N95-3 (US) gets firmware upgrade to 20.02.011

The long awaited firmware update for the N95-3 (US version) is now available according to Symbian-Guru (sources from Howard Forums and N95Users). The update brings the US version of the N95 up to speed with its world siblings. It adds demand paging, Flash Lite 3, Web Run Time, Idle Screen Nokia Search and significant performance improvements.

Flash Lite 3 allows for the viewing of Flash Video (e.g. YouTube). WRT allows you to install and use WRT widgets. Demand Paging offers improvements both in start-up time, application speed and memory usage. Other peformance updates include speedier image capture by the camera.

The updated firmware can be downloaded and installed via Nokia Software Updater which is available as part of recent version of PC Suite.

Cell Phones of the Future

You think your Razr's cool? When it comes to mobile phone design, you ain't seen nothin' yet

By Olga Kharif

Clamshells and candy bars be gone. Tomorrow's cell phones may bear little resemblance to the snap-open handsets or even the sleek, flat rectangular phones we sport today.

Visionaries from design firm Pilotfish and sensor maker Synaptics have created a phone that has no buttons. It's operated with gestures. Designer Manon Maneenawa has built a phone that can be converted into an alarm clock or a wrist watch. Sweden's GoldVish just began selling a phone for $1.26 million that features diamonds and a secret compartment.

Dell Increases Revenue and Earnings, Lowers Operating Expenses

Dell today reported record fiscal first quarter revenue of $16 billion, a 9 percent year-over-year increase, and earnings of $0.38 cents per share, a 12 percent increase. The results were driven by better-than-industry growth of commercial and consumer products and services, and lower operating expense as a percent of revenue.

Product shipments in the quarter increased 22 percent, with servers growing three times the industry rate at 21 percent. Storage revenue increased 15 percent and enhanced services revenue was up 13 percent. Notebook unit growth, a Dell strategic priority, rose sharply at 43 percent and 1.2 times the industry growth rate. Consumer units grew at more than two times the industry rate and the company increased its global share by 1.2 points to 8.8 percent during the quarter.

“We are executing on all points of our strategy to drive growth in every product category and in every part of the world,” said Michael Dell, chairman and CEO. “These results are early signs of our progress against our five strategic priorities. Through a continued focus, we expect to continue growing faster than the industry and increase our revenue, profitability and cash flow for greater shareholder value.”

Financial Report

Earnings per share in the quarter were affected by the following items:

$106 million in expense, or four cents per share, related to the realignment of our business, including severance costs and facility closures; $26 million, or one cent per share, in amortization expense of purchased intangible assets; $19 million in expense, or one cent per share, in investigation related costs; A $42 million increase in financing and other income, or two cents per share, related to an error in currency exchange rates from prior periods; A $46 million, or two cents per share, reversal in the provision for employee bonuses for fiscal 2008; and, A reduction in a litigation reserve related to a favorable ruling in a patent case of $55 million, or two cents per share.

Dell’s headcount has been reduced by 7,000 in the past year – including a reduction of about 3,700 in the first quarter – or 8 percent before the impact of acquisitions. Dell has added about 2,700 employees through acquisitions, making the net reduction for the company about 5 percent.

Operating expenses were 12.9 percent of revenue for the quarter. Cash flow from operations was $143 million and impacted by lower payables and tax and bonus payments. The company still expects to generate cash flow from operations in excess of net income on an annualized basis. Dell ended the quarter with $9.8 billion in cash and investments and weighted average shares were 2.04 billion.

In the quarter, Dell issued $1.5 billion in private placement and medium- and long-term notes to be used for general corporate purposes. Dell spent more than $1 billion to repurchase 52 million shares of stock and plans to spend at least $1 billion on share repurchase in the second quarter.

Strategic Priority Highlights

Global Consumer: On improved profitability, revenue grew 20 percent driven by a 47 percent increase in shipments. Dell grew units at more than two times the rate of the industry and increased its global share by 1.2 points to 8.8 percent. In addition to its online and telephone sales channels, Dell expanded its global retail presence, adding Suning in China and Costco in the U.S. to reach more than 13,000 retail locations worldwide. Enterprise: Server revenues were up 4 percent on a 21 percent increase in units, Dell’s fastest unit growth in more than two years and three times the rate of the industry. The company gained 1.5 points of share in the quarter. Storage revenue jumped 15 percent driven by strong growth from Dell’s PowerVault direct attached products and a full quarter of EqualLogic offerings. Based on company estimates, Dell again took share worldwide in the first quarter. Enhanced services revenue was up 13 percent aided by the first full quarter of the new ProSupport solutions. A leading indicator of services growth – the deferred services revenue balance – grew 23 percent to $5.4 billion. Dell’s Cloud-Computing service and design model is powering about half of the fastest growing Chinese internet companies as well as the largest portal in China. With launch of the Dell EqualLogic PS5000 series IP SANs and the Dell/EMC AX4 and 5i SANs, Dell extended its position as the No. 1 provider worldwide of iSCSI SAN solutions. Notebooks: Notebook units grew 43 percent year-over-year with revenue growth of 22 percent. In the quarter, Dell released its first fully ruggedized laptop, the Latitude XFR D630. In Global Consumer, notebook units increased 78 percent and made up 60 percent of the product mix. Small and Medium Business: Dell announced a redesigned Vostro laptop line for small businesses, including the 13.3-inch Vostro 1310 and the 15.4 inch Vostro 1510. These products are further expansion of Dell’s products designed specifically for small business customers, including servers, storage and services. Emerging Countries: BRIC plus the 10 targeted countries in Dell’s emerging countries priority accelerated revenue 47 percent. The company launched the Dell 500 notebook, designed specifically for the needs of emerging countries, which it is shipping to great demand in China and India. The Partner Direct program was launched in Europe and APJ in the quarter.

Get an Auto Loan the Smart Way

Did you know that most people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more on auto loans than they have to? Get an auto loan the smart way. Read on.

Most people really get taken for a ride on their auto loan. Did you know that differences in the total cost of different auto loans can run into a thousand dollars or more? Here’s how you can get the lowest rate:

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Make a list of different auto loan lenders and their interest rates and terms, before you go to the dealer (the web is usually the easiest way to do that). Did you know dealers get a commission on the loans they refer? If you’re not careful, that extra bit of money for the lender could mean you pay a higher rate than you would if you got the loan yourself.

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Get a credit report and figure out your FICO scores. Removing any incorrect negative information from your report will help you get a better deal. Knowing exactly what your score is will help you figure out what interest rate you can realistically get.

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Have bad credit? Try going to your credit union, bank or another institution where you have a relationship. Lenders like to help out established customers. If your bank still won’t help, online "bad credit auto loan" lenders usually offer better less expensive loans than dealers who advertise their great deals for people with poor credit.

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Use a vehicle loan calculator. It will tell you what your loan will cost each month. It saves you the time of looking at vehicles you can’t afford, makes you aware of what information you’ll need to apply for a loan, and is a "reality check" of your financial condition.

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Comparison shop, comparison shop, comparison shop. You don’t get the least expensive car by choosing a dealer at random, and you won’t get the least expensive auto loan that way, either.

Start researching your options now

Get credit reports and FICO scores here

Use this vehicle loan calculator

Comparison shop among these lenders

“Virtualization 2.0?”

I’ve been asked to moderate a panel at an upcoming event. The topic of the panel is “Virtualization 2.0.” This is a topic that my former colleagues at IDC have been flogging for quite a while. They even have a series of successful conferences on the topic.
What does this really mean? Is this something really new or merely incremental improvements in the technology used in industry standard datacenters that comes from things that the mainframe and midrange folks have been doing for decades? More of the latter than the former in my view.

