Technical news for ALL

Pay for Your Homeworks to be Done Professionally - Custom-Writing.org Review

2008-01-24T17:02:00.000-08:00

I would like to share to you this very useful site for people who has a hard time doing assignments or homeworks.

This site will be a little different from the sites that I usually review which help you make money online. You will be the one spending this time to avail of their very unique services.

This site offers to do write-ups, anything from custom essay writing , articles, reports, dissertations, your thesis, custom research papers , custom essays , term papers, annotated bibliographies to editing and proofreading is covered. Basically it's a one-stop-shop for all your writing needs.

I couldn't clearly give out on the cost of each cause they do not have a flat rate. Prices depend on what type of assignment you are asking them to do and the study level of your assignment (e.g school, bachelor, college or ph.D) among other things.

BDV-640727-BDV

HITS AND MISSES 2.0(07)

2007-12-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

2007: Hits

The Facebook platform. Facebook's new open platform has proven to be a great way to give Facebook users more to do, while putting eyeballs on and dollars into developer's sites. While the usefulness of some of the apps is questionable (see the misses category below), Facebook has built a solid foundation for new social applications, something that did not exist previously.

Google Gears. This platform lets developers write Web apps that can work offline. It is in its infancy, but it's an important step in the right direction for road warriors and anyone who wants to use Web 2.0 apps while away from a live connection. So far, it's limited to just a handful of apps, including Google Reader, Zoho Writer, and Remember The Milk, but with a developing API and support from Google, we think you'll be seeing Gears as a standard part of new Web apps in 2008.

Adobe AIR. AIR lets Flash (and other) developers take their apps off the Web and put them onto people's desktops, and it's seen a lot of progress this year. From launching an alpha version in late March, AIR has been met with considerable interest from both developers and users. Many of the apps that have been created are slick and easy to install. AIR, like Google Gears, is a key technology in the development of "hybrid" apps--Web services that work for users whether they are connected or not. AIR's special power is that its apps work outside of a browser. AIR apps look and feel like real desktop programs.

Twitter. Twitter was one of the first microblogging platforms to get it right. In addition to its open API, which has encouraged the development of dozens of ways to read and post Twitter messages on a variety of platforms, Twitter got the social angle right. It's simple, but not too simple, and it's fun. Twitter's brief messages tend toward the forgettable, but that's the platform's blessing: it doesn't ask too much of its writers or its readers.

Ning 2.0. The launch of Ning v2.0 in February gave anyone the chance to create their own social network with a series of highly focused and customizable modules. At CNET's HQ in San Francisco, a group uses it to track and discuss local lunch spots, but with a little know-how, anyone can use Ning to create simple and useful private social networks without having to know a lick of code.

Google Maps. Google has been busy with its maps property this year. Since launching in early 2005, the service has seen a wealth of updates, but this year brought some of the most useful ones for day-to-day use. Our favorites include: MyMaps, which lets you create your own maps with easy-to-use icons; StreetView, which lets you get a 3D street level look at buildings and local features; a rerouting feature to let you tweak any side stops or road preferences, and aerial, terrain, and live traffic views.

Hulu. Hulu serves up TV shows, movies, music videos, and many other pieces of video content in a simple Flash player. While still in private beta, those who have used Hulu (including us) are impressed with it. It brings all the goodness you'd find on the Web video players from TV networks' video sites, but puts them all in one spot with advertising that's both tolerable and far better than sitting through the four minute ad breaks you get when watching the show on regular TV. The service is beginning to add HD video to its repertoire, which might just be enough to get people to stop pirating content via P2P services.

Flock. For a long time now Flock's been on the outskirts of the browser world. Who really wanted a social browser? With the popularity of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter making a splash in 2007, Flock's v1.0 offering finally had that value proposition of ditching the stock version of Firefox for something that would save us some time, and make it easier to keep tabs on our friends while continuing our browsing activities. The real hook of using Flock is the integration of social networking and publishing tools, which offer more right off the bat than a standard Firefox installation. Users don't have to muck with tracking down and installing plug-ins that might not be updated when the browser is. With Flock, you don't have to worry about that with the core components, and if you really want to add on, nearly all extensions that work with Firefox are Flock-compatible. If you're still on the fence, check our our Newbie's Guide to Flock.

Picnik. There was a time when you really needed Photoshop, or some other installed software, to edit a photo. Nowadays there are dozens of Web-based photo-editing solutions out there to help you tweak and edit shots. Picnik was one of the real standouts from this year, not only for its slick look and feel, but because it gives fantastic results without requiring users to know much at all about editing. The launch of a premium service, and integration as Flickr's default photo-editing tool give it a leg up on the competition.

Netflix movies-on-demand. Forget these expensive boxes you need to hook up to your living room TV for renting movies a la carte. The future is direct downloads, not optical discs. If you're already a Netflix subscriber with one of the supported plans, you can take advantage of their on-demand streaming service that gives members a multi-movie pass that's only limited by how much time (in hours) they're allotted each month. The only bummers are the reliance on Windows Media DRM, the lack of Mac support, and noticeably smaller video collection than you'd find on disc. Despite this, it's still better than waiting for the postal service when you need a movie fix. The service launched in late February--we've got a hands on here.

Misses

MySpace News. The first-leaked reports of MySpace News made it sound like a dream come true for both advertisers, and enthusiasts of sites like Digg and Reddit. A social news service working off the massive, multimillion member userbase of MySpace seemed like a great idea, but just seven months later the place seems deserted with no real changes since the late April launch. Front page stories are only getting a small handful of votes, while the competition is getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes and comments per item.

NBC leaving iTunes. There are many reasons for the split, but the No. 1 is money. NBC Universal simply wanted more per show than Apple was willing to allow. NBC has since moved its various content to other distribution channels like Hulu.com (seen above earlier as a hit), and its own streaming service, NBC Direct. After years of advertising iTunes as the place to get your fix of portable, digital, and multiplatform copies of shows like Scrubs, Battlestar Galactica, and The Office, ditching the iTunes media store just made the company look greedy.

Livestreaming. The technology and platform solutions for livestreaming are here and wonderful, but we're giving this one a miss because the content is simply not up to snuff. While JustinTV was a fun project to watch, what it's evolved into is simply not worth your time. Justin Kan's original solution was to strap a camera to his head and go on daily adventures, but the service has devolved into a slew of people sitting in front of their Webcams talking to a bored audience. Recent second-generation Livestreaming service ModMyLife puts a slight spin on the idea by giving users a bit more control, but it's not enough to get us away from professionally produced content. We're still really impressed with services like Mogulus, UStream.tv, and Operator11, but besides Chris Pirillo, who is making this technology interesting for the watchers?

Creepy ad platforms. Nearly everyone with a start-up is hoping to make some money, although two new monetization services of 2007 stuck out as a little creepy. The first was Facebook's Beacon, which sounded like the best of both worlds for advertisers and big companies, who would have a direct way to get some free advertising from Facebook users using their services. Thecompany's big faux pas was to make the default method of input opt-out, meaning if users weren't savvy to uncheck one of those little check boxes when signing up for a service, or making a purchase, the information would be beamed back to Facebook. Despite a massive backlash, the company took a longer than expected time to respond, and eventually caved in to switch to opt-in by default, meaning users would have to check that box to participate in the program.

The other platform is The Pudding, which lets you make VoIP calls to people's landlines for free. The one caveat is that the company running the service will be monitoring your conversations and attempting to pull in contextual advertising. Somehow we're OK with this going on with our e-mails and Gmail, but the idea of voice calls with friends and family just creeps us out.

HD DVD's hexadecimal decryption key/Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Trying to keep something secret that's been put on the Internet is just about impossible. This proved to be the case earlier this year when Digg.com's front page exploded with stories that either related, or simply were the secret code to decrypt the copy protection from the still-struggling HD DVD format. The act of exuberance was a mob reaction to Digg's attempt to remove the stories to be in compliance with a cease and desist order from theMPAA. Incidentally, Digg's traffic skyrocketed shortly after--at least according to Alexa. This garnered a miss from us, not for Digg, but from the MPAA for attempting to censor Digg's stories to preserve a pretense of control over a format nobody really cares about.

Citizendium. If you Google Citizendium, you'll see the Wikipedia entry about it is pretty much the first link besides the site. That's part of the problem. Citizendium was created to solve the problems that can arise from letting Wikipedia be written by anyone with a keyboard and a 56Kbps modem--regardless of intellect or educational background. It's essentially Wikipedia, but with the hopes of having credible, scholarly sources that will both write the content and help moderate everyone else. While Citizendium has already ramped up a considerable amount of articles, why not put that effort toward bettering the larger, more established Wikipedia?

Zoho. We like Zoho, and on paper the number of products it's launched this year puts Google to shame. But more important than volume is polishing the ones that are there, which simply hasn't happened quite as much as we were hoping. We want integration and less disconnect between services. We're also looking for a little more pizazz and something to pull us away from our desktop office apps. We're hoping 2008 is the year of integration for Zoho.

Vampires and Zombies. And Ninjas vs. Pirates vs. I just slapped you with a sheep, etc. These Facebook apps might have started off cute, but now they're cluttering up the Facebook experience. The original poke was simple, subtle, and ingenious. Everybody could do it, and no one was left out. Now we've got to add an app to even tell you to stop it in the way you'll understand.

3D Mailbox. When's the last time that e-mail from mom needed aDirectX 9 capable video card to read it? 3D Mailbox was designed to make e-mail fun and exciting by turning your messages into onscreen 3D events, be it bikini-clad babes, or spam (represented by overweight beach goers) getting eaten by sharks. The company's latest foray has moved locales to LAX airport, with airplanes representing messages, complete with cargo for attachments. We found the app to be difficult to use, and a massive resource hog. As CNET Download.com's Peter Butler noted in his hands-on, "I don't know anyone who wants to spend more time managing e-mail." The one saving grace is the promotional video, which will leave your jaw agape.

iPhone apps. The premise of Web applications built for Apple's shiny new iPhone is simple: turn any Web service into a simple app that you can use with your fingers. The major snag? You can't download them to launch right off the phone and use local resources like mass storage and saved files. The other snag is speed, which is hampered by the outdated EDGE network. Whilean SDK for developers and 3G version of the iPhone are due out in 2008, early adopters have spent most of 2007 dealing with slow speeds, and having tohack their phones to get proper localized applications that can help overcome the EDGE network's inadequacies.

Got any hits and misses of your own? Share them HERE

FACEBOOK TO LET OTHER SITES ACCESS PLATFORM CODE

2007-12-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

This post has been updated with information about Bebo's implementation of Facebook's code.

And now, for something we didn't see coming: Facebook has announced that the architecture for its developer platform will be made available to other social-networking sites, potentially rendering moot the criticism that its strategy is too "closed"--and potentially dealing a huge blow to Google's yet-to-launch OpenSocial initiative.

Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora posted a blog entry Wednesday with the announcement. "(We) want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model," Vora wrote. "In fact, we'll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms." A developer page elaborates that "the 100,000 developers currently building Facebook applications can make their applications available on other social sites with no extra work."

In the official wording from Facebook, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network is "making its platform architecture available as a model for other social sites," and sees this as the natural evolution of a constantly changing product.

This announcement comes in the wake of three OpenSocial partners--LinkedIn, Friendster, and Bebo--all releasing their own developer platform initiatives independent of the Google-run program.

One of them, Bebo, specifically designed its developer code to be compatible with Facebook's. As it turns out, that's all part of Facebook's strategy; Bebo is the first major social network to implement this new "open" platform code from Facebook.

"We're glad to see Bebo take advantage of the work we've put into designing and building a complete, usable platform," a statement from Facebook said of its would-be rival. "Having similar platforms across multiple social sites is good for everyone: developers get more reach for their applications, social sites get more people developing for their site, and users have better experiences no matter where they are on the Web."

But the Facebook release also stressed that this is not any kind of special alliance. "No, this is not a collaboration or partnership with Bebo," the statement reminded speculative readers. "A core Facebook principle is openness and access for everyone, so we've decided to enable any social sites to model their own platforms after Facebook Platform."

The initial launch of Facebook's developer platform in May sparked a frenzy of developer activity and interest in third-party contributions to social networks. Google announced OpenSocial months before it was ready,largely as a PR move to counter the Facebook juggernaut. And some OpenSocial partners, like Plaxo, have already claimed that OpenSocial has shown results.

But others are waiting until the code has proven itself stable--and that has meant that OpenSocial is still largely a concept, not a concrete phenomenon.

Facebook could use a move toward "openness," too. In addition to "walled garden" criticism, Facebook's image as the darling of Silicon Valley took a tumble with its controversial Beacon advertising program andshady allegations about CEO Mark Zuckerberg's past.

It's likely that this new move will make Facebook look friendlier. "This is just another step toward the vision of easy, open sharing of information," Vora continued in the announcement. "We look forward to supporting other social sites as they release their own platforms, and look forward most of all to the added benefit for developers and users."

BEBO UNVEILS NEW APPLICATION PLATFORM, TOUTS FACEBOOK COMPATIBILITY

2007-12-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

SAN FRANCISCO--When Bebo co-founder and CEO Michael Birch took the stage in a theater at the Metreon complex here to announce the social network's Open Application Platform, he made the eyebrow-raising claim that the new initiative was, "dare I say it, 100 percent compatible with the Facebook platform."

Bebo representatives had hinted at Facebook compatibility last month when the social network officially joined Google's OpenSocial initiative. The new platform officially goes live on Wednesday night. "There's a little bit of a land grab with social networks," Birch said on Wednesday morning, acknowledging that Bebo, which was founded in 2005, was late to the game.

