers become fully compliant. IE7 only scored a 12% on the Acid3, and IE8 scored 20%; but today, most of the alternative browsers are at 100% compliance, with Firefox at 93% and with 3.7 Alpha 1 scoring 96%. So it means less now than it did in earlier months to have Acid3 yield an index score of 8.33, which is the score for any browser that scores 100% thanks to IE7. Now that cumulative index scores are closer to 20, having an eight-and-a-third in the mix has become a deadweight rather than a reward.
So now we're making Acid3 count in a different way: For the other batteries that have to do with rendering (all three Nontroppos and TestCube 3D), plus the native JavaScript library portion of the SlickSpeed test, we're multiplying the index score by the Acid3 percentage. As a result, the amount of any non-compliance with the Web Standards Project's assessment is applied as a penalty against those rendering scores. Today, only Mozilla and Microsoft browsers are affected by this penalty, and Firefox only slightly -- all the others are unaffected.

Next: Our physical test platform, and why it doesn't matter...

Our physical test platform, and why it doesn't matter

The physical test platform we've chosen for CRPI browser testing is a triple-boot system, which enables us to boot different Windows platforms from the same large hard drive. Our platforms are Windows XP Professional SP3, Windows Vista Ultimate SP2, and Windows 7 RTM.

All platforms are always brought up to date using the latest Windows updates from Microsoft, prior to testing. We realize, as some have told us, that this could alter the speed of the results obtained. However, we expect real-world users to be making the same changes, rather than continuing to use unpatched and outdated software. Certainly the whole point of testing Web browsers on a continual basis is because folks want to know how Web browsers are evolving, and to what degree, on as close to real-time a scale as possible. When we update Vista, we re-test IE7 on that platform to ensure that all index scores are relative to the most recent available performance, even for that aging browser on that old platform.

Our physical test system is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600-based computer using a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, an Nvidia 8600 GTS-series video card, 3 GB of DDR2 DRAM, and a 640 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive (among others). Three Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2, and Windows 7 RC partitions are all on this drive. Since May 2009, we've been using a physical platform for browser testing, replacing the virtual test platforms we had been using up to that time. Although there are a few more steps required to manage testing on a physical platform, you've told us you believe the results of physical tests will be more reliable and accurate.

But the fact that we perform all of our tests on one machine, and render their results as relative speeds, means that the physical platform is actually immaterial here. We could have chosen a faster or slower computer (or, frankly, a virtual machine) and you could run this entire battery of tests on whatever computer you happen to own. You'd get the same numbers because our indexes are all about how much faster x is than y, not how much actual time elapsed.

The speed of our underlying network is also not a factor here, since all of our tests contain code that is executed locally, even if it's delivered by way of a server. The download process is not timed, only the execution. Why don't we care about download speeds, especially how long it takes to load certain pages? We do, but we're still in search of a scientifically reliable method to test download efficiency. Web pages change by the second, so any test that measures the time a handful of browsers consumes to download content from any given set of URLs, is almost pointless today. And the speed of the network can vary greatly, so a reliable final score would have to factor out the speed at the time of each iteration. That's a cumbersome approach, and that's why we haven't embarked on it yet.

There are three major benchmark suites that we have evaluated and re-evaluated, and with respect to their authors, we have chosen not to use. Dromaeo comes from a Firefox contributor whom we respect greatly, named John Resig. We appreciate Resig's hard work, but we don't yet feel his results numbers correspond to the differences in performance that we see with our own eyes, or that we can time with a stopwatch. The browsers just aren't that close together. Meanwhile, we've currently rejected Google's V8 suite -- built to test its V8 JavaScript engine -- for the opposite reason: Yes, we know Chrome is more capable than IE. But 230 times more capable? No. That's overkill. There's a huge exponential curve there that's not being accounted for, and once it is, we'll reconsider it.

We've also been asked to evaluate Futuremark's PeaceKeeper. I'm very familiar with Futuremark's tests from my days at Tom's Hardware. Though it's obvious to me that there's a lot going on in each of the batteries of the Peacekeeper suite, it doesn't help much that the final result is rendered only as a single tick-mark. And while that may sound hypocritical from a guy who's pushing a single performance index, the point is, for us to make sense of it, we need to be able to see into it -- how did that number get that high or that low? If Futuremark would just break down the results into components, we could compare each of those components against IE7 and the modern browsers, and we could determine where each browser's strengths and weaknesses lie. Then we could tally an index based on those strengths and weaknesses, rather than an artificial sum of all values that blurs all those distinctions.

How useful is Google's 'Similar Images?'

Publié: octobre 30, 2009, 11:52pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Hands On Review

Let's face facts: The real reason you'd ever want a search engine to locate "similar images" to one or more you're observing at the moment, is because you're not certain of what you're looking for or what you want to find. A search for photographs that look like da Vinci's Mona Lisa is going to turn up more pictures of the same Mona Lisa. And while a search for photos that look like Paris Hilton will turn up more photos of Paris Hilton, a search for photos that look like other one-hit wonders like William Shatner will turn up pictures of folks we may have never heard of, like someone named Mike Vogel.

So while Google Labs' pre-built experimental searches for its first public incarnation of Similar Images, unveiled Wednesday, does demonstrate an uncanny ability to isolate Paris Hilton pictures from its index, the fact that most of those pictures are labeled "Paris Hilton" anyway suggests that these are not real-world experiments. In the real world, people are looking for a picture of that person in that show with the other guy with the weird hair, or a painting from an artist with the funky name. They're looking for the imaging algorithm to fill in the gaps for the information they don't have on hand, not to demonstrate the ability to mimic a successful search when the information is in front of our face.

In the interest of testing Google Labs' Similar Images in something resembling the real world, we came up with some examples of cases where an individual would want to see related images because they looked similar, not because they were contextually related. An example of something that's contextually similar rather than visually would be a search for "that glass pyramid in France." By comparison, if you were doing a search for pictures of skyscrapers that were covered in mirrored glass, the only results you'd be likely to obtain from an ordinary Google or Bing search, unless by some miracle several photos were published alongside text that read, "Here is a picture of a skyscraper covered in mirrored glass."

The Fountain Place building in Dallas, Texas But any kind of Google search starts with text, even when you're using Similar Images. So your hope is to be able to find at least the first item contextually (conventionally), and then use it as a sample upon which to base the target of your search. For our first test, we pictured in our minds a particular mirrored-glass skyscraper of the 20th century, and pretended to forget that it was designed by architect I. M. Pei, that it's called Fountain Place, and stands tall on the east side of the skyline of Dallas' CBD. If you're a Texan, you know which one I mean: It's like a big shard of blue glass rocketing upward from the ground as though it had grown there.

Besides the logo up top, the only other obvious difference in this process is that you're looking for a blue hyperlink, "Similar images," along the bottom of items where visually similar samples are available. It's here where you come to realize Similar Images' biggest flaw: It only provides similarity estimates for images that it has already pre-determined to be similar in the first place, so unless it's indexed "mirrored skyscrapers," it's of no more help to you than if you simply used Google Images.

So what has Similar Images indexed thus far, besides what appears on its front page in Labs? We decided to try a handful of searches that an everyday user might embark upon in the hopes of finding something that's visually, not contextually, similar. Here's some of the searches that did turn up at least one or more "Similar images" hyperlinks on page 1 of the results:

Jaguar automobiles, although most of the similar items found there would also easily turn up in an ordinary search for "Jaguar"

How many of these items actually look like 'yellow birds' to you? A snapshot of a Google Similar Images query for 'yellow bird.'

Yellow bird brings up some links, although one of them is attached not to a bird but to a picture of a Porsche rally car called the "yellow bird;" and another is attached to Sesame Street's Big Bird, who is undoubtedly also one of a kind. Here you might prefer some similarity links to actual birds, and indeed there's at least one very unique specimen. However, the Similar Images that Google actually indexed contain, for reasons I can't quite fathom, mostly pictures of mushrooms, along with various ferns, cacti, and a tourist photo of a gift shop in Hong Kong.
Old master Christ disciples painting - The Renaissance period is chock full of various interpretations of Jesus and the disciples, usually painted according to the preferences and exacting tastes of the artists' respective benefactors (with some notable exceptions). But if you're not familiar with the artists themselves, finding a particular masterwork that pops up in your mind may not be easy -- there's no unique text to go on. This particular query actually pulled up better similar images than we expected, with an item from allthingsbeautiful.com triggering the similarity hyperlink. From there, we did find several other photographs of the same painting (Cranach's Christ and the Adulteress, 1532), plus links to paintings with much similar content. Since disciples/religious paintings during that period did have almost geometrically regulated guidelines (for instance, the relative positioning of Jesus' head), there are actually some obvious elements for the similarity algorithm to focus on.
Italian pasta dish broccoli links to pictures of several appealing pasta dishes, some of which actually do have broccoli. Being able to discern something that's green and tree-like, however, from anything else that's green at the time, is not something you'd necessarily expect even a high-order algorithm to be able to accomplish. So the Similar Images link generated by a picture from howstuffworks.com instead takes you to a number of very good looking pasta dishes, whose plating and use of color are much the same. You'll find spinach, bay leaves, generous parsley, even spinach pasta, alongside bright yellows and spots of chopped tomato.

Behold the black dog, the symbol of all that is great in America. From a search that was not for bald eagles, from Google Similar Images.

Black dog long face surprised us right at first, since the topmost image retrieved that had a Similar Images link was of a black Labrador with a very long face. Could Similar Images pull up a gallery of similar photos? Here is where you realize how much more useful Similar Images would be if it could maintain track of both the context and the visual similarity at the same time -- specifically in this case, if it could remember it's searching for dogs. For this particular target, the index pulled up mostly bald eagles -- round-headed and white -- with a few fish hawks and other wild fowl thrown in. For another example with Similar Links, the system pulled up not wild dogs but wild hogs...actually, a few dozen pictures of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, the similarity factor here to the black poodle in the target photo being absolutely bewildering.

Meanwhile, there were some searches we tried that, like mirrored skyscraper, turned up "bupkus" Similar Images links, including cashmere sweater (which you might expect would at least turn up an indexed link to similar patterns) and fern blue leaves (which might be a search someone might try to pull up a kind of fern she might otherwise be unable to describe). Many Google Labs projects are pretty much what they're advertised to be: curiosities, open experiments, ways to throw some ideas out there and see what comes back. Indeed, it's part of the Google philosophy of "Try it first and see what happens;" and it did lead to Google Chrome, arguably the most astonishingly efficient computational engine ever devised for the purposes of mere Internet consumption.

But there is an aimlessness in the Similar Images project that is a little distressing, an indicator that Google isn't always so much about good execution as it can be about good ideas. Many of the sub-par query results we received could easily have been improved if the contextual part of the search had been blended with the visual similarity part. It would have led, for instance, to motorcycles and bald eagles being excluded from the dog search, and mushrooms and Hong Kong tourist photos being excluded from the bird search (though maybe asking it to exclude spinach in a search for broccoli may be too much to ask). The same level of expertise used to refine everyday Google searches could be employed here, although it's the projects where such expertise is regularly used where the most secrecy goes on.

And perhaps that's just one of the downsides of "openness" -- when you're in a forgiving and tolerant mood to begin with, you can forget that the objective of a mission is to cut out the chaff and get to the goal. If Google Similar Images is to become anything more than a toy, someone needs to take charge of it and perhaps add whatever secret sauce the company uses to make regular queries work so well. It may not be in the spirit of openness, but as we're learning in recent years, openness isn't everything.

At last! Public Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is live with new Windows 7 support

Publié: octobre 30, 2009, 10:35pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 from Fileforum now.

One of the nicest new features in Microsoft Windows 7 concerns the revised taskbar, specifically how many more choices are available to you when you right-click an icon, or when you just hover over it to see where all your open windows are. In Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1, which went live just minutes ago, the browser's integration with the Win7 taskbar is now on a par with that of Internet Explorer 8.

Specifically, the contents of the first handful of active tabs are transmitted live to the taskbar, meaning that the thumbnails contain live images of Firefox pages, including active video. In our initial tests just after we downloaded the final edition, we noticed a possible bug in this feature just with regard to Betanews.com, for reasons we're not certain of at the moment (maybe we scored Chrome too high last time). Our thumbnail doesn't show up yet. This isn't the only possible problem we've noticed today; the File Open dialog box seemed slow to sort entries when we called it up. Obviously this is a beta edition, so little problems like this could crop up, but now it's the public's responsibility to point them out.

The improved Windows 7 taskbar integration in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1.

If you're trying 3.6 Beta 1 out for the first time, and you don't notice the much-talked-about Ctrl+Tab feature working just yet...don't worry, you actually have to turn it on manually. It's an about:config setting called browser.ctrlTab.previews, which must be set to true. It's only the first 15 minutes or so, but this feature seems to work flawlessly at the moment: When your browser window is open, the same thumbnails that appear in the taskbar for that window, now appear here in a selection screen that'll be comfortable for Windows users who use Alt+Tab already to page between open windows. Just typing Ctrl+Tab still moves the active tab forward, like before. To get the menu feature to work, you have to hold down Ctrl alone for a moment first, then press Tab.

The updated Ctrl Tab feature brings up thumbnails of active tabs, all over the screen, in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1.

You keep pressing Tab until the highlight is over the page tab you want to open, then you release both keys. But there's another feature here that has "Aza Raskin" written all over it: When you highlight the button that says "Show all n tabs," Firefox brings up a Fennec-like menu of thumbnails. You can let go of your keys and still see them all. But there's also a search box that lets you narrow down the set of on-screen tabs to those whose titles contain the text you give it, in case you can't find a certain page based just on how it looks alone.

A menu that steps off of Ctrl Tab lets you perform a text search of active page titles, in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1.

Previously, based on Betanews performance tests of nightly builds, we predicted that the first public Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 would have almost 23% better performance overall than the current stable 3.5 build. We're still tabulating figures at the moment, but in the early going, the performance gain on Windows 7 alone appears to be about 21% based on the scoring system we were using at the start of the month, but closer to just 10% using a revised scoring system we're premiering today. We'll have a full report later today when the final numbers are in.

Update ribbon (small)

2:05 pm EDT October 31, 2009 · The results are in, and they took a little longer than we expected because we wanted to verify a few extra points. (That and Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 came out later than we anticipated.) But here is the final breakdown:

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index 2.2 October 30, 2009

The new public beta 1 is Mozilla's best performing browser of the bunch -- more than its stable editions, and more than its private test editions. But with a few new tests added to our evaluation suite, the gap between 3.6 and 3.5 is actually not as much as we anticipated, although testers are reporting they can feel the speed bump.

A complete report on the latest round of tests appears here.

Nokia's N-Gage can't survive against iPhone, will be shut down

Publié: octobre 30, 2009, 7:36pm CET par Tim Conneally

According to Reuters today, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia will reportedly be shutting down its N-Gage gaming service. The shutdown will come six years after the mobile phone and gaming system hybrid concept debuted and was quickly retired; and nearly four years after it was re-invented as a part of Nokia's smartphone ecosystem, and later integrated with the Ovi platform.

Nokia intends to stop publishing new N-Gage titles and eventually wind down the service by the end of next year. Games will still be a major part of the Ovi platform, available in the Ovi Store under store.ovi.com/games, but the dedicated N-Gage brand is finally being scuttled.

In the N-Gage blog today, the Nokia Games Team tried to explain the reasoning behind the service's closure.

"As mobile gaming evolves and begins to encompass social gaming, we want to offer one store front with an even broader portfolio of games -- games for everyone. It's much more convenient to have one place to get all your mobile games, and this it what Ovi Store provides. Mobile gaming is one of the most popular activities in the Ovi Store, with games being the #2 most downloaded category for premium content," today's blog entry said.

The problem was that the re-designed N-Gage was marketed as a niche product to serious gamers who owned Symbian S60 devices. But after the early failures of the platform (namely its high cost, weak game support, and poorly designed "game deck") the product had little or no appeal to the very niche it was trying to serve.

This failure, coupled with the app store gold rush occurring on all the major smartphone platforms, especially iPhone and iPod Touch, could help de-fragment Nokia's games offerings and help reach a wider audience.

The only thing that is truly going to suffer from this change is the community element associated with the N-Gage Arena, which lets users post high scores, write reviews, and manage their games. After the N-Gage shutdown, games will continue to work, but all the community features in the games will stop functioning after 2010.

Security fixes, JavaScript update bog down Internet Explorer 8

Publié: octobre 30, 2009, 4:39pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

The final test editions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, released while Windows 7 was still in the technical preview phase, suggested that its performance could very well triple that of its predecessor, the venerable IE7. When the RTM edition first became available, its performance was pared down a bit, but still better than double that of IE7, based on Betanews' assessments at the time.

But we've noticed a trend of IE8 performance dragging down over time, while every other major Windows browser in the field was headed the other direction -- and fast. Early this month, when Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 appeared imminent (and still is at this moment), we calculated the performance difference between IE8 and IE7 at about 75%.

After the last round of security fixes two weeks ago, plus an out-of-cycle update to Microsoft's JavaScript (JScript) engine this week, the performance gap across Windows platforms has averaged down even more, to an all-time low of 54%. This even though Betanews tweaked its testing suite even more in the last few weeks, in response to changing circumstances with one of our benchmark providers -- our CRPI suite now includes a few test batteries that should have cut IE8 some slack.

In our latest round of tests, IE8 scored a CRPI of 1.54, which means on average, users can expect 54 better overall performance from IE8 than they would have seen from IE7 running on Windows Vista SP2.

We also could not help but notice that the latest JScript update was applied to Windows XP and Vista platforms only -- at least in the Automatic Updates distributions that we received. After those updates were applied, IE8 performance in Vista and XP were dragged down so heavily that IE8 on Windows 7 is now the fastest of the three platforms: 1.63 for Win7 versus 1.59 for XP and 1.41 for Vista. Since we've been testing on the Windows 7 RTM platform, browsers have typically been 10 to 15% faster on XP SP3 than on Win7.

What happened? First of all, we've noticed that since Patch Tuesday, IE8 has completely failed the portion of the advanced SlickSpeed selectors test that focuses on the browser's native JavaScript library, on all three platforms ("failed" meaning, it couldn't perform the programmed job on all 56 heats). This is the one portion of the SlickSpeed test that IE8 used to perform quite well on. On XP over the past few weeks, IE8's score on SlickSpeed slipped from 2.45 on October 13, to 1.67 yesterday.

Meanwhile, the SunSpider test suite written by the WebKit team shows a noticeable slowdown in the calculation department in all categories, but again, on XP and Vista and not Windows 7. On XP, IE8's SunSpider score slipped from a 6.02 to a 5.79. On Windows 7, meanwhile, the SunSpider score improved from a 5.66 to a 5.93. (These scores are relative; a 6.00 would mean "six times faster than IE7 on Vista SP2." We post relative scores on tests using identical hardware in order that the hardware can be factored out of the equation; in other words, we believe IE8 is only 54% faster than IE7 on any machine you choose.)

It's computational test scores where IE8 is flagging; by comparison, rendering scores are flat to slightly higher across the board. We're still in the midst of tallying scores for other browsers, and plan to post those results along with test scores for the first public Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 once that browser (finally) becomes available.

Some Betanews readers have asked us why we use IE7 on Vista as our performance index rather than IE8, and up to now, our answer has been because it's the slowest browser we test, and thus gives us a more granular sense of performance improvements for all the more modern browsers in current use. If this trend keeps up, though, we may just change our minds.

Sprint quietly locks down Xohm WiMAX network while it awaits Clear takeover

Publié: octobre 30, 2009, 3:12am CET par Tim Conneally

Without any notice to current customers with or those early adopters with dormant accounts, Sprint has locked down the Baltimore Xohm WiMAX network and is not letting inactive hardware be turned back on to allow free upgrades to Clear hardware.

Sprint's Xohm network was one of the first two WiMAX deployments in the United States. We watched with excitement as the towers were raised in Baltimore and the ceremonial ribbon was cut on the new high speed wireless network.

But not three months after Xohm debuted, Sprint and Clearwire agreed to merge their 4G wireless assets under the brand name "Clear," and the fate of the Xohm brand was sealed.

Since that time, Clearwire has rolled out new WiMAX networks in 14 markets, has made plans for networks in as many as 80 cities, while the lone Xohm network sat in wait for Clear to come in and take over.

It now appears that time is approaching, and Sprint has all but shut down its Xohm operations with no attempt to communicate this fact with early subscribers.

The activation of new accounts on the Xohm network was frozen four days ago. When you log into xohm.com, you get forwarded to the customer page, and if you click the "learn more" link, you're redirected back. All sales information has been removed, and when you try to click "about us" or "contact us," you're linked to a beta.xohm.com URL that is password protected.

If you log into the site with a user account, it still says "Do you have a XOHM device but no XOHM Service? If so, click on the 'Buy a New XOHM Service' button so we can activate your device and get you the service you need to start using the XOHM network."

But there is no button.

When Rob Wray of mp3car.com tried to re-activate some extra Xohm equipment on his currently active account, customer service representatives and managers refused to do so, and instead suggest he return the hardware to the vendors.

So customers who let their accounts lapse due to the uncertain future of the network or those who had an allotment of extra equipment for workforce deployments are out of luck with no sympathy from Sprint.

This is because new equipment will be required when Clear takes over the Xohm network at the beginning of 2010, and only customers with active equipment will be eligible for a free hardware upgrades.

Xohm equipment "might be compatible with the new Clearwire network...but probably not."

Unconvinced by Windows 7? Ubuntu 9.10 debuted today!

Publié: octobre 29, 2009, 10:17pm CET par Tim Conneally

The latest version of Canonical's popular Linux distribution Ubuntu (9.10 "Karmic Koala") was officially released today and is now available for download.

Among numerous performance improvements (Upstart native jobs, Intel video driver acceleration switched from "EXA" to "UXA", GRUB 2 boot loader by default, ext4 filesystem by default) and upgrades to the architecture (Linux Kernel 2.6.31, Gnome 2.28, X.Org 7.4, X.Org server 1.6.4, Xsplash and Compiz Fusion 0.8.4), Ubuntu 9.10 has thrown in a couple of compelling new products to make Karmic Koala worth a second look for those still apprehensive about Linux operating systems and largely unfamiliar with all the architectural and environmental upgrades.

The first of these is SoftwareCenter, a graphical package manager designed to simplify the act of installing or removing software. The rationale behind this project is that Ubuntu has never had a single, cohesive graphical method for application management.

"Having multiple sanctioned graphical methods of installing software...makes people more likely to think that unsanctioned methods are just as safe, when they are not. Meanwhile, the descriptions of available software are often technical gibberish. And many software project and vendor Web sites either provide command-line installation instructions (dulling users to malicious terminal commands from other sources) or .tar.gz downloads that are difficult to install and near-impossible to update," the project's description says.

Including better application descriptions, better screenshots, and a better overall experience, Software Center will hopefully make software discovery, installation and management more user friendly.

Secondly, Karmic Koala comes with Ubuntu One, a cloud sync utility which comes with 2 GB of online storage to all free users or 50 GB for a monthly $10 fee. Ubuntu One lets users store and share files, Tomboy notes, and Evolution contact data between multiple machines, and includes a Web interface for accessing content when on other machines.

In addition to the new desktop interface, a Karmic Koala Netbook Remix and Server Edition (featuring Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) were also released today.

"Ubuntu 9.10 gives users more reasons than ever to seriously consider Linux at a time when many are thinking again about their operating system options. We are delivering a platform for users interested in an easy-to-use, great-looking, Web-friendly operating system," Jane Silber, Canonical COO said in a statement earlier this week. "A faster, more beautiful boot and login sequence, file and contact synchronization through online services and great experiences on the most popular notebook, desktop and netbook models continue to drive Ubuntu into the mainstream of computing choices."

Non-exclusive iPhones: Has Verizon waited too long?

Publié: octobre 29, 2009, 10:08pm CET par Carmi Levy

I've never been a fan of exclusive deals between handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. I understand why they appeal to the Apples and the AT&Ts of the world in the first place, but it ticks me off that sweet deals like this always seem to leave consumers out in the cold. They limit choice and competition, which tends to keep prices artificially high for longer than they should, and they make it easier for carriers to maintain the kind of old, customer-unfriendly practices that have long stained the industry.

When a given gotta-have-it device is available only through one carrier, consumers are forced to make a Hobson's Choice in that they can choose by device, or by carrier, but not both. And if they dislike the exclusive carrier for any reason, they either hold their noses and sign, or learn to live with another carrier's second-rate hardware.

Either way, it's not exactly democracy in action, and it often results in less than optimal experiences for consumers. We all deserve better.

Change already happened

So it's with more than a little eagerness that I watch rumors of Verizon potentially adding the iPhone to its portfolio around the second half of 2010. While the cynic in me thinks the company's still smarting from its stupid-in-hindsight decision to spurn Apple a couple of years back -- a decision which resulted in AT&T becoming the exclusive launch carrier in the US -- the realist in me says Verizon has better things to do than lick old wounds.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) First, disclosure: My fellow Canadians and I are no strangers to iPhone exclusivity. Rogers Wireless has been the sole carrier of the device since its debut here just over a year ago (please don't get me started on why we were iPhone-less until 2008). Canadian exclusivity is about to end as both Bell and Telus are scheduled to start selling iPhones here next month.

I hardly think we're alone, either. From where I sit, it's only a matter of time before exclusivity ends in every market Apple is in, as the company shifts toward a cross-carrier model more like Research in Motion's. Although different carriers obviously carry different BlackBerry models, you've still got a certain degree of choice no matter whose store you walk into, or who's sending you a bill every month.

As encouraged as I am to see Verizon potentially getting into the iPhone game, I'm left wondering if its timing is all that great. After all, the wireless market in the second half of 2010 will look radically different than the wireless market of today. Google's Android mobile operating system -- at one time largely a curiosity, due to its limited availability on none-too-impressive hardware -- is about to bust open big time thanks to high-profile hardware releases from a number of vendors, including Samsung, former Microsoft Windows Mobile stalwart HTC, and a possibly resurgent Motorola.

Within a year, Google's services-rich strategy could fundamentally alter the power balance in the wireless device/application market, and erode the iPhone-vs.-everyone else halo that Apple currently enjoys. That's because while Android's 10,000 titles can't match Apple's App Store dominance, its tightly integrated Web services give it enough room to make an end run around the iPhone, and seriously erode the optimistic sales and revenue figures being floated around a possible Verizon iPhone play. When you've got Web services, you don't always need "an app for that."

The latest rumors, based on a Broadpoint.AmTech report cited by AppleInsider, state that VZW could get away with putting up a $300 subsidy per unit for late 2010-model iPhones, if it (easily) sells 14 million of them the following year. While batting numbers like these around is risky business (risky if you like being right, which it seems fewer people do nowadays), you might still get at least a baseline understanding of why Verizon might think it could pull this off.

The time-eroding value of money

But would Verizon be able to make as much money off of iPhone subscribers as AT&T has managed? Can anyone be just as profitable selling a device in Year Four of its lifecycle, as simply one of potentially many carriers? After all, there's no guarantee that Apple isn't also going to offer its devices to other carriers by the second half of 2010, so maybe Verizon should push for a smaller subsidy to limit its exposure. Or perhaps Verizon should push Apple to source only the latest generation (4G?) iPhone instead of the 3G S, or whatever passes for current-generation at that time. And if Android takes root and closes the feature/app gap, should Verizon push for an even sweeter deal? Or simply walk away?

However it plays out, it's becoming increasingly clear that any delay is bad for everyone:

Bad for Apple because it keeps an artificial upper limit on market share growth. Worse, because it pushes broader iPhone availability so far out that by then, it'll be competing against itself with the tablet..or whatever that next "One More Thing" turns out to be. Apple's overall product roadmap means iPhone's window as a profit-rich halo device could close before Verizon even gets in the game.
Bad for Verizon because it needs to build out a robust offering of leading edge smartphones to maintain its shrinking market share advantage. Android-based devices will help, but iPhone would push Verizon over the top headline-wise. Assuming it happens sooner rather than later, of course.
Bad for consumers because they shouldn't have to wait years for wider carrier availability, and the positive effect on rates and plans that competition of this sort inevitably brings.

None of this would matter if the iPhone were a middling piece of mobile hardware with a barely active application store and moribund developer community. If we all coveted other devices (and if the iPhone wasn't so culturally, if not numerically, dominant), we'd yawn at the prospect of any carrier, much less Verizon, adding a new device to its portfolio.

But the iPhone is none of those things, and consumers deserve to have the choice earlier in the product life cycle. That they may be forced to wait until the second half of next year is further evidence that carrier-exclusive deals make no sense in today's fast-changing mobile market. It's time for them to disappear for good.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.

Verizon's Droid claims 10,000 apps, graphics co-processor, and 'a map for that'

Publié: octobre 29, 2009, 9:18pm CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

At a sneak preview in New York City on Thursday night, execs from Verizon Wireless, Motorola, and Google gave reporters from Betanews and elsewhere a point-by-point illustration, supported by a few of Android's 10,000-plus apps. They also showed off some features not even mentioned in Verizon's anti-iPhone marketing blitz: a stellar 3.7-inch high res display, turn-by-turn GPS voice navigation with Google Latitude and Street Views, and innovative peripherals like a car mount and multimedia station.

In a scathing new ad campaign, Verizon takes aim at everything Apple's rival iPhone doesn't do. "iDon't have a real keyboard," according to an ad. "iDon't run simultaneous apps," and so on, and so forth.

But as they say, seeing is sometimes believing. As I witnessed during demos on Wednesday, Droid does have a "real" slideout keyboard, although some have criticized it as kind of cramped.

"At 13.7 millimeters, this is the thinnest slider QWERTY around," said Juan Ignacio Sarmiento, a Motorola marketing evec, as he pulled the slider out from the Droid during the demo.

Motorola's Droid from Verizon Wireless Also aboard the Droid are two software QWERTY keyboards -- one in horizontal (landscape mode) orientation, and the other in vertical (portrait mode).

As advertised, too, the Droid runs multiple apps simultaneously -- a feat achieved, of course, through Android multitasking capabilities. Essentially, you don't need to close out of one app before launching another app, something the iPhone still forces you to do.

In fact, Android is gaining ground fast against Apple's App Store for iPhones, with more than 10,000 applications already online in the Android Market, Sarmiento contended.

I haven't even come close to viewing all of those thousands of Android apps, so it's unclear to me how well all of them will work on the Droid. But also during the meeting, Verizon's Menniti told me that he expects a lot more apps for the Droid to spring from Google's just released SDK 2.0.

Other claims from Verizon also ring true. The Linux-based Android environment supports open development. Some of these apps -- such as a calculator, for example -- are widgets. The Droid's batteries are indeed interchangeable.

I haven't had a chance yet to try out for Droid's 5-megapixel autofocus camera to take night-time photos (another advertising assertion). But Menniti shot some pics successfully in a dimly light corner of the demo room.

Sarmiento attributed the Droid's night-time photo abilities to a dual LED flash, along with work the Droid partners have done around photo issues like color resolution and white balance.

And yes, the Droid is definitely customizable -- and then some. The choice of three different QWERTY keyboards is a help here, and so are the 10,000+ apps and Droid-specific peripherals.

The Droid's high-res display -- specifically, it offers 480x854 WVGA resolution -- is another stunner. With resolution that high, you can view most Web pages at full size, according to Menniti.

To accommodate this high-res screen in a 4.56-by-2.36-inch gizmo, Motorola's engineers might possibly have made some trade-offs in overall processing speed. The Droid's main processor runs at 550 MHz, rather than at the higher rates possible with a heftier chip. But the main processor is also accompanied by a separate on-board graphics chip. And all of the apps I saw operating on Wednesday seemed to be running quite fast enough.

All of the Droid's rich functionality is accessible just by touch, without the need for a stylus. By comparison, Microsoft's Windows Mobile is just starting to reach that goal in its own new version 6.5.

Also in the plus column is the Droid's very broad 3G reach. On maps supplied by Verizon Wireless, you can graphically compare Verizon's huge US coverage area to the much scantier areas served by T-Mobile, Sprint, and even AT&T -- whose 3G network is used by Apple's iPhone in the US.

Motorola's Droid from Verizon Wireless

Sitting in its pint-sized multimedia station, while running clock and radio apps, the Droid becomes a digital alarm clock. Pop the Droid into its car mount, and the gizmo turns into a voice-capable on-board GPS system.

Although earlier Android phones have run Googe Maps, the Droid is the first to integrate turn-by-turn navigation, said Google's Michael Siliski, during another demo. This integration also includes Google Latitude and Street Views. According to Siliski, you don't even need to give a street address to get turn-by-turn instructions for driving to a restaurant, for instance.

Siliski told me that it's way too early to tell whether Google will ever market its GPS navigation outside the US.

"We're still in beta with this," he noted. Yet the Droid's just announced Google Maps Navigation is due to leave test mode when the phone ships on November 6.

Nintendo makes DSi screens bigger than competitors

Publié: octobre 29, 2009, 7:23pm CET par Tim Conneally

Nintendo DSi LL This morning, Nintendo announced the third upgrade to the DS family, the DSi LL (or DSi XL), will be released in Japan on November 21, one year after the DSi debuted, for ¥20,000 (approx. $220). The LL's main improvement is the size of its screens, which have been increased from 3.25" to 4.2" with a moderate increase to the size of the chassis. The device also includes a much bigger stylus, which looks to be the size of a ballpoint pen, and battery life has reportedly been increased to five hours at maximum screen brightness.

Handheld gaming has been a strong suit for Nintendo since the early '80s, and it has consistently led the category despite the constant string of capable competitors touting higher quality or more innovative portable gaming platforms. Of Atari, Sega, NEC, Tiger, Bandai, SNK, and a handful of other notables, few video game and toy companies have been able to engage the handheld market for more than a single generation.

Nintendo, meanwhile, has managed to work its way through seven consecutive generations of handhelds. It has done this by working on an extremely predictable and regimented upgrade path, incrementally refreshing its handhelds and slowly phasing out prior generations while retaining backward compatibility. This means each generation is made up of families of systems rather than single units.

The seventh generation Nintendo DS (dual screen) family of consoles debuted in 2004 and has since been upgraded twice: from DS to DS Lite in 2006, and then to DSi in late 2008.

Despite the availability of the new DSi, Nintendo's handheld sales dropped nearly 20% in 2009. This, paired with unfavorable exchange rates, brought Nintendo's profits down 61% in mid-summer. Today, the company reported a 52% decrease in quarterly profit and cut its annual forecast by about 25%. Things are looking pretty stale six years into the DS series, but bigger screens address a couple of potential audiences and use-cases.

The improved visibility and more comfortable stylus could appeal to older gamers or those who simply don't care for small screen gaming. The 4.2" screen is respectably larger than the new PSP Go's (3.8"), the iPhone 3G S' (3.5") and even those of smaller-form MIDs like the now-delayed Nokia N900 (also 3.5").

As Apple is wont to remind us, the public has embraced downloadable touch-based gaming, and the iPhone/iPod Touch platform has more than 21,000 games available. Nintendo DS and Sony PSP have barely 5,000 combined. However, iPhone screen visibility remains a major issue. The iPhone's lack of buttons forces developers to integrate touch or motion control into their games, and the execution is oftentimes poor. Touching the screen always interrupts the gamer's field of vision, and it proves to be detrimental in games where the developer hasn't fully taken this into account. Furthermore, tilting, shaking, or waving the iPhone as some games demand is simply "counter-immersive" -- if such an adjective exists.

Though the DS family still lacks motion sensors, it has plenty of interfaces that developers can tap into to let the user's view of on-screen action remain continuous. The touch screen's view may be interrupted, but the upper screen's view remains. And failing that, there is always the option to rely on the D-pad, buttons, microphone, and in the DSi's case, two cameras.

The point of this upgrade is that it falls in line with Nintendo's past handheld upgrades, where displays get upgraded as the technology becomes affordable and energy efficient. With improved screens typically comes an improved user experience and a more engaged audience.

Google answers the FCC: Google Voice blocks fewer than 100 numbers

Publié: octobre 28, 2009, 11:56pm CET par Tim Conneally

While most of the tech world today is reveling in the introduction of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and its first host device, the Motorola Droid, there's still plenty of Google left to talk about.

Earlier this month, Google Voice was subject to yet another inquiry by the US Federal Communications Commission -- specifically the Wireline Competition Bureau. Its intent is to re-examine what Google Voice exactly is, evaluate whether it is unfairly blocking certain connections and how, and to determine how it should be regulated.

Today was the deadline for that inquiry, and Google responded with a 12-page letter responding to the five principal questions posed by the FCC. Two of the responses were kept confidential; they dealt with the total number of Google Voice users, and the third-party partnerships Google has made for providing access to telephone numbers, transmission of calls, and interconnection with local networks. Fortunately, the heart of Google's response to the call blocking allegation was left intact.

The FCC's key question was three-fold: "How does Google identify the telephone numbers to which it restricts calls? Does it restrict calls to individual telephone numbers, or to particular exchanges or NPA-NXXs? Why does Google Voice restrict these numbers?"

The simplest and most obvious answer to this last question is: cost.

"As a free service, Google Voice is predicated on the ability to manage operating costs aggressively. The vast majority of outbound calls to phone numbers in the United States can be terminated at reasonable costs, which allows Google Voice to provide free forwarding to US numbers and free calls to those numbers," Google's response began.

"However, through the application of a set of data filters, we have found that calls to a relatively small number of telephone numbers generate vastly disproportionate costs," the letter continued. "These telephone numbers terminate to local exchange carriers located in comparatively high cost destinations, which in turn have set up various businesses to encourage inbound calling, that apparently include conference calling services and chat lines. If Google Voice were required to terminate calls to those specific numbers, and spread the costs among its user base, the free service model for all users could be jeopardized."

In Google's investigation, it found that the top 10 prefixes to US destinations (NPA-NXX) accounted for 1.1% of monthly traffic by volume (161 times higher than the expected amount per prefix), which meant this tiny number of prefixes accounted for 26.2% of all of Google Voice's monthly cost. Google said its own underlying carriers assessed Google Voice calls to these numbers with these prefixes to be as much as 39¢ per minute and therefore restricted them.

Google goes on to say that it originally could only block by prefix, but now has the technology to block by the full telephone number, and the list of restricted numbers amounts to fewer than 100.

AT&T's senior vice president for federal regulations Robert Quinn said that Google Voice's blockage of such numbers is a luxury not afforded to its "competitors" the telephone companies, and is therefore a transgression of the Internet Policy Statement. However, it has not yet been determined if Google Voice is in fact in competition with the telephone companies, and further, as a free service, if it would be subject to the same regulations as subscription-based services.

Bad Vista-to-Windows 7 upgrade experiences #2: No TV in Media Center

Publié: octobre 28, 2009, 9:43pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Typically when you upgrade a computer from one operating system to the very next level up, you don't want the new system replacing or deleting anything without your knowledge and approval. Windows 7 thus far seems to be quite good on this score. But perhaps it's too good in the case of its new and somewhat enhanced Windows Media Center, whose new reliance on an upstream recording prevention mechanism that's part of its PlayReady scheme, among other things, renders obsolete Vista's media settings.

As a result, if you have a TV tuner in your Vista-based PC, and you follow all the instructions for migrating to Win7, the new Media Center could insist you don't have a TV there at all. Betanews was able to reconstruct the conditions of a situation some upgraders are reporting where their built-in tuners disappear. Luckily, we also have a solution to the problem that worked for us, and that may hopefully work for you if you're in similar circumstances. But let's concede right off the bat, it's not an easy or intuitive solution, so don't blame yourself thinking there's something you missed.

Betanews recreated the problem using a Vista-based dual-core Intel PC, and a Hauppage WinTV PVR-350 tuner card. This is an older card that takes in analog signals in SD, not HD, from cable or antenna, although we found some TV tuner card users had other models. Device Manager clearly recognizes the tuner card for what it is. But after switching on Media Center for the first time, the program complained that it could not find the TV tuner.

It's a problem that was reported as early as last May by a Windows 7 tester, who reported to Microsoft at the time: "I upgraded to the RC of Win7 and everything went beautifully. Even stressed the install by 'having' a four-year-old turn off the machine in the middle! When I got to the end, I was checking out how stuff was working and went into Media Center. When trying to play live TV, I get a message that it can't find the tuner card. No update for the driver thru [Windows Update]."

More recently, there was this from the SageTV Community: "I had installed Win 7 the first time with the [Hauppage] PVR-350 installed in the machine, so I thought the driver install was messed up so I removed the card and did a fresh install of Windows 7 without it and then installed the card but same outcome. The Device Manager shows Video Capture Device as not installed and when I try to update the driver it fails to install."

Microsoft MVPs suggested to many individuals that they try installing an older version of the WinTV drivers, preferably one intended for XP, using Compatibility Mode during the installation. We found no evidence of anyone attempting this and succeeding. Then we tried this ourselves with no success either. As we discovered, this method is actually guaranteed to fail. Other willing assistants from Microsoft and elsewhere have offered what seems like sound enough advice at any time: Find and install the latest available drivers. But here is where folks were running into problems too: Microsoft established its Windows 7 Compatibility Center to direct individuals to the drivers and support software they need for their components and software to run in the new OS. But Microsoft doesn't actually host the files itself -- that would be a Herculean task. So it directs users to the manufacturers' Web pages where the files should be found.

Hauppage PVR-350 TV tuner card shows up in Microsoft's Windows 7 Compatibility Center.

At the time of our test, the Compatibility Center notified us that the PVR-350 is compatible with Windows 7. (This turns out to be quite correct.) But the download link takes us to Hauppage's US Web site, where the same "Compatible with Windows 7" badge appears as shown on Microsoft's site. However, Hauppage reports, "WinTV-PVR is not certified for use with Windows 7, though it will work in many systems with Windows 7 32-bit version."

This is somewhat ominous sounding for folks who remember the experience with "Vista Ready" and "Certified for Vista," the distinctions between which customers were expected to determine intuitively. In any event, the Hauppage US site then leads customers to a download page, where the most recent drivers appear to be for Vista.

Installing these drivers will also ensure the tuner card does not work with Windows 7. Realizing that Hauppage was a UK-based company, we tried the same route on the British site. There we located the absolute latest version of the driver, which we would later discover will work with Windows 7, without the need for any Compatibility Mode. Once you've downloaded the proper driver for whatever TV tuner card you have, there's a proper order for getting everything set up properly. Here's the method that worked for us:

1. Uninstall the current tuner card driver. Make sure Media Center is exited when you do.

2. Clean any instance of the driver files from your computer. You don't want Windows 7 automatically re-installing the drivers you just uninstalled after you reboot. With the Hauppage driver kit, there's an .EXE file for doing just this, called HCWCLEAR.EXE. Then reboot the PC.

3. Let Windows 7 try to reinstall the driver automatically and fail. It will create an entry for "Multimedia Device" in your Device Manager, and put a little exclamation mark icon next to it. Let that happen, but do not use Device Manager to try to reinstall the newer driver -- in other words, avoid any temptation to right-click on this entry and "Update Driver."

4. Install the latest driver using the TV tuner card manufacturer's setup file. Hauppage offers its driver packages in two forms, one of which contains the WinTV program; we've noted that WinTV and Media Center are typically incompatible with one another anyway. So if you happen to have the larger package that contains WinTV, skip the on-screen step that asks you to install WinTV.

5. Reboot the PC again. But don't start Media Center, not yet.

6. Open a command line with administrator privileges. I keep a link to CMD.EXE on the Start Menu, then right-click on it and select Open as Administrator.

7. Navigate to the Media Center directory. (Yes, you're using the old cd command.) Typically you'll find this in a folder under your Windows home directory, usually \windows\ehome 8. Run the following command: mcupdate -MediaCenterRecoveryTask You won't get an on-screen response, so don't worry when you see nothing happen.

9. Launch Windows Media Center. At this point, you will have erased the setup that should have been erased during the Windows 7 upgrade process -- the setup that only pertains to Vista anyway. Yes, you have to start from scratch and re-introduce Media Center to your TV tuner. But hey -- it's there! And in a few minutes, you'll be able to watch -- and more importantly for your setup, record -- live TV.

On a related note: XP and Vista users had discovered they were able to network their set-top boxes to their PCs using a Firewire connection, and with the aid of some remarkable drivers called ExDeus created by a private citizen, record HD digital shows using Media Center. Unfortunately, many of these users are now reporting that these private drivers (nor their predecessor, another private effort called FireSTB) are not working in Windows 7. So for the meantime, some folks are sticking with Vista until either someone takes the time to rewrite the drivers, or another relatively reasonable digital recording solution makes itself available.

Bad Vista-to-Windows 7 upgrade experiences #1: 'Hosed' Intel SSDs

Publié: octobre 28, 2009, 5:05pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Although we had good reason to expect that most folks' experiences with Windows 7 upgrades this past week would be, as we put it, "without the crap," the exceptions are starting to show up. One of the more serious cases involves Intel, which has withdrawn its latest solid-state drive firmware update after multiple reports from disgruntled users of complete storage system failure following their Windows 7 upgrades.

The new firmware, along with Windows 7, was supposed to support a new internal file management methodology called TRIM. Its purpose was to compensate for a problem typical of memory-based storage, as opposed to traditional magnetic disks: Since memory systems must keep track of their contents even some of those contents aren't really in use, over time, SSDs' performance can lag. While traditional disks don't have to retain a memory of the contents of sectors pointing to "deleted" files, SSDs do...and they can't wipe the contents of those sectors individually. Instead, they have to wait until entire blocks become disused -- which happens less and less often as drives become more and more fragmented. TRIM was supposed to overcome that deficiency with a kind of self-optimizing mechanism, letting SSDs wipe blocks more often, thus overcoming lags and keeping performance levels high over time.

The trouble appears to be that something in the Windows 7 RTM distribution wasn't ready for TRIM after all. Though Windows 7 appeared to work fine just after installation, soon afterwards, Intel SSD owners were finding they couldn't sustain a reboot.

"I removed the drive and put it in an external case and went to the desktop. Guess what, the partition was raw!" reported one contributor to Intel's support forum early this morning. "Deleted the partitions and reinstalled Windows, and that seemed to do the trick. After an hour or two, a message came up and said that my drive was about to fail and S.M.A.R.T. reported it bad!"

That contributor was joined by a flood of similar reports all over the major hardware forums. On HardForum Monday, there was this: "I've scared myself off of SSDs for a few years and would probably never touch an Intel SSD again. I'll gladly take a 5% real-world performance hit for a drive that doesn't have a history of bricking itself when a firmware update is applied."

The firmware update was part of a comprehensive SSD Toolkit from Intel released just last Monday, which had promised to boost write speeds by as much as 40%. As company marketing director Pete Hazen said at the time, "We are encouraging our 34nm customers to download the new firmware update today. Not only will Windows 7 users receive the performance enhancements of the Trim command, but so will our Windows XP and Vista users."

Reviewers of the TRIM firmware appeared to confirm that figure and did not report problems. One of those positive reviewers was Anandtech, which was also first to update its TRIM review with Intel's comment that it was pulling the firmware update due to problems. Up to that point, commenters' complaints had focused on Intel's lack of willingness to extend TRIM support to owners of older SSD models, which cost much more in the early going than they do now. As one contributor noted, "I don't think that you should lose the wiper and TRIM support for being an early adapter, it does not make sense."

PC Perspective's Allyn Malventano believes the drive-hosing issue must not be widespread, noting it did not happen to him during his review, which involved an Asus P6T motherboard with an Intel Core i7 920 CPU.

Motorola and Verizon unveil the Droid, Google Maps navigation

Publié: octobre 28, 2009, 5:00pm CET par Tim Conneally

Verizon Droid by Motorola, open

After a long period of rumors, leaks and teaser marketing campaigns, Verizon and Motorola have officially announced Droid, Verizon's first Android smartphone, and the first Android device running Eclair. It will be available on Friday, November 6, for $199 with a two year contract and mail-in rebate.

Motorola's Contribution:

In addition to pricing and availability, the complete list of specs that was leaked a bit early (and subsequently yanked) has been published by Motorola. It can now officially be said that Droid is nearly identical in size to the iPhone 3G S, with a screen 0.2" larger, and a body only 0.02" thicker despite having a full QWERTY keyboard.

The slim Droid has a 3.7" (480x854) WVGA capacitive touchscreen, and includes a 16 GB memory card which can be replaced by microSD cards up to 32 GB. Today's announcement unfortunately does not include processor speed (listed as 550 MHz in leaks) or clarify whether it includes a discrete graphics chip as many had speculated.

Verizon Droid by Motorola What it does include is EV-DO rev. A 3G, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED Flash and digital image stabilization and DVD-quality video recording, aGPS and standalone GPS, a 3-axis accelerometer, and 6.4 hours of talk time or 11.25 days of standby.

Google's Contribution:

With yesterday's launch of Eclair in the Android SDK, we got to see a number of the new APIs made available to developers in addition to some interface and support improvements that Droid will offer, such as HTML5 and Flash 10.

But we kept seeing "navigation by Google Maps" in early Droid announcements, with little information as to what this represented. Today we've found out that Droid will launch with free navigation from the new Google Maps for Android 2.0 beta. It combines "plain English" voice command, turn-by-turn directions and its unique Street View perspective which is unlike any other GPS device currently available.

Verizon's Conribution

In addition to providing the 3G Network infrastructure that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is so fond of, Verizon is equipping the Droid with Verizon Visual Voice Mail. When T-Mobile launched the G1, visual voicemail was not an option until third parties such as YouMail and Phonefusion made apps providing the functionality. It was not until considerably later that T-Mobile Visual Voicemail was an option presented to Android early adopters.

Droid will be available exclusively at Verizon Wireless stores and through Verizon's Web store on Friday, November 6.

Symbian Dev program tries to limit fragmentation

Publié: octobre 28, 2009, 2:50pm CET par Tim Conneally

Symbian OS logo Though Symbian Foundation Executive Director Lee Williams publicly deemed Google's approach to spreading Android the "perfect storm of fragmentation," yesterday the Foundation launched the beta of its developer program for what looks to be a pretty fragmented app store architecture in its own right.

Here's how it works: The program is called Symbian Horizon, and in this program, developers have their applications approved through the Symbian Signed identification process. This process adds one of four kinds of "tamper-proof digital certificates" to an app, one of which involves the app's stamp of approval from one of three independent testing facilities. Each of these facilities charges the developer a different amount, and each runs a different test.

Once this is done, the app is then listed in the Symbian Horizon Directory, which gets published to various app stores. Currently, there are five app stores: the Ovi Store by Nokia, the Samsung Applications Store, AT&T's Media Mall, Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Arena, and China Mobile's Mobile Market. Within most of these stores, users have to specify their device to access the content catalog: the Ovi store has six device profiles, for example, and PlayNow Arena has nearly 70.

"We recognize that developers face many challenges in bringing their products to market on Symbian devices," Williams said in a statement Tuesday. "In particular, the diversity of application stores in our ecosystem increases the burden on developers by requiring multiple submission and review processes. But this diversity can also offer an advantage over competitors' closed systems, where applications sometimes receive arbitrary or commercially motivated rejections. Symbian Horizon retains this advantage while reducing the burden by becoming a conduit to multiple stores, helping developers reach the largest global mobile market in the world more efficiently."

Under the terms of the program, it is now free for developers to list their apps in the Symbian Horizon Directory, and the goal is to provide developers with access to the largest Symbian market with the lowest possible cost of entry.

According to the Symbian blog, "Approximate figures we've worked on suggest we can reduce the cost of publishing apps by about 75% compared to not using Horizon, assuming you want to push your work to six stores...Over the long term however, running Horizon will not be cheap, so the Foundation will open-source the development of the business model."

Amazon lowers EC2 cloud service fees, adds MySQL relational instancing

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 11:07pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

amazon web services logo Come November 1, Amazon's Web Services division will be lowering the per-hour prices for all of its current five instance types (AMIs), while adding two new AMI types on the high-end, according to a multitude of announcements from Amazon today. At the new high end of the scale will be a "quadruple extra-large" AMI with 68.4 GB of dedicated RAM, and the virtual computing power of a 1 GHz, 26-core Intel Xeon processor (albeit a 2007 model).