What is “Virtualization 2.0?”
Virtualization 2.0 is a catch phrase developed by several industry research firms in the hopes of somehow distinguishing what they’re publishing from what others are publishing. If this is done properly, IT decision-makers will think that they’re offering leading-edge thinking and will select their research services over those offered by others even though those others may have a deeper well of knowledge and expertise but, have chosen to use different terms to describe their research.
The research firms using this catch phrase would define Virtualization 1.0 as using technology to place computing resources in an environment that hides and simplifies the view those functions have of the actual physical environment. This “logical” or “virtual” environment offers enhanced features from those found in the actual physical environment.
They would then go on to say that Virtualization 1.0 was a static environment. That is, once a resource is encapsulated and is assigned to a specific set of physical resources, it doesn’t move. and that Virtualization 2.0 arrived when those computing resources could be dynamically moved during processing to offer a more agile, optimal environment.

What’s new?
This type of environment first appeared at least 20 years ago in the world of the Mainframe and at least 15 years ago in the world of the midrange system. These research firms have declared a new catch phrase because it is now appearing in the realm of the industry standard system.
While I love the fact that their marketing catch phrase seems to have caught on in some quarters, I question if anything is really new or is it just the progressive realization of the idea that the physical resources are often best utilized when they are hidden from the computing functions that are using them.

What’s your take on this? Do you think that something new is really happening here? If so, please let us know what’s new that hasn’t emerged years ago in other parts of the IT industry.

upcoming iPhone 2.0 release

With the upcoming iPhone 2.0 release, I will be free from a USB cable to sync my PIM data by using the Exchange ActiveSync utility. However, there are still a couple of reasons cables will be needed and that is for getting movies and podcasts onto my iPhone and to charge my iPhone. Apple can fairly easily solve the media content issue by providing content downloads and transfers over WiFi. The New York Times reports that Apple has filed some new patents that may bring solar charging capability to Apple devices in the future.
The patent involves integrating solar cells into the device display under the touch screen. The display on the iPhone is huge in comparison to other mobile devices and even in comparison to some other mobile solar chargers so if Apple can get the display to still work with dual touch like it currently does then this could be a revolutionary improvement and finally address an issue that has plagued mobile devices from day one. With the 3G iPhone rumored to be coming soon, it will be even more power-challenged as 3G data networks consume more power and something like a solar display to charge the battery would be awesome.
The Solio solar chargers are quite small and have the capability to charge a typical mobile phone more than twice or give over 20 hours of music listening capability to a MP3 player. 1 hour of sunshine typically provides 15-20 minutes of talk time or 40-50 minutes of MP3 playing. The problem for people like me who live in Washington State is finding any sunshine to power up the iPhone.

Mozilla aims for nonexistent download record with Firefox 3

Mozilla on Wednesday said that it is aiming to set a Guinness World Record for software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3. The date for this download extravaganza is sometime this month.
In a somewhat corny approach, Mozilla is urging its users to joint regional download fests, pledging to get Firefox 3 and spreading the word. Consider it the Super Bowl of browser downloading.
The rub: There is no download record compiled by Guinness. In an FAQ, Mozilla notes:

Do we have to reach a specific number of downloads in order to set the
record?
This is the first record attempt of its kind so there is no set
number. We’d really like to outdo the number of Firefox 2 downloads on its
launch day, which was 1.6 million. Let’s shoot for 5 million–the sky is the
limit!
In other words, Mozilla is a lock to create a record as long as it
sticks to the Guinness rules.
Mozilla is also hoping folks will hold Firefox
parties. It appears that these parties will be BYOBrowser.

Court Finds Dell Guilty of Fraud

Dell was found guilty on Tuesday of fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices and abusive debt collection practices in a case brought by the New York attorney general.
The Albany County Supreme Court found that Dell deprived customers of technical support that they bought or were eligible for under warranty in several ways, including by requiring people to wait for very long times on the phone, repeatedly transferring their calls and frequently disconnecting their calls.
Dell also often failed to provide onsite repairs for customers who bought contracts for such support and often blamed software when hardware was actually the problem, the court found. The company also sometimes refused to offer support when a support contract ended, even though the user had first complained about a problem before the end of the contract. Subscribers to a "next-day" repair service sometimes waited as long as a year for support, the court found.
Dell and affiliate Dell Financial Services also advertised special no-interest financing, but denied almost everyone those terms. It often sold customers products without informing them that they didn't qualify for the special financing terms and then charged them interest rates as high as 30 percent, the court said.
Dell and DFS also often incorrectly billed people for cancelled orders and for accounts they didn't authorize. The companies then harassed the people for payment, using illegal billing and collection practices, the court said.
The court will determine how much Dell will have to pay in restitution to affected customers and will also require Dell to pay the state of New York the profits it made on these deceptive practices. In addition, the ruling prohibits Dell and DFS from continuing to engage in the fraudulent activities.
Dell did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the ruling.

Windows 7 to Have Touch-screen Interface

Microsoft demonstrated its multitouch interface for its upcoming Windows 7 operating system on Tuesday. The interface provides a touch-screen input for users to interact with their computers.
Multitouch uses Surface technology, introduced last year by Microsoft, which harnesses touch and multitouch capabilities to provide users with a more natural way to interact directly with computing devices. Expect to see the table-like Surface devices in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues, Chris Flores, a director at Microsoft working on the Windows Client Communications Team, said in the Windows Vista Team blog on Tuesday.
In a demo to the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows experience program management, showed a number of applications that could use the multitouch technology, including photography applications that enable a user to handle photos on the screen more easily. The user can drag and drop snaps, zoom in, and rotate snaps with his fingers. The musically inclined can play with their fingers on an on-screen piano keyboard.
In a blog entry on Tuesday, Flores said that the long-term architectural investments Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista and then refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will carry forward in Windows 7. Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7, he said. One of the design goals for Windows 7 is that it will run on the recommended hardware specified for Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7, Flores added.

Sony's Stringer Promises 27-inch OLED TV 'fairly Soon'

Sony plans to launch a much larger version of its impressive OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) television within the next year, CEO Howard Stringer said Wednesday.
Sony launched its first OLED TV, an 11-inch model, in late 2007. The set, which also has the distinction of being the first commercial OLED TV in the world, won great acclaim thanks to the smoother, sharper and more richly colored images it offered over today's LCD (liquid crystal display) and PDP (plasma display panel) technologies.
At the same time Sony began showing a prototype 27-inch OLED screen and last month in Tokyo showed an OLED screen that was just 0.3 millimeters thick. Stringer, speaking at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference in Carlsbad, California, on Wednesday, introduced the thin prototype and talked about commercialization.
"This is 0.3 millimeters wide, it's a glass, we can produce this in plastic and you can wrap it around your arm, we're not quite sure why you would want to," Stringer told Walt Mossberg, a columnist for the newspaper and co-host of the event. "We're looking for applications for the next generation of the plastic version but this will come out in a 27-inch version fairly soon."
"Within the next 12 months, we haven't given a date," he said when asked to be more specific on timing.
Stringer didn't give much away when it came to pricing. The 11-inch model, which Sony calls the XEL-1, carries a relatively high price-tag of US$2,500.
"It's a complicated process and obviously we are working very hard to find out how to mass-produce it but until then it's very expensive," said Stringer.
Stringer's reference to a plastic OLED panel was to a prototype announced by the company in May 2007. Then it showed a small 2.5-inch OLED manufactured on a plastic substrate. The screen has a resolution of 160 pixels by 120 pixels and showed full-motion video while being bent and rolled.
Sony hasn't announced any sales targets for its OLED televisions but said earlier this month that it plans to sell 17 million LCD televisions in the fiscal year from April. That's a jump of about 7 million sets on the previous year. Sony hopes to achieve this by producing more models for the mid-market based on panels it will procure from Sharp. High-end sets will continue to feature panels produced by S-LCD, the LCD panel manufacturing joint venture it has with Samsung Electronics.

