My tech experience.

Samsung W7900 showcase

2010-06-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Pico projectors are all the rage, and their popularity is growing. I always thought that these little projectors would really shine once they become fully integrated into the projects that use them such as a phones or handheld games. Well, the Samsung Show W7900 has been demoed, and it is very nice.

The Samsung Show W7900 is just like any other Samsung media device save for one essential feature; it has a built in projector capable of displaying a great image up to 50 inches diagonally. Specifically, the projector features 10 lumens and 480 by 320 pixels. Other specs on the phone include a 5MP camera, 3G connector, 3.2 inch OLED screen, and a front facing VGA camera for video conferencing. If the OS and the media functions are up to snuff, this phone will be very nice.

It was only a tech demo, and there is no official Samsung W7900 release date or price, but you can bet these things will be hitting the street soon. Now if I could only get a PSP or a Nintendo DS with a built-in projector.

About Computer injuries

2010-06-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

While back pain, blurred vision and mouse-related injuries are now well-documented hazards of long-term computer use, the number of acute injuries connected to computers is rising rapidly. According to a study published in the July 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy and The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital; and The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus have found a more-than-sevenfold increase in computer-related injuries due to tripping over computer equipment, head injuries due to computer monitor falls and other physical incidents.

According to data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database, over 78,000 cases of acute computer-related injuries were treated in U.S. emergency departments from 1994 through 2006. Approximately 93% of injuries occurred at home. The number of acute computer-related injuries increased by 732% over the 13-year study period, which is more than double the increase in household computer ownership (309%).

Injury mechanisms included hitting against or catching on computer equipment; tripping or falling over computer equipment; computer equipment falling on top of the patient; and the straining of muscles or joints. The computer part most often associated with injuries was the monitor. The percentage of monitor-related cases increased significantly, from 11.6% in 1994 to a peak of 37.1% in 2003. By 2006, it had decreased to 25.1%. The decrease since 2003 corresponds to the replacement of heavier cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors with smaller and easier-to-lift liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors.

Children aged 5 years had the highest injury rate of all age groups. The most common cause of injury was tripping or falling by patients aged 5 years had the highest injury rate of all age groups. The most common cause of injury was tripping or falling by patients aged 5 years (43.4%) and ≥60 years (37.7%) and hitting or getting caught on computer equipment for individuals of all other ages (36.9% of all cases). While injuries to the extremities were most common (57.4%), children aged 10 years most often had injuries to the head (75.8% for those aged 5 years and 61.8% for those aged 5𔃇 years).

According to Lara B. McKenzie, PhD, MA, Nationwide Children's Hospital Center for Injury Research and Policy, Columbus, "Future research on acute computer-related injuries is needed as this ubiquitous product becomes more intertwined in our everyday lives. More information is needed on the types of computers and equipment used, the layout of these systems, and the furniture utilized in order to develop household-safety practices in this areaGiven the large increase in acute computer-related injuries over the study period, greater efforts are needed to prevent such injuries, especially among young children".

Extending computers life

2010-06-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

Sometime I think losing a laptop is almost as traumatic as losing a pet. You spend so much time and effort getting to know what it, trying new things. You waste hours of your life playing with it. It even follows you around.

Okay, so I might be pushing the analogy, but the truth is, most of us don"t have the money to get a new laptop every 6 months. We"d like to keep the one we have alive and running for as long as possible.

So here are a few useful little tips that might extend the life your computer. Don"t worry, you probably already know them, but reminders never hurt anyone:

1. Shut it Down: This may sound simple but a number of of us just close the lid, turn of the monitor or set it to sleep mode. Completely shutting your computer down will keep it from overheating and leaking memory. Think of your computer like your brain, it can"t function without a good night"s sleep.

2. Defrag!: Again, another simple "duh" moment. Defrag your computer. Most PCs will even let you set up a regular defrag schedule once a week. Cleaning up your files on a regular basis will also keep your computer functioning at optimal speed.

3. Keep it Clean: During your regularly scheduled defrag, go ahead and run a scan for viruses, spyware, malware, all that bad stuff you can pick on the internet. Find a good program to keep your PC"s health good.

4. Don"t Drop It: Look, be nice to your laptops. Keep them in safe places, don"t expose them to weird temperatures and be sure not to eat or drink near them if possible. Also pets. I lost a laptop a few years ago to a cat pouncing on and then hairballing all over my keys, it broke my screen and something gross seeped into the circuitry. Trust me, helping your computer and your pets avoid each other is a good idea.

These might not be the most enlightening tips, but they"ll go along way in keeping your computer chugging along for an extra year or so.

2010-06-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

Despite the distraction potential of laptops in college classrooms, new research shows that they can actually increase students' engagement, attentiveness, participation and learning.

To achieve this, however, the instructor must set the right stage, says University of Michigan professor Perry Samson.

Samson is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences who has received honors for his educational technology work.

He has developed robust interactive student response system called LectureTools that utilizes students' laptops. A paper about how students report that LectureTools affected their learning is reported in the May edition of the journal Computers & Education.

"If you allow laptops in the classroom without a plan for how you'll use them, you can potentially invite disaster. It's unlikely that students will be so entranced by class material that they won't wander off to their favorite social networking sites," Samson said. "The key is to deliberately engage students through their computers. LectureTools does just that".

LectureTools is an interactive student response system and teaching module. Instructors at more than 400 colleges and universities have set up accounts to use it.

Samson recently surveyed close to 200 students who, over the past three semesters, have taken his Extreme Weather lecture course that utilized LectureTools. Students reported that while they did sometimes stray from in-class tasks, laptops with LectureTools made them feel more attentive, engaged and able to learn, compared with classes that don't use the system.

"Our surveys showed that while laptop computers can be a distraction, students of this generation feel that they are capable of productive multitasking," Samson said.

Through LectureTools, laptops serve as robust "clickers," providing drastically more interaction than the class polling that clicker-based student response systems offer.

LectureTools also allows students to take notes directly on lecture slides. Students can anonymously ask the instructor's aide a question through a chat window during class, and others can see these questions and answers. Students can also rate their own understanding of each slide, giving the professor valuable feedback.

"It is the first successful instance I've seen of dramatic use of information technology to augment the real-time classroom experience," said John King, vice provost for academic affairs and the William Warner Bishop Collegiate Professor of Information. "LectureTools significantly increases the interactivity between the student and the instructor without disrupting the flow of the class. The instructor gets a lot more detailed information about where the students are while maintaining normal operation in the class".

Close to half of students surveyed said that having a laptop in class increased the amount of time they spent on tasks uncorrelation to the lecture. But a full 78 percent agreed that laptops in class made them more engaged. Approximately half said that having their laptops made them more attentive. Seventy percent said laptops had a positive effect on their learning.

LectureTools significantly increased class participation as well. The system allows students to chat with an instructor's aide, posing questions without raising a hand and having to speak up in front of their peers.

"You can ask the dumb question without fear," Samson said.

More than half of the students asked at least one question during the semester, which is a much higher percentage than Samson saw in classes without LectureTools, he said.

The paper is called "Deliberate Engagement of Laptops in Large Lecture Classes to Improve Attentiveness and Engagement".

Vopium invensting in Skype

2010-06-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

The underdog Danish voiceover IP (VoIP) company Vopium has received a large cash injection from a prominent Indian telecommunications investor and has declared it is gunning for Skype in a bid to compete with the frontrunning VoIP provider.

Vopium, sometimes dubbed the 'other' VoIP company, today announced that Indian investor Raghuvinder Kataria, an early backer of Bharti Airtel – the third largest in-country mobile operator in the world – would invest $16.5m (£11m) in the Danish internet telecom, making him its largest shareholder.

In a statement, Kataria said: "We believe that the market demands an alternative mobile solution to Skype and the fast market penetration of smartphones opens up new and more intelligent ways of communication."

Kataria's investment significantly increases Vopium's funding as their last posted investment was €4.2m (£3.5m) in 2008 from Enex Group SA, a private Luxembourg-based investment company.

But the little VoIP still has a long way to go before it catches up with Skype, the field's clear leader.

At peak hours, Skype reports 23 million users online and Skype traffic accounts for 12% of global international calling minutes. Its users made 3.1bn minutes of calls to landlines and mobiles, and 36.1bn minutes of calls between Skype users in the third quarter of 2009.