The new high-end instances won't come cheap -- they'll carry a premium of $2.40 per instance-hour for Linux editions, and $2.88 per instance-hour for Windows Server 2003. The previous high-end AMI, still called "extra large," had been priced at nearly one-third that amount.

However, revenue from the new super-high-end will help drive down prices for everyone else, starting November 1. At that time, the per-hour price for the smallest and cheapest instance available, running generic Linux, will be reduced by 15% to $0.085 per hour. Windows Server instances will be trimmed a bit, but not by as much percentage-wise -- the "extra large" price, for instance, will drop only 4¢ to $0.96 per hour.

The price cuts come as Amazon looks to offer more competitive buildouts, for customers that continue to prefer to deploy entire machine instances -- rather than just applications, such as Salesforce.com and Microsoft offer -- in the cloud, administered using everyday software. Already Amazon has been offering pre-configured AMIs with Microsoft SQL Server (at about a 10% premium per-hour), and IBM DB2 (somewhat higher at $0.38 per hour). Now Amazon is committing to offering its own brand of database server, called Amazon RDS, in lower-priced instances that will compete with its SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2 instances, using MySQL as the underlying engine.

"For customers whose applications require relational storage, but want to reduce the time spent on database management, Amazon RDS automates common administrative tasks to reduce complexity and total cost of ownership," reads a statement from Amazon AWS to Betanews this afternoon. "Amazon RDS automatically backs up a customer's database and maintains the database software, allowing customers to spend more time on application development. With the native database access Amazon RDS provides, customers get the programmatic familiarity, tooling and application compatibility of a traditional RDBMS. Customers also benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with a Relational Database Instance via a single API call."

Customers will still be expected to maintain their own databases, Amazon's statement tells us, although instancing in the cloud will enable them to re-provision resources as necessary on a more granular basis. Multiple statements today managed to make mince meat of Amazon's quoted rates for transfer, but a blog post this afternoon managed to straighten the matter out: RDS customers will be charged 10¢ per gigabyte per month for storage, and another 10¢ per month for every one million I/O requests. Bandwidth charges should then be the same as for Amazon's existing, non-relational SimpleDB instances: The first gigabyte of data in or out is free, then fees rise to 10¢ per gigabyte in and 17¢ per gigabyte out, declining to 10¢ per gigabyte out after 150 TB.

This will not be the first appearance of MySQL on Amazon's cloud; the commercial MySQL Enterprise has been available under Sun Microsystems' branding since this time last year.

US Chamber: Fake site by Yes Men not a parody but a fraud

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 8:31pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court for DC, the US Chamber of Commerce charged the company that manages the team of self-styled comedians and social activists known as the Yes Men with criminal fraud, including the creation of a fake Web site designed to resemble the real Chamber site, specifically to promote sales of their new film and paraphernalia surrounding that film. Along the way, the Chamber bypassed any allegation that might lead directly to the "parody defense" -- that appropriating the appearance of the target of parody is necessary in order to "bring to mind" the subject of that parody, as the law puts it.

Instead, the Chamber went straight for the heart, alleging that the creation of a Web site at www.chamber-of-commerce.us was done to dilute the value of the real Chamber trademark. "Defendants' use of Plaintiff's marks without the authorization or consent of the Chamber causes tarnishment by associating those marks with Defendants, whose positions and tactics are inconsistent with positions and conduct of the Chamber, its members, and prospective members."

Last week, the fake Chamber Web site issued what appeared to be the transcript of a speech purportedly by Chamber president Thomas J. Donohue, delivered that week at the National Press Club in Washington. In actuality, meanwhile, a real person was indeed delivering a speech there. However, it was another Yes Men member pretending to be a representative of Donohue, who brought fake reporters with him to ask fake questions, and whose antics attracted a few real reporters' attention.

The fake conference was interrupted by a real Chamber member, whose credentials were immediately called into question by the fake reporters -- all of whom were being taped in conjunction with a promotion for the movie, The Yes Men Fix the World. The confrontation stopped short of violence; and in the end, a person proclaiming to be a real reporter provoked the speaker to finally state he was representing the position that the Chamber should ultimately take: specifically, that "clean coal...doesn't exist."

In the meantime, the Yes Men's antics may have ended up taking the spotlight away from the climate change and "clean coal" issues, and dragging it into the realm of domain names as trademarks. Currently, the law does not grant a trademark holder the rights to the counterpart of that trademark in the realm of domain names, although it does give a trademark holder redress should someone use a domain name that borrows a trademark in a fraudulent action against the trademark holder.

Should the Chamber prevail in this suit, it could set legal precedent with regard to anyone who registers a domain name similar to a trademark, and then uses the likeness or the graphics from the trademark holder, in the course of a criminal act. The Chamber is not accusing Yes Men of "criminal parody," but rather of misappropriating registered marks in the pursuit of financial gains -- in this case, promoting a movie.

iPhone cannot win the smartphone wars

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 8:00pm CET par Joe Wilcox

I'm going to make a bold prediction: Apple's iPhone will lose the mobile device wars. Such statement will send some iPhone fans howling -- perhaps appropriately so with the full moon days passed and Halloween days away. :)

Put another way: iPhone is to Android -- and somewhat Symbian OS -- handsets as Macintosh was to the DOS/Windows PC in the 1980s and 1990s. The Mac's rocky start in 1984-85 gave way to great success because of several killer applications, with desktop publishing being among the most important. But by the mid 1990s, Windows PCs pushed down Mac market share. The iPhone is poised to track similarly. Gartner predicts that Android OS shipments will exceed iPhone OS by 2012 (see chart). I'm a believer.

The question of how far iPhone can go is important, because a new computing platform is rapidly emerging. Mobile devices like cell phones are sure to replace PCs. PEW Internet claims by 2020. I'm on record as predicting much sooner.

Today, Gartner predicted that this year, worldwide smartphone shipments would grow by 29 percent year over year to 180 million units, exceeding laptop unit shipments. From this year, Gartner predicts that end users will spend more on smartphones than they will on notebooks. The analyst firm expects that most PC manufacturers will move into the smartphone market (where Apple already is with iPhone).

Chicken-and-Egg Thinking

The iPhone's staunchest defenders insist that applications will rule the market. Over the weekend, tech blogger Robert Scoble followed a Twitter debate with blog post: "85,000 reasons why iPhone isn't going to be disrupted." Like many other iPhone enthusiast bloggers or journalists, Scoble believes that iPhone must succeed because of the vast number of applications. In a somewhat terse Twitter exchange, I called him and other die-hard iPhone fans unreasonable. He blogged in response:

If you get me all those, and all the other 85,000 apps, but on a device that is sexier and more fun to use (and more productive) then I'll definitely be reasonable and switch...Until then I have 85,000 reasons to be unreasonable...Yes, I'm unreasonable. Let me know when I can stop being unreasonable! :)

The large number of applications does at first glance seem like a pretty good reason to claim iPhone's eventual domination of what arguably is the next, major computing platform. However, the number of applications is no surefire measure of iPhone's or any other platform's success. Applications are but one -- and not the most important -- platform characteristic. Successful platforms share five common traits:

There are good development tools and APIs for easily making good applications
There is at least one killer application people really want
There is breadth of useful applications
Third parties make lots of money
There is a robust ecosystem

I usually only put the first four items on the list, but here extend the fifth from the fourth, which is the most important of all. To single out applications as the measure of success is to put the chicken before the egg. Related: The platform chicken-or-egg scenario, where there is question: Which comes first, the platform or the applications? The chicken-or-egg question presumes that many PC operating systems fail because there aren't enough applications; that many developers wait to develop applications because they want to see if the platform will gain momentum among consumer or business customers; that platforms cannot gain momentum if there are not applications.

Gartner Smartphones 2012

But this reasoning is flawed. It ignores fundamental rules of economics. The chicken-or-egg theorists should ask why do developers wait at all -- or not? My answer: Because they want to make money. The fourth point in my list -- "third parties make lots of money" -- is more important than number of applications. It's the most fundamental reason why platforms succeed or fail. The fifth point --"there is a robust ecosystem" -- is intrinsically connected to the fourth and over the long term is as important, if not more.

The Ecosystem is Everything

Among technology platforms, the Windows PC is classic example of a robust and vital ecosystem. The Google informational/search platform is another. Around either platform, there is a discernible ecosystem of third parties -- not just software developers -- making lots of money. The two ecosystems are broad and deep. By comparison, Apple's App Store/iPhone/iPod touch platform is narrower and shallower, despite the depth of applications, because the ecosystem depends on a closed, end-to-end technology platform. Apple controls everything.

By comparison, in the 1980s and 1990s, DOS/Windows was more open than Mac OS, because Microsoft only controlled the software and Chairman Bill Gates took the brilliant approach of licensing to third parties. (Commenters, please don't huff. I didn't write that DOS/Windows was open, but more open than Mac OS, because of licensing.) Through the licensing scheme, good luck (because of competitors' mistakes) and Microsoft efforts to establish standards around DOS/Windows and DOS/Windows PCs, a robust ecosystem of third-party profiteers emerged.

The ecosystem is everything. Windows Vista's market failure is good explanation why. Vista suffered from perception problems that were much larger than its performance problems; Vista isn't a bad operating system, it just wasn't good enough to displace Windows XP. Vista wasn't just competing against XP but a huge, supporting ecosystem of third parties making money from it -- PC, peripheral and component manufacturers; distributors, resellers and retailers; software and Web services developers; and consumer, enterprise and small business services providers, among many others. XP had five years in the market before Vista's release to build up this broad and deep ecosystem, which also included customers -- many of them large businesses -- dependent on the software to make (or save) money.

What's really interesting about the Gartner numbers (see chart): Windows Mobile declines, but not that dramatically, through 2012. Why? The ecosystem. Microsoft has established a viable Windows Mobile ecosystem that somewhat compensates for the weak mobile strategy. Ecosystem also is one major reason why Symbian OS will remain so dominant, despite steep market share declines. Another: Nokia plans to open source Symbian OS (process is underway). By comparison, Gartner predicts that BlackBerry and iPhone OSes will reach near identical market shares, and, not coincidentally, both are part of closed, end-to-end systems.

A History Lesson

Parallels between the past and present foreshadow iPhone's future. The IBM PC launched in mid-1981. About 18 months later, Compaq announced its 12.5 kg clone, nicknamed the "luggable." A year after Compaq started selling its IBM PC clone, Apple announced the Macintosh, in January 1984.

Desktop publishing was the Mac's first killer application, contributing to sales growth over the next five years. But Apple couldn't win the "Clone Wars" against DOS -- and later Windows -- PCs. The resulting clone attack, essentially every other PC manufacturer against Apple, was too much for Macintosh. The PC ecosystem overwhelmed Apple.

To reiterate: In the 2000s, like the 1980s, Apple successfully launched industry-changing platforms -- iPhone and Macintosh, respectively. Like Macintosh, iPhone's end-to-end licensing model is poised to limit the supporting ecosystem's growth. Meanwhile, Google, Microsoft and Nokia license their mobile operating systems to third parties.

Among the three, Google's Android is the one to most closely watch, followed by Symbian OS, assuming publication of source code under open source license is completed next year as planned. While DOS/Windows was more open than Mac OS during the 1990s, Windows Mobile is more closed because Microsoft has failed to establish standards around the software. By comparison, Android, which Google open-sourced, is to mobile devices more like DOS/Windows was to PCs in the 1980s and 1990s: A more open operating system around which third parties make money and an ecosystem thrives.

iPhone Against the World

In March 2009 Microsoft Watch blog post, "The iPhone Platform Comes of Age," I glowingly praised App Store/iPhone/iPod touch. But I tempered my enthusiasm:

Whether or not that platform succeeds depends on many factors. Among them:

How Google, Microsoft and Nokia shape up their mobile platforms in 2009-10.

How many market share-leading handset manufacturers adopt Android (HTC just announced three more Android handsets).

How quickly Apple can expand its iPhone OS install base -- and that includes iPod touch.

Since I raised these reservations about Apple's platform, Microsoft and Nokia fumbled their mobile strategies. Meanwhile, Android is rapidly gaining momentum among handset manufacturers and developers. In a presentation given last week, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney predicted that Android smartphone OS share would grow from 1.6 percent in first quarter 2009 to 18 percent in fourth quarter 2012 (see chart). By comparison, iPhone OS: 13.6 percent, up from 10.8 percent. Symbian OS will remain dominant, Gartner predicts.

That said, the mobile device market will be bigger than just handsets, which is where Android already is gaining adoption for use on other connected devices. Barnes & Noble's Nook ebook reader and Verizon's Droid phone are but recent examples of where Android is going, and where iPhone is not. Meanwhile, new information published this week shows how Android 2.0 emphasizes information interoperability -- openness that should grow the ecosystem, like DOS/Windows did for PCs decades ago.

Another "everyone else against Apple battle" is coming, with Android looking to be the better OS around which an ecosystem grows and thrives. There's a Star Wars metaphor here somewhere. Apple lost out to DOS/Windows because of the attack of the PC clones. Now the droids are coming for iPhone. Apple's power is the Force -- blogger and journalist enthusiasts like Robert Scoble. Can the Force win? I say no, but you tell me. That's what comments are for.

Nokia invokes a 'NATO defense' strategy against Apple's iPhone

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 7:42pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

The usual reason commonly given for the creation of technology standards is to enable a more open, seamless process for licensing and adoption. But in its lawsuit filed last week against iPhone maker Apple, Nokia is attempting a rather interesting spin on this definition, a spin which may very well reflect reality: It argues that standards are broadly licensed in order to increase the size of the market which those standards can address.

As a result, when a transgression against the standard comes about -- for instance, by way of failure to pay royalties -- the rights holders throughout the market enabled by that standard, have a duty to come to its defense. An attack against one, in other words, is an attack against the whole portfolio.

In its lawsuit filed last Thursday, Nokia alleges that it has been actively negotiating with Apple for fair and reasonable licensing terms ("F/RAND") for the use of GSM technologies in all of Apple's iPhones. Nokia is an acknowledged rights holder, not only for GSM but for HSPA (a.k.a. HSDPA), the 3G platform behind the iPhone 3G S. It claims, "Apple has rejected Nokia's offers for the F/RAND terms and conditions both on a portfolio and on a per-patent basis and thereby refused to compensate Nokia on F/RAND terms for the use of Nokia patented technology, including the [eleven] patents-in-suit."

Nokia did not specify dates, so conceivably Apple could have rejected Nokia as early as 2007; however, a good defense lawyer might argue that if Nokia didn't act on that refusal then, it lost its right to do so two years later. So the likeliest scenario is that Apple refused Nokia more recently.

But Nokia's theory of Apple's infringement is perhaps less important with regard to future legal precedent than its statement that it has a duty to the market at large to defend against that transgression, inevitably using the broadened size of that market as a factor in evaluating the scale of the infringement.

"Standards Setting Organizations ('SSOs') are formed to allow wide promulgation and utilization of commonly defined standards," begins Nokia's reasoning. Not to create the standards, not to develop the technology, but specifically and expressly to broaden the market. "These standards must be available and accessible in order to produce the intended efficiency gains and benefits and thereby for the standardization process itself to comply with competition law." In other words, it was antitrust law that forced companies to certify that standards were available for everyone to license in the first place, implying that it is therefore the duty of smaller competitors that wish to become competitive, to either play by the rules of the standard or build its own technology platform and try to compete that way.

"Intellectual Property Rights policies ('IPR Policies')," Nokia's suit continues, "provide essential IPR holders committing to license on F/RAND terms with the benefit of collecting F/RAND compensation from a far larger market than they would have enjoyed if the protected technology had not been incorporated in the standard. Because competing proprietary technologies and systems have been abandoned in favor of a single, universal, and standardized system and set of technologies, a holder of an essential IPR can collect royalties on a large volume of standards-compliant products from a wide variety of manufacturers worldwide. In contrast, if the IPR holder's protected technology was only used in one of a number of competing systems or proprietary technologies, the patent holder could only generate returns on its R&D investments through differentiation and -- if it chose to license -- only collect royalties from manufacturers who chose to market and sell products for the narrow proprietary technology. This is why committing to F/RAND licensing is advantageous and rarely refused by essential IPR holders."

FOR MORE:

Nokia lawyers up, chooses to fight Apple in court rather than the market by Carmi Levy

A rights holder such as Nokia, the suit goes on, by definition waives the right to exclude any other company in partaking in the standard. Thus Nokia can't exactly withhold licensing as a way of compelling, or extorting, a company such as Apple into compliance. Implementers have a duty to enter into a licensing arrangement, and rights holders in the standard have a duty to negotiate with them. If an implementer refuses, since the only other course of punitive action against that implementer is to seek a court injunction barring the sale of its products, then a rights holder has no other alternative but to defend the standard as a whole.

"Nokia has irrevocably undertaken the obligation to grand license(s) on F/RAND terms and conditions to its essential patents, including the patents-in-suit, and Apple has the corresponding right to claim licenses on F/RAND terms on the basis of Nokia's undertakings," the lawsuit complaint continues.

So to review: A kind of "globalization," if you will, has forced a situation where there must be one set of standards in order to level the playing field between competitors. Thus whenever a competitor transgresses against that set of standards (the unspoken word here being "platform"), the principal rights holder must come to the defense of those standards as a whole. It's as though Nokia has drawn a NATO-like boundary around all of GSM, saying that if you enter into that realm it's with the intention of leveraging GSM as a platform, and if you don't pay your respects to the superpower in the region, then you don't respect the platform.

On the other hand, there's the much simpler issue of Nokia apparently never being paid. Not knowing yet the nature of Apple's rejection of Nokia's terms, but knowing the extent to which Nokia is regarded as the principal rights holder to GSM technology, one does have to wonder just what Apple was thinking by withholding any kind of royalties whatsoever from Nokia. Anyone doubting Nokia's ability to defend GSM could have simply looked it up in Betanews, under "Nokia" and "Qualcomm." Perhaps Apple might have thought Nokia's terms unfair; in which case, it had ample opportunity to raise objections. Of course, doing so in a public court during the iPhone's formative period would have given away Apple's secrets; but it's had nearly three years now to make amends.

But if Nokia eventually succeeds in defending GSM, even through a settlement, the possibility exists that Nokia's arguments with respect to what is a standard may be perceived as setting legal precedent: a way to make markets bigger and more centralized, and to clearly establish the principal rights holders in those markets, so it's clearer to everyone involved where to send the checks.

Android 2.0 features revealed

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 6:27pm CET par Tim Conneally

It's undoubtedly been a huge quarter for Google's Android mobile operating system, and exciting developments are all falling into place.

Two weeks ago, the ceremonial giant foam pastry was planted on Google's front lawn. This time it was an eclair, and it signified the readiness of Android 2.0, codenamed "Eclair," which we get a first look at today.

Android SDK Tech lead Xavier Ducrohet announced support for Eclair in the Android SDK today, and unveiled some of the big capabilities in the latest version of Android, which is expected to hit the market soon on at least one of Verizon's upcoming "Droid" devices. In the developer video posted today, for instance, all the new features were shown off on a device connected to the Verizon network, and the release notes say it will be deployable in November.

The keyword with Eclair is interoperability.

Motorola recently launched its custom Android build with a UI called MotoBLUR, the central function of which is the ability to integrate with a user's many social Web services from a single interface. The new APIs included in Eclair give this communicative function to all developers.

Android 2.0 Eclair Quick Connect So with the new Account Manager API, developers can centrally store account credentials on the device, the Contacts application can now sync and aggregate contact data from multiple accounts, and the sync adapters API provides full two-way contact sync with ANY back end.

To provide a single, unified face for this data, the Quick Contact function has been added. By clicking on a contact's picture, a user can pull up a menu of all the different ways to reach that contact...Gmail, e-mail, IM, Phone, and the various social networks. It's like the existent "live folder" concept for contacts, but brought together under the standard contact list, or in any app where a developer chooses to utilize it.

Android 2.0 also updates the Bluetooth API so apps can now access Bluetooth controls to discover, connect and share information with nearby devices, which unlocks the ability to make peer-to-peer and proximity-based applications.

The built-in Android browser has been updated with a refreshed UI with an actionable address bar, bookmarks sorted by thumbnail, and a double-tap zoom command. There's now also HTML5 support, which opens up the application cache, client-side SQL databases, geolocation API support, and fullscreen video tag support.

The camera app has again been tweaked, but this time it includes digital zoom (with macro mode), built-in color effects (posterize, solarize, etc.), and built-in flash support.

On, and there's a little matter of Exchange support and multi-touch thrown in there too. Check out the release notes for a comprehensive list.

Android 2.0 eclair camera mode

Android 2.0 Release 1 SDK is available right now.

All the right moves: Roku's Netflix streamer branches out

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 5:06pm CET par Tim Conneally

Roku Netflix remote One of the major attractions of the Netflix Instant streaming service is its low cost of entry. For $9 a month, subscribers have access to a substantial and ever-growing library of content on their PC, available whenever they have a connection and some time to spare. And if a subscriber wanted to view that content on his HDTV, he can do so through game consoles, DVRs, connected optical media players, and of course, through the branded Netflix player by Roku which debuted in spring 2008.

The $99 streaming device certainly proved to be a breakout hit for Roku, providing the simplest, cheapest, and most elegant way to access Netflix Instant in the living room.

However, time is running its course. As Netflix Instant streaming finds its way onto more devices, and the prices of components drops, Roku is facing stronger competition from other manufacturers in the sector. Just last week, for example, Best Buy announced the connected Blu-ray players from its budget electronics brand Insignia would be getting Neflix Instant streaming. For Roku to stay competitive, it has to get cheaper, or pile on some new features.

The company is doing both.

Today, Roku announced it is branching out its line of streaming media players to include a cheaper model that only has standard definition output (Roku SD -- $79) and a more expensive player that has dual-band 802.11n compatible wireless (Roku HD-XR -- $129.)

On the content side of things, Roku said it will be launching the "Roku Channel Store" later this fall, which will let users select new content channels for their device, from providers such as Revision3 (which its CEO Jim Louderback announced earlier this month), Mediafly, Pandora, and Flickr. At Blogworld earlier this month, Brian Jacquet of Roku said there were "about half a dozen" other Roku development partners which will be announced in the coming weeks.

There was discussion of YouTube integration before Amazon on Demand launched earlier this year, but it is not known whether there will be a YouTube channel available for installation when the Roku Channel arrives in the coming weeks.

Google flexes Twitter integration with Social Search Lab

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 12:28am CET par Tim Conneally

Monday, a new experimental Google search feature called Social Search was made live in Google Labs, following up on last week's announcement that Google and Twitter had established a partnership.

But the implementation of this Twitter data is much more conservative than many were expecting. Following the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, a lot of talk in the search community revolved around "Realtime Search," (a buzzword formerly known as "conversational search") where chatter (articles, blog posts, comments, forum entries, status updates, tweets, videos, and podcasts) on a particular subject is indexed in real time, putting searchers more or less directly into the conversations as they occur.

This Lab does not go quite that far.

Instead, Google Social search is more an extension of a user's Google Profile, which can be linked to Twitter and FriendFeed in addition to the myriad Google-owned services like YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, and Reader. A user's contacts in Gmail and Google Talk, as well as friends/followers in all those other services serve as the basis for Social Search; making up what Google calls the Social Circle.

When you enter a query in Social Search, Google crawls content publicly posted by members your Social Circle; which includes not only your friends, but also friends of your friends.

For example, because a majority of the stuff that I follow has to do with Android, when I type in a query related to that subject, Social Search shows recent posts from the blogs I follow in Reader, the developers I follow on Twitter, and related content linked to my friends. Suppose a friend of a friend publicly posted and tagged pictures from a mobile developer's conference on Picasa; those pictures are likely to turn up in social search as well.

Google today emphasized the ability to opt out of any service. If you don't want all the pictures of your new house geotagged and posted for everyone with your name to case out, you can un-link your Picasa or Flickr account. Similarly, Google emphasizes the importance of the social graph for making your public content visible, like if you want your blog or your resume or your portfolio of artwork to be found more easily.

Nokia lawyers up, chooses to fight Apple in court rather than the market

Publié: octobre 27, 2009, 12:16am CET par Carmi Levy

If timing is everything in business, Nokia apparently didn't get the memo. Apple's iPhone has been on sale for about 28 months now, but only last week did Nokia file a wide-ranging lawsuit in Delaware District Court that covers no fewer than ten alleged patent infringements.

This isn't anything new in the tech industry. In a business where intellectual property accounts for a disproportionately huge slice of any given product's value proposition -- and ultimately its market success -- fights over who came up with what idea first are common. For example, Research in Motion has paid out over a billion dollars over the last three years to settle two significant patent lawsuits that, if left unresolved, could have shuttered its popular BlackBerry devices for good.

Sue me -- it's the in thing to do

Of course, RIM isn't alone. Tech companies of all stripes are often forced to fight off lawsuits that may or may not have merit. For example, Apple, Belkin, Best Buy, Dell, HP, Intel, Netgear, and Sony are part of a group of 22 hardware vendors and retailers who were sued for patent infringement in 2007 by Wi-LAN.

The Ottawa-based Wi-LAN, which in 1994 was awarded patents for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology, claims 802.11-based solutions that have been brought to market since that time have inappropriately used Wi-LAN's IP. The company is targeting firms that incorporated 802.11a- and g-based technology into its products, which were then sold to customers, along with companies had anything to do with the supply chain. Wi-LAN, which last year added a few more plaintiffs to its lawsuit and has also claimed that its technology also forms the basis for 802.16a and WiMAX standards, is no stranger to the process: It's been suing various tech companies, including Cisco, since at least 2000.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) While I support any company's right to actively defend its investments in developing new technologies and bringing them to market, there's a fine line between fighting for what you believe in and building a business case for organizational growth that's based largely on the pursuit of settlements and awards as a substitute for bringing actual products to market.

So as I look at Nokia's latest legal salvo, I'm left wondering if this marks the company's first tentative step toward a slippery slope where litigation -- not innovation -- defines its corporate culture.

A legal solution to sinking market share?

Nokia, like Wi-LAN, isn't exactly riding high in the market these days. Its US market share, which was once a healthy 35%, has shrunk to 7% and shows no sign of turning around. The company has also seen its global-leading market share slip thanks to a stodgy product lineup and a smartphone pricing model that seems to suit high-end PCs better than mobile devices. It missed the industry's transition from basic cell phones to smartphones and in doing so has ridden its budget devices down the one-way escalator to the basement while Apple, RIM, and a gaggle of Google Android-following vendors have captured the market's attention. Its mobile OS roadmap is all over the map, and its Ovi Store online app market is a lame duck afterthought that reinforces just how much Nokia still doesn't get it.

If Apple is the jock, RIM is the super-nerd, and Google is the cool new kid everyone's talking about, then Nokia is the doddering grandpa of the bunch.

From where I sit, Nokia's decline has sown the seeds for this latest lawsuit. Because if it had read the tea leaves correctly and recognized that data was the new voice for today's mobile market, it wouldn't have the time or the inclination to divert resources away from its core business. Nokia came to dominate its landscape because it delivered the right cell phones at the right price to a global market that a decade ago couldn't get enough of their newfound ability to talk on the go for cheap. But as voice-focused handsets evolved into data-centric, fashion-forward pocketable computers, Nokia kept pumping out the same old handsets. Sure, some of its N- and E-series smartphones looked great on paper, but scant carrier support and scandalous up-front purchase prices kept them from making much of an impact.

Not a troll. But reminiscent of one.

Which leaves Nokia in the sad position of suing the most obvious target in the hope of winning something in court that it couldn't win out in the real world. Forced to make up billions of dollars in lost revenue, it turns to lawsuits for what it apparently hopes will be a new form of revenue stream. I hesitate to call Nokia a patent troll, because it actually is in the business of designing and selling actual products. But this is the kind of lawsuit that gets real patent trolls kicked off of the invite list to the luxury box at the baseball stadium, and I suspect Nokia will soon find itself in similar straits. You don't make friends this way.

And even in a perverse universe where such behavior is applauded, lawsuits like this are a drain on corporate productivity, even for companies as large as Nokia. And even if Nokia itself manages to keep its employees focused on the task of building and marketing sellable stuff while this lawsuit plays out, the rest of the market -- including customers, members of the supply chain, and the media -- won't necessarily follow suit. While Nokia will try to get all of its stakeholders to focus on whatever great new offerings it has coming, everyone else will be wondering how the company's newest legal adventure is faring. This isn't how good buzz is created.

In the grand tradition of the American tech market, litigation will always loom large as a potentially viable business plan for companies that couldn't make things fly otherwise. Even as it struggles to keep pace globally, Nokia remains a potent force in mobility, and it's not like it'll disappear from our midst if this lawsuit fizzles. But Nokia's repeated failure to connect with American consumers has clearly reached a point where the mothership finds itself willing to lash out at its competitors in any way it can, in a belated effort to keep them in their sights.

This is not how leading companies behave. And it's not how wannabe-market-leaders convince the rest of us otherwise.

Public Firefox 3.6 beta now expected Wednesday, 3.5.4 Tuesday

Publié: octobre 26, 2009, 8:12pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Actual Beta News feature banner During a Mozilla developers' planning meeting today, it was officially announced that Firefox users will begin seeing notices for version 3.5.4's availability beginning tomorrow (October 27). Full information about security issues addressed by this regular update will probably be released at that time, although Betanews tests indicate that Windows 7 users in particular will probably notice a bit of a speed boost, on account of improved document load times.

The first public beta of Firefox 3.6, which adds even more Windows 7 integration, will be released the following day. It will probably not be the final public beta for the product, as a development cycle for Beta 2 has been ongoing since the Beta 1 code was frozen last October 14.

As Betanews reported before, our tests show Firefox 3.6 speed gains to be sizable on all platforms, now pulling the venerable browser to within the performance levels of version 2 of Google Chrome (although version 3 is the current stable edition, and version 4 is its widely distributed dev channel build). However, we also expected to see the final public build ten days ago -- its released was blocked on account of newly discovered bugs. Some sources had reported the product was actually released, and a few went on to say it was released and then retracted; data obtained by Betanews from Mozilla indicates this was never the case.

Tomorrow's rollout of the stable version bug fix means the window for the next bug fix in that cycle moves to mid-December, which is not the most desirable timeframe. During today's planning meeting, contributors called for suggestions as to how or whether that timeframe could be adjusted.

At long last, Microsoft to release Outlook .PST file specifications

Publié: octobre 26, 2009, 7:53pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

Three weeks ago, the European Commission signaled its approval of Microsoft's revised plan for a more vendor-neutral Web browser selection screen for European Windows users. But that revised plan was buffered with a big bonus: a promise to supply the general public with a wealth of interoperability information, including about proprietary formats.

Among the most sought after formats on that list has been for Outlook Personal Folders -- the much-maligned .PST file format, whose lack of comprehension has been the pet peeve of certainly every developer who's ever worked on a calendar or smartphone synchronization utility. Now the manager for Microsoft's new Office Interoperability Group announced this morning that work is under way on public documentation for the file format.

"This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .PST files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice," reads Paul Lorimer's notice this morning. "The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .PST file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties."

Although Microsoft had already documented the Outlook Object Model, that was essentially the type library, or interface, for .NET applications to address components of the running Outlook 2007 application. That's only helpful if you're a developer of an add-on or some other product that assumes that Outlook is running. What Microsoft is promising today goes much deeper: As a Microsoft spokesperson told Betanews this afternoon, the specification will actually enable some organizations to finally comply with new government policies for corporate governance, especially with regard to maintenance of interoffice communications.

Back in March 2007, the issue of whether Outlook's ability to automatically delete old communications was brought to light by way of AMD's ongoing antitrust suit against Intel. At that time, Intel's attorneys claimed the company inadvertently destroyed much of the internal e-mails it had been ordered to keep, on account of an internal network policy enabling Outlook to destroy old .PST files. Knowing that such a loss was possible, Intel managers had instructed their staff to create new, personal .PST files that could not be destroyed.

Had a better understanding of the .PST file format been available at the time, theoretically, forensic engineers may have been able to recover deleted .PST material from backups, or from hard drives that were also in use for other purposes.

The documentation will be released under the company's Open Specification Promise, which was unveiled in February 2008 with the expectation that the .PST format would certainly be among those that the European Commission would expect to see opened up. But even after today's announcement, the matter of when the documentation would be released, was left undetermined. As Lorimer puts it, the amount of time Microsoft expects to take will be determined by how long "industry experts and interested customers" may take reviewing the drafts, "to ensure that it is clear and useful."

PS3 Netflix: The best use of BD-Live yet

Publié: octobre 26, 2009, 7:20pm CET par Tim Conneally

Finally, Sony's PlayStation 3 home video game console and Blu-ray player will be receiving Netflix Instant streaming, a feature which has appeared on a number of other pieces of hardware, including rival console Xbox 360 and connected Blu-ray players from manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, and even Sony itself.

But unlike those other platforms, which connect to Netflix Instant Streaming through an interface native to the console, PlayStation 3 users will be required to boot up the service from a Netflix Blu-ray disc, which utilizes BD-Live to access the online content. BD-Live is a Blu-ray standard which lets a disc have downloadable bonus content instead of limiting it to content burned onto the disc.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter believes the BD-Live technique was chosen to work around some exclusivity clauses between Netflix and Microsoft, but the real reason is unknown. We've contacted Netflix and Sony for comment on Pachter's hypothesis, and will update with their responses as they arrive.

But whatever the reason, the inclusion of Netflix on PlayStation 3 means big things. Firstly, and most obviously, it takes away one of the major exclusive capabilities of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and offers it for free. On the 360, Netflix subscribers must also be an Xbox Live gold member, which costs $50 a year, raising the price of Netflix streaming-only access by some 46%. This adds fodder to the debate that the PS3's online capabilities are not as good as the 360's, but are at least offered freely.

Secondly, this will help expose even more consumers to Netflix Instant streaming. The PS3 has an estimated 9 million users now, and numbers have been swelling rapidly thanks to the recent -- and long demanded -- console price cut. The Netflix disc can be obtained free of charge and opens the PS3 to the streaming library of more than 17,000 titles. Rather than pack the disc with the PlayStation 3, Netflix is only making the Instant Streaming discs available through the mail, which could ensure higher customer conversion.

Thirdly, this has potential to be the single largest use of BD-Live yet. In September, Deluxe Digital Studios said users were connecting to BD-Live about 4 million times a month, with the majority of interest coming in the form of downloadable trailers. Meanwhile, the first three months after Netflix was introduced on Xbox Live, more than 1 million users were connected to the service for 1.5 billion minutes. Even if users were connecting to BD-Live in five-minute increments, which is long for a trailer, that would still only amount to 20 million minutes a month.

Yes, but is it funny? US Chamber issues takedown notice for Yes Men parody

Publié: octobre 26, 2009, 5:25pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

It looks like the US Chamber of Commerce Web site, and has a convincing URL: www.chamber-of-commerce.us. It bears the seal of the Chamber, a private organization that advocates for business issues before federal legislators. And where you'd expect to find links to the real Chamber Web site, there they are -- real links to www.uschamber.com.

But it's another daring act of imitation crafted by the self-proclaimed impostors known as the Yes Men -- the same group that, in 2004, successfully pretended to be Dow Chemical representatives, appearing on the BBC to take responsibility for the Bhopal chemical plant tragedy. This was after Yes Men posted a similar impostor Web site purporting to come from Dow Chemical. That site had a press response address, to which the BBC addressed its request for an interview, and from which Yes Men -- still pretending -- complied.

A transcript of what appeared to be a speech from Chamber president Thomas Donohue from the National Press Club appeared last week on the fake Chamber site, appearing to reverse the Chamber's stance on global climate change issues. "In business, as in life, we sometimes don't look ahead. We seize the day while forgetting the year," the phony speech began. "Let's remember Lehman Brothers, a committed, solid member of this Chamber, who in the interest of short-term gain scuttled a century. They ate lamb, but were left without wool when the cold, hard winter set in. We must learn from the past, so that we can manage the future."

Continuing what may be a perfect batting average on the subject, Reuters ran the phony press release as actual news, and both CNBC and Fox News interrupted programming to report the developments as real. In a face-saving attempt, a CNBC commentator suggested that perhaps the White House, not the Yes Men, was actually responsible for the hoax.

The Chamber's real viewpoints on the dubiousness of scientific data pointing to the trends of global climate change, have recently prompted high-level members such as Apple and GE to resign their membership. Last week, the real US Chamber issued a DMCA takedown notice (PDF available here) to the ISP hosting the phony site, Fremont, California-based Hurricane Electric. "The Web site infringes the Chamber of Commerce's copyrights by directly copying the images, logos, design, and layout of the Chamber of Commerce's copyright-protected official Web site," the notice reads. The ISP's defense, according to the Chamber, was that it was an "upstream provider," and thus unable to comply.

Two Web sites side-by-side: [Left] The real US Chamber of Commerce; [Right] the Yes Men rip-off

Two Web sites side-by-side: [left] the real US Chamber of Commerce; [right] the Yes Men rip-off.

Last Thursday, the Yes Men's response came from its own lawyers: counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In a letter to the Chamber's attorneys sent that day (PDF available here), warning that if Hurricane Electric complies with the takedown request, the Chamber may be liable for misrepresentation of infringement. Citing the Supreme Court, the EFF's Matthew Zimmerman wrote, "parodies must often use substantial portions of an original work to make their point."

But the problem -- one which may haunt both the Yes Men and the Chamber -- is that the law has never been particularly clear on this point. What's more, the law has been specifically clear about the extent to which it has been unclear, pointing to a glaring, seven decades-long gap that has never quite been filled.

The first real legal precedent on the electronic use of parody came by way of a 1956 ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, against comedian Jack Benny. At the time, his TV show periodically produced send-ups of popular movies, and Benny's troupe had performed a parody of the 1944 movie Gaslight with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, based on the theatrical play. The rights holders to that production, Loew's Incorporated, claimed copyright infringement and won, and Benny's appeal was denied, after Loew's had argued that Benny's defense of parody-as-fair-use couldn't hold up. To be parody, Loew's said, it had to be funny.

The courts struggled to bypass having to address those arguments; and eventually the Ninth Circuit ruled that if a parody resembles its target too closely, that's copyright infringement. In other words, a reasonable person might be confused into thinking the parody was real because 1) Jack Benny looked so much like Charles Boyer (or Ingrid Bergman); 2) neither the real Gaslight nor the parody were...well, all right, all that funny.

But the case law on the current books comes from the Ninth Circuit's classic 1978 reversal of itself, in a case surrounding the alleged lack-of-fair-use around some of Walt Disney Co.'s trademarks. The Ninth Circuit decided at that time, "Parody and satire are deserving of substantial freedom -- both as entertainment and as a form of social and literary criticism…At the very least, where as here, it is clear that parody has neither the intent nor the effect of fulfilling the demand for the original, and where the parodist does not appropriate a great amount of the original work than is necessary to 'recall or conjure up' the object of his satire, a finding of infringement would be improper."

It's that case law which the EFF is relying upon for its Yes Men defense. However, here's the problem: In delineating where its predecessors went wrong, the 1978 Ninth Circuit ruled that a parody should not be confusable with the original, reasoning that true copyright infringement takes place when the infringing work substitutes for the original work.

And there will be the stickler in this latest Yes Men case, for the impostors didn't just use the name "Thomas J. Donohue," but also the graphics and style of the real US Chamber Web site. And the bottom of the fake speech transcript page clearly reads, "Copyright 2009 U.S. Chamber of Commerce...All rights reserved." That's a mark that traditionally has never been appropriated by others for "fair use" parody.

The implications of a final ruling on this subject go way beyond the interests of parody practitioners. For instance, an individual's right to register sound-alike domain names, or defacement names such as "AirFranceSucks.com" -- a practice currently considered cybersquatting -- could become permanently protected by law.

Bloggers at Think Progress chronicled Fox Business and CNBC breaking the fake Yes Men press release as real news.

Meanwhile, a completely separate issue could arise with regard to whether Yes Men appropriated their fake Web site name improperly. The name they chose falls under the .us top-level domain, whose rules are not the same as for .com.

According to the .us domain registration agreement (PDF available here), information posted on a .us Web site may be used by the US government for any purpose. For that reason, according to Dept. of Commerce guidelines, the Web site must disclose its proper identity.

The WHOIS database currently lists the registrant of the fake address as "Support and Commitment, Inc.," which is known to have also registered "CheneyBush.com," "georgewbush.org," and "YesBushCan.com." Back in 2004, at the height of the presidential campaign, the latter site was responsible for issuing a fake press release, claiming it had defected from its candidate and endorsed John Kerry for President -- an announcement that, once again, was covered by real sources as real news.

Palm Pixi lands Nov. 15, indicates a third webOS device

Publié: octobre 26, 2009, 4:06pm CET par Tim Conneally

Palm Pixi Today, Palm announced that the Pixi, the company's second webOS device and slimmer, lighter-weight cousin to the Pre, will be available for the holiday season on November 15 exclusively through Sprint.

With a 2.63" multi-touchscreen, 8 GB of internal memory, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a 2 megapixel LED flash camera, and integrated GPS, the Pixi lightens up on many of the Pre's specs (smaller screen, slower processor) and eliminates the Wi-Fi radio entirely.

The Pixi will be available for $99 after rebates and with a two-year service contract, landing it on the sub-$100 tier which proves vital in stimulating consumer interest.

As fans of Palm have already pointed out, on the day that Pixi was announced in September, the Pre dropped to $149.99, putting only $50 between Palm's upper and lower tiers after subsidies and rebates.

However, this tight pricing scheme likely means that a new high-end device is on its way, and that the Pre is actually destined to be the company's midrange handset. As Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein said in September, webOS will be the only operating system the company supports from now on, and there has not yet been a replacement for the Treo Pro, Palm's final Windows Mobile device and last flagship device up for replacement.

Web search in a post-Twitter world

Publié: octobre 24, 2009, 1:58am CEST par Tim Conneally

We all contribute to the news cycle when we post timely content online, even if it's 140 characters or fewer, and this week we learned that our little bits of information have substantive value when search giants Google and Microsoft announced that they will index our tweets and status updates.

But the sheer volume of content that we produce could be a problem, and Twitter users who find day-to-day value in the service may scoff at the idea that the "information firehose" of live content can be tapped and made searchable. It doesn't take extensive use to see that most tweets are in fact worthless, and that thousands of bots simply use Twitter as a tool for free promotion, by tagging links to a particular Web site with trending topics.

But this seemingly uncontrollable flow of information is shaping the way news gets to us, and it presents an important evolutionary hurdle for the search industry: We know there is extremely valuable information there, but how do we make it work for us?

Gerry Campbell has been dealing in the search space since the days of CompuServe, and was one of the first to work on monetizing Web search at AltaVista nearly 11 years ago. Campbell is an angel investor in nearly a dozen social search companies, including Summize, which came to power Twitter's own on-board search. He currently heads Collecta, a real-time search engine which shows how far we've come in terms of live news: It's a continuous query search engine that streams news articles and relevant tweets (which are filtered for content rather than indexed) as they happen until the user decides to hit "pause."

Campbell today shared some perspective on the trends in content creation and consumption. "There are two trends that are fascinating to me, the bright lights of all the trends: The first is the current velocity of content creation. Google has a trillion documents indexed, and about half a billion new indexable pieces of content are being published every single day. But the nature of what's being published has changed dramatically since Google began about ten years ago. Today it's short-lived, quickly published documents. They're high velocity. Old documents were meant to have more weight to them so they could be read longer. Information now is valuable for less time, and an important space is in finding a better way to surface this."

Startup search services like Worio attempt to do just this, and provide an equally valid mix of results from both traditional sources and "real-time" social sites. Worio combines keyword- and context-based search with "Web discovery" algorithms like the ones that suggest content in Pandora and Netflix. Topics which are spiking in interest on the social sites are more likely to be included in search results.

"You want current news, but you want to carefully look at what is interesting rather than just what is popular. iPhone, for example is historically more popular than Palm Pre. However, on the date such as the Pre's launch, search results for 'smartphone' would have been more skewed toward the Pre because that topic had more traction at the time. Some search results are always more popular than others, but social media activity helps us determine how interesting a topic is," Worio CEO Ali Davar said today.

The second important trend that Gerry Campbell pointed out today is the Web's changed role in our daily life.

"The Internet isn't a destination any more, we don't make time in our schedules to get on the Internet," Campbell said. "The emerging model goes beyond even the 'always on' concept. I've got my phone on, my notebook open at every meeting, with information constantly flowing to me at all times. I don't necessarily want a summary explaining what happened...I want to be involved as the story evolves. All of those little bits of information have a daily value to us which gets less valuable over time. This is the evolution of news.

"The topics have a shelf life based upon the format in which they're presented. A study recently showed the diffusion of a news story: it starts in Twitter and on social sites, then as it moves into blogs, it gets colored with interpretation and opinion, and the value goes up. Finally, mainstream media gets it and value goes up even further with trustworthy analysis."

With the increased flow of real-time data and increased daily use of mobile devices, Web search in a post-Twitter world is not going to be a destination model, but rather a model of integration.

McCain's 'Real Stimulus' to go head-to-head against FCC's 'net neutrality'

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 10:55pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The day after the US Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to begin debate on the possible introduction of new federal regulations governing how Internet service providers may delineate and manage services for their customers, Sen. John McCain (R - Ariz.) announced he will be proposing simple and swift legislation that would forever separate the Internet from the FCC's purview.

Sen. McCain's office presented Betanews with the very latest draft of the bill this afternoon, which has yet to be reported to the floor (thus it does not yet have a number), and has within the last few hours been renamed the "Real Stimulus Act of 2009." Its earlier name, the "Internet Freedom Act," clashed too strongly with competing pro-net-neutrality legislation introduced earlier this year in the House. As it stands now, it's only a two-page bill, the principle clause of which reads: "The Federal Communications Commission shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services." Exceptions would be in cases of national security, to ensure public safety, or to aid in law enforcement activities; and existing regulations to that effect would still be considered in effect.

In a statement yesterday, Sen. McCain attempted to explain the "stimulus" theory of his bill: Although it contains no government subsidies, unlike recent stimulus bills, he feels that keeping wireless services free from government regulation will enable job growth through continued investment in service expansion.

"This government takeover of the Internet will stifle innovation, in turn slowing our economic turnaround and further depressing an already anemic job market. Outside of health care, the technology industry is the nation's fastest growing job market. Innovation and job growth in this sector of our economy is the key to America's future prosperity," reads a statement from his office. To that, the Senator added the remark that his bill "will allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment. Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy."

Sen. McCain is already very much on record as believing that the Internet, unlike the public airwaves, is a culmination of collected services that are contributed by private enterprises, and that each of those enterprises has an exclusive stake to its share of the contribution. At the All Things D conference in May 2007, when he was still seeking the Republican nomination for President, McCain told the audience, "When you control the pipe, you should be able to get profit from your investment."

Microsoft wins round one in its battle against Vista

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 6:45pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Anyone who would continue to frame the consumer PC market in 1980s terms, as a continuance of the old war between Microsoft and Apple, would be sorely disappointed by this morning's earnings news from Microsoft. The measured candor that continues to emerge from CFO Chris Liddell suggests that Macintosh and iPhone are not even on the company's radar at the moment, and that his real battle is against a tougher and more menacing foe: Vista.

As of yesterday, it was officially okay for Microsoft to pronounce Vista part of its past, to "un-support" it from a marketing standpoint (though certainly not from a service standpoint). Steering Microsoft clear of the perfect storm -- the effects of the global recession, coupled with the peak in negative attitude toward Vista -- means putting Vista behind it, placing it in the adversarial role normally characterized by someone who looks a lot more like Justin Long than John Hodgman.

If Microsoft had continued on its unprecedented downward slope, as it was forced to report on last July, analysts might have concluded the company was in a recession of its own -- a kind of corollary of the "two consecutive quarters of decline" rule normally applied to the country's economic state. But the slope was not so down this time, and literally all the credit was bestowed upon the company's newest, bravest warrior, Windows 7.

"To put the quarter results into perspective, Q1 represented the highest number of Windows licenses sold in one quarter, ever," pronounced Investor Relations GM Bill Koefoed, "and September was the highest single month of Windows unit sales ever. In summary, it was a very solid quarter for the Windows division; and with Windows 7, we have a great product for the recovering PC market."

During the low point of the economic crisis, what kept the PC market from collapsing altogether was the ability to shift its product mix towards netbooks -- the lowest-priced segment, but certainly the lowest-margin end of the business as well. As Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell reported, netbooks went from 0 to 12% of the overall consumer PC market in just one year's time. During that same year, Windows was able to find itself installed on 90% of those systems.

"Find itself" is actually a very accurate phrase, because this wasn't really what Microsoft intended, and it actually became something of a real problem. At a time when the company needed to tout Service Pack 2 as the life saver for Vista, the netbook surge presented consumers with the single biggest confirmation of Vista's inadequacy to date: the presence of Windows XP, not Vista, on nearly all of those netbooks.

"People are clearly willing to pay for having Windows on their netbooks, so that's the first and most important fundamental," Liddell told a Deutsche Bank analyst this morning. "Then in terms of Windows 7 reaction, clearly [we've] yet to see, but early indications in terms of the OEM builds that we're having, and the mix that they're putting in terms of Windows 7, is encouraging...in terms of their expectations of the number of people who are going to want to see a Windows 7 on their netbook as opposed to an XP. In terms of the ASP [average selling price], clearly it's almost twice on Windows 7 what it would be on XP, or a significant premium...So it's going to be beneficial, but I think it's more important symbolically from our point of view that people see value in Windows 7 and are willing to pay for it. Netbooks, even though they've grown fast, are still a relatively small component of the overall demand, so it's not going to have a massive financial impact, but it'll certainly help in terms of ASP comparisons year-over-year, if we get the sort of good attach of Windows 7 that we're starting to see in the early days."

As it did during Vista's premiere, Microsoft has opted to defer about $1.5 billion of revenue from pre-orders of Windows 7 from OEMs and retail customers, until the following quarter. Still, the activity surrounding Win7 in this past quarter indicated that the period of time in which customers were deferring their operating system investments had clearly ceased. Operating income from its client division, now called the "Windows and Windows Live" division (reflecting the realignment of online software around the core product, and away from online services like Bing), dropped only marginally on an annual basis to $2.81 billion, on revenue just 3.3% lower at $3.98 billion. With Server & Tools and Entertainment & Devices income slightly higher on the year on revenue that was basically flat, the company was able to sustain a huge hit from the declining value of its stock awards -- essentially a $2.2 billion write-down.

So total income was down about 25.3% annually to $4.48 billion -- not good, but not unexpected in the wake of last quarter. And besides a little bit of credit given to the success of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 game platform, Windows 7 enthusiasm was credited for keeping income from business operations stable.

"What I think we're seeing is the robustness of the concept of a PC," Liddell told an RBC Capital analyst this morning. "Even through an economic reset, it's something that people want to spend money on, and I think that gives us confidence in the sort of long-term trend, the long-term ability to have good, potentially double-digit growth in PC demand. That's clearly helped by the fact that we've got new form factors, Windows 7 helps clearly. You're just seeing a general positive trend on a long-term basis [for] a reset."

The next battlefield for Microsoft will be getting Vista off of business desktops and notebooks. Toward that end, the cards could finally be stacked in Windows 7's favor, for reasons Liddell alluded to today. Existing business PCs can be perceived as slow, for either of two reasons: If they're five years old or more, they're probably single-core. And if they're newer than that, they're probably stuck with Vista. Either way, they're slow, and that perception may play into business' decision to make a PC investment during calendar year 2010.

At least maybe. "The big variable in my mind is business PCs," stated CFO Liddell candidly. "That's been a significant negative, that's decreased double-digits over most of the last few quarters, and it's dragged down the numbers. That can't continue forever. Eventually those PCs wear out and have to be replaced, so the big variable in terms of rebound is going to be the strength and speed of the business PC refresh cycle. We hope and expect that to be next year...We're probably still relatively cautious, but when you start to see a rebound in that, plus what you're seeing in the consumer side, we feel pretty good about what we see demand's going to look like in the next calendar year."

Liddell did let something slip a bit when he said that revenue for the Business Division should recover in the near term when business spending in general recovers, "combined with the impact of Office 2010." That's a product whose release window even now is the entire next year, but Liddell's framework seems to put O10 someplace closer to late second-quarter, early third-quarter.