Pentax New Release

Pentax has released a new digital camera that allows you take snap some pictures under the rain, it is the Optio W60. This camera can withstand under water pressure up to 4 meters. It comes with a 10MP sensor, 5 optical zoom and a 28mm wide-angle lens. Other than that, it has sensitivity for up to ISO 6400, and can record HD video (720p resolution).

Egg Mouse !

Elecom’s Egg Mouse (model M-EGUR) features a bold ovoid design, in a variety of colors that would make even the Easter Bunny proud. The size and contour of the mouse looks like it would fit perfectly in the palm of your hand, while looking great on any desktop. The Egg Mouse features a high-resolution optical sensor, and a super smooth scroll wheel that spins like butta.

Previously available only in Japan, gadget importer AudioCubes managed to fly a bunch of these eggs in for consumption stateside. They’re available now for $49 a piece (which works out to be a rather insane $588 a dozen).

Keyboard For Your MAC

If you can’t keep your apple-shift-Ls straight from your apple-shift-Ps then these performance-enhancing keyboard shortcut skins might be just the thing for you. Designed for use with Macs in Photoshop, Aperture, and more, these skins are like the Cliff’s Notes for the modern era.

I know- you thought you would have memorized every keyboard shortcut by now. Don’t feel bad, a lot of folks need a little boost to optimize their Photoshop prowess or their Final Cut finesse.

The skins are washable rubber, so there’s no need to fear your frappuccino during an all-night editing binge. They’re color-coded by function and easy to take off and put on. Their kicky colors are also, in my opinion, far more aesthetically pleasing than the once-white but now grimy Mac keyboard on which I am typing right now.

Buy them at PhotoJoJo. They’ll set you back $30 for laptop models, $40 for desktop models.They offer shortcut skins for Photoshop, Aperture 1.5, Final Cut Pro/Express, Pro Tools, and After Effects. They’re compatible with black and white Macbooks, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, the Classic Apple Keyboard and the Apple Thin Keyboards.

Microsoft to pay people to use its search engine

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. is offering cash rebates when people make purchases after using its search engine as the software maker begins to reveal how it plans to take on Google Inc. following the failure of its $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo.
Analysts and investors have been eagerly awaiting details about "Plan C" after Microsoft acknowledged that its Plan A of going solo was troubled but also withdrew its Plan B — acquiring Yahoo — because Yahoo executives sought more money.

Under the cash program revealed Wednesday, Web shoppers who sign up for an account and buy items found using Microsoft's Live Search cashback site will receive a percentage of the purchase price deposited into their account.
When the total reaches $5, the shoppers can redeem their "cold, hard cash" via eBay Inc.'s PayPal. Microsoft said the rebates are funded with a portion of the money it collects from advertisers.

So far, more than 700 merchants, including Home Depot and Zappos.com, have listed products on the site.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in a speech that he believes the cashback program will boost the number of people using Live Search for shopping, at least. More grandly, he predicted it will change the economics of the search advertising market as advertisers shift from paying for click on links to paying for concrete actions, like completing a purchase.

The online advertising market overall has begun to move in that direction with advertisers under increased pressure to deliver results from their spending. Historically, search ads that have made companies like Google Inc. successful are typically sold by the click, which itself was seen as revolutionary compared with the traditional method of paying for ads by the number of viewers.

"It's exciting. I think years from now you may look back and say, 'Wow, search started to get a fair bit more competitive,' and you can look back to that announcement," Gates said.
"By giving money directly back to the consumer, Microsoft hopes to change the balance of power," wrote IDC research analysts Caroline Dangson and Susan Feldman. They predicted that if Microsoft's effort is successful, advertisers will sink the bulk of their advertising into such rebate programs.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has resorted to buying search traffic. The software maker has tried offering large companies software and services credits for every employee who used Microsoft's search engine at work.
Microsoft also developed a collection of free games last year that triggered a Web search with every play. Players could rack up points and exchange them for prizes, including software, Xbox consoles and Zune media players.

The tactic — more common among fledgling or niche search engines trying to make a splash — may not make much of a difference, if the past efforts are any indication. The corporate bounty program remains in pilot phase and the games only temporarily boosted its search share.
Danny Sullivan, editor of the search news site SearchEngineLand.com, said in a recent interview that he recommended Microsoft pay people to use Live Search — as an April Fool's joke. Microsoft, however, is under very serious pressure to come up with a way to boost search market share.

Facebook preparing for redesign to clear clutter

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Having nearly tripled its audience and added about 20,000 new applications over the past year, Facebook's popular online hangout is about to undergo a housecleaning.
Visitors who can't stand the clutter that's been piling up will be glad to see that the site's new look sweeps disparate bits of information into categories marked by tabs at the top of each user's customized home page.
Basic personal background and interests will be filed under an "info" tab, for instance, while news about users' buddies' latest activities will land under a "feed" tab, pictures will be corralled in a "photo" section and applications will be easily located under a "programs" tab. That content is now scattered, creating a confusing mishmash that has frustrated some Facebook users.

The facelift, in the works since January, is to debut in June.
Besides tidying the site, the overhaul should give users more control over their profiles, Facebook managers said Wednesday as they previewed the redesign at the startup's Palo Alto headquarters. Users will be able to magnify information they want to emphasize and downplay other features, for example.
Even so, many users are likely to protest, said Mark Slee, the Facebook product manager overseeing the facelift.
"Change is difficult for our users, even positive changes," Slee said. "But we are pretty confident that we can walk everyone through this so they will be engaged with the changes and enjoy them."
Facebook has had to quell two user rebellions since Mark Zuckerberg started the site a little over four years ago while he was still an undergraduate at Harvard University.
In 2006, users railed against a feature called "news feed" as too intrusive because it shared too much information about their activities. The backlash caused Zuckerberg to apologize and tweak the application to give users more control over how the information was shared. The news feed is now a Facebook staple.
Zuckerberg, 24, apologized again late last year after a tracking tool called "Beacon" caught users off guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and personal preferences expressed by their activity at other Web sites. Facebook decided to allow users to turn off Beacon, diminishing its reach and possible value to advertisers.
Despite those hiccups, Facebook has emerged as Silicon Valley's hottest startup since Internet search leader Google, which recently has been losing some of its prized employees to Facebook. Ben Ling, a former top engineer at Google, is part of the team working on Facebook's overhaul.
Microsoft put its stamp of approval on Facebook late last year by paying $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the startup — a deal that implied a $15 billion value for Facebook.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
Since dropping a $47.5 billion offer to buy Yahoo Inc., Microsoft reportedly has been mulling a bid for Facebook, although Zuckerberg has repeatedly indicated he wants to preserve the privately held company's independence.
Facebook turned into a potential gold mine as it extended beyond its initial goal of allowing college students to swap information about each other. The site now has 70 million users worldwide, up from about 24 million a year ago.
Zuckerberg's decision to open Facebook to outside applications last year has played a key role in Facebook's rapid growth. Since then, developers have contributed 20,000 applications that make it easier to distribute photos, share music and play games.
But all those programs were starting to make Facebook look jumbled — a problem that also has plagued the Internet's largest social network, Myspace.com.