Creating an application platform, he explained, had been part of Bebo's strategy for quite some time, but then Facebook launched its heavily hyped developer strategy--and that changed the landscape for Bebo. "That kind of changed our course a little bit because we don't want to launch another platform," Birch said. "It just becomes like a format war." Consequently, Bebo's platform uses compatible APIs and markup language so that Facebook applications can be easily converted.

When OpenSocial (which has yet to launch in full) is ready and stable, Birch said, Bebo will add those APIs to its developer arsenal, too. "OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform are clearly different platforms," he said, then added jokingly, "Our lazy development team said they couldn't do both at once."

About 40 developers and companies have created applications for Bebo's platform launch. Among them are NBC Universal, which has created two new applications for the Bebo platform, one based on the hit showThe Office, and one for Astrology.com, part of the company's iVillage brand; movie-centric social-media company Flixster, which has created a version of its application for Bebo; and virtual world Gaia Online, which has created the "Gaia OMG" application so members can access the service through Bebo.

"We want the good quality applications to rise to the top," Birch said, demonstrating the ability of Bebo users to rate applications on a five-star scale. The home (or "canvas") pages for Bebo applications are a little more extensive than Facebook's, with custom "skins" that members can then opt to add to their own profile pages. "It is a full-blown profile," Birch explained.

Birch stressed that Bebo is a platform for media consumption in addition to socialization. "We're very much focused on self expression and on content and media," he explained. Indeed, earlier this year, Bebolaunched its Open Media Platform so content creators could start a presence on the social network. The Open Application Platform, Birch said, will do for developers what Open Media did for media companies.

TRY CELL PHONES BEFORE YOU BUY, ONLINE

2007-12-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

(Credit: TryPhone)

The buying experience of cell phones has always been frustratingly full of unknowns: you don't have a good idea of what the service coverage will be like before switching plans, you don't know what reception your specific phone will get, and you are usually stuck with a dummy non-operative phone to look at in the store that gives you little idea how it will actually work.

A new Web site has come into beta that aims to plug that last hole. TryPhone provides onscreen simulations of handsets and shows how different button presses let you navigate through the user interface. Right now the phone selection is limited to four hot models (iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Verizon Juke, and Sprint Muziq), and not all functions can be tried out, but it's certainly a big help.

You can do your own freeform actions (within the limits of the functions simulated), including important ones like making a call, taking a photo, adding contacts, or sending text messages. You can also try out some of the customization options, but they don't (understandably) actually take effect on the phone demo itself. There are canned demos of key functions, and you can imagine how this can be used as a rich online tutorial for post-purchase. Perhaps users will also be able to generate their own walkthroughs.

In addition to these dynamic elements, the site also offers standard items like user reviews, specs lists, and the ability to buy the phones through vendors (presumably paying TryPhone a fee). I tried to buy a Pearl, which popped up a dialog box to pick between Amazon and another vendor. I chose Amazon and was presented with a page for the Sprint Muziq. Oops!

In my trial of the site, it worked fairly well, but seemed either buggy or slow at times. On the iPhone demo, I couldn't get back to the home screen after trying Yahoo mail. On one of the canned demos for the Pearl, things got out of sequence. And in general, the iPhone demo was missing much of the user interface magic that comes from its animations and gestural touch control. The Pearl demo missed the scrolling capability of the pearl "button" itself, part of the whole point of the design. Indeed, one wonders how TryPhone will simulate what are sure to be more complex interaction methods in the future.

For right now, however, kudos to TryPhone for filling a knowledge gap that the carriers and retailers themselves have sadly been slow in addressing. Let's hope they can work out the kinks during the beta period.

Silicon Valley celebrates Commodore 64 at 25

2007-12-12T00:08:00.000-08:00

The Commodore 64 may be the best-selling computer of all time. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., celebrated the C64's 25th anniversary Monday night.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--I don't want to date myself, but when I was in high school, one of the things I remember was that, among the geeks like myself who hung out in the computer lab, a bit of a culture war was under way.

No, it wasn't Macs versus Windows. But Apple was a player in this battle.

In fact, it was the Commodore 64 versus the Apple IIe, and while the school had a collection of Apples in the lab that all of us had to use, those of us who had C64s felt like we we owned the superior computer.

Maybe it was because the machine seemed pluckier. More accessible to the common man. Easier to use. Better looking. Whatever. We knew we were right. Those Apple owners were stuck-up elitists.

I suppose today some people probably feel the same about the Mac versus Windows stand-off, and, well, once again, as a Mac user this time, I'm on the right side of the fence.

But Monday, it was all about the Commodore 64, as hundreds of Silicon Valley's best and brightest came out to the Computer History Museum here to celebrate the machine's 25th anniversary.

It's hard to believe it's been that long. But I can still remember the day when my dad and I went to the local Long's to pick up my new C64. It was one of the happiest days of high school I can remember.

Over the years, I put that computer through its paces. I played endless games on it. I wrote BASIC programs. I word processed. I connected to my local BBS and illegally downloaded copied games. And so much more. That machine and I were like best friends.

I must not have been the only one because it turns out that the C64 may well be the best-selling computer of all time.

At the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64 in Mountain View, Calif. Monday night, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel was on hand for a rare public appearance.

At the celebration Monday night, Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, who was the guest of honor during what I'm told was a very rare public appearance, told the gathered crowd that the C64 sold between 20 million and 30 million units, a staggering number.

So given the presence of luminaries like Tramiel, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Pong designer Al Acorn and many others, I decided to ask some of them if they agreed that there had been a culture war during the early '80s, with C64, Apple IIe and, to a lesser extent, Atari 800 devotees carving out their sides in a pitched battle of self-righteous geekery.

I got to spend a little time talking with Tramiel and I first asked him what was different about people who bought C64s and those who ponied up for the Apple IIe.

"The only difference was the price," Tramiel said. "Because it seems that in this country, if you sell something cheaper, it couldn't be as good. If it's more expensive, and it's the same product, that must be a better product. That didn't stop me. I still wanted to sell it for a low price. If a person pays three times as much for a computer, he has to be proud of it, because he paid for it."

Fair enough. But does he agree that there was a culture war, maybe even one akin to today's Mac/Windows split?

Not really, Tramiel suggested. In fact, how could there be a culture war when one platform has 95 percent of the users, he asked. Never mind that Mac users are probably infinitely more passionate about their machines than Windows users.

So, since Tramiel didn't buy my premise, I decided to give Wozniak a try.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was on hand at the Computer History Museum to help celebrate the Commodore 64's 25th anniversary.

Woz didn't seem to buy it either. In fact, his position was that, secretly, most C64 users really fancied themselves Apple IIe users.

"I talked to young people," Woz said, "and a lot of Commodore 64 users (told me they) would have gotten an Apple II if they could afford it."

He added that users felt they could learn more from the Apple's open system, while the C64's closed architecture offered only a cheaper price.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that these two didn't acknowledge the culture war the way I did. After all, they were unabashed partisans. But if you read between the lines of their comments, you can see that I'm right. Tramiel bashed the price of the Apple; Wozniak said everybody really wanted an Apple.

Atari engineer Al Acorn, who designed 'Pong,' speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64.

But, there was still an evening of celebration at hand, and I decided to press on with checking out the scene.

One thing I hadn't expected was that a lot of former Commodore employees had come out to be with their kind, and to talk to Tramiel, who they mostly hadn't seen in years.

I ended up talking with Bil Herd, who worked for Commodore from 1983 to 1986, and who was the lead designer of the company's consumer group. He said he had designed the Commodore 128, as well as several other of the company's machines.

Herd explained that he had gotten lucky as a high school dropout who just happened to know how electrons worked and had landed his job at Commodore.

He said that he worked his butt off while under Tramiel's tutelage and that one thing he remembered about his time there was, "You learned not to give excuses. You learned to just get it down."

Herd said he had come here Monday from his home in New Jersey just because he wanted a chance to see Tramiel again.

"You just don't get Jack out in public," Herd said.

He began to reminisce about his time at the company and smiled as he recalled how Tramiel had come up with the idea to give consumers $100 off a Commodore 64 if they traded in their existing computer.

"It got thousands of the competition off the street," Herd said. "We had a warehouse full of the competition's (machines)."

And what did they do with those old computers?

"I used a Sinclair as a doorstop," Herd laughed.

Later, the several hundred attendees filed into the museum's auditorium for a panel discussion moderated by New York Times reporter John Markoff.

New York Times reporter John Markoff interviewing Commodore founder Jack Tramiel on stage during the 25th anniversary celebration of the Commodore 64

And Markoff seemed to prompt the panelists--Tramiel, Wozniak, former IBM PC developer William Lowe and former Commodore International vice president of technology Adam Chowaniec--to answer the question of whether there might just have been a culture war after all.

Most didn't seem to want to bite.

But then, at last, one final nugget from Tramiel, riffing on the fact that the Apple IIe cost more than three times as much as the Commodore 64: "We made machines for the masses, (Apple) made machines for the classes."

Woz and I agree: 'Tetris' for the Gameboy is the best game ever

2007-12-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

Tetris for Nintendo's Gameboy may well be the best video game of all time.

(Credit: Nintendo)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--I was waiting to talk to Steve Wozniak last night at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64 when I overheard him say his favorite video game of all time was Tetris for the Gameboy.

My eyes practically lit up when I heard that because, in a lot of ways, I have to agree.

In fact, as I told him a couple minutes later when I went up to talk to him, one of the things I made sure to do before I left for my Road Trip around the American Southwest this summer was go on eBay to buy a used Gameboy, just so that I could play that version ofTetris while I was traveling.

Woz seemed a little surprised that I agreed with him, but then he enthusiastically told me that, actually, it wasn't just the normal version of Gameboy Tetris that he loved. Specifically, he said, it was the version for the Gameboy Light, a rare version of the machine distributed only in Japan that has a backlit screen suitable for play on long plane rides.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64 on Monday night. Woz said his favorite video game of all time was Tetris for the Gameboy Lite.

Not only that, he said, but he'd just been thinking about going on eBay to try to find one of the machines and the Tetris cartridge for it. So this morning, I noticed a Gameboy Lite available for sale on Craigslist, and I sent it to Woz. Apparently, though, it didn't come with Tetris. Bummer.

For me, the Gameboy Tetris was fantastic because the game is so amazingly simple, yet addictive. And that actual version just works so well on that machine. It feels good in your hands; it looks good on the screen; it makes a really satisfying sound when you score a tetris (clearing four lines at once) and the scoring system was just about right.

One of the funny things about Tetris is that there are innumerable versions of it, and they all seem to work a little bit different.

Perhaps my second favorite version was a version for Windows I used to play back in the days when I was a technical support "specialist" for Borland in the early '90s. I realized that Tetris was the kind of game that really requires only your subconscious brain. And I know this because I used to play while I was on support calls. And, believe it or not, the more intense the call and the more involved I was in it, the better my Tetris score. I kid you not.

Anyway, this all got us to thinking: What is your favorite video game of all time, and why? If you have a thought on this, please feel free to post into the comments section.

NETBOOKS: ALMOST A DO-IT-ALL SMALL BUSINESS SUITE

2007-12-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

Per my previous rant on Web startups that lack a Big Idea, here's one I appreciate, since it's trying to solve a real problem: NetBooks. This company has built a Web-based suite of interconnected apps designed to run a small business.

It's a noble effort, because the small business market is murder. It's not that there's a lack of customers, it's just that they are so hard to reach and so different from each other. Building a universal small biz app is a tricky balancing act.

It looks to me like NetBooks might eventually pull it off, although I'd wait for a version 2 before I'd recommend the service to my friends who run their own small businesses.

NetBooks: Not exciting, but useful.

In the functions and features department, NetBooks is off to a strong start. If your business fits into the NetBooks target space (product-based businesses, not consultancies), you'll find a rich collection of databases and business logic to manage customers, inventory, shipping, and bookkeeping. For my own demo, I worked a sales order through picking, shipping, and billing. The application correctly moved items from inventory, created shipping labels, an invoice, and so on.

But while CEO Ridgely Evers pitched me on NetBooks as a "complete business operating system," some core functions, such as payroll and email list management, are handled through partnerships (PayCycle andVertical Response, respectively). Integration with these critical functions seems to be lacking.

And while I'm a big proponent of Web-based applications for workgroups, in NetBooks' case the reliance on the Web doesn't do the application favors. While the architecture guarantees that everyone using it is working on the same data and can get to it from anywhere, the NetBooks UI is archaic: Screens are filled with tiny text and selection boxes, and many rely on drab and uniform tabs for additional info. Navigating from screen to screen is slow. This app needs a UI refresh.

Pretty much everything you need is on the NetBooks screens, but the UI could be more contemporary.

The big difference between NetBooks and QuickBooks Online Edition is that NetBooks is designed to serve all parts of a business, not just bookkeepers. There are lightweight CRM forms in NetBooks, for example.

The suite has only "hundreds" of customers so far, and it is evolving. Evers also told me NetBooks will soon add more features to help its users run a Web-based retail store, and that there will be a cash register (point of sale) module soon, too. However, he's not going to expand the product to serve non-product-based businesses any time soon.

The product costs $200 a month for eight users (you business' CPA, bookkeeper, and marketing professional; plus five others of your choosing). Additional users can be added for a fee. Telephone support from actual company employees is included; Evers says he doesn't appreciate the "deterrent support model" of requiring users to seek other users for support; or for obnoxious hold music that drives customers away.

NetBooks is not yet the killer Web-based office data suite that Evers wants it to be, but it's a solid app that solves several small business problems.

2008 Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI

2007-12-11T19:28:00.000-08:00

CNET EDITORS' RATING7.3/10 Very good Editorial policies >>

Be one of the first to rate this product!

How would you rate this product?

WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEW

PRODUCT SUMMARY

The good: As a full-size SUV that gets more than 21 mpg because of its diesel engine, the 2008 Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI costs a lot less to operate than competing luxury SUVs. An adjustable suspension and off-road mode make it suitable for rough terrain.

