Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » février 23, 2010

BetaNews.Com (8 non lus)

Google Chrome 5 loses points, wins categories, against Opera 10.5 beta

Publié: février 23, 2010, 10:58pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Beta 1 Build 3271 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Two weeks ago, we warned the new leader in the Windows Web browser, Opera 10.5 Beta 1, that it would have to paddle fast to stay ahead of the ever-improving Google Chrome 5. Apparently only one side of that battle was listening: Opera did paddle fast, pulling nicely above 26 in our latest Windows 7 relative performance index tests. The newest Chrome 5, meanwhile, took a performance hit that sent it back the other direction.
As a result, Opera's lead over Chrome is no longer a narrow gap. The latest build 3271, released just today, scored a 26.17 on Betanews' Windows 7 RPI, representing over 26 times the performance posted by Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista, on 70 different data points in 10 independently-developed test categories, using the same hardware. The previously tested build on February 11 scored a 25.83. Developers' build 5.0.322.2 of Chrome, released late last week, posted a Win7 RPI score 23.90, way down from 24.60 the week before for build 5.0.317.2.
What does this mean? As developers at Google scramble to make version 5 of its Web browser -- whose development track began just weeks ago -- more stable, that usually takes points away from performance. We usually see this happen at the very beginning of a development cycle, after the first obvious bugs are pointed out and eradicated, and toward the very end just prior to a product's release. But Opera hasn't had this kind of performance lead in years, literally coming out of the blue with performance better than triple its current stable release. Opera's developers may be riding the waves while they can.
So here's a message for anyone working on the Opera beta: A continuing bug in the beta's nested conditional statement handling remains responsible for as much as half a point of performance loss on our tests.
When you break down the test results by category, the news looks somewhat better for Chrome. The latest developer build actually regained the performance lead in the SunSpider computational test battery, with a 68.39 score versus Opera's 67.75. Mysteriously, the latest WebKit development build of Apple Safari 4 suffered terribly on this test. If you want proof that WebKit's own SunSpider battery is honest with its results, look at the result build 55138 of WebKit/Safari 4 posted today: a 38.92. Betanews retested and verified this result. The latest stable Chrome 4 posted the third best SunSpider score today with 58.55.
Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.
The Opera beta took a performance hit in CSS rendering as well, which is usually Opera's strength, with a 6.73 score on the Nontroppo CSS rendering battery versus 15.09 for the latest stable Safari 4, and 14.18 for the WebKit/Safari 4 daily build. Chrome 5 crawls toward the podium here with 12.38. Opera 10.5 hangs on to third place in the SlickSpeed CSS selector test, which compares the browsers' performance in handling 10 different development libraries for referencing complex page elements using CSS. Chrome 5 has the best score here with a 13.29, compared to 12.43 for WebKit/Safari 4 and 11.68 for Opera 10.5. In the Testnet.world JavaScript math operators' test, Opera continues hanging on to second place (it might be first were it not for the bug), with an 18.31 score versus 19.19 for Chrome 5.
So wait a minute...I thought Opera was in the lead here. What's going on?
In two of the three categories where Opera 10.5 does lead, it's by a breathtaking margin -- so much that, in the average, Opera ends up winning out overall, despite having second- or third-place performance elsewhere. In the old-style Web page loading test (which judges the handling of pages that would probably be considered tailor-made for IE6), Opera 10.5 scores a phenomenal 9.86. The next highest score in that category is posted by the stable Opera 10.1 with 8.57 (the stable build doesn't score very well elsewhere), followed by the stable Chrome 4 at 7.05.
And in the Canvas element test, which judges graphics performance in a Web app environment, Opera 10.5's lead here has only increased: to 69.00, more than double WebKit/Safari 4's next highest score of 31.81. Sadly, Chrome 5 posts a 22.76 in the Canvas battery.
For the Chrome dev track to retake the lead from the Opera beta, conceivably, it only requires radical improvement in just two departments. One is page loading, something Google thought it had the lead in at one time. On the standard page load test, Chrome processes bits at about 3200 KB/sec, while Opera 10.5's speed is just over 5000 KB/sec (that's processing speed excluding the speed of the network). And during the load process for the same test page, Opera 10.5 fires its DOM loaded event (signaling scripts that they can start referencing the Document Object Model) in 24 ms, while Safari 4 fires it in 34 ms, and both Chrome 4 and 5 in 39 ms. That's not an indicator of how fast the page has loaded (as some have mistaken it to mean in the past), but rather how soon certain elements of the script can start executing.
The other department is graphics performance, another former Chrome stronghold. Our Testcube 3D battery examines not only how fast the browser rotates two sizes of cubes in memory and re-plots them, but how consistent each iteration is compared to the next. If it costs cycles in the middle to get fast in the beginning, that's not good performance. For the large cube half of the test, Chrome 5 lost consistency points, with iterations as fast as 12 ms but as slow as 24 ms. That led to a 2.55 score for Chrome 5 here. Meanwhile, the Opera beta rotated the large cube as fast as 9 ms per iteration and as slow as 14 ms -- more consistency, better control, better performance. Opera has the overall lead here at 3.30.
With the browser choice screen being rolled out to Europe March 1, look for Google to make up some ground, particularly so it can roll out its campaign that the fastest browser is the best browser, without Betanews blaring a big neon pointer in the direction of Opera.
Download Google Chrome for Windows Dev build 5.0.322.2 from Fileforum now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Die-Fi: Communications company unveils wireless tombstones