Microsoft Q1 2010 by the numbers: Windows license sales at record levels

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 5:28pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Microsoft may have quite a headache, but the economy finally isn't whacking the company as hard. This morning, Microsoft announced fiscal 2010 first quarter results before Wall Street's opening bell, beating analyst consensus expectations. Mixing metaphors, Microsoft's results don't stink as bad as they have for the last couple of quarters.

Windows 7 is off to a resounding start. Microsoft launched the new operating system yesterday, but PC OEMs have been buying the software for months. During a conference call with financial analysts this morning, Bill Koefoed, general manager of Microsoft investor relations, said that Windows license sales were strongest ever for any single quarter.

For fiscal 2010 first quarter, Microsoft reported revenue of $12.92 billion, for a 14 percent year-over-year decline. Operating income: $4.48 billion, down 25 percent. Net income: $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share. Net income fell by 18 percent and earnings per share by 17 percent year over year.

Results would have been higher if not for a one-time charge. Microsoft deferred $1.47 billion from fiscal first quarter to the second, because of technology guarantees for Windows 7. People buying Windows Vista PCs were eligible for free or discounted 7 upgrades starting July 1. Without the deferral, Microsoft would have reported $14.39 billion in revenue, for only a 4 percent year-over-year decline, and 52 cents earnings per share, up 8 percent from fiscal 2009 first quarter.

Microsoft stopped offering guidance during fiscal 2009. So Wall Street consensus was solely based on analysts' judgment. Consensus called for a 17.9 percent year-over-year revenue decline, to $12.37 billion. Earnings-per-share estimate was 32 cents, for a 33.3 percent consensus decline. So even without the deferral, Microsoft beat the Street.

Chris Liddell, Microsoft's CFO, described the quarterly results as "strong," during the conference call. He attributed Microsoft's start at revenue and earnings recovery to Windows and Xbox sales and to cost containment. Fiscal 2010 first quarter "might have been the bottom of the economic reset," he said. He predicted real recovery to start in early calendar 2010.

Microsoft Q1 2010 Revenue

Liddell still didn't offer much guidance for fiscal second quarter, but still more than other quarters:

Windows & Windows Live: Revenue growth will be in line with the PC market, or slightly ahead. Liddell said Microsoft expects the "netbook mix to stabilize" over the fiscal year.
Server & Tools: Revenue growth will exceed server shipments.
Business: Revenue growth will lag the PC market, in part as businesses wait for Office 2010.
Online Services: Revenue growth will be equal to or better than the market.
Entertainment & Devices: Flat.

Microsoft got a little boost by bad news not being worse. Last week, Gartner and IDC released better-than-expected preliminary third calendar quarter PC shipment data. Gartner had expected worldwide PC shipments to decline 5.6 percent, when they instead rose 0.5 percent to 80.9 million units. IDC put PC shipments up 2.3 percent following 6.8 percent and 2.4 percent declines in the first and second quarters, respectively. IDC estimated PC shipments to be 78.1 million units. By comparisons, Microsoft estimates that worldwid, year-over-year PC shipments were flat to 2 percent growth. Sequentially, sales were up in the mid-teens.

Microsoft Q1 2010 Income

But circumstances mitigated the benefits to Microsoft:

Netbooks continued their sales surge. Most of these portables shipped with Windows XP Home, for which Microsoft collects substantially smaller licensing fees than either Windows Vista or 7. However, Microsoft also shipped Windows 7 Starter Edition, which margins are better than XP Home.
Some regions sagged: PC shipments declined 8 percent year over year in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), offset by dramatic netbook and low-cost notebook sales, according to IDC.
Checks on component suppliers suggest that OEMs flooded the channel with inventory in anticipation of strong Windows 7 uplift. Microsoft could see Windows license sales decline in fiscal second quarter, particularly if PC sell-through is weaker than OEMs and retailers anticipate.

Segment Results

Windows & Windows Live. Microsoft has changed the name of what was the "Client" division to "Windows & Windows Live," reflecting recent organizational changes. Revenue fell 39 percent year over year and income by 52 percent. The declines are not as severe as they seem, because of the $1.47 billion deferral. Windows & Windows Live revenue was $2.6 billion without the deferral but $3.8 billion with it. Microsoft expects to realize $1.7 billion total deferred revenue for the division in the coming quarter.

The division derives 80 percent of its revenue from license sales to PC OEMs, which were up 6 percent year over year. However, OEM license revenues declined by 6 percent, reflecting the margin damage inflected by increasing netbook sales. Microsoft estimates that during the quarter, netbooks accounted for 12 percent of PC sales.

Microsoft reported that Windows license sales were strong during the quarter, with sales during September being the strongest for any month ever, in line with the aforementioned record quarterly sales. Robust license sales reflect strong OEM demand for Windows 7. However, as mentioned earlier, the strong license sales could be viewed as OEMs flooding the channel with units that may or may not sell through. Liddell said that OEMs "are buying in anticipation of demand" rather than for "actual demand." Therefore, robust Windows license sales are cautiously encouraging.

Server & Tools. The division is most insulated against economic maladies, because 55 percent of revenues comes from contractual volume-licensing agreements. However, because of corporate layoffs, Microsoft is seeing customers renewing license contracts at lower levels. The division's revenue was flat year over year, while income grew by 23 percent. Microsoft predicted that industry server hardware sales declined 20 percent year over year during the quarter.

Business. Next to Windows, Microsoft's other cash cow division reported revenue and income declines of 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Several factors accounted for growth declines, including aggressive back-to-school promotions for Office and declines in Business and Dynamics licensing -- down 4 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Consumer revenue declined $390 million, or 34 percent, which is seemingly counter-intuitive to Microsoft offering deep discounts. Shouldn't revenue increase then? The discounts were for Office Home and Student 2007, which comes with three licenses and sold for less than $90 from some retailers. Presumably, the heavily discounted three licenses-for-one product sapped sales from higher-priced, single-license Office SKUs.

Online Services. Income plummeted by 50 percent. The division's performance, with ad sales in decline, starkly contrasts with quarterly results from Google, which asserted the worst of the econolypse is over. The majority of the Online Services division's sales come from advertising, which fell 3 percent year over year to $421 million.

Entertainment & Devices. Microsoft sold 2.1 million Xbox consoles during the quarter, bringing the install base to about 35 million. Xbox Live revenue grew by 50 percent.

Our love/hate relationship with Microsoft: What happens now?

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 4:04pm CEST par Carmi Levy

Over the years, Microsoft has been vilified for more reasons than you can shake a memory stick at. But the world is bigger than Microsoft; and if we're going to take the time and effort to hate something, it makes more sense for it to be something deserving of hate -- like government corruption, unsanctioned access by certain countries to nuclear missiles, and diseases that evolve faster than our ability to comprehend them. Tossing bile at a mere software company would be too easy if it weren't so pointless.

As Microsoft releases Windows 7 unto a world that has been well-trained to be suspicious of such events, now is a pretty good time to reconsider why so many people have for so long held a special degree of contempt for the company. It's also an ideal time to question why this has been the case in the first place, and figure out what our attitudes should be from this point forward.

Microsoft's failures have always led to success

There's a reason Ford never followed up the Edsel with another car called "Edsel:" Some brands just deserve to die. (It's a good thing "Vista" wasn't a Microsoft executive's first name.)

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) Most recently, Vista's been the lazy person's target for vilification and vitriol. When it was released, it was big and buggy, and although Microsoft eventually fixed most of the countless niggling problems with its flagship OS product, it couldn't repair the damage to the Vista brand.

Vista is only the latest in a long line of Microsoft missteps. Whether it's on account of the Xbox red circle of death, XP's sieve-like (in-) security, Windows ME's general crumminess, or Bob's absolute disconnection from reality, Microsoft has had to survive a number of high-profile failures.

But the company that's never failed hasn't been invented yet. (Sorry, Google.) Failure is what teaches great companies -- and people -- to achieve greater success the next time out. And in Microsoft's case, its successes far outweigh its failures. For better or worse, Microsoft's influence on a wide range of markets has forged consistency and purpose in those markets, when no one else was willing or able to step up to the plate and take the lead. To wit:

Desktop operating systems. While some folks have valid reasons for disliking Windows, there's got to be at least some good baked into it to explain the basic fact that 90% of the computing world runs it. Since Windows 3.0 first transitioned Microsoft's GUI-based OS from curious plaything to serious competitor, the franchise has been the centerpiece of an ever-growing ecosystem of developers, vendors and users, all of whom have built careers and businesses around this now-ubiquitous OS. Mass adoption in various markets often seems to be accompanied by a certain degree of contempt: We all may despise Toyotas for being boring, soulless transportation appliances, but we buy them by the boatload because they get the job done.
Applications. I still get e-mails from frustrated WordPerfect for DOS users who claim writing just hasn't been the same since Microsoft's Word vanquished WordPerfect's offering -- and, rather starkly, WordPerfect Corporation itself. Whatever. I still have nightmares when I remember trying to move data between Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. Microsoft's Office paradigm redefined how we got work done, and its market dominance made it easy for me to share my work with virtually anyone else who mattered.
Development. The catch-as-you-can state of programming languages before Windows-based machines took over forced developers to either invest significant time in learning multiple languages, or risk backing the wrong horse by choosing the wrong one to learn. Products like Visual Basic opened up development paths to more users and broadened the landscape for consumers and businesses alike. Suddenly, programming wasn't so arcane.
Networking. While Novell rightly gets credit for defining and popularizing the modern Local Area Network, Microsoft's Windows NT Server assumed the mantle and drove the concept into the heart of corporate IT. It certainly wasn't always pretty, especially if you were responsible for patching and securing it, but it was a good enough, familiar enough product family for most organizations.

A kinder, gentler Microsoft

As it brings Windows 7 to market, Microsoft is showing signs of greying around the temples. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the evolution of its CEO, Steve Ballmer. Long known for being an exuberant -- sometimes overly so -- Microsoft booster, Mr. Ballmer's antics, from throwing chairs to cheerleading during keynotes, are near-legendary. But somewhat uncharacteristically, his behavior during the Windows 7 launch has been nothing short of reserved and reflective.

Through Ballmer, we see a Microsoft that isn't so much monolithically monopolistic as it is customer-centered and, dare I say it, soft around the middle. Could this be a kinder, gentler Microsoft? Perhaps. The company makes it clear that consumer feedback to Vista's failings guided its Windows 7 development effort. And as new software delivery paradigms threaten its OS and productivity software dominance as never before, its efforts to build businesses in previously non-core sectors (Windows Azure Platform, anyone?) provide glimpses into a company that has come to terms with being merely mortal.

What's left to hate?

So this clearly isn't your father's Microsoft. But is that a good or a bad thing? Is a post-antitrust, post-king-of-the-world, post-desktop company that doesn't rampage through its markets as much as it carefully steps through them necessarily a good thing for the broader tech market?

Perhaps so. The tech landscape already has an heir apparent in Google, which now finds itself in the similarly unenviable position of lightning rod for those who seem to always need a lightning rod. By virtue of its size and perception as a monopolistic player, Google now falls under the same harsh criticism that had defined Microsoft for the better part of a generation.

Which leaves Microsoft to define a new path for itself, unencumbered by the weight of the constant attention typically afforded a singular leviathan of a given industry. It also leaves those of us who habitually cast an evil eye on this or any company, to wonder whether doing so serves any real purpose at all. Anyone who flogged Microsoft for the sins of its most recent Windows products, lost any significant reason this week to go on doing so. Sometimes, it just pays to be nice.

Mac Boot Camp to support Windows 7 by year's end

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 1:05am CEST par Tim Conneally

Apple today promised to update its Boot Camp partitioning tool to support Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate before the end of the year.

In a support article posted to Apple's site today, it says the Boot Camp upgrade will be brought to most Intel-based Macs running OS X Snow Leopard. The sole exception at this point is the 2006 line, where Windows 7 will not be supported by the 17" and 20" iMac, 15" and 17" Macbook Pro and 2.66GHz or 3GHz Mac Pro. These units represent the first generation of Intel-based Macs, and represent a transitional period in the Mac architecture.

Users of these particular models who wish to install Windows 7 will have to do so on a virtual machine through software such as Parallels 4.0 or the soon-to-be-launched VMware Fusion 3.0. Parallels 4.0 has supported Windows 7 in its earlier forms for about six months.

Boot Camp currently only supports Windows XP and Vista in its official documentation, but a number of users claim to have already installed Windows 7 with no problem.

Microsoft wows Windows 7 crowd with Internet TV

Publié: octobre 23, 2009, 12:17am CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

The title screen from Windows Media Center Internet TV, during the Beta 2 period.

While most of the Windows 7 features demo'd at today's New York City launch were already known about far and wide, Microsoft surprised a lot of the crowd with Internet TV, a streaming media capability that just might some day spur consumers to ditch pricey cable TV services like Time Warner and Cablevision.

Internet TV lets you stream video and audio programming directly into Windows 7 Media Center, without the hassles of going to myriad Web sites and downloading multiple players, said Microsoft rep Brian Yee, in an interview with Betanews at the Microsoft bash.

Actually, Internet TV has been under development at Microsoft since way back in September of 2007. Netflix started showing up as a Media Center partner in January of this year, and was soon streaming some of movies into the Vista version. In May, Internet TV for Media Center officially entered beta 2. With today's release of Windows 7, though, the feature finally leaves beta testing behind.

In demos today after company CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote, Microsoft showed Internet TV working together with Play To, a new function in Windows 7 that uses the DLNA 1.5 protocol to send streaming content from a PC to other home-networked devices.

Microsoft representative Brian Yee demonstrates Internet TV for Windows Media Center in Windows 7, during the big rollout event in New York City, October 22, 2009. [Photo credit: Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews]

Sitting on a couch set up in a mock "living room," Yee clicked on icons in a Windows 7-enabled Acer laptop to beam videos from services like Netflix, MSN, and sundry CBS Audience Network properties to an HDTV from LG and two D-Link digital photo frames. He also sent tunes streamed in from Microsoft's Full Zune Podcast Library to a remote audio system a few feet further away.

As for Netflix, Internet TV only works with those movies marked as streaming-enabled.

The CBS Audience Network videos -- consisting of current TV shows, CBS Classics, short clips, and "Web originals" -- are available in the US only, whereas Sky Network content is available in the UK only, said Yee.

"But we're also really interested in Internet TV partnerships with other entertainment content providers," noted the Microsoft rep.

Dual Verizon CEOs deftly dance on both sides of net neutrality

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 11:58pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

At about the same time Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam was preparing to issue a joint statement with Google, of all companies, signaling his company's support of the FCC at least opening up the floor to debate on proposed net neutrality legislation, Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of parent company Verizon Communications, told attendees at the Supercomm conference in Chicago (as covered by CNET's Marguerite Reardon) that regulating net neutrality itself is "a mistake."

While bloggers noticing McAdam's signature alongside that of Google CEO Eric Schmidt took it to mean that Verizon had actually switched sides on the issue (again, folks, it's a good idea to read the whole story), it's clear that the intent of the joint statement was to demonstrate the company's willingness to come to the table and debate the issue civilly, and to listen to Google's side of the argument as well. But McAdam's fingerprints were all over sentence #2, which acknowledges that his company still disputes "whether mobile networks should even be part of the discussion" -- in other words, whether the FCC has the right to use net neutrality as a springboard for regulating Internet commerce and transactions.

The joint statement listed six elements of common agreement between Google and Verizon, first and foremost being the rights of individuals to decide how they choose to use the Internet. Point three does represent some moderation on Google's part, by agreeing that in certain respects, "net neutrality" legislation may already have been enacted: "The FCC's existing wireline broadband principles make clear that users are in charge of all aspects of their Internet experience -- from access to apps and content. So we think it makes sense for the Commission to establish that these existing principles are enforceable, and implement them on a case-by-case basis."

The statement goes on to propose that broadband providers should be able to use management methods of their choice for dealing with traffic issues and malicious content, so long as they "don't unreasonably discriminate in ways that either harm users or are anti-competitive." The meaning of "unreasonably" in this instance was left for further discussion.

Certainly the benefit in issuing this statement, both for Verizon Wireless and parent Verizon, is that the customer will probably be less likely now to perceive Verizon as "anti-net neutrality." It can still be against FCC regulation of wireless industry management practices, but today's reframing of the subject gives Verizon a happier face for the general public -- by painting Google's smile on its own face.

Meanwhile, as the t's were being crossed on the joint statement, Seidenberg was telling Superconn his belief that regulations as they are currently proposed draw too hard of a distinction between service providers and content providers, as if they'll always be in two camps. (Comcast, with aims to possibly purchase a majority share of NBC Universal from parent company GE, would certainly say no to that.)

As CNET quotes Seidenberg as saying, "Proponents [of net neutrality] have a worldview that network providers and application providers, like Google, occupy different parts of the Internet: dumb pipes versus smart apps. This is a mistake pure and simple. It's an analog idea for a digital world."

What's missing from this understanding, Seidenberg went on, is the positive role of "smart networks" -- the ability for more highly developed equipment to use sophisticated, perhaps even AI techniques for making adjustments to bandwidth allocations, in order to ensure quality of service.

In his dissent from today's FCC rulemaking order, also published today, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell (perhaps not coincidentally) spoke to this exact same point: "One of my concerns regarding today's Notice is that its premise looks at innovation in a way that could actually deepen the division between applications and networks precisely at a time when the market is sparking unprecedented convergence between the two," Comm. McDowell wrote. "For instance, many proponents of network management regulation speak of unfettered innovation at the 'edge' of networks -- such as on consumers' personal computers and wireless devices -- while the freedom to innovate 'in the middle' of networks should be more limited due to concerns regarding potential anticompetitive conduct by network operators. Today's Notice and its proposed rules could be viewed as operating from a similar premise, however, which could produce counterproductive results. Constructive public policy should subscribe to the philosophy that unfettered innovation should be encouraged equally at all points of the network -- at the edge and in the core.

"As a practical matter, it is fast becoming impossible to separate the two," McDowell continued. "Consumers are telling the marketplace that they don't want networks that operate merely as 'dumb pipes.' Sometimes they want the added value and efficiency that comes from intelligence inside networks as well. Those who oversimplify this issue as a zero sum scenario between a dumb pipe and smart edge versus a smart pipe and dumb edge offer only a false choice that does not reflect the realities of today's market. I hope that yesterday's joint blog post between Google and Verizon Wireless on the importance of the consumer Internet experience is the start of continued collaboration and dialogue among these two communities."

The FCC's proposals come the day after Canada's counterpart to the Commission, the CRTC, issued its final rules for regulating net neutrality. Unlike the FCC's proposed rules, the extent of which is still being determined, the CRTC limited itself to dealing with network management practices. Under Canada's new rules, according to the CBC, service providers would be allowed to institute even "traffic shaping" -- among the smartest of the smart apps -- to prevent congestion on a limited basis, but only after demonstrating to the CRTC how such measures will achieve their purpose without limiting consumers' choice of Internet applications, and after the CRTC has issued a final approval.

Apple's lack of iPhone tethering: Can 'net neutrality' render it illegal?

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 11:28pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The principal argument made by opponents of "net neutrality" regulation, such as what the US Federal Communications Commission formally proposed today, is that government need not extend the hand of regulation to an industry that has arguably flourished in the absence of regulation. Almost like a Microsoft "embrace and extend" policy, opponents argue, government can conceivably leverage its advantages on one platform to extend itself to another, as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has actually admitted he's doing with respect to using telecommunications law to regulate Internet service -- an area that was, up until 2004, outside the FCC's purview.

The year 2004 is when then-Chairman Michael Powell put forth his "Four Freedoms" for Internet users which, though not actually law, were certainly cited by legislators in pushing net neutrality legislation (none of which actually passed). The third freedom, as Powell put it then, was this: "Consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes." Today's FCC refers to this as the "any-device rule."

In this afternoon's release of its Notice of Proposed Rule-making (PDF available here) -- an opportunity for the public to weigh in before it issues its decision -- the FCC put forth several questions to test public sentiment about the extent to which it should regulate businesses to conform with the "any-device rule." In other words, once the principle is embraced as a "rule," just how much elasticity will the public be willing to give it?

"In this context, we ask how, in what time frames or phases, and to what extent the 'any device' rule should apply to mobile wireless broadband Internet access," the Notice reads. "In particular, we seek concrete data and specific examples that will inform our consideration of the issue. Should we require a mobile broadband Internet access service provider to allow users to attach any device with a compatible air interface directly to its network? If so, what procedures may providers use to prevent harm to the network? Who should ensure that devices are non-harmful: the providers themselves, third-party organizations, industry associations/laboratories, or the Commission? Should we allow providers to satisfy the device-attachment principle by providing wireless modems or SIM cards that could be easily inserted into end-user devices?"

It's that third question -- the one that begins, "Who should ensure...?" -- that is the heart of this probe. There are numerous public grievances about the way the entire wireless industry has handled broadband rollout in the US up to now, but is the public willing to accept the government -- or more specifically, an agency of the executive branch of government -- as the final arbiter in addressing those grievances?

One hot-button issue for many wireless users has been how certain carriers and/or phone manufacturers prohibit tethering, the use of USB or Bluetooth connections to let their users' computers borrow the broadband connections from their smartphones. In perhaps the most extensive test of the public's willingness to tolerate government regulation in the name of net neutrality, today's FCC proposal asks the public whether the absence of tethering capability be rendered illegal -- a situation which, unless existing phones are "grandfathered" in, would render Apple's iPhone subject to fines and penalties.

As the Notice reads, "Should we require providers to allow 'tethering' as a form of device interconnection? If we required wireless providers to permit tethering, what impact would that have on wireless network congestion, and what reasonable network management measures should providers be allowed to take to ensure that their networks can support tethering? Alternatively, should a tethering requirement be sufficient to satisfy the 'any device' requirement in the wireless context?"

And then the Notice proceeds to answer its own question: If the "any device rule" is enacted as a "Rule" with a capital "R," customers must be enabled to utilize any device they choose to connect with a wireless broadband network, as long as it did not harm the network. Not any smartphone, but any device -- and that would mean a laptop tethered to a smartphone. However, the Rule would not prohibit carriers from locking customers into contracts in exchange for purchasing subsidized phones at lower prices.

It was Sen. John Kerry (D - Mass.) who first took a stand against tethering prohibition, citing the iPhone specifically in hearings before Congress. Sen. Kerry grouped this and other wireless service policies together, as innovation-stifling practices that emerge as a result of exclusivity contracts between phone manufacturers like Apple, and wireless carriers like AT&T. In a June 15 letter to then-FCC Acting Chairman Michael Copps, Kerry asked the Commission to consider regulations that would prohibit carriers from using exclusivity as an excuse for denying service to customers.

But in its Notice this morning, the FCC stated explicitly that exclusivity -- at least in this round -- will not be considered as part of net neutrality regulation. "We do not view the open Internet rules proposed here as directly related to handset exclusivity, and we do not intend to address that issue in this proceeding, but rather will consider it separately," the Notice reads.

Yet the very next paragraph touched on all of Kerry's hot-buttons anyway: "Application of a nondiscrimination principle raises important questions in wireless, given the provision of voice, SMS/MMS, and Internet service through a single device, typically sold by the same network operator. We seek comment on how, in what time frames or phases, and to what extent the prohibition on discrimination, subject to reasonable network management, should be administered for wireless services, including specific examples and data regarding practices."

Interested parties are asked to reply to the proposed rules by next January 14, and to provide any rebuttals to such replies by March 5.

Kindle goes multitouch on Windows 7

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 8:35pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Hitching its wagon to the Windows 7 star today, Amazon announced the upcoming availability of Kindle for PC, a free Windows 7 optimized e-reader program that syncs with a user's Kindle, and allows PC-based reading and library building.

Just like Kindle for iPhone, the software uses Amazon's Whispersync functionality to keep users on the same page (literally) as their Kindle. Also like the iPhone application, Kindle for PC users running Windows 7 will be able to utilize multi-touch gestures such as pinch zooming and finger swipes to turn pages.

Naturally, the software will also be available to Windows XP and Vista users when it debuts next month.

Amazon's Kindle for PC application

Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft said, "With the announcement of Kindle for PC, Amazon is making its massive selection of Kindle books available on the world`s most widely used platform. The new Kindle for PC`s use of Windows 7 features such as Jump Lists and Windows Touch demonstrates how Windows 7 makes new things possible."

This announcement comes just days after Barnes & Noble -- potentially Amazon's strongest competitor in the e-book space -- launched its own Android-based e-reader, called "nook," which comes with a full color touchscreen interface.

Microsoft's 'Have it Your Way' confronts Apple's 'Have it Our Way'

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 7:35pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Burger King has long used marketing slogan "Have it Your Way." I saw something different during my first trip to New York City 30 years ago inside the Times Square Burger King. There was an express line with sign: "Have it Our Way." Which line was longer? The one where people could choose how their burgers were fixed.

Today, Microsoft officially launched Windows 7 in New York, emphasizing choice and customer participation. Choice is a longstanding Microsoft marketing and product principle. Participation is a longstanding approach to Microsoft product development. With Windows 7, Microsoft is bringing the two together for the product marketing. Have it your way. "Excuse me, sir. Is that Windows 7 for here or to go?"

The approach is simply brilliant and it is timely with social networking trends. Microsoft is positioning Windows 7 as your operating system, which you can fix any way want. The first TV commercial asserts that Windows 7 was crowdsourced, with people asking for what they wanted and getting it. Catch phrase: "I'm a PC, and Windows 7 was my idea."

Microsoft's strategy starkly contrasts with Apple, which is much less about choice than customers being chosen for. For example:

Apple product development is secretive, rather than encouraging customer feedback and participation.
Product choice is limited to the few computers that Apple releases, such as the same aluminum construction and design for iMac or MacBook Pro.
Mac OS X is deliberately designed to discourage customization. There is one look for all Mac desktops.
Apple sells only one computer -- the entry-level Mac mini -- for less than $999. Buyers must choose to spend $999 or more.

Apple's product and marketing approach is very much "Have it Our Way." Microsoft wants you to "Have it Your Way":

You help Microsoft improve Windows to meet your needs.
You choose the PC that looks and functions your way.
You customize the desktop any old way you want it.
You choose how much you want to spend on a computer.

Microsoft long has advocated this kind of choice and participation. The difference now: Microsoft is using these attributes to really sell Windows, in ways the company hasn't done for years and in other ways like it never has. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Burger King and Microsoft share the same advertising agency: Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. Some examples of Microsoft's Windows 7 participation marketing:

The aforementioned TV commercials asserting that "Windows 7 was my idea."
Windows 7 House Party, where real people celebrate the launch and share pics and videos online.
Social Website that collects "What people are really saying about Windows 7" from blogs, feeds and social networks, such a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube.
Microsoft home page, which today rotates Windows 7 reviews and comments from real people -- mostly via Twitter -- rather than from bloggers or journalists.

The most successful products sell a lifestyle -- they provide a community where people feel they belong. Apple already had a fervent Mac community before the opening of the first Apple retail store in May 2001. Since, and with products like iPhone, iPod and iTunes, Apple has successfully extended the Mac community to the mass market.

Microsoft started rebuilding Windows community and belonging with the "I'm a PC" marketing campaign, which debuted in late 2008. Microsoft essentially told customers that they didn't have to feel bad before the cool Mac kids. PC users are just as cool but in different ways, and there are more of them, too. Microsoft also touted a value lifestyle.

The Windows 7 marketing campaign goes much further, by asserting that everyday people contributed to Windows 7's development -- that Microsoft listened to their input, that their opinions mattered. Who does Apple listen to other than CEO Steve Jobs?

Everything about Windows 7 marketing is anti-Apple and anti-Mac -- all unstated. Microsoft doesn't need to attack Apple directly, nor should it. The better marketing approach is to attract customers rather than to drive them away from something else. Besides, the bigger market of users run Windows, not Macs. Microsoft is competing against itself. It's Windows 7 against Windows XP (and some Vista).

That's where the other part of the marketing messaging is so important. The tagline: "Your PC, simplified." Simple is usually better. Among my six principles of good product design, two are more important: Good products should emphasize simplicity and they should hide complexity. Windows 7 unquestionably fulfills both in comparison to Windows Vista or XP.

In the first Windows 7 TV commercial above, the featured users first ask for a "Whole lotta less" and later for "simpler." The simpler message continues in the two other videos. Microsoft can't countermarket -- or shouldn't -- Windows XP . The marketing does better by enticing people to a better, simpler Windows 7.

Good marketing is about selling aspiration, about showing people how their lives will be better for buying products X, Y or Z. Microsoft's choice and participation marketing is excellent; joining a community or participating in a lifestyle are aspirational qualities. Better still: Asking for what you want and getting it. Have it your way, baby.

FCC advances net neutrality rules for wireless carriers

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 7:05pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, the Federal Communications Commission moved forward with the hotly debated Net Neutrality policy revision, and opened the floor for public comment on the updated framework for a "free and open Internet" based on the "Four Freedoms" laid down in 2005 by former FCC Commissioner Michael Powell.

"The goal is and must remain without compromise preserving a free and open Internet," Commissioner Julius Genachowski said this morning. "Any rules we adopt must preserve our freedom to connect, to communicate, and to create that is the wonder of the open Internet. Each and every user of the Internet must have access to an unlimited online universe of ideas and commerce. Internet users should always have the final say about their online experience, whether it's the software, applications or services they choose, or the networks and hardware they use to connect to the Internet."

Genachowski and two other commissioners, a majority of the 5-member board, approved the measures to work on the new framework, which will be open for public comment until January 14, and be brought to final vote by some time next summer.

The framework would let Access providers engage in "reasonable network management," but under the condition that they:

1.) do not block users from sending/receiving legal content.

2.) do not block legal apps from being installed on users' devices.

3.) do not block certain legal devices from accessing the network.

4.) cannot deprive users of entitlement to competing networks and services.

5.) cannot discriminate content, apps or services.

6.) must disclose all network management practices.

Despite the aggressive lobby from wireless providers such as AT&T and Verizon, the Commission says these rules will apply not only to cable and telecom broadband providers, but to wireless broadband as well. A major interest of this inquiry, therefore, is to find out exactly how these principles should apply to wireless and mobile broadband.

"Openness is essential for the Internet however it's accessed. It doesn't make sense to have one Internet when your laptop is plugged into a wall and another when accessing the Internet through a wireless modem," Genachowski said this morning. "At the same time, wireless networks are different from wired networks. Given fundamental differences in technology, how, when and to what extent open Internet rules should apply to different access platforms, particularly mobile broadband, will undoubtedly vary. This is an important issue on which the Notice seeks to develop a full and informed record."

Microsoft misses a perfect opportunity for Windows 7 and multitouch

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 6:41pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Analysis

Here are some observations after having watched Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 rollout, as streamed live from a Soho loft earlier this morning: Although I'm on record as praising Windows 7 (at Vista's expense), Microsoft missed a window here to make its new product more tangible and more interesting to consumers.

We saw plenty of demonstrations today about multitouch, which will at some point be perceived as a key feature of Windows 7 once more people are able to get their hands on it. But the only two routes Microsoft presented this morning were through expensive touch-sensitive TVs (which don't make sense to folks who prefer remote control) and through a new class of PCs that has yet to find a proper form factor, let alone make its way from the factory.

And yet there will be at least some multitouch-ready applications, mostly derived from that ancient photo gallery demo we first saw prior to the release of Vista. But if Microsoft truly wanted to make multitouch the talk of the town...since it is also in the peripherals business, one wonders why the company didn't think to make even an early class of Windows 7-ready multitouch pads available for the everyday consumer.

Scott Fulton On Point badge (200 px) It wouldn't have had to be much, although something on the order of Apple's multitouch-sensitive zero-button mouse would have been a serious game-changer. Essentially, it could have been a corded USB device that's placed beneath the mouse pad, maybe with suction to the table below. Nothing but a multitouch pad in a frame, plus a bundled way to get the apps (through Windows Live) to make it do something. Such a device could have been bundled with Windows 7 upgrades in retail stores. Or it could have been a Windows 7 upgrade, for at least one SKU, since there's no real reason anymore to put little software in big boxes unless there's something else in the box.

If customers had had available to them a way to plug in something for under a hundred bucks right now, and see Windows 7 multitouch at work, rather than wait down the road until probably Christmas 2010 when they might be able to afford one of these glossy multitouch devices, then Windows 7 would have been the game changer Microsoft needs it to be, right out of the box. Consumers would have had something they could hold in their hand that demonstrates the gulf between Windows 7 and Vista, rather than a plethora of online reviews from folks who are just now trying Win7 for the first time and proclaiming, "It looks the same to me; I don't see any difference!"

Apple's pre-emptive strike on Tuesday, covered at length by Betanews contributor Joe Wilcox, appeared to me at first to have been a way of evening up the score for just this move by Microsoft, had it actually made that move. Apple's clever way of dressing up its MacBooks so that folks don't notice that more of them are lacking Firewire, is not exactly a game changer by itself. But the zero-button, multitouch-sensitive "Magic Mouse" combined with these elements does evolve Mac's form factor, and gets the product further out there to a broader class of consumers, even while it retains its stake on the premium segment.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at the 'Heroes Happen Here' rollout presentation in Los Angeles, February 27, 2008. Microsoft's response at this point appears to be not to dignify Apple by looking as though it's responding to Apple's challenge. However, I seriously doubt that if Ballmer were to have taken the stage today with one of these devices in his hand, however crude it may have been with respect to what multitouch could eventually become, the first words out of consumers' mouths, or even the second, would have been, "I bet this is all because Apple came out with that cool mouse the other day!"

It would have made the new Apple mouse a non-issue, and it would have made any discussion about Apple declaring war on Windows...in the year 2009, seem a little inflated in hindsight. Ballmer had been on a run with his newfound ability to convert potentially damaging issues into non-issues, especially with government regulators worldwide, but also in terms of product competition (Office 2010 multi-format support being the best example).

A simple and inexpensive Microsoft multitouch device, even if it were only semi-cool with a few apps to support it, would have rendered anything Apple did earlier this week a non-issue. Ballmer missed his chance.

Nokia sues Apple, claims iPhone is stealing its innovations

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 5:31pm CEST par Tim Conneally

This is no patent troll lawsuit. This is the world's largest mobile phone maker calling out one of the most beloved devices of recent history on ten counts of patent infringement.

iPhone 3GS

The patents that Nokia cited in its complaint to the Delaware District Court today are related to wireless standard compatibility, speech coding and wireless data, as well as security and encryption. Nokia says it has licensed these patents out to more than 40 other companies and that every model of iPhone since the device's introduction in 2007 has infringed on them.

"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for. Apple is also expected to follow this principle," Nokia's Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Legal & Intellectual Property, said in a prepared statement today. "By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of [our] innovation."

The Patents Nokia cites in the complaint are the following:

1.) "Data Transmission in a Radio Telephone Network." (1998) Covers the formation of virtual data channel.

2.) "Data Transfer in a Mobile Telephone Network." (2002) A wireless patent which covers when a radio block is to be coded, and user data is transferred in octet form to simplify flow of data.

3.) "Measurement Report Transmission in a Telecommunications System." (2004) This lets mobile devices respond to polling codes that indicate the condition of that device.

4.) "Access Channel for Reduced Access Delay in a Telecommunications System." (2004) A UMTS patent where access requests are adjusted based on channel conditions.

5.)"Reporting Cell Measurement Results in a Cellular Communications System." (2006) This "enables a mobile device to report an increased number of signal quality measurements to a mobile network."

6.) "Method and Apparatus for Speech Transmission." (1998) This lets multiple speech coding methods to be used at different transmission rates for 2 stage channel encoding.

7.) "Speech Synthesizer Employing Post-Processing for Enhancing the Quality of the Synthesized Speech." (1999) This is a postfilter processing technology for clearer voice calls.

8.) "Method of Ciphering Data Transmission in a Radio System." (2005) This covers a UMTS cyphering alogrithm with a channel specific parameter among its inputs.

9.) "Integrity Check in a Communications System." (2006) A UMTS integrity algorithm calculated from values including channel identity information.

10.) "System for Ensuring Encrypted Communication after Handover." (2008) This allows for secure handoffs with an encryption algorithms supported by a mobile station between radio access networks.

Nokia's complaint is a heavy affair, including nearly a dozen pieces of evidence with myriad schematics and graphs illustrating the ways Apple uses Nokia's patents.

In sum, however, it's a claim that is very simply stated: Apple Violates all of these patents because the iPhone:

1.) Is a wireless communication device,

2.) Includes encoders/decoders for bi-directional voice and data communication.

Nokia says Apple has heretofore failed to pay licensing fees for these patents under The European Telecommunications Standards Institute's Intellectual Property Policy (ETSI IPR Policy), and that the nearly three years of infringement must be paid for.

"Prior to filing this Complaint, Nokia has made various offers to Apple for the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory royalty determination (F/RAND) terms and conditions of a license agreement...Apple has rejected Nokia's offers for the F/RAND terms and conditions both on a portfolio and on a per-patent basis, and thereby refused to compensate Nokia on F/RND terms for its use of Nokia's patented technologies, including each of the patents-in-suit."

Live from the NYC Windows 7 press event

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 3:43pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Live Commentary

The world pretty much knows what Windows 7 contains, thanks to technology previews and early releases to developers. So what's left for anyone to be surprised about? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a hint as to a possible answer this morning on NBC's Today program, telling host Matt Lauer that one of the most noticeable new features of the operating system will be multitouch. With Apple premiering its "multitouch mouse" a few days early, did Ballmer have something similar in mind?

Betanews' Jacqueline Emigh is with the press contingent in New York City, and is filing live updates from the scene.

Refresh this page for updates.

8:51am PT: Ballmer: "The notion of speed, simplicity, and form factor...and peripherals, we haven't even really gotten to the peripherals."

Encourages folks to check out the offers that PC makers are offering. "I think today is an important day for the computer industry, certainly for Microsoft, and I hope for customers around the world." Ends on time.

8:50am PT: Acer Aspire Rivo is a whole PC for TVs, priced at around $200, can be hidden behind the TV. Runs Intel Atom dual-core.

ATI DirectX 11 graphics card, rendered live on GPU, CPU is at 10% idle. "Order-independent transparency -- every single layer is being rendered where you see the background all the way through." ATI demo using semi-translucent robot with independent camera. $400 PC rendering the robot using DirectX 11.

HP laptop with dual hard drives (!), HDTV screen, subwoofer sound. No mention of price, but it's certainly nice.

Dell Adamo XPS. "This will be the thinnest computer in the world when it's shipping: 9.99 mm thin." Comes up from sleep in 1-2 seconds."

8:45am PT: 60 GHz wireless docking technology, demonstrates active windows sliding between two active displays, windows remain active when systems are undocked.

8:43am PT: Demo of new PCs running Windows 7, including an Acer PC that boots up in 15 seconds. (No specs on which CPU.)

HP Envy, resumes from sleep in one or two seconds.

8:37am PT: Netbook, invented over the last 12 months or so, "those are Windows PCs." (Will come as news to Intel.)

8:36am PT: Ballmer returns: "_The_ key for the popularity of Windows -- and Windows is very popular... -- is the fact that there's simply more you can do with these systems. It's the diversity. It's all of the peripherals, the Onkyo, the this, the that, the all the things you see that Brad showed you...For some, it'll be the new Hulu application; for others, it will be Microsoft Office."

8:34am PT: Simultaneous streaming to seven other devices along with the first three, with one Win7 PC as the controller. I'm noticing some halting in the streaming, 54% machine utilization. Firing up a stream locally.

"You know what, I think I'm done here."

8:33am PT: "Play to," which Brooks calls the "Seventh Wonder of Windows 7." Western Digital TV-box, sells for less than $120, makes an HDTV into "a great Windows 7 experience." New class of CE devices enables TV digital amplifiers to be Win7-enabled.

Digital picture frame enables media to be streamed, pushed from a single device to three other Windows TV components throughout the home (including the picture frame), simultaneously.

"But you know what, it doesn't stop there." (SF3: For some reason, I feel like I should be in pajamas drinking tea.)

8:27am PT: Can take a business laptop home, and make it a member of the homegroup network. Shares media while at home, but shares domain at work with no additional setup. Location-aware printing and sharing.

8:26am PT: Homegroup networking demonstrated now. What do you want to share? Pictures, documents, printers? Entered the homegroup password, sharing is complete. Betanews can vouch for this -- "These PCs are working together, that simple with Windows 7."

8:25am PT: [SF3:] The infomercial feel of this presentation may be detrimental here; consumers see through this "It's just that easy" and "It makes your life a breeze" marketing lingo.

8:23am PT: Finds "Caddyshack" in Netflix, can pick up in the middle of a movie where one left off. "All right, thank you, Bill Murray."

"It's just a great touch platform in general with Windows 7." New touch application for Windows 7 PCs with touch capability: Kindle Reader from Amazon, content libraries from Kindle, touch-enabled app with full-color pictures. Resizable, fonts reset themselves live.

8:21am PT: CBS Audience Network, any of CBS prime-time content directly available through Media Center. "All I need is a broadband connection, I don't even need a tuner now." Of course, an add for Burger King comes up first.

"The great thing is, it's a platform. They can use this platform to create a great monetization business model...It's really that easy."

8:20am PT: "Multitouch is a great platform, but it's also going to revolutionize how you think about the TV experience with Windows 7."

Windows Media Center, "a great touch experience as well." Touch-sensitive screen works with Media Center [as originally intended for the Vista version in an early demo].

USB tuners cost less than $100, can get HDTV over the air. Or get broadcast content from the cable box, whether it has a tuner or not. (Betanews has been attempting to test this out, not all the components have been available yet.)

8:18am PT: Selecting Windows Live Photo Gallery pictures, moving to Windows Live Movie Maker. Imported pictures from camera, added music, already has a slideshow. Testing animations for transitions, one-click posting to YouTube. Can be shrunken down, sent in e-mail. "It really is that simple," Brooks says, invoking a favorite phrase from infomercials.

8:16am PT: [SF3:] Microsoft Corporate Vice President Brad Brooks takes the stage, holding a Nikon D5000 DSLR camera. Demonstrating Device Stage, we're not seeing the pictures yet...there it is. Device Stage, shows the Nikon camera on the Desktop itself.

8:14am PT: [SF3:] Focus around three different screen sizes -- PC, phone, and TV. Kind of a Comcast-like analogy without invoking Comcast by name.

8:12am PT: [SF3:] First mention of multitouch. "A road warrior like me, I love wireless networking."

8:12am PT: [SF3:] Ballmer here uses the exclamation "Boom!" to emphasize the speed increment. You want things simpler, boom. More responsive, boom.

8:06am PT: Kiley, (spelling?), a five-and-a-half-year-old user, says she's visited a ferry and the Statue of Liberty. Kiley now tells Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer he's late. He gives her a pink PC.

8:04am PT: Microsoft is rolling some commercials for Windws Live. On a couple of screens to the sides of the stage. Now, here comes Tami Reller. She welcomes us to "a festive Soho loft" to celebrate the launch of Windows 7. "This is a big day for Microsoft. This is a big day for our customers," she says, adding that it's also a big day for customers worldwide."

8:02am PT: Here I am at Microsoft's Windows 7 launch in New York City. The bash is being thrown at a sort of out-of-the-way venue in the West Village called Skylight Studios. The overall mood here is subdued but expectant. The doors here opened at 10 am Eastern, but people didn't start standing in line until around 9:30, I'd estimate. There's a presentation at 11 am, and folks here are wondering just what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and the other brass are going to say, now that the cat's been out of the bag about Windows 7 for so long.

The Crook in the Nook: Barnes & Noble ebooks are overpriced compared to Amazon

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 2:53am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Yesterday, I excitedly preordered Barnes & Noble's "Nook" ebook reader. Today, I cancelled the order -- and I'm none to happy about it. Why can't Barnes & Noble learn from its past mistakes? The bookseller's digital titles are way overpriced -- at least compared to Amazon (Sony charges even more than both booksellers for many titles).

Quick examples -- and more will come later in this post: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: $6.59 from Amazon; $8.79 from B&N. Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?: $8.38 from Amazon; $11.20 from B&N. (Sony charges $9.89 for the first and $9 for the second.)

Barnes & Noble has been down this sordid path before. Ten years ago, B&N was an early ebook pioneer, opening a store using Microsoft Reader technology. But the bookseller had the pricing all wrong, asking the same price for digital -- for which there was no printing or distribution costs -- as hardcover books. That's right, and the ebooks came with onerous DRM that made sharing titles nearly impossible.

For years, I criticized B&N and other ebook sellers for overpricing that stalled adoption. Eventually, Barnes & Noble closed its ebook store. Here's the epitaph I wrote in September 2003 on the now defunct Microsoft Monitor Weblog once run by JupiterResearch (Forrester Research has absorbed the analyst firm):

This morning I received a notice from Barnes & Noble.com informing that as of today, the company would no longer offer ebooks online. Customers like me have 90 days to retrieve titles from their online Microsoft Library; 90 days from purchase for Adobe ebook customers.
I purchased my first Microsoft Reader ebook about four years ago, and, unless I am mistaken, from Barnes & Noble.com. The company offered an excellent ebook library and facilities for downloading titles. I will sorely miss the service. The larger question is what Barnes & Noble.com's exit means for the larger ebook market. Maybe I'm a nut, but I find reading an ebook on my HP iPaq handheld to be quite enjoyable.
Still, publishers could have done more to make the price of titles more appealing. Who wants to pay 25 bucks for a new ebook, the same as the hardcover price? That hardcover book has associated printing and distribution costs that shouldn't affect ebook pricing. The hardcover can be passed around among family members or borrowed by the neighbor across the street. The ebook version is much less portable, so why charge so much?
I don't see the ebook market as dead, but Barnes & Noble.com's bowing out of the market isn't a good sign. I remember when the bookseller championed for good writers without big-name publishers or offered print-on-demand services that could revive out-of-print editions. Maybe we're just not a nation of leisure readers anymore, which would be the sadest commentary on this development yet.

Four years would pass before Amazon showed enough cunning and courage to release the Kindle reader and reasonably priced ebooks. Kindle has got to be the ugliest ebook reader on the planet. It's styling matches what I imagine an Amazon warehouse to look like. But the ebooks are priced to sell, and that's the appeal. Price matters -- a principle Amazon has long and successfully practiced. Apple applied the principle to iTunes Music Store in 2003, by offering 99-cent singles. Kindle reader isn't the revolution so much as Kindle book pricing. Why doesn't Barnes & Noble get that?

Pricing turned me away from an ebook reader that is really exciting (more on the device in a few paragraphs). Some more comparisons:

1776 by David McCullough: $9.99 from Amazon; $14.40 from B&N
Michael Crichton's State of Fear: $7.99 from Amazon; $11.99 from B&N
Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons by Tim Russert: $9.99 from Amazon; $11.16 from B&N
Robert J. Sawyer's Flash Forward: $7.85 from Amazon; $9.99 from B&N
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin: $9.99 from Amazon; $14.99 from B&N.

In my searches, I only found a few a newer or popular titles were Amazon and B&N matched prices, such as Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. But the for majority of my searches, Amazon titles cost considerably less than those from Barnes & Noble. My searches were random, and some I abandoned because Amazon had many ebook titles not available from Barnes & Noble.

I'm not quibbling pennies here. Barnes & Noble pricing is as much as 50 percent more than Amazon. I found few instances where the difference was less than 10 percent. Barnes & Noble may not be asking as much as it did during its 1999-2003 foray into ebooks, but pricing is way too high -- particularly for a bookseller playing catchup. Amazon has got an early mass-market ebook lead. Competitive ebook pricing would be crucial to winning over people to Nook.

Barnes & Noble appears to be betting on the device as the bigger draw. No question, Nook is cool. It's well designed, competitively priced and likely more extensible because of the Android operating system. From the broadest strategy perspective, Barnes & Noble is preparing an ebook and content publishing platform as much as a simple digital book reader. That's impressive.

But can the device be enough when ebook pricing is so much higher? For me, the answer is no. I suspect that many other potential buyers will balk at higher pricing, too. I ask you, Betanews readers, to offer your opinions in comments. Is Barnes & Noble asking too much? Are you even interested in ebooks (I ask mainly because of DRM)?

In fairness, Barnes & Noble learned a few lessons from its past ebook selling mistakes, and these are worth observing. The first effort came from the Barnes & Noble.com Website, at a time when fewer people were online. The new strategy looks to leverage the physical stores, which makes sense. For example, Nook will be sold at Barnes & Noble stores. Something else: The bookseller is addressing longstanding criticisms of onerous DRM by allowing customers to lend their ebooks for as long as 14 days.

The difference between Kindle and Nook is the difference between the approach of a real bookseller versus a warehouser. Barnes & Noble is trying to anticipate the needs of the reading customer. Use of physical stores and ebook lending are great examples of Barnes & Noble leveraging its strengths and anticipating what its customers want. But do those needs include paying as much as 50 percent more for ebooks than Amazon? You tell me. That's what comments are for.

Twitter hooks up with Google, Bing

Publié: octobre 22, 2009, 12:06am CEST par Tim Conneally

WIthin hours of one another, Microsoft and Google announced that their respective search engines would begin indexing tweets from popular microblogging service Twitter.

Microsoft was first on the scene, when Redmond's President of Online Services Division Qi Lu announced the beta of Bing.com/twitter had opened at the Web 2.0 summit today. The beta provides a real-time index of tweets, and the ability to rank tweets according to its relevance.

"If you want to keep an eye on [a] topic, you can just watch the Tweets roll in. Or, click on 'See more Tweets about...' to go to a page full of Tweets. On that page, you can change the ordering to 'Best Match.' Here we arrange Tweets differently. If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower," Paul Yiu of the Bing Social Search Team blogged this morning.

Then, Google's Vice President of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer followed up with a quick and casual announcement that, oh yeah, Google can do that too.

Mayer is also expected to give a presentation at the Web 2.0 summit where more details are sure to be disclosed. But Bing has fully beaten Google to the punch, since the Mountain View, CA search giant doesn't actually have a product to show for its agreement with Twitter yet. Mayer said, "We look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."

Mozilla aims to revolutionize Web layout with new Firefox font support

Publié: octobre 21, 2009, 11:54pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

One area of Web standards where both Mozilla Firefox (version 3.5.3 CRPI: 7.34) and Opera (version 10 CRPI: 6.38) have an edge over Google Chrome (build 3.0.195.25 CRPI: 15.85) is in the field of page-designated font rendering. It's where the code for the Web page specifies which fonts to use, and even triggers the downloading of those fonts where necessary. Actually, Opera 10 has led the way in scalable Web fonts support although Firefox 3.5 has followed close behind.

The problem here has been with the extremely proprietary nature of the fonts used for the Web. They actually are TrueType and OpenType fonts, the majority of whose licensing prohibits their use for anything other than installation in commercial operating systems on a per-desktop basis. Even though some typographers have created free renderings of their commercial font products (here's a favorite of mine: Museo Sans by Exljbris), there's some question as to whether type designers are technically allowed to use the proprietary underpinnings of font technology (mostly contributed by Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple) for use on the Web.

Now, in an effort to resolve this little dilemma, Mozilla is announcing that forthcoming daily builds of version 3.6 (presumably the Beta 2 Preview editions) will support CSS3 @font-face embedding using a font format that is not TrueType or OpenType. It's being called Web Open Font Format (WOFF), and its purpose is simply to repackage the same spline data that appears in TrueType and OpenType font files, in a format and with licensing that's tailored exclusively for use on the Web.

Leading the move toward WOFF is Mozilla contributor Jonathan Kew. In a document Kew co-authored for the W3 Consortium, he writes, "A WOFF font file is simply a repackaged version of a sfnt-based font in compressed form. The format also allows font metadata and private-use data to be included separately from the font data. WOFF encoding tools convert an existing sfnt-based font into a WOFF formatted file, and user agents restore the original sfnt-based font data for use with a Web page." (Here, "sfnt" refers to a specific type of spline geometric data, and is a term based on how early Macintosh systems tagged spline data appearing in OpenType files.)