The bad: The stereo doesn't display track information for MP3 CDs and the infotainment interface looks as bad as it works.

The bottom line: The cabin electronics and interface for the 2008 Mercedes-Benz GL320 CDI's infotainment system are old, and have fallen far behind today's standards, but the diesel engine makes the car drive well and get incredible fuel economy for a full-size SUV.

Specs: Body style: SUV; Trim levels: GL320 CDI; Available Engine: Diesel

Price range: $53,000.00

HIDE (X)SPECIFICATIONS

Manufacturer:: Mercedes-Benz
Part number:: 100909018

BASIC CAR PROPERTIES

Body style: SUV
Trim levels: GL320 CDI
Available Engine: Diesel

SAFETY FEATURES

Smart airbags: Standard
Antilock brakes: Standard
Traction control: Standard
Stability control: Standard
Back-up cameras: Optional
Steerable headlights: Optional
Roadside assistance: Standard
Adaptive cruise control: Standard
Rain-sensitive wipers: Standard

ENTERTAINMENT

Satellite radio: Optional
Video entertainment system: Optional
Multizone entertainment: Optional
Connection for portable MP3 sound system: Standard
MP3 CD-enabled sound system: Standard

CLIMATE/CONVENIENCE

Multizone climate control: Standard
Smart (set-and-forget) climate control: Optional
Heated/cooled seats: Standard
Integrated interface (iDrive, for example): Standard
Keyless entry: Optional
Keyless start: Optional
Two-way security system: Standard
12V power outlet: Standard

DRIVETRAIN TECHNOLOGY

Drivetrain available: All-wheel drive

NAVIGATION

Trip computer: Standard
Voice activated navigation: Optional
DVD navigation system (non-GPS): Optional

COMMUNICATION

Bluetooth phone interface: Optional
Home automation integration: Standard

Google's Storage Plans Raise Plenty of Concerns

2007-12-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Google maps, Google search, Google mail, and next it seems will be Google storage, although the company has yet to announce official details. Increasingly, when Google sneezes, entire industries catch cold, and if the report in this week's Wall Street Journal is correct, the nascent remote storage business may soon feel the chill.

In the wake of this week's buzz about Google's plans for a new online service for file storage, Internet privacy specialists are raising concerns about the potential vulnerability of such data to government investigations. Such fears have been heightened by a variety of high-profile attempts by federal investigators to retrieve user information from online companies, including Amazon, Yahoo, MSN, and Google itself.

The buzz this week seems to have started from a report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, saying that Google is developing an integrated service that would allow users to store and organize their own information on Google's servers. According to the WSJ story, users of the service could store any and all of their files -- from business letters to family photos -- on Google's servers, and then access or share those from any computer or mobile device.

Although Google has declined to comment on the report, privacy watchdogs as well as competitors in the data storage industry have some concerns.

More Vulnerable Data

"Whenever information is in the hands of third-parties, it changes the protections available for that information in a qualitative way," said Lauren Weinstein, an Internet privacy expert and co-founder of the People for Internet Responsibility. "E-mail, for instance, that is in the hands of an ISP typically has less protection than the same e-mail on your home computer."

When consumers store data on devices in their home, Weinstein noted, law enforcement is generally required to obtain a search warrant, which requires presenting sufficient facts to a judge or magistrate to demonstrate probable cause for the issuance of the warrant. But data in the hands of a third party can be disclosed under a variety of other theories, some of them with lower standards of protection.

"Remotely stored information might be subject to a nationalsecurity letter, for instance," he argued. "NSLs are a mechanism to extract information from third parties who have acess to information that the government is interested in. Not only can government officials get the information more easily," he said but they can also "often get access to data without the knowledge of the target of investigation, which is obviously harder to do with a search warrant."

Weinstein said that a critical feature in making remote storage secure is for the hosting company to encrypt it in such a way that only the owner of the data can get access to it.

Roiling the Online Backup Market?

Personal privacy is not the only significant issue raised by Google's announcement. Increasingly, when Google sneezes, entire industries catch cold, and the nascent remote storage business may soon feel the chill.

Intrepid computer users have been hacking their Gmail accounts for some time now to store personal files in unused space (no doubt that's one of Google's motivating factors for announcing its new service). Meanwhile, over the past year, a number of consumer-oriented remote backup services have been launched. Although the details of Google's storage service are still unknown, the company's size and online presence have the potential to reshape the remote backup sector.

Keith Cooper, president of Carbonite, a leading remote backup service, said he is not particularly worried. "Google is obviously a formidable company," he said in a telephone interview with us. "They're aggressively working to move consumers from a device model to the Web, and they've been very successful. But what we offer is an insurance policy," he said, "as opposed to remote access to data."

Cooper added that, when it comes to backup, what consumers need is a simple service that works entirely in the background, backing up everything that is important with minimal consumer involvement. "That's the service we offer," he said, differentiating it from Google's file storage service.

Of course, with Google looming in the storage market, differentiation is the way to go.

Windows XP Speed Boost Coming with SP3

2007-12-11T19:23:00.000-08:00

With Devil Mountain Software researchers running an Office productivity test suite, Windows Vista and Windows Vista plus Service Pack 1 took approximately 90 seconds to complete the steps, while Windows XP took only about 40 seconds and Windows XP plus a preview version of Service Pack 3 ran about four seconds more quickly than that.

After pronouncing Windows Vista SP1 a "performance dud" two weeks ago, Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based software development firm, reported that an upcoming update for Windows XP will offer substantial performance gains.

Running an Office productivity test suite on a preview version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, Devil Mountain discovered a 10 percent performance boost over the current version of Windows XP, the company reported on its blog.

The news comes as a "nice bonus," the research staff said on the blog, because SP3 was expected mainly to deliver bug fixes and consolidate various patches. "In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a must-have update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond's not-so-latest-and-greatest desktop OS," the company said.

Vista SP1 'No Panacea'

These results run in stark contrast to tests conducted on Vista SP1. On November 18, Devil Mountain Software reported that performance gains under Vista SP1 were negligible and that Vista continues to be slower than XP.

"The hoped-for performance fixes that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized," the testers reported. "Vista + SP1 is no faster" than out-of-the-box Vista, they said.

"If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. SP1 is simply not the panacea that many predicted. In the end, it's Vista's architecture -- not a lack of tuning or bug fixes -- that makes it perform so poorly on systems that were 'barn-burners' under Windows XP," the research staff said.

In comparable tests of Office tasks, Vista and Vista plus SP1 took approximately 90 seconds to complete the suite, while XP took only about 40 seconds and XP plus SP3 ran about four seconds more quickly than that.

For Office testing, the researchers ran Windows through a scripted set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentations materials. For multitasking, they generated a multiprocess workload scenario involving a client-server database and streaming media tasks.

Vista's Biggest Competitor?

In mid-November, Forrester Research concluded a survey of 600 American and European enterprises and concluded that while a third of them said they would start Vista deployments by the end of 2008, an overwhelming majority have standardized on XP.

"Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP," Benjamin Gray, an analyst at Forrester Research, said about that survey. With SP3 due for release in the first quarter of 2008, many enterprises are interested in extending the lifecycle of XP for quite a bit longer before taking the plunge into Vista.

The latest finding that SP3 will deliver substantial performance gains makes it all the more likely that enterprises will stick with XP for as long as possible.

Forrester found that 84 percent of companies with more than 1,000 employees now run XP, compared to 67 percent a year ago. With so much standardization on XP, Microsoft might have to extend support for the old OS beyond April 2009, when it's supposed to expire.

While 32 percent of enterprises said they would deploy Vista in 2008, 38 percent said they had no plans to use Vista and 14 percent said they didn't know what they would do.

Apple's iPhone Sales Sluggish in Europe

2007-12-11T19:12:00.001-08:00

Following word that Orange sold 30,000 iPhones in the first five days it was on sale in France,analyst Greg Sterling downplayed the news, saying that 30,000 iPhones seems sluggish. Even accounting for the population difference between France and the U.S., he said, the French launch of the iPhone was half as strong as it was in the U.S.

After five days of sales, French wireless carrier Orange has sold 30,000 iPhones, the company announced Wednesday. Louis-Pierre Wenes, Orange's executive director for France operations, said the number was "a very good score," and added that half of the iPhone sales are accompanied by a new Orange subscription.

Orange's parent, France Telecom, had set a goal of selling 100,000 iPhones by the end of the year. Considering sales volume is typically higher immediately after a product launch, Orange will be hard-pressed to hit those goals in the three weeks remaining in December.

In Germany, T-Mobile said it sold 10,000 iPhones on the first day. And in the UK, O2 said the iPhone was its fastest selling unit ever, but refused to provide numbers.

Sales Look 'Sluggish'

Even accounting for the difference is size between the U.S. and France, "30,000 units seems sluggish," Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence, said in a telephone interview. "The iPhone is having a tougher time in Europe."

In its first weekend, AT&T and Apple sold 270,000 iPhones in the U.S., which is five times the size of France. Thus, even accounting for the population difference, the French launch was half as strong as it was in the U.S.

The reason might be that wireless in Europe is more advanced than in America, Sterling said. The iPhone offered "a quantum leap in quality in the U.S. that doesn't exist in Europe," he noted.

Unlocked Version Available

Another factor is the dominance of Nokia in Europe, Sterling said. "Nokia is the dominant handset maker and has a lot of devices, a lot of smart devices. They're pretty entrenched in Europe, so Europeans may be more blasé about the iPhone."

France is a unique situation for Apple, because French law requires Orange to sell unlocked phones in addition to the ones tied to an Orange contract. Orange sells iPhones with an unlimited Internet contract for 399 euros ($585), 549 euros on other contracts, and 649 without a contract.

Orange only sold 1,500 of the 30,000 without a contract. A 100-euro fee is required to use the phone on another network.

In Germany, a judge ruled Tuesday that Apple's partner T-Mobile does not have to sell an unlocked version of the phone. Rival Vodafone had sued T-Mobile over the exclusive deal with Apple. The ruling overturned a lower court decision that required a T-Mobile to sell an unlocked iPhone, which had been selling for the extravagant price of 999 euros.

"The intention of the legal action was to ensure clarity on the commercial position in the German marketplace," Vodafone spokesperson Simon Gordon said. "We will be examining it closely to decide on any future actions. ... Vodafone Germany does not believe that the pricing model is in the best interests of the German consumer."

ShoZu introduces MMS you pay for once

2007-12-11T14:55:00.000-08:00

ShoZu (coverage) recently added a new dimension to its multimedia messaging service--the ability to post photos and video clips to a preset cadre of destinations, while only paying for a single data transfer.

On the Web site, ShoZu users select from 30 popular sites their multimedia submissions will auto-update each time they upload an image or video. The sites include Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, plus the usual trove of blog hosting sites like TypePad, WordPress, and LiveJournal. Also fair game are personal e-mail and FTP addresses.

The new service also incorporates a tagging architecture that lets users assign tags to photos uploaded into a common group, like a pile of vacation or birthday pictures.

There are two main benefits to ShoZu's new MMS upload system. The first is simplicity--after choosing the recipients for auto-updating, you just MMS or e-mail ShoZu's processing e-mail, go@m.shozu.com, any time you want to publish. With minor tinkering, you can convert the address into a contact for a quick-launch, and if you're not sure how, ShoZu has even created a ready-made contact for you.

The second benefit is monetary. Since your MMS merely tells ShoZu to push media to your prechosen upload package, you only pay for one message total. The setup is similar to Utterz, which also supports voice and text pushes.

Fujitsu bumps 5,400rpm mobile drives to 320GB

2007-12-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

A mainstream Fujitsu 2.5-inch hard drive for mobile or compact PCs

(Credit: Fujitsu)

Fujitsu has squeezed a notch more capacity into its 2.5-inch, 5,400rpm mobile drives, announcing its MHZ2 BH family with a maximum capacity of 320GB on Tuesday.

The family is designed for use in mobile or compact PCs and in consumer electronics products. It also features 8MB of buffer, a 3 gigabit-per-second SATA interface, and power consumption of 1.9 watts when reading or writing data.

The new drive will be available in February; Fujitsu didn't release pricing. The earlier MHY2 BH line topped out at 250GB and had a slower 1.5Gbps SATA (serial ATA) interface.

T-Mobile announces the Samsung Katalyst

2007-12-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

Samsung Katalyst

(Credit: T-Mobile)

About six months ago, T-Mobile rolled out the HotSpot @ Home service, which lets you use certain handsets to make calls via WiFi as well as its regular GSM network. For a minimal monthly fee, all the calls that you make over a wireless network are "free" and not deducted from your monthly minutes. Not too many phones are compatible with this service, though--so far, the only ones that can take advantage of the HotSpot @ Home service are the Samsung SGH-T409, the Nokia 6086, and the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8320. Not anymore, though, as today T-Mobile has announced the Samsung Katalyst, a stylish slider phone with a 1.3-megapixel camera, a music player, a microSD card slot, stereo Bluetooth, and of course, compatibility with HotSpot @ Home. Pricing will be released shortly, and we'll update you with more information as soon as we get it.

POSTED IN: phones

TAGS: t-mobile, samsung,

Photos: Samsung T10

2007-12-11T14:27:00.000-08:00

Slide 1 of 8

Previous | Next

Color me sleek

At $170, the Samsung T10 not the most competitively priced player on the block, but it's packed with features and comes in your choice of five, high-gloss colors: black, white, green, red, and purple (shown here). (Photo credit: CNET Networks/Corinne Schulze)

Photos: Samsung T10

The Samsung T10 won't satisfy audio purists, but users who value lots of features, a fun interface, and a player that will turn heads should give it a look.

Friendster developer platform goes live with over 180 apps

2007-12-11T14:26:00.001-08:00

Friendster has fully launched its developer platform with more than 180 applications available to its 56 million registered users, the social-networking site said Tuesday.