Publié: février 23, 2010, 9:55pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Arizona company Objecs announced today that it has developed "enhanced memorial products" that add Near Field Communications tags to cemetery markers, which allow text and photos to be "embedded" in a headstone and retrieved whenever a cell phone is touched against its surface.
It's the same inductive coupling technology used in wallet phones that allows complex information sharing at the expense of practically no electrical energy.
Objecs, which specializes in "object hyperlinking," or assigning a Web-based presence to real world objects, sells two products. One is called RosettaStone, which is a palm-sized stone tablet; the other is Data Tag, which adheres directly to headstones. In good outdoor conditions, the company says the Personal RosettaStone should be readable for as much as 300 years.
While it does conjure up fantastical images of Jor-el's parting messages to Superman, this sort of tagging can actually be incorporated into the extremely popular (and lucrative) genealogy business.
"Each tag has a unique ID number that serves the same purpose as a database primary key," John Bottorff, Objecs Founder said in a statement today. "This unique ID number creates a common reference between the physical world and the digital world in ways that first and last name by itself can not."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Lenovo launches notebooks, tablet, and sub-$400 Windows server

Publié: février 23, 2010, 8:16pm CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

With its latest announced systems on Monday, Lenovo is following up on a series of PCs unveiled just over a month ago that included AMD-powered Edge notebooks for SMBs. The global #3 PC maker's new entries include two ultraportable notebooks, a tablet PC, and two mobile workstations -- one of them outfitted with Lenovo's trademark secondary display -- and a low-cost server aimed at the smallest of businesses.
With these new products, Lenovo is adhering to a "protect and attack" strategy versus rivals such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, said Mika Majapuro, a Lenovo product marketing manager, in a meeting with Betanews during a New York City press tour.
Lenovo, he elaborated, wants to safeguard its core business of enterprise PCs for the North American, European, and Japanese markets while at the same time branching more into the SMB and consumer spaces as well as emerging markets such as Latin America.
The five Lenovo notebooks launched this week are geared mostly to enterprises, according to Majapuro. Lenovo is officially addressing consumers through its IdeaPad line-up. But on the other hand, ThinkPads are also popular with some consumers, particularly students, because ThinkPads are designed to provide "best value," he said.
"With a ThinkPad, you know it will last at least three years," Betanews was told. Majaupuro contended that Lenovo's PCs are so durable that he can stand on a ThinkPad notebook without breaking it.
Lenovo's new X201 and X201s ultramobile notebooks come with 12.1-inch, WVGA + LED backlit displays; multiple choices for HDD or SDD storage; Intel HD GPUs; built-in Bluetooth; and a 4- to 9-volt battery. WiMax and external optical drives are optionally available. Pricing starts at $1,199 for the X201 and $1,599 for the slightly lighter X201s (pictured right).
Lenovo also unveiled a convertible tablet edition of the X201 (above). Features include a 12-inch capacitive multitouch screen; a wide angle screen for views of up to 185 degrees; a 2 megapixel camera; a fingerprint reader; dual microphones for canceling out background noise; and WiMAX, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The X201 Tablet is also expandable through up to 8 GB of memory, multiple USB ports; and a 54mm Express Card Slot for smart card readers, TV tuners, Firewire and other devices. Options for the convertible tablet include a super-bright outdoor screen and a DVD drive connection through Ultrabase or USB port.
Majapuro said that Lenovo's new W701 (above) and W701ds (left) 17-inch mobile workstations are tailored to engineers and other users of graphics-intensive application looking for desktop replacement machines that are portable between rooms in an office, or between the office and home. Both machines sport X-rite color calibration for color accuracy and Intel Core i7 processors with NVidia Quadro FX 2800 and 3800 Series GPUs.
Pointing to the W701ds, Majapuro showed a secondary, slideout 10.6-inch WXGA resolution screen for supplementary viewing.
Options available for both machines include X-rite color calibration for color accuracy and a built-in Wacom digitizer and pen, he said. Pricing begins at $2,199 for the W701 and $3,799 for the W701ds.
Although also very suitable for home networking, Lenovo's new T3200v ThinkServer is really aimed at small business, a target the PC maker expects to pursue some more with additional products over the next couple of years. The company's new TS200v server -- meant mainly for SMBs -- offers a choice of four 32 nm Intel Core CPUs including the new 2.13 GHz Core i3-350 with integrated graphics.
Small enough to fit under a desktop, the new server comes with a DVD drive; a single Gigabit Ethernet port; x16 and x1 PCI slots; ten USB ports; dual PCI slots; and VGA out. Equipped with space for two HDDs supporting RAID 0/1, the server supports unregistered DDR3 RAM through four expansion slots. The TS200v also comes with Intel Active Management Technology, for remote management whether the server is situated in a home office or a medical building, for instance. Pricing starts at under $400.
In the future, Lenovo plans to announce additional servers for SMBs, along with an all-in-one PC geared to enterprises, Majapuro told Betanews.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Android and iPhone smack down Windows Mobile

