The Internet Herald: May 2008

Publishers expect book sales to stay flat

Posted by Blogger Friday, May 30, 2008 at 12:07 AM

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
2 hours, 36 minutes ago

The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit organization supported by the publishing industry, projects a 3 percent to 4 percent growth through 2011, when revenues should top $43 billion. The BISG expects little change in the actual number of books sold and sees a drop in the general trade market by more than 60 million, from 2.282 billion copies in 2007 to 2.220 billion in 2011.

"The hits will keep doing well, but other books will have troubles," says BISG senior researcher Albert N. Greco, a professor of marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business.

The findings were announced at BookExpo America, being held this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Barring another Potter-like phenomenon, Greco believes the children's market will barely break even. Modest gains are projected in most adult categories, although that could change once Brown comes out with his long-awaited follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." No release date has been set for the novel, which also features protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor who interprets symbols.

The biggest losers likely will be mass market paperbacks, which continue to plunge as baby boomers seek formats with larger print, while religious books should keep growing, by more than 5 percent annually.

The hottest market, according to the industry study group, isn't books, but standardized tests, boosted by the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Growth of 8 percent or better is expected through at least 2009.

"It's the one sector, without a doubt, that's really going to expand," Greco said.

McClellan's book on Bush a surprise hit for many

Posted by Blogger at 12:07 AM

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
2 hours, 24 minutes ago

Scott McClellan's bookWhite House spokesman

"Books by spokespeople rarely contain anything newsworthy and have generally not proven particularly compelling to consumers," said Steve Ross, publisher of the Collins division of HarperCollins and head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House Inc. at the time McClellan was offering his manuscript. "It was shopped around but, like others who publish in the category, we didn't even take a meeting based upon past history."

McClellan, a press secretary known for loyally defending President Bush on Iraq, Katrina and other issues, has written that his ex-boss misled the country about Iraq and calls the White House atmosphere "insular, secretive and combative."

"What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" was No. 1 on Amazon and the publisher, Public Affairs, said that the printing has been doubled from 65,000 to 130,000.

McClellan's accusations have been met by counteraccusations that he is cashing in on his White House access. Bush supporters have criticized him, but so have liberals such as commentator Arianna Huffington.

"It's George Tenet deja vu all over again," Huffington wrote in a posting on her blog, http://www.huffingtonpost, referring to the former CIA director who received seven figures for his memoir. "How many times are we going to have a key Bush administration official try to wash the blood off his hands — and add a chunk of change to his bank account — by writing a come-clean book years after the fact ..."

But McClellan's book does not fit the pattern of Washington megadeals. He was not represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Barnett, whose clients include Tenet and countless political leaders, but by the much less known Craig Wiley, whose most famous client is actor Ron Silver.

McClellan's advance did not approach the level of Barnett's writers. According to an official with knowledge of McClellan's contract — who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the confidentiality of the pact — McClellan received only $75,000 from PublicAffairs, which specializes in policy books by billionaire George Soros, Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus and others.

Rival publishers say they had no sense that McClellan would make such explosive observations, a belief scorned by PublicAffairs founder Peter Osnos.

"Of course they didn't know what would be in it, because they didn't acquire the book," said Osnos, currently in Los Angeles for BookExpo America, publishing's annual national gathering. "Very rarely does a book turn out the way it's expected."

Osnos said he didn't even read the proposal, but instead sought out people who knew McClellan and said they regarded him as an honest man unhappy in his job. According to Osnos, and the book's editor, Lisa Kaufman, "What Happened" evolved as McClellan wrote it.

"The original proposal was somewhat general, so before making an offer on the book we talked to Scott at some length," Kaufman said.

"As Scott says in the preface, writing the book was a process for him. ... The tone was always thoughtful, straightforward, and candid. It's just that as he thought about his experience over many months, that tone began to be directed toward issues and events that some people would rather he not be straightforward and candid about."

Aerosmith's Tyler in rehab for 'safe environment'

Posted by Blogger at 12:06 AM

Steven Tylerphysical therapyAerosmith

Tyler said the surgeries were to correct long-time foot injuries resulting from his physical performances as the singer for the blues-rock band.

"The doctors told me the pain in my feet could be corrected but it would require a few surgeries over time," Tyler said in the statement. "The 'foot repair' pain was intense, greater than I'd anticipated. The months of rehabilitative care and the painful strain of physical therapy were traumatic. I really needed a safe environment to recuperate where I could shut off my phone and get back on my feet."

The 60-year-old was known for heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s, but completed rehabilitation in 1986, after which Aerosmith enjoyed a successful revival.

Review: `Lost' ends season with answers, mystery

Posted by Blogger at 12:04 AM

By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
2 hours, 1 minute ago

This is a game "Lost" devotees are happy to play — albeit fewer of them lately than there used to be. Four seasons in, the show demands even more of the viewer than it used to. But those who have stuck around know that rewards richly outweigh the frustration.

This was never more so than on Thursday's two-hour season finale. It might be the most rewarding, deliciously challenging episode in the history of this mystical ABC serial.

Spoiler alert: Read no further if you mean to watch it for yourself and want to preserve its surprises. There are many.

For instance, you get to see the man in the casket at the L.A. funeral home. Though identified at the end of Season 3 as Jeremy Bentham, he is shown to the audience at long last, lying in pasty-faced repose: none other than John Locke.

But how did Locke, who embraced life on the island, get to Los Angeles? And how did he die? Let the guessing begin.

Another mystery addressed: that recent crazy talk about "moving the island." Darned if it doesn't happen! But not like moving a couch from one room to another. This was moving from Now to Who-Knows-Where-Or-When.

Ben did it deep within a chamber of the Dharma Initiative's Station 6, where experiments had previously been conducted in time travel. Ben made the island disappear along with its occupants (including Locke, Sawyer and Juliet), while, aloft in their helicopter, Jack, Kate and several others watched in disbelief.

Yikes! Time, not just space, is now a way to separate and torment the characters — and amplify the "Lost" narrative.

From the start four seasons ago, "Lost" roamed freely from the island where its characters were stranded. The series interspersed the "present-day" island story lines with scenes that captured its characters prior to their fateful flight on Oceanic Airlines flight 815.

But in the final moments last season, "Lost" added another dimension to the saga: propelling the action into the future, to offer glimpses of how certain characters readjust to the "normal" world.

The flash-forwards have given "Lost" an intriguing new perspective on the characters who got out. But their post-rescue lives are also shedding light on what took place on the island — and serve as a reminder to the audience that, even for those characters who came home, there's no escaping. Not yet, anyway.

The finale makes clear how, for the safety of the "Oceanic Six" as well as any comrades they left behind, everything that happened on the island must stay secret.

"We're gonna have to lie," says Jack.

"Lie about what?" Sayid asks.

"All of it," Jack answers. "Every moment since we crashed on the island."

"Jack, we can't pull it off," argues Kate.

John Locke

http://www.abc

'D' Show: Cell Phone Fees, and the Future of TiVo

Posted by Blogger at 12:03 AM

Michael Miller - eSeminars

The final discussion at the D Conference involved FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, who discussed broadband deployment, network neutrality, open access and more. Earlier, TiVo's Tom Rogers talked about DVRs and the changes facing the TV market.

Walt Mossberg showed a chart showing that the U.S. had slower broadband rates and higher prices than other countries. Martin talked about the differences in population density explaining why some countries have larger penetration and higher speed, though he did agree that speed was an issue.

Martin said the U.S. system masks some of the costs by spreading it out over a large area, including a very large rural area. He said he believed that instead of subsidizing voice services, the government should subsidize rural broadband . He believes in a "reverse auction" to provide such service, rather than spreading subsidies among multiple providers.

Lowell said one of the issues was going locality to locality to get franchises, siting towers, etc., and he complained about the local bureaucracies.

There was a discussion about open access, with Mallon talking about all of the actions that various companies have done to make the wireless industry more open, including recent announcements from Verizon and AT&T, the Sprint and Clearwire discussions of a Wimax network, Google's open handset alliance etc. Lowell said this would have happened with or without Google's public pushing for openness, because the way to increase penetration is to get people to carry more devices. Lowell said Verizon is requiring certification because it doesn't want devices that would impact the other customers negatively. He said the wireless charges for "open devices" would be the same as for Verizon phones, because there was no subsidy but also less opportunity for Verizon to sell other service.