Google's Search-Within-a-Site Feature: Let the E-Tailer Beware

Google's search-within-a-site feature -- which it rolled out in March -- is beneficial to users interested in drilling down for more information after an initial search. However, the feature is dangerous for e-tailers, says Guidester CEO John Federman.

It all used to be so simple -- at least for retailers. Back in the day, it was enough to have your catalog online; then interactivity and rich media came along. Now, we're in an age of personalization, where buyer patterns are predicted and mapped to up-sell and cross-sell options. The Internet has indelibly changed the way retailers engage with prospects, and how products are sold. We've watched as every retail best practice in the physical world has been transformed for the virtual world -- from shopping cart functionality to the experience of having an online salesperson. In the same way merchandisers used to match the perfect pair of pants with the perfect shirt for their in-store displays, retailers have embraced the power of today's e-commerce and search platforms to deliver the most effective up-sell and cross-sell strategies site-wide. Retailers have paid handsomely to create a brand experience -- and no wonder. When consumers find the right mix of navigation, selection and recommendation, they become loyal customers. As such, it's more important than ever for a retailer to get consumers to their site.

A Completely Different Thing
To that end, retailers have enthusiastically harnessed the power of search marketing . Search marketing offers great reach, an effective cost structure and the opportunity to engage consumers wherever they are in the research or purchase cycle. With nearly 90 percent of sales being initiated online with research, search offers a return on investment like few other marketing channels. As such, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and other search providers have deservedly become an integral part of the retailer customer acquisition puzzle. However, retailers beware: Google's newest offering, "Search within a Site," is a completely different thing -- and my advice to retailers is to just say no. Google built its search-within-a-site feature to address the concerns of users looking to drill down for more information after an initial search. Users can type a company name into the search field, and their selected vendor will likely be among the top results. With this feature, a second search bar appears underneath the site description, allowing users to narrow their query to a specific product.

Sharing Face Time
For instance, if I wanted to check out the latest tech gadgets at Newegg.com (which at one time had search-within-a-site functionality), I could type Newegg into the Google search bar, then specify under the search-within-a-site bar "DVD burner." I'd then get results for whatever DVD burners Newegg was selling within the Google Search page. Sounds interesting, right? To a consumer, it offers value and ease of use and minimal clicks and makes Google even more robust. To a retailer, it's dangerous. As a consumer interested in Newegg's resale offerings, I still haven't entered Newegg's actual site. I'm getting results for my narrow search, but am seeing similar offerings from a plethora of DVD vendors, and I have no way to see all of Newegg's other promotions and sales. No one knows better than Newegg how to monetize its offerings. It, like most retailers, has invested deeply in creating a guided user experience; yet with Google's new feature, consumers remain on Google rather going to their initial destination. More importantly, while I view Newegg's product results in Google, I'm confronted by a litany of advertisements for similar products -- from Newegg's competitors -- thanks to AdWords. Suddenly, Newegg is forced to share face time -- which it has purchased with an AdWords buy -- with the competition, and it can't even offer a cohesive shopping experience within the cover of its own Web site. Brand identity is compromised, the merchant runs the risk of losing the sale, and its search investment diluted -- even though the user had intended to purchase said product from Newegg's site in the first place. When one cross-applies Newegg's situation with thousands of other retail sites the picture becomes clear -- Google's search-within-a-site tool is no retail boon; it's an advertising windfall for Google. It represents an ultimate lack of control over one's site, which rates among the top concerns of online retailers. Unless you want to feed into that idea of forced democracy, you should stay away. Don't let a competing brand piggyback on your hard-earned equity, or replace the premier customer experience you designed with one defined for you by Google. Initial reactions Google's search-within-search is inciting from major retailers by siphoning traffic , sales and page views are featured in an insightful article by Bob Tedeschi of The New York Times. While analysts consider the move egalitarian in terms of saving users time and energy otherwise expended in navigating a particular site, the payoff is messy at best, Tedeschi says.

Retailer Concerns
A major concern for retailers is that Google will roll out the search-within-a-site across all brands it indexes, forcing wary retailers to actively opt out of the service. Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Newegg no longer have search-within-a-site bars attached to their search results. This seems like an easy thing to do, but Google has also implied that should a retailer ask to turn off Google's new feature, there is no guarantee that it can retrieve the feature if, down the line, the company chooses to reverse their decision. Pundits are correct in identifying the search-within-a-site feature as a boon to small, upstart retailers whose Web sites may leave a lot to be desired in terms of aesthetics and organization. However, even then, won't small sites run the risk of being usurped in brand equity and name recognition by larger companies whose AdWords results shout out in noticeable shaded letters? Google will continue to be a great partner for retailers -- that is, if it stays true to its value proposition and focus on driving qualified traffic to retailers' online stores.

OLPC Dreams of Power-Skimping, Touchscreen Notebook for 75 Bucks

The One Laptop Per Child organization has revealed details about a new notebook it hopes to offer by 2010. Dual touchscreens will replace a physical keyboard, and the design will use half as much power as OLPC's current XO laptop. In addition, OLPC says the cost of the notebook may be brought down to just $75.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the organization focused on bringing low-cost laptops to children in developing nations, announced it intends to release a newly redesigned version of the XO notebook, the XO-2, in 2010.
The second generation of the XO will include new technology to meet OLPC's goal of advancing new concepts of learning, lowering power consumption and decreasing the laptop's footprint, the organization said.
The new design will also lower the cost of the laptop, which currently costs US$188, said Jackie Luftig, an OLPC spokesperson.

$75 Target
The change was prompted by "the need to continue to drive down costs to make the laptops affordable to developing nations," she told LinuxInsider.
The new target price is $75 per machine, possible due to new developments in display, processor and other hardware and software technologies, according to OLPC.
The announcement followed news on Monday that OLPC would make a scaled-down version of Windows XP available on the XO laptop. The Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) partnership with OLPC disappointed many in the open source community who had backed the machine's original Sugar user interface.

XO Touch
Although the XO-2 will continue to sport the vibrant green and white case, gone is the bright green keyboard with the slightly chunky keys and traditional display screen of the original XO.
In its place are dual touch-sensitive displays intended to give children an experience analogous to reading a book. Doubling as a right and left page in vertical mode or a hinged laptop when held horizontally, the flat two-screen wide continuous surface can also be used in tablet mode.
The dual touchscreen interface, under development by Pixel Qi will allow younger children to initially use simpler keyboards; older children will be able to opt for customized keyboards geared to particular applications as well as for a variety of languages, according to OLPC.

Power Sipper
The laptop's new look will also consume less power. At 1 watt, the XO-2 has cut in half the power demands of the XO, which averaged 2 to 4 watts and already required roughly 10 percent of the wattage consumed by a typical laptop.
Reducing the amount of power required to run the laptop will also lessen the amount of time children need to generate power for the machine using the device's hand crank or other manual mechanisms.
The new design will offer children several benefits, Luftig noted.
"The XO-2 will provide a book-like experience that children will enjoy. The laptop will be lighter and easier to carry for small children and lower power consumption will be better for environments where electricity is scarce or non-existent and other modes of power generation are required," she explained.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 To Add ODF, PDF Support

Despite its recent ISO approval, however, Microsoft will not support the standardized version of its own Open XML format until the release of Office 14.

After success in getting its own Open XML document format passed by the International Standards Organization, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Wednesday that it would move to support the Open Document Format and now-standardized PDF in Office 2007 during the first half of next year, when the company releases the second service pack for the productivity software.
In Office 2007 SP2, users will be able to open, edit, and save ODF and PDF documents as well as set the software to automatically save documents in those file formats by default. The increased support also includes its own XML Paper Specification and the Chinese national document format, Uniform Office Format.