Vopium, on the other hand, has a total of one million users with 10,000 of them online at peak hours. Last year, Vopium reported 40m-50m minutes of calls during the whole of last year.

But at reported growth of 30% every month, Vopium could well be on track to become a real challenge to Skype's hegemony.

Vopium was founded in 2006 by Pakistani entrepreneur Tanveer Sharif. Users download software to their mobile phone, which then re-routes calls over the internet. It was initially founded to allow cheap calling to Pakistan, India and Bangladesh but launched throughout the world last year.

Stomach Acid Wins...

2010-02-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

This girl is getting sick of technology...

8 CELL PHONE MYTHS AND FACTS PART 2

2010-02-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

5. Your cell phone can set you on Fire

Probably one of the last things you want your phone to do is spontaneously combust, especially if it’s in your pocket or, you know, against your head. For the most part we like to think there are hard working men and woman out there ensuring that the products we use from day to day just don’t do that. And while most things are pretty safe, very few things are 100%

Back in 2004, a teen in California was walking with her phone in her back pocket when, as witnesses say, it made a woosh sound, bulged a little, then spewed forth fist-sized flames. The girl suffered 2^nd degree burns.

So how could such a nutty thing happen? An overheated battery. Kyocera issues a recall of 140,000 batteries and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued recalls as well for certain batteries that can short circuit, overheat and, yes, burst into flame.

There have been other reported incident of phones bursting into flames while charging as well and though it’s rare, it actually can happen, though it seems to have been the result of poor quality batteries more than your phone angry at the poor grammar used in texting as you might think

6. Your phone can spy on you

This one has been a favorite of conspiracy nuts for the last few years, the idea that the government can tap into your phone and use it to track your whereabouts, or ever turn on the microphone and listen in on your conversations, whether or not you’re using the phone at that moment.

In fact, it’s true that the FBI has used this technique, calling “roving bug” to eavesdrop on criminals, like in New York when it was used as a surveillance tool in an organized crime investigation. Traditional wire tapping of land lines is a bit too old school and criminals are on to it, so the FBI had to adapt. Since many phones will never fully power down unless the battery is totally removed, a cell phone is a perfect wireless transmitter for law enforcement to tap into, and it still falls under the purview of existing wiretapping laws.

In other cases, though judges are have batted the attempts down due to a lack of probably cause, law enforcement has attempted to get access to information about cell phone use – locations of cell towers that took calls from individuals, strength and angle of signal and timing of calls, which would allow them to approximate the location of an individual. You’ve seen it in television and movies before and, for all intents and purposes, it’s fairly accurate. With access to cell company records, you could be tracked in real time based on your cell phone usage, or even just having the phone on and in your possession.

7. Your cell phone can explode

If you’re the kind of person who figures a cell phone fire is no big deal, you may be more inclined to be slightly nervous of cell phone explosions. After all, fire can be our friend and let us roast weenies and such. Explosions just suck, by and large.

Back in 2007, word came out of Korea that a man who had his cell phone in his shirt pocket died when the phone blew up, sending shrapnel into his heart and lungs. Last year in China, a man died shortly after changing his phone battery when the same thing happened. It was the 9^th recorded phone explosion in the country over a seven year period.

In one incident, a man working in an iron mill died when it was determined that the heat of the mill caused the liquid in the battery to overheat and blow up. So it may be rare, but it can happen. Let that be a lesson to you, never expose your phone to molten metal.

8. Cell phones cause infertility

Potentially the most horrible rumor of all, at least for some people, is the one that says cell phones lower your sperm count. And apparently it’s true.

Research conducted at the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio suggests that there’s a chance using a cell phone is bad news for your boys if you’re the hands free type who keeps the phone in your pocket. Long term exposure to all that electromagnetic radiation so close to the goods may lead to an increase in body temperature. And that can effect sperm count as well as mobility and shape.

The jury’s not out, of course, and odds are you need to be doing a lot of talking with the phone in your pocket, but probably to be on the safe side you could keep the phone over a couple of inches or two. You never know.

8 CELL PHONE MYTHS AND FACTS PART 1

2010-02-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

The internet is rife with rumors about the miracles of cellular technology, as well as the dangers. Depending on who you believe you may be carrying around a miracle tool or a death trap in your pants and Lord knows that’s a lot of stress for one person to deal with. Best to get to the bottom of things and separate truth from fiction.

1. Your cell phone can unlock your car

No one seems to know where this story came from, but it’s been circulated in a number of emails. The basic idea is that you’re out and about and in your frenzy to get things done, you lock your keys in the car. Crap. But, being clever and knowing you have a spare set complete with keyless entry at home, you call home and have someone press the button on your spare set to unlock your car over the phone. The signal goes through the phone, to your car and you’re driving again. Now that’s crafty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bjQMzI9m5w

So popular is this myth that the Mythbusters themselves had to test it. Guess what they discovered… you’re going to be pointing your phone at your car for a long, long time.

The problem is the phone uses an audio frequency while your keyless entry is on a much higher radio frequency. Which is to say you’re dealing with apples and oranges and once that keyless frequency hits your cell phone, it’s not going to get translated through to the other side at the same frequency. So no, you can’t unlock your car with your cell phone, unless you plan on using it to break a window.

2. Cell phones cause gas pump explosions

This winner has become so ingrained in our minds that gas stations actually have signs asking you to not use your phone while at the pumps for fear of a massive fireball of death and destruction, all because you needed to say goodnight to grandma. But when’s the last time you saw this happen on the news?

As it turns out, in the entire history of the entire world, there has never been an incident where someone blew themselves or any gas stations up with a cell phone. It’s a complete fabrication.

According to Snopes, the story just showed up one day in 1999. And every time it got mentioned, they said the explosion happened somewhere else. So basically it’s a friend of a friend story, only in this case the friend is an explosion, and no one’s ever seen it in person.

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and the American Petroleum Institute both agree that phones just don’t blow things up and they’ve never seen any evidence to suggest they do. Any news reports that have attributed fires to the use of phones were later proved false when someone, you know, actually looked for the real cause.

3. Cell phones cause deaths in hospitals

Similar to no phones at the gas pumps, most hospitals have signs in place telling you to turn off your phone. While some have phone use in designated areas which us regular folks assume must be lead shielded rooms or some such, other hospitals ban them altogether. The fear is that cell phone signals may interfere with the machines being used to keep people alive. There are even reports that the use of cell phones in hospitals has been a contributing factor in the death or serious injury to patients as a result of machines malfunctioning, delivering incorrect amounts of medication and so on.

However, the FDA has no information whatsoever on cell phones causing any deaths in hospitals the FDA has no information whatsoever on cell phones causing any deaths in hospitals, nor has any medical journal mentioned it. Reports that cell phone interference has caused incubators, heart monitors and IV pumps to go all wonky are the main cause behind the cell phone bans in hospitals, however the evidence for these is also sketchy. Just what is it that would cause the problem, anyway?

In 2007, the Mayo Clinic decided to do a study to see what the effect of cell phone interference was, so they used phones near 200 different pieces of hospital equipment. The end result was that the observed no clinically important interference at all.

So are you safe using a phone in a hospital? Probably, just keep in mind that if they have signs up and you refuse to put the phone away, they can and will have security take you out. In 1998, a man in Massachusetts was pepper sprayed for not hanging up. Probably best just to leave a message and call back later.

4. Cell phones cause cancer

This is the biggest one you’re going to find online with the most confusing answers. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that will assure you that cell phone use leads to brain tumors.

Dr Vini Khurana, a reputable neurosurgeon who trained at the Mayo Clinic, even wrote a paper back in 2008 that said cell phone usage caused more cancer than smoking or asbestos. If you just said “holy crap” you’re well within you’re rights, as that’s a pretty damning statement. But there is a but.

According to the World Heath Organization, and more than 30 other scientific reviews, cell phones do not pose a cancer risk. And, apparently, Dr. Khurana’s work had not even been peer reviewed when it was released.

In a nutshell, cancer is caused by DNA mutations. Some kind of radiation or chemical has to break down chemical bonds in our cells that lead to mutation. But the radiation from a cell phone, the electromagnetic kind which is released by all kinds of electronics, is not strong enough to strip away electrons or break down chemical bonds, at least according to most scientists. So cell phones just physically can’t cause cancer. But why do people think they do?