There was a big discussion about termination fees for wireless accounts. Lowell said that 98 percent of Verizon customers pick subsidized phones, and he agreed with the idea that termination fees decline over time. Martin said he agreed with that, although not all companies offer that; and also said he thought customers should be able to return phones after a reasonable time if it doesn't meet their needs.

On the digital TV consumer, Martin said consumer awareness of the switchover has grown tremendously, but there is still a lot of confusion in the market. He said you'll see more ads and more information on this in the next few months.

Martin also talked about network neutrality, and said he didn't want network operators to limit their access to content and applications, but that reasonable network management practices did make sense. He thinks the commission needs to address this more clearly.

Read the rest of this post at Michael Miller's blog, Forward Thinking: "'D' Show: Cell Phone Fees, and the Future of TiVo"

Copyright Issues Become Cloudy When Content Owners Can't Be Found

Posted by Blogger at 12:03 AM

By K.C. JonesInformationWeek

Orphan works reform Intellectual Property Symposium

Public Knowledge President and Co-Founder Gigi B. Sohn spoke about the issue Thursday, during the symposium at the University of Maryland University College. The group's aim is to represent consumers and the public on technology policy issues.

Congress is considering changes to the way libraries, historians, museums, publishers, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and others can use copyright-protected works whose owners cannot be found. In many instances, people are reluctant to use, display, or reproduce the works because they cannot obtain permission to use the works and fear liability for copyright infringement.

The problem arose because works do not need to be registered to fall under copyright protection laws.

Congress is considering reform legislation that would let users off the hook for copyright infringement if they could show they made a "diligent" or "reasonable and appropriate" effort to find the copyright holder for permission and filed notice. The standards would be outlined in "best practices" determined by the government. Copyright holders who found out that their works had been used without permission, after a diligent search, could receive "reasonable compensation."

The U.S. Copyright Office has received more than 850 responses to the proposal, which is gaining support in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

She said that courts, not government agencies, should determine whether a user performed a diligent search. Sohn also said that requirements to register works in an archive should not be costly. The government currently estimates that archiving could cost $38 per page, a price Sohn said could keep large volumes and works in the closets of museums.

Finally, Public Knowledge takes issue with parts of a "safe harbor" clause for nonprofit institutions, like universities, libraries, museums, and public television. Congress would exempt those institutions from paying fees if they removed works after copyright holders reappear. Sohn supports that exemption, but takes issue with a stipulation requiring that the work is not used for "direct or indirect commercial advantage."

"Just because a museum may sell an exhibit catalogue that uses an orphan work in its gift shop doesn't necessarily mean that it is using the work for 'commercial advantage,'" she said during her speech at the symposium. "While indeed such sales are commerce, they are used to fund the nonprofit educational mission of the institution, not for profit"

And, she said that a requirement that institutions relinquish proceeds from the use of orphan works could raise questions about giving up admission fees from an orphan works exhibit that is later removed.

Stanford University Law professor Lawrence Lessig opposes the legislation. He argued in a recent New York Times opinion piece that: the bill does not distinguish between old and new, or foreign and domestic works; creators who have relied on a 1978 law that protects their work without registration would be exposed to infringement; and the bill would not simplify the process of dealing with orphan works.

He said Congress should tackle orphan works reform the way the country has legislated patents: requiring a $1 registration after a period (14 years) of automatic protection for domestic works. He said foreign works, and those produced between 1978 and now, should be protected without registration, so rights holders aren't burdened with "formalities." He said the law should not apply to images until technology allows for reliable and simple registration and searches.

Google, which could create a database for registration and searches, supports the bill.

See original article on InformationWeek

Dell Confirms It Has A Mini-Notebook

Posted by Blogger at 12:03 AM

By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

Dell

While acknowledging the upcoming product exists, Dell has declined to provide details other than screenshots of the device on the company's blog. "Stay tuned for details" is all a company spokeswoman would say.

CEO Michael Dell sparked news reports of the mini-notebook when he showed the device on Wednesday to blogger Brian Lam of Gizmodo at The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference. Beyond giving a quick look at the candy red notebook, Dell declined to give any details.

Lam, however, said he saw three USB ports, a card reader, a VGA out, and an Ethernet connection. VGA, or video graphics array, refers to the hardware in a computer for connecting to an external display.

While the actual size of the device hasn't been disclosed, the notebook appears small enough to compete with HP's 2133 and Asus' Eee PC. The HP machine sports an 8.9-inch display, and the Eee PC comes in an 8.9- and 7-inch model.

Asus sparked the sub-$500 mini-notebook craze with the introduction of the Eee PC in October 2007. Since then, the Taiwanese company has sold more than 350,000 units, and said it's on track to sell between 3 million and 5 million notebooks by the end of this year.

While sales have been strong among computer enthusiasts, the ultra-low-cost notebooks are expected to eventually find their place in the mainstream PC market as an inexpensive option for students and as a second computer for accessing the Web on the road at Wi-Fi hotspots, according to IDC.

Worldwide shipments will grow from less than 500,000 units last year to more than 9 million in 2012, IDC predicts. Because of low average selling prices, revenue will be less than $3 billion. As a percentage of the total consumer PC market, the devices will remain under 5% through the forecast period.

See original article on InformationWeek

Blog Gives Women Power Over Harassment

Posted by Blogger at 12:03 AM

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Most women have probably experienced the following scenario at one time or another: You're walking down the street minding your own business. Perhaps the weather is nice, and you're in a good mood because you're wearing a fun new outfit. Suddenly, your reverie is interrupted by a whistle and a "Hey, baby, lookin' gooood!" from a male stranger who, unbeknownst to you, has been admiring your female form from afar.

Most women will ignore the comments or merely grumble under their breath, knowing that even if they want to retaliate there is nothing they can really do, and it won't prevent the same experience from happening again because usually the men are not committing an actual crime.

Some women have more drastic reactions, but find that law-enforcement officials still are not sympathetic to their plight. A female tourist in New Zealand was so frustrated by the wolf whistles she received from a group of men repairing a road in a small town that she stripped off her clothes in an attempt to shut them up. The woman was apprehended by police and told her actions were "inappropriate in New Zealand," according to a Reuters report about the incident.

In September 2005, they created HollaBack New York City, a blog encouraging women to use their cell-phone cameras to take photos of wolf whistlers and then post those photos, as well as written accounts, of harassing incidents online.

The site caught on, and women from all over the country and even overseas began posting photos and stories of street harassment, either personal accounts or incidents they witnessed.

"He still couldn't take his eyes off a woman's rear even as my phone was in his face," wrote one woman who identified herself as Susan in a post dated Oct. 16, 2006. "He and his friend eyed her and he said, 'Have a nice day, gorgeous.' But in the way that makes you feel anything but nice."

"Some women like those compliments," she said.

Many don't, so the idea of HollaBackNYC is to give women the power to identify when they feel they've been unjustly harassed and make men answer for it, May said.

In these cases, victims of street harassment experience similar personal trauma to victims of more obvious and prosecutable crimes such as sexual harassment in the workplace, domestic violence, sexual assault and even rape, even if the crime itself is not as severe, she said.

Case in point: The other day I was walking in the Bronx on my way to the New York Botanical Gardens. For some reason, I received more attention than normal from some of the men in the neighborhood. When I finally made it to my destination, I wondered if perhaps it wasn't the best decision to wear a figure-hugging dress on my eight-block walk from the subway, though the day was warm and sunny and my skirt fell to midcalf.

It's this effect of street harassment, that self-blame that women also experience when they are the victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and the like, that May said she hopes the blog helps women avoid.

"When women go, 'I shouldn't have been walking there,' or 'if I do this, I won't get harassed,' it's their way of wanting to control a situation that you can't control," she said. "It has nothing to do with it at all."

Rather, street harassment transcends class, race, socioeconomic status and ethnicity, May said, and it's "about power" more than it is about a man's physical attraction to a woman he sees on the street.

May also said that the common misconception that men of certain race or ethnicity engage more in street harassment is not true. A third-party Web site performed an independent analysis of the street harassment reported on HollaBackNYC, she said. The results showed that races and ethnicities of the men alleged to have harassed women mirrored demographic information for the racial and ethnic makeup of New York.