The metadata will enable foundries to include licensing information which could, for example, restrict a downloaded font's ability to be used anywhere on the user's system except on the page that triggered its download. Or, it could enable an open font intended to be used multiple places, to be shared freely. A typographical poster produced entirely in HTML using a suggested variation to the CSS3 standard, and a ligature-heavy font called MEgalopolis, in a test by Mozilla contributor Jonathan Kew. What WOFF could also enable -- as part of a future wave of developments that could be ready for Firefox 3.7 next year -- is for Web designers to use the variations that are present in font files, but which HTML and even CSS have never directly covered: Many fonts include hints for how renderers should typeset small caps, and how it handles ligatures -- like connecting capital "T" with small "h," or small "f" with small "t." Without a mechanism in place for addressing the special capabilities of many fonts, CSS can't get a handle on them.

So Mozilla engineers proposed an amendment to CSS just last June 29: a new property called font-variant that enables exclusive properties of embedded fonts to be declared outright. In a build of Firefox 3.6 that was altered by Kew for testing this feature, he was able to produce the lavish typographical poster you see here, using a font called Megalopolis by Jack Usine that's rich with ligatures, using only HTML.

With full font features enabled, diacritical marks, monospaced numerals, and capital letters and descending lower-case characters with sweeping swashes only where applicable (like the beginnings of sentences), would all become addressable by browsers, making them effectively the typographical layout engines that engineers always knew they could be. The result could be a Web where usable text may appear as clearly as on the printed page.

The biggest hurdle the Mozilla engineers may face with this feature is a familiar one: contending with Microsoft's Internet Explorer trying to implement the same feature, but in a different way. As Mozilla contributor Christopher Blizzard acknowledged in a blog post yesterday, "IE currently tries to download all fonts on the page, whether they are used or not. That makes site-wide stylesheets containing all fonts used on site pages difficult, since IE will always try to download all fonts defined in @font-face rules, wasting lots of server bandwidth."

A Sidekick crisis post mortem on cloud confidence

Publié: octobre 21, 2009, 10:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

I was sitting in the dentist's chair getting my teeth drilled, while the technician complained about her now-worthless Sidekick. With no way to access her contact lists, she couldn't get in touch with her family due to arrive in DC for a reunion, and had to rely on the frequently failing device as a simple inbound line for family members to contact her. When that failed, she had to use a payphone.

It was a pretty sad story, and thousands of users were faced with a similar communication breakdown...for more than a week.

People threaten to sue Google when Gmail goes down for mere hours. But the poor Sidekick customers lost use of their phones, lost their personal data (in some cases permanently), and even lost the ability to turn off or restart their devices for upwards of nine days.

Microsoft and T-Mobile claim to have finally restored much of the lost data, and now offer a recovery tool on the T-Mobile site, but the incident was just too tremendous to simply walk away from. The whole concept of Web-based, shared, and distributed cloud services now has a huge black mark smeared across it, even though the Sidekick's contact, calendar, photo, and info sync only vaguely constitute a "cloud" service.

The resulting cloud doubt was never as clearly portrayed as it was by ABC News columnist Michael Malone, who said, "What counts is that we never really ever trust the cloud again."

But "the cloud" -- the marketing buzzword -- represents much of what the computer industry has been working toward for years: small, fast, and lightweight consumer end devices relying heavily on their persistent connection to a network (whichever one that may be) to provide information, storage, and processing on demand.

It's not something one can particularly trust or distrust.

I liken it to home PC security. You can't simply say the whole Internet is untrustworthy because it contains viruses, scams, and information of dubious authenticity. You take the good with the bad, protect yourself, and tread lightly.

There's only so much your antivirus software can do to protect you if you're recklessly clicking through everything, installing whatever fake plug-ins you're told to, and voluntarily submitting personal information when asked. Similarly, if you're uploading information to a single hosting service without backing it up somewhere, you're putting yourself at risk.

Unfortunately, Sidekicks are a risk.

Regarding the fiasco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently said, "Non-Sidekick users, we are not earning their trust back, but I think people are going to say, 'Hey, look, show me what you are doing to ensure this does not happen to me.'"

The devices have been compared to thin clients, where there is no mechanism in place for a client-side backup of all the data stored on the Danger/Microsoft servers, so users are given only minimal control over their data.

This degree of control is one of the critical elements in establishing confidence in cloud-based services.

"All risk cannot be removed," said Erik Laykin, leader of the Global Electronic Discovery and Investigations group at independent financial advisory and investment bank Duff & Phelps. "After all, we are still relying on hardware and software systems, both of which can fail."

"Both organizations and individuals need to consider some factors [when] turning their data over to a third party...What are the risks we opening ourselves up to? Where is this data going to be (US, India, China)? What kind of backups and redundancies are in place? Who are the third party's subcontractors?" Laykin said.

Risk-benefit analysis, therefore, is another critical element.

"My clients are corporations and law firms, but consumers have to be aware of the risks too. For example, as an individual, I outsource my backups to online storage services like Carbonite. Do I accept that as the final solution? No. I make a physical backup because I can't always rely on my third party. Sidekicks unfortunately lack flexibility in this area."

But because we cannot rely solely on a cloud service, does that mean that ABC News was right to suggest we can't trust the cloud?

Laykin said no: "I'm getting on a plane tomorrow, and we all know the plane can drop out of the sky for a thousand different reasons. But does that mean I can never trust airlines to get me there safely? Of course not. We trust that the airline has mitigated those risks, but protect ourselves and our families with insurance in the unlikely event that something happens."

It's situations like the Sidekick data loss that could ultimately restructure the way we deal with data protection.

"For the last ten years, the insurance industry has provided coverage to mitigate data loss, which usually addresses hosting data," Laykin said. "Data insurance for individuals may not be something widely available today, but I envision policies like that being part of the average user's portfolio twenty years down the road."

Today, groups like Laykin's can assess the risks for companies looking to move their data into the cloud, but incidents like the Sidekick outage could trigger the demand for stricter regulations. "We may see a day in the future where organizations and companies like Microsoft or Google are rated on how safe and accessible their data is. Right now, it's still a brave new world in terms of third-party data management."

Windows 7: Vista without the crap

Publié: octobre 21, 2009, 5:32pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor 2.0 from Fileforum now.

Analysis

Here is the essential information you need to know if you're a Windows Vista user considering whether to upgrade to Windows 7: Yes.

Up to now in Betanews, we've covered many of the individual new features of Windows 7 throughout its development stages; if you're new to Betanews, then in this feature, we'll present plenty of links to catch you up with each one. But this special feature is about the final analysis, and the big question that consumers and businesses will be asking now:

As folks have asked me outright, why buy it? Some have qualified this a little more delicately: Why do we have to buy it? Or as some have put it more pointedly, if Windows 7 truly is "Vista Service Pack 3," as I've observed before, then why didn't Microsoft actually release the product for free, maybe as Windows 6.1?

You should invest in Windows 7 if you value your time. The minutes upon minutes you've spent waiting for Vista to do its thing -- to connect with the other Windows computer in your home network, to mount a removable device, to link to your handheld, to find your printer -- are actually hours, and they're worth money. If you were to place a reasonable dollar value on those hours, you'll find that the upgrade price is worth the investment.

Microsoft Windows 7 story background (200 px) On average, I spend 54 hours per week as an online journalist, and maybe another six hours using the computer for entertainment. By my calculations, over the months I was running Vista on one of my production machines, at least four minutes per hour on average was spent unproductively waiting for Vista to do something -- to regain its Wi-Fi connection, to clear me as an administrator for some critical process, to refresh a directory listing, to reboot a crashed Internet Explorer, to cancel a search that became lost in a forest of meaninglessness, or to decide again that the monitor on my laptop was the only monitor on that laptop. Assume for the sake of argument that I didn't use any other computers in this office, that my Vista-based laptop was my main production system. I would reclaim four hours per week in lost latency time alone, just by moving to Windows 7.

In the over two months I've been working with the RTM build, I have not encountered even once any of the issues I've just listed -- exercises in thumb-twiddling that characterized Vista as a product.

But the ability for you to reclaim your lost time does not end there: Betanews tests on all the major brands of stable and developmental Web browsers, running on the three most recent versions of Windows, installed on the same machine with the same hardware, show that programs tend to run 17% faster on average in Windows 7 RTM than in Windows Vista SP2. That doesn't make Win7 the fastest Windows ever made -- XP Service Pack 3 is faster still, by another 16% over Win7, at least at running Web browsers. But a slightly slower execution performance level is a fairer tradeoff than a significantly slower one, for an OS that presents the improved security that Vista actually did provide, the improved stability that Vista didn't quite provide, and the overall comfort level that Vista never even approached.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, broken down by Windows platform.

Click here for a complete introduction to the Betanews Comprehensive Performance Index.

Assume that any one of my computers runs on idle speed at least two-thirds of the time. That means for every hour of real-world usage, at least 20 minutes of that time is expedited by 17%. That's at least another three-and-a-half minutes per hour of work or online play gained back, which equates to another three-and-a-half hours per week recovered. Add that to the four I've reclaimed in thumb-twiddling time, and I've gained back some 385 hours of productivity per year.

That's over six weeks of work. I can write a book in six weeks.

After I told this to my wife, she suggested a new marketing slogan for Microsoft: "Buy Windows 7: Get Six Weeks of Your Life Back."

Next: Do you need a new computer for Windows 7?

TOP 10 WINDOWS 7 FEATURES:

#10: Homegroup networking
#9: Native PowerShell 2.0
#8: Automated third-party troubleshooting
#7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA
#6: DirectX 11
#5: Multitouch
#4: A worthwhile Windows Explorer
#3: XP Mode
#2: Device Stage
#1: Action Center

[FULL SEC DISCLOSURE:] Microsoft supplies Betanews with evaluation software, including Windows 7, through its MSDN developer support program. Microsoft also provides some technical expertise and insight to Betanews on request. In return, Betanews professionals participate in Microsoft testing programs, including with Windows 7, as well as other operating systems, tools, and applications.

This relationship enables Betanews to thoroughly examine Microsoft software prior to its public availability. It does not contribute to, or color in any way, the opinions of Betanews or its writers. Scott M. Fulton, III is the author of this article, and as always, is solely responsible for his content. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Betanews or any of its other editors or contributors.

Do you need a new computer for Windows 7?

No.

One of the most common questions I've received from everyday computer users since January 2007 has been, "How do I know when I've got all of Vista?" For most users, what ruined the entire Vista "experience" from the very beginning was its convoluted OEM logo compliance program, which left them with the sinking feeling that, no matter what SKU they chose, their OS would be incomplete. On top of that, the whole "Windows Experience Index" concept only served to remind them they were never getting as complete a package as some enthusiast someplace was enjoying -- some Tom's Hardware guy (someone like me) with dual graphics cards and eighty-six cooling fans. As a result, users instead complained about owning "half a computer."

The original intention of the WEI, I was told at the time, was to give folks incentive to upgrade. But since when does anyone, after being given a score revealing how much of a machine he doesn't own, rush to the store to fill the gap? "That's a nice Camaro you've just bought, Jack! Did you know it was exactly 0.65 of a Corvette?"

Microsoft does not actively publicize this little-known fact, but from a technical standpoint, Windows 7 is a more suitable candidate for an XP replacement than Vista. It's leaner, it's better with memory, it takes fuller advantage of multicore processors, and it doesn't inundate the user with nonsense.

Any computer that was "ready for Vista" is effectively just as ready, if not more so, for Windows 7. While Vista's engineers created barriers that precluded XP users from upgrading, for fear of missing the whole "experience," no such barriers exist between Vista and Win7. Unfortunately, though, the lack of a direct migration path between XP and Win7 is both intentional and artificial.

It is technically feasible for you to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 using a borrowed copy of Vista. We've done it in trials, with minimal cuts and bruises. That said, there are excellent reasons for you to avoid that course of action for yourself. Due to less standardized and less secure practices employed by software manufacturers including Microsoft during the XP era, the XP System Registry is an unfathomable hairball of convoluted associations, many of them broken. A set of XP Registry files can swell to several gigabytes of database code, although like DNA in the human body, only a part of it is actually usable -- the rest lies dormant. Recreating the sensible part of the Registry even on Vista, let alone Win7, would require mere megabytes by comparison.

After I wrote our story about XP-to-Win7 upgrades, I received numerous inquiries boiling down to: "You idiot! Why would you ever suggest anyone do this?" The answer at the time was this: There may be numerous instances where users simply cannot re-install all their working applications, for reasons including loss of the original CD-ROM, and my personal favorite, the inability for older apps to be installed in Windows given its new and more secure permissions structure. Since that time, XP Mode has been introduced to give folks who do have the old installer discs a way to re-install their older, less secure software in a secured XP virtual envelope (at least for users of Win7 Professional and Ultimate).

Granted, not everyone is pleased with Windows 7's current "SKU-ing" of its retail line-up, which isn't much different from Vista's. But the streamlining of the meaning of the Windows 7 compatibility logo, for both OEMs and customers, is most welcome: If there's a Windows 7 logo, it runs Windows 7. Not half of it, not the half that's minus the Aero "experience," but all of Windows 7.

Meanwhile, many very intelligent XP users who skipped out on the whole Vista debacle, may be considering whether to purchase a Windows 7 "upgrade" package, or a new computer with Win7 already on it. The dilemma for them has less to do with the operating system than with the state of their computer: Too many 2002-era single-core PCs out there have a single hard drive that's littered with media files and documents that have never been offloaded, perhaps never even backed up. Many are running Office XP, because their businesses run Office XP (on Windows 2000), perhaps because they can't install a newer version of Office without breaking their VPN software. Like bacteria cultures, their computers have become mossy, overgrown hives of inactivity, where sometimes the Internet works and sometimes it doesn't.

For these folks...it's time already. The world has evolved, and it's a lot nicer out here now. It's time for that long-overdue visit to the toxic waste disposal facility.

On the other hand, if you are running Windows XP on a modern, multi-core system, that's well-managed with its data files on an independent drive from the system device, whose networking is fast and crystal-clear, whose media files are all well organized, and that's secured by hardware and software firewalls along with non-intrusive anti-malware utilities, then is there a compelling reason for you to consider keeping the hardware and upgrading the operating system to Windows 7?

I say there is: The genuine advances that the Vista kernel (especially the 64-bit kernel) made to system security are all present in Windows 7 (which even technically speaking is really Windows 6.1). The truly good ideas that Vista advanced, especially with regard to software access policies, are all present in Windows 7. But you're not paying a significant performance penalty for them.

In fact, with proper self-administration, you may be able to overcompensate for any performance hit: The poor performance with which many XP users are typically plagued, on account of lousy security software whose cost in aggravation and lost productivity is greater than any harm that malware could intentionally inflict on your computer, can be remedied with Microsoft Security Essentials. Although it's basic, it's free. And in Betanews tests of Security Essentials on a quad-core Win7 system, there was no performance hit. None. In fact, some of our apps were mysteriously faster with anti-virus turned on.

How come? Windows 7 is better at managing parallelism than Vista, which is probably the biggest reason its speed is best appreciated on quad-core (or AMD triple-core) systems, and Microsoft (once again) knows the secret. It knows how threads can be used to better prioritize running applications, and that anti-virus does not have to be run with high or even regular priority. This is also why Security Essentials may have an architectural edge even against some commercial anti-virus products.

Recently, some independent sources have claimed that the Windows 7 speed delta over Vista they observed is less than 17%. However, their tests were said to be run on single- or dual-core systems upgraded from Vista, with all applications intact. Possibly among those apps are third-party anti-malware utilities, whose working relationship with Vista has been poor enough. Break your dependence on bad anti-virus software (especially the brands pre-installed by dealers) and you'll gain more than six weeks of your life back, easily.

There will be some who will remain quite comfortable in their XP-driven environments for the next few years, and with good reason: It's a pretty decent OS, when it's well-maintained and well-secured. Nonetheless, the principal reason for users to consider replacing their old computers is because they're old, tired, and single-core. The multicore era is upon us, and Windows 7 takes better advantage of multicore than its predecessor.

Next: What Windows 7 doesn't give you...

TOP 10 WINDOWS 7 FEATURES:

#10: Homegroup networking
#9: Native PowerShell 2.0
#8: Automated third-party troubleshooting
#7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA
#6: DirectX 11
#5: Multitouch
#4: A worthwhile Windows Explorer
#3: XP Mode
#2: Device Stage
#1: Action Center

What Windows 7 doesn't give you

One of the most important series that Betanews has ever run in over a decade of publishing has been our Top 10 Windows 7 Features. These are the noteworthy features we feel will give users reason to not only purchase but to appreciate the product. Some of our choices are changes from Windows Vista (for instance, a better Windows Explorer, and DirectX 11); others are features whose true usefulness may only be determined after the first year of deployment (Device Stage, Multitouch, third-party troubleshooting).

But what that list does not cover is some of the baggage that Windows 7 removes, particularly from Vista. Here are a few examples of things that Windows 7 does not offer, the lack of which I've come to appreciate over the past few months of testing:

We're done with the welcoming already. Back in 2006, Microsoft devoted quite a bit of Vista's time and space to videos intended to make users feel happy and peppy about having installed Vista. It turns out somebody built a Web for all that, so now that Microsoft has offloaded that part of the process to the Internet, a big chunk of the installation time has been reclaimed.
Trips to Task Manager to clear crashed Sidebar gadgets. You can install "Sidebar gadgets," as they're still called, on the Windows 7 Desktop. But there is no equivalent for the Vista Sidebar in which to stow them (at least, not without hacking the Registry). This is a design choice that seemed peculiar to me at first, and it does create the slight inconvenience of maximized Windows overlaying certain gadgets that one might prefer to be omnipresent, like the clock or the news ticker. But then I realized there was a deeper architectural reason for the change: Back in Vista, almost half of my program crashes were caused by Sidebar gadgets running in the Sidebar, and most crashes that forced me to reboot were Sidebar-related. On the Win7 Desktop, the very same gadgets do not crash. There is apparently something about the context in which gadgets run which confused Vista, and which may confuse Win7; at least for now, this appears to bypass another serious Vista-era headache.

The more sensible Personalization dialog box from Windows 7's Control Panel.

The dialog box maze of "Personalization" options, which reminded me of playing a game of Clue every time I wanted to change the e-mail notification sound. There really is no reason why the customization of one's desktop should be a process buried beneath a pile of hierarchical menus; and indeed, Microsoft's designers discovered that the main reason why XP users' desktops continue to feature bright blue skies on bright green grass, is because changing the scene seemed too hard. Vista brought the Personalization menu to a right-click on the Desktop where it belongs; but from there, the user was directed through a cavalcade of menus and dialogs. (And what exactly is the reason why "Change desktop icons" was under "Tasks" in Vista, but changing the desktop wallpaper was not?) In Windows 7, all your choices for themes and customizations are presented in glorious 3D, like ads for decorator fabrics in a home design magazine. At long last, somebody at Microsoft got the idea that seeing your choices makes more sense than combing through a list of their names.
Regular trips to the "Network and Sharing Center." It's actually unbelievable: The degree to which Windows 7 is capable of automatically finding its way in a workgroup, especially among other Win7 and Vista systems, is something I never thought I would see from Microsoft. In XP, the process of getting the right protocols installed, then the connections that used those protocols, then the network that used those connections, involved hours of trial-and-error and multiple reboots. And in Vista, the process was actually far worse: I have lost count of the number of times I had to re-install wireless networking on Vista-based laptops moved throughout this office. To date, for each Win7 laptop, Wi-Fi has been installed once and once only. In fairness, the layout of the Orwellian-entitled "Network and Sharing Center" remains about as convoluted in Win7 as it was in Vista. But not having to visit it nearly as often, is a true blessing.

For the first time, Windows Search actually finds something we're looking for, in Windows 7.

Empty or meaningless search results. One reason why so many computing veterans remain skeptical that Microsoft will ever find any success with Bing is because they know that "Microsoft" and "search" put together has been a farce. Memories of the little yapping cartoon dog that the company literally added to XP, in order to more smoothly pass the time users spent not locating anything they were searching for, makes folks reticent to even try locating content on their hard drives. In an extraordinary epiphany, Windows 7's use of Microsoft's new Search 4.0 has made the quantum leap from pointless to invaluable. I maintain a huge library of documents that I don't have time to keep sorted. Being able to find a set of Microsoft Word and/or PDF and/or HTML files based on a contained phrase, that accurately represented what information I actually possessed, in about a second, is something I was never able to accomplish with any Microsoft product ever made up until last August. In hindsight, I should have considered Win7 Search more thoroughly as a candidate for a Top 10 Feature.
Computers that don't stay off. Windows XP was notorious for never really paying attention to what its drivers were saying about the motherboard's power state. For most XP systems I've ever built, "off" never stayed off, and "hibernate" or "sleep" was a euphemism for "wait 15 seconds then come back." I burned out a power supply just last month when, once again, an XP-based desktop popped back on a weekend while I was out of the office. Vista was better with power management, but not 100%: On almost every Vista system I've used or built, the "wake-on-LAN" feature is always considered turned on, even when the BIOS says it's not. As a result, whenever I hibernate a Vista system, I always have to unplug the Ethernet cable or disconnect the Wi-Fi first (another delightful trip to the "Network and Sharing Center"). This problem has been solved ever since the final Technical Preview of Win7, and it literally means I no longer have to remove the power cable from my desktop machines to keep them in the off position.
Extra add-on apps you will never use (see: "the invention of the Internet"). The replacement of non-essentials like Photo Gallery with links to Windows Live Essentials is, yes, a promotional tool for Windows Live services, but it's also a blessing for folks who want faster installation and less bloat, and who know the address for Fileforum. Games like Spider Solitaire and Minesweeper are still present, but that's for long-time Windows users who expect to find them there since they were in Windows 95, and these games are very small programs anyway.

Action Center in Windows 7 shows security nags for Automatic Updates are (thankfully) turned off.

Incessant "security" nags. I like to know what's going into my systems and when. So I never set anything from anyone to install automatically; I prefer to be notified of what's been released, and I'll make the decision whether to patch or not. Isn't this dangerous? No more dangerous than Office 2007 Service Pack 2 installing itself automatically every single morning, which is what will happen if I changed the Automatic Updates setting on two of my XP-based desktops right now. Vista penalized me for making this choice, by flagging this with a yellow light in Security Center, but more revoltingly, by reminding me of the errors of my ways every 12 hours or so, with little blurbs emerging from my taskbar. In Windows 7's Action Center -- my pick for the #1 new Windows 7 feature -- there are no more nagging blurbs to make me feel less secure about whether I'll take a sledgehammer to my machine. And although Action Center does flag my choice with a yellow light, I can turn that light off and it will stay off, like a power switch (at least, like a power switch prior to the advent of Windows XP). In the screenshot, you'll see the message, "Windows Update - Currently not monitored." Yes! Thank you! It's my choice, and I'm sticking with it.

Typically I've agreed with my friends at Sophos with regard to security matters. Here is one notion with which I absolutely disagree: Nagging the user less about security makes the computer less secure. Bull socks. When an administrator makes a choice, and is willing to sign her name to that choice, the operating system should learn to live with it. In addition, the companies whose livelihoods used to matter on how insecure Vista made users feel, need to adapt to these changing consequences as well.

Next: Is Windows 7 worth the money?

TOP 10 WINDOWS 7 FEATURES:

#10: Homegroup networking
#9: Native PowerShell 2.0
#8: Automated third-party troubleshooting
#7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA
#6: DirectX 11
#5: Multitouch
#4: A worthwhile Windows Explorer
#3: XP Mode
#2: Device Stage
#1: Action Center

Is Windows 7 worth the money?

Let's face the most obvious fact right up front: It's still Windows. It's an operating system married to a single, local System Registry for all software executable by the processor, which we have all come to realize is an inelegant model. It continues to depend upon device drivers to be installed from the outside world, rather than being able to receive instructions from the devices themselves -- a feature that device makers would be more than willing to co-develop. Windows spends a great deal of its time making absolutely certain that nothing you're running is stolen, and it doesn't always do a great job of that. Installing the very latest version of Windows Live Messenger still requires you to hack the Registry and/or re-register a DLL from an administrator-authorized command line (and if you don't believe me, here are the instructions to prove it).

At a certain level, building a better Windows would be like Ford building a better Crown Victoria. It's nice, but not worth throwing a party. As my friend and colleague, Betanews contributor Carmi Levy, observed earlier this week, the era when a new operating system makes a direct impact on people's social calendars has long past. (There's ample evidence that this era only lasted about three weeks.) And the era in which the model for software design is based around the operating system as the sole underlying platform is also on its way out, which is grave news not just for Microsoft but Apple as well.

Scott M. Fulton, III head shot The thing is, though, Windows isn't going away anytime soon. I remember the onset of the era of solar and wind energy too -- I seem to recall it was announced on a one-reel Encyclopedia Britannica film that my fifth-grade science teacher was splicing back together during the height of the Vietnam War. I do foresee the very real possibility that the underlying foundation of Windows could be completely replaced with a kind of operating system layer whose sole purposes are to manage a new class of hardware, and to run a user OS in a virtualization envelope. (Microsoft may not be the only company to produce this.) But that envelope will likely run Windows, so the operating system will probably be known as Windows, and from the user's vantage point, it will be Windows.

New operating systems may no longer be the stuff of rock concerts and Tupperware parties. Neither are new dishwashers, sinks, or toilets. Yet they are all indispensable parts of our lives.

Even after reading this, one question probably still remains on many readers' minds: If Windows 7 truly represents the level of functionality that Vista should have provided from the beginning, then shouldn't Microsoft be paying for it and not the public?

If Vista were an insecure system, then I would say yes. It was not. It was an annoying system, especially with "features" like the Black Screen of Death. But it was not Windows Me, the travesty of code that represents the absolute nadir of Microsoft's development history, the "Disco Era" for Windows.

Even then, however, I said Windows XP was worth paying for. XP -- the first version, the one I said in hindsight was desperately in need of a transplant. The fact that I value my time (with a calculator) is just one reason. The fact that I value the developers' time spent making this work, is the other. Yes, I've said Windows 7 is "Vista Service Pack 3," and I stand by that. But in terms of the work Microsoft's people are genuinely devoting to improving the quality of this product (whose quality needed improvement), I do believe it is worth the investment. Windows Me was not worth the investment; Windows 98 (pre-OSR2) was not worth the investment.

But as anyone who's done the work knows, cleaning up crap is a dirty job. Someone has to do it, and there are days I'm glad it's not me. Windows 7 is cleaner, brighter, and sanitized for your convenience. And that's worth the tip.

TOP 10 WINDOWS 7 FEATURES:

#10: Homegroup networking
#9: Native PowerShell 2.0
#8: Automated third-party troubleshooting
#7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA
#6: DirectX 11
#5: Multitouch
#4: A worthwhile Windows Explorer
#3: XP Mode
#2: Device Stage
#1: Action Center

Barnes & Noble mashes up iPhone & Kindle for 'nook' e-reader

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 9:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Barnes and Noble nook Bookseller Barnes & Noble has finally unveiled its e-book reader, which many have already slated to be the Amazon Kindle's biggest competition yet. Called the nook, Barnes & Noble's $259 e-reader includes a full-color touch panel interface in addition to its 6" e-ink display, and is the first e-reader to run on Google's Android Operating system.

There is something instantly amazing about the nook, but it's not because of a single, readily visible feature. It's the fact that Barnes & Noble has combined the feel of two extremely popular devices both regarded as total "walled gardens" -- Apple's iPhone and Amazon's Kindle -- and effectively mashed them up in the open source Android framework. The result is a compelling new take on the e-book experience that has been more or less homogenous across the many devices currently available.

The 3.5" LCD touchscreen interface lets the user switch between periodicals, books, the Barnes & Noble download shop (which is accessible through AT&T 3G wireless), and system settings with simple clicks and swipes. When browsing through content in the bookstore or in the user's library, titles are displayed in a full-color coverflow interface.

Once a title is opened, the LCD menu at the bottom lets users search for in-text content, change font size, add annotations and highlights, and place bookmarks. To exit an open document, the user hits the "home" button very much like they would on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Unlike Kindle, nook supports Wi-Fi and has a microSD expansion slot for additional storage. These features and the slightly smaller dimensions, however, make nook considerably thicker than the Kindle, at half-an-inch versus a third.

But the game changing aspect of nook isn't its Android foundation, its touchscreen interface or its backing from a major book retailer. It's the technology called LendMe, which lets users share books between nooks, iPhones, iPod Touches, BlackBerrys, and Windows/Mac PCs with Barnes & Noble's free eReader software. Books can be lent to other devices for as many as 14 days at a time.

The onset of nook may come as a shock not only to Amazon, but to at least one other e-reader manufacturer that had, as recently as four weeks ago, touted itself as the B&N e-reader. Irex's DR800SG has a stylish design, but it uses a stylus for its controls and lacks the touch-panel display that could, at least for the foreseeable future, associate the e-reader functionality of the nook with Barnes & Noble.

Pre-orders for Barnes & Noble's nook are currently under way.

Apple declares war on the entire PC industry

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 8:49pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

There is absolutely nothing coincidental about Apple launching new products today. The big product launch is Apple's first preemptive marketing strike against Microsoft, Windows 7 and the entire PC industry. It's a bold move exploiting a position of strength against an industry weakened by low-margin, low-priced netbooks.

Windows 7 officially launches in two days. Best Buy already has Windows 7 PCs on sale, but not for purchase. Dell started taking Windows 7 over the weekend. Gartner is telling businesses they must upgrade to Windows 7, despite any hardships migrating from Windows XP. Microsoft is priming the marketing pumps. The PC industry is collectively turning its attention to Windows 7, which Microsoft is trying to launch with some bang rather than a whimper.

But what has the geek world been babbling about for the last 24 hours? Apple. Firstly, there were rumors of new iMac, revamped white MacBook, new Mac mouse and updated Mac mini -- all products Apple unveiled early this afternoon. Secondly, late yesterday, there were Apple's blow-out fiscal 2009 fourth-quarter results: $1.67 billion profit and 3.05 million Macs shipped, the majority notebooks. Apple outperformed Wall Street's consensus, blasting past the econolypse's effects like it was business as usual.

Exactly who is talking about Windows 7 today or will tomorrow? Or gasp, on launch day -- Oct. 22nd?

Netbooks are a Plague

Apple's new product release timing is clearly deliberate, designed to pull attention away from Windows 7. But Apple also is looking to pull away Windows PC sales at the high end, where Macs are strongest and PCs are weakest. Surely, Apple executives realize that the PC industry is hoist with its own netbook petard.

I've complained about netbooks for months. They are cannibalizing Windows PC sales at an alarming rate. By comparison, laptops commanded higher margins and average selling prices when their popularity started to increase. PC manufacturers -- and even Microsoft -- benefited from notebooks' reversing the trend of falling computer ASPs; for a time. By comparison, netbooks are a plague, because they dramatically lower ASPs and margins and pull away sales from real laptops.

Last week, Gartner and IDC issued preliminary PC shipment data for third quarter. Both analyst firms once again identified netbooks as driving portable and overall PC shipments. Gartner observed the negative impact on ASPs. Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst, said in a statement:

The consumer mobile PC market drove US shipment growth in the third quarter of 2009, fueled by back-to-school sales. However, the results came with a revenue loss because of very steep declines in average selling prices...Consumers were comfortable buying PCs, but they were relentlessly looking for bargains. Our preliminary research shows consumer mobile PC ASPs declined more than 20 percent compared to a year ago.

On October 8, DisplaySearch explained netbook's derisive impact on PC ASPs. Laptop ASPs fell to $688 in second quarter from $704 in first quarter and $849 in Q2 2008. Netbook prices fell to $361 from $371 and $506, respectively, during the same time period. Additionally, netbooks accounted for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales and 11.7 percent of revenues. Netbook sales jumped a staggering 264 percent year over year, while overall laptop sales (without counting netbooks) declined 14 percent.

Netbooks remain the Windows PC industry's huge Achilles tendon, exposed and ready to be cut by an aggressive Apple. Windows 7 isn't going to lessen demand for netbooks. Consumers might find them even more appealing because of Microsoft's new operating system.

The "Pay More" Principle

Apple positioned Macs as the alternative for people willing to pay more, which is a surprising number of buyers given the gloomy economy. Today's new Mac product announcements give potential shoppers more reasons to look Apple's way -- even with Windows 7 launching on Thursday. For Betanews readers frothing to comment, I want to be absolutely clear: I am not suggesting Windows 7 won't sell well. But I am asserting that many new Windows 7 sales will be on netbooks, not the high-priced, margin-rich systems Microsoft and PC partners need to sell.

Something else -- and this is hugely important: Last week, there was speculation that PC and peripheral manufacturers may have overproduced for the holiday quarter in big anticipation of Windows 7 demand. Based on my own quiet channel checks, I have the same concern. I'll predict now that Windows 7 PC supply will be greater than consumer or small business buying demand during fourth quarter. If OEMs anticipated big demand for netbooks, then the bigger problem will be for Microsoft, which makes less on Windows 7 Starter Edition than other 7 versions. But if OEMs bet big on pricer systems, they will stuff the retail channel this holiday season.

The resulting price war would be good for consumers looking for bargains, but further sap tight OEM margins. Macs have remained largely immune to the economic gloom or even the potential threat of lower-priced Windows PCs. But Macs have competed against Windows Vista PCs. Can Macs defy Windows 7 gravity? Because of the netbook scourge, I must say yes. Few Windows PC manufacturers are competing where Apple sales are strongest: Computers selling for $1,000 or more. But all major OEMs are fighting for sales in the segment for the smallest, least powerful, lowest-cost and least profitable portables. Are their executives insane?

I'm on record as asserting that Windows 7's release will stall Mac market share gains. My reasoning: Windows 7 netbooks are sure to drive up PC unit volumes. But market share is but one measure of success. Yesterday there was an interesting Twitter discussion about market volume versus sales margins. Jason Snell, Macworld editorial director tweeted: "Apple sold 2.3M laptops at an average price of $1,265 per unit. Imagine how much money it could have lost if it had a netbook!" He's absolutely right, and so is Apple for choosing not to compete in a portable segment where brands and margins are lost to lowest price.

Mind Share versus Market Share

Apple has got geekdom's attention, and that of Wall Street and even consumer and trade publications. For today and tomorrow and quite possibly Thursday, which otherwise should belong to Microsoft and Windows 7. Some enthusiasts will be quick to point out many apparent Mac shortcomings. Windows PC defenders will rightly observe that:

"The new MacBook packs less RAM and storage than comparably priced Windows PCs." Maybe, but the $999 price will appeal to enough buyers, who will get a sturdy, attractive new enclosure and big battery life.
"The 27-inch iMac is too big and too pricey at $1,699." Maybe, but the screen size makes the desktop a potential computer and TV, when streaming or playing programs or when attached to a tuner from companies like El Gato.
"The updated Mac mini remains pricey at $599." Maybe, but price is low enough for many people thinking of adding a Mac as second PC. The $999 Snow Leopard Server Mac mini has huge potential appeal to small or home-based businesses.

There seems to be a blind spot when it comes to understanding Macs in relationship to Windows PCs, and I don't understand why. Many analysts, computer enthusiasts and reporters miss something simple: Macs compete against Windows PCs, while Windows PCs compete against, well, Windows PCs. Apple can compete differently because Macs are the alternative to a big, saturated Windows PC market. Macs are the new thing, while another Windows PC is just another old thing. Macs will compete against PCs, but in the PC market Windows XP (and some Vista) will compete against Windows 7.

Yesterday with record Mac sales and today with new Mac products, Apple has declared -- at least for holiday 2009 -- war on the entire PC industry. To win, Apple just needs to make more money off lower volumes. Apple doesn't need to gobble up market share. A few points of share here or there are huge to Apple but losses to Macs have little impact on PC OEMs. It's an unfair battle in some ways, because the PC industry isn't fighting Macs but a civil war of Windows old against Windows new. Sadly, netbooks will scorch the earth behind every sale.

Now, even Apple's mouse is multi-touch

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 7:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Apple Magic Mouse gestures Continuing Apple's incremental shift away from button-based interfaces and toward multi-touch everything, Cupertino today unveiled the Magic Mouse, an acrylic Bluetooth mouse where "the entire surface is a button."

Apple has done to the mouse almost exactly what it did to the trackpad in 2008, it has turned it into a multi-finger reactive surface, where common navigation tasks are given iPhone-like gestures.

For example, the "scrollwheel function" has been associated with a two-finger drag on the trackpad since the 2007 Macbook Pro line. This move can now be done on the surface of the mouse, and has been expanded to allow 360 degree scrolling. Also like the updated trackpad, anywhere on the mouse's surface can be clicked, and though there are no buttons, clicking with the right finger brings up the "button 2" menu, making it a sort of virtual 2-button mouse.

Other gestures have been added to the Magic Mouse, such as two-finger swiping to "page forward" in Safari, iPhoto and iTunes. Unfortunately, the "pinch zoom" feature, which is undoubtedly the most defining Apple gesture (if such a thing could be said) has been translated into an action that requires buttons. To zoom, the user must hold down the Control key on the keyboard and scroll forward or backward on the surface of the Magic Mouse.

The Magic Mouse costs $69 and requires OS X 10.5.8 or higher with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0

Giving it all to Google: It may be too late to complain

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 6:32pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The problem is not so much Google itself. The problem is with the self-absorbed-yet-insecure nature of a plurality of industries, media being just one among them, whose collective inability to plan how they would conduct business in the era of digital multimedia communication, led them to essentially give up, give in, and let Google build it all for them.

Conducting business is all about staying visible, not just in front of the public's eyes but in its conscience as well. It's why Coca-Cola continues to advertise itself even though folks are likely to go on drinking it anyway (there's a great gag about this fact in Ricky Gervais' latest film, The Invention of Lying). At a time during the evolution of the Internet when businesses were busy trying to construct analogs for physical business entities -- such as online shopping malls with 3D virtual escalators, online business directories that were alphabetized, and "portals" that sought to become the world's centers for particular industries, such as dog grooming -- along came an Occam's Razor that appeared to make everything much simpler: It was the idea that visibility, that critical ingredient of all business relationships, can be engineered.

This, actually, is the same principle that has driven the audience transitions between major media since the Civil War, only this time it was somewhat less deliberate. The move to radio as a news source came with the urgency of World War II; but the establishment of radio's infrastructure came two decades earlier, when major corporations realized the potential value of the commodity of capturing an audience's attention for a period of time. The transition to television as a news source was complete after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but the establishment of television's infrastructure came three decades earlier, with the lofty, humanistic, and utopian pronouncements of men like David Sarnoff, whose goal was no less than the remodeling of the human species:

"It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth of a new art so important in its implication that it is bound to affect all society," Sarnoff told the New York World's Fair in 1939. "It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in the troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind. This miracle of engineering skill which one day will bring the world to the home also brings a new American industry to serve man's material welfare."

The move to the Internet as a news source is ongoing -- by any measure, a process still under construction. And yet the infrastructure, the underlying mechanism of digital transactions upon which this migration should depend, is not entirely in place to this day.

Scott Fulton On Point badge (200 px) It is into this void of indecision that Google enters the picture, sounding much less like David Sarnoff than Mister Rogers, boasting no ideology or philosophy whatsoever besides the promise of a really super day. It fulfills the role of father figure that the Internet -- as a collection of semi-cooperative academic institutions, a handful of directionless private companies, and the US Dept. of Defense -- could not conjure for itself. And for the general viewing audience -- especially those veterans out there who were expecting the NBC chimes or the Peacock or something to tell them who's responsible for all this -- Google provides them with a public face.

Ask folks on the street -- as a Google employee did once -- and you'll be told by someone, at some point, that the Internet is Google. And before you dismiss their responses as amateurish, realize that you'll get the same response from marketing consultants: "Google is the Internet in your customers' minds. If you are not ranked in the top ten, your company simply does not exist!"

Google's is a formula which, at its roots, is based on mathematical fairness. The value of a keyword, for example, is based on what businesses are bidding to appear next to that keyword, but evened out so that every business is eventually entitled to its share. Whether an article appears in the Google News feed depends on how often the context of that article or its headline appears to be covered by everyone else, and everyone's visibility in that context is evened out so that every publication is eventually entitled to its share.

It is the institution of a market economy based around nebulous concepts rather than institutions, and its inherent incompatibility with the economy of the real world is something we are only now discovering.

Now we have found ourselves in the midst of an ideological discussion that few had expected, especially given Google's unpretentious and almost shy façade: Is Google entitled to speak on behalf of all the literary creators whose voices have been silenced by neglect and inattention? And if it is, then who controls the relative visibility of literary works by F. Scott Fitzgerald and by Jane Doe when they're all available on a level playing field? If YouTube truly should become the clearinghouse for all media, then what assurance can a company obtain -- or purchase -- that a show it produces will gain more visibility than some guy's video of his cat dancing on a piano keyboard?

As we discovered last month, Google is already planning a micropayment system for handling the transactions behind the distribution of all forms of paid media -- it's not waiting for anyone's permission or blessing or even funding. And as Google told the Newspaper Publishing Association, if profiting from the distribution of media means taking over the job of publishing it...it's more than happy to oblige: "Software and support services are typically provided at no charge. Google will be happy to host content and supply the bandwidth necessary to serve content. There may be a charge for additional professional services, depending on the extent of the support necessary and the volume of views anticipated. Current models on revenue sharing for the selling of content typically involve a percentage of each sale to Google in order to cover maintenance, bandwidth, processing charges, and profit margin."

Or, to paraphrase the Coke ad from Gervais' film -- created prior to the invention of the lie -- we'll always be here anyway, and we're sure you use Google all the time along with everyone else, so we'll take care of things for you, and you just go on doing what you're doing and we'll do the same.

Perhaps the most poignant symbol to date of the weight of Google-driven visibility as a true commodity came yesterday: Shares of the UK-based advertising firm Media Corp. surged to more than triple their value from last month, after having announced that whatever strange "penalty" Google seemed to impose upon it that weighed down its search rankings, appeared to have been lifted. The firm effectively resells high placement in Google's indexes, most notably to online gambling sites whose visibility depends on how Google responds to guys typing "poker" into the query box.

It's as if the firm had announced to the world, "We're back in the Top Ten...We exist again!" And the value of that announcement actually translates into stock value. Let me say that more directly: Investors are actively trading securities based on a company's placement in Google's search results.

At this point, there's not much time or room left for complaint. Just about anyone who sounds a warning whistle is drowned out by the cacophony of his own irony, as was the case after AT&T warned the FCC that Google was plotting to devise a telecommunications monopoly for itself.

I'm not certain we as a society have completely realized the full extent of what we are willing to consign to Google, with respect to the determination of what is of value to us and what is not. It cannot possibly amount to the wholesale of the global economy, bundled with the system of human values and ideals, to Google's cloud -- certainly one private business wouldn't handle the weight of it all. But just the thought of how many businesses and even countries are willing to entertain the idea illuminates the gulf that separates the era of David Sarnoff and today.

Best Buy's Blu-ray players now stream Netflix

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 5:58pm CEST par Tim Conneally

In the last year, Netflix on-demand video streaming has made its way into connected optical media players by LG, Samsung, and Sony, and at the beginning of the last quarter, CEO Reed Hastings said the public could expect new Netflix-enabled consumer electronics products every quarter. Today, Best Buy's Insignia brand became the latest to support Netflix streaming with a firmware update to two of the brand's connected Blu-ray players.

This is another important partnership to differentiate Best Buy's exclusive store brand from lower-quality department store brands, which often have more in common with Chinese knock-offs than with products by major manufacturers. In July, for example, Best Buy announced a partnership with TiVo that would improve the interface and search in Insignia and Dynex televisions.

The firmware update allows the $179 Insignia Connected Blu-ray Player (Ethernet) and the $249 Insignia Advanced Series (Wi-Fi) will let Netflix subscribers browse titles, build queues, and instantly watch movies or TV episodes, similar to the way Xbox 360 and TiVo users do.

To install the 35 MB firmware update, users must download the files from Insignia and burn an installation CD/DVD. The brand's support site includes instructions for how to burn the installation disc in Cyberlink Power2Go, Roxio Easy Media Creator, Nero 9, and Sonic RecordNow! 7.

The new iPod nano: A flop?

Publié: octobre 20, 2009, 12:06am CEST par Tim Conneally

The good news in Apple's earnings call this afternoon, according to CFO Peter Oppenheimer, is that the Cupertino company has sold more Macs and iPhones than it ever has in the past, beating previous Mac sales records by 444,000 or 17% year over year and beating iPhone records by 7% unit growth year over year.

The bad news is that the MP3 player product class where Apple has actual market dominance, not just dominant mindshare (as with the iPhone), has begun to slide, despite a 100% increase in iPod touch sales year over year.

In all, Apple sold 10.2 million iPods, which is down 8% against last year. So if sales of the iPod touch are up, what's the deal?

"Customers love the iPod nano," Oppenheimer said in today's earnings call, but he did not say how many were sold, nor did he specify how well the 160 GB iPod Classic and 2 GB - 4 GB iPod Shuffle sold. With substantial growth in iPod touch and an overall decline, this can only mean that every "old school" iPod sank.

This is the quarter where there is typically an iPod sales spike related to the fall update to the product line. As with previous years, the updated iPod line debuted on September 9, which provides adequate time for a surge in the newest devices until the end of the quarter on September 24.

In 2005, for example, when the first iPod nano debuted, iPod sales were relatively flat for the quarter, but over a million Nanos shipped in the 17 days following the device's premiere.

Again, the big product debut this time was the iPod Nano with camera, microphone, and built-in FM radio, but there appears to have been no related surge.

As Betanews contributor Carmi Levy wrote on the day before this year's iPod refresh, "The cynic in me believes the Day the iPod Died was when Apple shifted away from its hard drive-based iPod classic, and moved toward the flash-based iPod touch. Indeed, the touch -- either the model Apple is selling now, or the one that'll be on sale following this week's announcement -- has infinitely more in common with the iPhone than it ever had with the original iPod. Which means it isn't really much of an iPod at all. Which, from where I sit, means the iPod, as a brand, refers to yesterday's technology."

Though the iPod still holds a 70% market share here at home, it looks like the purpose-oriented iPods of the past are losing out to devices supporting user-installable apps.

The Windows 7 launch: The cultural event of the entire afternoon

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 11:17pm CEST par Carmi Levy

Have you reserved your copy of Windows 7 yet? Did you book off work? Get a babysitter for the kids? Stock up on Red Bull and Doritos?...No? If you're one of the dozens who pine for midnight door-crasher sales at the electronics big box store and Rolling Stones-themed launch events, you may want to make alternate plans.

For anyone who doesn't live in a cave in Afghanistan (and even for a few folks who do), this week could be the most exciting one in an age as Microsoft launches its newest -- and possibly company-saving -- operating system, Windows 7, on Thursday. But 14 years after it redefined the rock-star launch party with Windows 95, and nearly four years after having invested a half-billion dollars selling us Vista, this time around, Microsoft is taking a lower-key approach.

Don't start me up

The company isn't saying how much it plans to invest in marketing its new OS, but the message around the October 22 launch event itself suggests the days of Jay Leno hawking the OS to the tune of "Start Me Up" are firmly history. This Thursday, expect Steve Ballmer to deliver an uncharacteristically subdued message at the launch event -- no tossed chairs or spontaneous onstage cheers. The good times, for Microsoft and for us, ended a while ago.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) As much as we all pine for the days when a new operating system from Microsoft was a cultural event, the new reality is that hardly anything changes when a new OS is released. Given the back seat that operating systems in general now take with respect to other, sexier elements of the technology that increasingly defines our work and home lives, Win7 could be an absolute yawn.

When Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard replaced Leopard earlier this year, the underpinnings of the Mac universe remained largely as they had existed before. Likewise, don't expect Windows 7 to rewrite the history books. Your PC works just fine today, and it'll work just as fine on the 22nd and beyond, no matter what OS you run. Whatever comes next from any given vendor will forevermore be merely an evolutionary increment just beyond currently available offerings.

There's a reason an Apple iPhone-themed event often jumps into mainstream media, while an updated Mac OS stays firmly on the tech pages. Mobility is as sexy today as the desktop OS was 15 years ago, and each new release is, for now anyway, a quantum bump over the suddenly dowdy stuff we're carrying around in our pockets. But even this won't last forever: Hang around long enough and something will come along eventually to relegate mobile hardware and operating systems to a similar place. It's how tech works, and just as individual products have a limited shelf life, so, too, do entire categories.

Ah, what memories...

Too good for their own good

In so many ways, Microsoft and its mainstream consumer and enterprise OS competitors have done too good a job creating the ultimate in commoditized software. The modern OS is so ruthlessly capable of everything we demand of it, that choosing between them is largely a matter of personal taste. While the flame wars between Mac and Windows fans will continue until long after computers have morphed into tiny networked processors that are implanted into our heads at birth, it's a safe bet that you can get pretty much anything done on one that you can get done on the other.

Not every technological road is as drivable, of course. While some users may find certain functions easier on a given platform, the bad old days of locking yourself out of entire classes of software and functionality because you chose one OS over the other are pretty much over. We will, of course, save discussions on gaming for Macs for another day. Whatever apps you run, no matter what OS you choose, the borders that used to define your playground have long since been torn down. OS choice no longer defines how free you are to move data and workflow between machines or networks.

Where we're all headed: Up

Indeed, moving data around is an increasingly quaint notion thanks to the rise of the cloud. While Microsoft's recent unfortunate Sidekick data lost-and-found incident (whether or not you take Microsoft's word for it that the incident took place "below" the cloud somewhere) may have cast some well-deserved shadows on the cloud movement, the trend is unavoidable. You can resist entrusting your data to a Web-based service until you're blue in the face, but it's hard to ignore reality, and as Microsoft shifts its attention to its online offerings -- Azure's coming next month -- because, frankly, it has to, the locally-focused OS will gradually fade from its longstanding frontline role.

It's a bit of a tough pill to swallow, especially for those of us who remember the Windows 95 launch. It was as close to mainstream mania as Microsoft will ever get, and it marked the desktop operating system's coming out party after over a decade of living on mostly beige boxes in mostly corporate environments. As much as earlier versions of Windows had driven consumer adoption of PCs, it was Windows 95 that punched the OS into the average consumer's mind and convinced us all that PCs didn't just get work done. Windows 95 also made PCs fun, not to mention attainable and usable for the legions of folks who never got DOS and were still struggling to understand GUIs on the decidedly lame GUI of Windows 3.1.

As impressive a product as Windows 7 seems to be, it doesn't move the bar over Vista and XP as much as Windows 95 did over 3.1 and even DOS. Even if it did, we'd all be fogging the windows at the Verizon store, begging for some in-hand time with a new Droid-powered device. Which explains why I've already booked my time off from work, called the babysitter and stocked the fridge and pantry with enough munchies to feed an entire block party. We're still celebrating the introduction of new technology, except it no longer sits exclusively on a desk.

Apple Q4 2009 by the numbers: Beats street, posts $1.67B profit

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 10:57pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

[Editor's Note: Post was updated with quotes from Apple financial analysts conference call and four charts at 6:20 p.m. EDT.]

Today, Apple delivered yet another gravity-defying performance, as sales surged across most product lines. After the bell, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company announced fiscal 2009 fourth quarter results that beat its guidance and Wall Street analysts' over-inflated consensus.

Apple reported $9.87 billion revenue and net profits of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share. A year earlier, Apple reported revenue of $7.9 billion and $1.14 billion net quarterly profit, or $1.26 per share.

Three months ago, Apple forecast revenue between $8.7 billion and $8.9 billion, with earnings per share ranging between $1.18 cents and $1.23. Analyst estimates were much higher than Apple guidance: $9.2 billion average revenue consensus and $1.42 earnings per share. Still, Apple blew past the Street.

It's unclear to me from a cursory review of the earnings how much deferred revenue contributed to the quarterly results. Currently, Apple defers some iPhone revenue for 24 months. The company recognizes a portion of the revenue every quarter. In the year-ago quarter, Apple deferred $3.5 billion in revenue from Apple TV and iPhone.

During a conference call with financial analysts today, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer described the results as the company's "most profitable quarter ever," including record iPhone and Mac sales. Mac shipments grew 17 percent year over year. Portables represented 74 percent of Mac sales, he said.