Publié: février 23, 2010, 6:12pm CET par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Worldwide, Windows Mobile smartphone operating system market share declined in 2009 to 8.7 percent from 11.8 percent a year later. Windows Phone 7 Series couldn't come soon enough -- if holiday 2009 could even be enough to hold back Apple's iPhone OS and Google Android.
The smartphone data comes from Gartner, which measures actual sales to customers rather than to carriers or dealers. By that reckoning, Windows Mobile sales only declined by 1.47 million units to around 15 million units year over year. By comparison, iPhone OS sales more than doubled -- to nearly 25 million units -- with share rise to 14.4 percent from 8.2 percent year over year. Android made significant gains -- and at the expense of other Linux-based smartphone operating systems, too -- with share rising from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 3.9 percent in 2009 on 6.8 million units shipped. Android made its biggest gains of the year during fourth quarter.
"Android's success experienced in the fourth quarter of 2009 should continue into 2010 as more manufacturers launch Android products," Roberta Cozza, Gartner principal research analyst, said in a statement.
Between 2008 and 2009, Android's smartphone market share increased by 680 percent, while unit sales rose by 961.4 percent. By comparison, Windows Mobile market share decreased by 26.27 percent and units sales fell by 8.9 percent. iPhone OS: 75.6 percent increase for share and 118 percent increase for unit sales. BlackBerry OS: 19.9 increase in market share and 48.4 percent for unit sales. Symbian: Market share declined by 10.5 percent, while unit sales rose by 10.9 percent.
Mobile phone sales reached 1.21 billion last year, 380 million during fourth quarter. Device sales were strongest at at the fringes -- smartphones and lower-cost handsets. Apple, Google and Research in Motion benefited from smartphone sales, while Nokia gained from cheaper and mid-tier handsets, particularly those selling into emerging markets.
"Smartphone sales to end users continued their strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, totaling 53.8 million units, up 41.1 per cent from the same period in 2008," Carolina Milanesi, Gartner research director, said in a statment. "In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8 per cent increase from 2008." Milanesi noted that "smartphone-focused vendors" captured "market share from other larger device producers."
The only really good news for Microsoft is that Windows Mobile share stank but sales didn't reek. As aforementioned, Windows Mobile dramatically lost more market share than number of units shipped. Windows Mobile fell to No. 4 position from No. 3, replaced by iPhone, for smartphone OS share. Microsoft still has some footing for recovery, particularly as it up to Windows Phone 7 Series device releases. That said, Android and iPhone OS are rapidly rise stars, even as Windows Mobile's shine dims.
Nokia remains the market share force for all other handset competitors to reckon with. While Nokia lost market share in 2009, prospects are much better for 2010. Symbian OS smartphone share dropped from 52.4 percent to 46.9 percent on an increase of about 8 million more handsets sold than 2008.
"Symbian had become uncompetitive in recent years, but its market share, particularly on Nokia devices, is still strong," Cozza said in a statement. "If Symbian can use this momentum, it could return to positive growth." Much depends on the operating system's first, truly open-source version, Symbian^3, which the Symbian Foundation announced during Mobile World Congress.
"Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010," Milanesi warned. "Its very strong mid-tier portfolio will help it hold market share, but its ongoing weakness at the high end of the portfolio will hurt its share of market value."
Nokia stood out from nearly all other handset manufacturers during Mobile World Congress by not announcing a slew of new handsets. Still, Symbian^4 is expected to release by end of year. Both new Symbian versions will add functionality as much to mid-tier handsets as smartphones. Nokia sales may be weak in the United States, but they're strong in nearly every other region and across nearly every handset category.
I take a moment to focus on Nokia because of American blogger and journalist obsession with smartphones, particularly iPhone. In many regions of the wolrd, the cell phone is the first connected device that people own -- not a PC. In emerging markets, services like mobile money (and mobile banking) are transforming peoples' lives in meaningful ways. Application stores and touch-feely touchscreen features American bloggers and journalists coo so much about matter much less to people in emerging markets with more basic needs that a Symbian -- or even Android or Windows Mobile -- handset might better serve.
[Editor's Note: Paragraph inserted with percent change in smartphone OS market share and unit sales.]
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Federal cybersecurity authority awaits break in Senate logjam