Nearly every study on the link between cancer and cell phone use takes the time to point out that will no link is found, the risk of long term use requires further study. Meaning that we found nothing, but if we kept going for a few years, maybe we would. And leaving the door open like that has let people who are primed and ready to panic over their ear growing a second head walk right in.

For Chip Makers, the Next Battle Is in Smartphones

2010-02-22T20:58:00.000-08:00

The going rate for a state-of-the-art chip factory is about $3 billion. The plants typically take years to build. And the microscopic size of chip circuitry requires engineering that practically defies the laws of physics.

Over the decades, legions of companies have found themselves reeling, even wiped out financially, from trying to produce some of the most complex objects made by humans for the lowest possible price.

Now, the chip wars are about to become even more bloody. In this next phase, the manufacturers will be fighting to supply the silicon for one of the fastest-growing segments of computing: smartphones, tiny laptops and tablet-style devices.

The fight pits several big chip companies — each trying to put its own stamp on the same basic design for mobile chips — against Intel, the dominant maker of PC chips, which is using an entirely different design to enter a market segment in which it has a minuscule presence.

Consumers are likely to benefit from the battle, which should increase competition and innovation, according to industry players. But it will be costly to the chip manufacturers involved.

“I worry about that,” said Ian Drew, an executive vice president at ARM Holdings, which owns the rights to the core chip design used in most smartphones and licenses that technology to manufacturers. “But ultimately, these chip makers are all pushing each other, and if one falls over, there are still two or three left.”

Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has long been held up as the gold standard when it comes to ultra-efficient, advanced chip manufacturing plants. The company is the last mainstream chip maker to both design and build its own products, which go into the vast majority of the PCs and servers sold each year.

Most other chips, for items as diverse as cars and printers, are built by a group of contract manufacturers, based primarily in Asia, to meet the specifications of other companies that design and market them. Traditionally, these companies, known as foundries, have trailed Intel in terms of manufacturing technology and have handled chips with simpler designs.

But with mobile technology, an expensive race is on to build smaller chips that consume less power, run faster and cost less than products made at older factories.

For example, GlobalFoundries plans to start making chips this year in Dresden, Germany, at what is arguably the most advanced chip factory ever built. The initial chips coming out of the plant will make their way into smartphones and tabletlike devices rather than mainstream computers.

“The first one out there with these types of products is really the one that wins in the marketplace,” said Jim Ballingall, vice president for marketing at GlobalFoundries. “This is a game changer.”

The company, a new player in the contract chip-making business, was formed last year when Advanced Micro Devices, Intel’s main rival in the PC chip market, spun off its manufacturing operations. GlobalFoundries, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has been helped by close to $10 billion in current and promised investments from the government of Abu Dhabi.

The vast resources at GlobalFoundries’ disposal have put pressure on companies likeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, United Microelectronics and Samsung Electronics, which also make smartphone chips. The message from GlobalFoundries is clear: as the newcomer in the market, it will spend what it takes to pull business away from these rivals.

At the same time, Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm are designing their own takes on ARM-based mobile chips that will be made by the contract foundries. Even without the direct investment of a factory, it can cost these companies about $1 billion to create a smartphone chip from scratch.

Recently, these types of chips have made their way from smartphones like the iPhone to other types of devices because of their low power consumption and cost.

For example, Apple’s coming iPad tablet computer will run on an ARM chip. So, too, will new tiny laptops from Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. A couple of start-ups have even started to explore the idea of using ARM chips in computer servers.

“Apple was the first company to make a really aspirational device that wasn’t based on Intel chips and Microsoft’s Windows,” said Fred Weber, a chip industry veteran. “The iPhone broke some psychological barriers people had about trying new products and helped drive this consumer electronics push.”

Companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm want to get their chips into as many types of consumer electronics as possible, including entertainment systems in cars, and home phones with screens and Web access.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, last week, manufacturers displayed a wide range of slick devices based on ARM chips, including a host of tablets and laptops. In addition, HTC released its Desire smartphone, built on a Qualcomm ARM chip called Snapdragon, which impressed show-goers with its big touch-screen display.

Meanwhile, Intel is about to enter the phone fray, both to expand its market and defend itself against the ARM chip makers. Its Atom line of chips, used in most netbooks and now coming to smartphones, can cost two to three times as much as the ARM chips, according to analysts. In addition, the Atom chips consume too much power for many smaller gadgets.

Intel executives argue that consumers will demand more robust mobile computing experiences, requiring chips with more oomph and PC-friendly software, both traditional Intel strengths.

“As these things look more like computers, they will value some of the capabilities we have and want increasing levels of performance,” said Robert B. Crooke, the Intel vice president in charge of the Atom chip. “We’re seeing that from our customers in a number of spaces, including digital TVs and hand-held devices.”

Intel also has deep pockets. As of December, the company had more than $9 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Mr. Crooke said that Intel’s manufacturing expertise would allow it to produce a new crop of chips every 18 months or so that would be cheaper and use less power. As rivals shift to more cutting-edge chip-making techniques, he said, they are likely to run into problems that Intel solved years ago.

At the same time, competition from other chip makers will pressure them to lower their prices.

“I don’t know whether it will make it harder for these guys to invest in the future, but you certainly would think so,” Mr. Crooke said.

Privacy, complexity seen as Google blind spots

2010-02-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

The recent privacy backlash over Google Buzz, the company's new social-networking service, is the latest in a series of launch fumbles that some argue reveal troubling blind spots within the Internet giant.

The huge amount of cash generated by the Mountain View company's search business has enabled it to hop from product to product, moving into mobile, software, social networking, broadband and other areas.

But in the process, it's overlooking predictable consumer concerns, like privacy worries, the need for prompt customer service, or the importance of intuitive products, industry observers say.

"Google is clearly looking like a company that is doing a lot of things, few of them well," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. "They have this attitude that if you're getting it for free, you should be happy with what you get."

Buzz, which was introduced this month, allows users to post updates, videos, photos and links within its popular e-mail service in a manner similar to Facebook.

But privacy groups assailed the fact that users' "followers" were preselected based on those they frequently e-mail or chat with. Unless users took a step to block those people when first using Buzz, the followers could see other followers, as well as photos and information shared in additional Google products.

Among other things, critics argued this default setup could inadvertently aid stalkers, jeopardize journalist sources, or reveal one's doctor or psychiatrist.

The Buzz controversy closely follows the tightly orchestrated January launch of the Nexus One smart phone, the first handset sold directly online by Google. Early reviews of the device were predominantly positive, but media coverage was soon dominated by complaints about the lack of customer service, high early termination fees and network issues.

Anticipating Wave

Similarly, the rollout of Google Wave in September, which initially had people auctioning on eBay their invitations to the all-in-one communications service, hasn't made more than a ripple since.

"Google has not done a great job of selling it to the public at large," said Greg Sterling, analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. "It's kind of a cool product in search of a problem to solve."

Google took quick steps to address the complaints with both Buzz and the Nexus One, and Wave is in a "preview phase" and will continue to be developed, Jill Hazelbaker, the company's director of corporate communications, said in an e-mail.

"It's clear from the feedback that we got some things wrong - and we have listened and made changes," she said in regards to Buzz. But she stressed that the response to the product itself has been "largely favorable," with more than 9 million posts and comments made within the first two days. She also said the Nexus One "was and still is unapologetically great."

To be sure, Google's mobile initiative, led by its Android operating system, has been a runaway success. Moreover, all of these recent product launches are peripheral to the company's highly lucrative core business of online search, which continues to grow at a healthy clip.

Google has a long history of turning out many early version products in limited batches, improving them based on user feedback and providing full backing for those that prove popular. This approach has allowed it to have surprisingly few glaring product glitches over the years, said Clayton Moran, stock analyst with Benchmark Co.

Moran said the growing scrutiny has less to do with the size of the mistakes than the swelling size of the company. Indeed, Google is now a huge global operation that has drawn the eyes of regulators, privacy advocates and media outlets around the world.

Missteps can take toll

But this may mean it can't afford to experiment on a public stage the way it once did. Whether or not the products are labeled beta, they're stamped Google and missteps take a toll on the company image, said Rob Frankel, branding consultant and author of "The Revenge of Brand X."

"It's this whole sense of hubris. They get to a certain size and think, 'We don't have to care,' " he said. "They are just roaming around, not defining themselves, and allowing their actions to be interpreted by whomever."