The company first announced the platform on October 25.

The developer platform was initially piloted by some well-known names in the widget world: Slide, RockYou, Imeem, Jangl, Clearspring, and Gbox. Companies and individual developers participating in the program are allowed to advertise anywhere in the application space and keep all revenue.

According to the social network, the platform is going to be as "open" as possible to make it easy for applications designed for other sites to make their way to Friendster, and vice versa. Friendster is a partner in the Google-led OpenSocial initiative and has said that OpenSocial APIs will be integrated into the Friendster Developer Platform when the much-stalled OpenSocial is "completed and secure."

This is not the first time that we've seen an OpenSocial partner go ahead and launch its own developer platform before Google's standard has gone live; business networking site LinkedInannounced its InApps platform earlier this week.

A victim of the soaring popularity of MySpace.com and then Facebook, Friendster has fallen from favor in the U.S. But the company currently claims a large chunk of the social-networking market share in the Asia-Pacific region--a fact that prompted Friendster to start launching versions of the site in different languages in the fall. Some of Friendster's developer applications reflect this: Yobo.com, for example, has created a Chinese-language music discovery application.

Sleek Samsung T10 reviewed

2007-12-11T14:20:00.003-08:00

Click the pic for more photos.

(Credit: Samsung)

It seems like I waited forever to get my eager little reviewing hands on the Samsung T10, and actually, CNET had to sweat it out a lot longer than consumers. It's hard to blame Samsung--you are the ones with the cold, hard cash, after all. In fact, the company almost got some of my cold, hard cash once I grew sufficiently weary of the delay. I finally received the coveted package the day before a scheduled trip to Best Buy. Was it worth the wait? You be the judge.

POSTED IN: music

TAGS: mp3 players, samsung, t10, bluetooth

Study: High-speed Internet helps cool the planet

2007-12-11T14:10:00.001-08:00

Tempted to obsess over how another personal habit helps or hurts the Earth? Keep surfing with cable or DSL and you might save carbons in the process, according to the American Consumer Institute.

The world would be spared 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases within a decade if broadband Internet access were pervasive, the group's report (PDF) concluded in October.

Broadband is available to 95 percent of U.S. households but active in only half of them, the study said, noting that near-universal adoption of high-speed Internet would cut the equivalent of 11 percent of oil imports to the United States each year.

How would faster downloads and Web page loads curb the annual flow of globe-warming gases, and by how much? According to the report:

Telecommuting, a "zero emission" practice, eliminates office space and car commutes: 588 million tons.
E-commerce cuts the need for warehouses and long-distance shipping: 206 million tons.
Widespread teleconferencing could bring one-tenth of all flights to a halt: 200 million tons.
Downloading music, movies, newspapers, and books saves packaging, paper, and shipping: 67 million tons.

The Department of Energy estimates that the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide alone total 8 billion tons each year.

A study released and funded by a major Australian telecom company in October also suggested that broader use of broadband could cut that country's carbons by 5 percent by 2015.

All it would take is for more people to use software to monitor shipping schedules, cut the flow of power to dormant gadgets and so forth, the study said.

The broad forecasts of both reports may appear to be common sense on the one hand, but they also feel incomplete, a reminder of the greenwashing "Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off" described last month by a "green" marketing firm.

For instance, neither report touches on the impact of electronics waste on the planet's health. It is the fastest-growing type of garbage. What of the carbons spent to manufacture the gadgets that get people online? And does heating and cooling an office of many people really expend more pollution than if the staff telecommuted and powered their home offices instead? These and other possibilities remain largely unexplored.

Behind many bold, green claims, there often lurks a vested interest. Contrary to what its name may suggest, for example, the American Consumer Institute speaks for business interests, according to the online community Broadband Reports. With that fact hidden within the institute's title, its study tends to read like a case of the broadband industry patting itself on the back.

Dell tries tablets with Latitude XT

2007-12-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Tablet computing is a very small pond, and it's now home to a very big fish: Dell.

The Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker on Tuesday is introducing the Latitude XT Tablet PC, its first product in the category.

Though it's just one notebook, Dell's entry is sure to cause a stir. It's a modest niche of computing that hasn't really gotten off the ground yet. And the interest of the second-largest PC maker in the world can't help but have an impact on the market.

"It puts the product in limelight," said Richard Shim, PC industry analyst with IDC. "It has potential to bring down pricing on key components that are being priced at a premium."

The Latitude XT at work.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

Currently tablet PCs comprise just 2.4 percent of the worldwide notebook market, according to IDC. That's about 2.5 million units shipped total. But as Dell joins other high-profile tablet makers like Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Gateway, and others, the category is expected to grow to 12.3 million units and 6.3 percent of the notebook market by 2011, IDC said. And as volumes go up, prices are sure to go down.

That Dell would delve into tablets was one of theworst-kept secrets in the PC industry over the last year. The company confirmed the rumors in May and then briefly showed the product during Michael Dell's keynote speech at Oracle Open World in November.

The Latitude XT is aimed chiefly at commercial markets, and Dell says it initially tried to address several of the key complaints expressed by typical tablet users: that they're too bulky, the screen isn't viewable in direct sun, poor handwriting recognition, and inadequate battery life.

Although tablets in general are not marketed toward consumers right now, Dell's entrance could bring component prices down enough to make building and buying tablets affordable for, say, students one day, noted Shim. "Lately we've been seeing manufacturers start to look at the consumer market as an audience for this type of tablet," he said. Particularly because the profit margins are much higher for consumer devices.

For now, the price is not what you would call friendly to the mainstream notebook buyer. At the starting price of $2,499, the Latitude XT has a 12.1-inch LED-backlit screen, a 1.06-gigahertz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 1GB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive. It comes with Windows Vista Business edition or XP Tablet Edition. The whole device weighs 3.57 pounds, and has about 5 hours of battery life. It uses capacitive touch input, which recognizes both fingers and an included pen for inputting data. The pen also comes with a right-click button.

The Latitude XT at rest.

(Credit: Dell)

To target outdoor, all-day commercial users, the Latitude XT comes with upgrade options of an extra bright outdoor-viewable LCD display (which adds to the thickness of the notebook), an extended battery, which clips on the bottom of the device, as well as the option of an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 32 or 64 GB solid-state drive.

Dell calls its capacitive touch technology, which picks up on the electrical current in a person's hand, the "breakthrough" in the device. It also recognizes the difference between the touch of an errant palm or a purposeful press of a fingertip on the screen.

Touchscreen interfaces are a technology area with huge potential, and mainstream interest in multitouch technology skyrocketed this year with Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's demonstrations of its Surface PC technology. Dell has its cooking up its own multitouch technology, which it showed at Oracle Open World, in which all five fingers can be picked up by screen sensors. That won't be available until at least next year, said Glenn Keels, director of Dell's commercial product group.

The biggest delay is the availability of software applications that take advantage of touchscreen technologies. And it's not just Dell, but all makers of tablets. "The (manufacturers) making progress are the ones getting closer to customers, like Motion Computing," Shim said. Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Gateway "have to come up with applications that are a little more mainstream or mass market. The hard part is they're not used to thinking that way, in terms of applications, as (tablet computing) is less and less about speeds and feeds, and more about the experience."

Dell says it will begin to take orders and ship the Latitude XT by the end of the year.

Microsoft ramps up antipiracy efforts with 52 lawsuits

2007-12-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has filed 52 lawsuits against alleged software pirates.

The software giant, which has led an active campaign against counterfeit copies of its softwareover the years, announced Tuesday that it filed cases against resellers in countries that ranged from China to the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and United States.

Microsoft noted that in 15 of the 52 cases, the software involved could allegedly be traced to a massive commercial counterfeit syndicate that Chinese authorities and the FBI broke up this summer. Most of the alleged illicit sales were conducted through e-commerce sites.

Counterfeit copies of their digital goods cost members of the worldwide software industry an estimated $40 billion annually, according to Microsoft. The tech titan also cited a study conducted by the Business Software Alliance and market researcher IDC that put the global PC software piracy rate at 35 percent last year.

Redmond also unveiled a "Microsoft Buying Guide" on eBay as a tool for educating consumers about counterfeit applications. In addition, it maintains an information site with tips on how to detect pirated software.

Through users' tips, Microsoft said, it also gleaned enough information to refer 22 criminal cases to various law enforcement agencies around the world.

Vudu adds TV shows

2007-12-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

The previously movie-only Vudu now offers some TV episodes as well

(Credit: Vudu)

When we reviewed the Vudu back in September, we said "only feature films are available, but Vudu says that TV shows are on the roadmap." Vudu made good on that pledge today, adding 12 TV shows to its content roster. Episodes are available for $1.99 each--the same price you'd pay for TV shows on Apple's iTunes Store.

TV content on Vudu is said to be "in beta," but it should be available to all Vudu owners as of today. The initial dozen shows offered are: 24, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,Family Guy, Firefly, Lost in Space, My Name is Earl, NYPD Blue, Prison Break, The Riches,Shark, and The Shield.

While all of the TV shows will be available in standard-definition, Vudu has been experimenting with HD programming as well. Today marks the availability of The Bourne Ultimatum on Vudu--the same day it hits DVD and HD DVD--in standard and high-definition versions. The previous two Bourne movies have been available for free viewing on Vudu in HD since November 23, and the company says that "more HD will be coming."

Microsoft fixes 11 flaws in 7 patches; 5 affect Windows Vista

2007-12-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

Microsoft on Tuesday released its December 2007 security bulletin, which includes seven updates: three are designated as critical by the software giant and four are deemed important.

On the Windows side is a cumulative update for Internet Explorer, plus patches for the Windows Kernel, DirectX, Macrovision Driver, and the Windows Media File format--the latter three suggest concern that criminal hackers are targeting media files for exploitation. There are no Microsoft Office updates this month. All Microsoft security patches for Windows and Office software are available via Microsoft Update or via the individual bulletins detailed below.

MS07-063: Important
Entitled "Vulnerability in SMBv2 Could Allow Remote Code Execution (942624)," this bulletin affects users of Microsoft Windows Vista and does not affect users of Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP2, and addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-5351. A vulnerability exists in the way data is transferred via SMBv2, which could allow remote code execution in domain configurations communicating with SMBv2.

MS07-064: Critical
Entitled "Vulnerabilities in DirectX Could Allow Remote Code Execution (941568)," this bulletin affects users of DirectX versions 7.0 through 10.0 included within Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. The update addresses two vulnerabilities detailed in CVE-2007-3901 and CVE-2007-3895 that could allow code execution if a user opened a specially crafted file used for streaming media in DirectX. Successful exploitation could allow remote code execution.

MS07-065: Critical
Entitled "Vulnerability in Message Queuing Could Allow Remote Code Execution (937894)," this bulletin affects users of Windows Server 2000, Windows 2000, and Windows XP SP2, and does not affect users of Windows XP Professional x64, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. The update addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-3039. A vulnerability in the Message Queuing Service (MSMQ) could allow remote code execution in implementations on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, or elevation of privilege in implementations on Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. Successful exploitation due could allow remote code execution or elevation of privilege.

MS07-066: Important
Entitled "Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (943078)," this bulletin affects users of Windows Vista, and does not affect users of Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP. The update addresses the Windows kernel vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-5350. Successful exploitation could allow an attack to take complete control of an affected system.

MS07-067: Important
Entitled "Vulnerability in Macrovision Driver Could Allow Local Elevation of Privilege (944653)," this bulletin affects users of Microsoft XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003, and does not affect users of Windows 2000 or Windows Vista. The update addresses a vulnerability in the way the Macrovision driver incorrectly handles configuration parameters detailed in CVE-2007-5587. Successful exploitation could allow elevation of privilege and allow an attacker complete control of the system.

MS07-068: Critical
Entitled "Vulnerability in Windows Media File Format Could Allow Remote Code Execution (941569 and 944275)," this bulletin affects users of Windows Media Runtime Format 7.1, 9, 9.5, and 11, and Windows Media Services 9.1 running on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. This update addresses the Windows Media File Format vulnerability detailed in CVE-2007-0064. Successful exploitation could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted file in Windows Media Format Runtime.

MS07-069: Critical
Entitled "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (942615)," this bulletin affects users of Internet Explorer 5.1, 6, and 7, running on Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP SP2, and Windows Vista. The update addresses the four privately reported vulnerabilities detailed in CVE-2007-3902, CVE-2007-3903, CVE-2007-5344, and CVE-2007-5347. Successful exploitation could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer.

Intel Breaks Ground In China For Silicon Fabrication Plant

2007-12-10T03:51:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. [INTC 27.73 --- UNCH ] held a groundbreaking ceremony Saturday for its first chip factory in China, expanding its presence in the booming Chinese computer industry and boosting Beijing's campaign to lure foreign high-tech investment.

The US$2.5 billion facility, one of the biggest single foreign investments in China, will be Intel's first silicon-wafer fabrication plant in Asia and its eighth worldwide. It is due to open in 2010 with a work force of 1,200.

The new factory, dubbed "Fab 68," will produce chipsets, which connect microprocessors to other computer components. Intel says it chose not to equip the plant with its most advanced processes because of U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, a deputy chairman of the Chinese Cabinet's main planning agency and the mayor of this northeastern port city, which is a growing center for the software and computer industries.

"China is obviously such a booming economy. We very much felt like it was important to be near our customers," said Kirby Jefferson, the Dalian plant's general manager, in an interview ahead of the ceremony.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel says China already is its second-largest market after the United States and is expected to be the world's biggest information technology market by 2010.

Foreign investment in China's computer and other high-tech industries is growing as companies set up factories and research centers. But the communist government wants more and offers tax breaks and other incentives to lure investors.