Governments and some other organizations are beginning to require that their productivity software includes support for standard document formats, and Microsoft clearly wants to keep a large piece of the pie.
"In supporting these standards, we're providing a platform for greater innovation and growth in the ecosystem," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of standards and interoperability, said in an interview. "We want to get out of the political realm, focus on what matters most to customers, and then take concrete steps to meet their needs."
Microsoft and Adobe had fought over the inclusion of PDF as a default file format in Office 2007, with Microsoft ultimately conceding the battle by only offering PDF support as an add-on, rather than in the base version of the software as it had earlier sought to do. Now that PDF is in the control of a standards body, Adobe no longer has any say over whether Microsoft can include support for it in Office.
Despite the focus on increased standards support in Office (all of the new file formats have been accepted as standards either internationally or nationally), Microsoft will not support the standardized version of its own Open XML format until the release of Office 14, which is expected in late 2009 or early 2010. According to Robertson, that's because of the substantial work required to ensure that the standardized version of Open XML would be backwards compatible with the version found in Office 2007. For the time being, at least while Office 2007 continues to ramp up, anyway, Microsoft's old binary file formats continue to be the dominant document formats.
Not only will Office users be able to save and edit these standardized formats, but Microsoft will join the standards bodies overseeing development and maintenance of the formats themselves. Microsoft will join the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards to participate in the evolution of ODF, AIIM to participate in the evolution of PDF, and the International Standards Organization's working group on Open XML.
Microsoft also will join an emerging working group at the International Standards Organization that aims to improve interoperability between ODF and Open XML. The new working group will look at the relationship between the different formats and do mapping between them to define similarities and differences. Microsoft also will work to create document templates optimized for several different file formats.
Robertson said it's even possible that if the working group is successful, it could eventually provide a template for unifying ODF and Open XML, but added that it's less clear if that's what customers want.
"That's a dialogue that will naturally take place over time," he said. "Do you want to continue to see diversity in the marketplace in terms of formats? We'll see what the market does."
Separately, Microsoft has an effort under way called the Document Interoperability Initiative, which has as one of its goals the mission to provide a set of standard baseline document libraries made available to anyone implementing Open XML to provide interoperability among implementers.

Google Offers Personal Health Records on the Web

After a year and half of development, Google began offering online personal health records to the public on Monday.

The Internet search giant’s service, Google Health, at google.com/health, is the latest entrant in the growing field of companies offering personal health records on the Web. Their ranks range from longtime online health services like WebMD to the software powerhouse Microsoft to start-ups like Revolution Health.

The companies all hope to capitalize eventually on the trend of increasingly seeking health information online, and the potential of Internet tools to help consumers manage their own health care and medical spending.

Google enters the field of personal health records with a leading online brand, deep pockets and a wealth of technical skills. In a two-month trial this year, the Cleveland Clinic found that its patients were eager to use the Google health records.

The pilot project, limited to 1,600 patients, was quickly oversubscribed, said C. Martin Harris, the Cleveland Clinic’s chief information officer. Dr. Harris also said that when the clinic’s online health records, introduced in 2004, were linked to the Google record the clinic’s records were used more frequently by patients. “It positioned our personal health record more into an activity that they use every day,” Dr. Harris said.

The Google record, he said, allows the user to send personal information, at the individual’s discretion, into the clinic record or to pull information from the clinic records into the Google personal file.

The ability of patients to send information, in particular, can be helpful to clinic doctors, Dr. Harris said. For example, if a person sees specialists outside the clinic and receives a drug prescription from an outside doctor, it raises the risk of harmful drug interactions. “Until now, if a patient doesn’t remember to tell me,” he said, “I don’t know about drugs prescribed outside the Cleveland Clinic system.”

In the Cleveland trial, patients apparently did not shun the Google health records because of qualms that their personal health information might not be secure if held by a large technology company.

In Google Health, as in the pilot project, the company is not selling advertisements. And what information is shared with doctors, clinics or pharmacies is controlled by the individual, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products.

More than two dozen companies and institutions announced that they are partners with Google Health, including Walgreens, CVS, the American Heart Association, Quest Diagnostics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. The partnerships are not exclusive arrangements.

Cleveland Clinic, for example, is also talking to Microsoft. “As these online services become available, we expect to connect to them all,” Dr. Harris said.

Google Health, Ms. Mayer said, represents a “large ongoing initiative” by the company, which she said she hoped would eventually include “thousands of partners and millions of users.”

Mac Clones Are Back

Apple ended its Mac clone program in 1998, soon after Steve Jobs rejoined the company. At the time, there was little reason to suspect that it would ever be revived. Now a Mac clone is back, but this time without Apple’s blessing.

Psystar, a Florida-based company, is selling low-priced clones that run Apple’s OS X Leopard software, at an entry-level price far below that charged for official Apple machines. When first announced last month, many tech sites dismissed the operation as a scam, given the Web site’s proclivity to continually change its physical address and the inability of various bloggers to reach the owner.

But now the first machines have started to ship, and according to at least one well-known Mac user, they compare favorably in performance to some of Apple’s own models.

Jason D. O’Grady, creator of the mobile Web site O’Grady’s Power Page and an Apple blogger at ZDNet, recently tested a base-priced Open Computer from Psystar against its closest competitor in terms of price, the Mac Mini. He found that the Open Computer “trounced” the competition.

But take note. Like the Mini, Psystar’s $399 product comes without a monitor, keyboard or mouse. It also ships without a FireWire port, Bluetooth or a wireless card. Adding those options, plus a pre-installed copy of Leopard, boosted the price to $680, $80 more than Apple’s Mini, which comes with wireless and Bluetooth installed, but with a smaller hard drive than the Open Computer.

Because it is a clone, installing the Mac operating system is not a simple matter, which is why Mr. O’Grady had the company install it. However, according to Apple’s license agreement, Leopard can only be installed on “a single Apple-labeled computer.” That appears to put Psystar in danger of legal action. Rudy Pedraza, Psystar’s owner, said he was confident that what he was doing was legal, and Apple declined comment.

Meanwhile, it is always possible that Apple could figure out a firmware update that could disable Psystar’s clones.

But Mr. Pedraza is not worried. “We have developed technology that will allow only software updates that we have verified will work with the Open Computer,” he said.

On the other hand, if Apple decides to rewrite its software and knock out Psystar, Open Computer owners could be stuck running the current version of Leopard forever.

Users report more trouble with Windows XP SP3

The latest service pack for Windows XP continues to cause problems for users. According to an online user forum , the latest glitch in Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) causes problems with the remote desktop access feature of Windows Home Server.

On the We Got Served U.K.-based Windows user forum, Windows XP users running Windows Home Server, Microsoft's home storage and local networking server, report that SP3 is cutting off their access to the server from their PCs. The remote desktop access feature would ask users to add their home server's Web site address in order to access it even after they already had, users reported.

According to a user on Microsoft's Windows Home Server forum, the problem arose because Windows XP SP3 by default disables Terminal Services Active X control as part of its security model. The user, ColinWH, posted a fix for the problem that outlines how to enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control in Internet Explorer.

The Windows Home Server problem is not the first that users -- or Microsoft -- have had with the latest XP service pack. Scheduled for release on April 29, Windows XP SP3 was held up for a week by Microsoft because of incompatibilities between the service pack and one of Microsoft's own applications, retail chain management software called Microsoft Dynamics RMS. The problem even affected the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 set of updates.