Observers say there are two things in particular that Google isn't paying adequate attention to in its rush to deliver the next new thing: privacy and complexity.

Marketing problems

Both blind spots are byproducts of the engineering-centric culture of Google, several analysts said. Their typical hires can puzzle out eye-crossing brain teasers the company famously issues in job interviews but can't always predict how real people will react to their services.

Google "doesn't always recognize or anticipate some of the human problems, the people problems, the customer service, the concerns over privacy," Sterling said. "They tested Buzz internally and everyone liked it, so they just had no idea it would cause the fear it did."

Buzz and Wave were both, in different ways, Google's answers to the skyrocketing popularity of social networking services Facebook and Twitter. Privacy concerns aside, the problem was that Google tried to compete by lumping in more capabilities, but in the process made the services overly complex, Enderle said.

"The ideas in concept were good, but they needed to be turned over to someone who understood marketing," he said.

Privacy groups' fears

Meanwhile, many Google products have raised red flags among privacy groups, because they often provide new ways for the company to collect information about users and customize advertising based on their behavior. Before Buzz, advocates had voiced concerns about Google's search engine, Gmail, pending Google Books settlement and move into mobile advertising.

"The bottom line is, users should have meaningful control over their information," said Kimberly Nguyen, consumer privacy counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Mozilla ends Firefox support for Mac OS Tiger

2010-02-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

Barring any last-minute change of mind, Mozilla will permanently drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 from future editions of Firefox.

Mozilla stopped supporting Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger, in September 2009, but left a large amount of Tiger bits in the development code. Now, said Josh Aas, a platform engineer for Mozilla who works on Mac OS X integration, it's time to either restore support for the five-year-old operating system or remove the code from the development tree.

"We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance," said Aas in a message yesterday on the mozilla.dev.planning forum. "Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."

According to Mozilla's metrics, 24% of those running the Mac version of Firefox 3.5 rely on Tiger, while 12% of those running the just-released Firefox 3.6 do. Half of all users run Firefox 3.5 on Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, while 59% run Firefox 3.6 on OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard.

Aas noted that Tiger users can continue to run Firefox 3.6, which supports the older operating system, until that version is retired from support. Currently, that end-of-support would come sometime in 2011, as Mozilla doesn't expect todeliver a major update to its open-source browser until late this year at the earliest. Mozilla's policy is to support an edition for approximately six months after a new version ships.

"We are often one of the last vendors to continue supporting older Mac OS X releases," said Aas.

There was only one dissenting voice on the forum, but he took Mozilla to task for ditching him. "As it stands now, it [is] impractical for me [to] update either machine due to lack of funds," Phillip Jones said in a message today, referring to a pair of PowerPC-based Macs running Tiger. "Most just take what they are given and stew in the background. Silly me I don't. So in the end my opinion doesn't count for anything."

Mozilla started to discuss dumping Tiger from its list of supported Mac operating systems in April 2009, just weeks after pondering whether todrop support for older versions of Windows.

For its part, Apple has already retired Tiger from security update support. The last time it patched vulnerabilities in Mac OS X 10.4 was September 2009.

Firefox 3.6, which runs in Tiger, can be downloaded from Mozilla's site. According to Mozilla, nearly 39 million copies of the new edition have been downloaded since its Jan. 21 launch.

As of Jan. 25, about 6 million Mac users were running Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3.6.

Report: Streaming video drove 72% global increase in mobile data consumption

2010-02-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

A new study from subscriber management company Allot Communications today says that worldwide mobile broadband consumption increased approximately 72% in just the second half of 2009.

Though the Federal Communications Commission is worried that there won't be enough bandwidth in the United States to support the growth in mobile broadband use, the Americas are actually being outpaced by both the Asia Pacific region (APAC) and the Europe/Middle East/Africa region (EMEA) in terms of growth rate. APAC experienced an 86% growth in mobile broadband consumption, and EMEA experienced 70% growth, while use in the Americas grew by 59%.

Allot's study says that streaming video is "the single most influential factor driving the need for increased mobile network capacity," and that consumption of streaming video grew by 99% in the second half of '09. YouTube alone accounted for 10% of the world's mobile bandwidth consumption in the third and fourth quarters of last year.

"Mobile broadband networks are still facing the same challenges as fixed networks -- growing bandwidth demands, congestion, as well as finding ways to enhance the user experience and to lessen the negative impact of a few [P2P users] on the network," a statement from the company said today.

Windows 7 and batteries?

2010-02-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

Windows 7 is a pretty cool operating system - I think it's the best version of Windows that Microsoft has released. But some notebook PC owners would beg to differ.

Last week, reports arose that Microsoft was looking into a message some Windows 7 users were seeing. A warning box appears saying:

Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly.

However, user in Windows forums have been complaining about this alert since last year, when the betas and release candidate of Windows 7 were circulating.

Ina Fried of News.com, among others, reported that Microsoft believed initially it was a firmware of the notebooks, and not its operating system:

Microsoft says it is looking into a problem that is causing some Windows 7 users to get a warning that there is a problem with their battery when, in fact, there is not.
"We are investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners, which appears to be related to system firmware," a Microsoft representative said in a statement on Tuesday.

Now, Microsoft has some bad news for those seeing the message: Your batteries are, indeed, dying. Steve Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows division and the man who oversaw Win7's development, writes in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that it's not a bug, it's a feature:

Several press articles this past week have drawn attention to blog and forum postings by users claiming Windows 7 is warning them to "consider replacing your battery" in systems which appeared to be operating satisfactorily before upgrading to Windows 7. These articles described posts in the support forums indicating that Windows 7 is not just warning users of failing batteries - as we designed Windows 7 to do this - but also implying Windows 7 is falsely reporting this situation or even worse, causing these batteries to fail. To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.
Using all the tools at our disposal including contacting customers reporting this issue on forums, customer service communications, partnerships with our PC makers, and of course the telemetry in Windows 7, we have been monitoring reports and discussions regarding this new feature, trying to separate reports of the designed behavior from those that might indicate an issue with Windows 7. In the latter cases we are trying to understand the scope of applicability and obtain hardware on which to reproduce a faulty behavior. To date all such steps indicate that we do have customers seeing reports of battery health issues and in all cases we have investigated Windows 7 has simply accurately detected a failing battery. . . .

Sinofsky offers some details on just what Microsoft looked at in its study, and some of its findings. Among one of the most interesting:

We have seen no reproducible reports of this notification on new hardware or newly purchased PCs. While we've seen the reports of new PCs receiving this notification, in all cases we have established that the battery was in a degraded state.

In other words, some of the reports involved batteries on brand new PCs, but the batteries were indeed in bad shape — which doesn't speak well to quality control, if true.

The post is full of technical detail on how Windows 7 judges the quality of a battery, and what triggers the alert. If you're a notebook owner, it's worth reading.

As you'd expect, the answer isn't sitting well with those who are getting the error and believe their notebook batteries are just fine — see the comments under the Microsoft blog entry. They point out that the same problem doesn't happen with Vista or other, older versions of Windows.

Of course, if Windows 7 is indeed "smarter" about battery quality, it may be reporting information not taken into account by previous Windows versions. And Sinofsky says there's no similar warning in previous versions of Windows.

It looks like this is a case of shooting the messenger, but Microsoft should continue to study it. Of course, as Windows 7 notebooks age, there will be more and more of these notifications popping up. It's information that's good to have, even if it doesn't make you very happy to see it.

When Phones Are Just Too Smart

2010-02-02T22:30:00.002-08:00

IF Caroline Cua’s iPhone looked anything like her closet, where she keeps her dozens of pairs of shoes, she would have screen after screen of applications.

ut instead her iPhone is nearly empty. Since she bought it nearly a year ago, Ms. Cua, 27, who works for a transportation service in San Francisco, has downloaded precisely five programs. And though she uses four of those apps “religiously,” she says, the ones she favors — Pandora, the Internet radio service, and Shazam, the music identifier — are your basic black pumps.

And that’s just fine with her, until she finds herself among friends whose iPhones are studded with icons. When a fellow iPhone owner asked recently to see her apps, she grew self-conscious. “I said to him, ‘O.K., now I’m officially feeling like a loser,’ ” she recalled.

Ms. Cua is not an exception. She is the rule. The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends. This despite the surfeit of available apps: some 140,000 and counting.