Though it's hard to quantify the positive effect HollaBackNYC has had on women, May said that studies have shown that women who are victims of rape and other sexual assault experience less depression or post-traumatic stress disorder afterward if they fought back against their perpetrator, even if they were unsuccessful in preventing the crime. She said that she hopes the blog gives victims of street harassment a similar way to vent their frustrations so they feel less guilty or maligned later.

Women can submit photos and reports of harassment to HollaBackNYC not only from their PCs, but also directly from their mobile phones. The site also takes video submissions.

The popularity of the New York City HollaBack blog has inspired spinoffs in other cities and states. Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, Boston and Charleston, South Carolina, all now have HollaBack blogs, as well as states such as Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Colorado.

HollaBackNYC also has had an indirect effect on law-enforcement activities against men engaging in public lewdness, one of the chief complaints of women posting on the blog, May said.

Two years ago, after a spate of press coverage about the blog, the New York Police Department embarked on a campaign called Operation Exposure that sent female police officers onto New York subways to arrest men who exposed themselves to women on the subway. They arrested 13 in a two-week period, May said.

Google's Marissa Mayer Sides With Simplicity

Posted by Blogger at 12:02 AM

By Thomas ClaburnInformationWeek

Google I/O developer conference Marissa Mayer Google

When you focus on the ordinary and everyday you solve people's problems, said Mayer. She cited the millions of page views garnered by simple widgets as an example of the revenue potential of the mundane.

Such advice may seem overly simplistic, but Google has made a business of simplicity.

It's worth noting that Google arrived at that insight accidentally. Mayer said she asked Google co-founder Sergey Brin how Google had settled on the clean, white design of its home page. "We didn't have a Webmaster and I don't do HTML," Brin replied, she said.

And initially, all that white space confused Google users. User tests early on revealed that searchers would load the Google home page and wait for upwards of a minute in some cases. Asked why, the testers, accustomed to pages chock full of content, said they were waiting for the rest of the page to load.

That's why Google has a copyright notice at the end of its home page, said Mayer, to indicate that the page has loaded and that searching can begin.

Nonetheless, Mayer said that Google found the version with the least white space performed best in terms of its user happiness metric and in terms of ad revenue generated.

Similarly, Mayer said that Google tried running sponsored results against a light blue background and a light yellow background. The yellow background led to more searches and better revenue.

"Users really care about speed," Mayer said. "They really respond to speed."

A typical Google search, Mayer explained, touches some 700 to 1,000 machines in Google's data centers and can return a list of 5 million results in 0.16 seconds.

"As Google gets faster, people search more," Mayer said. "As it gets slower, people search less."

Mayer reiterated the importance of universal search to Google's business and repeated the company's view that search in the future will be more personalized. And she urged developers to have a healthy disrespect for the impossible and to pursue fanciful projects because they exercise the imagination.

"Search is an impossible problem," Mayer said. "We will never have the perfect solution."

Even so, expect Google to keep trying.

See original article on InformationWeek

U.S. Eyes Free Internet As Part Of Airwaves Auction

Posted by Blogger at 12:00 AM

By ReutersInformationWeek

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is
proposing to auction an unused piece of 25 megahertz wireless
spectrum, with the condition the winning bidder offer free
Wi-Fi access and filter out obscene content on part of those
airwaves, a spokesman for the FCC said Thursday.

Under Martin's proposal, the winner would be allowed to use
the rest of the airwaves for commercial services.

The plan would address criticism from some consumer
advocates, who say the government has not done enough to
get broadband service into more U.S. households. It also could
win praise from anti-obscenity watchdog groups.

"I think there are a number of features of the plan that
would be attractive to various constituencies," said Stifel
Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin.

But the plan got a lukewarm response from existing wireless
carriers. The industry's chief trade group, called CTIA, said
auction provisions such as the free-service requirement were
too rigid.

"CTIA supports flexible auction rules that allow any and
all entities to participate," the group said in a statement.

The winning bidder also would have to build out the system
to serve 50 percent of the U.S. population within four years
and 95 percent within 10 years.

Further details of the plan have yet to be worked out, but
Martin's plan is expected to come up at the FCC's next meeting
on June 12.

Martin's proposal is similar to a plan put forth previously
by a start-up company called M2Z. Under that plan, which was
not approved by the FCC, M2Z would have been given the spectrum
at no up-front cost. It would have provided free service,
generating revenue partly through advertising.

The 25 MHz spectrum at issue is not viewed as highly
attractive to wireless carriers, unlike the 700 MHz spectrum
auctioned by the FCC earlier this year. There has been little
previous interest in it, aside from the M2Z proposal.
(Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
By: Peter Kaplan

As per UBM LLC's agreement with Reuters, this story will be removed from this site after 30 days.

See original article on InformationWeek

3K Computers Launches Mini-Laptop

Posted by Blogger at 12:00 AM

By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

The 3K RazorBook 400 weighs less than two pounds and includes a 4 GB flash drive for storage and 512 MB of memory. The device comes with the Linux operating system and is powered by an Ingenic 400 MHz 32-bit single-core mobile processor. The notebook's 7-inch screen has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.

The RazorBook is built for people in need of an ultra-portable notebook for accessing the Web on the road. The machine boots in 15 seconds and has built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g. The computer comes with the open source Linux Office Suite, an integrated sound card, stereo speakers, three USB 2.0 ports, and a one-year warranty.

3K sells exclusively to distributors and value-added resellers.

3K competitor Asus proved there was a market for sub-$500 mini-notebooks with the launch of the Eee PC in October 2007. Since then, the Taiwanese company has sold more than 350,000 units and expects to sell between 3 million and 5 million by the end of the year. The device, which is popular among computer enthusiasts, has a 7-inch display.

Other competitors include Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which is preparing to enter the market soon.

The low-cost notebooks are expected to eventually find their place in the mainstream PC market as an inexpensive option for students and as a second computer for accessing the Web on the road at Wi-Fi hotspots, according to IDC. Worldwide shipments are forecast to grow from less than 500,000 units last year to more than 9 million in 2012.

See original article on InformationWeek

FCC Considers Offering Spectrum for Free Wireless Internet

Posted by Blogger Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 11:59 PM

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will soon vote on a plan to auction spectrum, with the winner required to offer free wireless Internet services.

The winner of the 25Mhz piece of spectrum in the 2155MHz band would be required to use a specified amount of the spectrum to deliver free wireless Internet access. The operator could choose to use any technology, but in that range WiMax or many of the mobile technologies would make sense.

"We believe this is a good idea and demonstrates the FCC's commitment to supporting initiatives that have a positive impact on the next phase of broadband innovation. This will give consumers greater choices to access the Internet," said Chelsea Fallon, a FCC spokeswoman, in a statement.

The FCC developed the plan based on proposals from several companies including M2Z Networks, Commnet Wireless, NextWave Broadband and others. M2Z in 2006 proposed that the FCC give the company the spectrum so that it could offer free wireless Internet access to users. The company planned to fund the network through advertising and said that it would give the FCC 5 percent of its gross revenue. The FCC's current proposal would simply auction the spectrum to the highest bidder and require the free services.

The current proposal also includes a requirement for a content filter that would aim to prevent minors from accessing adult content over the free network. The final plan could also include specified data rates for the free service.

The FCC first sought comment on the proposal last September. In a joint filing, TDS Telecommunications and U.S. Cellular expressed concern about how the spectrum winner would fund the free service. "It will have to be paid for by revenues from somewhere, presumably other customers not receiving 'free' services," they wrote in a comment to the FCC.

While many of the bigger wireless operators filed individual comments, they typically stressed technical issues that would help ensure that any new service in the band doesn't interfere with their existing services. However, the CTIA, a trade group representing the operators, urged the FCC not to place requirements on the spectrum winner. "The commission should not require licensees to meet specific conditions, such as pricing plans, minimum data rates or content filtering," the CTIA wrote in a filing with the commission.

Existing wireless operators typically oppose proposals that would dictate how they use spectrum. Nonetheless, the FCC recently required the winner of a certain section of spectrum in the 700MHz band to allow any device to use the network. Verizon won the spectrum, despite its protests against the requirement.

If the FCC approves the plan for the 2155MHz spectrum during its June 12 meeting, it would then have to work out the auction procedures, a process that could take six months or longer.