Publié: février 23, 2010, 5:57pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

One of President Obama's first priorities upon taking office was a comprehensive review, then considered urgent, of federal policies for maintaining Internet security. The report on that review, released last May, recommended further empowering the role of what was then being called the "cybersecurity czar," including the delegation of authority to lead emergency responses in case of an attack on Internet resources that threatened the national security.
Inactivity in enacting those recommendations was blamed for the resignation of Mr. Obama's first czar, Melissa Hathaway, last August. In December, a former security advisor to Pres. George W. Bush, Howard Schmidt, was confirmed to fill Hathaway's post.
That's assuming the post actually means anything or has any authority whatsoever. Last February 4, the House voted overwhelmingly 422 - 5 to pass its version of the cybersecurity act that would give Schmidt the authority recommended in the review that Hathaway led.
But this morning, the Congressional news service The Hill reports, the Senate's version of the same bill -- despite bipartisan sponsorship from Sen. John Rockefeller (D - W.V.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R - Maine) -- now appears on a list of 290 House-originated bills stalled in the Senate.
The reason: An ongoing showdown over health care legislation has apparently created a situation not only where Senate Republicans are unwilling to publicly show support for any administration-backed proposal, or even judicial nomination, but also where Senate Democrats are unwilling to show signs of compromise for fear of empowering the opposition.
Now, The Hill cites House Democratic leaders as blaming Senate Democratic leaders for the logjam. For instance, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D - S.C.) likened Senate leadership (indirectly including Harry Reid (D - Nevada), the Senate Majority Leader), fairly or unfairly, to the British House of Lords -- a legislative body that is perennially seen as out of touch with the common person.
Signs of a possible thaw came yesterday as the Senate voted 62-30 in favor of legislation for creating and protecting jobs, believed to have been the President's #2 legislative priority this year. Voting in favor, ironically, was newly minted Sen. Scott Brown (R - Mass.), the man who campaigned for Ted Kennedy's old seat by declaring himself "#41" -- the one Republican vote necessary to stop cloture votes and maintain debate indefinitely.
Still, whether an authoritative federal agency in charge of cybersecurity -- a concept not only currently supported by House Republicans, but even created by some of them during their leadership of that body years ago -- can be established this year may depend on how the Senate handles the proceedings in the publicly televised health care reform debate, currently slated to begin Thursday.
In the meantime, it has been left to the Federal Trade Commission to send letters to several dozen organizations this month, the FTC announced yesterday, that their private documents were discovered in an investigation of files publicly shared through P2P file trading networks. The names of organizations contacted have not been released, however, the FTC says that private entities, including local governments, were among those notified. Normally, the FTC -- the "T" in whose name stands for "Trade" -- would not be notifying a school or municipal authority about its public conduct; and in fact, the FTC may have no authority in enforcing any of the recommendations it gave to non-private entities.
A sample of the version of the letter the Commission sent to schools and public agencies (PDF available here) reads in part, "The FTC recommends that you identify the students, employees, and others whose information has been exposed by taking appropriate steps to determine which of your files have been shared to P2P networks. You should also consider whether to notify them -- and any law enforcement agencies and credit bureaus -- about the exposure."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
PGP security gets Linux and Win7 support, plus more encryption