Last week’s announcement of the Apple iPad, a tablet device that runs iPhone applications and will not be available until March, has already spurred the development of more, including a version of a drawing app called Brushes; Nova, a shooter game; and Apple’s own app called iBooks, which will connect to its new online e-bookstore.

But that doesn’t mean that people will change their habits. Actually, it may just make them feel a tad more overwhelmed. The next generation of gadget users might prove different, but for now it is clear that people prefer fewer choices, and that they gravitate consistently toward the same small number of things that they like. Owners of iPhones are no different from cable TV subscribers with hundreds of channels to choose from who end up watching the same half-dozen.

So, for every zealous owner whose iPhone is loaded with little-known programs that predict asteroid fly-bys, there are many more Caroline Cuas, who seldom venture outside the predictable. Most say they’re too busy, too lazy or just plain flummoxed by the choices.

“I think I’m supposed to want more of them than I have,” said Julie Graham, a psychotherapist in San Francisco who echoed Ms. Cua’s vague anxiety. “There’s this sense that I’m missing out on something I didn’t know I needed.”

Ms. Graham, 50, said friends were shocked when she confessed to having failed to download Urbanspoon, a compendium of restaurant reviews. She now has it — and seldom uses it. “I don’t have time,” she said.

Since apps were introduced in 2008, rivals like Palm, Microsoft, Google and Research in Motion have all rushed out their own catalogs of mobile applications.

A survey of iPhones, iPod Touch and Android users conducted in July 2009 by AdMob, an advertising network that helps people promote their applications on smartphones, found that people discover apps most often by browsing app stores. And even though the iTunes store is bloated with offerings, people tend to gravitate to the most popular.

“For all the tens of thousands of apps out there, the odds of being exposed to more than a thousand are very small,” said Stewart Putney, the founder and chief executive of Moblyng, a company in Redwood City, Calif., that develops applications for mobile devices.

“The top apps featured at the store do change out,” Mr. Putney said. “But most users will never see more than 1 percent of the total apps available.”

A study last year by Pinch Media found that most people stop using their applications pretty quickly, particularly if those apps are free. And three out of every four applications people download are free, even though analysts say that Apple and its developers receive $1 billion a year in revenue from selling applications (Apple itself won’t say).

Jon Lebkowsky, 60, who runs a technology company in Austin, Tex., has a few dozen apps on his phone but uses only a handful, he said. He discovered a few when he saw friends using them. Others he found by searching the app store. “I’m a Buddhist, so I searched for ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Buddha’ to see what I could find,” he said. “I found a cool meditation app and a set of the Buddha’s writings.”

Some apps become the electronic equivalent of comfort food. Ms. Cua said her social inclinations were well served by a game called Words With Friends, a popular Scrabble derivative that she plays with others. Dana Delany, the actress, has the same game, which Ms. Delany said is played among word-oriented people on the set of “Desperate Housewives.”

“Your personal interests certainly drive what you’re interested in,” said Peter Farago, vice president for marketing at Flurry. “But people can’t always find the things they’re interested in.”

At the app-happy end of the spectrum is Phil Minasian, 18, a freshman at Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind. Mr. Minasian said his iPhone is loaded with games, including racing games, Texas hold ‘em, and numerous word puzzles. He said that while the majority of his games are free, he still pays about $15 a month for those that aren’t.

Mr. Minasian said he believed that people who don’t download apps in abundance are missing out. “If people put the time in, they can definitely find apps they’ll like, and that help with everyday life,” he said. With the help of — you guessed it — an app for finding apps, he found the Weather Channel app, which he prefers to the weather program that came with his iPhone.

Simon Sinek, 36, a leadership and management consultant in New York, has 130 apps, having collected them with a tried-and-true strategy.

Every night, Mr. Sinek said, he goes to the iTunes store to look at the most popular apps. “If one looks appealing, I see if there is a free version to try first,” he said. He also looks at the number of stars next to the app. If more than 5,000 people have downloaded an app, and 60 percent have given it the maximum of five stars, Mr. Sinek downloads it. “I might even pay for it, even if it’s over 99 cents,” he said.

Sometimes he goes completely rogue, entering random words in the search box, just to see what pops up. Typing “brain” yielded one of his favorite apps, a simple, elegant and free program called 3D Brain. John Connolly, a media producer who created 3D Brain for the Dolan DNA Learning Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., said he was delighted to hear that Mr. Sinek downloaded the app, which is used mostly by science educators and students.

“I think most people are inherently interested in how their brain works, in what makes them tick,” he said. And, of course, there’s an app for that.

Google Planning Store for Business Apps

2010-02-02T22:30:00.001-08:00

Google is developing an online store where it will sell business software from its partners in an effort to ramp up sales of Google Apps, its own suite of business applications, according to a person familiar with the project.

Google already offers what it calls a solutions marketplace, a site where users of Google Apps can find a variety of add-ons, tools and support services. The new store represents the next step in Google’s strategy to work with business partners to promote Google Apps, said the person, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the project. This person said the store was largely intended to provider better integration with Google’s partners and make it easier for users to buy add-ons and services.

Google declined to comment on its plans to develop a store for business software, but suggested that it was working to revamp its current marketplace.

“The Google Solutions Marketplace makes it easy for our customers to connect with an ecosystem of products and professional services,” the company said in a statement. “We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

While the solutions marketplace is simply a place for connecting users of Google Apps with third-party vendors, Google will take a slice of the revenue generated by tools and services sold through its store, the person familiar with Google’s plans said. The revenue generated by the store is expected to be small, at least by the standards of Google’s $23 billion annual business.

Google’s plans for the store were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Google Apps includes a variety of applications, including Gmail, a calendar function and software to create and edit text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Google offers the programs free and sells the entire suite to businesses for $50 per user per year. While Google Apps has gained some important customers, it has failed to dent the business of Microsoft, the market leader in business productivity software. Google said that about 20 million people use Google Apps, but only hundreds of thousands of those are paying customers. By comparison, nearly 500 million people have bought Microsoft Office.

Google said it had recently added many paying Apps customers, including 20,000 users at Motorola, 15,000 at Jaguar Land Rover and 30,000 in the city government of Los Angeles.

Apple tablet rumors want to eat your brains

2010-02-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Thought these got killed on Wednesday, but looks like we didn’t stake them in the hearts, shoot them in the head, nail ‘em with silver bullets, or whatever it takes to take down these brain-eating, unkillable Apple Tablet rumors.

First up, I thought the rumor about Apple partnering with Verizon was bashed with a baseball bat like a fax machine dragged out to a field. But apparently people who know people who know people know for certain that Apple is still in talks with Verizon about a wireless deal. Makes me wonder if the only thing these “sources” know is how to keep Verizon’s stock inflated.

Also heard on the tubes is that Apple is working on… a tablet?!? Yes, somehow the rumor that Apple is working on a tablet still walks the earth, or at least the Internet. Okay, in fairness, this rumor specifies that it’s a new tablet that’s more Mac than iPhone. But let’s face it, Apple always has more products in the works. So, sure, they probably do have a larger iPad or a Mac tablet on the table somewhere. It could be ready to go in a year, or it could be held back numerous times, as has been claimed about the iPad. Warn me when this zombie wanders closer to the front yard (or if it turns out to be one of those freaky fast zombies from 28 Days Later).

XP mode in Windows 7 pt 2

2010-01-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

XP Mode runs using Microsoft Virtual PC. This is based on Connectix's Virtual PC, primarily used to get Mac and PCs to run together. Microsoft either liked it, or didn't like it (it is hard to tell with Microsoft), and subsequently bought it in 2006 and released the software for free (now there is a business model).

Microsoft then polished the code and released it as Virtual PC 2007, which runs on Vista and XP given the right hardware and patches. Further polishing followed and we arrive at Microsoft Virtual PC that is to be bundled with Windows along with a suitable copy of XP to run with it.

Virtualisation is to step into the mainstream market. Right, so what's the big deal this time then? Virtualisation is nothing new and Virtual PC has been sitting on Microsoft's servers as a free download for ages. It's bundling XP Mode into Windows 7, but the way the two applications have been integrated together is a new thing.

There are two parts to XP Mode. Alongside Virtual PC we have the more substantial XP part, this is essentially a copy of Windows XP tailored for Virtual PC and with the appropriate licensing, so we can get two Windows for the price of one.