Free Internet eyed as part of airwaves auction

Posted by Blogger at 11:59 PM

By Peter Kaplan

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is
proposing to auction an unused piece of 25 megahertz wireless
spectrum, with the condition that the winning bidder offer free
Internet access and filter out obscene content on part of those
airwaves, a spokesman for the FCC said on Thursday.

"We're hoping there will be increased interest in the
proposal; and because this will provide wireless broadband
services to more Americans, it is certainly something we want
to see," said FCC spokesman Rob Kenny.

Under Martin's proposal, the winner would be allowed to use
the rest of the airwaves for commercial services.

The plan would address criticism from some consumer
advocates, who say the government has not done enough to get
broadband service into more households. It also could win
praise from anti-obscenity watchdog groups.

"I think there are a number of features of the plan that
would be attractive to various constituencies," said Stifel
Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin.

But the plan got a lukewarm response from existing wireless
carriers. The industry's chief trade group, called CTIA, said
auction provisions such as the free-service requirement were
too rigid.

"CTIA supports flexible auction rules that allow any and
all entities to participate," the group said in a statement.

The winning bidder also would have to build out the system
to serve 50 percent of the U.S. population within four years
and 95 percent within 10 years.

Further details of the plan have yet to be worked out, but
Martin's plan is expected to come up at the FCC's next meeting
on June 12.

(Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Gerald E. McCormick)

Mobile Ad Revenue To Hit $10 Billion By 2013

Posted by Blogger at 11:58 PM

By Marin PerezInformationWeek

Mobile ads in the United States accounted for $421 million in sales in 2006 and are expected to reach nearly $5 billion by 2011.

But the market must first face a host of issues involving formats, pricing strategies, and standards, according to a report titled "Mobile Advertising: The Service Provider Revenue Opportunity."

"The key issue is getting the media buyers comfortable with the advertising in the mobile market," said Aditya Kishore, senior analyst with Heavy Reading, said in an interview. "Currently, it's quite hard to purchase and measure the effectiveness of these ads."

The report emphasizes that the mobile ad ecosystem is still in a state of evolution, but will experience rapid and sustainable growth as these issues fade away and technologies and advertising campaign models advance, Kishore said. The report shows how five U.K. carriers partnered together to provide a unified set of metrics for ad buyers.

Another benefit for the market is the aggressive approach companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google are taking toward the mobile ad market.

Mobile advertising offers some significant advantages over other media, but also has some limitations, said Kishore. "Mobile advertising offers carriers the greatest opportunity to insert themselves into the advertising value chain," he said. "Unlike with TV and Internet advertising, which developed before the service providers got involved, carriers have been involved with mobile advertising from the start."

Spending on mobile advertising is beginning to develop worldwide, but mobile ad revenue isn't likely to reach any significant volume until 2010, as market participants continue to wrestle with formats, standards, and pricing strategies.

The report predicts that wireless carriers' share of mobile advertising revenue will grow to $3.4 billion in 2012. While this represents less than 1% of total wireless service provider revenue, it's also just the beginning. Mobile advertising revenue will ramp up steadily for the foreseeable future. Carriers now have an opportunity to enter this market at its early stage and influence its development as it expands into a sizable market, it says.

Mobile ad revenue will not flow evenly to all network operators, the report says. Carriers that are aggressive in building their content, search, and advertising businesses will gain a disproportionate share of mobile advertising revenue. The market also will vary significantly by geography, with Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom now best positioned for mobile ad revenue.

Service providers offering wireline and wireless services have a unique ability to integrate advertising across the TV, PC, and mobile device. This could offer advertisers significant value, provided it's packaged correctly, the report says.

As a comparison, 67 million consumers use the mobile Web, which means SMS's reach is twice as high as Internet reach for advertising on mobile phones, according to the report.

See original article on InformationWeek

VIA Launches Low-Power Nano Processor Family

Posted by Blogger at 11:58 PM

By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

The Nano line, based on VIA's 64-bit Isaiah CPU architecture, comprises five models with maximum power consumption ranging from 5 watts to 25 watts. Clock speeds range from 1.0 GHz to 1.8 GHz.

The power efficiency of the new products makes them candidates for use in power-efficient PCs offered to businesses. The chips, however, could find a bigger home initially in thin and light laptops and later in sub-$500 mini-notebooks with screen sizes of less than 10 inches. Battery life is particularly important for the latter notebooks, which are primarily used for accessing the Web on the road.

The Nano builds on the company's C7 processor line, but offers as much as four times the performance within the same power range, the company said. Nano processors can be used in the same C7 socket, making the upgrade easier for computer and motherboard manufacturers.

The Nano's performance boost is because of the manufacturing process that shrinks the size of transistors on the chip to 65 nanometers versus 90 nm for the C7. More transistors on a chip translate into higher power-to-performance ratios. VIA designs the chips and contracts manufacturing with Fujitsu.

The Nano line supports a full 64-bit instruction set and has a 1-MB L2 cache. The chip's VIA V4 Front Side Bus has a speed of 800 MHz. The processors have on-die hardware cryptographic acceleration and security features.

A white paper on the Nano line is available on VIA's Web site. The processors are available to computer and motherboard makers. Systems featuring the chips are expected to hit the market in the third quarter of the year.

VIA, based in Taiwan, specializes in low-power processors for running Windows. The company this month released its own reference design for mini-notebooks, an emerging category of PCs with screen sizes less than 10 inches and costing less than $500. Analysts expect the lightweight, ultraportable devices to catch on with some consumers, particularly businesspeople who spend large amounts of time on the road and students strapped for cash.

Worldwide shipments of mini-notebooks, such as the 7-inch Asus Eee PC, are expected to increase from less than 500,000 units last year to more than 9 million in 2012, according to IDC. Because of the low average selling prices, revenue will be less than $3 billion.

VIA's most prominent challenger is Intel, which is expected to ship its own low-power chip, dubbed Atom, soon. The small-footprint processor is designed to operate in the 2- to 4-watt range.

See original article on InformationWeek

EDS Shareholder Sues To Block HP Merger

Posted by Blogger at 11:57 PM

By Paul McDougallInformationWeek

Hewlett-Packard

The suit was filed this week by Joseph Villari in Delaware Chancery Court. Villari wants the court to force EDS to auction itself off for a higher price.

HP agreed to acquire EDS earlier this month. The transaction, which values EDS at $25 per share, is expected to close in the second half of 2008. The $25 a share is a 32% premium over EDS's share price before HP's offer.

HP's EDS unit would house 210,000 employees.

HP has struggled to grow its services business internally. Despite publicly stating its intention to become a leader in the outsourcing market and investing accordingly, the company often found itself in the position of also-ran against competitors like IBM, Accenture, and EDS itself when big deals were handed out.

With EDS in-house, HP would double its outsourcing business overnight while adding blue chip customers like American Airlines, Bank of America, and Royal Dutch Shell.

HP shares were up 0.84% to $46.91 in trading Thursday. EDS shares gained 0.45% to close at $24.49.

See original article on InformationWeek

MySpace Adopts Google's Gears To Search Messages

Posted by Blogger at 11:57 PM

Richard Koman, newsfactor

Google MySpaceNews Corp

The chief benefit right now is dramatically improving performance for MySpace's messaging system and enabling functions like search and sorting that the current system is unable to provide. Another benefit is the cost savings of moving all those client-server communications and processing to users' machines.

Faster, Smarter Messaging

On the TechCrunch blog, Michael Arrington explained the difference between the old and new systems. "Instead of scrolling through pages and pages of messages, users can now sort by date, from, status (read/unread), or subject. And, more importantly, users can also search the full text of messages. The results are shown instantly (think Outlook), without page refreshes."

In addition to the improved user experience, the cost savings could be substantial. A MySpace representative said 170 million messages move across the system every day, so moving a substantial amount of that data from servers to desktops could free up a large amount of server horsepower.

Fixing the Browser

He also demonstrated the ability to process geographic information within Google Maps to, as an example, locate all bars near San Francisco's Moscone Center, where the conference is being held. Some of these potential applications raise security concerns, however. "There has to be permission for using location data. We haven't figured out the best model yet," Prince said.

In the larger scheme, the work on Gears is clearly important to make the browser a full-fledged computing layer on top of whatever operating system a computer runs. "Our broader goal has always been to close the gap between Web apps and native apps by giving the browser new capabilities," Prince wrote on the official Google blog. "There is no shortage of Web application pain points to be addressed! In its second year, Gears will begin to tackle some of these problems."

