Tech News

Even the 768 bit RSA algorithm cracked, so far 1024 is safe

2010-01-09T13:01:00.000+05:30

Cracking encryption codes is an activity that has been carried out for millenia now, since the carrying of information in a way that outsiders cannot read it is as old as man's quest for politics and fighting with each other. The tales of the Enigma project in the second World War, the quest between the Allied and Axis powers to read each other's secret messages, and then the quest between the Soviets and the US over encryption and safety of messages eventually turned into a battle of mathematics; and this is what encryption is all about now, a quest for who can have a higher degree of combination of mathematics and computing power to either set up more secure systems, or to break other other's codes.
A few years ago, it seemed that 128 bit encryption was secure, and now it does not even seem that 768 bit is secure (link to article):

Most modern cryptography relies on single large numbers that are the product of two primes. If you know the numbers, it's relatively easy to encrypt and decrypt data; if you don't, finding the numbers by brute force is a big computational challenge. But this challenge gets easier every year as processor speed and efficiency increase, making "secure" a bit of a moving target. The paper describes how the process was done with commodity hardware, albeit lots of it.
Although most people aren't going to have access to these sorts of clusters, they represent a trivial amount of computing power for many organizations. As a result, the authors conclude, "The overall effort is sufficiently low that even for short-term protection of data of little value, 768-bit RSA moduli can no longer be recommended." 1024-bit values should be good for a few years still.

Feedback of a Flash user on Silverlight

2009-11-14T22:28:00.002+05:30

I came across this article a couple of days back, and found this to be a nice review, although a bit one-sided. The article takes the case of a long time Flash developer who got tempted to use Silverlight for a project. The article presents the problems he faces, and although he mentions in the end that he was not experience enough in the Microsoft and Visual Studio area, this should not be a roadblock. And he is right, since Silverlight is meant to take the battle to Flash, and it should have a great experience for somebody whose expertise on Flash. If a Flash developer found it difficult to move to Silverlight, it would just add another level of difficulty in getting Flash user to convert to Silverlight. Read the article at this location.
The article is a thorough criticism, not only of Silverlight, but also the efforts around Microsoft for improving the infrastructure related to Silverlight. For example, the article talks about how difficult and time-consuming it is just download and install Visual Studio. And the help and guidance provided was not very friendly.

Don’t dumb things down on my account, but understand that not everyone installing (rather, waiting for the install process to complete so they can use) your tools knows them well enough to get themselves in and out of your workflow with ease. Lower the barrier of entry and you may appeal to, and more importantly, enable, a lot more folks. This may be hard for you, seeing as your existing and historic developer contingent has already adapted to what I think is a very hardcore centered developer process.

The iPhone app that shows climate change

2009-10-04T16:35:00.002+05:30

The iPhone is a great commercial success for Apple. The phone has mesmerized users all over the world, and become the corner-store for a smartphone that is well designed, provides what users want, and most noticeably, provides a platform for 3rd party apps that can extend the various functions available to users. The App Store allows developers to create apps and have them in front of users, whether these Apps be free or purchasable, and the number of apps that have been downloaded is an ever increasing number. The Apps cover a huge gamut of areas, whether these be news, business usage, games, cool gadgets, useless stuff, sports, and so on.
A different topic; that of global warming. Global warming is a phenomenon that is progressing at a rapid pace, and human efforts to put a brake on emissions are really not up to the mark; developed countries that have contributed to the problems in the most significant ways do not want to take measures that will harm their economies, unless developing countries take similar steps. Developing countries want to make sure that the contributor pays the maximum, and do not want to get strung by tough climate norms without exacting all the possible help they can (even though it is developing countries that will be hit harder by the impacts of global warming).
Some of the impacts of global warming are:
- Glaciers receding and carrying less water
- Water levels rising due to melting of polar and Greenland ice caps
- Atmospheric temperatures rising
These are just an indicative list.
Well, visitors to the Swiss Alps can now get to evaluate the results of global warming on an iPhone (link to article):

As these rivers of ice retreat back up the valleys they carved out, so scientists' knowledge of climate change advances, in turn helping us recognize the signs of a warming world. Now a new iPhone app is helping visitors to the Swiss Alps understand how climate change is altering the landscape. Developed by the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern in Switzerland and Swiss software company, Texetera, the Jungfrau Climate Guide is an interactive guide to glaciers and climate change.
For a fee of 20 CHF (around $19) visitors to the Jungfrau Alpine region can hire an iPhone loaded with the app. "For example," Meuli explained, "if you are standing in front of a glacier you will be told why it is no longer as big and provided with images of what it looked like 100 years ago, and what it might look like in the future."

Such an App can be very interesting to the user. They provide information that a tourist seeks in terms of tourists tracks, information about flora and fauna, and also provides information about how global warming has changed the levels of glaciers. As you get more Apps that cover changes in weather patters, track storm patterns and sea levels, people will be more aware.