Publié: février 23, 2010, 12:59am CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

After rolling out the first Linux edition of its desktop encryption security software last month -- together with new support for the latest versions of Windows and Mac -- PGP Corp. on Monday announced major server updates that will let PGP be managed alongside myriad other approaches to encryption.
Released on January 19, the new PGP Desktop 10.0 product brings new support for Windows 7, MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and two flavors of Linux: Ubuntu and Red Hat. The software also works on Windows Vista, XP, and 2000, earlier editions of Mac OS, and Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones, said Karthik Krishnan, senior director of product management, in a briefing for Betanews.
Version 10 also adds greater ease of use and new capabilities not provided by the Bitlocker feature in Windows 7 and Vista, for instance, according to Krishnan. For example, if you lose your encryption password, you can now retrieve it by successfully answering Q&A challenges incorporated into the desktop software.
PGP 10 can be used either with or without two new server products -- PGP Universal Server 3 and PGP Key Management Server 3 -- slated for availability from PGP Corp. on March 3.
PGP Corp. bought the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) code base and name from Network Associates back in 2002. Initially written in 1991, PGP was available as freeware, and widely used on bulletin boards, prior to its productization.
Beyond adding support for PGP 10's new platforms and feature, the new Universal Server 3 adds the ability to manage encryption policies while users are offline.
In addition, for purposes of regulatory compliance, administrators can now give Encrypt and Sign buttons to business users who need to prove that they've digitally signed documents.
New in the Key Management Server is centralized support for PGP, along with other encryption technologies such as KMIP, OPAL, IEEE 1619.3, and PKCS 11 -- and security certificates for SSL, VPNs, and wireless networks, according to Brian Tokuyoshi, product marketing management.
The development of Key Management Server 3 comes hot on the heels of PGP Corp.'s acquisition of TC Trust Center -- a specialist in PKI (Public Key Infrastructure encryption -- and its parent company Chosen Security on February 2.
Krishnan acknowledged that PGP and PKI were once seen by many as competing encryption technologies. But, he added, PGP Corp. views the two as complementary, with PGP working under a peer-to-peer trust model and PKI supporting a "hierarchical, infrastructure-based model."
By and large, PGP's server software is geared to large enterprises rather than small to medium businesses, according to Krishnan. But smaller businesses can purchase full-scale cloud-based encryption services either through PGP Corp.'s partners or through TC Trust Center directly.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
What does Google gain from having purchased On2?

Publié: février 23, 2010, 12:48am CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