Your virtual XP is not completely closed off from Windows 7, however. Some effort has been made to marry the two operating systems. XP Mode has direct access to the range of Known Folders (My Documents, My Pictures and so forth), and you can cut and paste between XP and Win7 and share data. You can even launch your XP Mode apps directly from a shortcut on your Win7 Desktop.

The extent of the Direct hardware access also includes USB support and printer redirection – or rather that's the feature list on paper anyway. Not all of the features worked quite as seamlessly as Microsoft's instructions promised it would when we tried it.

Getting it up and running is easy-peasy and when you switch to full screen XP Mode only the little toolbar at the top reminds you that it isn't an XP machine. It's rather impressive to sit and watch Office install itself onto what it thinks is the root of your C drive and run perfectly.

Pop back to your Window 7's Start menu and there are your XP Mode applications, ready to launch directly from outside your virtual system. No drag and drop of documents though, that's asking a bit too much perhaps. Although it would be really great feature for the next update (hint, hint).

Starting a virtual machine for another operating system is equally painless. Click on 'Create Virtual Machine', define the amount of RAM you would like to give it and create a virtual hard drive, the dynamic expanding type is best.

Once created you've a virtual hard drive file that you can copy to another system and open there. Your virtual OS is also wonderfully portable. You can transfer a full PC OS installation, complete with applications, settings and documents, from one system to another and it'll run. Try doing that that without using virtualisation and see how that goes!

Beyond the theory

We tried installing a full version of XP Professional from a disc as a new virtual machine. All proceeded as advertised, with just a slight moment of panic when it started formatting the hard drive, until we remembered that in virtual land it doesn't have direct access to the physical drive.

Running the integration utility to link the two together to share data unfortunately proved less successful, and locked our new XP installation into 4-bit graphics, ouch. We're not sure what happened there. If it's a bug we hope it gets fixed.

Having been mightily impressed with XP Mode during testing, like the fools we are, we tried running some games. No, no, no. We can report that Hearts and Pinball work. Nearly everything else fell over, crashed or refused to install at all. 3D games are out.

We dug through the box of old games and tried Civilisation III, which installed happily and then refused to recognise the CD as the original, the game's code defeating the virtualisation's redirection somehow.

Back in time again to Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, which runs! And at a respectable speed on our system too. To be fair running games was never within the remit of Virtual XP. The only possible games it'll cope with are blasts from the past and even then the results are mixed.

So what's the point? Ah, well corporate types will be pleased that they can keep Win7 incompatible software in action, even if they decide to switch to the new OS. If you've a special bit of software you can't upgrade and simply can't live without then this is a good a solution as any.

The uses for software development are obvious. The rest of us might wonder what to do with this undoubtedly remarkable bit of programming.

Well, you could run a virtual session and install all sorts of weird and wonderful software onto your virtual version of XP that you know will make a dog's dinner of your nice clean Windows installation. This keeps your main installation nice and uncluttered.

You could create an XP version with every codec and media player on it, something which can easily become a right mess, and use this as a media player. Or, use it as a test-bed for suspect software. Want to see exactly what will go where and do what? Run it on your virtual system and see. No worries if it all goes horribly wrong and digs nasty hooks into your Windows directory. It's all virtual and if it comes to it you can just delete the whole thing and start again, no harm done.

Okay, we are grasping at straws a little here. Whether or not it is worth going for the Professional or Ultimate Editions of Windows 7 just for XP Mode is debatable.

Virtual PC is a free download and there are plenty of alternatives; realistically it's just the licensed copy of XP and the ready made integration that you are paying for. If you've an old copy of XP knocking around then you are in business anyway.

Virtualisation. Simple

What it may well do is get more people playing with virtual systems. Running Linux, BeOS or suchlike stops being such a frightening prospect, if you can experiment in a safe room.

Microsoft has made something potentially very complicated, easy and quick and given it to a lot of people; something it is rather good at.

XP mode in Windows 7 pt 1

2010-01-13T00:32:00.000-08:00

Windows 7 includes XP Mode. XP Mode is a virtualisation of XP - what you get is a copy of Virtual PC, so you can run it as a completely separate OS. XP lives all nice and safe on your Windows 7 set-up without all the hassle of a multi-boot system.

As well as XP you can install any other PC-compatible OS you like, too. But the big new feature from the marketing angle, and the main reason for its inclusion into Windows 7, is the ability to run XP software that would otherwise throw a fit.

The cynic may sneer that this is a neat way of side-stepping the issue that what was previously Windows-compatible software isn't, and that it is an admission that a real problem exists. That's what a cynic might say.

Vista never really set the corporate market ablaze. Having incompatible apps makes you think twice, even if you do get transparent effects. Hence, XP soldiered on and there are a lot of potential upgrade sales out there. Windows 7 now clears this hurdle.

It's not an ideal solution, providing full XP-compatible support would have been ideal, but this works, and you get all the joy of running multiple virtual operating systems thrown in.

Hang on, though, XP Mode is not a standard part of Windows 7. It's available only for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions. If you want it you'll need to splash out a little more than your Home Premium Edition. So, what exactly can it do and is it worth it?

We spell it with a zed

In a nutshell a virtual system is one which runs inside another operating system in its own little playpen, it can't get out and smear jam on things. Your primary OS is safe from interference and your virtual one operates as if it was the primary one, or at least thinks that it is.

Think of that fine and versatile actor Keanu Reeves who starred in the wonderfully scripted film The Matrix. He starts in a bed of goo living out a virtual life unaware of his actual circumstances. Your virtual OS has no idea it exists on a virtual system hosted by Windows 7. How sad.

Virtualisation works by divorcing the software from the hardware completely, encapsulating your hosted OS within a layer of software (the hypervisor) that handles all the calls to and from the hardware. It creates virtual drives, networks and the rest.

When your virtualised OS accesses the hardware the requests are intercepted and either re-routed invisibly to real hardware or emulated completely in software. Your entire virtual system lives inside one fat file on your hard drive, which the hosted OS thinks is its very own physical hard drive. How sad (again).

Okay, so running an OS inside an OS is fairly neat. What is significant is that since you now have it all wrapped up you can control where it thinks it is, specifically you can present it with any hardware it may want, whether or not the hardware actually exists or not. Hence completely incompatible combinations of software and hardware are possible, Mac on PCs or worse.

There is nothing new here of course, people started mucking about with the concept yonks ago and the delightfully clumsy word virtualisation, with a 'z', was coined at IBM in the 60s, back when computers needed separate rooms.

The technology started life in the world of servers. Here machines are often woefully under utilised, with powerful processors spending a lot of time idling and doing the crossword. Start a few virtual machines and you make better use of your hardware.

One set of hardware can effectively run half a dozen separate servers. Once you've created your virtual machines it becomes easy to move an entire server to another machine too. Just grab the virtual hard drive and shift it across, and bingo. It makes it easy to balance out the load across your kit.

Multiple OSes

Of more interest to us is the ability to host different operating systems on the same hardware, giving you two or more systems in one. Running games consoles on a PC used to be a popular target, but seems to have gone out of fashion now.

Software developers love it too, you can test an OS or application to destruction painlessly. The number of virtual machines you can run is simply limited by processor and drive capacity and not much else. You could create a machine with every version of Windows on it or something equally disturbing. Of course you'll need an OS for each virtual machine, which soon makes multiple Windows ones significantly less attractive.

There is always Linux of course, that's free. Running it on a virtual machine saves you the horror of destroying your Master Boot Record as you partition your drive after inadequate back-up procedures (you know who you are).

Internet is no longer free.

2010-01-13T00:27:00.000-08:00

EVERYBODY wants to be connected, and most major airlines in the United States have made bets that in-flight Wi-Fi Internet service will be a profitable sideline, or at least a worthwhile brand enhancer.

As the year started, about 700 commercial airliners were outfitted with Wi-Fi by Gogo, a product of Aircell, which is by far the leading provider of airline Internet connections. That is roughly a quarter of the domestic mainline fleet, excluding regional jets.

The number reflects robust growth for a service that started on an American Airlines plane in the summer of 2008. Gogo is now being offered (or will soon be offered) on eight airlines: American, Delta, AirTran, Virgin America, United, Air Canada, US Airways and Continental. (Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, has been working with another Wi-Fi provider, Row 44, to install a Wi-Fi system on its fleet.)