For fiscal 2010 first quarter, Apple forecasts between $11.3 billion and $11.6 billion in revenue, with earnings per share ranging between $1.70 and $1.78. Apple projects gross margins to be about 34 percent. In the comparable 2009 quarter, Apple revenue was $10.17 billion and $1.61 billion net quarterly profit, or $1.78 per share.

Apple Q4 2009 Revenue 1

Segment-by-Segment Results

iPhone. Wall Street carefully watched the quarter, because of several important trends, including sales of new iPhone 3GS and late-quarter releases of Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" and new iPod models. Fiscal fourth quarter is the first full one with iPhone 3GS and discounted iPhone 3G sales. The latter product sells for $99, a price point many analysts claim would boost sales volumes. The iPhone 3GS added features lagging behind many other handsets -- even non-smartphones -- such as video recording and MMS (the latter capability is also available on older iPhones loaded with 3.x firmware).

Days before the earnings announcement, with many analysts forecasting big iPhone sales, Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner dropped a caution bomb: He estimated that, based on Apple's September 9th disclosure of 3.5 million iPhones sold for the quarter so far, shipments would fall short of analyst predictions of about 7 million units. Reiner attributed potentially slower-than-expected sales to demand exceeding supply. [Editor's note: Oppenheimer & Co. should not be confused with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer; the names are coincidental.]

For most of the quarter, "demand outstripped the supply," Apple COO Tim Cook told financial analysts today. He estimated that Apple ended the quarter with more than 2 million iPhone units in inventory. "I would have liked to have had more," with Apple starting sales in China on October 30th, he emphasized.

Apple shipped -- what company executives really mean by sold -- 7.4 million iPhones worldwide. Apple shipments into the channel are usually several million units higher than numbers released by Gartner, which measures actual sales. Shipments exceeded analyst consensus, despite supply problems. Oppenheimer described the reception to iPhone 3GS as "tremendous." Apple distributed iPhone 3G in 80 countries and 3GS in 64 countries. The company expects to offer iPhone 3GS in 80 countries by year's end.

Apple Q4 2009 Units 1

For the quarter iPhone revenue was $2.3 billion, up from $806 million a year earlier, for 185 percent year-over-year increase. Oppenheimer said that the value of iPhones sold was "$4.5 billion." The iPhone average selling price for the quarter was $600, on a "high mix of the 3G sell through," Oppenheimer said. Consumers pay less, because AT&T subsidizes the price. He reaffirmed the recent 85,000 number of applications in App Store and 2 million downloads.

Coming into today's earnings announcement, there were some ridiculous blogs and new stories inflating iPhone's global presence. For example, last week, Silicon Alley Insider used data from RBC Capital Markets to assert that 30 percent of smartphone owners have an iPhone. The figure contradicts Gartner and IDC data. For example, for second quarter, Gartner put Apple's worldwide smartphone share at 13.3 percent. Even if the 30 percent figure were true, it's for a very small market. In Q2, manufacturers sold 286.1 million handsets, of which only 40 million were smartphones, according to Garner. Whether 13 percent or 30 percent of 40 million, it's a small number in a market 7 times larger in total.

Computers. Mac sales continued to defy the economy's downward pull. Apple shipped 3.05 million Macs during the quarter, up from 2.6 million Macs in fiscal third quarter and fiscal Q4 2008. As viewed separately, Mac desktop shipments declined 16 percent year over year, while laptops increased 35 percent. Combined, Mac shipments grew 17 percent year over year. Apple had its best back-to-school buying season ever, Oppenheimer said.

Last week, analyst firms Gartner and IDC split on Mac shipments. In the United States, Gartner said that Apple shipped 1.572 million Macs, up 6.8 percent year over year. Market share rose to 8.8 percent from 8.7 percent in fiscal third quarter and from 8.4 percent in fiscal Q4 2008. By comparison, IDC said that Apple shipped 1.64 million Macs, an 11.8 percent year-over-year increase. IDC put Apple's US share at 9.4 percent, up from 7.6 percent a quarter earlier and 8.6 percent in fiscal Q4 2008. Both analyst firms ranked Apple fourth in US market share. Worldwide, IDC puts Apple at No. 7.

Apple Q4 2009 Revenue 2

"What's Next?" matters more for Macintosh than "What's Now?" On Thursday, Microsoft will officially launch Windows 7. Best Buy already has new systems on display (but not for sale), and Dell is taking orders. The expected Windows 7 marketing blitz -- and the PC industry's desperation to boast sales pulled down by the econolypse's gravity -- will be big for Holiday `09. Apple won't easily compete ad-for-ad, but may hold surprising sales promise. Based on Gartner and IDC data for the last three quarters, low-cost netbooks are driving Windows PC shipments. It's a segment where Apple doesn't compete. In fact where Apple does compete -- the $1,000-plus computer -- Mac US retail market share exceeds 90 percent.

iPod. Apple shipped 10.2 million iPods during fiscal fourth quarter, flat from 10.2 million a quarter earlier and 11 million in fiscal Q4 2008. On September 9th, Apple released new iPods, including a new nano with video recording capabilities. Apple also lowered the entry-level iPod touch price to $199, albeit for a device with only 8GB of storage. The $299 model has 32GB of storage, by comparison.

Apple is putting more emphasis on iPod touch, which is the other leg on which stands the App Store platform. Apple claims more than 50 million lifetime iPhone and iPod touch sales. By comparison, iPod nano sales are sluggish.

Retail. Oppenheimer said "the stores had a record quarter." Apple opened 15 new stores during fiscal fourth quarter, for a total of 273. Average revenue per store was $7.1 million. As a segment, retail revenue rose 9 percent year over year and 25 percent sequentially. Retail revenue topped $1.86 billion.

Apple Q4 2009 Units 2

Fall Into the GAAP

For this quarter, it is somewhat necessary to look at Apple's GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and non-GAAP performance. Apple officially started reporting earnings in GAAP and non-GAAP fashion in the year-ago fiscal quarter. Based on GAAP rules, Apple had to spread out some iPhone and iPod touch revenue because of subscription accounting rules. Apple deferred revenue to be realized in subsequent quarters. However, in late September, the FASB -- Financial Accounting Standards Board -- voted to change subscription reporting rules. Apple should be Apple to record most, but not all, revenue; small portion would still be deferred.

As early as fourth calendar quarter, which would be Apple's fiscal 2010 first quarter, companies can report certain kinds of subscription revenue with other results, meaning on a GAAP basis. The change isn't mandatory until 2011. Apple plans to change its accounting by fiscal 2011 first quarter but could start sooner, Oppenheimer told financial analysts. "Making this change will be complex," he said, noting that Apple's fiscal 2010 first quarter guidance is based on the current, deferred revenue model.

For Apple, the change will dramatically boost revenues and earnings and offer some unfair competitive comparisons to some competitors. For example, worldwide handset leader Nokia reports revenue on the global equivalent of GAAP/non-GAAP --International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)/non-IFRS as set by the International Accounting Standards Board.

On a non-GAAP basis, for fiscal 2009 fourth quarter, Apple revenue would be $12.25 billion revenue, with net profit of $2.85 billion. For the year-ago quarter, non-GAAP revenue was $11.68 billion, with a quarterly net profit of $2.44 billion. The difference is phenomenal, almost 40 percent in fiscal fourth quarter 2008.

Because of the accounting change, Apple will get an extra revenue boost from previous quarters, depending on when the company adopts the new rules. Based on FASB rules, already reported revenue must be realized over time. Apple can't take it all at once. So for a few quarters, Apple can recognize all iPhone/iPod touch in that quarter and some deferred revenue, too. But there will be a price paid in future quarters in year-over-year comparisons unless iPhone/iPod touch sales surge.

EC hopes to beat US, Google in book-scanning race, may rewrite law to do it

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 9:50pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Out of concern that Google may yet be able to scan the printed works of authors worldwide and make them available to Americans but not Europeans, two leading European Commissioners this morning set forth on a plan they hope could beat Google to market. Their plan involves Europeana, the online portal for the collected works of the EU's member countries, which is still officially in beta, though has come a long way from its extremely rocky first tests last year.

Commissioners Charlie McCreevy and Viviane Reding this morning issued an official "Communication" regarding their plan to use Europeana.eu as a portal for the publication of printed European works that have fallen into the public domain, as well as "orphaned" works -- books that may still be under copyright protection, but which no author or publisher has recently claimed.

Orphaned works are the subject of the ongoing settlement talks in the US between Google and representatives of some publishers. While both sides appear willing to settle, Google has taken the unprecedented step of petitioning to settle any dispute that may arise in the future between itself and parties that have failed to claim rights to orphaned works up to now. Two weeks ago, the judge overseeing the settlement threw out the latest draft, and ordered the parties to create one that wasn't so much of a legal stretch.

That order may have given Comms. Reding and McCreevy the window they need to retool Europeana as a competitor site. As Comm. Reding stated this morning, "If we act swiftly, pro-competitive European solutions on books digitization may well be sooner operational than the solutions presently envisaged under the Google Books Settlement in the United States."

However, they admit they'll need to make changes to the law to do it. Up to now, the EC's policy has been to respect the various other policies of the copyright bureaus of its member countries, for what it's called "harmonization." But those countries appear to differ with respect to the answer to the question, "What does 'public domain' mean?"

You might think it's a simple enough question to answer, but keep in mind that when countries originally made their respective decisions, the concept of scanning books for worldwide dissemination over an electronic information service did not exist. Since public institutions can't exactly do this job themselves, money will have to come from somewhere. And who's to say that, when the silent authors of orphaned works let their copyrights lapse, their rights to collect from some future technology lapsed with it?

With that question unanswered, some countries are taking the step of claiming national rights to orphaned and public domain works. That makes it difficult for a continental institution like the EC to find a sponsor.

"While some of the cultural institutions explicitly indicate that the material they bring into Europeana is in the public domain, others claim rights on the digitized copies and/or charge for downloads," reads an August 28 Communication from the EC (PDF available here). "A few institutions apply watermarks and, in one case, viewing the material in a reasonable size is subject to payment. The different practices reflect the wide range of approaches across the EU, which are sometimes dictated by increasing pressure on cultural institutions to raise direct income from the assets they hold. Requiring payment for digitized public domain works also reflects the fact that digitization has a cost. At the same time it seriously limits the cultural and economic potential of the material.

"From a legal point of view the question is whether digitization in itself creates new rights. Normally this would not be the case," the August report continues. "However, the level of originality needed for the creation of copyright is not harmonized at European level, so the answer to the question may differ from one Member State to another. It may also vary for different types of digitization (for example the scanning of books is not the same as costly 3D rendering of objects)."

So just because a work has become free, does that necessarily mean anyone and everyone has a right to profit from it? Answering "yes" to that question would actually present the real problem for the EC, because it probably won't be the member states that contribute the most to Europeana (the Communication acknowledges that about half the site's material comes from France alone). The big problem, which commissioners are acknowledging today, is this: If the EC won't do it, Google will.

European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Charlie McCreevy As reads a statement this morning from Comms. Reding and McCreevy, "The recent information hearings held by the Commission on the Google Books Settlement Agreement highlighted the anomalous situation that would arise were the settlement to be approved, namely that the vast number of European works in U.S. libraries that have been digitized by Google would only be available to consumers and researchers in the US but not in Europe itself. Ensuring that Europeans are given access to their own cultural heritage, while European authors are fairly remunerated, is therefore of immediate concern and will require European responses."

That European response could very well be the creation of a continent-wide clearinghouse for media rights, a single collective library for all the other libraries and copyright bureaus in Europe. But getting that accomplished might mean throwing away parts of the EC's 2001 directive on "harmonization" of various countries' copyright laws -- a fact which Comms. McCreevy and Reding acknowledged in their Communication released this morning (PDF available here).

"The orphan works problem will be examined in an impact assessment which will explore a variety of approaches to facilitate the digitization and dissemination of orphan works," this morning's Communication reads. "Possible approaches include, inter alia, a legally binding stand-alone instrument on the clearance and mutual recognition of orphan works, an exception to the 2001 Directive, or guidance on cross-border mutual recognition of orphan works."

Facilitating such a broad new annex of Europeana would require a new degree of public and private cooperation, where private interests are allowed to contribute works or links to their own hosted works, and are perhaps compensated with a share of proceeds or with advertising. That may go against the grain, if not the letter itself, of some member countries' existing copyright laws. So the course of action today's Communication is suggesting that the Commission suggest that it consider suggesting, is essentially to throw out those parts of "harmonization" with which they just can't harmonize.

The most expedient way to accomplish that may be, ironically enough, in the name of harmonization itself: by the continent-wide adoption of a new Lisbon Treaty updating the EU Constitution. That document contains the Europe-wide copyright system that commissioners are hoping for.

European Commissioner for the Information Society Viviane Reding, in a weekly address April 14, 2009. That's what Comm. Reding said last Friday in a speech in Vienna: "Politicians nowadays talk in every Sunday speech about the need to counter the digitization power of Google, but they still shy away from making Europe a strong player with regard to copyright. The new Lisbon Treaty will give Europe a powerful tool in this respect, as the new Article 118 will allow the creation of a European copyright title. I hope Europe will have the courage to make use of this soon. According to Commission studies, revenues from online content could more than quadruple by 2010, to €8.3 billion [annually], if we finally bring about a functioning single market for creative content offers."

Office 2010, SharePoint public betas for November, VS 2010 Beta 2 Wednesday

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 8:56pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

During an industry event whose original purpose was to concentrate on SharePoint 2010, Microsoft's collaborative server product, CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that his company is making ready an official "public beta" of Office 2010, the applications suite for Windows.

The most likely timeframe for such a release would be during PDC 2009, Microsoft's annual developers' conference now scheduled for the third week of November in Los Angeles.

No further details on Office 2010 were revealed, but this much we do know: It is Microsoft's plan now to build O'10 in such a way that OEMs can install a full product on PCs for sale, which will come up in a limited "Office Starter" functionality mode until customers purchase the product online or through retail outlets. This reduced functionality mode will not be the same as Office Web Apps, which will be available to all users for free, even if they're not licensed Office users and even if they're not using Windows.

What we will probably learn at PDC next month is how fully-featured Office Web Apps will be compared to Office Starter. Given the company's recent developments, it's seeming more likely that OWA will be geared toward users who already have access to Office documents, even though they may not have Office itself. This way, editing functions may be limited to making changes to content that has already been created -- especially in the case of Excel, whose spreadsheets in the early public beta enabled users to view charts but not create them, and enabled them to use cells that already had conditional formatting but not create new ones with the same feature.

The current Office 2010 Technical Preview is a relatively stable product; extensive Betanews tests involving the Word, Excel, and Outlook components have revealed numerous cosmetic problems, but surprisingly few crashes. However, there are relatively few new features in the Technical Preview; what Outlook 2010 appears to support that Outlook 2007 did not, appears to be focused on new functionality that will be provided by SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint's functionality this round appears to be extensively reworked, especially around the idea of letting businesses create rich, socially active networks for their employees. These networks will be better integrated with Office applications, by making SharePoint sites into destinations directly accessible through the apps themselves, rather than through Internet Explorer.

An Excel document editable directly through a Web browser pointed at a SharePoint 2010 site, as demonstrated at a Microsoft SharePoint conference in Las Vegas, October 19, 2009.

New services available through SharePoint servers will effectively make them into hosts for Office Web Apps. Demonstrations at today's conference in Las Vegas included the presentation of an Excel spreadsheet through a SharePoint site, whose contents were viewable directly through the Web browser. The SharePoint server, in this case, is the one hosting the Excel display functionality, eliminating the need for many employees to have direct access to Office or Excel.

The two buttons on the demonstration site's toolbar, "Edit" and "Open in Excel," suggest two levels of functionality for editing purposes. The "Edit" functionality appears to be a way to launch the complete Excel Web App through the SharePoint site, which may offer some (perhaps not all) online counterparts for Excel editing capabilities. Microsoft is about nothing if it isn't about leveraging; and in this case, Silverlight is being used as the trestle for connecting platforms. The rich media support for new SharePoint 2010 sites will be provided by Silverlight -- that will apparently be the component that enables higher-definition video than is currently capable, as well as richer controls. The ability for developers to build SharePoint sites is being built into Visual Studio 2010; and developers' first taste of this ability is the primary focus of VS 2010 Beta 2. That build went live on MSDN this afternoon, along with .NET Framework 4 Beta 2. Both betas will become generally available Wednesday afternoon.

Verizon touts Android's superiority over iPhone

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

Every major iteration of Android is named after a pastry (Cupcake, Donut, etc.), and whenever the latest version is being worked on, a giant foam rendition of that pastry is planted on the lawn of Google's headquarters. Last week, a giant eclair, signifying the impending drop of Android 2.0, was unveiled.

This is normally a pretty big event in and of itself, but it happened on the same day that Google had its quarterly earnings call, and CEO Eric Schmidt made the bold statement that "Android adoption is about to explode," without providing too much more detail.

But not a lot of detail was needed to see what was going on. A little more than a week prior, Google and Verizon made a joint announcement that Verizon would be getting its first Android phone, and Schmidt's enthusiasm for the mobile operator was abundantly clear at the time ("Verizon's data network is the best in the US by far.") Additionally, Motorola's Android device destined for Verizon had not made its debut yet, so it looked like only a matter of time before something big happened.

Over the weekend, the push began with a captivating television advertisement.

Moving beyond the tame MyTouch3G advertising campaign which has an untoward number of former Saturday Night Live cast members (none of whom seem to appreciate the device), the new ads take an aggressive stance against Apple's iPhone.

The first ad shows no product yet. It simply lists a number of things which the iPhone cannot do ("iDon't allow open development, iDon't run simultaneous apps," etc.) and closes with "Droid Does...November."

"Droid," though a trademark of George Lucas, is expected to be the official name of the phone which has until now been called Motorola Sholes, an Android 2.0-equipped QWERTY slider running the powerful TI OMAP3430 processor.

While the ad harkens back to the 16-bit era of video gaming when Sega ran a campaign with a nearly identical tag line ("Genesis Does what Nintendon't,") it is one of the most direct advertising attacks a Fortune 500 company has made on Apple, which has itself been directly attacking Microsoft Windows in its advertisements for many years.

Any photographs and specs related to the Droid are still totally unofficial. Today, Boy Genius Report, which has been leaking information about the Motorola Sholes for months, posted an early hands-on report which lauds the device as "the thinnest QWERTY slider we've ever seen....the fastest Android device we've ever used....the best screen we've ever seen on an Android Handset...the most impressive phone we've used since the iPhone."

That's a lot of superlatives. Pair them with Schmidt's glowing praise for Verizon and things get downright mushy.

Microsoft and Mozilla leave Web users tangled over 'variant' vulnerability

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 6:02pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The disabled .NET Framework Assistant Firefox plug-in. In what is now indisputably the most important vulnerability addressed during last Tuesday's record round of Windows patches, the two companies most affected by the problem -- Microsoft and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla -- could not help but be caught in a tangle of miscommunication exacerbated to a large extent by overhype from a sea of blogs. As a result, it's everyday users who are left confused and bewildered, even though no known exploit for the vulnerability exists.

The problem involves both the ".NET Framework Assistant" add-on and "Windows Presentation Manager" plug-in made by Microsoft for Mozilla Firefox, both of which are installed automatically -- and without warning -- by Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. One of Microsoft's patches last week, as explained in a Microsoft bulletin, addresses the functionality of 3.5 SP1 that's made available through these Firefox extensions.

Meanwhile, on its end, Mozilla opted to disable these extensions at the browser level, for reasons explained by its vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver, as, "because of the difficulties some users have had entirely removing the add-on, and because of the severity of the risk it represents if not disabled." The move was made only after having contacted Microsoft first; and Microsoft agreed with the decision, Shaver said.

This contradicts a multitude of reports over the weekend saying that Mozilla had taken action in defiance of Microsoft's extensions.

But this morning, Microsoft issued a clarification to Mozilla, apparently correcting its own misunderstanding of the matter (or rather, when the weekday crew came in to relieve the weekend crew): The extensions themselves actually have nothing whatsoever to do with the Patch Tuesday vulnerability. This despite having been referenced in Microsoft's own security bulletin last Tuesday: "Firefox users who are running the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plug-in and do not have it disabled should also apply this security update."

Upon realizing this news, Shaver announced this morning that Mozilla is un-blocking the two extensions [CORRECTION] the .NET Framework Assistant add-on, leaving the WPF plug-in blocked.

The disabled .NET Framework Assistant Firefox plug-in. Yet that creates an entirely new problem, as Betanews discovered this morning: For the same reasons folks had trouble trying to uninstall these extensions before, they'll have trouble now re-installing them -- though .NET Framework Assistant appears in Firefox's Extensions list, the "Enable" button is greyed out, and the same goes for "Windows Presentation Foundation" in Firefox's Plug-ins list.

In an effort to shed some light on this wild subject, here now are some clarifying facts:

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 was not one of the patches presented by Microsoft last Tuesday. When users noticed the two Firefox extensions for the first time this week, it was probably because they ended up installing SP1 at the same time they installed the critical and important Patch Tuesday updates. One of those updates was the Microsoft patch that temporarily disables the extensions' functionality.
ClickOnce functionality was not the subject of the vulnerability in question. ClickOnce is Microsoft's now extremely ironic brand name for a technology designed to enable .NET applications to update themselves over the Web, a process which requires elevated privilege since installed code is being replaced. While the possibility that .NET code could find itself running with elevated privileges as a result of the ClickOnce problem, the attack vector in question here involves something quite different -- a broad level of possible attack vector that's thus far unexploited (it takes some intelligence), for which .NET Framework was only a case-in-point.
It's not the extensions that are vulnerable in this instance, but rather the .NET Framework functionality which they enable through the browser.
Microsoft was not silent about having released its Firefox extensions. In fact, its engineers were quite proud of them, although few independent sources bothered to cover their existence until they became an annoyance (and we're guilty as charged here too). Granted, the world doesn't flock to Scott Hanselman's blog, though engineers can only do so much to tout their efforts. What Microsoft had neglected to do, in hindsight, was provide users with a way to opt out of changing their Firefox settings, or to uninstall these extensions once they appeared there. This has now morphed into a new problem: the lack of any direct ability to re-enable the plug-ins once they've been turned off. Betanews is still experimenting with finding a way to do this (it does not involve editing about:config, unfortunately), and we'll report it to you once we find it.

During a July presentation at the Black Hat conference by security engineers at Hustle Labs, a Microsoft mechanism called XBAP was used as a case-in-point for a demonstration of a much larger problem: the likelihood of vulnerabilities whenever interoperable code components use so-called variant data types to exchange information. Soon afterward, Microsoft began addressing the possibility of an exploit using an attack vector they feared could be inspired by the Hustle Labs demo.

XBAP is a facilitator for XAML, the XML-based layout language that substitutes for HTML for building Web apps. Microsoft began rolling out XBAP in August 2008, with Service Pack 1 to .NET Framework 3.5. Responding at the time to criticism that the company tends to release Web-based functionality for Internet Explorer only, it produced a ".NET Framework Assistant" add-on to Firefox as well, along with a plug-in that enabled XBAP in Firefox.

But neither extension gave Firefox users an option not for uninstallation. So when it was revealed that .NET's "ClickOnce" technology was potentially vulnerable, Firefox users were compelled to uninstall it manually. When users learned last weekend that Mozilla was blocking these add-ons, some bloggers assumed it was because of the ClickOnce matter, and reported it as such; ClickOnce is actually unrelated here.

Now, the problem going forward could be a number of Firefox users whose browsers are in need of some repair.

Update ribbon (small)

5:35 pm EDT October 19, 2009 · Responding to our story from earlier this morning, Mozilla Vice President for Engineering Mike Shaver told Betanews that this morning's unblocking action freed just the .NET Framework Assistant add-on for Firefox, not the Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in. It is Mozilla's belief, Shaver said, that this plug-in may still expose Firefox users to the principal vulnerability addressed in last Tuesday's Microsoft patch, as long as that plug-in remains enabled.

"We were told by Microsoft that the [.NET Assistant] add-on was vulnerable (and in fact at one point that the WPF plug-in was not, but we corrected that in conversation), and waited for confirmation from them that it wasn't before unblocking it," Shaver told Betanews. "We were not correcting ourselves; we were updating based on a Microsoft correction."

EU puts more than 100,000 historical documents online

Publié: octobre 19, 2009, 4:56pm CEST par Tim Conneally

While initiatives at various levels of United States government strive to put current documents and publications online for public consumption, the European Union has been keeping up with new documents and scanning its archives to boot.

As a result, the EU Bookshop opened its Digital Library last week, an online repository of more than 110,000 scanned historical EU documents which date all the way back to 1952.

A program launched by the EU Publications Office in 2007 let users request scans of out-of-print documents, and the program was so popular the Office went ahead with its next stage. Between February 2008 and September 2009, the Publications Office scanned some 12 million pages, and at its highest output was doing 1.4 million pages per month.

The project reportedly cost about €2.5 million.

Now, the fruits of this effort have been officially opened to the European public, with content in about 50 languages, which represents more than 370 corporate EU institutional authors.

These publications have been scanned into .PDF format, and can be accessed through the EU Bookshop's search page. When entering search terms, a check box labeled "Digital Library (Archive)" lets the user query the new archive.

Study: cable/telco competition brings North America slowest, costliest broadband

Publié: octobre 17, 2009, 1:15am CEST par Tim Conneally

Today was the Federal Communications Commission's deadline for public comment on the Berkman Center For Internet and Society's study which examines the growth of broadband in other countries and what has made them more competitive broadband markets than the U.S.

"International comparisons...have been a political hot button in the past few years. Because the United States began the first decade of this century with the fourth-highest levels of broadband penetration among OECD nations, and is closing the decade in 15th place in these same rankings, and because, according to International Telecommunications Union measures, the United States slipped from 11th to 17th between 2002 and 2007, many have used these data to argue that the United States, on its present policy trajectory, is in decline," the study says.

"Others have responded by criticizing the quality of the data in various ways, asserting that the United States broadband market is performing well and there is no concern to be addressed," it continued. "The debate occasionally resembles that of a horse race; indeed, a horce race in which those who have already placed their bets are arguing about how to decide which horse has won."

Who should the U.S. look to for inspiration? BCIS suggests Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands. Germany and Portugal are especially noteworthy because of their high actual speeds versus those advertised, despite the fact that "neither country has any fiber deployment to speak of."

But the common thread among all the countries BCIS studied was that "open access" policies such as unbundling, bitstream access, collocation requirements, wholesaling and other functional separation have been important to every high performing country...and the United States essentially abandoned these policies in 2001 and 2002. "Open access has been largely treaded as a closed issue in U.S. Policy debates ever since," the study said.

The study finds that the emphasis other countries have put on open access is backed up by empirical evidence.

"We find that in countries where an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors that entered using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition which, in most cases contributed to strong broadband performance across a range of metrics."

The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost all offered by companies participating in a market with telephone, cable, and competitors who built their presence through open access facilities.

The highest priced and slowest services are "overwhelmingly offered by firms in the United States and Canada...markets structured around competition between one incumbent owning a telephone system, and one incumbent owning a cable system."

Study: Cable/telco competition brings North America slowest, costliest broadband

Publié: octobre 17, 2009, 1:15am CEST par Tim Conneally

Today was the Federal Communications Commission's deadline for public comment on the Berkman Center For Internet and Society's recent study, which examines the growth of broadband Internet access in other countries, along with the factors that have made those markets overseas more competitive than in the US.

"Others have responded by criticizing the quality of the data in various ways, asserting that the United States broadband market is performing well and there is no concern to be addressed," it continues. "The debate occasionally resembles that of a horse race; indeed, a horse race in which those who have already placed their bets are arguing about how to decide which horse has won."

To whom should the US look for inspiration? BCIS suggests Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Also, Germany and Portugal are especially noteworthy because of their high actual speeds compared to those advertised, despite the fact that "neither country has any fiber deployment to speak of."

But the common thread among all the countries BCIS studied was that "open access" policies such as unbundling, bitstream access, collocation requirements, wholesaling, and other functional separation have been important to every high performing country...and the United States essentially abandoned these policies in 2001 and 2002. "Open access has been largely treaded as a closed issue in US Policy debates ever since," the study said.

The study finds that the emphasis other countries have put on open access is backed up by empirical evidence.

The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost all offered by companies participating in a market with telephone, cable, and competitors who built their presence through open access facilities.

US broadcast industry group finally standardizes mobile digital television

Publié: octobre 16, 2009, 7:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Last night, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) unanimously agreed on the final mobile broadcast TV standard, the ATSC A/153 Mobile DTV Vestigial Side Band (VSB). This standard lets broadcasters take a portion of their existing DTV band and rebroadcast it as a shortwave sideband for mobile consumption.

But even in places where mobile broadcast television is popular, such as South Korea, it still isn't that popular. In the United States, where the average household watches more than 8 hours of television per day, mobile television remains as unpopular as ever.

So why has ATSC been working for the last three years to standardize mobile broadcast television?

IP-based TV, for one thing.

According to the Nielsen Company this week, online video usage for the US has grown about 18% overall in one year. The number of unique viewers grew by 12.3%, total number of streams grew by 25%, streams per viewer grew by 11.1%, and time that each viewer watches online video went up 25%.

In September, popular video site YouTube streamed 6.68 billion videos to 106 million unique viewers, and Hulu streamed 437 million videos to 13.5 million viewers.

Even though online monetization has proven to be problematic for content owners, this gradual shift is changing fortunes for broadcasters. But as Radio Business Report pointed out today, only television station licensees have the infrastructure to deliver mobile DTV to the public, so they can therefore control the pipeline and the monetization scheme.

Mobile DTV/DVD Player from LG

But controlling stake aside, the technology still requires viewers to pick up entirely new devices to receive the signal, and right now, there isn't really any reason to get an ATSC-compatible device like the LG portable DTV/DVD player which it showed off today. The standard is compatible with 8-VSB DTV which was deployed in Washington D.C. to test mobile DTV, so there is at least one market ready to go, but regional participation is varied.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition -- which represents 27 corporations that own and operate more than 800 broadcast stations -- today said that some 70 member stations have announced plans to roll out their mobile DTV broadcasts this year.

"Consumers will soon reap the benefits from this innovative use of broadcast digital television," said ATSC president Mark Richer today.

Soon...just not yet.

Mozilla designer suggests Windows 'browser ballot' is preferential to Apple

Publié: octobre 16, 2009, 6:36pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In a blog post yesterday first noticed by Computerworld's Gregg Keizer, a member of Mozilla's user experience team -- stating she was not writing on behalf of Mozilla, as the organization allows -- suggested that Microsoft's revised proposal for a Web browser selection screen for European Windows users still isn't fair enough to the browser market.

Because more computer users are accustomed to the typical ways to install software, states Mozilla UX team member Jenny Boriss, they may assume that the first choice that appears in a list is the preferred choice. In Microsoft's original proposal, Internet Explorer 8 appeared in the leftmost column. But in the company's more neutral alternative as proposed last March, it placed browsers in columns sorted in alphabetical order by their manufacturer. As a result, Apple Safari fell first.

"Aside from being unfair to the other browsers, the problem is that past consumer choice has shown that Safari does not provide an ideal browsing experience on Windows," Boriss writes. "Taking IE out of the equation because of its advantage as the bundled browser, the free market really does show what Windows users prefer. Safari has the smallest market share of the five other browsers at 2.6%. Frankly, Safari is a good browser for Apple computers, but Apple hasn't put much effort to make it competitive on Windows. It's just not their priority. So, by listing Safari first, the ballot is presenting as the recommended item the browser that is least likely to be the one the user wants. This leads to users having a bad experience using the Web, and ultimately hurts the user and the market."

The revised version of Microsoft's Web browser ballot screen proposal to the European Commission, dated October 6, 2009.

One alternative Boriss suggests is for browser order to be arranged randomly, and a second would organize browsers by market share order -- like Microsoft had it the first time. But that second solution would place IE first most of the time, which may not be a better solution than placing Apple first. So Boriss suggests a third option: adjusting the random probability in the browser juggling order, so that the first slot is given to each browser in accordance with its assessed usage share.

As Boriss projects it, "Mozilla would be first about 50% of the time, Chrome would be first 30% of the time, Opera 15%, and Safari 5%. This allows for the market forces to have some weigh over placement, but doesn't consistently benefit one browser. The problem is, it still puts some users at a disadvantage who randomly get a less popular browser as the first on the ballot."

According to the latest live statistics from analytics firm NetApplications, all active versions of Firefox combined make up 23.75% of all active Web browsers online, while all active versions of IE make up just under two-thirds. Those numbers are subject to flux over time, although conceivably, a ballot screen mechanism that uses usage share as its baseline could update its numbers live through NetApplications, as we just did.

Mozilla is one of the "interested third parties" whose opinions are being sought by the European Commission during a comments period, before it issues its recommendations on Microsoft's proposal. Boriss' comments may not be officially recognized as coming from Mozilla or the Mozilla Foundation; on the other hand, a prototype recently proposed by Google was not intended to be an "official" comment either.

Broadcast radio one step closer to paying performers' royalties

Publié: octobre 16, 2009, 5:48pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

With the music industry's business model in flux, mostly due to forces seemingly beyond its control, one way of potentially reducing some of the stress from lost CD sales is by Congress lifting terrestrial radio broadcasters' exemption from paying royalties to musical performers -- an exemption that has been allowed since the beginnings of radio. Though a majority of representatives in the US House have voiced opposition to such a measure, a similar majority has yet to coalesce in the Senate.

Yesterday, concerted leadership in the Senate Judiciary Committee passed its version of a bill authored in the house by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D - Mich.), effectively striking language from US Code granting radio broadcasters exemption from paying royalties to performers. (Broadcasters currently do pay royalties for copyright holders, typically through annual fees.)

"Radio play surely has promotional value to the artists, no one is denying that," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.) on the Senate floor yesterday. "But there is a property right in the sound recording, and those that create the content should be fairly compensated for their work."

An amendment added to the Senate bill yesterday by Sen. Al Franken (D - Minn.) sets alternative minimum royalty rates for stations earning as little as $50,000 per year. And another amendment attached by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D - Calif.) -- so new that it hasn't yet appeared in the Library of Congress' transcript -- would establish, as Sen. Leahy's office puts it, "parity in the rate standard across platforms that publicly perform sound recordings." In other words, a mandate for equal rates between the fees broadcasters will pay, and what Internet radio streamers such as Pandora agreed to pay in a compromise last July.

That could mean a whole new ballgame for copyright holders as well. As it stands now, broadcasters use a relatively simple formula to pay copyright holders for the use of the composition, as opposed to the use of the recording. That fee is based on a total cap on receipts of $230 million per rights organization (PRO) per year, divided by the number of radio stations participating. But as broadcast law expert David Oxenford writes, that fee is set to expire at the end of this year, and the renegotiation will not be easy.

Making it easier -- at least on rights holders -- would be that congressional parity mandate. If in the sake of "fairness" broadcast radio is held to the same standard to which Internet streamers agreed, the formulas for both performance and recording royalties could become adjusted to reflect a percentage of each station's revenues. Currently, streamers have agreed to a complex system whose ballpark basis is that the sum of performance and recording royalties be capped at 25% of net revenues, from any and all enterprises associated with the music, including advertising.

The key backers of radio royalties legislation in Congress, who happen to be chairmen and ranking members of their respective judiciary committees: left to right, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R - Utah), Rep. John Conyers (D - Mich.), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), and Rep. Lamar Smith (R - Tex.), in a press conference last March.

Whether the US radio industry could sustain such an expense, if it balloons this high, is doubtful. Industry analysts estimated that the total revenues collected by the nation's 12,500 stations dipped below the $17 billion mark last year, and will decline by at least another 10% by the time this year is out. If those estimates hold out, performance rights organizations under new legislation could stand to split not $230 million, but as much as $3.8 billion.

With 251 out of 435 representatives opposed to such legislation, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, you would think that should end the issue. But legislation that doesn't stand a chance of succeeding by itself has ways of getting passed anyway, usually as riders to unrelated bills that have no chance of failing. Health care legislation is already a complex issue; with the President's desire to get such legislation passed before the holidays, it could find itself taking on a passenger.

Which would be convenient for PROs, whose current agreement with stations expires after December. Station owners have intimated that should such new rates go into effect, they may stop playing music altogether and switch to talk-radio formats. And that would be convenient for politicians needing new platforms for assailing other politicians.

Google to open e-book shop: Does it matter yet?

Publié: octobre 16, 2009, 12:37am CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, Google said it will launch its own e-book store in the first half of 2010 called "Google Editions." This store will sell in-print books in addition to its archive of public domain titles, and will be accessible to "any device with a Web browser," not just for the dedicated e-readers that have gained so much notoriety in the past few years. Users will reportedly need to be connected to the Web to initially obtain their books, but they are then cached for offline consumption.

Google has long been expected to enter this space, and did not mention this week with whom it intends to partner in the hardware space. But reading headlines today, you'd think this was the first melee in a full-scale war between Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google. Some have called it an "e-book fight," some an "eReader war," and then there was the inexplicably silly "Google wants you dead, Amazon!"

The funny thing is, without any e-reader or e-book sales data to go on, the notion that there's even a healthy market for the products is pure speculation at this point. The market is building in anticipation of the eventual demand for e-books.

Amazon, which leads the market for both e-readers and downloadable e-books, does not disclose its sales figures. In-Stat estimated that 2008 worldwide e-reader sales were only around 1 million, but predicted that by 2013, it will be up to 29 million. Similarly, iSuppli estimated that around 18 million e-reader units will be sold in 2012.

That's really not that big, considering that halfway through next year, there will be well over a dozen manufacturers with multiple e-reader products on the market: Amazon, Sony, iRex, LG, Samsung, Asus, Toshiba, Plastic Logic, Endless Ideas, Astak, Bookeen, Elonex, Foxit, Interead, and many more names you may have never heard of.

While increasing the competition and selection does stimulate consumption, it also dilutes the market.

In terms of content, the Association of American Publishers said e-book sales have risen 214% in the last two years. Of course, the largest percentage of growth usually takes place when a service is at its smallest; and even after this substantial growth, e-books still only accounted for 1% of books sold by major publishers. This does not take into account the increasing number of DIY publishers, public domain downloads, and converted/non-e-book texts.

Google Editions is expected to be made up of three of these disparate distribution methods: Users will be able to buy e-books digitized in Google's library, from the publisher directly, or from a partner third-party book site.

How do you define performance?

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 10:26pm CEST par Carmi Levy

System performance is an interesting concept; everyone seems to define it differently. To some, it involves chewing through a complex spreadsheet. To others, it's how fast a 3D video sequence can be rendered, or how easily Web pages are served up.

Call me a rebel, but after years of living off of a BlackBerry, my thinking has evolved. As much as I focused on megahertz and gigahertz for much of my computing life, the most important criteria for me these days are how fast the thing turns on, and how long it stays on before I have to recharge it.

It goes against everything we grew up with, of course, as the PC industry has always been obsessed with the electronic era equivalent of brute force horsepower, rather than eco-friendly efficiency metrics. But when I'm sitting in a deserted airport terminal with an hour's worth of work to power through and only 45 minutes of remaining battery life, the last thing I'm thinking about is processor performance.

Machines (and uses) have changed

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) However we choose to define performance, we've always assumed that performance measurement benchmarks were run on machines that had already been powered on and booted up. We also assumed that these machines were plugged into a power outlet. These days, these assumptions are laughable, because outside of cubicle-dwellers sweating over dusty desktops for their corporate overlords, few of us leave our computers on 24/7/365. We take them with us to places like Starbucks, where finding a power outlet is about as challenging as locating the lost city of Atlantis, and we don't have the luxury of time to sit and wait while our machines boot up.

This shift in performance metric priority is being driven by two major changes in attitude and technology:

Green matters. Conserving power didn't matter much when 30-pound desktops ruled the planet and no one paid attention to how much all that electricity cost. Now that we've mobilized, disconnected, and learned the value of power-performance curves, the cost and availability of power are suddenly much more important to us. It isn't feasible to leave a laptop or other mobile device perpetually powered on. Even if we didn't run the risk of frying our laptops inside their padded cases, their three-hour battery life would leave us high and dry before lunchtime.
Software deployment has evolved. Corporate software distribution methods that required conventional desktop machines to be powered on at night, are yesterday's news. Today, commodity chipsets, firmware, and monitoring software allow machines to be remotely -- and automatically -- woken up, updated, and shut down. Web-based remote management solutions keep mobile machines in top form as well. In many cases, cloud-based software infrastructure is largely obviating the need to update client code in the first place. One reason that everyday users neither know nor care when Google Docs adds a new feature is because the software no longer makes a big deal of it. Windows tends to announce when it's been patched or updated, but Web apps typically don't.

Beyond eco-friendliness, better, smarter client hardware, network control, and an increasingly thin software stack, lies another simple truth: Today's mobile machines lead very different lives than more sedentary desktop hardware we all grew up with. We shut them down and hibernate them before shlepping them from one place to another, and when we get to our destination and open the lid, we expect things to happen quickly. The more dynamic nature of the modern workplace, coupled with the transition of mobile handsets from basic voice devices to full-featured computing devices, has radically altered our expectations of how these devices -- mobile or not, pocketable or not -- should work.

Thankfully, the industry is tentatively taking notice. The turtle-slow speed with which the average computer wakes itself up, freshens its desktop, and presents its happy face to its owner, is finally getting some attention from hardware vendors. HP's QuickWeb and Dell's Latitude ON, for example, boot into reduced-scale environments for quick access to simple apps like e-mail and contact management. Beyond launch performance, once these machines are on, the amount of time they actually remain on is also finally becoming a key concern for hardware makers.

I'd like to ask them what took so long, but that would be cliché. What matters is that this real-world performance metric is no longer being ignored. And as operating systems initially developed for handsets such as Google Android start showing up on netbooks and other lower-end machines, end users will increasingly expect these larger devices to offer the same kind of instant-on, battery-friendly experience provided by more traditional handhelds.

Not so fast

As heartening as it is to see vendors finally wake up to power-on and battery life performance, we're not quite up to speed yet in terms of standardizing and normalizing the messages they send to the broad base of consumer and enterprise buyers.

For example, Nokia claims its new Booklet 3G will run for 12 hours before it needs to be recharged. In the absence of standardized power-based performance metrics, however, it's difficult to take Nokia at its word. Is it 12 hours of watching a movie? Is wireless on or off? If so, is it Wi-Fi, 3G or both? Since vendors have no established baseline for these performance claims, they're free to say pretty much whatever they want.

As a result, they'll continue to use rather useless metrics (like how many cells their batteries have) to flog their machines. But computer vendors making a big deal out of six- or nine-cell batteries aren't much removed from automakers hawking the size of a given vehicle's gas tank. In both cases, we still don't know how far the thing will go. In the real world, we continue to lack industry-accepted parameters akin to the EPA's fuel economy standards that allow computer buyers to make apples-to-apples comparisons.

Change often comes to an industry when consumers demand it. And as we spend ever greater stretches of time using battery-powered devices far from home, the onus is on us to challenge vendors to get straight with realistic methods of measuring such real-world performance parameters like battery life and power-on availability. I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks forward to evaluating comparable machines based on performance figures that weren't first invented by the marketing department.

Verizon victory: Royalties not due every time the phone rings

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 9:43pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The part of the movie It's a Wonderful Life that always brought a tear to my grandmother's eye was at the end, where little Zuzu hears a bell ring on the Christmas tree, and pronounces that an angel has just gotten his wings. If a district court had found in favor of ASCAP, the nation's leading performers' rights organization (PRO), it's quite possible that if that bell had sounded like a particular song, someone somewhere might have been owed change.

The question at hand was whether performers' royalties -- the same share of proceeds that rights holders get whenever you play a song on Last.fm or Pandora -- were owed to the performers of the music you hear in wireless ringtones. If so, wireless services everywhere could owe a ton of money. And ASCAP may never have thought so in the first place had Cellco Partnership (a company doing business on behalf of Verizon Wireless) hadn't made an application last January for a blanket license -- in other words, if Cellco hadn't been willing to pay a little something for those rights in the first place.

But in a decision yesterday, New York Southern District Judge Denise Cote ruled that performers' royalties were not due, for a number of reasons based on recent legal precedent. Last June, for instance, the Supreme Court let stand an Appeals Court ruling in favor of DVR maker Cablevision, finding that when a person makes a recording of a show on her DVR, it's not an unauthorized reproduction, and thus not a copyright violation.

Taking the next logical step, Judge Cote reasoned that if a cell phone user downloads a ringtone, and the phone then plays it whenever someone calls, that's not a "public performance."

"Boiled down to its essence," the judge wrote yesterday, "the question becomes whether in downloading a ringtone to a customer's cellular telephone Verizon transmits a performance of the work to the public." The keyword here is transmits, especially because the law interprets "transmission" and "performance" with even greater distinction than their common definitions would suggest.

Specifically, transmissions tend to have one receiver, which tends to go against the whole "public performance" idea. When Verizon (Cellco) sends its customers a ringtone, that's a transmission. And obviously, the ringtone is designed so that it may be heard by a plurality. ASCAP argued that this meant the transmission occurred for the purpose of reproducing the ringtone as a performance.

If the user of the phone wants to play his ringtone in front of a room full of friends or strangers, that's his deal. But as Judge Cote found, it's not Cellco's transmission that instigates or triggers the playback to any untold number of people. "Because only one subscriber is capable of receiving this transmission or performance, the transmission is not made to the public and is not covered by the Transmission Clause, at least when considered by itself," the judge wrote. Citing the Cablevision case, she added, "This transmission of a 'unique copy . . . limit[s] the potential audience of a transmission and is therefore relevant to whether that transmission is made to the public.'"

Well, then, if the owner of the phone is the one playing the ringtone in front of an unspecified plurality, aren't Verizon and Cellco liable for having given them the device to do it with? No, reasoned Judge Cote, because it's doubtful the guy would be charging folks money to hear it.

The judge wrote, "The only commercial advantage that ASCAP identifies as being associated with the playing of a ringtone is a commercial benefit to Verizon, specifically, the possibility that others may be encouraged to purchase ringtones when they hear ringtones. A potential commercial advantage to Verizon, however, does not suggest that its customers may not qualify for the § 110(4) [federal copyright law] exemption...The fact that cellular telephone users are not infringers of ASCAP's rights in the public performance of musical works defeats ASCAP's claim that Verizon is secondarily liable for their infringement."

In finding summary judgment in favor of Cellco, Judge Cote continues a trend of legal findings in favor of individuals' rights to make digital copies of media they've obtained lawfully. Opponents of this trend have attempted to leverage the findings against such notables as Napster and Grokster in their favor, the big difference there being that users were obtaining media unlawfully. Neither Verizon nor Cellco could be held to the same scrutiny as a proprietor of a P2P service actively soliciting customers to infringe copyright; the fact that Cellco acted lawfully in establishing its service in the first place, and also acted honorably in petitioning for a license, placed it in a very different league.

AT&T: Google is an evil empire that must be stopped

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 8:50pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Following up on the Federal Communications Commission's continuing investigation into the legality and regulatory positioning of Google Voice, telecommunications giant AT&T addressed the FCC with a document entitled, "The Truth About Google Voice and the Open Internet Principles." (PDF available here, hosted by the Washington Post.) It reads quite like any other publication with a title like "The Truth About..." complete with all the shock and vitriol of a propaganda pamphlet.

AT&T claims that Google needs to stop blocking certain outbound Google Voice calls. Google claims that it blocks certain connections which are too expensive for a free service to connect to; and furthermore, as an Internet-based service, the issue is out of the FCC's jurisdiction anyway.

AT&T's problem with Google Voice is that it, as well as the other national telephone companies, cannot block these access numbers, and have to pay the high fees that Google Voice has been sidestepping.

This most recent letter to the FCC, penned by AT&T Senior Vice President Robert W. Quinn, Jr., contains some of the company's harshest criticism of Google to date. In it he, alleges that Google uses its market dominance to unfairly squash competitors and silence political opponents.

Specifically, AT&T alleges that Google "unilaterally moved its favored political messages to the head of the [Google search] queue, apparently at no cost to itself." that Google blocked Inner City Press from Google News for criticizing the United Nations Development Programme with which Google had partnered, and that Google "acted in its economic self-interest to block what it considered a free-riding competitor," referring to Infinite SMS from Inner Fence, which Google blocked for being a costly exploitation of its experimental SMS chat lab.

Quinn's thirteen page letter does more than call Google's practices into question, it simply blasts the company at every turn.

Highlights include:

"Google's double-standard for 'openness' -- where Google does what it wants, while others are subject to Commission regulations -- is plainly inconsistent with the goal of preserving a 'free and open' Internet ecosystem."

"If Google convinces the Commission that it operates completely outside both Titles I and II, the Commission would not only be unable to require Google to protect confidential information about its customers' calling records, e-mails, Web searches, and other online activities, but also powerless to prevent Google from using that confidential data for whatever purposes it chooses or selling that information to whomever it pleases."

"In preparing a complaint to challenge the Google/Yahoo arrangement, the Department [of Justice] reportedly concluded that Google had a 'monopoly' in [Internet search advertising and Internet search syndication] and the proposed arrangement 'would have furthered [Google's] monopoly."

Microsoft sends Danger signal by not taking full responsibility for Sidekick service failure

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 7:01pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Microsoft should be lauded for doing what days ago seem miraculous: The recovery of Sidekick service data lost sometime last week. But Microsoft has failed to take responsibility for the data disaster, in statements issued publicly and given to the Los Angeles Times. The company's pass-the-buck position is simply inexcusable. Sole responsibility falls on Microsoft, because Danger is the company's subsidiary.

As Betanews' Scott Fulton reported earlier, Microsoft took credit for the data recovery, but not its loss. A Microsoft spokesperson told the LA Times that "the Danger Service platform, which experienced the outage, is a standalone service operating on non-Microsoft technologies, and is not related to Microsoft's cloud services platform or Windows Live." She continued: "Other and future Microsoft mobile products and services are entirely based on Microsoft technologies and Microsoft's cloud service platform and software."

The position is clear: Microsoft is distancing its cloud services from those provided by Danger, which acquisition was announced in February 2008. Microsoft closed the deal about two months later. Clearly Microsoft is concerned about the negative perceptions the outage could create for its cloud services, about a month before Azure Services Platform makes a big real world debut at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Following the data outage, there appeared many blogs or news stories -- I wrote one of them -- questioning Microsoft's data services reliability or cloud services in general.

But is it really true that Microsoft services infrastructure wasn't involved in the outage? Last week and over the weekend, unattributed news reports suggested that the failure occurred during a server/services upgrade, which could mean to Microsoft's cloud services infrastructure. If that's true -- and Microsoft says absolutely nothing clear about circumstances -- then the company's cloud services are partially at fault here.

Even if not, Microsoft cannot abdicate responsibility because:

Danger is a Microsoft subsidiary
Microsoft closed the Danger deal about 18 months ago
If Danger services weren't adequate, Microsoft should have migrated to its systems sooner

Before continuing, here is the official statement issued today by Microsoft:

Dear T-Mobile Sidekick customers,
On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems.
We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.
We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users. If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into the T-Mobile Sidekick forum at http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.
We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.
We will continue working closely with T-Mobile to restore user data as quickly as possible. We are eager to deliver the level of reliable service that our incredibly loyal customers have become accustomed to, and we are taking immediate steps to help ensure this does not happen again. Specifically, we have made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained.
Once again, we apologize for this situation and the inconvenience that it has created. Please know that we are working all-out to resolve this situation and restore the reliability of the service.
Sincerely,
Roz Ho
Corporate Vice President
Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation

Distancing from Danger is the wrong approach. It reflects badly on Microsoft as a corporate citizen. Trust isn't just about technology, but corporate character. Microsoft has shown bad character by not taking responsibility for a data disaster that happened on its watch.

More significantly, Microsoft has failed T-Mobile, a partner. Mirosoft's business is almost entirely built around partnerships. Microsoft develops software that is largey distributed and serviced by third parties. Microsoft's response abandons T-Mobile, which sends another message of mistrust: Partners can't rely on Microsoft to step up for them when it makes mistakes.

The Sidekick data disaster is potentially catastrophic for T-Mobile. Sidekick users are among T-Mobile's most loyal customers. Related, T-Mobile's customer demographic tends to be younger users than other US carriers. The Sidekick brand may never recover from the stigma of mistrust that data outage caused.