Premier Wen Jiabao appealed this week to foreign companies to do more research in China. He promised to protect intellectual property, a key concern for many companies, which are reluctant to transfer advanced know-how to China for fear it will be stolen amid rampant product piracy.

"What we hope is that growth enterprises and emerging companies will base more of their research and development centers in China," Wen said Thursday in Dalian at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of Chinese and foreign business leaders.

The Intel investment also gives a boost to government efforts to develop China's northeast, a former heartland for state industry that has suffered a steep decline.

Intel picked China because of its market and growing pool of skilled workers, rather than for the low labor costs that attract other manufacturers, Jefferson said. He said because of the huge investment in equipment for chip production, labor is only a small fraction of total costs.

"It's really that we're coming here simply because of the market," Jefferson said.

Intel also has "wafer fabs" in the U.S., Ireland and Israel. It has assembly and test facilities in Costa Rica, Malaysia and the Philippines. In China, the company has factories in Shanghai and the western city of Chengdu making memory chips, microprocessors and other products, and research centers in Beijing and Shanghai.

Dalian will be part of a worldwide network of two to three Intel plants making chipsets, with its output sold both in China and abroad, Jefferson said.

The company is still deciding which level of technology to use in Dalian, Jefferson said. He said it would be either a 65- or a 90-nanometer process, which can make circuits 65 or 90 billionths of a meter wide. That is considered to be one to two generations behind Intel's most advanced processes, which can make circuits 45 nanometers wide.

Intel says it chose not to apply for a U.S. license to transfer its most advanced process to China because of restrictions on high-tech exports to countries where Washington has security concerns.

But Intel plans to upgrade the Dalian facility as U.S. regulations change, Jefferson said.

Vodafone Essar Agrees IT Outsourcing Deal with IBM

2007-12-10T03:25:00.000-08:00

Mobile phone giant Vodafone Group has agreed an IT outsourcing deal for its Indian unit withIBM, it said on Monday, in the latest deal aimed at cutting costs and managing its fast-growing business.

Under the five-year deal, Vodafone Essar will outsource all its information technology operations to IBM India to boost efficiency and to ensure a faster rollout of more varied services to customers.

IBM India will manage all of Vodafone Essar's IT operations including key applications such as billing and financial systems, with the exception of network service platforms.

The agreement follows an infrastructure sharing deal which was announced on Saturday between Vodafone, Bharti and Idea Cellular to share 70,000 tower units in India, in order to help operators save costs and capital.

The new company, Indus Towers, will prove passive infrastructure services to all operators on a non-discriminatory basis.

The deal is part of a bid by telecoms operators in India, the world's fastest-growing mobile market, to share infrastructure to keep costs down amid fierce competition and a surge in low-income subscribers from rural areas.

Towers

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company by revenue, has also struck network-sharing agreements in Britain, Italy and Spain in a move to cut costs and ensure the company remains as "asset light" as possible. But the deal in the vast Indian market goes a little further. Rather than share mobile phone masts with rival operators, Vodafone is sharing the towers, which are built on the base stations that form the backbone of a mobile phone network.

Vodafone has bought a controlling stake in now renamed Vodafone Essar, one of India's top cell phone groups, a company Vodafone said last month was winning 1.6 million new customers per month and now clocked up a subscriber base of 35 million.

But to meet such customer growth, telecoms operators in the world's fastest-growing markets are facing vast capital expenditure needs.

Consequently, the Indian government has been encouraging companies to share infrastructure to expand coverage in rural areas, where installing towers is costly.

Vodafone had previously signed a memorandum of understanding with India's mobile phone market leader Bharti Airtel's Infratel unit to share infrastructure.

Shares in Vodafone were up 0.4 percent, as its management held an Indian investor day in London.

"We would characterize this as a small, net positive," Collins Stewart analysts said in a note to clients.

"Terms have not changed materially from the (memorandum of understanding) stage, and the saving needs to be put in the context of an annual capex bill at Vodafone of around 5 billion p.a.

"What it might do, however, in conjunction with this morning's presentations, is encourage investors to pencil in higher medium term growth rates."

CNBC jumps on Mac ultraportable bandwagon

2007-12-10T01:05:00.000-08:00

We're a little more than a month away from the Macworld Expo, and the expectations are starting to get a little clearer for arguably Apple's biggest show of the year.

CNBC reported Thursday that Apple plans at Macworld to introduce a 12-inch Mac laptop with flash memory in place of a hard drive. Apple followers have long anticipated such a product, and several other reports have come out this year predicting a similar type of announcement was nigh.

Apple could add 12-inch notebook alongside these 13.3-inch MacBooks in January.

(Credit: Apple)

The ultraportable Mac is said to be 50 percent thinner and lighter than a current MacBook Pro, the largest notebook in Apple's lineup. And CNBC is also saying it expects the price to be about $1,500, the same price as the 13.3-inch black MacBook that's currently available on Apple's site.

I'm a little skeptical of the price, especially since the notebook would reportedly use flash memory instead of a hard drive. My colleague Michael Kanellos noted last month that Dell charges a $950 premium for a 64GB flash memory drive in place of a 160GB hard drive on one of its XPS notebooks. Perhaps Apple is using a smaller drive, or the notebook will use a less expensive processor and smaller amounts of memory to offset the cost, but flash memory drives aren't expected to be practical for a few years.

Still, it's not hard to imagine Apple coming out with that style of notebook, especially since Intel is expected to have new notebook chips out around the same time, perhaps unveiling them during CEO Paul Otellini's keynote address at CES on January 7. Ultraportable notebooks--which generally weigh in around 3 pounds or less--aren't a very big segment of the notebook market but tend to be showcases for design flair, and Apple's been known to show an interest in that sort of thing here and there.

CNBC also reported that Apple could have more to say about a 3G version of the iPhoneearly next year, and that demand for the iPod Touch has caused Apple to up its production estimates.

Be careful when shopping for a replacement laptop battery

2007-12-10T00:55:00.000-08:00

The batteries in laptop computers are expensive (a quick review of prices at Lenovo.com shows they range from $119 to $179), and like any battery, they have a limited lifespan. When it comes time to replace the battery inside your laptop computer, you may be tempted to save a few bucks and buy a replacement from a company other than the one that made the computer.

Don't.

In a widely reported story, someone in Ohio purchased a battery for their ThinkPad laptop from a company called Shentech rather than directly from Lenovo or IBM (in 2005, IBM sold the Thinkpad line of laptops to Lenovo). No doubt they paid less than IBM or Lenovo would have charged. When I checked today, a battery for a T40 ThinkPad that Lenovo sells for $119 is only $65 at Shentech. Was it a bargain? Not at all; the battery caught on fire.

The story made news not because of the fire but because the battery, bearing an IBM logo, was a fake (allegedly). After examining the faulty battery, IBM purchased additional batteries from Shentech, and they too were (allegedly) fakes. Needless to say, IBM is suing Shentech (that they list a Post Office box and no phone number on the Contact Us page of their Web site doesn't inspire confidence).

Unfortunately, the laptop battery igniting in flames was not, in and of itself, newsworthy. After all, last year there were a slew of battery recalls. The big story was Dell recalling 4.2 million batteries made by Sony, but overall approximately 10 million Sony batteries used in machines from Apple, Sony, Lenovo/IBM, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Sharp, and Dell were recalled. In May of 2005 Apple recalled iBooks and PowerBooks with batteries made by LG Chem of South Korea. Lenovo/IBM has also recalled Sanyo batteries. It must be hard to make a safe lithium ion battery.

The lesson here is to only buy replacement batteries from the company that made the computer. Off-brand batteries are more likely to scrimp on safety features.

And, should there be a recall of the battery in your laptop, make it easy for the manufacturer to contact you--register your computer purchase.

Your Battery

If you are curious about the battery in a laptop computer running Windows XP, go to the control panel, open Power Options, click on the Power Meter tab and, finally, click on the battery icon. In the screen shot above, you can see the battery was made by Sanyo.

ThinkPad owners should have a ThinkPad configuration program installed (available from Start -> Programs -> ThinkVantage, at least in Windows XP, I'm not sure about Vista) that shows additional information about the battery. As you can see above, this includes the manufacture date and the first-used date.

The Status Detail tab (see above) also shows, among other data, the current temperature of the battery, which might bear watching every now and then.

Diehard Apple fans line up way in advance for N.Y. store opening

2007-12-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

The start of the Apple Store line snaking around the front of the store. You can't actually see most of the line, as it's off to the left; security was in the process of crowd control.

Fanboy alert! iPod and MacBook Pro spotted in line...

It was freezing cold and snow was starting to come down, but at 2:30 p.m. EST there were already several hundred people waiting in line at the new Apple Store on West 14th St. in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, which which opens at 6 p.m. One estimate put the crowd at about 600 people with several hours still to go.

The first person in line, a high schooler, had showed up at 1 a.m. That's not a typo. He told CNET News.com that by 3:30 or 4 a.m., more people started to join him. But the line really started to take off in the early afternoon, as students were let out for the weekend (some schools in the area close early on Fridays) and grown-up Apple fans cleared out of their offices in favor of lining up in the freezing cold.

Yeah, here's the end of the line. With three hours to go.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

Apple events are known for generating long lines well in advance--just look at the lines that formed for the Leopard operating system and the highly anticipated iPhone. But there's no product being released this time--it's just the opening of a new store.

So why wait? Well, Apple's given some incentives. "Come celebrate with us this Friday as we'll be giving away thousands of limited-edition posters and commemorative T-shirts," the store's Web site invited tantalizingly. "You might even win one of several great surprise gifts such as an iMac, a MacBook Pro, or an iPod Touch."

Sweet! Count me in!

As we've seen with many launch events that draw lengthy queues, many of the people in line were "tag-teaming" with friends, one waiting while the other went to grab food, coffee, or just headed for an indoor space to thaw up. And one local business was capitalizing on the freezing masses: the T Salon, located in the nearby Chelsea Market shopping complex, was distributing free cups of chai to anyone in line.

Also spotted: An establishment across the street, Comix Bar, was pricing apple martinis at half price for happy hour in celebration of the Apple Store launch. Good to know Jobs & Co. are welcome in the neighborhood.

GATHER 'ROUND THE WEB 2.0: SEVEN TIPS FOR WHOLESOME ONLINE FAMILY FUN

2007-12-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

The first thing that my father-in-law said to me when I got to his house on Thanksgiving was, "Stay off the computer. Be with the family." If he really wanted me offline, he could have turned off the Wi-Fi. But he didn't. And I met him halfway by sitting down with my mother-in-law and my ThinkPad, and working on the family tree on Ancestry.com. She loved it, and it was a good family-bonding experience.

There are other good ways to gather 'round the Web during the holidays. So if you're going to be with family, and would rather that they keep you company on the Web instead of the alternative--everyone stays off and plays Parcheesi--try these family-friendly Web 2.0 activities:

Geneology

Like I said, this is my top tip. Fire up Ancestry.com and ask a relative to sit with you and tell the story of his or her family tree. Capture it all on the site. Repeat with other family members and you'll be surprised what you learn. Bonus: Everyone will have something new to talk about, instead of criticizing your job, clothing, child-rearing skills, etc. See also:Geni, Kindo, and Amiglia.

Photo tagging

Before you go on your trip, upload a bunch of old family photos into your Flickr account. Then, when you're in need of an online group activity, sit down and start tagging photos with names, events, and so on.

If you have old film negatives, slides, and prints you want to work with, check out ScanCafe, which offers very good prices for a scanning service. It takes a while to get your images back, though.

Once you've got your photos online, consider creating a family photo book with a service like Blurb.

Bonus photo activity: Give the gift of a digital picture frame (like this unit from Ceiva) that supports over-the-Web access. Upload cute pics of the kids at least once a week.

Music

Sick of the three cheesy CDs your uncle is playing on the stereo? Hook your laptop up to the aux in (bring a3.5mm mini to RCA interconnect cable with you), fire up Pandora, search for "Christmas," and you're off. You'll have to tell Pandora that yes, you know it would rather search by artist than genre, but once you do so it will display several Christmas playlists for you to choose from. Also works for "Hanukkah." The same trick works on Last.fm.

Cooking

Take a quick inventory of the pantry, go to Epicurious or CNET's own Chow.com (or just Google), and type in the ingredients you have on hand. Pick a recipe that shows up and cook the meal together.

Video conferencing

If you have kids and you're visiting your parents, this will be an easy sell: Set up their PC or Mac with a Webcam and Skype (download) and teach them how to use it. Then when they kvetch about you never visiting with the kid(s), you can fire up a video chat. It's the green way to keep the family together. (Of course, if you and your parents both have Macs, just use iChat.)

Games

Finally, if all the togetherness gets to you, lock yourself in the den and kill some time playing Flash games. I recommend Kongregate for finding games worth playing. There are even some that can be played by two people, either in co-op mode or one-on-one.

Fix things

This isn't really a Web 2.0 activity, but when you get roped into fixing or tweaking a family member's computer, especially if the family member is older (a parent), please see my old advice on how to stay sane during and after the fixing process: Insider Secrets: Tech support for your parents.

SMUGMUG ADAPTS FOR LARGE, SMALL SCREENS

2007-12-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

This is how SmugMug now looks on a 1280x1024-pixel monitor. It looks pretty good, unless you're the frog.

(Credit: SmugMug)

SmugMug, a site popular among photography aficionados, has been retooled with a more adaptable interface and overhauled video-sharing technology.

The new interface, which the Mountain View, Calif.-based company calls SmugMungous, automatically displays one of nine different sizes of a photo on the screen, with a patch of thumbnails of related images to the left side. The reason for the SmugMungous name: the largest of these images is 1600x1200 pixels, enough to fill up very large monitors.

In addition, the new site comes with an iTunes subscription option so that friends and family can automatically download videos or sync them with iPods, he said.