But no one knows how viable the market for in-flight connectivity can be, given that many passengers, particularly younger ones, resist paying for a Wi-Fi connection. The airlines with Wi-Fi connections have been charging up to $12.95 a flight, depending on the length of the trip, to cover their costs.

Most airlines decline to provide the so-called take rate, or percentage of passengers who choose to pay for the service. But from what I’m told, it has been running at 5 to 7 percent, and is spiking on some flights, like Virgin America’s routes between San Francisco and New York, which attract a lot of business travelers who work in technology industries.

In mid-December, Continental Airlines made a move that further clouded the picture. Continental, which had lagged competitors in embracing in-flight Wi-Fi, announced that it would install Gogo on its fleet of 21 Boeing 757-300 aircraft early this year.

But at the same time, Continental indicated that it was hedging its bets. Continental has also been installing a live in-flight television system, which is now available on 48 of its later-model 737s and is planned for its 757-300s by the end of the first quarter. Those are the same 757s, incidentally, where Continental has decided to install Gogo Wi-Fi.

Continental says it is experimenting with the market. The television system DirecTV offers 95 channels of live television and eight programmed channels, for about $6 a flight. (It is free in first class.)

The DirecTV system also offers a service — free to everyone — called Kiteline, which uses a tiny slice of the broadband spectrum for passengers to send and receive e-mail messages and instant messages. This bare-bones connection does not allow surfing of the Web. But it is free, whereas Gogo’s full-broadband service is not.

Continental’s question is, Will passengers who already have the option of watching television pay for a full broadband connection, or will they be satisfied with the limits of a free e-mail connection?

“Our goal is to try to understand what customers want, and what people are willing to pay for connectivity — which is something that customers are going to be looking for in air travel,” said Jim Compton, Continental’s executive vice president for marketing. “But what does connectivity itself mean?”

There is a lot of money riding on such questions. Aircell and its airline partners say they believe that demand for Gogo will keep growing, especially given the spurt in sales of Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerrys and other smartphones, which are more convenient to use in cramped airline coach seats than full-size laptops.

“It is dependent to an extent, over time, on hand-held devices,” said Ron LeMay, Aircell’s chief executive. He said that after a sluggish period in the first half of 2009, Gogo was expanding rapidly again.

In the second half of 2009, he said, usage grew “over 10 percent a week, although admittedly a number of those sessions have been promoted sessions” — by which he meant promotional offers for Gogo by other companies marketing to airline passengers.

But he added that paid sessions and revenue had been growing recently by “over 5 percent a week.” Gogo is now looking for more businesses to subscribe to extended plans for traveling employees, rather than depending solely on single transactions in an aircraft cabin. He also said that regional jets, which are increasingly flying longer distances, could be a growth market.

It costs up to $100,000 a plane to install Gogo. Initially, Mr. LeMay said, Aircell paid those costs, but last year the model was changed to require airlines to pay for installation.

As to Continental’s long-term plans, we’ll see how the experiment works out.

“We’re certainly interested in far more than 21 airplanes, but what they’ve committed to at this point is 21,” Mr. LeMay said.

Zune felling off the market.

2010-01-01T14:12:00.002-08:00

OK, it's really no shocker that Apple's iPod touch trounced Microsoft's Zune HD in holiday sales. But couldn't the Zune have at least done a little better? Amazon's list of Bestsellers in Electronics has the iPod touch in the second and third spot, (8GB and 32GB models), while the Zune HD (32GB) languishes at number 89.

Sure, the hugely popular iPod touch benefits from Apple's marketing brilliance, the iPhone glow, and the lure of 100,000-plus games and other time-wasters in the App Store. It also has the major advantage of being cool with the younger crowd: Kids want an iPod touch, not a Zune HD.

But the Zune HD, which received favorable reviews from the tech press when it debuted in September, has a lot going for it too. PC World contributor Dan Tynan sums it up nicely:

"From its luscious multitouch OLED screen to its slick social media tools, the Zune HD is as cool as anything that doesn't have an Apple logo. The HD stands for both high-definition radio--the new Zune handles music and data streams from multicasting radio stations--and high-def video. Using an external dock, you can connect the Zune HD to your HDTV and watch movies at 720p. Log on to the Zune Marketplace via Wi-Fi, and you can buy tunes and shows, [and] stream music."

Want more proof? The Zune HD was ranked #22 in thePC World 100: Best Products of 2009.

Unloved Zune

Several factors contributed to the Zune's lackluster holiday showing. First, the MP3 market has reached the saturation point, at least in the U.S.

"MP3 players have been down year over year over the holiday season. The whole category has really been struggling," says NPD Group consumer electronics analyst Ross Rubin, who points out that MP3 functionality is migrating to smartphones.

But the Zune HD isn't your run-of-the-mill media player. And if the MP3 device market is tanking, why is the iPod touch still selling like crazy?

"The Zune HD is a higher-end product, obviously designed to compete with the iPod touch, which has done well for Apple, but which has had the benefit of leveraging the iPhone's success, and applications and [the App Store] ecosystem," Rubin says.

"Microsoft has released some games for the Zune. The device has the Tegra processor, so it's pretty capable from a 3D [gaming] perspective," he adds. But Microsoft has not opened up the Zune to third-party developers the way Apple has with its iPod/iPhone platform.

Other Plans for Zune?

Microsoft didn't exactly go all out to promote the Zune HD to holiday shoppers, which leads one to wonder: What are Redmond's long-term plans for its media player?

"Microsoft has said the Zune, moving forward, is going to be less of an integrated device and service, and more of a media brand available across multiple platforms, such as Xbox, where it already is," Rubin says.

The Zune HD's best features, such as its OLED screen and multitouch interface, may migrate to Windows Mobile devices over the next few years. But the device's future as a standalone media player isn't looking very bright right now.

iEconomy is coming

2010-01-01T14:12:00.001-08:00

Jack Dorsey’s Square, Incase, Verifone and now Mophie — these companies’ credit card readers are turning the iPhone/iPod touch platform into an e-commerce engine.

Mophie, a Los Angeles-based company that makes accessories for the iPod/iPhone devices will release a credit card reader at CES in January 2010. The device is going to have a reader and a software that would allow small businesses to take credit cards. No more details are available just yet.

I, for one, would like to see Mophie or one of these other startups come up with a way for me to scan my own credit card to enter it into an app or web site. Even better, I’d love it if they married their hardware with the functionality of something like 1Password. In doing so, they could enable e-commerce via the iPhone apps. Think of it as iEconomy.

I know, I know — it’s easier said than done, considering it would need some deep, system-level mucking around, and Apple isn’t going to let that happen. But it should! By opening up, it would make the iPhone into an even more useful platform. While I can understand Apple’s hesitation at opening up the iPhone, it can start with iPod touch, which is not tethered to a wireless phone company’s network.

By focusing on the consumers, these companies can also overcome two things: somewhat finite number of likely small business customers and get scale, which would allow them to get cheaper. And this would also help them overcome the slower adoption rates normally encountered when chasing the small business market. In fact, companies such as Visa, MasterCard and large banks should be trying hard to figure out how they can put these kind of readers in the hands of both merchants and consumers, thus shifting even more transactions into the electronic realm.

OK, you can see I am just way too excited about this stuff. Why not? I am encouraged to see such experimentation. It ties in with my big belief: the marriage of computing and connectivity without the shackles of being tethered to a location is the the biggest disruptive force of our times, and it will redefine business models for decades.

For a long time, companies like Symbol Technologies, a division of Motorola, have been making point-of-sale and handheld computing devices for non-office environments such as retail locations and warehouses. It is becoming obvious by the day — they are amongst those being disrupted.

15 tech movies you must see before you die

2010-01-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

I am as much a film geek as a tech geek. In a previous life, I reviewed music and movies, and had lots more fun with the latter. If someone offered me a film-review job that paid my mortgage, I'd take it in a second, but I have a feeling that will remain a part of my past rather than become my future.

Sadly, most of the film reviews I wrote back then are not online . . . I'd love to share the absolutely horrible review I wrote of The Story of O for the Daily Texan, circa 1975. But alas . . .

Geeks and movies go together quite nicely. I've been thinking about films that reflect tech and geek culture, and have pulled together a list of 15 movies that should probably be on any geek's must-see list.