Then, after the service pack's release on May 6, users reported that XP SP3 put some AMD-based PCs into endless reboots. Eventually, the problem was identified as affecting certain Hewlett-Packard PCs, and Microsoft posted information for fixing it on the Web.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday.

Microsoft puts new Yahoo deal on the table

Microsoft said on Sunday that it has raised the possibility of a new deal with Yahoo, one that may involve buying a part of the company but not all of it.
"Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a brief statement.

The company did not elaborate on the proposal. It said it did not plan at this time to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo, but that it was continuing to explore its options to expand its online services and advertising businesses.
Microsoft withdrew its offer to buy Yahoo on May 3 after the two sides failed to agree on a price. Since then, the activist investor Carl Icahn has said he will launch a proxy battle to replace Yahoo's board and force it back to the negotiating table with Microsoft.

Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong declined to comment on Microsoft's statement. Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment, although published reports said the company is not discussing its plan further in public.
"There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions," Microsoft said in its statement. It said it reserved the right to reconsider its decision not to buy Yahoo outright, depending on any future talks with Yahoo, third parties or the shareholders of either company.
That Microsoft is discussing a new deal could be a sign that Yahoo's leadership wants to avoid the spectacle of a proxy battle ahead of its annual meeting on July 3, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Yahoo responded to Icahn's threats on Friday, arguing that its own board has gave Microsoft's offer fair consideration, and that the current board, led by Chairman Roy Bostock, can best manage Yahoo's future.
It was unclear Sunday what type of alternative deal Microsoft has in mind. It said it issued its statement "in light of developments" that have taken place since it withdrew its offer.
Microsoft indicated earlier that it had moved on from the deal and that it was looking for other ways to grow its online business, internally or through smaller acquisitions.

AMD Gets Back in the Game with AMD GAME READY!

AMD, one of the leading manufacturers of computer technology, has just announced it is going to pay more attention to gaming users. The company, which is today responsible for powering the visual experience of the two most popular gaming consoles in the world, has just announced the birth of AMD GAME!. With AMD GAME!, the company is trying to help consumers select a more gaming-oriented PC, designed to meet their performance needs.The new program will provide platforms that combine the power of the latest multi-core processors with exceptional HD digital media and the power of the next-generation graphics processing. With the announcement of this new program, industry leaders including Acer, Alienware, Logitech and Microsoft, have also guaranteed they will stand by AMD and support its initiative to offer consumers an easier identification of PCs that can provide HD gaming and entertainment. The press release does not include any additional information about AMD's release of future products.According to Jon Peddie Research, most of all desktop and notebook PCs sold last year only offer the most basic of computing capabilities. They lack the technology to support the latest gaming experience, an issue that AMD has taken into account very seriously. It seems that users buying PCs prefer the more cheap and affordable assemblies, instead of those high-performance systems that provide the necessary power for a true gaming experience. With the new program, AMD intends to help users choose the right system, without them having to have the necessary experience to do so.According to Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's senior global director of Games for Windows, "AMD and Microsoft share the vision of delivering better gaming experiences on PCs running Microsoft Windows operating systems." AMD's program can be recognized by systems or hardware components wearing the AMD GAME! logo. Availability for AMD GAME! platforms can be seen at system builders such as Alienware, Cyberpower, iBuypower, Maingear and Velocity Micro.

Soccer Robots Compete For The Title

Robot soccer is an ambitious high-tech competition for universities, research institutes and industry. Several major tournaments are planned for 2008, the biggest of which is the ‘RoboCup German Open’. From April 21-25, over 80 teams of researchers from more than 15 countries are expected to face off at the Hannover Messe. In a series of soccer matches in several leagues, they will be putting the latest technologies on display.
For a machine, a soccer match is a highly complex endeavor. Robots must be able to reliably recognize the ball, the sidelines and the goalposts in addition to distinguishing between their teammates and opponents. To this end, they are outfitted with all sorts of high-tech equipment: cameras and sensors scan the robots’ surroundings, internal processors convert data to define game tactics and defense strategies, and innovative engines allow the automated players to sprint across the field and unexpectedly fake out their opponents.
There are now nine leagues, each of which has its own technological focus. In the middle-size league, robots get around on wheels. Four players and a goalkeeper compete for each team on a 20 x 14-meter pitch with standard soccer goals. They must be able to function completely independently and are equipped with internal camera systems that process information in real time. What’s more, the robots can move up to two meters per second.
Other automated soccer players, such as Sony’s robotic dog Aibo, run on four mechanical paws. And two-legged robots have been competing against each other at the RoboCup since 2005. “These humanoid robots have come a long way in recent years,” says Dr. Ansgar Bredenfeld, who is in charge of the RoboCup at IAIS. “Just like real players, they fall down and get up again, go after the ball autonomously and score goals.”
The RoboCup is more than just a soccer tournament. Since 2006, there has been a ‘RoboCup(at)Home’ category, a competition for service robots. In a replicated room, the robots must access refrigerators, collect garbage and recognize people. And in the ‘RoboCup-Rescue’ category, rescue robots must complete an obstacle course.
“RoboCup stimulates technological development in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible,” says Professor Stefan Wrobel, Executive Director of IAIS. “Many components that were originally designed for robot soccer have since made their way into other applications, for instance in localization technology for inspection robots.” Robots that can mow the lawn on their own or collect samples from the ocean floor for marine researchers are also equipped with RoboCup technology.
Participants under 20 years of age have their own competition, ‘RoboCupJunior’, which runs at the same time as the ‘RoboCupSenior’ tournament. In addition to fighting it out in a robot soccer tournament, the future generation of scientists will be competing in the RoboDance (robot dancing) and RoboRescue (obstacle course) competitions. These events are extremely popular: about 300 teams have registered for this year’s competition. To participate in Hannover, teams must qualify at one of three tournaments. “Germany has a serious problem: it lacks tens of thousands of engineers,” Wrobel points out. “RoboCupJunior is a very important event, as it sparks young people’s interest in technical degree courses.”
The tournament is being organized and carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin.