But the company also wants to make it easy for the photo buff with a 30-inch flat-panel display to share images with friends and family with comparatively tiny monitors. The appropriate image is automatically displayed according to how much real estate the Web browser shows, and it updates automatically if the window size is changed, said Chief Executive and founder Don MacAskill.

"Our customers tend to be photographers with big cameras and big monitors, but they may be sharing with friends with 15-inch monitors at 800x600," MacAskill said. "The goal is so grandma can see it at home without you having to coach her to maximize her browser."

This is SmugMug's apperance on a screen with only about 800 pixels of width to spare.

(Credit: SmugMug)

I gave the feature a quick test drive, and found that it worked fine and with snappy performance. I liked it a lot better than Flickr's options, which involve clicking on an "all sizes" button then on again to select one of a handful of preset options--and worse, doing so moves you away from a the page where you do anything interesting such as read comments or click through a user's photo collection. Google's Picasa Web Albums, though, offer images that scale automatically according to available real estate, but I find the interface much more cluttered than SmugMug's.

Previously, users had to manually select different photo sizes with tabs that popped up over the image. "It's safe to say those links will be going away. When you click on image, you can still manually switch sizes if you want, but we're pretty good picking the size for your particular screen resolution," MacAskill said.

The other half of the SmugMug change is the addition of H.264 video streaming, a much more modern standard than the MPEG-1 technology earlier supported. "Our video support before was just terrible," MacAskill said.

Moving to the new standard opens up video viewing options including Sony's PlayStation 3, Apple's iPhone and iPod, Apple Quicktime software, and shortly, Web browsers with Adobe Systems' widely used Flash software. The newest version of Flash, released this week, supports H.264, but Smugmug is "not quite done with our player," he said.

As with the photos, the video also scales automatically according to screen size. The highest resolution is high-definition 1280x720 video, but I had to actively select that option to override the site's preference for a smaller size; the sliver of screen real estate lost even to narrow window frames around the video was enough to lower my 1280x1024 monitor's usable width below 1280. MacAskill said the company might adjust that behavior.

MacAskill wouldn't offer predictions about how the new features would directly affect the company beyond offering, "I imagine some users may upgrade to power users so they can get video." However, he said the upgrade is in line with the company's core strategy to keep customers happy so they'll keep paying the mandatory subscription fees and recommend the site to others.

Customer satisfaction is crucial because the company depends on word of mouth for its marketing, supplemented only by Google advertising. So far the formula has worked: SmugMug has been profitable since its founding in 2002, and annual revenue has grown beyond $10 million, MacAskill said. Unusually for a Silicon Valley company, the company hasn't given an ownership stake to outside investors in return for money to fund the business during its early stages.

MacAskill hired the company's second employee, his father, Chris MacAskill, and started the company "basically as a side project so afford to buy ramen and corn flakes," he said. "We took three servers from an old company, bummed some data center space off a buddy, threw some code together, and crossed our fingers."

The company now is up to 29 employees--including MacAskill's two brothers, mother, sister, and aunt--and stores more than 225 million photos.

YAHOO-OWNED MINGLENOW CLOSING UP SHOP

2007-12-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

MingleNow, one of the first few social networks to promote companies making their own social networking profiles, will be closing up its doors in early January. We wrote about the company at its late-2006 launch, and from the looks of site activity, things appeared to be doing reasonably well. While the company's blog post about the closure is ambiguous at best, a good guess would be that Yahoo (parent company of BlueLithium Labs) did not see much worth in maintaining a social network that directly competed with at least four of its other properties including Upcoming, Flickr, Mash, and Groups. It only got in that spot after picking up BlueLithium in early September to get its advertising technology.

The idea of MingleNow was to blend a social network with member profiles to those of local businesses. Members could post party pictures and tag them to events at local businesses, or find them the next day when they had been posted to the business profiles by whatever MingleNow photographer was at the event.

Admittedly, I was never fond of the site, but I do feel a little bad for its members who have just a few weeks to jettison their photos and contacts to other services. It would have been nice for them to provide some sort of escape hatch for their users, like what Yahoo photos did when it closed shop.

REVIEW: YOUMAIL REALLY DOES MANAGE VOICE MAIL LIKE E-MAIL

2007-12-07T12:39:00.000-08:00

I'll come right out and say it. The biggest problem with my original experience with YouMail may have been my own human error.

In my original review of the voice mail system that lets you manage voice messages online, I said YouMail had a lot of potential, but wasn't delivering on its promise of catching my voice mail messages. It could be that I skipped a beat, and that before entering YouMail's phone number into the Motorola RAZR V3 handset, I failed to punch in the star (*) key. Or, offers YouMail's PR representative, Derek Brookmeyer, I may have actually done this and the signal cut out, in which case YouMail would not have completed my voice mail forwarding and Verizon would not have warned me the action was unsuccessful.

So now, the complete review. It turns out that once you've got YouMail properly set up, it works quite well and provides a well-rounded feature set, plus one controversial capability. (I call it creepy. Keep reading.)

YouMail users receive notification of new voice messages from both text and e-mail (you can disable that if e-mails start building up.) Checking voice mail on your mobile phone reroutes you to YouMail's service, which plays your message, and which gives you options to reply, save, delete, or skip messages, or change your individualized greeting for the caller.

Clicking the e-mail notification opens a new YouMail.com window and plays the voice message. On YouMail.com, voice messages are indeed handled like e-mail, with the regular functions to save, trash, flag, and sort messages. Replying to a message sends the caller either a text or an e-mail wrapped in YouMail's branding, your choice. As I mentioned in the previous review, users are also able to record customized greetings for select callers, a really unique surprise for a buddy. Or a nasty one, depending on the message you leave. I'm imaging high school break-ups via YouMail: "If you're wondering why I'm not picking up the phone, it's because we're OVER!"

YouMail's one dubious ability--sharing others' voice messages online.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In addition to YouMail getting interactive with a hands-on approach to voice mail management, it also goes Web 2.0. with a few publishing tools. This is, perhaps, a little too chic for comfort. Users who enable message sharing can choose to broadcast voice mails they receive by e-mailing the message, linking to it, embedding the WAV or MP3 file onto a Web page, or publishing it to Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, and Spurl with a single click.

While YouMail's privacy statementpromises to shield your e-mail address and phone number, it says nothing about walling off your voice content. In fact, YouMail stands behind sharing, explaining to me in a PR conversation that there's little difference between YouMail's message broadcasting capabilities and the tape recording taken of Alec Baldwin's incriminating voice message left on his daughter's cell phone. If I had let that PR call go through to voice mail, I could have embedded it here.

The comparison doesn't inspire much confidence, and it's YouMail's biggest flaw. As much as I'd love receiving a sweet or funny voice note directed to me when I call a friend, I cringe at the thought that any message I leave them could be so swiftly distributed. Of course, with a few tools, anyone is capable of digitizing a voice message that anybody else leaves, but the fact that callers have no choice in the really simple publication of their voice message could, at the very least fuel some individual embarrassment, and at the most, fuel an ugly debate about digital voice rights. For now, as with e-mail messages, letters, and other forms of private communication-gone-public, it comes down to a users' judiciousness and sensitivity.

Apart from that, YouMail's free voice mail management is a well-integrated solution for making more out of mobile messages.

Nvidia 650i Ultra:Motherboard

2007-11-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

After conquering the hearts of enthusiasts with the nForce 680i SLI, Nvidia now has something to stun the mainstream users. The nForce 650i Ultra promises to ace in its category with its lavish feature set.

Features

The nForce 600 series for Intel supports the entire line of Intel LGA775 processors including the latest Core 2 Duo series. The 650i Ultra North Bridge boasts 1333 MHz FSB and DDR2 memory support up to 8 GB. The board also features a x16 PCI-E slot for adding a graphics card. Combined with the 650i Ultra North Bridge is the powerful nForce 430 MCP supporting two IDE drives, four SATA drives, Gigabit Ethernet and 8 USB ports. 8-channel audio is controlled by the Realtek ALC885 HD audio codec.

Layout

The layout of the board is flawless with thoughtful placement of components. The area around the CPU socket is clutter-free with ample clearance between the North Bridge and the DIMM slots. The North Bridge is cooled by an aluminum heatsink fitted with a 40 mm fan. The DIMM slots are also well-spaced to allow thicker memory modules with heat-spreaders to breathe comfortably. The four SATA ports are placed at the lower right edge of the board to maintain close proximity to the hard drives in the case.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel C2D E6700, 2.66 GHz Memory: 2 GB DDR2 800 MHz (4-4-4-12 1T)

Hard drive: WD Raptor 740GD

Graphics card: Asus EN7800GTX Top

SCORES

SiSoft Sandra 2007

CPU Arithmetic

Dhrystones: 24572 MIPS

Whetstones: 48196 MFLOPS

Memory bandwidth: 5755 MB/s

PCMark 05

Overall: 7527

HDD: 6726

3DMark 05: 9047

Doom 3

640x480 @low: 220 fps

1600x1200 @ultra 4xAA: 53 fps

Time taken to…

Compress 200 MB files to RAR using ‘Best compression’: 52 secs

Encode 300 MB of WAV files to 256 Kbps MP3 at high quality: 60 secs

Encode 99 MB VOB file to Xvid at 75 percent quality: 102 secs

Performance

We decked up the board with high-end components and the board cruised throughout the synthetic and real-world tests. Except for being able to display steroidal frame rates using the SLI mode, the performance is comparable to that of enthusiast boards. The BIOS offers support for tweaking FSB, CPU multiplier and voltages. Using the preset FSB to memory ratios, overclocking on this board is a cakewalk. We managed to overclock the E6700 from 2.66 GHz to 3.4 GHz by increasing the FSB to 1360 which in turn cranked the memory speed from 800 MHz to 906.7 MHz (3:2 ratio).

Verdict

If you’re looking out for a mainstream board without on-board graphics, this is the best board in the category for Intel processors. Settle for this board if you need high performance without SLI support.

Lenovo ThinkStation Unveiled in India

2007-11-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

Lenovo India has announced to launch the new ThinkStation, a desktop brand in the domestic market. Newly launched ThinkStation S10 and D10 workstations deliver reliability.

The ThinkStations D10 features dual core processor while the S10 offers single processor. Thanks to these new processors, The Lenovo workstations offer energy efficient performance. Moreover, they are quipped with large hard drives, latest graphics solutions from NVIDIA. And they come equipped with fast connectivity with dual Gigabit Ethernet and multiple slots, bays and USB ports for expandability.

Also. the new workstations have illuminated front I/O ports, which help users to work more easily in multiple systems and even in low light conditions. The ThinkStation’s unique dual channel thermal system delivers a cool and quiet experience.

“Lenovo designed the ThinkStation to be the highest performance, highest quality workstation, delivering an unparalled experience for professional users who work in graphically and computationally intensive environments where a standard desktop PC isn’t enough,” said Peter Schrady, vice president and general manager, Emerging Products Group, Lenovo. “Not only do the Lenovo workstations provide excellent performance and industry-leading acoustics, our environmentally responsible, user-centric design helps to increase productivity even more.”

The ThinkStation S10 will be available in the Indian market at the price of Rs. 40,000 and above. While the D10 desktop will start at approximately Rs.62, 000 and above excluding taxes. The newly announced ThinkStation desktops from Lenovo will be available in India in January 2008.

A Perfect Pink Case for Your MacBook

2007-11-07T16:41:00.000-08:00

The Peony Pink Sleeve from Case-Mate is the perfect companion for your 13" MacBook. The color is adorable and for $99, you are getting a high-quality sleeve for your notebook. The impact resistant molded shell is made out of italian pebblestone leather, and protects your precious laptop from the elements (dirt, dust, etc).

PC users are SOL because it was made exclusively for Apple notebooks. I actually have this exact notebook and I actually LOVE this exact shade of pink so it's a win/win situation. (BTW - it is also available in green/black/white for all you boring people).

Top 10 Pink Gadgets in Honor of Breast Cancer Awareness

2007-11-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

There are only about a billion products out there that are pink and support breast cancer research. Shiny Shiny put together a nice little top 10 list of the best pink-colored gadgets whose manufacturers donate a portion of the sale to various charities/organizations in the name of boob health.

Top 10 Breast Cancer Donation Gadgets

Some favorites on the list....

1. Belkin iPod Cases

2. Pink Sony Vaio

3. Dyson Pink DC07 Vacuum

4. Special Edition iPod Shuffle Pack

Check out the whole list for a whole lotta pink

Rotating USB Hub Is Practical and Colorful

2007-11-07T16:32:00.001-08:00

This thing could come in handy if you are one of those people who have 18 USB-powered devices plugged in at once. Or, 4, because that's how many additional ports you are going to get from this. I'm more the type that has 20 extension cords plugged into one other, stretched across the room, since my ancient apartment has a total of 4 electric sockets. Safe, I know.

It's cute, sort of kiddy looking, but the key here is the first two ports that rotate 180 degrees so you can accommodate different cords/drives/devices. Aluminum case body, Plug & play, and extremely light.

It's a total bargain at $16 from USB Brando.

Skullcandy mp3 Watch Stores 1GB

2007-11-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

This Bully mp3 watch from Skullcandy is pretty effing gorgeous. Aside from looks, it's got 1GB of memory, is waterproof up to 100 ft, has a voice recorder, and it's inlaid with DIAMONDS. Hot. It's got a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal surface as well.

It's only $199, so the "diamonds" are most likely CZ, because the website doesn't specify. They do mention that it is "bling that stings!" Hahahahaha......... sold!

Who actually uses an mp3 watch? Anyone, anyone?

Sony Cybershot DSC-T2 with 4GB Capacity Announced

2007-11-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

Sony has launched a new mega-capacity Cybershot DSC-T2 digital camera. The camera features huge memory of 4GB, eliminating the need of carrying memory cards.