Such a vision suggests that PCs in the future will operate on more of a "hybrid model because more functions can be ported from the desktop to the cloud," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research, in a telephone interview. "To some degree this is the Mac and desktop Linux, because software compatibility isn't as important."

If Google is able to establish the Web layer as the place where development happens, the operating system may never become "irrelevant," Sterling said, but the distinction between operating systems is "less and less important."

FCC mulling free high-speed Internet network plan

Posted by Blogger at 11:57 PM

By DIBYA SARKAR, AP Business Writer

free wireless high-speed Internet service

The Federal Communications Commission at its June 12 meeting will likely vote on an order setting terms of the spectrum auction that could include the free Internet service provision. A similar proposal was rejected last year.

"We're hoping there will be increased interest (in the proposal) and because this will provide wireless broadband services to more Americans it is certainly something we want to see," said FCC spokesman Rob Kenny.

Kenny said he didn't know when the auction would be held and details must still be worked out. However, he said the resulting network must reach 50 percent of the population four years after the winner gets a license and then 95 percent after 10 years, he said.

Under the plan, the winning bidder would provide free high-speed service on a small portion of the spectrum that potentially could be available on millions of Americans' phones and laptops.

Jessica Zufolo, a telecom analyst with Medley Global Advisors, said the plan is "risky."

"While it (the public interest component) is hugely laudable and really fulfills a lot of public policy objectives of both Congress and the FCC, from a business standpoint it's very difficult to justify," she said.

Two years ago, a wireless startup, M2Z Networks Inc. based in Menlo Park, Calif., asked the FCC to let it use those underutilized airwaves so it could offer free nationwide broadband service.

In exchange, M2Z — co-founded by John Muleta, former head of the FCC's wireless telecommunications bureau — would pay the federal government 5 percent of sales generated from advertising on the resulting network.

The FCC rejected the proposal because it meant giving the airwaves to the company without it bidding against other carriers for the rights.

Supporters of the plan say it could help widen competition in a market dominated by wireless carriers, such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.

"If you have a service where you can have competitive access to different handsets, that is going to be very attractive compared to a wireless industry that makes you have to sign up with AT&T if you want an iPhone," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and chief executive of the public interest group Media Access Project.

He acknowledged the technology is still in the laboratory stage and infrastructure costs to deploy a network in urban and very rural areas could be high, but said it's worth the risk.

The wireless industry, which opposed M2Z's proposal, has said imposing conditions on any auctioned spectrum would shrink the pool of bidders.

"We support flexible auction rules that allow any and all entities to bid," said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA — The Wireless Association, whose members include AT&T, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC.

The FCC earlier this year tried to auction off a portion of spectrum in which a winning bidder would have been required to build a nationwide emergency communications network for public safety agencies. No one stepped forward.

Intel, Micron Launch High-Density Storage Chip

Posted by Blogger at 11:56 PM

By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

Intel

The NAND device is aimed at solid-state drives, which are increasingly being offered at a premium in notebooks to deliver faster boot times and more durability and reliability than traditional hard disk drives. The new product was manufactured by the companies' joint venture, IM Flash Technologies.

In building the chip, the partners used a 34-nanometer manufacturing process that increases the density of the device in order to cram more memory in a smaller space, which is important for ultraportable notebooks and other mobile PCs. "This new 32-GB device provides the best bit storage density available in the industry," Brian Shirley, VP of Micron's Memory Group, said in a statement.

The new devices are smaller than the size of a thumbnail but can store more than 2,000 digital photos or up to 1,000 songs. The chips are also available in a two eight-die stacked package to deliver 64 GB of storage.

The companies claim their latest product can drive capacities beyond 256 GB in a standard 1.8-inch form factor for solid-state drives. Intel and Micron also plan to introduce lower-density products by the end of the year.

The companies expect to ship samples of the latest chip to customers in June. Volume production is expected in the second half this year.

While solid-state drives have a number of advantages over hard disk drives, the biggest disadvantage is price. SSDs are multiple times more expensive than HDDs and are unlikely to replace the latter anytime soon in most applications. However, SSDs are finding a place among businesses looking for rugged notebooks for field workers and in mini-notebooks with screen sizes less than 10 inches. Besides weight, SSDs also use up less batter power than HDDs.

See original article on InformationWeek

Comcast.net site is hacked briefly

Posted by Blogger at 11:56 PM

Comcast Corp.'s Web portal

The front page of Comcast.net went down shortly before 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday and was replaced with a note saying the hackers had "RoXed" Comcast, according to postings at BroadbandReports.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said Thursday that the hijacking had been reversed in the morning, but that it was possible some users were still unable to access Comcast.net and Web-based e-mail.

There was no indication that e-mail or other private information was compromised by the attack, Comcast said. It didn't stop customers from getting their e-mail through programs like Outlook.

The hackers appeared to have seized control of the Comcast.net domain name at registrar Network Solutions Inc. and redirected it to other servers, Khoury said.

"We have alerted law enforcement authorities and are working in conjunction with them," Khoury said.

___

On the Net:

http://wwwcast.net

Redlasso continues service, hires ex-CBS CEO

Posted by Blogger at 11:56 PM

By Kenneth Li

CBS Corp Chief Executive Michael
Jordan

General Electric Co's NBC Universal, News Corp's Fox News
and Fox Television Stations, CBS and Allbritton Communications
Co in May demanded Redlasso stop violating their copyrights by
streaming video clips of their news, sports and TV shows
without permission.

In a response delivered Thursday afternoon to lawyers
representing the five broadcast programmers, Redlasso said it
would continue business as usual making clips of news
broadcasts available to bloggers.

"We've been in conversation with them all along," Redlasso
CEO Al McGowan told Reuters in a phone interview. "We were not
surprised, but disappointed we received the letter."

McGowan said his company had been in talks with the
broadcasters on how to design a service that would be useful to
bloggers searching for news clips, while building a business
model that ensured these clips are protected.

Like users of Google Inc's YouTube, Redlasso users can
embed clips, or place them on their Web page. The clips and any
associated advertising are controlled by Redlasso, McGowan
said. Clips typically run under 2.5 minutes.

Unlike YouTube, which has taken down clips identified by
content owners as having been uploaded without their
permission, Redlasso said on Thursday it will continue with its
practice.

McGowan said he hoped hiring a media industry veteran like
Jordan could help rekindle discussions to license the content
for a business that could help media companies make money off
news videos that typically have a shorter shelf life compared
to entertainment.

"I have joined forces with Redlasso because I have the
greatest belief in the solution offered by the company and its
long-term viability," Jordan, former CEO of CBS and
Westinghouse Corp, said in a statement.

"Redlasso is converting a marketplace challenge into an
opportunity for content providers, advertisers and the online
community, creating a new value for traditional perishable
content."

The service, which has been in a password-protected test
stage since November 2007, has proven popular with bloggers,
including the Huffington Post, Perez Hilton and Politico.

In April, the site received 24 million unique visits and 10
million video plays, the company said.

A representative for NBC Universal was not immediately
available for comment.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li, editing by Richard Chang)

Mozilla Aims For Firefox 3.0 Download Record

Posted by Blogger at 11:56 PM

By Thomas ClaburnInformationWeek

set a new world record

The company has put out a call to its global community of users to pledge to download the new 3.0 version of Firefox on the day the browser is made available to the public.

Given that there's no established Guinness World Record for software downloads, Mozilla is destined for the record book no matter what happens. A Mozilla spokesperson said the company is working with the Guinness Book Of World Records to verify the record attempt and will be furnishing 10% of the company's download logs for an extrapolated final download count.

Justin Fitzhugh, director of IT for Mozilla, is confident that Mozilla will be able to handle the bandwidth surge, which he said is likely to be a fraction of the load Mozilla bears when it releases automated browser updates to its installed base of users. "We've scaled for this already," he said, noting that in addition to the servers in its own data center, Mozilla relies on donated server capacity around the world.

Mozilla claims that it has 175 million users in more than 230 countries. The United Nations recognizes 192 member states. Presumably, Mozilla is counting perhaps a dozen countries with limited or substantial international recognition (Taiwan), several would-be countries not recognized by other nations (Abkhazia), and a variety of territories (Norfolk Island).