Mobile doctor

With an innovative concept developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, the ubiquitous cell phone could one day be used to make medical imaging accessible to billions of people around the world.
According to the World Health Organization, some three-quarters of the world's population has no access to ultrasounds, X-rays, magnetic resonance images, and other medical imaging technology used for a wide range of applications, from detecting tumors to confirming tuberculosis infections to monitoring developing fetuses.
"Medical imaging is something we take for granted in industrialized countries," said Boris Rubinsky, UC Berkeley professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering and head of the team that developed this new application for cell phones. "Imaging is considered one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. Diagnosis and treatment of an estimated 20 percent of diseases would benefit from medical imaging, yet this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain. Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations."
This new technique for medical imaging is described in the April 30 issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Public Library of Science ONE (PLoS ONE).
Rubinsky, who holds a joint appointment as director of the Research Center for Bioengineering in the Service of Humanity and Society at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, worked on this project with Ph.D. student Yair Granot and post-doctoral researcher Antoni Ivorra. Both researchers are in the UC Berkeley Biophysics Graduate Group.
Rubinsky noted that simply donating imaging devices to the world's poorest regions is not a viable, long-term solution. "More than half of the medical equipment in developing countries is left unused or broken because it is too complicated or expensive to operate and repair," he said. "We set out to develop something that locals could sustain on their own, as well as something that is relevant to local economies and technologies."
Most medical imaging devices, said Rubinsky, consist of three essential components: the data acquisition hardware that is connected to the patient, the image processing software and a monitor to display the image. When these components are combined into one unit, machine parts often become redundant, substantially increasing the cost of the device, he said.
Rubinsky and his team came up with the novel idea of physically separating these components so that the most complicated element - the processing software used to reconstruct the raw data into a meaningful image - can reside at an offsite central location, presumably in a large center where resources are available for its operation and maintenance. This central location would be used to service multiple remote sites where far simpler machines collect the raw data from the patients.
That's where the cell phone comes in. The phone, hooked up to the data acquisition device, would transmit the raw data to the central server where the information would be used to create an image. The server would then relay the image back to the cell phone, where it can be viewed on the cell phone's screen.
"This design significantly lowers the cost of medical imaging because the apparatus at the patient site is greatly simplified, and there is no need for personnel highly trained in imaging processing," said Ivorra, the post-doctoral researcher. "The data acquisition device can be made with off-the-shelf parts that somebody with basic technical training can operate. As for cell phones, you could be out in the middle of a remote village and still have cell phone access. They're so prevalent because so little infrastructure is required to maintain wireless networks."
The principle behind medical imaging is the production of a map based upon the physical properties of different types of tissue, such as tumors, muscle and fat. An MRI, for instance, produces a map of proton density in different tissue, while an ultrasound produces a map based upon pressure waves.
The researchers chose electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to demonstrate the feasibility of using cell phones in medical imaging. EIT is based upon the principle that diseased tissue transmits electrical currents differently than does healthy tissue. The difference in resistance to electrical currents is translated into an image.
The National Center for Research Resources at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting Rubinsky's research on the use of EIT to control gene therapy and cancer treatment in patients. The findings reported in the PLoS ONE paper demonstrate that these advanced medical technologies, which are dependent on EIT imaging, are not restricted to highly industrialized locations. Instead, they can be used in underserved areas of the world where there are limited resources.
Utilizing commercially available parts, the research team built a simple data acquisition device for the experiment. The device had 32 stainless steel electrodes - half to inject the electrical current and the other half to measure the voltage - connected to a gel-filled container that simulated breast tissue with a tumor.
A total of 225 voltage measurements were taken and uploaded to a cell phone, which was hooked up to the device with a USB cable. The cell phone was then used to dial into a powerful central computer that contained software to process the packet of raw data that was transmitted. An image was then reconstructed and sent back to the cell phone for viewing.
The researchers verified that the simulated tumor was clearly visible in the image, demonstrating the proof-of-principle that this system is feasible.
"This could open up whole new avenues of health care for the developing world," said Rubinsky. "Health professionals in rural clinics could affordably get the tools they need to properly diagnose and treat their patients."
The researchers said this system could work with any cell phone capable of sending and receiving multimedia messages such as graphics, video and audio clips. "The size of the data in the study was only 6 kilobytes, which is ridiculously small," said Granot, the Ph.D. student on the research team. "A one sentence, text-only e-mail message is bigger than that."
As for concerns about dropped calls, "there is no medical application that would not allow us to redial a line," said Granot. "Transmitting voice signals is actually more challenging than sending this imaging data, so it shouldn't be a serious problem."
Rubinsky said the screen size of a cell phone should not be a major impediment since "people are able to watch full movies on their iPods."
"In my opinion, this concept would be valuable for developed nations as well," said Rubinsky. "One of the main problems of medical care is the increased cost of health care. It may be worthwhile to consider this as a way of reducing the cost of medical imaging."
In addition to the NIH, the Israeli Science Foundation and Florida Hospital in Orlando also supported this work.

Green Ethernet

According to network equipment provider D-Link, the company is the first in the networking industry to introduce Green Ethernet technology into its SOHO Gigabit switches, capable of decreasing energy costs through the reduction of power consumption without sacrificing any operational performance or functionality while providing end users 3 key benefits:
* Reduced power consumption, less heat dissipation
* Extended product life
* Reduced operating costs
The products are labeled as "eco-friendly" as they comply with RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directives.
In addition, the company says that its Green Ethernet technology can detect a link's status and cable length, and adjust power usage accordingly. By reducing power consumption, less heat is produced, resulting in extended product life and lower operating costs.
Even when a computer is shut down, switches often remain on and continue to consume considerable amount of power. Using D-link's Green Ethernet technology, the company says that installed switches can detect when a computer is turned off, and then respond accordingly by changing into power standby mode, thus reducing power usage for that port.
In addition, switches normally send full power to cables regardless of the actual length. D-link says that its switches can analyze the cable's length and adjust the power

Play games on the visor (if you're not driving)

As impressive as the GPS Bluetooth rear-view mirror may be, its functions are pretty boring for the most part. At least, that's how it looks when compared with something like this multimedia visor.
Other visors with built-in TVs and DVD players have been around for awhile, but this one is out of control--which, by the way, is exactly what the driver would be if he gets distracted by it. Even though it's on the passenger side, there's no way to completely ignore a visor that lets you play games on its 7-inch LCD and comes with two gamepad controllers with an assortment of retro titles, according to Newlaunches.
It also plays DVDs and CDs, of course, as well as MP3s and MP4 videos, all for $100. But remember, the cost will escalate in a hurry when you throw in traffic tickets, let alone the fender damage.

MySpace takes the crown for anti-spam award

New York - The popular online hangout MySpace has won a $234 million (€151.23 million) judgment over junk messages sent to its members in what is believed to be the largest anti-spam award ever.

A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled against a notorious "Spam King," Sanford Wallace, and his partner, Walter Rines, after the two failed to show up at a court hearing, MySpace told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. He left that company, Cyber Promotions, following lawsuits from leading Internet service providers such as Time Warner's AOL, only to re-emerge in a spyware case that led to a $4 million (€2.59 million) federal judgment against him in 2006.

"MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site," said MySpace's chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam. "We remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members."

Rines and Wallace created their own MySpace accounts or took over existing ones by stealing passwords through "phishing" scams, Nigam said.

They then e-mailed other MySpace members, he said, "asking them to check out a cool video or another cool site. When you (got) there, they were making money trying to sell you something or making money based on hits or trying to sell ring tones."

MySpace said the pair sent more than 730,000 messages to MySpace members, many made to look like they were coming from trusted friends, giving them an air of legitimacy. Under the 2003 federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM, each violation entitles MySpace to $100 (€64.63) in damages, tripled when conducted "willfully and knowingly."

In court papers, MySpace said the activities resulted in bandwidth and delivery-related costs, along with complaints from hundreds of users. The company also said some of the outside Web sites contained adult material, potentially harming teens who use MySpace.

The judgment is a big victory for MySpace, although service providers often have a tough time collecting such awards. But even if the News Corp.-owned site never collects, it hopes the judgment deters other spammers.

"Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say, `Wow, I better not go there,"' Nigam said. "Spammers don't want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It's our job to send a message to stop them."

The Los Angeles-based company described the amount of the award as a "landmark."

John Levine, a board member for the anti-spam advocacy group Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, said that past spam judgments he knows of have been in the tens of millions of dollars.

He said he would be surprised, though, if MySpace ever collected.

"The giant judgments are all defaults, which means they don't necessarily even know how to find the spammer," Levine said.

There was no telephone listing for Wallace in the Las Vegas area, where he moved to in 2004 to pursue night club promotion work. Service was disconnected for two listed numbers for Rines in Stratham, N.H., his last known address; a third number in Stratham was unlisted.

U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins awarded $157.4 million (€101.73 million) jointly against Rines and Wallace and an additional $63.4 million (€40.97 million) against Rines under CAN-SPAM - plus $1.5 million (€0.97 million) more against the pair under California's anti-phishing law. Collins also issued injunctions barring similar activities in the future.