Microsoft should do right by T-Mobile, by setting aside a sizable marketing kitty -- perhaps $50 million -- for rebuilding the Sidekick brand and confidence in Danger services. TV commercials should as inviting and exciting as those for Bing.

Something else: Microsoft must understand that its short-sighted approach of protecting the larger cloud services brand is a hole in which conspiracy theorists will bury the company and erect tombstone: "Microsoft killed Sidekick to save Pink." Microsoft's much rumored Project Pink is supposedly coming from the same Premium Mobile Experiences group responsible for Danger. Conspiracy theorists -- and I'm not one of them -- will see the data failure as a Microsoft plot to kill off Sidekick, which sales T-Mobile suspended. According to product leaks, Project Pink appears to be a Sidekick competitor based on the same Danger software platform -- or at least its extension by Microsoft.

The data recovery is largely inconsequential -- except perhaps to Sidekick users -- because Microsoft failed to take responsibility for its loss, too. Apple and Mac fanboys love to debate about whether Microsoft copies Apple. Apple is notoriously image conscious, media manipulative and secretive. Microsoft's response to the Sidekick data disaster seems awfully Applesque. This is one way Microsoft shouldn't want to copy Apple. Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you.

Final Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 public release will wait for quality control

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 6:51pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

An extra week of quality control testing has been scheduled for the first public beta of Firefox 3.6, which was originally scheduled to have been released today. Wednesday, October 21, at 5:00 pm PDT is the new scheduled release time.

The code freeze for 3.6 Beta 1 took place yesterday. What that means is a bit confusing, but certainly transparent in keeping with open source projects: There is now a Beta 1 release candidate which is undergoing one round of testing in preparation for next Wednesday. Separately, development has begun on 3.6 Beta 2, where testing is ongoing but private. And to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, ther-r-re is a third possibility which no one had counted upon: the beginnings of testing for the 3.6 Release Candidate (not the Beta 1 RC, but the 3.6 final RC).

As the public weighs in, various bugs they find are accumulated alongside those found by Mozilla's crack team of volunteers. For the 3.6 RC, some 118 "blockers" have already been amassed, so there is already a lot of work awaiting Mozilla's developers prior to 3.6's final release, not counting anything else that may turn up.

The two most obvious visual improvements to Firefox 3.6 that testers are looking forward to seeing are the addition of a right-click jump menu for use with the Windows 7 taskbar (GA day for Win7 is next Thursday), and a Ctrl+Tab preview option that scrolls through thumbnails of open tabs in the active window. And Betanews tests of Firefox's cleaned-up version of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine that premiered in version 3.5, gives us reason to believe that overall performance may improve by close to one-fourth.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 13, 2009

Google: No Chrome OS event tomorrow, contrary to reports

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 6:23pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

A presentation that Google had scheduled for early tomorrow evening at its Mountain View offices entitled "Front End Engineering Open House" will be a discussion about the Google Chrome Web browser, and not a preview of Google Chrome OS as reported by multiple Web sites this afternoon, one example of which appears at this hyperlink.

"This is actually just a small recruiting event and we won't be talking about Chrome OS at all," the spokesperson told Betanews moments ago, "just one engineer talking about UI design for Google Chrome (the browser)." The implication that Chrome OS was the subject was chocked up as a "false alarm."

Google took down the registration page for the event due to heavy traffic in just the last few hours. It may very well already be booked solid.

A cottage industry in Chrome OS rumors has blossomed since last July, with a treasure trove of amateur Photoshop touch-ups purporting to depict the new netbook operating system, though showing very few real features beyond what's already been seen in Windows and the Chrome browser. One longs for the good old days when relatively convincing smuggled photographs passing themselves as Mac System 7 showed up in one's mailbox.

BlackBerry Storm 2 vs. BlackBerry Storm: The complete specs

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 6:17pm CEST par Tim Conneally

As expected, Research in Motion today released the specs for the BlackBerry Storm 2 (9550), and it really does appear to be mostly the same as its predecessor, except with crucial improvements in the areas that disappointed users most.

BlackBerry Storm 2 (left) BlackBerry Storm (right)

	BlackBerry Storm 2 (9550)	BlackBerry Storm (9530)
Size	4.43" x 2.45" x .55"	4.43" x 2.45" x .55"
Display	3.25" (480 x 360) capacitive multitouch/gestural	3.25" (480 x 360) capacitive touch
Memory	256 MB Flash, 2 GB on-board storage	125MB Flash, (192 MB RAM), 1 GB on-board storage
Network Support	Dual Band CDMA/EV-DO Rev A., Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, single band UMTS/HSPA	Dual Band CDMA/EV-DO Rev A., Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, single band UMTS/HSPA
Connectivity	802.11b/g/d/i, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR1) Integrated GPS with A-GPS Capabilities	Bluetooth 2.0, Standalone GPS, A-GPS
Battery	1400 mAhr Li-Ion, 5-6 hours of talk time, 11.2-12.7 days of standby time	1400 mAhr Li-Ion, 6 hours talk time, 15 days of standby time
Imaging	3.2 MP Video/ 2x zoom AF camera with flash and image stabilization	3.2 MP Video/ 2x zoom AF camera with flash
Weight	5.64 oz.	5.47 oz.

The major upgrades in the Storm 2 are the inclusion of Wi-Fi, the increase in storage, and the "next-gen" Surepress interface. Surepress was intended to mimic the click of a mouse with a touchscreen, where any contact with the screen would highlight selections, but actions only took place when the screen was pressed into and clicked. Unfortunately, with a single point of contact behind the screen, the original Surepress user experience was somewhat unrefined. Research in Motion is promising much better accuracy with the new Surepress, which has four points of contact instead of just one. The company says this gives the onscreen keyboard (especially the portrait mode keyboard, which was highly imprecise) better responsiveness, and should provide a more engaging touch experience.

The Storm 2 is going to launch later this month in the US (through Verizon), Canada, and the UK. In Canada, it's expected not only on Rogers Communications, but also BCE Inc. and Telus. In the UK, it's expected to arrive on Vodafone, where the device will reportedly be free with a two-year contract of at least £35 per month. American carriers have not yet disclosed how much the handset will be subsidized.

Microsoft takes credit for resolving Sidekick data loss, but not for causing it

Publié: octobre 15, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

It's been no secret that the Premium Mobile Services group at Microsoft, headed by Corporate Vice President Roz Ho, has been working on a secret class of consumer-facing mobile projects, least secretly of all a wireless content service code-named Pink. As late as last Tuesday, speculation centered around Pink's connection with Danger, the data service for T-Mobile's Sidekick device, and ground zero for last weekend's colossal service failure. Surely Danger should be tied in somehow with Microsoft's big plans in mobile, enthusiasts thought.

But this morning, in the midst of damage control, Ms. Ho found herself revealing a card she might not have been ready to play just yet: In a message to customers published on T-Mobile's Web site, she apologized on behalf of Microsoft for the service failure, while announcing the near-complete recovery of users' lost data. But she then revealed -- and a spokesperson also confirmed to the Los Angeles Times -- that Danger had not actually been using Microsoft's technology for Sidekick service, despite having had since April of last year to implement it.

The first clue comes from this paragraph: "We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up," Ho writes, acknowledging the single point of failure. "We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data."

In addressing the problem of whose system it was that failed and why, the Microsoft spokesperson told the LA Times' David Sarno, "The Danger Service platform, which experienced the outage, is a standalone service operating on non-Microsoft technologies, and is not related to Microsoft's cloud services platform or Windows Live." Certainly future renditions of mobile services should be built on Microsoft's platforms, the spokesperson went on, though surprisingly she did not mention the Danger brand in reference to such future services.

The message there from Microsoft was apparently, don't blame us for the Danger Service Platform, it wasn't built on our watch.

When Microsoft acquired Danger in April 2008, co-founder Matt Hershenson said at the time that his business' first priority would be to integrate Microsoft's platform. "As we combine our team and technologies with Microsoft, we see a clear path to evolving that experience and delivering it to an even broader group of consumers," Hershenson stated then.

A lack of any substantive transition from Danger's original Sidekick service to a division prepared to deploy Pink, would appear to confirm a report just last week from MobileCrunch's Greg Kumparak. That report cited an anonymous source with "seemingly exhaustive knowledge" of the Pink project as saying that it was going nowhere -- specifically, that most of Danger's resources on the project had actually been let go by Microsoft, leaving "no braintrust that understands how to build a product."

Just last week, analyst Henry Blodget was publicly advising Microsoft to acquire BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, if it wants a real consumer-facing mobile service player and wants it fast. One wonders whether Blodget would make the same recommendation now.

Senate GOP: FCC's net neutrality 'will limit the freedom of the Internet'

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 11:40pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Sen. Sam Brownback (R - Kansas) Using the strongest language to date in firing a shot across the bow against unchallenged regulation of the broadband access market, a group of 18 Senate Republicans led by Sam Brownback (R - Kan.) sent Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski a letter yesterday, signaling their intention to oppose any efforts by the FCC to create new restrictions on broadband Internet access suppliers, without clear case studies proving such restrictions are necessary.

"We fear that the proposals you announced during your September 21, 2009 speech will be counterproductive," wrote Brownback and his colleagues, "and risk harming the great advancements in broadband speed and deployment that we have witnessed in recent years, and will limit the freedom of the Internet." (PDF available here, from the Washington Post.)

Brownback's words appear to echo -- only with greater volume -- the case made by House Republicans in their own letter to the Chairman last week. The case that Republicans in Congress have been making since the installment of a new administration is that no commission should impose unilateral regulations on markets without clear proof that such regulations are necessary -- specifically, that players in those markets are acting unfairly, and that consumers are harmed in the process.

Last month, in a landmark speech, Chairman Genachowski proposed the addition of two "Freedoms" in the communications industry worth protecting, to the "Four Freedoms" originally proposed by former Chairman Michael Powell. The "Fifth Principle," as Genachowski called it, would prevent ISPs from utilizing content-based means to restrict consumers' access to Internet content, or conversely to clear the way for less restricted bandwidth to be made accessible for a premium to content providers. On principle, as it were, Republicans in Congress are opposed to the Fifth Principle because it would eliminate the incentives provided in legislation dating back to 2005, for the creation of a nationwide licensing program for broadband services, supplementing the municipal and statewide licenses that currently exist.

But there's another reason: By deferring the matter of mandating net neutrality to the FCC -- an agency of the executive branch of government -- Senate Democrats pave the way for communications industry matters to be fast-tracked to a committee where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 2. Despite the biggest Democratic majority in years in the Senate, filibusters are still feasible, at least in theory.

Yet even when filibusters can't overcome a 3-2 vote of the FCC, Senate Republicans may still have a hand to play, as Sen. Brownback directly implied, more than once. Broadband providers have been seen as siding with Republicans since before the net neutrality debate began. If Genachowski were to pass his Fifth and Sixth Principles without debate, Brownback intimated, certain faucets of investment might be turned down a few notches.

"Broadband service providers have invested billions of dollars in building and upgrading their networks to better serve their customers," the senators write. "However, burdensome regulations will have a chilling effect on further private sector investment, at a time when the US economy can least afford such an impact. It is because of significant competition among broadband service providers that consumers have more choices and are enjoying the best online experience that has ever been available...Market-based solutions and competition is working [sic]."

Among the other leading Senate Republicans signing Brownback's letter were Chuck Grassley (R - Iowa), former Presidential candidate John McCain (R - Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R - SC), Tom Coburn (R - Okla.), and Saxby Chambliss (R - Geo.)

After the FCC issued a ruling last February against Comcast, saying it was wrong for the leading cable ISP to throttle traffic based on BitTorrent-related sampling, it was Sen. Brownback who issued one of the strongest comments in opposition to the ruling: "There has been no market failure to justify the heavy-hand of so-called net neutrality," the senator said (emphasis ours), "and I do not believe the Commission has the authority to enforce principles as if they were adopted rules. The Bush Administration has made deregulation of the Internet and the telecommunications sector a priority; today's move was a giant step backward and may harm innovation and broadband deployment. Competitive markets, not the government, should decide which business model best suits the industry."

Verizon's Storm 2, hopefully with stronger gusts than Storm 1

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 9:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The BlackBerry Storm 2 (also known as "Odin," "9550," or "9520") has been the subject of passing rumors for the last six months. As the purported sequel to Research in Motion's first touchscreen BlackBerry, it looked as though the new device would improve upon the shortcomings of its predecessor without deviating from its familiar style. In other words, it would keep the same chassis shape and trademark "clickable touchscreen," but would give the device more consumer appeal by doing things they actually want, like adding Wi-Fi, improving the interface, and bringing the applications up to par with its competition.

Early leaked image of the RIM BlackBerry Storm 2

It's not that the original Storm was a slouch by most measurements. But since it was such a great departure from the traditional BlackBerry form factor, its reception among BlackBerry fans was mixed. I personally know four BlackBerry loyalists who bought a Storm and subsequently returned it, citing such reasons as, "It didn't feel right," and "It wasn't what I was expecting."

Six months ago, sources "familiar with the subject" predicted a September 29 launch; and last month there were predictions that the device would actually launch today, so prior reports have been pretty much voided. But there's been a recent blitz of information, which essentially guarantees that the device is about to arrive.

Last week, the customary pre-launch accessories began to show up at Best Buy, fan sites began posting pictures and videos (some more Canadian than others). Yesterday The New York Times said Verizon will be launching the Storm 2 in the US this week, and overseas reports suggest a mid-October launch. Vodafone Germany began listing the BlackBerry Storm 9550 on its Site this week, but the page has since been removed.

It's still not official, but all eyes are on Verizon for the new Storm to hit tonight, tomorrow, or Friday.

Not that Windows is any enclave of safety: Microsoft's biggest Patch Tuesday

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 9:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

A lot of the presentations at security (or perhaps more appropriately, "insecurity") conferences such as Black Hat are devoted to experiments or "dares" for hackers to break through some new version of digital security. After awhile, it gets to be like watching pre-schoolers daring one another to punch through ever-taller Lego walls. But in the midst of last July's briefings came at least one scientifically researched, carefully considered, and thoughtfully presented presentation: the result of a full-scale investigation by three engineers at a consultancy called Hustle Labs, demonstrating how the presumption of trust between browsers, their add-ons, and other code components can trigger the types of software failures that can become exploitable by malicious code.

Engineers Mark Dowd, Ryan Smith, and David Dewey are being credited today with shedding light on a coding practice by developers that leaves the door open for browser crashes. The discovery of specific instances where such a practice could easily become exploitable is the focus of the most critical of Microsoft's regular second-Tuesday-of-the-month patches -- arguably the biggest of 13 bulletins addressing a record 34 fixes.

Among today's fixes is one that specifically addresses a relatively new class of Web apps that use XAML, Microsoft's XML-based front-end layout language, instead of HTML for presenting the user with controls. The class of apps is currently being called XAML Browser Application, or XBAP (perhaps Microsoft should have it shut off just for the lousy acronym). Simply browsing to a maliciously crafted XBAP application could create an attack vector, says one of Microsoft's bulletins published this morning.

But that isn't actually the problem, but the symptom of a very serious problem uncovered by the Hustle Labs trio -- one that may generate several more security fixes in coming months. At the root of the problem is the fact that browser plug-ins and components external to browsers -- for instance, the components that tie browsers to the .NET Framework in order to run XBAP apps -- are given higher levels of trust than the browser itself. These days, trust levels are turned down on the browser to disable most any chance of a simple JavaScript deleting elements of the user's file system without authorization; but plug-ins are often given a medium level of trust simply because they must be interoperable with a component (the Web browser) that is outside of its own context.

So when a plug-in creates references to new components, a principle called transitive trust mandates that this medium-level trust be transferred to the new component. And when that new component is an instance of an ActiveX object, that new level of trust may mean that if the object causes an exception, the mess it leaves behind could have just enough privilege attributed to it to execute malicious code.

The mess itself, the Hustle Labs researchers illustrated last July at Black Hat (PDF available here), can be caused by a tricky data type that has raised my eyebrows since the early '90s when I witnessed its first demonstrations: It's the variant type, created to represent data that may be passed as a parameter between procedures or components, whose type may be unspecific or even unknown. The way Microsoft represents variants in memory is by pairing their type with their value as a single unit, and that type is actually a pointer to a structure. That structure may be a primary type, but most often in the case of COM components (known to Web users as ActiveX components), it's a complex object comprised of multiple data elements, assembled together like records in a database, often whose types may include other variants.

The problem with using variants, as Microsoft learned the hard way (more than once), is that when you're trying to secure the interfaces between components, the absence of explicit types makes it difficult to ensure that they're behaving within the rules. But as the researchers discovered, it's the security code itself -- what they call marshaling code, resurrecting language from COM's heyday -- that can actually cause a serious problem, a mess that leaves behind opportunities for exploitation.

"The most obvious mistake a control can make with regard to object retention is to neglect to add to the reference count of a COM object that it intends to retain," the trio writes. A reference count helps a control to maintain a handle to the object it's instantiated. But marshaling code, in an effort to provide security to the system, will also amend the reference count; and when it thinks the control is done with the object, it will decrement that count in turn. So if the control had any other plans for the object, it has to add its own reference count to the same object.

To make a (very) long story short, there often ends up being more pointers to the object than there are objects. And with medium-level privilege, those pointers can theoretically be exploited.

The case-in-point involves those nasty variants. Adding references to objects in memory often involves copying the objects themselves; and in the case of variants, there's a special function for that. But to know to use that special function, marshaling code would have to be aware that the objects being copied and re-referenced are variants; so instead, they resort to the tried-and-true memcpy() library function. That function is capable of copying the complex object, but in such a "shallow" way that it doesn't give a whit about whether the contents of the complex object are complex objects in themselves -- and since memcpy() predates COM by a few decades, it doesn't increment the reference count for new instances of included objects that are created in the process. A pointer to the new object exists, of course, but not the reference that COM requires.

So an ordinary memory cleanup routine could clean up the contents of the duplicated contained object, even though a component has designs on using that object later. As the group writes, "If the variant contains any sort of complex object, such as an IDispatch [a common COM object], a pointer to the object will be duplicated and utilized without adding an additional reference to the object. If the result of this duplicated variant is retained, the object being pointed to could be deleted, if every other instance of that object is released."

There are a multitude of similar examples in this research paper of essentially the same principle in action: a principle that points to a fundamental flaw in the way COM objects have been secured up to now. The Hustle Labs team takes Microsoft to task only at one point in the paper, and quite gently, for implementing Patch Tuesday fixes that tend to resort to using "killbits" in the Registry for turning off COM components and ActiveX controls impacted by this kind of vulnerability, instead of reworking the marshaling code to address the problem at a fundamental level.

So today's round of Patch Tuesday releases may go into more detail than just resorting to killbits -- in a few situations this week, new patches actually go into further depth at patching problems that were said to have been patched already, including with the GDI+ library. But it's an indication that independent researchers with conscientious goals are truly getting through.

Wi-Fi Direct aims to be the 'Bluetooth Killer'

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 6:29pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Imagine a wireless home network where devices communicate directly with one another instead of through the wireless router -- a sort of mesh network without the need to switch to ad hoc mode. Today the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it has almost completed the standard which could make these a reality: Wi-Fi Direct.

Wi-Fi Direct was known as "Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer," and has repeatedly been referred to in IEEE meetings as a possible "Bluetooth Killer." By means of this standard, direct connections between computers, phones, cameras, printers, keyboards, and future classes of components are established over Wi-Fi instead of another wireless technology governed by a separate standard.

Even though the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands are often dreadfully overcrowded in home networks, the appeal of such a standard is twofold: Any certified Wi-Fi Direct device will be able to communicate directly with any legacy Wi-Fi devices without the need for any new software on the legacy end, and transfer rates will be the same as infrastructure connections, thoroughly destroying Bluetooth. The theoretical maximum useful data transfer for Bluetooth 2.0 is 2.1 Mbps, while 802.11g has a theoretical maximum throughput of 54 Mbps.

"Wi-Fi Direct represents a leap forward for our industry. Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn't available. The impact is that Wi-Fi will become even more pervasive and useful for consumers and across the enterprise," Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa said in a statement today.

Intel's plan to bring back the PC market

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 6:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

When the worst part of the Economic Storm of 2008 was about to hit, Intel made preparations by moving its emphasis toward Atom, its lowest-end processor for netbooks and embedded devices -- at the time, a single-core unit. Sure, it would drive average selling prices (ASPs) down several points, but it would provide the sales volume necessary to keep Intel in the game, so all hands were bracing themselves against Atom for support.

The biggest sign to date that the storm has officially passed came from Intel's quarterly call exactly one year later. Mention of Atom, the lifeline of the company through the worst of it, was minimized. And we're back to talking about Nehalem, the company's current power-saving architecture, and the move from 45 nm to 32 nm lithography. At least in the skies above Santa Clara, the all-clear has sounded.

During Intel's quarterly conference call to financial analysts yesterday (our thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript), we heard the high, resonant sound of that all-clear siren, in the form of a strong and comfortable 57.6% gross margin -- almost one point higher than forecast by the company last year, seven points better than in Q2 2009, and just one point lower than the company was facing before the bad economy hit full-force.

We also heard some evidence of how Intel plans to move forward from here, based on estimates that the general PC market has grown back from its pitfalls in Q1 2009, to just about flat if not slightly better. Essentially, it works like this: Usually, chipsets are a no-gainer business for Intel -- in fact, analysts used to complain during the years when Intel thought it could rely on chipsets as a growth market in itself. Now, with the chipset market having shaken out somewhat, there's more of an expectation that CPU makers AMD and Intel will contribute more to that end of the market, in order to better define the platform.

So Intel has seeded the market in the previous quarter with chipsets, knowing that as OEMs build more motherboards and notebook PCs that utilize those chipsets, demand will be seeded for the CPUs on which these chipsets rely. It's the reverse of the 2005 strategy (that didn't always work), which boiled down to, "If you like the CPU, you'll love the chipset that's made for it."

Here's how Intel CFO Stacy Smith described it to a Merrill Lynch analyst: "Remember the way the supply chain works -- and we think the supply chain is looking pretty normal right now -- if they put some chipset inventory in place in the third quarter, and then they couple it with a CPU in the fourth quarter, [that will] probably [result in] a little richer mix to CPUs in the fourth."

CEO Paul Otellini did mention Intel's shift toward more "systems-on-a-chip," but that refers more to the embedded side of the business. That's where Atom still rules, but Atom was not the star of the day today by any means. The shift in the "product mix" is now clearly toward notebooks and away from desktops, just like it was before, though the netbook form factor was given thanks for helping Intel hang on.

Here's how Otellini passed the torch back to the old generation, from his opening remarks: "Our mobile business had a particularly strong quarter -- in fact, we saw the sequential unit growth rate of notebook processors and chipsets actually exceed the growth rate of Atom processors and chipsets. While Atom and netbooks are important growth drivers for us, our traditional notebook business remains one of the primary drivers of revenue growth, and we expect that to continue in the future."

You don't need chipsets to drive Atom -- that's what system-on-a-chip architecture is all about. Atom already is a platform. As the traditional end of the market resumes its shift to notebooks -- perhaps on fast-forward, compared to the speed that CPU makers anticipated back in 2007 -- Intel is looking to build a complete platform, where the platform drives demand for Nehalem and future 32 nm architectures rather than the other way around, "allowing us to expand margins in a difficult economic environment," remarked Otellini.

It was a leaner Q3 for 2009 than for 2008, but Intel successfully scaled down its operating expenditures to match: its margins year-over-year are a little higher than flat, when Atom's success could have easily driven them into the toilet. The company earned $1.9 billion after expenses last quarter, on $9.4 billion of revenue. For the next quarter, the company gave more direct guidance than we'd seen in recent quarters, expecting as much as 62% gross margins on revenue of about $10.1 billion -- great returns on what probably will not be record sales.

Acer rings in year 2 of Android with a Snapdragon-based device

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 5:15pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Acer today took the lid off of its first Android-based smartphone, the Liquid, formerly shown off as the "A1." In addition to being the top computer manufacturer's first Android smartphone, it's also the first Android phone based on the 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.

Acer Liquid Android smartphone

It's not the first Snapdragon phone altogether -- that honor went to the Windows Mobile-based Toshiba TG01 earlier this year -- but the Liquid will become be the most powerful Android handset available. Sony Ericsson is rumored to also be working on a Snapdragon-based Android phone with a UI known as "Rachael," and HTC is reportedly working on the "Dragon," but neither company has officially debuted a product as Acer has today.

The majority of the half dozen or so Android handsets available worldwide run at 528 MHz; but as the software platform approaches the beginning of its second year in commercial availability, companies are beginning to step up its processing power. November more or less marks the beginning of the "Android year," so Sprint will be breaking out the 800 MHz Samsung Moment on the first of the month.

Acer however, did not announce when the Liquid will be made commercially available. Today's announcement was made in the UK, so that will presumably be the first market to receive the new Acer Liquid.

The specs for the Liquid have yet to be released, but the Snapdragon chipset specs are no mystery: 1 GHz CPU; 600 MHz DSP; 3D graphics support (up to 22 million triangles per second and 133 million 3D pixels per second); 1280 x 720 HD video support; integrated 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth; built-in gpsOne engine; support for cameras up to 12 megapixel; and mobile broadcast TV support.

Though Snapdragon is capable of 720p HD, the Liquid's resolution is only WVGA (800 x 480). Additionally, Acer says the device will come with "a new user interface with easy access to entertainment and Web bookmarks," so expect yet another manufacturer-specific Android UI like HTC's Sense and Samsung's TouchWIZ.

Similar to the way T-Mobile packaged Geodelic's Sherpa exclusively with the MyTouch3G, Acer will package a Spinlets app exclusively with Liquid. Spinlets is a relatively new media company which has partnerships with Sony BMG, CBS Interactive, Grab Networks, and Vio Mobile to provide free streaming music and video content.

First public Opera 10.1 beta competes against its predecessor for performance

Publié: octobre 14, 2009, 12:18am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Opera 10.1 Beta 1 for Windows from Fileforum now.

At a time when performance and speed are more important to browser users than ever before, and when Web apps users need the best platform available, suddenly it's Opera Software that is having the most difficult time delivering. While Opera 10's "Turbo Mode" is intended to leverage the company's pre-rendering capabilities originally designed for the Opera Mini mobile browser, none of that matters with respect to raw JavaScript performance; and these days, Web browsers are essentially JavaScript engines with some markup on the side.

Today, the first builds of Opera 10.1 that officially bear the "Beta 1" label were released to the company's servers. Betanews tests on this latest build were not very promising, as its overall CRPI score outperforms that of the latest stable Opera 10 by less than one percentage point. In fact, scores for the first public beta fell in Vista actually fell below those of the latest stable Opera 10 by about 7%.

Opera 10 Beta 1 scores a CRPI of 6.35, which compares to a 6.30 score for the stable Opera 10 (which we retested in Vista), and a 6.56 score for the last Beta 1 preview build we tested last week.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 13, 2009

Click here for a complete introduction to the Betanews Comprehensive Performance Index.

On both newer Windows platforms (Vista and Windows 7), Opera 10 Beta 1 tended to post slower rendering times than the stable version, with the exception being a slightly faster rendering score in XP (6.17 for Beta 1 versus 6.11 for Opera 10). On Vista, for some reason, the differences in the CSS rendering test are far more pronounced, in tests we repeated just to validate the results (6.46 in Beta 1 versus 8.81 in Opera 10, and yes, O10 is faster at rendering on Vista than XP).

And even in the CSS selectors test, where the previous beta preview builds had shown some nice gains, performance fell flat or below, with scores in XP and Windows 7 for Beta 1 falling below those for the stable build. The differences are not severe, though multiple browser users who have been spoiled in recent days by the hurdle-jumping contest between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome may be disappointed by Opera essentially bringing up the rear.

FOR THE LATEST COMPLETE CRPI SCORES:

Expect 22.8% performance boost from next week's Firefox 3.6 beta by Scott Fulton

Mac fanboys should get a life and some Windows 7 common sense

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 10:53pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

I have to laugh at the sudden, slew of Mac bloggers taking swings at Windows 7 and asserting that Macs will continue to sell well after Microsoft's newest OS ships. Feeling a little defensive are we, bros? Their reaction shows worry that the thing they profess against -- surging PC sales that swamp Macs -- may yet be reality.

Windows 7 is simply Microsoft's best operating system ever. Mac fanboys should worry and circle together in defensive posture. Collectively, they're making a last stand against the PC giant. Please, please, boisterous Mac defenders, stand in the front lines and receive the first blows. You deserve them.

Mac market share actually means little to Microsoft, although it sure matters lots to Mac bloggers thumping for Apple. The little dog barks, but the big dog -- with its enormous market share -- has the bite. Windows 7 is a new set of teeth. (I'll explain what competitors really matter to Microsoft after the subhead.)

The Apple fanboy crowd snipes against Windows 7 and stresses the over-importance of all things Mac. Some of the assertions about Macs or Windows 7 sales are laughable, they're so ridiculous. For example, today, Apple 2.0 blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt asked: "Will Windows 7 boost Apple sales?" Philip writes that "over the past decade, Mac shipments have grown with nearly every new Microsoft release," based on research released by Broadpoint AmTech yesterday.

That's not what the data shows. The biggest increase in Mac sales follows the release of the much-maligned Windows Vista. The data supports what is widely known: Vista was a Windows failure. As for the other spikes, supposedly associated with Windows releases, Occam's Razor dictates that something Apple did and not Microsoft affected Mac sales. For example, the chart shows a huge spike in Mac sales for second quarter 2000, noting that Microsoft released Windows 2000 on February 17. But it ignores something else. A day earlier, Apple unveiled new Power Macs, finally reaching the long-delayed 500MHz processing power milestone and setting off a sales surge.

Another date: Oct. 25, 2001, and the launch of Windows XP. The chart shows level Mac sales for the quarter and a substantial decline for the one following. In July 2001, Apple introduced dual-processor Power Macs, and accordingly there was a two quarter spike in Mac shipments. Philip asks a silly question, and the chart is more reasonably explained by Apple actions, not Microsoft's.

BroadPoint AmTech on Macs

Over at Apple Insider, Neil Hughes continues the Broadpoint AmTech misinformation, also referring to Philip's post. Several other blogs or news sites also reported on Broadpoint AmTech numbers, some of them yesterday.

Mac fanboys have also attacked verteran tech reviewer Walt Mossberg's fairly favorable review of Windows 7. Perhaps they feel betrayed, as Walt has favored Macs for years -- and for good reasons in the post-Vista era. But go back a decade and you'll find Walt to have been less charitable towards Apple.

Assessing the Real Competition

Microsoft's competitive problems aren't Macs but:

Windows XP
Software pirates
Netbooks

Windows XP. Windows 7's biggest competitor will be Windows XP, which runs on about 80 percent of PCs, according to combined analyst reports. Microsoft's first challenge will be getting XP users to move up to Windows 7. Mac market share was 7.6 percent in the United States in second quarter, according to IDC. (Gartner and IDC should release Q3 preliminary numbers in the next couple of days.)

Mac share is inconsequential to Microsoft compared to Windows XP. My prediction: Windows 7 will slow Mac share gains, which already declined over the last three quarters, according to both Gartner and IDC.

Software pirates. Collectively, software pirates pose the greatest competitive threat to Microsoft, next to Windows XP. Not Macs. Certainly not PCs running Linux. According to Business Software Alliance, software piracy rates are highest in emerging markets, which also are where potential Windows PC adoption is greatest: 85 percent in Latin America, 66 percent in Central and Eastern Europe and 61 percent in Asia Pacific. By comparison, piracy rate in North Americs is 21 percent and 35 percent in the European Union. So in Latin America, more than 8 out of 10 copies of software in use are stolen.

Here's a loaded question: How many people among the Betanews community use software for which they didn't pay for, even though the developer charges something? Anyone care to respond in comments? Maybe this is easier: What do you feel you should have to pay for software?

More significantly, software piracy creates competitive opportunities for Macs, because of the damage done to the Windows brand. In a report released last week, BSA revealed a direct correlation between online software piracy at torrents and other file-trading sites and malware infections. Countries with high online piracy rates also have high malware infection rates. Related, 25 percent of a sampling of 98 sites distributing pirated software or digital content also contained malware. Where does the blame fall when PCs are infected with viruses? On Microsoft and Windows, which tarnishes the brand and helps foster popular folklore that Macs are more secure than Windows. Macs have problems, too, but they're not always as well publicized.

Netbooks. Microsoft also faces more competitive threat from netbooks, which are gobbling up Windows margins at an alarming rate. Microsoft makes substantially less on each Windows XP Home license shipping on netbooks than it does on either Windows Vista Home Basic or Premium.

During second calendar quarter, when Windows Client revenue fell 29 percent year over year and income declined 33 percent, netbooks made up 11 percent of PC sales, according to Microsoft. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell acknowledged that the increase in lower-margin consumer Windows licenses -- fed in part by increasing netbook demand -- contributed to declines.

Last week, DisplaySearch updated second calendar quarter PC shipment data. DisplaySearch concluded that netbooks accounted for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales and 11.7 percent of revenues. Netbook sales jumped a staggering 264 percent year over year, while overall laptop sales (without counting netbooks) declined 14 percent.

Meanwhile, increased netbook sales exerted ever greater pull downward on average selling prices. Laptop ASPs fell to $688 in second quarter from $704 in first quarter and $849 in Q2 2008. Netbook prices fell to $361 from $371 and $506, respectively, during the same time period. Microsoft has lots more to worry about than Macs, particularly netbook cannibalization of the PC market and the negative impact on Windows margins.

Swedish ISP wins appeal in biggest test to date of EU anti-piracy law

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 9:54pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Last March, the European Commission voted to enact a continent-wide law compelling member countries to take bolder steps to enforce their own copyright infringement laws. One of the more controversial provisions of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) has been to allow rights holders to petition member states' governments to act on their behalf. That provision has emboldened some rights holders and associations to act as evidence gatherers; and in Sweden, their right to do so was put to the test.

A group representing five publishers of audiobooks in Sweden were judged to be entitled to the identity of a single file-sharer. In a June decision, a district court in Solna ordered ISP ePhone to turn over the name of the file-sharer. It refused, and was forced in September to pay a fine of 750,000 kronor (about $107,400), one-tenth of which was to go to the publishers.

While the publishers did not have the complete identity of the unauthorized file-sharer, they knew that he/she existed. Acting under what they had described as the authority granted them by IPRED, someone representing the association hacked into ePhone's records to obtain the single IP address to which the unauthorized downloads were associated, according to ePhone. The district court ruled that the association had "probable cause" to investigate ePhone's records in the manner it did, applying language that's usually reserved for federally sanctioned investigative bodies.

The 750,000 SEK fine was of some concern to ISPs throughout the country because of the precedent it might set: In keeping with a separate EC privacy directive, ISPs had been destroying their retained data on users and their online destinations after six months, if not sooner. The ruling of the Solna court appeared to threaten those same ISPs with sizable fines for...well, there's no other way of saying this...permanently destroying such data in such a way that it could not be un-destroyed.

But in a 2-2 decision yesterday whose split was decided by the presiding judge, the Svea Court of Appeal -- as reported by Sweden's English-language daily The Local -- overturned the Solna court's decision, saying no such probable cause existed. As it turned out, since the audiobooks in question were only accessible through a private login, the association had no basis for arguing that its products were widely available "to the public," the presiding judge ruled.

The Local quotes ePhone CEO Bo Wigstrand as saying after the trial's conclusion, "After all that's been written that we should have released the information, it actually feels really nice that the court has ended up agreeing with what we've said the whole time: that the evidence wasn't good enough." Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the association expressed shame for the appeals court's decision, saying it "really complicates" its ongoing investigations.

Typo blamed for country-wide Web site blackout in Sweden

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 9:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

If the script that updates your DNS records for a zone leaves off the trailing period for each record, the DNS server can't properly attach the top-level domain name. That little tip is probably permanently etched onto the head of an administrator somewhere at Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation. Late yesterday evening, that single omitted period caused Web sites with Sweden's .se TLD to be inaccessible for at least one hour, with some perhaps remaining inaccessible until the following evening before downstream routers refresh their caches.

A security bulletin issued by the Foundation this morning advises administrators noticing difficulties with accessing .se sites to use BIND 9.2.0's rndc flush command to clear memory of cached data prior to a reload. The firm issued a new zone file shortly after the incident, although it admitted it refrained from going through the usual security steps to clear the zone file since .se sites remained inaccessible. A new, fully cleared zone file has since been issued.

Some ISPs, a spokesperson for the .SE foundation told Sweden's English-language daily The Local, may take two days or longer to fix the issue on their sides of the Internet. Larger ISPs such as TeliaSonera and Bredbandsbolaget report having already instituted the fix.

Evidently the problem did not impact copyright violation powerhouse The Pirate Bay, whose .se domain name defaults to its principal Web site with a .org TLD.

Why is John Hodgman smiling? Data loss isn't the only Snow Leopard problem

Publié: octobre 13, 2009, 6:04pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

If Snow Leopard, the latest version of the Mac operating system released late last August, were seriously plagued with bugs, writes a volunteer contributor to Apple's discussion forum, the company would be besieged with complaints. But that may very well be the problem, as evidenced by this screenshot from a Snow Leopard user who attempted to formally report his problem to Apple through his operating system, and was met with this message: "An error has occurred. Please report the error to Apple Inc. by emailing the error detail to devbugs@apple.com."

As the user reported on Apple's forum, "I'd laugh if I wasn't in an apoplectic rage."

Apple has reportedly acknowledged the existence of a critical data loss error affecting numerous Snow Leopard users, although the company actually has yet to release a complete statement on the issue. As a result, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has resorted to taking a reader poll, asking readers when they believe Apple can fully resolve this issue for release 10.6.2 (developer builds for which are now being distributed). About a quarter of TUAW's readers are confident Apple can roll things up by the week of October 26.

As this situation continues to develop, there is now one big issue and at least three subsidiary issues that branch from it. The main problem concerns the apparent fact that Snow Leopard is deleting the wrong data when exiting a Guest account.

In Mac OS X, the Guest account was devised as a convenient way for a non-authorized user to be able to use the computer with limited privileges, in such a way that no permanent changes or extra files remain when the user logs off. But since Snow Leopard's release, a growing number of users are discovering that the system is deleting the wrong account: Their main user accounts are missing, along with most of the data stored under those accounts.

Why this problem was not discovered during testing (assuming testing even occurred) is baffling. In the absence of raw data from Apple to help users resolve or avoid the issue, once again, Mac users are left with independent sources and volunteer contributors to Apple's forums to help them out.

Based on what those folks have been able to compile, here is what we've been able to assemble thus far: The problem seems to be concentrated among users who have upgraded to version 10.6.1 from earlier versions. The theory there is that the format of the existing Guest account may not have been upgraded to conform to the new version of the operating system.

Mac users who upgraded to version 10.5 Leopard once before noticed something unusual in the same category, but not as destructive: After upgrading, their main accounts' home directories appeared to be missing. It turns out that they were only moved to a temporary location, and that the upgrade process for some neglected to relocate contents from the /home-preserved directory that Leopard created and the new /home directory. It took a little prestidigitation for users to resolve that problem, but in that case, data was not lost.

But the existence of the problem itself suggests that Apple is changing the structure of user accounts with new releases (which is a likely reason why Leopard would have been relocating user's files in the first place). Theoretically, code that was designed from the ground up to handle a new account structure may be disrupting the old one, in situations where the upgrade process to Snow Leopard failed to make the appropriate change -- as appears to be the case with the Guest account.

The three subsidiary issues arising in the wake of the Guest account problem are, in and of themselves, quite serious, though in terms of possible damage they pale by comparison. First, users who are genuinely trying to restore their data using Time Machine, Apple's built-in backup utility, are discovering it didn't back up their complete contents. According to one Web developer's report, Web pages associated with users' accounts do not appear to have been restored, and were probably not backed up to begin with.

A second issue that's probably unrelated technically is being given extra weight with regard to Snow Leopard's other problems: Users of the Mac's Airport wireless devices are reporting continually dropped connections only since having upgraded to Snow Leopard. Several volunteers have suggested any number of solutions including upgrading router firmware and changing the format of security keys to something stronger, but no solution seems permanent.

What may relate this issue to the bigger issue of account deletion, if anything, is this one common thread: Folks who believe their solution is fixed (their Airport stops dropping connections) only come to discover the problem un-fixes itself after their machine is powered down or hibernated. As one afflicted Mac user writes, "Something tells me that Airport just isn't meant to be cycled off and on numerous times a day to reestablish a connection."

Another potentially common thread has to do with external hard drives, many of which are connected using Airport. Many Snow Leopard upgraders are reporting they cannot launch their Finder application for these drives -- specifically, they're receiving a message that reads, "The application Finder.app can't be opened - 10810."

Some users report being able to reconnect to their external drives and launch Finder, but only after uninstalling whatever drive they're using for their continual Time Machine backup. And once again, in cases where users appear to have found solutions, their fixes mysteriously disappear after having powered down or hibernated their systems. "Now have the choice of no Finder or no backup," writes one user. "We need an answer from Apple."

As with other cases in the past, we're seeing some independent contributors to Apple's forums who respond to complaints by coming to Apple's rescue. For example, some contributors have now taken to responding to demands that Apple issue a solution to the Guest account debacle by citing Apple's EULA, specifically the section headed, "9. Limitation of Liability."

That's the section that states that by using the Mac in the first place, you agree that Apple cannot possibly harm you with serious intent. The section reads, in part, "In no event shall Apple's total liability to you for all damages (other than as may be required by applicable law in cases involving personal injury) exceed the amount of fifty dollars ($50.00). The foregoing limitations will apply even if the above stated remedy fails of its essential purpose."

One can imagine Justin Long seated behind a desk in front of a queue full of complaining users, and passing out fifties.

But throughout the Apple forums, perhaps for the first time, there appears to be a split in the ranks, where not everyone is rushing to the company's defense as if it's the one being damaged. One user bit by both the Guest account and Time Machine problem reported she had grown so comfortable with the idea of just having a Mac that she never really thought she'd have to learn about using it to the extent she has in the past few weeks.

And another user, in exasperation after being bitten by "Error 10810" for the last time, simply shouted, "This is Mac for God's sake!"

Danger signs: Now how secure does the cloud look?

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 11:57pm CEST par Carmi Levy

There are service outages, and then there are service outages. T-Mobile customers who carry the Sidekick smartphone are learning the hard way that there's a major difference between having no access to a service for a little while and losing every contact, calendar entry, and related shred of personal data they've got.

In the not too distant past, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all experienced basic, quaintly simple service outages. Despite the headlines and general chaos associated with each incident, the bottom line impact was never all that onerous: When service returned, so did their users' data. For the most part, users were given an easy excuse to take a few hours off. And with the exception of Google's subscription services, most were free, so folks couldn't argue that they weren't getting their money's worth.

More than a free service

Microsoft's experience isn't turning out as charmed, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of the folks behind its 2008 purchase of Sidekick maker Danger might be rethinking the $500 million deal in the wake of last week's worse-than-usual outage. When service was restored and countless users (Microsoft and T-Mobile still aren't fessing up to actual numbers) realized their devices had been wiped clean, Microsoft was forced to release an unprecedented mea culpa admitting data had been lost and would in all likelihood not be recovered. More embarrassing for the companies involved, Microsoft implored users to keep their batteries in place and avoid resetting their devices or allowing them to lose power.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) However you slice it, this is not a happy place for anyone. While it's easy to assume Microsoft's and T-Mobile's customers are the real victims here, the sad truth is these very clients shoulder at least part of the blame for losing their stuff. It may sound harsh, but users who rely so heavily on a vendor that they neglect to implement their own disaster recovery plan shouldn't complain too loudly when said vendor drops the ball. Although in this case Microsoft and T-Mobile were accountable for the service itself, data ownership always resides with the customer. While the peculiarities of the Sidekick dictate that much of the data resides in the cloud, end users remain ultimately accountable for their information.

Sadly, many of them are learning a hard lesson about the value of local syncing. Whatever mobile device or OS you're using, this should be a wakeup call if you're not doing the same.

A cloudy question

This debacle doesn't just force this particular service into question. More ominously, it challenges the very notion of cloud-based services at a time when their takeup rate is accelerating. The fundamental trust that we have in such services -- that a provider that specializes in large-scale deployments like this could absolutely never lose our precious data -- has been thrown into question. Suddenly, keeping things stored on our rickety old hard drives, or at least backing them up there, may not seem like such a bad idea. Any way you slice it, it's a backward step in the march toward the cloud.

To its credit, Microsoft is doing everything it can to make the best of an unfortunate situation. It's apologized for losing customer information, it's scrambling to recover what it can, and it's offering up a free month of data service. While customers who have lost it all may disagree, this is a textbook response to this kind of situation. And as the vendors involved strive to save whatever face they can, it's fair for current and prospective customers to feel burned by a service whose monthly subscription fees implied a certain trust relationship. More than a free service like Twitter, which when it inevitably goes dark users can simply shrug their shoulders in response because they're simply getting what they've paid for (namely, nothing), a service like T-Mobile's that comes with a monthly bill can't simply rely on shoulder-shrugging users when the worst happens.

Thunder cloud (Photo credit: Carmi Levy)

[Original photograph by Carmi Levy]

A case of bad timing

All this must weight heavily on Microsoft as it prepares to release its core cloud-based environment, Windows Azure Platform. While Microsoft was hardly involved in the architecture decisions made years before it acquired the Danger unit, the brand association is anything but positive as Microsoft takes its biggest step yet toward a Web-enabled services model. Convincing customers still comfortable with the notion of physical servers in tangible data centers that they should toss their data into infrastructure owned and managed by some unseen entity just got a lot harder.

Google, Salesforce.com, and other cloud-based vendors -- free or not -- are doubtless also feeling Microsoft's pain, because they all know full well that this kind of thing can happen to them, too. The industry clearly has a long road ahead of it as it seeks to balance the compelling capital and operational advantages of Web services with the never-ending need for customers to take an active role in securing their data.

That road will be difficult indeed if vendors ignore the need for this form of partnership. Despite their passion for making their new generation of Web-based services as worry-free as they possibly can, no amount of technology can ever remove the need for personal and corporate accountability from the equation. Vendors that market themselves as the answer for customers who can't be bothered to pay attention to their own data need a not-so-slight attitude adjustment.

For their part, customers also need to begin challenging cloud-based services vendors with specific questions revolving around how data is secured, backed up, and restored. Before signing on the dotted line, they should ask about what tools and processes the vendor makes available for customers to self-serve their own backups. Even if it's as simple as a basic export to a .CSV file, with the right support from their vendors, customers can set up automated processes that ensure they can keep going even if the service itself does not.

Vendors that don't help customers help themselves will be quickly eclipsed by those that do. And when the worst happens and a vendor-caused meltdown takes data with it, customers that don't step up to the plate will have no one to blame but themselves. Welcome to the new reality of the cloud.

Yet another case for backing up your data: Snow Leopard

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 11:50pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard box Apparently not only are Sidekick users losing their personal data. Now, in a separate incident, Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) users are also finding their data fully wiped.

The bug was actually discovered within a week of Snow Leopard's launch back in August, when users found that logging out of their account, into a "guest" account, and then back into their personal account would completely erase the content from their home drive (Documents, Movies, Pictures, Music, Sites).

Though the bug is now more than a month old, it's still claiming victims, as Apple's support forums show. However, Apple has yet to acknowledge the issue and the aforesaid conditions do not faithfully reproduce the bug.

The issue is thought to only affect users who had active guest accounts in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), and the only workaround currently is to disable guest login altogether.

Users who have succumbed to the bug are likely to permanently lose their data unless they have performed a backup, so users who have guest accounts and upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard are advised to back up their data immediately. Users with Time Machine running simply need to hold down the "C" key when booting their Mac, and then selecting Utilities > Restore from Backup in the event that this bug eliminates their data.

No, Windows 7 isn't slower than Vista, even at booting up

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 11:31pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Test Results

The manufacturer of a Windows maintenance toolkit featured on our Fileforum told CNET's Ina Fried last week that it believes boot times for Windows 7 are typically slower than boot times for Windows Vista. Iolo Technologies told Fried that it gauged the amount of time required for the CPU to reach a "true idle state."

As many veteran Windows users already know, the operating system doesn't actually boot to an "idle state" -- it's not DOS. Since that time, Iolo has been characterizing the time it stops its stopwatch as the time that the CPU is "fully usable," which seems rather nebulous.

The discussion over whether this means Win7 is slower was declared moot today by TG Daily's Andrew Thomas, who wrote, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I put it to you that there are no occasions when the boot time of a PC is important in any way whatsoever."

Unfortunately, there is one situation where the boot time of a PC is important: It affects the public's perception of whether the PC is actually faster, and thus better. And as we have seen with Vista, an operating system that was by all scientific measures much more secure than Windows XP, the perception that it was less secure -- by virtue of its highly sensitive behavior -- was as bad, if not worse, from the public vantage point as being insecure to begin with.

The public at large typically perceives the boot sequence of a computer as the period of time between startup and the first moment they're asked to log in. Betanews tested that interval this afternoon using an external stopwatch, and our triple-boot test system: an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600-based computer using a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, an Nvidia 8600 GTS-series video card, 3 GB of DDR2 DRAM, and a 640 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive. Both Vista and Win7 partitions are located on this same drive.

The interval we tested is between the pressing of Enter at the multi-boot selection screen, and the moment the login screen appears. While the tools I used for timing were an ordinary digital stopwatch and my eyeballs, I will gladly let everyone know that I use these same tools to test qualifications at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and my measurements vary from those at the Timing & Scoring booth usually by about 0.05 seconds.

In tests of what I'll call the "perceived boot interval" on the same machine, Windows 7 posted a five-boot average time of 24.214 seconds. Windows Vista, booting from the exact same machine and the exact same disk (just a different partition) posted an average of 36.262 seconds -- just about 50% slower. Exactly how much time is required for a Windows-based system to start idling down and doing relatively nothing -- the "fully usable" state that Iolo is looking for -- typically varies wildly depending on what drivers are installed, and what startup applications may be running. On a well-utilized XP-based system (and we have a truckload of those), that time may officially be never.

However, it's worth noting that in a separate test conducted by ChannelWeb's Samara Lynn this afternoon, she discovered that boot times for a system running Windows 7 with Iolo's System Mechanic software installed were typically slower than for the same system with System Mechanic not installed. This may be because System Mechanic was authored with Vista in mind -- which could explain a lot of things about Iolo's own evaluation.

Levinson quits Google's board, stays with Apple, amid FTC scrutiny

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 9:59pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Apple and Google Director Arthur Levinson With the on-again/off-again relationship between the US Federal Trade Commission and antitrust enforcement clearly coming on again with the rise of the Obama Administration -- and the appointment of former FTC Commissioner Christine Varney at DOJ Antitrust -- it may no longer be acceptable among technology company directors to leverage their status with one company to influence another. Genentech Chairman Arthur Levinson's involvement as a lead director with both Google and Apple had never raised eyebrows until this year, when newly appointed regulators sought to eliminate the perception of possible collusion between technology companies.

That perception might have been obvious with regard to Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO who left Apple's board of directors last August. But for the career genetic scientist and molecular biologist whose company produced neither MP3 players nor search engines, his involvement was at one time seen as a way of sharing his life experience with multiple companies that could become partners.

In the modern realm of technology, appearances are often worse than the real thing. This morning, Levinson stepped down from his directorship post at Google, in an amicable parting that just last week Schmidt, in an interview with Reuters, pleaded was unnecessary, given Levinson's particular realm of expertise.

An FTC investigation into the relationship between the two companies was ongoing up until today. Though it has not officially called off the investigation, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz issued this statement today: "Google, Apple, and Mr. Levinson should be commended for recognizing that overlapping board members between competing companies raise serious antitrust issues and for their willingness to resolve our concerns without the need for litigation."

Apple and Google had actually not overlapped much until last year, when the latter company entered the Web browser wars with a very competitive entry, Chrome. Later, Google announced its intention to build that software into an operating system, at first primarily for netbooks; presently, Apple does not produce a netbook, and has professed skepticism at the validity of the form factor.