These are in no particular order, except that the first one is my No. 1 Must-Watch-for-Geek-Cred film.

• Brazil -- There are some geeks who'd argue you should just list "any film directed by Terry Gilliam," but I'm only putting three on my list. Brazil tops it, though, for the ultimate in skewed sci-fi dystopia. Geeks relate to its themes of freedom, longing and getting the girl, despite being quite dorky. Oh, and Robert DeNiro as a subversive air-conditioning repairman rocks, too.

• The Matrix -- Yeah, the second two in this series almost ruined the legacy of the first, butThe Matrix remains an icon of geek culture. A fun mix of sci-fi, cyberpunk lit and sociopolitical commentary, it extends the notion of machines run amok further than any previous film. And after seeing it, I dare you not to wonder whether we all are, indeed, jacked in to some cheesy simulation of reality.

• The Fifth Element -- The best Terry Gilliam film he didn't make, The Fifth Element has some cheap special effects but makes the list for its vision of media, society and art. If the vocal performance of the tube-headed alien doesn't give you goose bumps, you're not alive. Oh yeah, and Bruce Willis is pounds of fun, too.

• Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan -- William Shatner's cry of "Khaaaaaaaaaaan!!!" has entered the Geek Movie Scene Hall of Fame, as has Chekov's getting an earful of a space worm. Lines such as "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one," uttered by Spock as he sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise, have entered the lexicon.

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home -- The next-best film in the series makes the list for two wonderful scenes. The crew of the Enterprise comes back to mid-1980s Earth to save the future planet from destruction by a whale-loving alien. At one point, engineer Scotty confronts a Macintosh and tries to talk to it. Someone points out he should use the mouse, which he then picks up and says into it: "Computer!" Next is the scene in which Spock gives the Vulcan death grip to a rude, boombox-toting punk on a bus. Audiences still cheer that scene.

• Serenity -- Even if you've never watched the Firefly TV series, you owe it to yourself to seeSerenity. It's easily the best Star Trek movie that's not a Star Trek movie, and you don't need to be versed in the characters to get what's going on. In fact, even if you didn't follow the series, you'll still weep when one of the major characters dies. This movie is smart, funny and hits the right balance between serious action and fun camp.

• Dark City -- There are those who hint, eyebrows arched, that The Matrix got its best ideas from Dark City, even though the latter was released just one year before the former. A city is reworked each night, people's memories are rewritten and those who begin to guess the truth are reprogrammed. This film owes a lot visually to earlier works, such as the films of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and Robert Wiene.

• 12 Monkeys -- A Terry Gilliam/Bruce Willis pairing, 12 Monkeys is a little less serious in its dystopian vision. Willis travels back in time in an attempt to prevent a virus from ravaging the future. The film is worth it for Brad Pitt's best performance ever, as a crazed environmental terrorist. A review at the Internet Movie Database offers a grammatically garbled warning to take to heart, though: ". . .this movie needs your attention the forthcoming two hours and you better not miss some minutes for getting a coke as there is a danger you can't follow." I think I agree . . .

• Shaun of the Dead -- This is both the best parody of a zombie movie ever made, and thebest zombie movie ever made. All zombie movies are political commentary -- the masses are mindless and dangerous, yada yada -- but few of them have as much fun with it as this one. In Shaun of the Dead, the heroes are misfits and geeks who bust through the conventions of zombie filmdom. It will be hard to make a zombie movie with a straight face from here on out.

• Darkman -- Sam Raimi does a comic book movie, pre-Spider-Man. It's an updated version of Batman with a darker heart and more attitude, in which a scientist is horribly disfigured by thugs and uses his brains to outwit their brawn to wreak vengeance. In other words, geeks harassed in high school by jocks for being science nerds will relate.

• Army of Darkness -- More Sam Raimi, this time capping off his Evil Dead series with a more mainstream and approachable film. Bruce Campbell, arguably the king of geek actors, reprises his Ash role as he's sucked back in time to the Middle Ages. Ash is both brilliant and brilliantly dumb, playing a geek who succeeds in spite of himself. Best scenes -- Ash assembles a replacement for the arm he hacked off in Evil Dead II, and he does battle with a demon in the aisles of an "S-Mart".

• War Games -- Possibly the first film to give mainstream audiences a taste of hacker culture -- sanitized though it was -- War Games is both a period piece and a source of geek lexicon. The term wardialing, the practice of dialing random phone numbers until you find a modem to connect to, came from this film. That later morphed in to wardriving -- cruising the streets in search of unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Geeks will also have a great time watching for the techno-mistakes, which are legion.

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- I occasionally run into geeks who say, "I've never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I feel like I have." I think it's fair to argue that the Pythons invented geek humor, and this movie is its pinnacle. Note to serious geeks: You shouldn't just have seen this movie, you should pwn it.

• Office Space -- No film has captured what it's like to work at an "enlightened" high-tech workplace as has Office Space, which bombed when first released but has become a cult hit on DVD. Who among us hasn't wanted to smash the office fax machine with a baseball bat while profane hip hop plays in the background?

• Repo Man -- Directed by Alex Cox, this movie is best known for having been produced by former Monkee Mike Nesmith (the smart, talented one). Emilio Estevez plays a punk who takes a job as a repo man. "Repo man is intense," Harry Dean Stanton tells him, and that's an understatement. Geek alienation and the blanding down of mainstream society are the themes here. Those who missed the 1980s may not get the references to black-and-white generics -- Estevez dines from a can marked simply "Food" -- but a little history lesson never hurt anyone.

Those are my favorites; what are yours? Add to this list via the comments.

The evolving cellphone technology

2009-12-19T14:21:00.002-08:00

The cell phone is a piece of technology that more and more people are putting in their pockets. They are one of the quickest evolving gadgets on the market. In addition to enhancing the communication capabilities of their products, they added so many extra features to what was already sought by the society.

Nowadays there are so many opportunities to pimp your cell phone with various applications. Iphone owners have one of the biggest apps selection they can choose from. Making so many activities possible in just a few touches on the screen. Just to mention few of the possibilities you can get - you get use your Iphone as a GPS device, music player, instant messaging client, remote control for your computer and so many more.To make the best of your cellphone keep up with the latest mobile phone reviews.

Fring is of my favourite apps. It combines several IM clients in one including Google talk, AIM, Skype, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Twitter and there is one more option to make VoIP calls from WiFi hot sports. Quite impressive.

Another very helpful app is VNC lite. It gives you the ability to control your computer from anywhere. Sound crazy, doesnt it?

Controlling your personal computer from a great distance.

I remember seeing such technology in the movies back in the days. So what can we expect in the next several years?

YouTube shows what friends share on Facebook

2009-12-19T14:21:00.001-08:00

YouTube is pushing its Facebook Connect integration further by allowing its users to see the videos that their friends share on Facebook. YouTube users had previously been able to find their Facebook friends on YouTube as well as update their Facebook profile with their various actions from the site.

While it's nice to see YouTube embracing Facebook more and more, it stops a bit short of being an impressive Connect implementation. YouTube is getting there, but seems to be lagging behind a little in this department. An implementation that shares, on Facebook, what you are watching, on YouTube, would certainly make sense, although it might clutter up users' Facebook profiles if they are a prolific YouTube watcher. For now, the addition of this new feature is a welcome inclusion and serves as a great way of getting trusted recommendations for videos to watch on YouTube.

YouTube said this feature is in "test mode" for the time being. In my testing, I was not able to get this feature to actually work. This can be sometimes be expected while YouTube irons out the kinks with new features that aren't quite ready for prime time. If anyone has better luck, let us know in the comments.

WP 2.9

2009-12-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

It’s out. The world’s most popular blogging engine has released it’s latest update and there’s a little something for everyone.

Along with a mass of bug and security fixes, Wordpress highlights the following as the major geek candy:

Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss.
Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).
Comments for pages have been added to the default “Kubrick” them with WordPress, so blogs can now have comments on pages as well as posts.
Hello World: For new blogs, the default first post will be more informative about using WordPress as opposed to the old-style “Hello World” post.
Comments: You can now expand greatly what you can do in comment framework thanks to a new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts.
The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.

The 2.9 release also includes a slew of changes for WordPress developers, with 84 changes for 2.9 listed on the Codex. Changes range from improved documentation for the WP Filesystem to support for new post types and limiting checks for “blog by email” to every five minutes.