MySpace has another anti-spam case pending against a high-profile defendant, Scott Richter, who it claims gained access to MySpace profiles using stolen passwords and then sent spam bulletins from those accounts.

MySpace said the junk messages from Wallace and Rines came after Richter's.

Nintendo to pay gaming company Anascape $21M

LUFKIN, Texas - Nintendo of America Inc. was ordered to pay a small East Texas gaming company $21 million Wednesday for infringing on a patent while designing controllers for its popular Wii and GameCube systems.

A federal jury found in favor of Anascape Ltd. in the lawsuit that was originally filed in 2006. Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta said the company will seek an appeal and expects the court to reduce the award "significantly."

The jury found that Nintendo infringed on Anascape's patent while designing its Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers.

Scibettra said Nintendo was pleased no infringement was found with the motion-sensing technology used in its wandlike Wii and Nuncheck controllers, which mimic movements by users in games such as tennis and boxing.

Attorneys for Anascape did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tyler-based Anascape also sued Microsoft Corp. for patent infringements on game controllers but reached an agreement with the company before the start of the trial against Nintendo, The Lufkin Daily News reported.

Microsoft said in a statement that terms of the settlement reached May 1 were confidential.

Blu-Ray Wins !

The high-definition DVD format war is over, but U.S. consumers remain unenthusiastic toward players supporting the winner Blu-ray, a survey showed.

Nearly seven in 10 people polled by Harris Interactive knew that Blu-ray had beaten HD DVD, and nearly a quarter of them said they had been waiting for the rivalry to play itself out before buying an HD player. By April, however, few of the respondents had actually bought a player.

Based on an online poll of more than 2,500 U.S. adults, Harris found that nearly nine in 10 people own a standard DVD player, but fewer than one in 10 reported owning devices available today for playing HD content, namely, HD DVD or Blu-ray disc players, Sony PlayStation 3, and the external HD DVD player for Microsoft's Xbox 360. These numbers are surprising, given that more than a third of consumers overall report owning an HDTV.

Furthermore, only 9% of non-Blu-ray player owners say they are likely to buy a Blu-ray disc player within the next year, even when they are made fully aware that the format is the definitive technology for players of HD content going forward, Harris found. Notably, the percentage of HDTV owners likely to buy Blu-ray players is only slightly higher at 14%. Currently, about 10% of HDTV owners also have a Blu-ray disc player.

Price could be a contributor to the lackluster response to Blu-ray. While players of the format still average above $300, standard players only cost between $80 and $150, which include an up-converter to generate a higher quality picture that older standard players.

There's also the consideration of being able to download HD videos. "While this is likely to catch on more with the technophiles than with the mass market due to the complexity of downloading, it does provide another alternative," Joan Barten Kline, VP of Harris media and entertainment practice, said in a statement released Tuesday.

Sony-backed Blu-ray won the format war after Toshiba said this year it would no longer lead the HD DVD camp, and discontinued making HD DVD players and recorders. The company had sold 1 million players and recorders worldwide, including sales for drives for Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Download or Send Fragrance Using Your Mobile

Would you ever wanted to smell a rose or jasmine while you are in the fish market to get rid of the nasty smell there? Yes, you can now download and play your favorite frangance through your cell phone!

NTT Communications of Japan has recently announced a pilot test of its new Mobile Fragrance Communication service. The service will add specific fragrances that are emitted by a dedicated device along with audiovisual content download.

Fragrance Communication is also used by companies and individuals to enhance indoor environments with pleasing fragrances. The new mobile version offers the convenience of using mobile communication to download Fragrance Playlists, or files of recipes for specific fragrances together with visual (GIF animation) and audio (MIDI) content. Using the phone’s infrared port, the fragrance data is transferred to a device that has been loaded with a cartridge of essences. The device mixes the specific fragrances and emits them as the user enjoys the audio-video content played back on their phone.

The Fragrance Playlists also can be edited as well as shared with others who subscribe to the service. NTT Com is also planning to develop ringtones, music and horoscopes combined with fragrances, applications for housing, automotive, consumer electronics or video game markets, etc. NTT has been developing this technology since 2004.

Google kicks off its Facebook ground war

Updated: Google on Monday outlined its Google Friend Connect, a service that promises to insert social features into any application and any site.

Sound familiar? It is. MySpace has its friend connect service and Facebook has its version.

Add it up and you have a good old fashioned ground war over this question: Is social networking a feature or a destination site? For Facebook, the answer so far is that latter–of course it would love you to carry it around to other sites. Simply put, everyone wants to be the suitcase that carries your social graph.

On a conference call, David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, acknowledged that the newfound open standards surrounding social networks is good for the Web and Google. “Social activity has been limited, bottled up by a handful of sites,” said Glazer.

According to Google:

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

The tug of war is over control and the ground war is just beginning. Who controls these friend repositories? Even in an age of open data there will be aggregation winners. If Google’s OpenSocial gang disperses these networks then Facebook has issues. If Facebook succeeds with its walled garden approach, it stays a winner. Google’s plan: Adopt social standards and APIs from everywhere to let folks connect. The potential for Google: Be the friend aggregator.

Lump in ad revenue and it’s highly likely that Google will get a few sites to go along with Google Friend Connect.

Dan Farber reports:

I asked Glazer if Friend Connect is a response to Facebook Connect and MySpace.com’s Data Availability. “People will speculate a lot in that direction. We didn’t create this code in the three days (since Facebook and MySpace made their announcements).”

Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Google lacks a dominant, centralized social-networking hub. Friend Connect works the edges of the Internet, applying an open and distributed approach, and bringing a social dimension to the 99-plus percent of sites that aren’t socially enabled.

And let’s not forget Yahoo. Last month, Yahoo launched its Open Strategy with plans to infuse social networking throughout its sites. The message: Social networking is a feature not a destination.

Time will tell who is right.

Microsoft’s plan to block Linux on laptops

Details of Microsoft’s recently announced plan to extend the life of Windows XP for ultra low-cost PCs are trickling out. IDG News got its hands on what it says are Microsoft documents outlining the program for PC manufacturers.

Until now, the big question was: What exactly defines an ultra low-cost PC? According to the documents, Windows XP Home will only be available on systems with the following specs:

• A 1GHz or slower single-core processor (with exceptions for the Via C7 and Intel Atom N270)
• Up to 1GB of memory
• Hard drives up to 80GB
• Displays that are 10.2 inches or smaller
• No touch-screen

For companies manufacturing PCs that meet these specs, Windows XP will be available for $26 in emerging markets and $32 in developed markets, though a marketing agreement knocks another $10 off the price.

Ultra low-cost PCs pose a dilemma for Microsoft and PC manufacturers. Windows Vista won’t run on most–though not all–of them, and it costs too much anyway. But a freely-available, cheap Windows XP might cannibalize sales of traditional budget PCs with the full-priced version of Windows Vista. The narrowly-defined Windows XP extension seems designed to get around those issues, and to prevent Linux from gaining a toehold on the desktop.

The cut-off date for selling Windows XP on all other desktops and laptops is still June 30, though many manufacturers will continue to sell Vista systems with downgrades to Windows XP. Reading between the lines of Bill Gates’ recent speeches, Ars Technica concludes Microsoft learned from mistakes in Vista, and will make Windows 7 all about performance.

Related: The Asus Eee PC 900 is now shipping in both Windows XP and Linux versions. Here are some of the first full reviews:

• CNET.com
• Laptop Magazine
• NotebookReview.com
• PC World Australia