While some analysts were saying Levinson's exit from Google just about wraps it up for the ties that appear to bind, they evidently had forgotten about one more prominent advisor who continues to have ties to both: Former US Vice President Al Gore has served on Apple's board of directors since March 2003, and helped guide that company through its accounting scandal, which many have already forgotten. Since before joining Apple, Mr. Gore has also been a senior advisor to Google.

Mr. Gore has leveraged his position at Google to help drive some pro-active policy efforts, including The Climate Project. Launched just two weeks ago, the site contains tools based on the Google Earth platform to help individuals study the effects of global climate change, and Google has certainly supplied the former presidential candidate with more help than just the platform.

It is the extreme right wing which has used the tool of guilt-by-association to draw an extremely elastic perimeter around Mr. Gore, Google, the "climate change underground," the "net neutrality movement" (whose founding principle, ironically, was created in an effort to prevent Google from buying premium bandwidth), and political action group MoveOn.org co-founded by Mr. Gore. Recent ultra-conservative blogs point to the fact that Mr. Gore mentioned the SavetheInternet Coalition in a 2007 book, as an indicator that he is actually that project's "ringleader."

Some believe that Gore is leveraging this alleged "ringleader" role in an effort to spearhead the notion, advanced only by scientists who refuse to wear their political affiliations on their sleeves and who point to only sporadic evidence of tsunamis, that global climate change is somehow real.

Writes conservative commentator Scott Cleland, "Where are the disclosures in the book that most all of Mr. Gore's multi-ten million dollar net worth is in Google shares -- constituting a huge undisclosed conflict of interest on the issue of net neutrality?"

Arthur Levinson was typically never mentioned by conservative bloggers.

Mandriva Linux 2010 RC2 available now

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 9:51pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Download Mandriva Linux 2010 RC2 from FileForum now.

The last development version of Mandriva Linux 2010 RC2 (32 and 64 bit free versions) went live on Saturday, and is now available for testing from our FileForum.

Please note that this should not be used to upgrade stable installations of Mandriva Linux, as there are unresolved issues with windows managers such as KDE and GNOME which could conflict with previous versions. This pre-release edition is mainly for bug fixes, but the official public release of Mandriva Linux 2010 remains scheduled for November 3.

This candidate is especially noteworthy because Mandriva Linux 2010 will be the first 100% free Linux distribution to fully integrate Moblin (2.0), the Linux Foundation's mobile platform designed to run optimally on Intel's Atom chips. While it is designed specifically for netbooks and such, it can still be useful for quick and straightforward tasks.

This version replaces the Splashy boot screen with Red Hat's Plymouth, includes the Guest Account ability, and also upgrades its interfaces to include KDE 4.3.2, GNOME 2.28, and Xfce 4.6.1.

Should you trust Microsoft with your data?

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 6:38pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

That's probably not a hard question for many Sidekick users to answer, given recent events. If you're a Sidekick user, please offer your answer -- or your experience during the week-long data crisis -- in comments. I ask the same of everyone else. Answer in comments the question: Should you trust Microsoft with your data?

Every existing or potential Microsoft cloud computing customer should ask and answer that question following the Sidekick data loss fiasco. How could Microsoft potentially lose all Sidekick user data? What? There was no server backup? It's not like Microsoft is inexperienced hosting data. The company bought Hotmail over a decade ago. Windows Live is all about hosted data.

As I write, Microsoft and subsidiary Danger, have reportedly informed Sidekick users that potentially all their synced data -- contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists and photos -- has been lost. Best option is to keep the device off, so that syncing doesn't suck any remaining data into oblivion.

T-Mobile now presents Sidekick Website visitors an explanation about the dire situation. I'm not even a customer, the Website presented me with the information early this afternoon in a pop-up message:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption. We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device -- such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos -- that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.
In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.
We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers' personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.
We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.
Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

Timing is the problem and the huge negative exposure it brings to Microsoft. The company is making big pushes into hosted data. Azure Services Platform is about ready for a big debut during Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference next month in Los Angeles. The Office Web Apps Technical Preview is underway, and Microsoft now offers hosted versions of enterprise products like Exchange and SharePoint servers. If Microsoft can sidekick Danger data out the door, how can enterprises trust their most sensitive data to the company?

Competitors -- even Google -- have huge opportunity here to, from a counter sales-and-marketing perspective, deliver Microsoft a good nuts kick. How's that for a swift sidekick? Smart countermarketing should hit at two different customer levels: End users and Microsoft partners. The Sidekick data loss is much bigger than Microsoft, because it hurts T-Mobile, too. Whose customers are Sidekick users really? T-Mobile's, and the company may lose subscribers as a result of this huge loss of personal data.

Personal is the problem. Corporations can lose data, but who really notices? Even when there is big data loss? But personal data loss, particularly Sidekick's scale and scope, riles up everyone. Sidekick is a messaging device; it's all about communication -- really personal stuff. Sidekick has a notoriously loyal user base, and a number of celebrities among the lot. I'm surprised there is yet no Sidekick support group for users suffering texting withdrawal or the shock of losing all their friends. Wait. Do you know of one?

The timing presents another problem for Microsoft. The company's mobile strategy is a train wreck, but there was hope in the oft-rumored Project Pink. Looks like Microsoft was -- and may be -- planning to release new Sidekicks. They'll be stinkers now, because every blog or news story will recall the Sidekick data loss.

Windows Mobile 6.5 is stinker enough. I took last week off from blogging, while I completely made offer my Oddly Together site. That's mainly why I didn't blog about Windows Mobile 6.5. How could I? The reviews were bad enough. Pee you. I couldn't bring myself to kick Microsoft when it was down.

It's a wonder how Microsoft could release that stink bomb. But what other choice was there? The mobile market races ahead, even as Microsoft falls behind. I actually felt sorry for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, while watching his stiff introduction to Windows Phone. Could the normally animated Ballmer look any unhappier to be launching new Windows Phone software and hardware?

For now, the question remains: Should you trust Microsoft with your data? As Dirty Harry once asked: "Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

The Sidekick catastrophe: A curse for Microsoft, but a blessing for Motorola?

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 5:35pm CEST par Tim Conneally

What began last week as a service disruption for T-Mobile Sidekick users devolved into one of the worst calamities in mobile/cloud synchronization thus far. One week after announcing the prolonged disruption, T-Mobile, its Sidekick service provider Danger, and Danger parent company Microsoft alerted users that the disruption had become a complete failure, resulting in the loss of contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, and photos which users had synced to the network.

The companies only said that the data loss was attributed to "a server failure at Microsoft/Danger," but there have been rumors that it was actually a joint failure of Microsoft and Hitachi when attempting to update the Danger Storage Area Network (SAN), which failed, and no backup had been performed.

T-Mobile and Microsoft are expected to provide further details of the recovery efforts and remaining issues this afternoon.

In the meantime, T-Mobile's support forums have been jammed with thousands of comments from shocked and appalled customers, wondering what to do and where to turn.

Many are taking this outage as a sign to cease their support for the Sidekick and pick up something new. Because the Android-powered Motorola Cliq goes up for pre-order on T-Mobile this Sunday, and since the device has been marketed to largely the same audience that would use a Sidekick, a significant number of users are considering switching.

"I'm definitely interested in the Cliq," one user wrote in T-Mobile's support forum. "I've been loyal to Sidekicks in the past because of the solid OS & everything (in the past) has worked great. With the LX 09, however, there are more problems than perks. I blame that on the acquisition of Danger by MS."

Indeed, most of the Danger team is now gone, including CEO Andy Rubin who has gone on to become Google's head Android developer.

So with the sentiment that Microsoft has killed the Sidekick at an all-time high and user frustration at a similar zenith, Motorola's launch of the Cliq could scarcely come at a better time.

'Amateur' Linux IBM mainframe failure blamed for stranding New Zealand flyers

Publié: octobre 12, 2009, 5:20pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Update ribbon (small)

12:05 pm EDT October 11, 2009 · The president of a design firm that specializes in data center power efficiency, and that was working on a new design last year for the Auckland-based data center that failed Friday morning, told Betanews today that even if changes were being made to that data center, if both the original design and the changeover plan were implemented properly, the data center failure would not have happened.

"What seems strange about this incident is that they are blaming it on a generator failure during testing," stated California Data Center Design Group President Ron Hughes, whose organization was not responsible either for the data center's current design or the changeover. "If this failure did occur during testing, the question I would ask is why didn't the redundant generators assume the load or why didn't they just switch back to utility power."

Though Hughes has no specific knowledge of last Friday's incident, his insight does shed more light on the situation.

"A properly designed Tier 3 data center -- which is the minimum level required for any critical applications -- should have no single points of failure in its design. In other words, the failure of a single piece of equipment should not impact the customer," Hughes told Betanews. "A generator failure is a fairly common event, which is why we build redundancy into a system. In a Tier 3 data center, if you need one generator to carry the load, you install two. If you need two, you install three. This is described as N+1 redundancy. It allows you to have a failure without impacting your ability to operate...In a Tier 3 data center, it should take 2 failure events before the customer is impacted."

The CEO of Air New Zealand -- one of the few major CEOs anywhere to have been elevated to the top post from a CIO position -- expressed his disgust last weekend over what he describes as the poor handling of a data center failure at his airline's outsourcing partner, IBM. Rob Fyfe's e-mail, made public by IDG's Randal Jackson, excoriates IBM for its handling of a systems outage that took place at 9:30 am local time Friday morning, and that lasted for at least six hours.

During the entire time, ticketing, baggage handling, and traffic rerouting procedures for the entire airline were at a standstill, causing chaos for airports there. This at a time when Air New Zealand was engaged in a public showdown with its chief rivals there, Pacific Blue and Qantas subsidiary Jetstar, challenging them to meet ANZ's standards for flight punctuality. "In my 30-year working career," Fyfe told his colleagues, "I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologize to its client and its client's customers...We were left high and dry and this is simply unacceptable. My expectations of IBM were far higher than the amateur results that were delivered yesterday."

Indeed, even as of this morning, IBM New Zealand has issued no public statements. The data center failure apparently affected all of IBM's customers in the region, not just the airline, although there is no word yet as to the identity of those customers or the extent of damage to their operations.

The move to outsource data center operations to IBM appears to have happened partly under Fyfe's watch as CIO, and was heavily touted by the time by IBM's marketing literature as a "design win" for mainframe-based Linux. Though some mainframe database operations for ANZ came online as early as 1999, the most lucrative move came in August 2002, when the airline replaced its mid-range Windows NT-based in-house network made up of 150 Compaq z800 workstations, with a single eServer zSeries Linux outsourced mainframe hosted by IBM Global Services. The airline's CIO at the time of the move, Andrew Care, said maintaining the outsourced zSeries would cost his airline 30% less in maintenance fees, and save $600,000 in software licenses.

The migration was seen as a huge loss for Microsoft, whose NT operating system was already well on its way to having been branded a failure for mid-level networks.

IBM established the global airline industry standard software for transaction processing as far back as 1960, in a joint project with American Airlines called the Airlines Control Program, which made possible the original, groundbreaking Sabre system. Since 1979, IBM has sold other airlines a commercial version of this system, called Transaction Processing Facility (TPF).

To this day, the transaction format used by airlines everywhere is based on ACS' half-century-old protocol. It isn't the format that has needed evolution, but rather the software that runs it; and IBM itself has been the key innovator here, developing a new class of software this decade called the Airlines Control System (ALCS). Originally seen as a mid-level alternative to a higher-class TPF system for smaller airlines that couldn't afford big iron, ALCS -- a TPF emulator -- now runs on bigger iron, thanks to the evolution in hardware as well.

Air New Zealand was one of ALCS' biggest customer wins in August 2002. Up to now, the airline has been one of ALCS' more active supporters, contributing a big chunk of new requirements for the software's latest version, according to literature from the UK-based ALCS User Group.

At this point, Air New Zealand may have too much investment tied up in the software to be in any position to migrate its applications to an IBM competitor -- if there even really is one in this field. But the airline's problem may not be with so much with the software but with its current host.

According to an ANZ group general manager cited in local radio news reports, the offline incident was traced to a single generator failure at IBM's Newton Data Center in Auckland. Usually data centers have redundant power sources, and normally the Newton center would not be an exception. An August 2008 article in Data Center Journal by the designer of new energy-efficient data center power generators with redundant sourcing, specifically mentioned the Auckland center as one of his customers at that time.

"I've seen numerous references recently to reducing the amount of redundancy as a way to achieve higher energy efficiency," wrote engineer Ron Hughes, president of California-based Data Center Design Group, referring to his Auckland data center project. "While I have no doubt that it is true, it may not be in the long term interest of the client. Data center outages can be career changing events. That extra redundancy may be the difference between a component failure with little impact and a system-wide outage."

Current ANZ CIO Julia Raue has been overseeing an innovative new information systems project at her airline, which has involved the creation of customizable self-serve ticketing kiosks, which customers themselves can change online using selectable widgets to suit their airport demands. In an interview with CIO Magazine last month, iGoogle was credited as a design inspiration for the self-serve system. But the entire system revolves around the zSeries mainframe, whose uptime last week appeared to have revolved around a single faulty generator.

While CEO Fyfe certainly has understandable reasons for wanting to abandon IBM, with his entire information strategy dependent on the move ANZ made in 2002, he may not have many alternatives open.

Expect 22.8% performance boost from next week's Firefox 3.6 beta

Publié: octobre 9, 2009, 10:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Click here for a complete introduction to the Betanews Comprehensive Performance Index.

Test Results

The developers at Mozilla have set next week as the tentative rollout window for the first public beta of Firefox 3.6 -- the first edition of the organization's big fixes for 3.5 where it's accepting analysis and advice from the general public. Betanews tests this week on a late version of the 3.6 beta preview, close to the organization's planned code freeze, indicate that users will be visibly pleased by what they see: Generally faster JavaScript execution and much faster page rendering will result in a browser that's almost one-fourth faster than its predecessor -- by our estimate, 22.78% faster on average.

Betanews tested the latest available development and stable builds of all five brands of Web browser, on all three modern Windows platforms -- XP SP3, Vista SP2, and Windows 7 RTM. Once again, we threw the kitchen sink at them: our new and stronger performance benchmark suite, consisting of experiments in all facets of rendering, mathematics, control, and even geometry. Like before, we use a slow browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, the previous version, running in Windows Vista SP2) as our 1.00 baseline, and we produce performance indices representing browsers' relative speed compared to IE7.

Averaging all three Windows platforms, the latest Beta 1 preview of Firefox 3.6 posts a Betanews CRPI score of 9.02 -- just better than nine times the performance of IE7. Compare this against a 7.34 score for the latest stable version of Firefox 3.5.3, and 7.81 for the latest daily build of the Firefox 3.5.4 bug fix.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009

When looking at the results broken down by platform, we've noticed that in the CRPI scores for Firefox's development builds, moving up through the latest Alpha of version 3.7, the Windows 7 score has been pulling closer to the XP score. Typically, XP has been the fastest platform by a noticeable margin; that hasn't been the case in the latest builds. This trend has definitely permeated Opera 10, whose stable and development builds on XP and Win7 are almost dead-even.

Still, Firefox 3.6's score on XP crossed over the 10 mark on our new index, with a 10.44 on that platform versus 9.09 for the current stable version 3.5.3, and 7.38 for version 3.6 on Vista.

For our long-time readers who watched browsers' performance scores before we added new tests to our comprehensive suite: You'll recall how during the development of Firefox 3.5, test builds flirted with a 10.00 score on the old index in Windows XP SP3, and only occasionally crossed that mark. Right now, using the old scoring system, Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is scoring a 13.59 on XP -- moving into the territory that Google Chrome blazed when it first hit the scene.

For all its forward strides, the pace of Firefox's acceleration is finally approaching that of Chrome. That is, Firefox is getting faster at the rate Chrome is getting faster. Of course, Chrome's acceleration has been, and continues to be, meteoric, absorbing about one IE7's worth of performance in its development builds every two months. Having posted a CRPI score of 15.37 just one month ago, the latest stable build of Chrome 3.0.195.25 posted a score of 15.85 this week. (In strange but typical Google fashion, build 195.25 was posted to both the stable and beta channels simultaneously, for reasons known only to Google at the moment.)

While the Chrome 4 development builds had been lagging behind Chrome 3 somewhat, they're catching up nicely now with a CRPI score of 15.35. On Windows 7, Chrome 3 and Chrome 4 are almost dead even in performance (15.27 versus 15.23), and only two tenths of a point separate the stable and dev builds on Vista.

Next: Performance breakdowns by individual test...

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, broken down by Windows platform.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 1

Once again, our rendering test shows that Google Chrome 3 appears to have been intentionally developed with Windows XP in mind -- the version of Windows many believe best suits netbooks, which is where Google is still seeking to break through. But Chrome 4 does not follow suit; on average, it actually falls behind the latest stable Apple Safari 4 build.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 2

The Celtic Kane test is the one that last year called out Opera as the "fastest browser," much faster than Firefox. If the CK test alone designated speed, then Firefox would actually be the champion over even Chrome. Firefox tends to be faster at simpler tests; when the loads get tougher, Firefox gets weaker and Chrome and Safari march right on.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 3

Acid3 compliance scores are unchanged for the last several months. We may not see Mozilla attempt to close that last standards compliance gap until the first daily builds of Firefox 4, which may not come until next year.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 4

Chrome loves heavier workloads; and here in the SunSpider battery, we see it surging ahead, better than doubling Firefox's scores. The dev build of Chrome 4 has closed the gap here somewhat against the stable/beta Chrome 3.

Click here for a complete introduction to the Betanews Comprehensive Performance Index.

Next: The four new tests in our CRPI battery...

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, broken down by Windows platform.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 5

We found the TestCube geometry test, which was created to address a bug that a Mozilla developer had discovered in Firefox. After we were told there were several areas we hadn't discovered where Opera is clearly the faster browser, we found our readers to be correct on that count, at least with respect to DHTML graphics rendering. Here not only is Opera the clear leader, but Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is right on the heels of Chrome 3.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 6

One of the more unique test batteries we've uncovered evaluates each browser's performance with handling 10 different permutations of JavaScript libraries -- specifically, how each browser performs when selecting a CSS element mathematically. This is Safari's strong point, though even Opera outperforms Firefox in this class as well.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 7

When a Web page doesn't use CSS to divide its elements, it uses old-style <TABLE> elements. And just because developers...deprecate their use doesn't mean they're not everywhere. In concentrating on developing for newer standards, Firefox actually performs relatively slowly in the table handling category, though the standards-compliant Chrome handles old-style tables with ease. What's amazing here, though, is the gap between performance scores in this battery for both stable/beta and dev editions of Chrome, on Windows 7 (12.60) and Vista (6.69). Chrome is also faster on this test on Win7 than on XP, which is unusual given its usual preference for XP.

Betanews Comprehensive Relative Performance Index October 9, 2009, heat 8

Chrome's performance on the general page load test is all over the map, and this appears to be due to Google changing its strategy for how it "fires" (enacts) certain JavaScript loading events, evidently across platforms. We understand that the JavaScript onLoad event is not a good indicator of the time it takes for pages to load, so we don't pretend that it is. However, from a performance standpoint, the fact that these events can fire earlier on some browsers (especially Safari) is a true performance boost for developers -- it means that scripts can start accessing page elements and filling their contents dynamically, even as other elements of the page are still loading. This isn't cheating; it's multitasking, and Safari does it well especially in XP. But you're reading this right: The availability of page elements on the everyday page loading test was much faster on Chrome 3 in Vista (!) than on any other platform. (Now you see why we run a variety of tests and find the average or mean of their scores.)

Click here for a complete introduction to the Betanews Comprehensive Performance Index.

FTC official dispels $11,000 anti-blogger fine as misinterpretation

Publié: octobre 8, 2009, 11:28pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

When the US Federal Trade Commission last Monday published its amended Guidelines for commercial publishers' behavior, set to go into effect December 1, many sources ended up passing judgment on the document before having read it in its entirety. One misinterpretation that was passed around the blog-O-square like a hot potato was the notion that the FTC would impose an $11,000 fine for each offense where a blog failed to disclose its connections to the manufacturer of a product for which it posted a review.

One blogger, whose tagline is "an Internet entrepreneur who generates six figures online per year," chocked up the supposed fine as another example of the government's "infinite wisdom." Meanwhile, quite ironically, discussion of the fine on one of the world's more popular blogs managed to become newspaper material by way of the Washington Post.

The problem is, the whole idea is a fantasy; and in a group interview arranged by the publishers of Fast Company, published today, FTC Assistant Director for Advertising Practices Richard Cleland said as much, in response to a direct question from a blogger who stated her opinion that such a fine is "a little crazy."

"That $11,000 fine is not true," responded Cleland. A first-time violator, he said, would be given a cease-and-desist order. Any monetary penalty that may arise would come only when the recipient of such an order fails to take heed, and it might not even get that high. A first offense, Cleland said, could be categorized as a "mistake;" and the FTC's response to such a mistake would be a more "educational approach" to regulation, helping to make bloggers aware of the seriousness of their conduct in the commercial space.

Almost immediately, bloggers reported Cleland's comments as a case of the FTC saying one thing and taking it back, behaving more like a software company than a government agency. Of course, the original incident was another case of a story being reported enough times that it was almost true.

In-flight Wi-Fi: Everybody's doing it

Publié: octobre 8, 2009, 9:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Aircell has made a commanding name for itself in in-flight Wi-Fi systems. In its first year offering GoGo InFlight Internet service, the company has secured Wi-Fi contracts with Virgin America, American Airlines, US Airways, Delta, AirTran, United, and others.

At the beginning of 2009, United announced that it would begin to offer Aircell's GoGo Wi-Fi on its transcontinental service between New York and California "in the second half of this year," and it has finally been able to deliver.

The first flight featuring this service took place last Friday, and the airline is said to be outfitting 13 more Boeing 757s with Aircell's Wi-Fi hardware, with completion expected by the middle of November. On the transcontinental flight, Wi-Fi access costs $12.95 for laptops and $7.95 for Wi-Fi smartphones and PDAs, and all flight classes have access. Aircell varies the price depending on the length of time the flight is in the air. For short hops, it costs $5.95, for 1.5 to 3 hours, it's $9.95, and for up to 24 hours it's $12.95.

Five airlines have commercially deployed Aircell's Wi-Fi, and three more are expected to be complete by next year, putting GoGo on more than 570 aircraft.

But Aircell isn't the only one making a name for itself. Southwest Airlines is taking a different approach with a different system, built by California company Row 44, supplemented by JiWire's in-flight advertising platform. Rather than only allow paying customers online, limited access will be freely available to all passengers.

Of course, free access will be limited to a portal called "Skytown Center" which is the online equivalent of the Skymall catalog, rife with advertisements. But paying customers will be granted unfettered access for likely a much lower cost if still ad-supplemented.

The Wi-Fi Alliance recently released a survey of 480 frequent business fliers, in which 76% said they would choose an airline based upon the availability of in-flight Internet.

Some 71% of respondents also said they would choose Wi-Fi over an in-flight meal. Let the contrived airline food jokes begin.

FCC Chairman: Spectrum deficit could set wireless data back 50 years

Publié: octobre 8, 2009, 7:40pm CEST par Tim Conneally

"We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski warned at CTIA Wireless yesterday. "So we must ask: what happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour, or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks?

"The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum."

Given the current allotment of spectrum, Genachowski's statement sounds like Roy Scheider in Jaws.

But his portents were even more severe.

"I believe that that the biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis," Genachowski also said.

It's not often that the FCC uses a term like "crisis," especially when the issue is one as ostensibly benign as a bottleneck in the flow of data. But Genachowski is not warning of a crisis where economies crumble and families are forced to move into bomb shelters. This is a crisis of design, where more people are consuming far more bandwidth than originally anticipated.

Let's put this "crisis" into perspective: Genachowski said that there will be a 30-fold increase in wireless traffic, which will demand new wireless technologies be put in place by 2013.

The DTV transition freed the 700 MHz block and increased the available wireless spectrum by a multiple of three, Genachowski estimated. But that took more than five years to complete.

At that rate, it would take 50 years to accommodate our wireless data growth.

So fixing the "spectrum gap" is one of the FCC's highest priorities, Genachowski said. Looking at the wireless spectrum chart, anyone can see that sorting out licenses will be like sequencing the human genome, but the Commission has no choice: It must identify spectrum that's being underutilized, and re-allocate it to mobile broadband.

Microsoft to replace Works with ad-supported 'Office Starter 2010'

Publié: octobre 8, 2009, 7:20pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Breaking News

Microsoft Office 2010 'product key card' In a bold new experiment for distributing Office that, quite surprisingly, does not involve Office Web Apps, Microsoft announced this afternoon its plans to let OEMs pre-install the full Office 2010 on new PCs, but enable it to run in a limited format until users purchase their licenses. That format, for the first time, will be ad-supported.

When Office 2010 premieres (the official date is still unknown at this point), a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews, new Windows 7 PCs will be made available through participating OEMs (no list has been revealed yet) that contain, pre-installed, a product that will be known as Office Starter 2010. It will contain partly functional versions of Word and Excel -- or perhaps more accurately, it will appear to contain partly functional versions, because the complete Office 2010 software will be installed on these systems.

Rather than sell upgrade software separately, however, Microsoft will enable retail outlets to sell simple plastic cards containing license numbers, for the various consumer SKUs of Office including Home and Student, and Professional. Customers can enter the numbers from these cards to instantly "upgrade" their software from partly-functional, ad-supported mode to fully-functional, ad-free mode, as well as activate components that were not functional in Starter such as PowerPoint and Outlook.

This will be Microsoft's first venture into the realm of ad-supported commercial local software. Earlier, the company had considered introducing Office Web Apps, at some level, as the replacement for Microsoft Works, the long-extended entry-level software that relatively few people are aware still existed. But conceivably, Starter Edition could give Microsoft a way to more effectively monetize its entry-level software, subsidizing it continually through advertising rather than once only through OEMs. Whether OEMs will even be charged to pre-install Office Starter is doubtful; it's feasible that they may even be given incentives to do so.

However, this may still be seen as a setback for the premiere of Office Web Apps, which up until today was being described as the entry level of Office. More and more, Web Apps is looking like a way for mobile users to obtain and freshen their Microsoft Office documents on the go, which could make the suite less competitive against Google Apps, Zoho Apps, and future entries from Adobe.

Also today, Microsoft announced it will be distributing full versions of Office 2010 online, through a service entitled Click-to-Run. Trial editions of the package will be made available through this service on virtual machines, probably executable through Virtual PC on XP and Vista, and Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7. This will solve the problem that Betanews discovered with the current Office 2010 Technical Preview: Because of the way Office 2007 configuration works, Office 2010 applications in general (not just Outlook) cannot effectively co-exist on the same PC with Office 2007 apps. So anyone trying a future trial edition of Office 2010 in the conventional manner would have to uninstall Office 2007 -- not something folks will have an incentive to do.

On the bad side, a virtual Office 2010 will not be able to co-exist with the customer's current e-mail profile, which will make testing Outlook 2010 more difficult within the virtual envelope. But it will be safer. Microsoft said today that customers of Click-to-Run will be able to purchase Office 2010 directly online, download it, and then install it.

Both Click-to-Run and Office Starter will contribute to Microsoft's efforts to reduce publishing costs, as both methods are no longer reliant upon physical media at the customer end.

Judge orders Google, publishers to start over on Books settlement

Publié: octobre 8, 2009, 6:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In the wake of a Dept. of Justice Statement of Interest last month questioning whether Google had the right to negotiate a settlement deal on behalf of publishers that aren't direct parties to the deal -- and that may not even exist anymore -- the federal judge overseeing the case, Judge Denny Chin, ordered Google and publishers' groups to draft a completely revised settlement proposal by November 9.

At issue now is that several of the groups on whose behalf Google was claiming to be acting, actually do exist; and a number of them filed objections to the settlement, most recently on September 22, asking why they weren't made direct participants. Last September 2, Judge Chin ruled that groups representing photographers whose scanned works would be made public through Google Books, were too late in making their objections heard.

"This case was filed some four years ago and has been conditionally settled," Judge Chin wrote at the time. "It is simply too late to permit new parties in the case." But these groups, led by the American Society of Media Photographers, won't take no for an answer. Yesterday, they filed their Notice of Appeal to the Second Circuit.

While Google had apparently thought about the interests of authors of printed textual material -- albeit late -- the interests of photographers whose work may be scanned in as well, perhaps did not factor in as highly as they should. Sources inside the courtroom yesterday, including from Judge Chin's alma mater, quote the judge as giving credence to objections to the proposed settlement -- objections which may include from the Justice Dept. as well as the photographers' groups. "Clearly, fair concerns have been raised," Princeton University quotes the judge as saying.

It's unknown if Judge Chin is a reader of Wired; if he is, he might have seen a timely article yesterday by Kevin Poulsen. That article noted how Google's last attempt to save history, through the 2001 purchase of Deja.com and its Internet archive, the Google Groups record of the early Usenet has sat largely untouched, with "beta" features still under development after having literally been announced in 2004.

It would have been an article like that which caused Judge Chin to make the curious comment noted by Princeton this morning, in which he said he wasn't sure Google Books would offer society ample benefits.

Whether Judge Chin will be the presiding judge in the District Court case on November 9 now depends on whether his transfer comes through. On Monday, President Obama announced Chin was his nominee for elevation to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. If he is confirmed, ironically, he may have to recuse himself from hearing the photographers' groups' appeal to that very court.

Now that 7Digital supports US, Songbird can almost replace iTunes

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 10:57pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Online music store 7Digital officially gained support from all major labels in March of 2008, and has since enjoyed substantial growth by offering its platform as an API for developers to integrate into other services such as RIM's BlackBerry music download service and EMI's music discovery portal.

The store offers full DRM-free albums for $7.77 and single tracks for 77¢, the service claims to have a library of over 6 million downloadable MP3s, encoded at 192 kbps and 320 kbps.

But one of the most exciting things about this release is 7Digital's inclusion in open source media management software Songbird. For music consumers who may not want to be tied to the ubiquitous Apple iTunes for managing their music and media content, Mozilla XULRunner-based Songbird has provided a robust alternative for a little more than two years. While enhanced by social Web plug-ins, the software really couldn't compete with iTunes because it lacked a native music store (and comprehensive PMP device support...but it actually supports a ton more hardware than iTunes!).

However, in March 2009, Songbird launched version 1.1.1 with the 7Digital music store built in. At the time, 7Digital CEO Ben Drury said, "7digital and Songbird is a killer combination for anyone who wants a dynamic, open music player. Songbird blows other media players away in terms of device support and extensibility and we're very excited to be partnering with them to allow users to buy, download, and transfer MP3s onto a multitude of devices. The Songbird Platform made it quick and easy to integrate 7digital into Songbird."

Unfortunately though, only UK users had complete access, so United States and European users had access to only a beta version of the store.

But now that the 7Digital store has opened fully to the US, you can find it by simply erasing "songbird" from the end of the URL (http://us.7digital.com). Songbird has not officially updated its native 7digital interface yet, which includes a recommendation engine based upon your library; but when songs are purchased through the store in the Songbird browser, they are still automatically queued, downloaded, and catalogued in the application.

Clever Adobe compilation trick sneaks Flash apps onto iPhone

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 10:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Up to now, Apple's prohibition against anyone's runtime modules from appearing on its iPhone without authorization has been one of two central reasons that Adobe's Flash video and Flash platform have not made their appearance there -- the other reason being simply that Steve Jobs doesn't like it.

But at its annual MAX developers' conference in Los Angeles this week, Adobe's engineers unveiled a surprise: It's planning a public beta release of Flash Professional CS5 that will go through a new and unique set of hoops to enable developers to write or export apps built for the Flash runtime, to run on the iPhone as native apps. The new Flash Pro will use a mechanism for Flash application developers to deploy their apps on the iPhone anyway, even without the Flash mobile runtime.

That mechanism is the evolution of an academic project -- namely, the work of the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Illinois-Champaign. It's an open source project called Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), and it's a way to effectively bury the compilation element of a language interpreter below the application layer where the runtime module normally resides, deep into object code.

"On the iPhone, we don't have a browser plug-in. Flash Player 10.1 isn't available, and you can't browse to this application and just start using it," explained Adobe engineer Adrian Ludwig, in a company video released during MAX.

"So what developers have to do is go inside of Flash Pro, and they have to export that project to a native application for the iPhone. While you're using Flash Pro to build these applications, it's being converted from SWF down to IPA, which is the native file for applications on the iPhone. So it's installed -- there's no runtime interpretation, there's no JIT. These are applications that are built according to all of the rules that have been established in the iPhone developer program."

Adobe Flash engineer Adrian Ludwig demonstrates a Flash app appearing in Apple's iPhone App Store for the first time.

Seven Flash games have already been developed for iPhone, and have begun distribution this week through Apple's App Store -- a clear indication that these apps do follow Apple's rules.

As Aditya Bansod, another Adobe engineer, blogged on Monday, "We created a new compiler front end that allowed LLVM to understand ActionScript 3 and used its existing ARM back end to output native ARM assembly code. We call this Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation -- in contrast to the way Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR function on the desktop using Just in Time (JIT) compilation. Since we are able to compile ActionScript to ARM ahead of time, the application gets all the performance benefits that the JIT would offer and the license compliance of not requiring a runtime in the final application."

The downside of this architecture is that the hoops Apple made Adobe jump through, bypass the normal route an iPhone app would take to communicate with the iPhone itself. As a result, much of the iPhone API is inaccessible from within an exported Flash app; although Flash evangelist Mark Doherty presented an initial list of iPhone features that will not work in a Flash app, one gets the distinct feeling that it's not yet even an exhaustive list.

Which limits the class of Flash apps one can port to the iPhone to mostly games; and indeed, that's the focus of the first seven such apps that Adobe is demonstrating. As for rerouting Adobe's ingenious detour closer to the phone itself in the future, Doherty pointed to a future version of the company's Flex Mobile Framework, whose code-name "Slider" gives you a hint as to where it's directing at least one offshoot of its platform.

AT&T's first Android phone: A Dell?

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 9:30pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Dell has smartphones on the way, but it's not talking about them yet.

In fact, the first Android-powered smartphone on AT&T's network could be coming from Dell, according to reports Wednesday afternoon.

Citing unnamed "people briefed on the plans," The Wall Street Journal today claimed that Dell will have a smartphone on AT&T as early as 2010.

In September, a 3.5" touchscreen Dell smartphone known as the "Mini 3i" was shown running Open Mobile System (OMS), an Android-based operating system central to China Mobile's "OPhone" platform. That platform thus far has been supported by Lenovo and HTC subsidiary Dopod, with many more to come.

The smartphone that Dell is saying is not really its Mini 3i, at least not yet.

The Texas PC company, however, has thus far been hesitant to discuss its movement in the Chinese mobile sector, even though China Mobile has highlighted Dell's participation in the Android-based OPhone project several times.

Dell declined comment today to Betanews and others on its plans for smartphone distribution, domestically or otherwise.

Firefox 3.6 public beta slated for 10/14, promises faster startups, loads

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 8:54pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Mozilla's stated goal for its next version of Firefox, first and foremost, is a perceivable improvement in the time it takes to do things, not just render pages. We saw a big performance jump in JavaScript execution and page rendering in Firefox 3.5; but for 3.6, the developers want to apply the same level of improvement to responsiveness and process activation.

Although all Mozilla daily builds -- even the "private" alphas -- are publicly downloadable, the public may be formally invited to render its opinions on version 3.6 on Wednesday, October 14. That's the decision made during a Mozilla planning meeting Monday.

Originally, Mozilla wanted to have 3.6 release candidates available by this time; the public beta process was supposed to have been in full-swing by now. In the interim, the organization has been posting daily builds labeled "beta previews" instead of "alphas" or "alpha previews" -- almost ready to be not ready for prime time.

Still, the new browser has an opportunity to make a public show of its everyday performance improvements, including in departments such as page loading. Betanews tests on recent daily builds of Firefox 3.6 show just over 40% speed gains in that department. Our recent CRPI index for a preview build of 3.6 Alpha 2 is 8.67, versus 6.80 for the stable Firefox 3.5.3.

According to the minutes of Monday's planning meeting, released yesterday, engineers in charge of the "Namoroka" development track (where Firefox 3.6 currently resides) plan to freeze code development on the current "beta preview" sometime this week. A daily build of 3.6 was released at about 9:30 EDT this morning, and there's no word as to whether it's the last build before the planned freeze.

There is no formal release date for the finalized version 3.6 just yet. However, a newly published list of goals for upcoming releases places 3.6 release as sometime within the fourth quarter of the year, with a promise to be "less crashy than Firefox 3.5." Also on that goal list is Mozilla's intention to produce a public alpha of version 3.7, the focus of which will be a completely revised theme for the front end. A recently published Mozilla page on the topic now points to a "firm initial direction" for a new design, which makes more liberal use of aesthetic features such as transparency and dimensionality.

A Mozilla artist's mockup of the likely design direction for the new theme of Firefox 3.7.

"Firefox feels dated and behind on Windows," the design team writes. "Especially Vista and Windows 7. These issues include absence of Glass, anemic purple toolbar color on Vista, tall and bulky UI footprint, element overload, inconsistent toolbar icon usage/style, lack of a tactile look & feel and perhaps too great of a divergence between the look on XP and Vista/7." The team aims to overcome these perceived deficiencies by reducing the number of buttons -- for example, by converging Stop and Reload into one button -- and adopting neutral tones and glass textures to enable the application to blend better with the desktop and the user's choice of color themes. The same degree of transparency may not be available in version 3.7 for Mac or Linux yet, but the design team aims to implement similar aesthetics for non-Windows users "going forward."

October 14 is also the scheduled date for the first public betas of version 3.5.4, the next round of bug fixes to the stable release.

Qualcomm's FLO TV debuts its own mobile television

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 7:09pm CEST par Tim Conneally

FLO TV Personal Television

Qualcomm subsidiary FLO TV, the company responsible for the MediaFLO mobile content delivery system used in Verizon V Cast Mobile TV and AT&T Mobile TV, has launched its first piece of branded hardware, the FLO TV Personal Television.

The device looks almost exactly like a smartphone or a touchscreen media player, and has the specs to match. The main difference, of course, is that the FLO TV Personal Television is built with the single purpose of watching subscription FLO TV streams. The $249.99 TV is made by HTC, has a 3.5" capacitive touchscreen, and built-in stereo speakers.

This is the first time the company has released its own exclusive hardware, but more items are expected to follow soon. Last year, Qualcomm showed off its prototype in-car entertainment system which later went into production through a partnership with Audiovox. While still not available in retail, these solutions are expected to show up under the Audiovox Advent brand before the fourth quarter of this year is out.

FLO TV broadcasts its digital signal over the "white space" freed by the DTV transition which occurred earlier this summer, and streams 320 x 240 QVGA at 15-30 frames per second. Currently, the service has 15 channels which broadcast 24 hours a day, including CBS Mobile, CNN Mobile, ESPN Mobile, Fox Mobile, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, MSNBC, and CNBC.

The main drawback right now is the service's contractual commitment, which can cost as little as $8.99 per month, but requires a massive three-year contract. One-year contracts are also available, but FLO TV did not disclose their price today. The same service on Verizon Wireless costs either $13 or $15 per month, and on AT&T either $15 or $30 per month. Both of these packages, however, are also tied into mobile data service plans.

Fake entries in new e-mail/password lists point to unsophisticated phishing

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 5:47pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

If last weekend's unsolicited posting of about 10,000 supposed Hotmail addresses and passwords to a legitimate developers' Web site did not contain some addresses that were fake, the theory that a hacker may have obtained those addresses through an attack on Microsoft's servers might continue to hold water. That theory lost ground today, after more addresses from major services other than Hotmail -- including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, and Comcast -- appeared without warrant on Pastebin.com, a site for developers to share debugging information.

In what could be the first publicly shared forensic report on the original Hotmail list, security researcher Bogdan Calin with server security software maker Acunetix reported that of the 10,028 entries that appeared in that list (which was apparently partial, including usernames that only began with A and B), 185 of the entries actually had blank passwords. That in and of itself could not have come from a server's own list of valid passwords, thus lending much credence to the theory that the responses came from a phishing scam.

But not a very sophisticated one, Calin goes on. Without revealing information that would have compromised anyone in particular, he reported that the most commonly repeated passwords he saw in the list, coupled with the nature of the remaining passwords, leads him to conclude that they were obtained from members of the Hispanic community. The password alejandra, for example, appeared 11 times in the list -- once more than 111111 -- and alejandro appeared 9 times.

From time to time, many sequences of password characters appear almost repeated, except with varying capitalization. "What most probably happened, is that the users didn't understand what was happening, and they tried to enter the same password again and again, thinking the password was wrong," Calin wrote. An unsophisticated phisher might have accepted every attempt at repeating a password in sequence; meanwhile, the unsuspecting victim is trying to log in, thinking, "Didn't I capitalize the O?"

Paul Dixon, who maintains Pastebin.com, told the press yesterday he's had to take his site down to address the problem more directly, saying, "Pastebin.com is just a fun side project for me, and today it's not fun." This morning, the site was operational.

Though Dixon's site bears a strong resemblance to Pastebin.org, which has the exact same purpose, users of the latter site -- which was not involved in the list-posting incident -- began complaining to Dixon last month about problems they were having with that site, not knowing the two were not connected. In a blog post at the time, Dixon wrote that Pastebin.org "seems to have been compromised in other ways, with extra advertising banners and popups...I'm not responsible for that site."

Possible confusion over the two sites' identities could play into the motive for the unknown party posting these apparent phishing entries onto a site that otherwise has perfectly legitimate purposes.

As of yet, there is no evidence that anyone -- the original poster or any downloaders -- has attempted to use any of the partial lists posted to Pastebin.com in a security compromise operation directed at password holders. However, the possibility exists that these lists were posted as evidence of the existence of more complete lists, for inspection by underground sources willing to bid for them. After Bogdan Calin's analysis, the bidding may not be all that high.

EU to test Microsoft's revised proposal for Web browser ballot screen

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 4:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Nearly ten weeks after Microsoft issued a proposal to the European Commission for a mechanism to let Windows users and installers choose the default Web browser they want to use during setup, the EC issued a statement this morning saying it likes Microsoft's basic idea, but will give the rest of the market an opportunity to weigh in with its opinions.

The EC statement admitted for the first time that Microsoft had submitted at least one "improved" version of its ballot screen concept since last July. "The improvements that Microsoft has made to its proposal since July would ensure that consumers could make a free and fully informed choice of Web browser," reads this morning's statement. "Microsoft has in particular agreed to present users with a first screen explaining what Web browsers are. 'Tell me more' buttons for each browser would also enable users to learn more about the web browser they may wish to install. The user experience would be better and the choice screen would better represent competing browser vendors. Finally, the proposed commitment would now be subject to a clause allowing the Commission to review it in the future to ensure that consumers would continue to have a genuine choice among browsers."

The new version of the ballot screen would be offered to all European users of current versions of Windows -- meaning XP, Vista, and now Windows 7 -- for a five-year period. This would apparently not mean that Microsoft would have to ship a unique "Windows 7 E" version for Europe, which was the company's original plan. But beginning with Windows 7 and on into the five-year period, OEMs would be given full options to install competitors' Web browsers and uninstall, or not install, Internet Explorer.

The revised version of Microsoft's Web browser ballot screen proposal to the European Commission, dated October 6, 2009.

The revised version of Microsoft's Web browser ballot screen proposal to the European Commission, dated October 6, 2009.

The EC admitted today it likes Microsoft's idea. But rather than simply give the company the go-ahead, it has decided that in the interests of ensuring competition among IE's competitors, it will be "market testing Microsoft's proposal in light of these requirements." Microsoft itself released a copy (PDF available here) of the EC's Market Test Notice, which opens up a one-month period starting today, during which, "the Commission invites interested third parties to submit their observations on the proposed commitments...Interested third parties are also asked to submit a non-confidential version of their comments, in which commercial secrets and other confidential passages are deleted and are replaced as required by a non-confidential summary or by the words 'commercial secrets' or 'confidential.'"

"Interested third parties" presently include many of IE's competitors which have signed on to participate in the case, including Opera Software, Firefox maker Mozilla, and Chrome maker Google.

Microsoft made copies of its improved pledge to the European Commission this morning. The crux of the pledge is actually not about the browser screen, but a pledge to consistently provide interoperability information about the protocols used by its key software -- not just Windows and IE, but also .NET Framework, Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Office (especially Outlook). Although the interoperability pledge was supposed to have been on a different track, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said today, the company is willing to implement this enhanced interoperability pledge the moment the EC signs off on the Web browser commitment.

"Microsoft's proposed undertaking will ensure that developers throughout the industry, including in the open source community, will have access to technical documentation to assist them in building products that work well with Microsoft products," said Smith. "Microsoft will also be required to support certain industry standards in its products and to fully document how these standards are supported. Microsoft's proposed undertaking will make available legally-binding warranties that would be offered to third parties."

Also included in that pledge is a promise to support "open, public standards" in its software, to the extent that it can. Here's how the company defines that:

"Microsoft shall provide support for applicable standards by either (i) implementing the required portions of the applicable standard that relates to functionality of the implementing product, or (ii) completely and accurately documenting instances where required portions of the applicable standard are not implemented or are implemented with variations. Microsoft shall make this documentation publicly available in a Timely Manner."

The newly proposed ballot screen does feature some obvious tweaks: First, it contains a bar of language selection buttons now familiar to many European residents. The selection of browsers is now in alphabetical order by manufacturer, so Apple Safari appears first and Opera last. There's also a notice saying, "Please Note: The Browser Ballot update unpinned Windows Internet Explorer from your taskbar," which indicates that this screen applies to Windows 7, but also that the update -- which arrives on users' computers through the Windows Update mechanism -- takes initial steps unilaterally to unregister Internet Explorer as the user's default browser.

But at least in this mockup, there is one element which may continue to prompt criticism from the EC's market testers: the fact that the ballot screen appears in Internet Explorer, complete with its logo in the upper-left corner -- which some have said implies a preference on the part of Microsoft. In its revised pledge, Microsoft states, "Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen" can be construed to favor Microsoft, although it's arguable that since one needs a Web browser to see the ballot screen, it's impossible to turn off the "Internet Explorer-ness" of IE.

The Ballot Screen Update would be flagged as "Important" on Vista and Windows 7, and "High Priority" on Windows XP. Once downloaded, it would give the user an opportunity to execute it now or later; and if the user chooses later, it will install a shortcut on the desktop.

While only five browsers appear in Microsoft's proposed design, the company acknowledges that number could rise: "The Ballot Screen will be populated with the 12 most widely-used Web browsers that run on Windows based on usage share in the EEA as measured semi-annually by a source commonly agreed between Microsoft and the European Commission...In addition, if a browser's usage share is among the top 12, but that browser is no longer actively offered by its vendor, that browser will not be included in the Ballot Screen."

In his statement this morning, Brad Smith concluded, "As we've said before, the steps described above will require significant change within Microsoft. We believe that these are important steps we should take in order to resolve the Commission's competition law concerns. Today is an important day. Although the European Commission has not made its final decision, today's news is a major step forward, and we're hopeful this will help move us towards closure to the past and the building of a new foundation for the future."

The EC's call for a market test comes just one day after something resembling an alternative ballot screen emerged from Google Labs, ostensibly as a response to a marketing video depicting ordinary folks as ignorant of the difference between a Web browser and an operating system.

Amazon Kindle 2 gets cheaper, goes (sort of) international

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 4:35pm CEST par Tim Conneally

For the second time in three months, Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle 2 e-reader. The device which began shipping in February for $359.99 begins October at $259.99.

Since debuting, the Kindle has dominated e-reader mindshare in the United States, but has faced serious competition from senior e-reader maker Sony, which not only makes the lowest priced product, but also the most feature-packed product as well. Sony's Daily Edition Reader has 3G wireless from AT&T, a touchscreen interface, and the ability to borrow e-books from participating libraries.

But the Kindle may not be exactly the thing some potential buyers need. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in airports in the last 2 years will tell you, the Kindle is very popular among travelers. Unfortunately, the device's Sprint-friendly CDMA connectivity is all but useless overseas. Users who have taken their Kindle to another country and want to obtain new content have no wireless options. To address this, Amazon today has also unveiled the "US and International Wireless" Kindle for $279.99, which can be used on the 3G networks in more than 100 countries.

And travelers appear to be the main group targeted in this device launch, rather than actual international markets, since Amazon's Kindle Store still deals almost exclusively in English language literature. There are a handful of products in other languages, though, and Amazon pointed out today that a number of international periodicals are available for subscription, such as La Stampa (Italian), El Pais and El Universal (Spanish), O Globo (Portuguese), Le Monde (French), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German). However, there are major limitations preventing the device from use in other languages.

Principal among these limitations is the fact that international fonts remain problematic. Though the Kindle store displays symbols such as (ç, ß, etc,) there is still no way for the user to enter these characters in search queries. Furthermore, other scripts are not supported, and installing other international fonts (Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese) requires a Unicode font hack. We've sent an inquiry to Amazon today to see if the company has plans to address this.

Apple joins an exodus of companies from US Chamber of Commerce

Publié: octobre 7, 2009, 2:21am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

A massive energy bill that has already passed the House, and is currently before the Senate, would create new government programs that would not only encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by utilities and energy companies, but set limits over time as to the quantity of that reduction over the next several years. The US Chamber of Commerce (USCC), a private business federation that is not affiliated with the federal government, went on record last August as being skeptical of any legislative or regulatory effort that assumes greenhouse gasses truly endanger human health. Late last month, the Chamber voiced its opposition to that bill.

Today, Apple Inc. joined a growing list of companies including General Electric, athletic apparel maker Nike, and even energy companies such as PG&E and nuclear power plant operator Exelon, in terminating their membership in the Chamber.

The move is Apple's latest in a campaign to change its public image with regard to environmental friendliness, both in its design and its manufacturing practices. Back in January 2007, CEO Steve Jobs found himself in hot (but purified) water after he publicly responded to activist group Greenpeace's inquiries into Apple's manufacturing practices by suggesting that the group "get out of the computer business [and] go save some whales." Now, the company takes an aggressive stance toward improving what it calls its "environmental footprint," and has dedicated a portion of its Web site to the subject.

Apple is also in favor of efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency -- newly reconstituted under President Obama -- to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Last August, USCC threatened to take the EPA to court, to force it to publicly prove that greenhouse gasses are harmful to human health, and to face scientists from the opposition. Describing such an event as a 21st century "Scopes monkey trial," USCC Vice President Bill Kovacs is quoted as having said at the time, "They [EPA] don't have the science to support the endangerment finding. We can't just take their word for it."

In a June 24 letter to members of the House of Representatives (PDF available here), USCC Executive Vice President Bruce Josten advised lawmakers that the energy bill (HR 2454) should go easier on existing energy providers. "Carbon-based fuels are and will remain for decades to come the backbone of the US energy system," Josten wrote. "HR 2454 must do a better job of ensuring that cost effective and reliable renewable and alternative energy sources are developed and deployed to smooth a transition to a low-carbon energy future."

Josten also suggested in that letter that the burden for clearing up greenhouse gas emissions would be hardest on oil refineries, which would be stuck with 40% of the job. "Because oil refiners will be forced to pay for credits, the price of gas will rise significantly for consumers. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that cost impacts could be as much as $.77 per gallon for gasoline, $.83 per gallon for jet fuel, and $.88 per gallon for diesel fuel, all ultimately borne by the consumer."

The Josten letter itself made no reference to the Environmental Protection Agency, or to any allegories dealing with creationism versus Darwinism. But in a September 29 statement that referred to the letter in renewing USCC's opposition to the bill now before the Senate, Chamber CEO Thomas J. Donohue dragged up the EPA matter once again: "We believe that Congress should set climate change policy through legislation, rather than having the EPA apply existing environmental statutes that were not created to regulate greenhouse gas emissions," Donohue wrote. "This is also the stated position of the President and Congressional leaders. If determined to proceed on its own, EPA should publicly present its finding and answer questions on the limited studies it cited, in keeping with the President's pledge of transparency."