Over at SpreadFirefox, there's an interactive map that lists by country those who have pledged to download Firefox 3.0 on the designated day. At the time this article was filed, the United States had the lead, with almost 38,000 promising to participate in the download event. In Turkmenistan, only six people have committed. Enthusiasm for the download record attempt is clearly higher in neighboring Uzbekistan, where 50 people have pledged to participate.

About two weeks ago, Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 RC1, a version of the new browser deemed stable enough for public testing. Mozilla says the official 3.0 release will occur in June.

Firefox 3.0 RC1 is noticeably faster than version 2.0. It also handles memory better.

As of May 29, Firefox has 17.76% of the global browser market share, according to Net Applications. Microsoft Internet Explorer accounts for 74.83%, and Apple's Safari accounts for 5.81%.

See original article on InformationWeek

Yahoo's BrowserPlus to Boost Web App Platform

Posted by Blogger at 11:56 PM

Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Yahoo this week announced it is working on BrowserPlus, a development platform for creating Web applications that contain desktop capabilities.

BrowserPlus joins similar projects, including Google's Gears, Adobe's AIR, Mozilla's XUL, Microsoft's Silverlight and others, designed to let developers make applications that leverage the best of the desktop and Web environments.

Yet questions abound regarding these competing efforts, such as whether they will create confusion among users, and about BrowserPlus itself, which developers can download and examine but cannot currently build anything with.

On Thursday, IDG News Service had a chance to pose these and other questions to Skylar Woodward, principal software engineer at Yahoo's Brickhouse division, and to Cody Simms, senior director of product management for the company's Yahoo Open Strategy effort.

An edited version of the interview follows:

IDGNS: What is the status of BrowserPlus?

Cody Simms: The version out there is production ready, so we'll be engaging with partners to start getting BrowserPlus supported on sites around the Web. Then we plan a broader, fuller, self-service release later this year.

Today, developers can't build it into their sites. They can download it to their desktops and play with it and see what services it can make available to them as though they were an end-user looking at it. They can get in and look at the code they'd be able to integrate with their site, but they can't build their site around it just yet, except for a select set of partners we're going to be working with.

Skylar Woodward: It's production ready today to use it on any partner site. In terms of everything being baked and ready, so developers don't have to change [their applications] too much later, the reason why we're putting it out now is because we want this to be an open community discussion about what things should be in here and how it should work. We want people to look at our APIs [application programming interfaces] and be critical and evaluate them. So in that sense, [regarding] the most flexible part of the system, which are the services, we'd love to get community feedback so this isn't something that's already set and won't change. We want to respond to the community, and listen to what they want and need, so that when we [release it into general availability], there doesn't have to be a lot of changing [of applications.]

IDGNS: BrowserPlus sounds similar to Google's Gears and other initiatives like Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's Silverlight. Is it?

Simms: You're seeing a strong trend toward people realizing that there can be a bridge between the browser and the desktop. So there are a number of different technologies out there playing in that arena. Each one of the technologies that has been announced or released recently has fairly different use cases about how you can bridge those two things and tackle the problem. Some of them are more focused on bringing Web functionality to the desktop, while others are more focused on bringing desktop functionality to the browser.

BrowserPlus is uniquely focused on making the browser richer with all these kinds of pieces of functionality that normally would be reserved for desktop clients. BrowserPlus has some strengths related to how easily and quickly we can deploy new services. We're not focused on one monolithic use case. BrowserPlus is very focused on being an open platform that can be extended with new types of services and thus enable new, interesting functionality. We don't yet know what will be the killer app that will be built on BrowserPlus, but we want to enable the development community to discover that by using it.

Woodward: The key differentiator here is that the system is able to bring down new services and features and capabilities, not necessarily to the browser, but to applications written for browsers: things like Yahoo Mail and Facebook or a Web site. Normally when you want to get new features like these, you have to do a monolithic download, whether it's a whole new browser or you have to download plug-ins to get new capabilities. But with BrowserPlus, once it's there, the user has this very seamless experience that doesn't restart the browser, you don't have to go through this complex install process; a simple dialog comes up saying something like 'The person who wrote this site requires you to have these extra features in order to use this. Do you want to want to activate them?' If you say 'yes', the process is usually very quick. The features are activated immediately and the page comes alive.

IDGNS: Won't end-users get confused with the different options out there?

Simms: There are a handful of [technologies] and each does a different thing, to an extent. There will be overlap between them, but this is the early days of experimentation, so it will be interesting to see which ones emerge strongest for which use cases, and which use cases end [up] being the ones that both developers and users [are most interested in].

It's a development platform, so it's up to the Web developers to build support for it into their sites. It's not the user who will decide to use BrowserPlus or this or that service. It's up to the developer to say, 'I need this piece of functionality to make my site great, and it's supported by BrowserPlus or service A or service B and, whatever it is, I'll build support for it into my site.'

As the user goes to that site, if they want that enhanced functionality, the site will prompt them to download it from the platform the developer chose to build on top of. It's not something the user would proactively seek to download.

IDGNS: Is there a new set of security concerns tied to this type of technology?

Simms: BrowserPlus enables the browser to do things that it couldn't do before in a secure way. Instead of sites trying to hack X or Y feature, Yahoo has now invested time and energy and resources into building a technology that does these functions securely. That's one of the guiding principles behind BrowserPlus: to make those interactions secure.

IDGNS: Have you had talks and/or actually had hands-on collaborations with any of the leading browser makers yet?

Simms: We haven't been talking to the browser makers yet but would welcome dialogue with them, as well as with any potential partners and developers interested in BrowserPlus.

IDGNS: How integrated is this today with other Yahoo Open Strategy projects?

Simms: Right now it's developed as its own platform and has been focused on just being a platform [and] getting its capabilities delivered. If, as developers start to build applications with the Yahoo application platform, or if they start to use our social APIs that we'll be launching, they tell us they'd like to see those things integrated with BrowserPlus, our job is to make that available.

IDGNS: Will developers need to be pre-approved by Yahoo to use BrowserPlus? Also, will the BrowserPlus licensing terms allow for commercial uses so developers can generate revenue from its use?

Simms: Today it's restricted: We're only working with some select partners. But over the coming months, we plan to open up the distribution channels for BrowserPlus so any site can build on top of it. It'll be a self-service capability. In terms of commercial use, the point of this service is to power sites on the Web so sites can use the functionality how they would like.

Google expanding search capabilities

Posted by Blogger at 11:55 PM

Paul Krill

During a keynote presentation at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Marissa Mayer, Google vice president for search products and user experience, said search would be expanded in devices such as phones and cars; search results also will include new media types.

"You'll see things like videos, images, graphs," stitched together as a holistic answer to a query, she said.

Personalization, Mayer said, might include knowing where users are and knowing what they have searched on previously.

She listed a roster of different Google projects, some in beta stage. Mayer cited Google Translate, a service now in beta that can perform translations across languages.

"If the answer exists in any language, we can find it," Mayer said.

Google is delving into book searching with its Google Book Search project, also in a beta stage. Microsoft earlier this month decided it would shut down its own book-searching and scanning operations.

Also noted by Mayer was Google Health, an effort to let users control their own medical records. Additionally, Google has had a Ride Finder application, which can provide information on ride service in an area by taking GPS signals off of taxis and shuttle buses.

Goog-411, meanwhile, is a free service for phone-based searching for local businesses. Voice recognition and speech-to-text technology being used in this service could serve as a basis for other technologies such as video-searching, she said.

Despite Google's efforts, the company recognizes there will always be issues with search, given the ambiguous nature of some terms, Mayer said. "We'll never have the perfect solution," she said.

Mayer also touted Google's Gadgets software, which enable customizations of Web pages. The New York Times crossword puzzle, for example, could reside on someone's home page. Developers, she said, can reach a broader spectrum of users with Gadgets. Thousands of developers are creating tens of millions of Gadgets she said,

"What's really interesting about these gadgets is that they really represent a new possibility for developers," she said.

Mayer also told some of the history of the company. The uncluttered, relatively blank Google home page resulted from expedience rather than a grand design, Mayer said. Google co-founder Sergey Brin told her the page was set up like this because Google at the time did not have a Web master and he himself did not develop with HTML, Mayer recalled.

"That's why the Google home page looks the way it does today," she said.