At the end of business last Friday, Google announced it had completed the transaction to acquire On2 Technologies, the maker of Web video encoding software and codecs, for a deal that was finally valued at $124.6 million. On2 was a small company that was, in recent quarters, losing small amounts of money. It was attempting to become lucrative at some point through the licensing of a new generation of its VPx codec platform, called VP8 announced way back in the fall of 2008. Customers were supposed to have included Move Networks and Skype.
It's the type of business model that only a small startup company could profit from to any significant degree; and it's the type of model that normally a huge company the size of Google would only purchase in order to shut down, perhaps to disable a competitor. But none of the usually suspected motives for a major player acquiring a minor provider make immediate sense when applied to Google and On2.
Perhaps that's why when the Free Software Foundation on Friday posted an open letter to Google urging the company to completely give away the crown jewel of On2's portfolio, VP8, to the free and open source community, that solution seemed about as plausible as anything else on the table. Why would Google make such a move? As the FSF describes it, to promote a single, ubiquitous standard that could end the Web's reliance upon Flash, Adobe's proprietary streaming platform that powers Google's YouTube.
"Because patent-encumbered formats were costly to incorporate into browsers, a bloated, ill-suited piece of proprietary software (Flash) became the de facto standard for online video. Until we move to free formats, the threat of patent lawsuits and licensing fees hangs over every software developer, video creator, hardware maker, web site and corporation -- including you," writes the FSF. "You can use your purchase of On2 merely as a bargaining chip to achieve your own private solution to the problem, but that's both a cop-out and a strategic mistake. Without making VP8 a free format, it's just another video codec. And what use is another video format with patent-limited browser support?"
On2 Technologies created this comparison between its own VP8 codec and H.264.
The problem is, it's of some use. Although Flash is a technology that does belong to Adobe, Google is actually in a good position to continue using it for some time to come, with all the benefits coming to it directly. Reportedly Google has already paid Adobe a one-time license fee for perpetual rights to the encoding; and since YouTube uses HTTP progressive streaming rather than the RTMP streaming protocol maintained by the Open Screen Project, it doesn't owe a license fee for using a Web standard. Meanwhile, one of the leading manufacturers of Flix encoding software for VP6 -- one of the codecs Flash has supported since version 8 -- is On2, so conceivably there's a little revenue to be made from perpetuating the VPx platform just as it is.
Back in August 2008, just as On2 was announcing VP8 for the first time, its executives convened a conference call with analysts (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). It was there that the company offered the first clues as to what it was really trying to build, going beyond the relatively low-profit licensing model of its chief competitor, the MPEG Licensing Authority, which manages H.264.
As acting CEO Matt Frost told analysts at the time, "We have licensing flexibility that the MPEG LA doesn't. If you want to license H.264, there's one licensing model and if you try to negotiate for a different licensing model, you're not going to get it. With On2, we are partnered with many different people using video applications and we're very open to different licensing structures with them, and it's something that many of our biggest customers have found particularly attractive about us."
On2 expected VP8 to compete against H.264 for the rest of its existence, Frost went on, but the company would not limit itself to licensing on a typical, annual basis as does MPEG LA. Frost wasn't looking to advance Web standards here: He was making a play for video systems manufacturers, companies like Vizio and Panasonic that are integrating Internet video into HDTVs. It doesn't make sense to apply an annual royalty model to a more wholesale business.
So when Broadcasting & Cable found On2 the very next month demonstrating at a major video manufacturers' conference, it wasn't with the idea of competing with Flash on YouTube. On2, remember, had an interest in Flash on YouTube. Instead, it was demonstrating a service, along with Move Networks, for potential customers such as Disney and NBC Universal to stream not-so-high-definition content onto set-top boxes and built-in program guides -- a way for content studios to advertise their content directly in TV sets.
Maybe On2 as a company wasn't going anywhere in the past few years, but that doesn't necessarily mean On2's technology was a bad idea. Anyone who's noticed Vizio's Forge product line commercial during NBC's Olympics coverage in recent days (you know, the one your wife or girlfriend warns you about because it starts with Beyoncé in a short, red dress) knows that the selling point for high-end HDTVs these days is functionality. Internet apps are delivering a new class of functionality to HDTVs, and there's a lucrative new market in the platforms for that functionality.
So maybe giving away VP8 would help Google score some points with Web browser fans; but we may be looking in the wrong category for clues as to Google's reasoning here. It may not care about VP8 as a PC/netbook/smartphone Web codec at all, and could conceivably continue to promote H.264 as the HTML5 codec of choice as long as it wishes. Google's chance at a platform play could have nothing to do with the Web at all. Problem is, giving away VP8 to the Web would mean giving it away everywhere, and that's something that looks less and less likely, the more you consider the viability of VP8 outside the Web.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Overcast, or, How I learned to stop whining and embrace the cloud