For many, that was the last straw. Nike resigned its membership in the Chamber the next day, and now Apple has followed. "As a company, we are working hard to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by relying on renewable energy at our facilities and designing more energy-efficient products for our customers," reads yesterday's resignation letter to USCC from Apple Vice President for Worldwide Government Affairs Catherine Novelli. "We have undertaken this unilaterally and without government mandate, because we believe it is the right thing to do. For those companies who cannot or will not do the same, Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort."

USCC has also been on record as supporting "clean coal" initiatives -- another sector of the energy industry that would be hardest hit by new federal regulations. A similar exodus of member companies has been ongoing from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, most recently by Duke Energy, after allegations emerged that the group's public relations firm forged letters from "concerned citizens" to congresspersons, in opposition to HR 2454.

Recently, USCC has been seen on the public airwaves and cable news in opposition to health care reform legislation, alleging that the entire cost of reform could be passed on to the consumer. "Tax increases to pay for a public plan, employer mandates, and minimum coverage will do more than devastate the private insurance industry -- they could bankrupt our economy," reads a Web page for a petition for congresspersons to oppose the current health care reform bill HR 3200.

With the US Chamber of Commerce taking hard, political, and even questionable stands on behalf of its members, it's difficult to imagine many of those members not wanting to stand aside.

'What is a browser?' Is this Google's idea of a 'ballot screen?'

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 11:58pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Oftentimes in the case of Google, small actions are the seeds for something much greater. In the case of a marketing video released this morning, we spotted something that looks like one of those Google seeds.

Last June, as part of a Google Creative Lab project, a Google employee named Scott Suiter produced a video with two colleagues. In that video, Suiter interviewed about 50 people one afternoon passing through Times Square in New York City, asking them the simple and nondescript question, "What is a browser?" Many of the folks who appeared in the video tended to confuse a browser with a search engine with a Web site with an operating system, making common mistakes that ordinary folks make, but giving another class of more Internet-active ordinary folks new targets for their unending streams of vitriol.

This morning, a Google associate product marketing manager named Jason Toff responded to Suiter's video with a video of his own, and a site to go along with it, named whatbrowser.org. It's an instructional video which uses crayon-like drawings to explain to complete novices just what a Web browser is, in comparison with the other major components of modern computer software. It's how the video ends that caught our attention: Although a YouTube video typically is not interactive -- and this one is no exception -- the final frame shows crayon-ized renderings of the icons for the four leading brands of Windows-based Web browsers, along with "chain-link" icons in the lower-right corner -- icons that typically signal, for interactive videos, clickable links that take the viewer someplace else.

A frame from a Google video entitled 'What is a browser?' that looks suspiciously like a possible EU-compliant browser screen.

One explanation for these link icons could be that Toff's video could be a prototype for a Flash presentation that takes the viewer into a further explanation of what individual Web browsers do. (Google, after all, did just join Adobe's Flash developers' promotional group.) It would only make sense, however, that such links could lead viewers to downloads of the browsers themselves -- including Google's own Chrome, of course, but the others in the top four just to be fair.

It might therefore follow that Toff's prototype could depict a theoretical alternate Web browser selection mechanism -- a vendor-neutral concept that might satisfy the European Union's interests for Microsoft to offer Windows users and installers a "ballot screen," letting them choose their own Web browser without the appearance of favoring Internet Explorer.

Microsoft's proposed 'Web Browser Ballot' as presented to the European Commission July 24, 2009.

Microsoft's proposed "Web browser ballot," as presented to the European Commission last summer.

Except that it might not be all that neutral: "A Web browser is the most important piece of software on your computer," Toff explains to novices in his closing to the video, "because every Web page runs through it. So a faster Web browser means you'll save time on every Web page you open. Installing a new Web browser is free, and only takes minutes. So take a moment to choose a Web browser that you like best today."

As Betanews tests continually confirm, Google Chrome is the fastest of the stable Web browsers for Windows currently in production. Planting the seed in novices' minds that faster is better could lead them to try to find the answer to "Which one is fastest?" within the presentation, or to look for the answer online. Given people's responses from Suiter's video, they'll probably use Google for that search. After all, Google has the only browser whose manufacturer's brand is listed in the video. (One wonders which link would be more attractive, "Safari" or "Apple Safari.")

The Opera Web browser was excluded from the Toff video. UPDATE: However, the WhatBrowser.org site does provide a link to this selection page that does include Opera. That page then contains links to manufacturers' respective download pages for browsers.

Google declared itself a participant in the European browser debate last February, when its vice president for product management, Sundar Pichai, posted to his company's policy blog his view that Internet Explorer had an unfair advantage over its competitors due to being tied to Windows. "We learned a lot from launching our own Google Chrome browser last year and are hoping that Google's perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience and offer consumers real choices," Pichai wrote at the time. "Of course, creating a remedy that helps solve one problem without creating other unintended consequences isn't easy -- but the more voices there are in the conversation the greater the chances of success."

AT&T to allow VoIP on its data networks

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 11:02pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Breaking News

AT&T has announced that it will now allow Voice-over-IP services to run on its wireless data networks, reversing the carrier's prior stance on the technology.

Reportedly, AT&T has been considering VoIP over 3G for weeks, but has continued to limit VoIP mobile apps to Wi-Fi networks up until even yesterday, when popular digital voice service Vonage released its own iPhone app, crippled to fit AT&T's and Apple's existing guidelines.

Today's announcement has not come as a surprise, since an unnamed source at AT&T this week told the Washington Post that executives were close to allowing VoIP.

AT&T previously cautioned that VoIP would strain the company's already congested wireless data networks, and blocked voice messaging software Skype from use on the iPhone, the device thought to be the principal bandwidth hog on AT&T's network.

In an official statement this afternoon, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said, "iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago. Today's decision was made after evaluating our customers' expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer."

Apple's Canadian hat trick: Exclusivity to end as Bell, Telus get iPhone 3G S

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 9:36pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In separate and very brief announcements this morning, Bell Canada and Telus -- Canada's #2 and #3 wireless service providers -- said they will be adding Apple's iPhone 3G and 3G S to their lineups this November. The move will mean the exclusivity deal between Apple and #1 provider Rogers Wireless, announced in October 2007, was probably a two-year agreement and is due to expire next month, even though Rogers only began selling the iPhone several months later.

Telus' and Bell's announcements were the talk of all Canada today, as news of the increasing availability of the world's most praised handheld gadget dominated the afternoon's headlines. At issue: Will this mean iPhone prices will come down, including for service; and will call quality go up? Neither new carrier made any promises this morning, and Apple is adding nothing to the discussion.

As it stands now, Rogers Wireless' reputation as the Canadian iPhone supplier is almost parallel to that of AT&T in America. It's getting hammered, especially since August when Rogers began raising rates for data service packages by $5 per month or more. But it was only last year that Bell Canada and Telus began a joint effort to move away from their CDMA legacy platforms, and toward LTE as their 4G platform, but through GSM -- the iPhone's native protocol.

As independent analyst and Betanews contributor Carmi Levy -- who is based in London, Ontario -- told us this afternoon, "Bell and Telus worked very closely last year, launching a partnership to build up the [GSM] network together, figuring that their consolidated resources will be able to result in a more comprehensive, broadly available network than would otherwise be the case if they had proceeded to build them individually."

Just how much of the country these two providers will be able to reach through the iPhone, may only be determined for certain by Canadian iPhone users themselves. "We haven't seen the coverage maps of this new consolidated Bell/Telus network yet," Levy told us, "so it's still hard to tell. But it's likely an easy conclusion that it's not as extensive as the competing 3G network that Rogers has had for a number of years."

This week in the US, #1 carrier Verizon Wireless launched a competitive ad campaign focusing squarely upon the iPhone and its connectivity problems, openly mocking Apple's slogan while touting its network quality at the same time, using the phrase, "There's a map for that" (YouTube video here). (Microsoft might want to take a cue.) Perhaps the longest-lived grievance that iPhone customers in North America have had, has been the quality of their network.

The area of Canada served by 3G service at the end of 2008, according to CRTC estimates.

The area of Canada where 3G service was available at the end of 2008, according to CRTC estimates.

"Canada has always had network coverage issues simply because we have a geography that roughly parallels that of the US in terms of overall size in square miles, but we have a population that is only one-tenth as large," Levy reminds us. "So economies of building out to support that population just aren't as favorable to carriers in Canada as they are in the US. So in many cases, carriers have had to choose where they focus their coverage, and where they choose to let it lapse."

The legality of deals giving a single carrier exclusive access to a certain phone, even for a limited time, has been questioned by the US government. It's also been the subject of a parliamentary inquiry by the CRTC, Canada's equivalent of the FCC.

"Canadians as a people are very friendly and very accepting," said Carmi Levy, "but at the same time, we bristle at the prospect of monopolies. So any time anyone mentions the word in conversation with a Canadian, expect the temperature of the room to drop by at least five degrees. We are very, very wary...of lack of competition in the market; and Canadians for a very long time have looked rather jealously toward other...wireless markets, and have questioned why they [themselves] seem to have less coverage, higher prices, more limited device availability -- why they can't get the latest and greatest wireless devices, while Americans can. So Canadians...have wondered if the lack of competition was a huge driver of this.

"They can look to an announcement like this," he continued, "as a sign that monopolistic freeze is beginning to thaw, that the market is becoming more competitive, that you are able to get more devices from more carriers, that devices for data and voice plans will begin to come down...and that over the next 12 to 18 months, the three carriers that have pretty much owned this market up until now, will be joined by a virtual flotilla of competitors by virtue of last year's spectrum auction."

That auction to which Levy refers took place in July of last year, and was conducted with rules that intentionally granted new spectrum in each service region to two or three carriers that had never done business in that region before.

Openness...what a concept. But what exactly does Apple want with it -- the company whose iPhone marketing plan originally hinged upon a one-carrier-per-country code? Levy told us today he thinks maybe even Apple hasn't answered that question just yet, but it's hoping that Canada can help it come up with one.

"I think that to a large extent, Apple saw breaking exclusivity in Canada as almost like an incubator for the process," he said. "In other words, execute the process in Canada of moving from one exclusive carrier to a number of non-exclusive carriers, learn from the experience, and then apply those lessons to the much larger, more lucrative American marketplace when the time is right. So from where I sit, Apple is learning some very important lessons as we speak; and when it comes time for AT&T to give up its exclusivity with the iPhone, those lessons from Canada will come into play in the US as well."

The 'Windows Phone' era officially starts today

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 7:13pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, we finally welcome Windows Mobile 6.5 and the "Windows Phone" platform from Microsoft. As a part of today's Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store has opened for business, the new Bing for Mobile app has been unveiled, the My Phone sync and security service has been launched, the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices have been announced, and the list of Windows Mobile 6.1 devices that can be upgraded to 6.5 has been published.

Microsoft is fully in mobile mode today.

The list of devices shipping in the US with Windows Mobile 6.5 pre-installed is somewhat small, including only three HTC devices (Pure, Imagio, Tilt 2) and one Samsung device (Intrepid, due in less than a week on Sprint). But Microsoft has also unveiled the full list of devices which can be upgraded from Windows Mobile 6.1 to 6.5, which adds eight more devices to the list: HTC Dash, Ozone, Snap, and Touch Pro 2; Samsung Jack, Mirage, and Omnia Pro; and the Pharos Traveler 137.

Worldwide, Microsoft will have Windows Mobile 6.5 on more than 30 phones in 20 countries before the end of 2009.

My Phone, which has been in beta since May is Microsoft's free cloud-based sync service that automatically backs up a user's contacts, photos, video, text messages and calendar data to a password-protected site and also lets users directly upload content to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace or Flickr.

The $4.99 premium My Phone package includes features that help users who have lost their device. It also includes Web-based GPS location of lost phones, the ability to remotely lock a device with an "if found..." message, or remotely wipe all data. It can even blast a loud location alarm in case the device has been misplaced, has fallen between the couch cushions, or has otherwise disappeared without actually being lost.

Windows Mobile 6.5 Finally, the Windows Marketplace rounds out today's offerings in Microsoft's mobile environment. The new marketplace app is only a part of the greater plan for mobile software distribution. Right now, it only includes free and for-pay apps (up to around $30) directly downloadable to a user's phone, but will eventually include a PC-based app catalog and mobile carrier side billing. The complete service will be tied together with a user's Windows Live ID and will let apps be installed on as many as five devices.

The meat of today's announcements actually has very little to do with Windows Mobile 6.5 itself, which is simply a finger-friendly incremental update to a largely unchanged operating system. In fact, though the mobile operating system ties all of these services together, the most important thing to take away today is that Microsoft has built a complete consumer mobile experience that strives to be as comprehensive as its enterprise experience.

Yahoo, Apple, Adobe, others named in Eolas patent lawsuit blitz

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 5:27pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

It's the same technology that was at the heart of a news-making patent suit against Microsoft: the patent held by Eolas Technologies that defines how a Web browser plug-in can activate functionality. A trio of Eolas patents was upheld under scrutiny in 2005, resulting in a battle in the nation's higher courts over whether Microsoft owes someone else for the right to use what could essentially be described as an "on-switch." It was a battle that brought a premature, if welcome, end to the marketing push for ActiveX.

But the final round of that fight never played out, as Eolas and Microsoft settled for an undisclosed sum, just as Microsoft won the right to argue the invalidity of Eolas' patents anyway. Since those arguments were never made, the 2005 decision upholding their validity stood.

Today, Eolas is using that decision as a platform to press forward with a colossal patent suit against a parade of new defendants, all of whom have something to do with the triggering of active functionality through a Web browser -- from Mac maker Apple, Flash maker Adobe, and electronic retailer Amazon to Frito-Lay, JPMorgan Chase, and Playboy Enterprises.

"All we want is what's fair," reads a statement to Betanews this morning from Eolas chairman Dr. Michael Doyle. "We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair."

The showdown will take place where all great US patent lawsuit showdowns take place nowadays: federal court in Tyler, Texas. The lawsuit itself contained merely boilerplate text, listing all the defendants, citing willful infringement on the part of each one, and pleading for damages.

"As a direct and proximate consequence of the acts and practices of the Defendants in infringing and/or inducing the infringement of one or more claims of the '906 Patent and one or more claims of the '985 Patent, Eolas has been, is being, and, unless such acts and practices are enjoined by the Court, will continue to suffer injury to its business and property rights," the lawsuit reads.

The complete list of defendants is as follows: Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Argosy Publishing (publisher of The Visible Body), Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, GoDaddy, J. C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, "transactional" adult entertainment provider New Frontier Media, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Rent-a-Center, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Touting the high value of the portfolio it's defending in a statement to Betanews this morning, Eolas lead counsel Mike McKool said, "What distinguishes this case from most patent suits is that so many established companies named as defendants are infringing a patent that has been ruled valid by the [US] Patent Office on three occasions."

Verizon's first Android phone will have Google Voice

Publié: octobre 6, 2009, 4:42pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, Verizon and Google announced their partnership on the Android mobile platform, a collaboration that has long been expected, but has recently been bereft of new developments. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam today said that the discussions between Google and Verizon began some 18 months ago but the timing of this announcement is in no way a reflection of "whatever's currently being discussed on the Hill." (i.e. The FCC's investigation of Apple's Google Voice rejection.)

Through this new partnership, Verizon Wireless will debut its first Android devices in the next couple of weeks. The carrier promised today they will provide "the best possible form factors from [Verizon's] partners in the hardware space, to bring those apps and services to market...there will be different form factors appealing to different audiences."

Google has already partnered with T-Mobile and Sprint in the United States, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt today had glowing praise for Verizon. "I think everybody knows...it's absolutely a fact that Verizon's data network is the best in the US by far," Schmidt said. "And I'm not talking ten percent here, I'm talking about many multiples: their reach, the scalability, and the performance...there's no question."

Schmidt continued, "Certainly from the standpoint of working with Verizon, we had known of that reach. We did not know -- until we spent a lot of time getting to know each other -- that they'd also take a leadership position in openness; which was frankly enormously surprising given the history and the old line nature of telcos. Verizon, somehow, the leadership has decided to embrace a different philosophy, which works very, very well with the Internet. We also learned this is a network engineering company that makes it work, that they sweat the details, that they understand scale in a way that's very consistent with the way Google would like to work."

So the two companies sound like they have truly clicked. Naturally, this raises a huge question: Given the recent controversy surrounding Google Voice, AT&T and Apple, is Google Voice going to be part of this collaboration?

In a word, yes. Verizon Wireless' Lowell McAdam said, "You have either an open device or not, and this will be open and we expect to bring that application to market when we bring the first device out."

FBI offers advice during new National Cyber Security Awareness Month

Publié: octobre 3, 2009, 12:22am CEST par Tim Conneally

This October has been declared National Cyber Security Awareness Month, a month in which Americans are encouraged to learn more about the "national security priority" that is the US communications infrastructure.

"Cyber attacks and their viral ability to infect networks, devices, and software must be the concern of all Americans," President Barack Obama said yesterday. "This month, we highlight the responsibility of individuals, businesses, and governments to work together to improve their own cybersecurity and that of our Nation. We all must practice safe computing to avoid attacks. A key measure of our success will be the degree to which all Americans educate themselves about the risks they face and the actions they can take to protect themselves and our Nation's digital infrastructure."

But on social networks, there is still a sucker being born every minute. The more new users that sites such as Facebook get, the more opportunity there is for malware to be spread and compromises to be made. In light of President Obama's grand proclamation yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its own statement, sounding as jaded as could be.

The FBI's sardonic warning yesterday was entitled, "No, Your Social Networking 'Friend' Isn't Really in Trouble Overseas."

The statement referred to the common spam/phishing scam where a social network's account is hijacked and all its linked friends are hit with messages claiming that the owner is in some sort of legal or medical danger and needs money.

Though the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received reports of nearly 3,200 hijacks since 2006, the FBI yesterday said that there has been a recent increase in reports.

And this surge isn't attributed to any new threat. Quite the contrary, it's the same old "please install this plug-in/application/codec" style Trojans that have been used for more than ten years, but they're just hiding under the friendly face of a social networking buddy. Since a link on Facebook appears to be endorsed by a trusted friend, people are much more likely to click on them.

There's actually very little that someone can do to prevent someone else from falling victim to a social engineering attack, so what's the FBI's advice now that cybersecurity awareness is a national month of observance?

"Be careful what you click on."

Report: 2010 Acer smartphone lineup will be 50% Android

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 10:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

According to a DigiTimes report today, newcomer to the smartphone market Acer will concentrate on releasing more Android devices. The source said it expects "at least half" of Acer's new smartphones to launch with the open source mobile operating system next year, even though the company actually showed off mostly Windows Mobile 6.1 devices earlier this year.

Acer first announced support for Android earlier this year, and President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci said it was being tested on several different hardware solutions. Acer's first Android device, the A1, is expected to come to market next month, but still has not been officially announced or specced.

All in all, it sounds very much like the path Motorola has reportedly chosen. After backing away from Windows Mobile this year, Motorola's CEO Sanjay Jha made a similarly noncommittal pledge to increase support for Android. Then, at least one analyst made the prediction that the company would be releasing no fewer than ten Android devices by the end of 2010, a number which could be anywhere from one-third to one-half of Motorola's lineup for the year.

Motorola unveiled its first Android device, the Cliq, earlier this month and is counting down the days until it becomes available for T-Mobile pre-order in the US A second device has long been rumored to be on the way for Verizon.

P2P warning bill passes House committee, will go to the floor

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 10:23pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Perhaps the most oft-used defense by defendants charged with the proliferation of unauthorized files -- including some which actually belonged to them or were entrusted to their care -- by way of P2P file-sharing programs has been, "I didn't know." That was the defense invoked by US government employees, and even their direct reports, when classified documents turned up on LimeWire two years ago.

If P2P technology truly can and should be used for legitimate purposes, as many of its engineers and practitioners believe, then the very least it can do for users is inform them of what and where files will be shared. That's the aim of a House bill re-introduced last March by Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R - Calif.), the widow of entertainer and Congressman Sonny Bono. After over a year's deliberation (taking the bill's predecessors into account), Rep. Bono's bill -- the Informed P2P User Act -- passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday, and is on its way to a full House floor debate.

Up to now, the debate among congresspeople has been whether the bill will "do enough" -- specifically, whether the real means to thwarting P2P's ability to share unauthorized and even confidential files involves prohibiting or limiting the spread of the technology itself. But the Bono bill is a compromise that would hold P2P engineers to their word when they say they can ensure their software is used for legitimate purposes: In simple language, it states that P2P programs must inform users during setup about which files they can possibly share with other users in the network, and must repeat that message during product activation -- giving users the opportunity to cancel if they realize they're exposing documents to danger.

"Imagine all your tax returns, medical records, family photos, your resume, professional records, online bill information, and anything else available to complete strangers," Rep. Bono posited in a May 5 editorial for The Hill. "Does this frighten you? It should."

The bill would also make it illegal for any software to install P2P components on a user's computer without also giving her the obvious means to uninstall it. This may not only be to protect the user's interests, but also to forestall opportunities for prospective defendants to argue in court that they didn't even know their file-sharing software was there.

Rep. Bono perhaps inadvertently painted herself as an enemy of the file-sharing community when a member of her staff casually told a member of the press -- who passed it on to the Associated Press -- that becoming the head of the RIAA would be her "ideal job." Bono later denied she ever had that sentiment; but in an environment where black and white are the only two colors of paint available, the damage was already done. The office worker's comments came after Rep. Bono's formation in 2003 of a congressional caucus representing copyright holders -- a caucus where she would not only be the representative but also, as the inheritor of her late husband's music, one of the represented.

Opponents of ICANN plan fear expedited domain takedowns

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 9:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Just days prior to the expiration of the final Joint Project Agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the US Dept. of Commerce, effectively letting the DOC's oversight over ICANN lapse, the CEO of ICANN, Rod Beckstrom, informed ranking Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee and its key Subcommittee on Courts and Competition, that ICANN had no intention of terminating its long-term relationship with the US Government. But Beckstrom's lack of detail in response to a direct question from Reps. Lamar Smith (R - Texas) and Howard Coble (R - N.C.) suggested that neither he nor ICANN was in a mood to extend -- or in the congressmen's words, "memorialize" -- the relationship between the private, non-profit entity in charge of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), and the government body that gave rise to it.

"It is important to note that the conclusion of the [Joint Project Agreement] is not a termination of ICANN's relationship with the United States Government," Beckstrom wrote the congressmen (PDF available here, courtesy Domain Name Journal), "nor is ICANN an advocate of that possibility. I am in discussion with the NTIA [division of the DOC] to establish a long-standing relationship to accommodate principles including the beliefs that ICANN should remain a non-profit corporation based in the United States, and should retain an ongoing focus on accountability and transparency."

Congressmen Smith and Coble had formally sent a letter to Beckstrom (PDF available here) on September 15, expressing concern over whether ICANN had finalized its response to objections from the Commerce Dept. and others over its plan to implement new, language-independent global top-level domains (gTLD). Their concern has centered over ICANN's characterization of the system as being driven not by the governments of countries whose native languages would be incorporated into such a system, but rather by a nebulous body of "stakeholders," the fuzzy definition of which was formally incorporated into the Affirmation of Commitments, announced on Wednesday.

The congressmen wrote, "As new gTLDs are created, many businesses fear being forced to defensively register trademarks and variations of their marks to block cybersquatters from illegitimately trading on their good will and to protect consumers from increased incidences of fraud. We note that the absence of price caps in the new registry agreements could mean that legitimate businesses with an established consumer base and Internet presence may be discriminated against and compelled to pay a premium for each new domain name they register or renew."

Coble and Smith went on to note that ICANN did go forth with the establishment of a so-called Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) -- a group of precisely the class of stakeholders that ICANN has been actively seeking to incorporate. They are mainly the holders of trademarks, and are thus the key customers of registrars commissioned by ICANN to manage existing or new TLDs. Last May, in a demonstration of what the inclusion of multiple stakeholders could contribute to a new and more worldly ICANN, the IRT suggested substituting the organization's current Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) with an expedited system that would give trademark holders the right to suspend entire Internet domains almost immediately upon request, for a fee possibly as low as $200 per instance.

It's called the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS), and opponents of the measure are calling it "UDRP on steroids."

"The IRT recommends that ICANN implement the URS, which would be mandatory for all new...gTLDs, implemented through the new gTLD registry agreements, which would in turn bind registrars supplying new gTLDs to the marketplace," reads the group's May report (PDF available here). "The URS would address cases of abusive use of trademarks where there is no genuine contestable issue as to the infringing or abusive use of a mark in a domain name and in connection with a site that represents abusive use (i.e., not a fair use or commentary situation nor a situation involving questions of whether the registrant is or is not authorized or selling, for example, legitimate, non-counterfeit goods)."

In other words, where trademark infringement seems obvious enough, a trademark holder could simply file an abuse claim, and the claim itself would be all that's necessary to suspend the site. The registration itself would not go away, the IRT points out. "Rather, domain name registrations found to be violating a brand owner's rights will be placed in a frozen state, for the life of the registration, and only will resolve to a specific error Web page."

Under the current UDRP system, a domain holder that is the subject of a complaint may continue to use its domain until the dispute is resolved -- and only then is the use of the domain removed from it, if the resolution is not in its favor. Under URS, the claim itself can get the domain shut off. The holder may then have 14 days to submit a complaint in response, assuming its WHOIS data is accurate.

Beckstrom referred to the IRT's recommendation in his September 15 letter to Reps. Smith and Coble, in an effort to placate their concern that the gTLD program, left unattended to by government oversight, would result in domain name chaos. He went so far as to suggest that URS could intentionally kill the domain name black market, and in so doing, eliminate the incentive among legitimate registrars to hike their prices in preparation of possible defenses of their customers' assets.

"A mechanism for quickly suspending clearly infringing registrations will reduce the incentive for cybersquatters to engage in bad-faith registrations," Beckstrom wrote, "thereby reducing or eliminating the pressure on organizations to make defensive registrations. A reduction in the perceived need to register names defensively will also have the effect of reducing the perceived power of new gTLD registries to charge organizations artificially inflated prices for registrations in order to avoid becoming the target of opportunistic cybersquatters."

However, there were apparently enough vocal opponents of the URS proposal, including independent "stakeholders'" bodies such as the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), to convince ICANN on September 23 -- one week prior to the JPA lapse announcement -- to suspend work on URS, while its key GNSO policy committee reviews those complaints.

As a report to Congress from ICANN Chief Operations Officer Doug Brent that day read, "In order to address concerns that some of the recommended solutions might impinge on existing policies such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or could themselves be the subject of policy development, ICANN will be asking the GNSO to begin an expedited review of some of the recommended solutions in an attempt to reach consensus on an optimal path for launching new gTLDs with robust mechanisms to ensure the protection of legal rights."

Brent went on to warn about the dangers of stalling for too long a period of time -- dangers which he said include adding value to the portfolio of cybersquatters whose holdings depend on the continued monopoly of the dot-com TLD. In raising an objection to that point of view, ICA counsel Philip Corwin let slip one of his own group's cards in his hand: the need to protect the value of the existing system, for stakeholders who have already invested good money in it.

"The value of .com names is based upon the general public perception that .com is by and large the Internet," Corwin wrote, "and whether new gTLDs change that mindset, or so confuse ordinary consumers as to reinforce it and further raise the value of those portfolios, remains to be seen."

'Ten most wanted' patent litigator gets busted

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 6:53pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Acacia Research has been deemed a frivolous patent litigator for its repeated attempts to have its broad streaming media patents enforced in court. The holding company owns several patents on the process of transmitting compressed audio and video, a technique practically built into online multimedia; and it has been trying for the better part of the decade to license these patents out to a laundry list of multimedia companies, adult sites, and satellite and cable network operators.

Finally, after more than seven years in litigation, US District Court Judge James Ware invalidated the last of Acacia's claims, and called for a hearing on October 9 to close out the case and officially bust the patent. Acacia has been able to secure settlements and licensing agreements from hundreds of businesses, including a significant number of huge companies (Walt Disney, Playboy, T. Rowe Price, Bloomberg).

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Director Cindy Cohn said this week, "Invalidation by litigation is a different process for busting a patent than the reexamination procedure that EFF uses, but the end result is the same: The patent is ended and harassment of others using the patented technology must cease."

The EFF had Acacia's streaming media patent on its "Ten Most Wanted List" of the worst offending patents, which it has tried to void through US Patent and Trademark Office re-examination. In the EFF's procedure, it attempts to convince USPTO that patents are invalid through significant prior art claims.

"This marks the seventh patent targeted by EFF that has either been busted, invalidated, narrowed or had a re-exam granted," Cohn continued.

The three remaining patents that the EFF has on its list which haven't been shaken yet are Acceris' patent for VoIP technology, Firepond/Polaris' patent for Natural Language Processing, and Nintendo's patent for handheld software emulation.

Sweeping content security enhancements tested on Firefox 3.7

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 5:59pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Initial development is nearly complete on an entirely new kind of Web browser code execution policy management system, which may yet become part of Firefox 3.7 (the point release following the next one in line), a Mozilla spokesperson informed Betanews. When implemented, browsers such as Firefox will be capable of restricting certain classes of embedded code from execution, and Web sites can advertise to browsers in advance which classes of code its pages contain.

The end result, the developers of Mozilla's Content Security Policy (CSP) hope, is that policy-enhanced browsers will be completely immune from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks from malicious sources, by virtue of restricting themselves to either only executing inline code from trusted, certified sites, or not executing any such code at all.

"The main goal of Content Security Policy is to prevent malicious code from being injected into a Web site and executed within the context of that site," reads the most recent text of Mozilla's CSP specification. "Hence, a recurring theme in CSP is to prevent the creation of script code from potentially tainted strings. It should be made clear that it is not the intent of CSP to prevent navigation to arbitrary sites, but rather to restrict the types of script, media, and other resources that may be used on a Web page."

In any kind of modern software administration, policy is a term for settings, restrictions, and permissions in a system that can be grouped together and represented explicitly, in common language (like English), for the admin to comprehend. For instance, one of CSP's policies is a setting disabling any kind of executable code from being created from a JavaScript string variable, through the use of the keyword eval(). There are several settings involved in establishing that policy, but from the admin's standpoint, the policy is quite clearly stated: "Code will not be created from strings."

The wide implementation of CSP, though, will not be easy. First of all, Mozilla's intention is for CSP to be non-proprietary, but that doesn't mean other manufacturers are chomping at the bit to adopt it. Mozilla may need support from its own competitors, including Google, Apple, and Opera, for Web site developers to feel the impetus to include policy directives -- methods of telling browsers what classes of content it may include. Microsoft is certainly aware of CSP's development, but opted to steer clear of it for Internet Explorer 8; and IE9 is still probably years away.

In a public discussion last January that included Mozilla contributors working on the CSP spec, Microsoft IE program manager Eric Law stated that his team would not be interested in considering adoption of CSP until it was done. "The problem in targeting a moving spec is that if we ship something that isn't compatible with the future evolution of that spec, we're inevitably pilloried for hurting adoption of that spec." Defending Microsoft's use of a private technology called the XDomainRequest object, he added, "Until we're ready to support a stable CSP spec, we're surgically addressing this vector."

But getting other manufacturers on board isn't the biggest hurdle CSP faces. Although the CSP specification clearly states its goal is to present an alternative from preventing browsers from navigating to sites whose layout techniques may be exploitable, that alternative would effectively mandate that developers build bypass routes for browsers that advertise their own restrictions. The most widespread example will likely be inline scripts -- pieces of JavaScript that are passed as parameters to event-driven objects such as on-screen gadgets and hyperlinks. JavaScript was designed to enable this -- it's a feature, to embed snippets of code as responses to events, instead of pointers to named functions residing in enclosed <SCRIPT> elements. It's shorthand for the developer, and makes many functions of site development much easier.

One sure-fire way to prevent inline scripts from injecting malicious code into the JavaScript stream is to prevent any inline scripts from executing at all -- and that's one of the available policies in CSP. A more Draconian measure would be to prevent navigation to a site that uses inline code (for example...Betanews). While CSP's alternative seems fairer, it's left to the site developer how to handle a situation where the site's been informed the browser can't execute inline scripts.

In the opinion of Mozilla security program manager Brandon Sterne, that's just fine with him: If CSP promotes a more secure, if more difficult, programming method, that may only mean sites are more protected from exploitation to begin with. And if developers get the loosely veiled message, then he hopes they'll simply take heed of it.

On Sterne's Mozilla blog yesterday, he posted a download link to a custom preview build of Firefox 3.7 "Minefield" with Content Security Policy included. He also posted a test page demonstrating how certain code samples can be effectively excluded using CSP, and how other browsers loading that test page let them right through.

Mozilla Minefield 3.7 custom build with Content Security Policy attachment

"We have looked at HTML/JavaScript samples from a wide variety of Web sites ranging in complexity and have yet to see an example which could not be modified to support CSP," Sterne wrote last June. "We'll provide documentation regarding best practices for migrating a site to use CSP. Content Security Policy is also consistent with the programming paradigm 'don't mix code with content,' so there may be additional functional benefits to be gained by implementing such separation."

Even if Web site developers concur with the paradigm engineers such as Sterne are promoting, they may still have to contend with advertisers, especially those who contribute by way of ad distribution services. Outside of these developers' control, more often, advertisers are using dynamic JavaScript tweaks themselves, sometimes to expand the reach of their ads beyond the borders set for them on the page. A site may not be able to vouch for the inline content its advertisers supply, so while they may advertise themselves as compliant, from time to time, through no fault of their own, they may not be.

Brandon Sterne's custom build of "Minefield" is not one of the daily preview builds of Firefox 3.7, so testers who download the latest private alpha build will notice that it, too, fails Sterne's CSP test. CSP has yet to be officially announced as a component of Firefox 3.7, or any future release.

No more 'draft:' 802.11n Wi-Fi certification program finally begins

Publié: octobre 2, 2009, 12:01am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Wi-Fi Alliance 802.11n Certified 'Matrix' logo Well over seven years since work began on the standard, and four years since the first draft of the proposed standard was published to vendors -- and subsequently rejected by them -- there is at last a process in place for wireless networking equipment vendors to get their products formally certified using a certification that means the product is certified. If that last sentence sounded redundant, believe it or not, it wasn't: Since 2007, some Wi-Fi products have been certified using a certification that did not mean the product was certified.

Huh? Some products that adhered to so-called "draft-11n" standards (in this case, "Draft 2.0") were allowed to carry a logo that said "Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n Draft 2.0," with the latter two terms in smaller print. At the time, the Wi-Fi Alliance described this certification as "the consumer's indication that a product has passed rigorous testing and can deliver the very best user experience." More than 700 Wi-Fi products received the right to bear this logo. But among professional network engineers, there was no doubt that this "mark of excellence" was perhaps the world's most definitive maybe.

Now that the standard itself is almost certainly official (the formal ratification comes next month), the Wi-Fi Alliance is replacing the old "draft" logo with a new one that it hopes will represent the world's most absolutely certain maybe.

To distinguish itself from the old logo -- literally, to "prevent" confusion -- the Alliance is employing something it's calling the "Matrix," which is full of multi-colored letters representing not only 11n but all the standards leading up to it. If you see the matrix on a product, you'll know it has passed the Alliance's current test battery for certification.

But what does that test mean, especially now? The whole point of 802.11n was to open up 40 MHz of bandwidth in the 2.4 GHz frequency band for use by more multiplexed signals, giving it the amount of space that wasn't available for 11g. But as SmallNetBuilder's Tim Higgins discovered at the time, wireless routers that received the "Draft 2.0" semi-certification logo could default to using two of the allotted three channels in this band at the same time, making it impossible not to interfere with 11g-certified equipment operating in the same vicinity.

The Alliance actually never solved this problem, as one of its marketing directors told Wi-Fi Networking News' Glenn Fleishman last August. Although manufacturers may go ahead and use this wide-band approach as proposed for Draft 2.0, the marketing official said it's now officially "discouraging" this practice; and Fleishman points out, Apple is heeding that warning. For those who aren't paying attention to the warning, however, there will be a "rigorous" testing process.

But an engineers' white paper (PDF available here) updated yesterday by the Alliance shows no sign of any such discouragement. "While 802.11 a/b/g networks operate in a 20 MHz channel, 802.11n defines the use of 20 and 40 MHz channels. 40 MHz channels allow doubling of the data rate to 150 Mbps," the paper reads. "All 802.11 devices send a packet over the air as a sequence of symbols. Devices using 40 MHz channels can encode and transmit more data in each symbol. Depending on the degree of complexity that the environment can support, 802.11 devices choose an appropriate data rate for use over the air."

Later, the paper points out that devices bearing the new logo can create wide channels (40 MHz) for themselves in either or both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. If a device uses the 2.4 GHz band ("draft 11n"), it must also pass the test for 11g -- the class of device with which an 11n device may interfere. If it uses 5 GHz, the device must also pass the test for 11a -- the class with which it may interfere there. However, 11n devices will be tested to ensure that they can detect possible interference with other signals as much as possible, and take corrective measures where it can.

Since interference may always be a problem, the new 11n standard (the one with the matrix logo) will utilize a multiple-antenna encoding technique called space/time block coding (STBC). It's such a clever technique that, conceivably, a manufacturer may be able to use two old "draft 11n" chips in tandem, to create the multiplexed antenna for a new class of 11n devices. (That's one way to get rid of those old chips.)

As the white paper explains, "STBC improves reception by coding the data stream in blocks which are distributed for transmission across multiple transmitting antennas and across time. At the receiving antenna, the data is recombined in an optimal way making use of the coding. STBC requires multiple transmit antennas and delivers benefits to devices with the ability to receive one or more data streams."

An 11n device does not have to have the capability to use the 5 GHz band, or use STBC, in order to obtain the logo. It should have either or both capabilities to avoid interference. But this way -- as the Alliance promised its members -- devices that had received the previous edition of the certification logo will be able to receive the new matrix logo.

But how, then, will consumers know the difference between an old 11n device and a new one that overcomes the problems of the old one? With an addition to the logo, of course: The Alliance is adding two classes of small print taglines for possible inclusion below the multi-colored letter boxes: one that reads "dual-stream n" if it supports 5 GHz, and another that reads "multi-stream n" if it both supports 5 GHz and STBC.

A chart distinguishing the three classes of 802.11n 'real' certification, apart from the general 'Matrix' introduced on September 30, 2009.

The Alliance is advising manufacturers to provide a complete set of features alongside the matrix plus taglines, so that consumers are fully aware of what those taglines mean. But they're encouraged not to rely on the feature set chart alone: "While the interoperability certificate provides a detailed look at the features tested for a certified product, the logo and tagline graphics are meant to distinguish products with a richer feature in a retail environment."

With that, the Alliance has created a fifth permutation of 11n devices since 2006: first the "pre-11n" class (actually created by default, by manufacturers that disapproved of the Alliance's tactics), then the "draft-11n" class, followed by the "Draft 11n" class (capital "D," also known as "Draft 11n 2.0"), then the Matrix, and now the Matrix with taglines. These additional branding elements, the Alliance says, will "help consumer users differentiate products and understand their capabilities."

Google bites Bing back, recovers all usage losses since spring

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 9:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries.

Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search.

While Bing's ascent worldwide was much more of a crawl since last May, according to StatCounter statistics, its global usage share in September fell about a quarter-point to 3.25%, while Yahoo lost almost half a point globally to 4.37%. Google ate up both services' loss worldwide, with global usage share now standing at 90.54%.

With the first day of October not even complete, StatCounter's live assessment of trends for the remainder of the month don't hold out much hope for recovery for Bing. Only 6.43% of StatCounter's sampled US queries thus far for the day (as of 2:47 pm EDT) came from Bing, while Yahoo trended up at 9.62% -- Google's share thus far is over 82%. Fewer than 3% of searches sampled worldwide belong to Bing at present.

What's important to note is that StatCounter's statistics focus primarily on searches conducted through just those three services, tossing out about 2% of searches as "Other." Worldwide, Bing is not the world's #3 search engine -- Baidu, based in China, is; and a competitor to StatCounter tracks Baidu's traffic as somewhat more significant than "Other."

A live sampling of global searches as assessed by NetApplications (with figures for Baidu recomputed to exclude searches it generates automatically for itself) shows Bing with 3.39% of global search traffic for the first day of October, well above that of #5 provider Ask.com (0.58%). Baidu comes in at 4.38%, with Yahoo at 6.84%.

PSP Go will give first glimpse into download-only attach rates

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 8:57pm CEST par Tim Conneally

PSP Go (tiny) Sony's latest handheld game console, the $250 PSP Go hit retail today -- the first major video game system that does not support physical media, with games offered only via download.

To kick start the device's life today, Sony has beefed up the catalog of downloadable games in the PlayStation Store with more than 100 titles ranging from $5 all the way up to $39.99, including the highly hyped Gran Turismo PSP. Sony will be giving away one copy with every PSP Go for the first ten days of its availability.

While all video game consoles today support downloadable games, they all also support removable media such as discs or cartridges (in the case of the Nintendo DS) as their primary method of content delivery. In this way, this generation of consoles has had a sort of hybrid attach rate (number of games sold per console), where both physical media and downloads have to be tracked.

The PlayStation Store is currently the only place where users can get games for the PSP Go, so the attach rate will be singly trackable.

Since no other game systems have made a similar transition, it is uncertain how well titles will sell for the new handheld. The nearest point of comparison is the iPhone/iPod Touch, which has proven to be a breakaway success as a casual and mobile gaming platform. However, with thousands of titles in the free-to-99¢ range, it won't be an even comparison. Furthermore, Apple has not issued an App Store breakdown that shows how many games sell versus other types of applications. Judging by Apple's increased emphasis on games (and claims of over 21,000 available titles) iPhone/iPod video gaming looks to be a highly successful category.

With today's 6.10 PSP firmware update, the Go gains the ability to be tethered to a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone for 100% mobile game, music, and movie downloads, which is more than can be said for the iPod Touch.

As competitive as these new platforms are, they're still in fundamentally different categories, and the PSP Go is swimming in uncharted waters.

At least the app store model is thriving! Three stores to get major updates

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 6:46pm CEST par Tim Conneally

iTunes App Store, Android Market, and Windows Mobile Marketplace

Even though collective analysis shows that the iPhone hasn't done as well as peer marketers would have us believe, the iTunes App Store undoubtedly has. In the first nine months the App Store existed, more than a billion apps were downloaded. Five months later, another billion were downloaded. Naturally, less than half of this vast quantity is thanks to the iPhone, as Apple combines the tens of millions of iPod Touch users downloading apps with iPhone downloaders.

But regardless of the device doing the downloading, the app store model has proven sound and has created a multi-million dollar business. This "app gold rush" has compelled thousands of developers to try their hands at creating software for the iPhone and iPod Touch in hopes of making a fortune.

This business is poised to mushroom in the coming days.

On October 6, Microsoft will unveil its new Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, which will be equipped with the brand new Windows Mobile Marketplace. This will finally provide a convenient outlet for the Windows Mobile environment, which already has thousands of apps at its disposal. Granted, this number of apps is also taking into account software developed for former versions of Windows Mobile, which won't have access to the Marketplace until November, but it's still a heck of a starting point.

Furthermore, Microsoft's odd Brix said in the Windows Mobile Blog yesterday that Tuesday is just the beginning, "We're targeting November for phase two...This second phase will bring the PC-based catalog and shopping experience, user generated app reviews, advanced key-based anti-piracy protection and other enhancements that expand your business opportunity and make it easier for a larger number of customers to find and buy your application."

FOR MORE:

The virtual mega-mart: Apple's oversized App Store by Carmi Levy

Google's Android is expected to get its updated market very soon as well, and will likely preempt the Windows Mobile Marketplace launch by a couple of days, if reports are to be believed. Rumors surfaced last night that an over-the-air update to Android will push out the 1.6 "Donut" firmware, which contains a fully revamped Android Market. Recently, developers got their hands on the Donut SDK, and subsequently the ARM-related NDK (Native Developers Kit,) and a number of owners of the Android Dev Phone 1 (ADP1) have reported successful Donut upgrades.

Rounding out the Fall app store updates will be Palm's App Catalog, which will soon start carrying paid application downloads. Last week, the company rolled out the 1.2 webOS update which included the ability to tie credit card information to Palm Profiles, but did not include any for-pay applications.

Uniloc will appeal overturning of Microsoft patent verdict

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 6:37pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Attorneys for Uniloc, the independent developer whose patent for software activation was the subject of an infringement case against Microsoft, told Betanews Thursday morning they will appeal a Rhode Island district court judge's decision Monday vacating the jury's award of $388 million to Uniloc.

In a statement to Betanews, Uniloc's attorneys said the following: "We are disappointed by the decision the trial judge has made to overturn the jury's unanimous verdict in Uniloc's patent infringement case against Microsoft. We believe that the jury's verdict in April was thoughtful, well reasoned and supported by the evidence presented. Since the patent status remains unchanged, Uniloc will continue to protect its intellectual property and appeal the Judge's decision to override the jury's verdict to the US Court of Appeals. We are confident that Uniloc will ultimately prevail."

On Monday, US District Judge William Smith overturned the jury's verdict and overturned the decision in part, remanding the case to a lower court for retrial. Although Microsoft may ultimately be held accountable, Judge Smith made clear that a new jury should be made aware it may only end up owing about $18 million at best, if they adhere to the proper formula.

But the judge's immolation of the underlying theory of Microsoft's guilt may have made that finding extremely difficult for a new jury to reach, as he used Uniloc's own expert witness' testimony to demonstrate that the technology Microsoft used instead could not have violated Uniloc's patent. Quite possibly, Microsoft may have studied that patent, but implemented different methodology in order to avoid infringement. The question a new jury may have to consider is whether Microsoft violated the ideal of a patent without copying its methodology -- a theory that hasn't held water before.

Whether a new jury even gets the case, however, may depend on the outcome of Uniloc's appeal.

Amazon settles Kindle case with '1984' reader, promises not to delete e-books

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 5:55pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

As first reported by TechFlash's Eric Engleman, Amazon has elected to settle out of court with a Michigan high school student, who sued the Kindle maker last July after having remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from his and about 2,000 other users' Kindles. The electronic publisher in that instance did not actually have the rights to those works from Orwell's estate; but as Amazon acknowledged in its published settlement order (PDF available here, courtesy Puget Sound Business Journal), deleting those works from their systems was a violation of Amazon's own Terms of Service.

The settlement is unique in that Amazon was willing to let its terms be known. Student Justin Gawronski's attorneys will receive $150,000, on the stipulation that the attorneys' portion will be donated to a charity that promotes literacy, educational, or children's causes. Amazon will continue to honor its plan to give purchasers a $30 gift card.

But the settlement also contains a promise from Amazon never to remotely delete e-books installed on customers' Kindles, except in certain circumstances: "For copies of Works purchased pursuant to [the Terms of Service] granting 'the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy' of each purchased Work and to 'view, use and display [such Works] an unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices]...and solely for [the purchasers'] personal, non-commercial use,' Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to a Device)," the settlement order reads.

The promise only applies to e-books, the order goes on, and not to system software or to periodicals or newspapers to which the customer subscribes -- issues of those items may possibly be deleted when they "expire."

The virtual mega-mart: Apple's oversized App Store

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 5:13pm CEST par Carmi Levy

By all definitions, Apple's iTunes App Store is a massive success, with sales numbers that would make McDonald's franchisees green with envy. Two billion applications -- half a billion in the last quarter alone -- have been downloaded since the store went live just over 14 months ago. With over 85,000 apps, it puts every mobile platform competitor to shame. The 125,000-strong iPhone Developer Program and successive evolutions of iPhone and iPod touch devices should keep driving growth for a while.

This is all obviously good for Apple, because a vibrant online App Store naturally drives demand for its high-margin hardware. And in the case of the iPhone, AT&T and other partner-carriers benefit from carrying a device whose sales are driven not only by desirable hardware, but by the ability to easily turn the device into pretty much anything the end user wants. The paltry few-thousand choices on Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World, or Palm App Catalog's even paltrier few dozen apps, end up serving as inadvertent advertisements for the iPhone.

When numbers overwhelm

The real issue for software developers is whether any of this is good for them. While all of them would likely give their eye teeth to develop for the hottest platform, there is such thing as being too hot. At a certain point, hugely popular ecosystems like Apple's App Store become a liability for developers who don't want to get lost in the crowd.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) Precisely where that point lies is a great unknown. Was it at 25,000 apps? Or will Apple cross the threshold at 200,000 titles? No one really knows, but in the still solidifying world of online software sales and delivery, I'll venture that at some point, too much success for the hardware/online app store vendor translates into weaker prospects for the little guys just trying to get their piece of the action.

A quick comparison with traditional retailers might help. In the typical big-box retail store, shelf space is everything. Vendors fight tooth-and-nail to get as much visibility as possible, brutally negotiating for every linear foot of exposure. In this ultra-competitive landscape, physical positioning drives sales numbers. Large store footprints offer more opportunities for large vendors to display their wares. Lose the battle and you're shunted to the bottom shelves. Or worse.

Clawing for space and visibility

While the strategy of clawing away for space and visibility scales rather nicely in any physical retail space of any size, it tends to fall apart when you try to transition it to the virtual space of app stores. There on the palm-sized screens of smartphones, there's a finite limit to the amount of visibility any one product can have. Customers will only scroll through so many screens before they elect either to buy or bail out.

So as Apple's download numbers soar toward that magic three billion mark, the customer's ability to find the one app that he needs becomes a hit-and-miss proposition. And if you're the developer of that one app, you come to realize that as the app store customer base scales up, the ratio of misses to hits scales with it.

An approval process that can be charitably described as opaque, or not-so-charitably called unfair and glacially slow, doesn't help. While it's a safe bet that Apple has beefed up the teams handling the crush of inbound app submissions, it's also clear that the company is far from quelling the chorus of complaints and making the process as streamlined as it needs to be. Even if the wildest optimists among us believe that the company will soon address every last complaint, the sad truth for developers is that it's harder to stand aside from the crowd when you're selling yet another GPS-enabled local business finder into an App Store that already counts two dozen similarly featured offerings.

Apple's App Store may be desirable because it has tons of traffic, but its interface leaves much to be desired when you're trying to figure out which one of these near-identical choices is the right one for you. It's one thing when they're free, as you can simply download them all and try them before making a final choice. But commercial apps don't always offer a free trial. So you cross your fingers and hope you've made the right call.

iTunes App Store, Android Market, and Windows Mobile Marketplace

Going the way of the shopping mall?

Dilemmas like these may cause some developers to rethink whether they want to be in the busiest virtual space at all. As many real-world retailers have discovered, the local mall -- once revered as the temple of retailing -- is under threat. Relatively high rental costs, often restrictive limits on what vendors can and cannot do with their stores, and a gradual shift away from one-stop-shopping toward distinct, more specialized big box retailers, have turned many malls into gap-toothed shadows of their former selves. The mall model, once touted as inviolable, is now obsolete.

As some online app store competitors offer developers better deals than Apple's 70/30 split, and as they move to make their approval processes faster and more transparent, Apple risks becoming characterized as the modern counterpart to the arrogant mall owners of the 1970s. These people once believed there would never be an alternative to their ultra-busy centers of suburban retail life -- they named their malls with words like "Village" and "City" because that's what they thought they were building.

As their experience has proven, nothing lasts forever, especially in the fickle world of consumerism. More ominously for dominant players like Apple, a less-than-ideal deal for developer-retailers hardly compensates for the hoops they often have to jump through to go to market. At some point, some developers may become unhappy with the deal they're forced to take, and may start looking to competing platforms' app stores to fulfill their marketing needs.

In such cases, their relatively small size could be seen as an advantage.

The current numbers obviously don't show a torrent of defections just yet. But the bigger and more distant Apple becomes, the easier it becomes for the seeds of doubt to be planted. As competing mobile vendors watch Apple run away with the app store prize, it's their best hope to remain in the game. As developers continue to wonder whether a compromised deal with Apple -- in a store whose overwhelming size makes it ever more difficult to break through and connect with buyers -- is worth it, alternative delivery channels offer similar hope that they won't get lost in the crowd.

iPhone's global success is more marketing myth than reality

Publié: octobre 1, 2009, 6:15am CEST par Joe Wilcox