But students testing the site in 1998 presumed there would be more to the home page and sat waiting for more visuals to load rather than tackle test searches they had been assigned, Mayer recalled. "The very first home page was that misunderstood," she said.

Dunkin' Donuts scarf ad flap "silly"-Islamic group

Posted by Blogger at 11:55 PM

By Marcy Nicholson

Dunkin' DonutsRachael Ray

The ad, online for two weeks before Dunkin' Donuts removed
it last weekend, showed TV host Ray wearing a black and white
scarf that some critics likened to a keffiyeh, a traditional
Arab headdress.

Columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin said it was "hate
couture," after which others made similar criticisms.

"It's sad that Dunkin' Donuts pandered to that kind of
fear-mongering. They have businesses in the Middle East, in the
Arab world. It's interesting to see how that will affect
business there," said Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for the Council
on American-Islamic Relations.

Dunkin' Donuts, which calls itself the world's largest
coffee and baked goods chain, said in a statement Ray had been
wearing a silk scarf with a "paisley design" selected by a
stylist with no intended symbolism. It pulled the ad due to the
possibility of misperception, the company said.

Ray hosts morning lifestyle show "Rachael Ray" on ABC, also
appears on the Food Network and has written recipe books.

"Our comment is no comment whatsoever," Ray's spokesman
Charlie Dougiello said when asked about the ad's removal.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Eric Walsh)

TV Tidbits: Notes of Interest

Posted by Blogger at 11:55 PM

Novell Posts 2Q Profit, Linux Sales Rise

Posted by Blogger at 11:55 PM

By ReutersInformationWeek

Fiscal second-quarter net income came to $5.9 million, or 2
cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $2.9
million, or 1 cent a share.

Excluding items, profit from continuing operations was 6
cents a share, ahead of the Wall Street outlook of 5 cents.

Revenue rose to $236 million from $232 million. Operating
expenses fell to $173 million from $180 million.

The company's shares rose 1% to $6.80 in extended
trade after closing up 2.1% to $6.71 on Nasdaq.

Novell is the world's second-largest seller of Linux
software after Red Hat.

Sales of Linux software and other programs in Novell's open
platforms group rose 31% to $30 million.

The increase helped offset a 1% drop in sales at its
workgroup networking software division to $92 million.

The company reiterated its previous forecast for full-year
net revenue of $940 million to $970 million.

It also said it still expects non-GAAP operating margin
between 7% and 9%, excluding acquisition-related
items.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

As per UBM LLC's agreement with Reuters, this story will be removed from this site after 30 days.

See original article on InformationWeek

Dell Revenues, Earnings Up On Notebook Sales

Posted by Blogger at 11:54 PM

By Antone GonsalvesInformationWeek

Dell

However, the computer maker also reported that it saw "conservatism" in IT spending in the United States, which Dell expects to last through the summer.

Contributing to Dell's profitability in the quarter was a reduction in operating expenses, led by a smaller workforce than a year ago. The company has 7,000 fewer workers than the same period a year ago, which included 3,800 job cuts in the first quarter.

While workforce reductions were across divisions, a "very substantial amount" came from Dell's consumer product unit, Donald Carty, vice chairman and CFO, told analysts during a conference call. Dell announced a year ago that it planned to gradually cut 8,900 jobs, and is targeting $3 billion in annualized reductions in spending by fiscal 2011.

Along with the reduction in spending, Dell's growth in commercial and consumer products and services outpaced the industry as a whole in the quarter, executives said, based on their own calculations. Product shipments overall rose 22% from a year ago, with notebook shipments rising 43%, or 1.2 times the industry growth rate, according to Dell. Shipments of server computers increased 21%, or three times the industry rate; and storage revenue increased 15%.

Revenue outside the United States in the quarter surpassed U.S. revenue for the first time at Dell. Brazil, Russia, India, and China led with a combined growth of 73% year over year in shipments and 58% in revenue. The countries accounted for nearly 9% of Dell's total revenue.

While the company did not give a forecast for revenues or profits, Dell said it has seen U.S. businesses pull back on technology spending. "We are seeing conservatism in IT spending in the U.S.," Carty said.

However, Michael Dell, founder, chairman, and chief executive, told analysts that he expected businesses, particularly large companies, to open the purse strings again, since it was only a matter of time before they would have to upgrade IT systems. "There's a rebound effect, so we're staying very close to our large customers," he said.

On the consumer side, Dell was preparing for September, when children and young adults head back to school. "You'll see a very active back-to-school season for Dell in notebooks," he said.

Overall revenue in the quarter rose 9% over the same period a year ago to $16 billion. Net income increased 4% to $784 million, or 38 cents a share. Dell's revenue and profits in the quarter surpassed estimates of Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Dell is more than halfway into a turnaround effort to reverse the mistakes that led to the company ceding the title of world's largest computer maker to Hewlett-Packard. While financial analysts believe Dell has made progress in reversing its market decline, some believe it's going to take some time, perhaps as long as two years by one estimate, to complete the turnaround.

See original article on InformationWeek

Domain Name Record Altered to Hack Comcast.net

Posted by Blogger at 11:53 PM

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

Hackers knocked Comcast.net offline late Wednesday night, preventing customers from getting to their Comcast Web mail and account records on the company's Internet portal.

The criminals somehow got their hands on passwords used to alter domain-name registration information with Comcast's registrar, Network Solutions, said Susan Wade, a Network Solutions spokeswoman. With access to the Comcast.net record, the hackers were able to switch the DNS (Domain Name System) servers associated with Comcast.net and redirect Internet traffic to their own server. They also added offensive comments to the Comcast.net record.

Visitors who went to Comcast's portal between approximately 11 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday and 12:30 a.m. Thursday were greeted with either a "Site under construction" message or a cryptic note reading: "KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven," an apparent reference to the hackers who had compromised the site and to their friends.

This attack is connected to recent defacement of the MySpace profiles of Justin Timberlake, Hilary Duff and Tila Tequila, said security researcher Dancho Danchev.

No one knows how the hackers gained access to Comcast's Network Solutions account. In the past, registrars have been tricked into handing over control of Internet domains. But Danchev said that lately, criminals have also been using phishing attacks to try to take control of Web domains.

Throughout Thursday, the Comcast.net Web page continued to experience problems. For many visitors, the page was missing graphics and had the look and feel of an early 1990s Web site.

"We believe that our registration information at the vendor that registers the Comcast.net domain address was altered, which redirected the site, and is the root cause of today's continued issues as well," Comcast said Tuesday in a statement. " We have alerted law enforcement authorities and are working in conjunction with them."

Neither Comcast nor Network Solutions can say how the hackers got their hands on the Comcast password, but this type of problem is not unheard of, Wade said. "It's not frequent, but it does happen," she said.

There are steps that companies can take to secure their domain name registration accounts, Wade said. "We tell folks, especially big companies, to consolidate domains so you have someone in charge of all the domains," she said. "We encourage people to update their passwords on a regular basis and make sure the passwords are complicated."

Alternate reality games blur reality and fiction

Posted by Blogger at 11:52 PM

By Lisa Baertlein

The Beast

"It's a boon for a person like me, who likes to talk to
people but doesn't always have people nearby," said Waite, 31,
who now owns ARGNet, the Alternate Reality Gaming Network, and
lives near Winnipeg.

The story-driven, reality-bending genre is also referred to
as immersive fiction and has a fellowship of devotees that is
equally split between genders.

The games have already been used to create brand awareness
for everything from beer and toys to high-end European
automobiles and charge cards. Such efforts allow game makers to
experiment with new types of game play, while deep-pocketed
sponsors foot the bill.

Hamburger chain McDonald's (MCD.N) jumped into the fray
this year with an Olympics-themed title called "The Lost Ring"
and Coty has launched "The Case of the Coveted Bottle" to
promote "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker's new
perfume.

BEASTS, BEES AND SJP

Puppetmasters, who control ARG play, dole out clues via
websites, mysterious mail deliveries, late night phone calls,
billboards, podcasts and every other imaginable type of media.

Fans, who play for free, delight in the intellectual
challenge and say working with others to solve puzzles and
crack codes creates a strong sense of community.

Enthusiasts converging on a handful of sites like
unfiction and despoiler.org swap tips and information about
their favorite ARGs. Players host real-life meetups, some
marry, and many maintain relationships long after the games
end.