Publié: février 23, 2010, 12:46am CET par Carmi Levy
By Carmi Levy, Betanews

It's one of the most predictable responses in all of tech: Every time there's a blowup over some online service's privacy or data security lapses, if you stick your head out the window and focus yourself just so, you can hear the rumble in the distance as naysayers happily share their told-you-so stories of woe.
Without your even asking, they'll go into excruciating detail over how cloud-based services aren't ready for prime time and probably never will be. They'll tell you how distrustful Web services vendors are, how they view our confidential data as means to a profitable end, and how only an idiot would move off of conventional network-controlled infrastructure and throw every shred of personally identifiable data into the nebulous clutches of an unseen service provider.
By the time they get to the part where they swear they'll never run anything that isn't installed on a server that they physically control, I'm just about ready to run for the exits.
There's no going back
I've been hearing a lot of this over the last few months. First when Facebook's latest privacy faux-pas earned it the undying attention of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, and last week following the firestorm of disapproval that followed the Google Buzz launch. And as much as I believe companies like Facebook and Google need to be held accountable for their too-loose interpretations of confidentiality and privacy, I'm similarly adamant that the cloud don't-wanna-bes are howling senselessly at the moon.
A little history might help make this a little easier to take. A cloud-free existence is as impossible to imagine today as a phone-free one was in the '70s, a PC or fax-free one in the '90s, or an Internet-free life for much of the past 15 years. Like it or not, the cloud -- or Web-based services, or software-as-a-service, or whatever else you want to call it -- is here to stay, and anyone who sanctimoniously opts out amid claims of never, ever moving over is in for a rude awakening.
That's because, despite the still-significant issues surrounding the transition of applications from locally installed, owned, and administered infrastructure to a decentralized model that's controlled by a provider other than you or your company, the cat is already out of the bag and it won't be getting back in anytime soon. Make that at all. When we go online in any capacity -- even reading a site like Betanews and leaving a comment -- we're buying into the cloud-based paradigm where we leave footprints far outside our firewall and far beyond our own ability to control them.
If only it were so simple that anyone who wanted to opt out of a cloudy existence could flip a switch and make it happen. Sadly for these Luddites of the Web Age, it isn't. If they were to successfully take their opposition to all things cloud-based to its ultimate conclusion, they'd miss out on pretty much every form of online interaction that increasingly drives our personal and professional lives.
With that in mind, if you find yourself among the cloud-hating minority, here's what you'd miss out if you decide to fully cut the Web services chord and revert to a locally-hosted and controlled way of life:
- E-mail. That message you just sent your mom? As soon as it leaves your cozy network, it's in the cloud, touching servers near and far, going places you couldn't even begin to imagine. E-mail was the first and still is arguably most widely used cloud-based app. I'd like to suggest dusting off that old fax machine and calling a paper supplier.
- Web browsing. When we go online, we leave traces of ourselves virtually everywhere we go. We don't even have to deliberately leave a comment, either. That pesky little IP address of yours gets logged into every Web site you visit. With it, the server owner can find out a whole lot about you. The cloud strikes again, apparently. I hear broadcast television (which you're going to be watching extensively after you remove all traces of Web activity from your day-to-day existence) is still somewhat interesting once the infomercials are over.
- Text messaging. That cell phone in your pocket isn't immune to the influence of the cloud, either. Few online services are as easy for carriers to track as SMS-based messages. So when you fling your girlfriend a text that you're picking milk up on the way home, you're buying into the cloud. Now that I think of it, even a voice call kind of qualifies, so you may as well pitch your cell phone or smartphone entirely. To ensure you're not out of touch, stock up on quarters and hope Ma Bell doesn't yank every last pay phone from your favorite haunts.
Insert tongue firmly in cheek
I realize I'm being more than a little ridiculous. But sometimes it takes one form of silliness to expose another. Our interconnected online economy practically compels us all to give up some personal information to a third party at some point in time. No, we don't all have to join Facebook, and we can buy and install Outlook and Exchange on our own machines instead of farming our messaging service out to Google. But at some point, the strategy of limiting exposure to online services and holding on to as much physical ownership of applications and data as possible simply runs out of steam. Eventually, your data's going to have to leave the nest, venture outside the firewall, and land on a server that you do not own.
Taking the high (and mighty) road of cloud-refusal ignores the growing reality that standalone solutions relegate those who use them to a standalone existence. While it's entirely possible that someone could unplug and live an idyllic life off the grid, it's infinitely more likely that this is little more than a pipe dream for most of us. The Internet as a whole is one giant cloud-based service. We can no more easily turn it off than we can learn to live without telephones. The world relies too heavily on this interconnected technology, and our ability to build careers and connect with the people who matter most increasingly relies on it, too.
Photo credit: Carmi Levy
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.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010