Users can store up to 40,000 VGA-quality photos or 1,000 8-megapixel pictures.

Sony has made managing photos easy with the Picture Motion Browser software. One can view images in chronological order or even can see them by naming a folder according to a particular event like “Birthdays” or “Sunday BBQs” etc.

Photos can also be moved to the camera’s “favorites” folder for easy access. In “favorites” folder, users can also arrange it in further six sub-folders.

Moreover, the DSC-T2 camera is pre-loaded with Sony PMB Portable software that automatically runs when the device is connected to a compatible PC via the supplied USB cable. Also the application allows users to publish their photos and videos directly to photo sharing sites, such as Crackle, Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterfly and YouTube.

The new 4GB camera from Sony has a very stylish look and will appear on the shelves in blue, green, pink, white and black colors. Moreover, the camera also features detection, optical image stabilization, high sensitivity (ISO 3200).

The Cybershot DSC-T2 digital camera is slated to ship in December and will be available in the US market at the price of $350 (approx Rs. 13,870).

Eyacandy Wallpapers

2007-11-07T15:55:00.000-08:00

And for more wall papers click here

USB Christmas Tree is a Shody Replacement for Workaholics

2007-11-07T15:51:00.000-08:00

Now that Halloween has come and gone in the blink of an eye, it's time to start thinking about Christmas. What! Already?! Fall is going by FAR too quickly for my liking. I haven't had nearly enough time to actually get out and enjoy it.

So for those of you who are chained to your laptops like me, you'll appreciate this easy way not to miss the holiday spirit. It's a USB Christmas tree!

Granted you celebrate Christmas, you'll enjoy this lit-up miniature version of a Christmas tree, without ever having to miss a single e-mail, instant message, or blog post. I'll tell you what this is. It's a sick replacement for what was once a delightful icon of my favorite holiday. But now I'm all growns up, and this girls got work to do. Ahh, spreadsheets and holiday nostalgia. What more could you want??

It's only about $20, (or £9.95) available on UK site Gizoo.com .

LG KU990 Viewty 5Mp cameraphone

2007-11-07T15:37:00.000-08:00

The LG KU990 Viewty is a 5Mp cameraphone that apes the iPhone on the front and a real digital camera from behind. And it has 3G connectivity.

One of the big criticisms about mobile phones that claim to be cameraphones is that they look and behave nothing like cameras. Another is the poor images that often result. Mobile phone makers can cram in more megapixels – as with the 5Mp LG KU990 Viewty – but cameraphone sensors just aren’t up to the job.

That doesn’t stop us buying cameraphones such as the LG KU990 Viewty at an impressive rate, though, and of course the best way to encourage innovation is if there’s money to be made from doing so.

For our money, the best cameraphones so far are the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shots. These taking photos at a quality or detail we find acceptable and are designed such that the whole of their rear is given over to the camera.

So it is with the LG KU990 Viewty - a 5Mp cameraphone that looks like an iPhone-lite on the front and a real camera from behind. The shutter release needs a firm press but the resulting photos aren't at all bad, even taken in unflattering artificial light.

At 2x and 4x magnification, detail is still acceptable, although beyond this you shouldn't have high expectations of the LG KU990 Viewty. For real close-ups, you want a real camera.

The LG KU990 Viewty's video facility is hard to argue with: super slow-mo playback of footage taken at 120fps (frames per second) is a real talking point.

Navigation-wise, you leave a fingerprint trail on the LG KU990 Viewty's 3in 240x400-pixel screen, but getting around it is a doddle as its onscreen icons approach iPhone levels of obviousness and are large enough to accurately select using a fingerpad. You can flit between portrait and landscape modes when viewing your photos and other media and use onscreen buttons to move through thumbnails of anything.

The other important feature of the LG KU990 Viewty is that it's a 3G HSDPA phone - something Apple has decided to hold off on for now with the iPhone.

Detailed specifications

Form factor Candy-bar
Dimensions (WxHxD): 55x104x17mm
Weight: 112g
Battery type: Li-ion
Talk time (manufacturer's figures): 355 min
Standby time (manufacturer's figures): 434 hours
GSM frequencies: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
3G: Yes
HDSPA:Yes
Available colours: Black

Phone

Ringtones: polyphonic, real music
Vibrating alert: yes
Calendar: yes
Alarm clock: yes
Speakerphone: yes
Voice recording: yes

Display

Main screen: 40x66mm
Resolution: 240x320 pixels

Camera

Resolution: 5Mp
Flash: yes
Video recording: yes

Music/radio

Music playback: yes
Supported formats: MP3, AAC, WMA, WMV, AMR
FM radio: yes
Headphone socket: proprietary

Messaging and data

SMS: yes
MMS: yes
Internet browser: yes
WAP protocol supported: 2.0
Email client: yes

Memory:

Memory card type: microSD
Memory expansion: yes

Connectivity

Infrared: no
Bluetooth: yes
Wi-Fi: no
USB: yes
GPS receiver: no

Verdict

The LG KU990 Viewty is just about the right side of small enough to be more phone than phone-cum-other gadgetry, but it doesn't have the visual wow that the iPhone has in abundance. That's a shame as, aside from the unintuitive text-correction for messaging, this is a pretty good phone.

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000

2007-11-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

Microsoft's Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 impressed us, despite its heady price.

Microsoft's Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is a well-designed, full-featured, and - at around £55 - expensive input device.

This wireless mouse worked great on all desktop surfaces; the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 even worked on rough or unusual surfaces such as glass and the keys of a keyboard.

Powered by a rechargeable nickel-metal hydride battery, the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 can charge through a small cable that latches magnetically from the mouse to a 2.4GHz USB receiver that also doubles as a 1GB flash drive.

And if that doesn't suit, you can connect the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 via Bluetooth, too.

Business travellers will appreciate the flexibility the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 offers; other people will find its price too high.

Image gallery

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000

The underside

The receiver

Manufacturer's product details:

Transceiver with 1 GB Flash Memory The transceiver is also a fully functional flash drive, so you can store and transfer files and free up USB ports.

2.4 GHz Wireless Technology The 2.4GHz wireless USB mini-transceiver connects wirelessly right out of the box with virtually no interference, and up to 30 feet of wireless range.

USB Rechargeable with Magnetic Connectors Simply snap in the magnetic connectors to charge while working, using the included USB transceiver.

High Definition Laser Technology Microsoft High Definition Laser Mouse products are more precise, more responsive, and deliver smoother tracking.

Battery Life Indicator You won't get caught with a dead battery—the Battery Status LED Indicator glows red when the battery is running low.

Magnifier Point and click to enlarge and edit detail using the Magnifier.

4-Way Scrolling Scroll four ways for greater efficiency and comfort with Tilt Wheel Technology.

5-Button Mouse Get quick access to the media, programs, and files you use most often with customizable buttons.

Flip 3D Easily flip through all open windows with Flip 3D.

Instant Viewer Too many open items on your desktop? Click the scroll wheel button to instantly display your open windows, then point and click to select.

Right Handed Design Mouse design is optmised for right-handed users.

Scroll Wheel Save time and effort with the scroll wheel—navigate documents and Web pages without using the on-screen scroll bar.

On/Off Button Turn your 3-in-1 device off to extend battery life even longer.

Bluetooth Mode Switch A switch on the bottom of the mouse enables Bluetooth notebook users to connect directly to their PC without using the included transceiver.

Carrying Case Protect your mouse while you’re on the go.

Designed for Notebook PCs Compact and comfortable, our handy notebook and laptop products are designed for convenience and mobility.

Ergonomic Design Point and click in comfort — ergonomic design helps you work longer without discomfort.

Verdict

In all but one respect we can't fault the Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. It is beautifully constructed, stylish and easy to use. But the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 represents a hefty outlay for what remains, at the end of the day, a computer mouse.

EXCLUSIVE REVIEW: BlackBerry Pearl 8120

2007-11-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

RIM’s sleek-looking BlackBerry Pearl has been given a makeover, re-emerging as the much improved BlackBerry Pearl 8120.

The BlackBerry Pearl was a big hit when it came out towards the end of 2006. Building on the buzz around smartphones that maker RIM had built up with its solid email access devices, the consumer-focused Pearl fulfilled many tech fans expectations. Some people were disappointed at the mere nod to cameraphones with just a 1.3Mp sensor but, in general, the delighted Pearl most who encountered it.

A year on and RIM’s sleek-looking BlackBerry Pearl has been given a makeover, with a new purply-blue handset for those who like to ring the changes (a black version is still available). More importantly, our tests prove that the refinements to the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 aren’t just cosmetic.

For a start, you now get Wi-Fi as well as GPRS and GPRS/Edge connectivity. Out and about in mid-Kent, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120 quickly found two or three Wi-Fi networks that we could log on to if we chose, helped by the fact that 02 has hitched itself to The Cloud.

02 minimises the standard BlackBerry screen clutter by reducing the BlackBerry Pearl 8120's main screen to a selection of five main applications – Messages, the secondary email inbox set up for this trial, a dual SMS and MMS alert, Calendar and Address Book. Below this is the standard BlackBerry icon which you click on to access the more familiar BlackBerry screen.

As before, it’s a breeze to get online and to send and retrieve email. Prompts appear when needed – and only then. Most helpfully, the BlackBerry Pearl 8120's wireless radio icon now pops up to Manage All Connections. You’re asked whether you want to turn on the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Mobile Network or turn on the lot in one go.

We took the 8120 out and about in mid-Kent, where it quickly found two or three Wi-Fi networks that we could log on to if we chose. 02 has hitched itself to The Cloud for iPhone purposes and introduced flatrate monthly internet access rates for other contract handsets, so this is a good option if you need to get online regularly.

For times when you need to get a handle on where you are, the Pearl has Maps built in. While no match for the detailed and more localised Vodafone Maps of the latest BlackBerry Curve, it's nonetheless a useful inclusion for anyone travelling long-distance and needing to get a fix on where they are.

This BlackBerry Pearl 8120 does multimedia far better too: the 2Mp camera (with 5x zoom selectable via the central rollerball navigator and automatic flash) produced some surprisingly good snaps, even in low light. The memory is now expandable too, via microSD card. Slot one in and you'll be able to capture video to it (you still only get 64MB flash memory onboard).

In pictures

Verdict

The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 updates last year’s model in all the right ways and offers more than enough wow without being too flash.

20 ways to stay connected anywhere

2007-11-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

In the beginning, there were computers. They were huge, monstrously expensive, owned only by governments and giant corporations and imprisoned in special-purpose rooms. If you were an ordinary Joe, you couldn't get anywhere near one.

Human ingenuity and Moore's Law miniaturised computers and made them cheaper, small and cheap enough for ordinary people to have them in offices and homes.

Soon thereafter, the 'portable' computer was born. It was like a regular computer, but you could take it with you, set it up somewhere else and use it like a desktop PC but in a different location.

Everything changed in the 1990s. Networks proliferated, as did mobile phones and general use of the internet. At some point, 'portable' computing turned into a very different and vastly superior scenario we call 'mobile computing'. Mobile computing is portable computing with the ability to connect and communicate on the go.

In addition to taking a PC with you on a business trip and using it in a hotel room, you can now use your laptop in a taxi on the way to the hotel. You could use your mobile phone for web browsing and email from lots of locations. And you could find Wi-Fi networks in coffee houses, airports, homes and offices and connect with either a laptop or mobile phone.

Old and busted

Through habit, custom, rules or other limitations, we still feel like prisoners of our offices and cubicles, totally dependent on the 'grid - both electrical and network. We still use - often are required to use - musty, obsolete technologies like landline phones, fax machines, credit cards and paper.

The mobile computing idea has been great. But it still limits us, perhaps more than we realise. We still accept limitations - places or situations where we can't connect, compute or communicate. We accept our loss of internet access during flights, while in some foreign countries, while in very remote areas, and when our batteries die or gadgets fail. We accept our inability to access current versions of our documents and files when our laptops crash or in social situations where laptops are inappropriate. Wi-Fi access is still rare, spotty, overpriced and problematic.

When we're away from our offices, we still consider ourselves 'out of pocket', 'inaccessible', 'unavailable' and 'offline'.

We accept all kinds of limitations on perfect, total, constant and full access to all our stuff and to the myriad capabilities we have while sitting at our desks.

People might defend these limitations as welcome and necessary 'breaks' from technology or work, but ultimately, they limit our choice and freedom over how, when and where we can take advantage of information technology.

All change

The good news is that these limitations - hard, soft, real or imagined - are all going away.

Like the previous shift from portable to mobile computing, the transformation is gradual and uneven, and caused by a combination of new products, services, attitudes and ideas.

Computing required you to go where the computer was. With portable and mobile computing, you took it with you. But in this new era of anywhere computing, the computer is already there. It's everywhere. It's in your laptop. It's in your pocket. It's in anyone else's computer. It's on remote mountaintops, islands and deserts. It's available from every corner of the globe - no exceptions.

The elements of anywhere computing

Here are some of the many enablers of this radical shift:

Do-it-all mobile phones: Once rare, mobile phones and smartphones that you can use as a laptop modem are now common. Phones with GPS; giant screens; peripheral, fold-out keyboards; PowerPoint support; and other advanced features are now numerous and affordable.

Satellite phones: Per-minute charges are high, but as a backup plan, satellite phones are invaluable for connecting from anywhere.

Ultramobile PCs: A new range of wireless UMPCs and similar super-small computers enable you to do real work in places you previously couldn't, such as on economy-class tray tables, restaurant table tops, you name it. They also serve as a low-cost, 'second laptop' while on the road in case something happens to your main laptop.

Rugged devices: Indestructible, waterproof laptops, tablets and mobile phones enable you to work outside, and help make sure your stuff is still available in harsh conditions.

Alternative energy: A new generation of compact solar chargers and even wind-up chargers means you never have to be sidelined by dead batteries.