"I Love Bees," one of the best known ARGs, started with an
e-mail address planted in the credits of a preview for
Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) 2004 "Halo 2" video game.

The hint led players to what looked like a hijacked
beekeeper's website, but was really a rabbit hole into a
sprawling game that involved Web sites, pay phones and scads of
computer audio files.

"The human brain is just set up to solve puzzles," said
Patrick Moorehead, director of emerging media at advertising
firm Avenue A/Razorfish.

While the pure entertainment value of ARGs is clear, he
questions whether corporate sponsors are seeing returns.

"I'm very skeptical of the value of doing these types of
things," he said.

Marketers that pay for ARGs are must tread lightly with
their message. Players say a successful, sponsored ARG must use
very subtle marketing techniques or risk turning players off.

(Editing by Gary Hill)

After Flood of Pictures, Are Any Surprises Left?

Posted by Blogger at 11:52 PM

Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service

Ultraportable laptops will be a major focus at next week's upcoming Computex exhibition in Taipei, but a flood of pictures released online in recent weeks have spilled the beans for many companies, revealing key details of the most anticipated systems.

The most recent laptop to get outed is Acer's Aspire One. Pictures of the small laptop appeared online Thursday. Clad in a glossy white case, with what appears to be a 9-inch screen framed by black, the small laptop has an Acer logo on the lid and above the monitor. The words "Aspire One" are written in grey below the what appears to a full-size keyboard.

The Acer laptop is running an unidentified operating system that could be a Linux distribution. If the laptop does ship with Linux, it likely won't be the only option. The laptop's keyboard has a Windows key, which indicates Windows XP might be an option.

Of course, pictures can't tell the whole story. For example, the pictures of the Aspire One show a built-in camera above the screen and the company has previously discussed plans for a Diamondville laptop, but the images offer no indication of what other components lie inside the case.

Perhaps the worst-kept secret among Atom-based laptops is Micro-Star International's (MSI's) Wind, which has a 10-inch screen and will be available with either Windows XP or Linux.

Within days of the Wind announcement, a video (since removed) appeared on YouTube showing two Turkish hardware reviewers playing with a Wind prototype. The video left few details of the laptop to the imagination, and screenshots were widely posted by bloggers.

Asustek also tipped its hand before Computex, with pictures of a revamped Eee PC appearing on a French blog, prompting speculation this could be the Atom version of the popular laptop.

FCC chief responds to technology industry views

Posted by Blogger at 11:52 PM

By Peter Kaplan

U.S. Federal
Communications Commission

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told a technology industry
conference near San Diego that the commission heeded the views
of technology industry companies in recent decisions.

"I think you've seen the commission, since I've become
chairman, take some dramatic steps across all platforms in
trying to preserve the ability for entrepreneurs to innovate,"
Martin said in an interview with Reuters after appearing at the
conference.

At the conference, Martin cited among other things the
FCC's decision to impose an open-platform requirement on part
of the valuable wireless spectrum the government auctioned off
earlier this year.

At the urging of technology companies, such as Google Inc,
the FCC required the winner of one block of spectrum to make it
an "open platform" accessible to customers using any device or
software application.

The winner of that block of airwaves, Verizon Wireless, has
promised to support devices and software applications that it
does not offer directly itself.

Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications Inc
and Vodafone Group Plc.

Martin said the requirement also prompted other wireless
carriers to take steps to open up their wireless networks as
well.

Martin also said the commission was moving to address
concerns that the restrictions imposed by cable operators and
other broadband networks would create a "bottleneck" that could
restrict new Internet services.

The FCC is investigating complaints from consumer groups
that Comcast violated FCC open-network principles by
unreasonably hindered file-sharing services.

"I agree with (technology companies) that we want to make
sure the networks don't become bottlenecks to innovation, and
bottlenecks to entrepreneurs (and) consumers from getting the
next generation of (online) services, applications or content,"
Martin said after the conference.

(Editing by Louise Heavens)

Web 2.0 Sites a Thriving Marketplace for Malware

Posted by Blogger at 11:51 PM

Erik Larkin, PC World
1 hour, 50 minutes ago

A wiry young man with his head shaved and wearing a tank top points a handgun straight at the camera in a disturbing YouTube video. The man wears what appears to be a wedding ring, and he gazes vacantly away from the viewer.

Though it's an odd image for an advertisement, this video isn't promoting your average company. It's from a not-so-underground Albanian hacker group that's out to make a name for themselves in the thriving world of malware and computer crime. Besides the shot of the gunman, the video showcases images of a computer screen, a table loaded with foreign currency, and plenty of links to the group's Web site.

Malware is big business, and groups like the Albanian hackers are trying to cash in, using the latest Web 2.0 tools: social networking profiles, blogs, and other publicly available media and Web pages. The digital desperados are moving more and more into wide-scale advertising and brand building on public sites and networks to grow their underground trade.Not Illegal

As the malware underground grows, "it's moving away from technology towards business," says Zulfikar Ramzan, senior principal researcher with Symantec Security Response. While virus vendors are still quick to jump on the latest security vulnerability or technical trick, "the real innovations are more business and marketing," he explains.

On the face of it, public ads appear to violate the number-one rule of any illegal activity: Don't make yourself known. And it's true, says Ramzan, that "the more sophisticated guys are more quiet." But since the writers and sellers of Trojan horses and other malicious apps have no real fear of legal repercussions, they have no compelling reason to be shy.

Don Jackson, a senior researcher with managed security services provider SecureWorks, says the Albanian advertisers are a team of hackers who break into computers and networks. "They want to be used for criminal purposes," he says. So they advertise.

Another video ad, this one from a Turkish group, hypes a program used to break into PCs. The group's name and logo (a stylized alien face with the Turkish crescent-and-star emblem on its forehead) play front-and-center in the program's graphical interface, and the video's speaker walks the viewer through a 5-minute-plus tutorial on using the program. More than 17,000 people have watched it.

Beyond YouTube

YouTube is a popular venue for ads from malware makers, with videos for supposedly undetectable Trojan horses, "packers" that compress and obfuscate malware payloads, and even password stealers for breaking into Steam online game accounts. (Asked about the trend, a spokesperson says that YouTube doesn't control site content, but that it will investigate if viewers report videos as inappropriate.)

Advertisements from Internet bad guys don't stop with YouTube. According to Jackson, many online thugs maintain profiles on social networking sites and blogs to keep in touch with their business partners and customers. Many botnet controllers, who sell time on their networks of bot-infected PCs to spammers and other crooks, keep blogs on the livejournal site, Jackson says.

The crooks who use these profiles and blogs may not give themselves away with direct references to nefarious malware activities. But the sites provide a more distributed, harder-to-track way of keeping in touch than using one particular underground site. They may also offer a platform for spouting fascist ideology, as Jackson refers to one Russian underground figure known as 'lovinGOD,' or some other pseudo-philosophy that ties one or more of these groups together.

The profiles offer "the capability of hiding in plain sight," says Tom Bowers, senior security evangelist with antivirus-maker Kaspersky Lab. Thankfully, they're not entirely hidden. Bowers says he works with law enforcement professionals, who try to track the bad guys through social networks. But the crooks are watching the cops, too.

The researchers at the SpywareGuide Greynets Blog recently discovered that malware pushers, pedophiles, and other criminals on MySpace were using a trick to track their trackers. A few lines of Javascript code inserted on a profile meant that if you happened across that page, "you [were] automatically subscribed to that person's video channel." Meaning the profile owner got "a record of every single Myspace user that has visited [his] profile page." (MySpace says it's working on closing this hole.)

Limits of the Law

All these public ads and profiles can help law enforcement glean useful data for investigations. But since selling malware isn't illegal, they're unlikely to lead directly to prosecutions.

Of course, using malware is clearly illegal. And a Department of Justice spokesperson says it could charge a virus vendor with aiding and abetting, or conspiracy to commit a crime, if it busted someone else who used that purchased malware to infect a PC. But the prosecutors would have to prove the seller intended for the code to be used in criminal dealings, instead of, say, security research, which makes it a fair bit harder. The spokesperson said she couldn't find any instances of actual prosecutions of this type in her initial search of cases.

And that's just in the United States. In many parts of the world, bringing known phishers and malware lawbreakers to justice isn't exactly a priority.

Beyond YouTube

Limits of the Law

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