Functional flash memory: 'Thumbnail' flash memory drives are everywhere, and some enterprising companies are using this technology to offer low-cost, solid-state devices that back up, secure and even provide operating systems for your data.

Gadgets for storage: Most new pocket gadgets these days are available with tons of storage or support for removable media. That means your smartphone or iPod can serve as a ready backup drive for all the documents you're currently working on.

Online Office replacements: Services like Google Documents and many others provide not only zero-install replacements, but also provide backup, storage and the sharing of your word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. Many let you save in standard Microsoft formats for mailing to colleagues.

Software that 'mirrors' your mobile phone: Free services like Dashwire are emerging, which not only back up and 'mirror' the contents of your mobile phone online, they let you use all that stuff - including chat, phone configuration and more - on the web. If you lose a phone, they can also help you restore to the replacement phone.

Low-cost online backup: You can constantly back up gigabytes of data for just a few pounds a month. And if your laptop is destroyed, you can quickly access everything with another system.

Web 2.0: Another dozen or more new Web 2.0 services emerge every day that empower users, often free of charge, and provide exciting new options for communicating, organising, brainstorming with, accessing, learning about, filtering, managing, processing and enhancing your information.

VoIP: Online phone calls enable you to make free or low-cost calls from cybercafes or any other internet connected computer, and can provide a backup if you can't call from a mobile phone.

Phone-to-PC services: A new category of specialised, free voice-recognition services enable you to send yourself reminders, add things to your calendar or to-do list with a single speed-dial button and a few choice words into your mobile phone, or get voice-mail as email. They turn phones into remote PC input devices.

Mobile phone versions of desktop replacement services: Many of these online services that replace desktop applications, such as Plaxo, Gubb, Google Calendar, Gmail, Maps and others, offer free minimalist mobile phone views of your data.

Cybercafes everywhere: You can find a cybercafe now everywhere, even in small towns in Third World countries.

In-flight Wi-Fi: Major carriers in Europe, the US and Asia are rolling out wireless access during flights. Currently, the majority of UK carriers do not yet offer in-flight Wi-Fi, but you do have a choice in carriers. And soon enough, most airlines will offer it.

Hotels with great connectivity: Gone are the days when you had to fret over your hotel's connectivity. Most business hotels offer Wi-Fi. Others still offer Ethernet. Some provide both.

Neo-nomads: A new breed of entrepreneur is starting companies, building businesses and doing it all without bothering to lease office space. Employees work wherever - home, coffee shops, you name it. Even people at more traditionally established companies are using neo-Bedouin techniques every chance they get, sneaking off to the local coffee house for some uninterrupted productivity. Some are taking vacations without taking vacation time off. They're travelling abroad and working all the while. The idea here isn't to never really take vacations, but to travel three months out of the year, even when your company gives you just three weeks.

Generation Y: People in their 20s now entering the work force are different from the rest of us. They don't remember, can't imagine and would never accept a world without 24/7 internet connectivity. They grew up being available at all hours to friends via chat and mobile phone. They don't see technology as an imposition, but as an enabler that connects them at all times to people they know.

How anywhere computing works

Some of this is pretty new, and some is very new.

Anywhere computing involves not just new capabilities, but extreme redundancy. Like the mobile computing era, you carry your laptop while travelling, ready to connect via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. But in the anywhere-computing era, you can connect with a mobile broadband card, too. Failing that, you can connect your phone and use that as a modem. If your laptop dies, you can use a UMPC. If that gets stolen, you can connect with your phone. Or use any computer you find and interact with recent online backups. Or use the files on your phone or thumb drive. Or... the alternatives are endless.

In the anywhere computing universe, nothing can stop you.

The idea of backing up before a trip, taking the 'hit' while away, then recovering upon your return is a mobile computing concept. The anywhere computing idea is not to recover after you get back, but to never be sidelined. You can continue working, playing and communicating, even when your laptop and/or mobile phone are lost, destroyed or incapacitated.

'Anywhere computing' involves full access at arbitrary, unexpected times - while shopping, sailing, sleeping - whatever, whenever, wherever.

Some will think all this is unnecessary or extreme. Just 15 years ago, critics thought the same thing about mobile computing concepts like using a laptop on an airplane or connecting from a hotel room. People who scoff at the 'excesses' of anywhere computing will be doing it within two years.

And you can do it right now. Anywhere.

Survey: Radiohead fans are cheapskatesSurvey: Radiohead fans are cheapskates

2007-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

But not me. I'm an idiot. According to a survey, two-thirds of the people who downloaded Radiohead's latest album, 'In Rainbows', paid nothing. Now I'm narked because I thought I'd do the decent thing and match iTunes' £7.99 an album, only to get stung for a data-handling charge. Radiohead, you owe me literally pence.

As my appropriately named colleague David Price reported a few weeks ago, Radiohead fans were invited to put their own price on the 10 MP3 files that made up In Rainbows. Radiohead must have been banking that people who regularly shell out for unadulterated misery in audio would prefer to pay more for the 'pleasure'.

Not so, it seems. A whopping 62 percent of the tightwad, tree-hugging quasi-intellectuals couldn't find it in their combat trousers to pay anything for their heroes' latest opus.

Indeed, according to internet monitoring company Comscore only 38 percent of Radiohead downloaders paid to do so.

The average price paid for 'In Rainbows' was a paltry £2.90. And even discounting those who chose to pay nothing, a hefty 17 percent of those downloaders who shelled out paid £1.90 or less. The tight sods. Twelve percent paid between £3.80 and £5.71. Which still leaves me looking like a twonk. Even in America, where the average price was a, er, whopping £3.85.

Turns out you don't always get what you pay for.

The great MySpace security swindle

2007-11-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry Bridget, Claire, Monica, and Shannon. Thanks but no thanks, Dixie, Lola, Shana and Zara. The same goes for Aimee, Willie, Lolita, Cassandra and the three dozen other 'people' who sent me bogus MySpace friend requests in the past 24 hours.

MySpace spam isn't new, but over the last two days something has gone seriously wrong with its junk mail filters. I've been buttered in script-kiddie affiliate spam, and I bet I'm not alone. (Here's a riddle: What does it say about your site's security when you can get gamed by somebody stupid enough to send the same 'friend' invitation 40+ times to each person?)

This is the kind of stuff that happens when your entire business philosophy can be summed up in three words - 'get big quick'-- with no thought to what happens next. When you get big, so do your problems. And if you haven't put stuff in place to catch them early, you never will.

So I find last week's news that MySpace is joining Google's OpenSocial a little chilling. I'm all for open standards and cross-platform compatibility. It would be nice to connect my button-down business colleagues on Linked In with my hang-loose pals on Friendster, even if it's only to throw a sheep at them.

But do not be fooled by the 'open' rhetoric. Pay no attention to the nice man in the Google polo shirt. This isn't about freedom, this is about data. Social networks are really just rich deep pools of personal information, and everybody wants to cast out a hook and reel you in. Marketers are salivating at the chance to sell you something based on that silly profile you filled out in a drunken haze one night on Bebo.com. If they can get at it simply by having you complete a stupid movie quiz or play a silly game, so much the better.

The problem: if they can get at this data, what's to stop the next dumb-as-a-fence-post affiliate spammer from doing the same? Nothing more than a few bland assurances that "we take your privacy very seriously" and "the security of your personal information is our top priority." We know how well those policies work in the real world.

New York Times columnist Randall Stosser sums up Google's motto as 'Social Will Be Everywhere'. Yes, and so is influenza. But every time somebody halfway round the world sneezes, I don't want to catch a cold.
If Google and the social networks of the world really want to do something useful, open, and cross platform, how about fixing the security problem first, then move on to the sheep tossing? Otherwise, social networks will quickly become just another social disease.

Asus: Apple is building a Tablet PC

2007-11-07T15:19:00.000-08:00

What's an Apple Tablet? I'll give you a clue: it's not the sort of vitamin infusion old men take to kickstart their doddering mojos. No, MacBook manufacturer Asustek has told the world that Apple is about to build a Tablet PC.

Using the CoverFlow touchscreen interface which has proved so popular on Apple's sainted iPhone, the Apple Tablet will be based on a patent Apple filed in May 2005. It will have Intel Core architecture and run Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, aka the one with all the bugs.

So that's the technical stuff sorted (sort of), but one major question remains. Why? Having cornered the market in digital-audio players and user-friendly game-free PCs, Apple has already exposed itself to the white-hot heat of the mobile phone business. And Gawd bless her, the fruity one remains upright.

But why any successful company would wish to get embroiled in the car crash that is the mass-market Tablet PC defeats me. Perhaps it is Apple's way of flaunting its apparently bullet-proof success. After all, Microsoft's Tablet adventures have been conspicuous by their lack of success.

Music label sues Google, YouTube

2007-11-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Google and its video sharing site YouTube have been taken to court by an Indian music labe. Super Cassettes Industries filed a suit after the display on YouTube of content on which the Indian company says it holds copyright.

Super Cassettes Industries is seeking a permanent injunction and damages on the dissemination and display on YouTube of the content and on Monday obtained an interim restraint order in the High Court in Delhi. That means Google, which was not represented at the proceedings, has to remove the YouTube content until the final order is decided.

"We had communicated several times to YouTube and to Google both in India and the US to remove the content that infringes our copyrights," said Amit Sibal, lawyer for Super Cassettes in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Google was not immediately available for comment.

Google has in the past objected to provisions in India's Information Technology Act 2000 which make intermediaries such as ISPs (Internet service providers), website hosting companies, search engines, email services, and social networks, liable for their users' content. Section 79 of the Act holds network service providers liable unless they can prove that the offense or contravention was committed without their knowledge or that they had exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of such offense or contravention.

"We don't hold the telephone company liable when two callers use the phone lines to plan a crime," Rishi Jaitly, a policy analyst at Google India said in a Google blog in October. "For the same reasons, it's a fundamental principle of the Internet that you don't blame the neutral intermediaries for the actions of their customers," Jaitly added.

Sibal however objects to the description of YouTube as an intermediary. YouTube is not an ISP, but owns and controls a web site, participates in the infringement, and derives revenue based on the number of clicks from advertisers on the site, he said.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for February next year.

Google has been criticised in India for controversial content on its social -networking site, Orkut. In June this year the Shiv Sena, a powerful political party in Mumbai, demanded that the federal government ban Orkut, after it was found that someone had posted derogatory remarks against the party's chief Bal Thackeray on Orkut.

In October last year, Yugant R Marlapalle, a lawyer from Aurangabad, filed a petition before the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court against Orkut and other social networking sites, after he found on Orkut a community called "We Hate India" which had a picture of the burning of the Indian flag, and anti-India propaganda.

Mozilla about to release Firefox 3.0 beta

2007-11-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

Several months behind its own schedule, Mozilla is about to release the first beta of Firefox 3.0 - according to notes posted on Mozilla's website. The Firefox 3.0 beta release makes it unlikely that a final version of the open-source browser will be released this year.

"With Firefox 3 Beta 1 just around the corner (release candidates coming soon), it's time to start focusing on what it will take to ship a final product that we're all excited about," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's user interface designer in a posting on his blog.

In another note, the browser's QA team called for volunteers to stress-test the Beta 1 release candidate this Friday, typically a sign that a roll-out is just days away.

As of Monday, only one bug remained to be patched in the Beta 1 code, a status meeting reported. On Tuesday, that bug - an issue in Places, Firefox 3.0's new redesign of bookmarks and browsing history - was still listed as open in Bugzilla.

At one time, Mozilla's schedule for Firefox 3.0 pegged Beta 1's debut as July 31 2007, with second beta in September and the final before the end of the year. That, however, was when it predicted only six alpha versions; so far, Firefox has run through eight.

A brief mention of post-Beta 1 plans was tucked into Monday's Firefox status meeting notes. "Looking at [Beta 2] before the holidays," it read.

On its current schedule, it's unlikely that Firefox 3.0 can make final release status during 2007. Last year, for example, when Mozilla updated the browser to Version 2.0, the stretch between the release of its Beta 2 on Aug. 31 and the launch of the final Oct. 25 was just shy of two months.

Mozilla was not immediately available for comment.

Microsoft updates Mac Office and kills Mac IM

2007-11-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Microsoft last night released its latest software update for Office 2004 for Mac. And Microsoft is to kill off MSN Messenger for Mac, replacing the IM (instant messaging) software with a new product.

Microsoft revealed its IM plans during a presentation at the Georgia Institute of Technology's IEEE Student Branch. The company plans to ditch its existing IM solution for Mac to develop and deliver a more advanced client.

While details are scarce at present, the Mac software is expected to appear by the end of next year and will support AIM, Google Talk and ICQ and be compatible with Windows Live Messenger 9.0.

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.9 update fixes an issue that causes Word 2004 to quit unexpectedly when users print a document.

Microsoft notes that this update is recommended for Office 2004 Standard Edition, Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition, Office 2004 Professional Edition, Word 2004. The update weighs in as a 2.49MB download.

Google's PageRank tweak to stop sites selling links

2007-11-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

A week after an update to Google's visible PageRank system got all manner of commercial websites in a Web 2.0 flap, the search-engine giant has confirmed that the move was intended to stop sites flogging their web popularity for a quick cyber-buck.

Websites with high PageRanks can boost the rank of lesser sites by linking to them. Naturally this has created a tawdry market in such links being flogged for cold hard cash. Google is not impressed and neither should web searchers be.

But Google search guru Matt Cutts this week told Search Engine Journal that Google will take a firm hand with web publishers who sell their PageRank currency. And not in a good way.

"The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites," said Cutts.

"Paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site. Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank."

So cash-rich but user-lonely sites can no longer boost the coffers of less commercial sites in order to boost their own Google rankings. Good for Google. I think.