Twitter confirms that it does not own user Tweets

2009-09-13T15:17:00.002+05:30

There is a section of Users (using various internet services such as Facebook, Email services, Twitter, etc) that are very sensitive to any thought that companies might want to be claiming copyright on the content that users generate. So, for example, when Google first announced that Gmail would have advertisements running next to the email, and these advertisements would be based on the content of the email, there was some controversy about how Google would be looking at the content of user's emails to generate these ads (and it slowly died away after Google talked about a computer algorithm to derive the context-aware advertisements).
Facebook faced a problem in February 2009, when its Terms of Use scared people into thinking that the Facebook is claiming copyright over the content uploaded by users; that controversy became very large very quickly, and needed changes and announcements by Facebook management to mollify and dampen the controversy. Twitter was in danger of landing in a similar public relations problem, but they seem to have taken quick action (link to article):

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on Thursday said that the popular online messaging site had updated its Terms of Service to clarify what users can expect from the service, though the announcement appears to be more about reassuring users than delineating substantive rights. "The revisions [of Twitter's Terms of Service] more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership," said Stone in a blog post. "For example, your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter."
"The vast majority of tweets are likely to be too short and lacking in creativity to qualify for copyright," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an e-mail. "So they are not 'owned' by anyone, much like your idle chatter while walking down the street isn't 'owned' by anyone."

Apple responds to FCC enquiry about rejection of Google Voice

2009-08-22T20:23:00.003+05:30

The Apple iPhone is such a popular device that it has encouraged a huge number of 3rd party developers to write applications for the iPhone, and Apple makes a large number of them available on the iTunes store (Apple claims that around 20% of the 500 apps that it receives per week are not approved - either directly rejected, or they need some modifications). However, it is apparent that one area where Apple is most concerned about is apps that either affect Apple's or AT&T's data plans or the money they make from voice calls. There was a lot of controversy in the month of July when Apple rejected the Google Voice (learn more) application, a software that could enable people to save money in making calls (even if Google Voice is not a VOIP application). The FCC was concerned about this apparent rejection, since it would seem that customers were being denied an alternative, and asked Apple for an explanation.
Apple has finally replied to the FCC, giving multiple reasons for the rejection, including privacy issues, and an apparent change of the basic call making flow inside the app (link to article):

"The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail," Apple said in a statement posted on its Web site. Apple also said Google Voice's importation of the Contacts database represented a privacy concern. "[T]he iPhone user's entire Contacts database is transferred to Google's servers, and we have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways," Apple said.
Separately, Apple acknowledged that its agreement with AT&T obligates it "not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T's cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T's permission.

However, Apple is stating that the application is still under review, and not rejected; an apparent subterfuge to ensure more time, and maybe hope that back-channel contacts ensure that the issue goes away.
At some time in the future however, Apple will find that the platform that it has built in the form of the iPhone and the app store will be broken open, that Apple will find that the rights it has to deny an application will need more openness. This could happen through a mix of consumer reaction and pressure from regulators.

Twitter shuts down for some time due to attack

2009-08-07T19:57:00.003+05:30

The fragile nature of many of the important destinations of the internet was visible once again. Social networkers of the world, suddenly found that they were not getting their fix from the highly popular Twitter site, and that the site had stopped responding on Thursday, the 6th of August. And it was not only Twitter that was affected, other sites such as Facebook were affected as well. However, Twitter was the site that was most affected.
When sites start going down to attacks, this is mostly due to something called a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service), and is mostly done through the use of requests for service from many different machines (many could mean hundreds of thousands or millions). In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately. One way to do these attacks is through the use of botnets (wikipedia), machines all over the internet that have been taken over.
However, this attack was somewhat different. This was carried out through the use of spams, and was actually part of an attack against the accounts of a person called Cyxymu (wikipedia), a blogger who supports the country of Georgia against Russia. People were sent spam messages with links to his accounts on different social networking sites, and a huge number of them clicked on these links (link to article):

The messages were designed to discredit Cyxymu by associating him with a spam run. Other security researchers, such as Patrik Runald at F-Secure (here) and Graham Cluley at Sophos, are sceptical about this Joe Job-style theory for the attack.
Twitter’s two NTT hosted address blocks were moved in response to the attack, Arbor adds. Twitter's reliance on just one service provider, and apparent lack of back up and redundancy, much less a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, goes a long way towards explaining why it was hit so badly.

One such attack normally causes the attacked entity to place a much higher emphasis on trying to prevent such attacks in the future, and one can expect Twitter to do the same.

Fined a huge amount for downloading songs

2009-06-21T12:44:00.000+05:30

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been fighting a battle against people indulging in music-sharing across the internet. For the past many years, the music industry has seen a reduction in the number of music sales through the physical medium (CD's, DVD's, etc.) and this reduction is being blamed on the amount of file swapping that happens (file swapping gained prominence with Napster, and when the RIAA shut down Napster through a court case, other, more difficult to control file sharing methods such as P2P and torrents have gained prominence).
The music industry and the RIAA have been fighting against these, although fighting against a much widely dispersed enemy in the form of torrent sites and servers is more difficult. The music industry also started attacking the actual users, getting their details from ISP's, and then serving them notices with huge amounts of damages. The RIAA also had some hugely embarrassing mistakes, suffering from targeting people such as single mothers, children, and so on, all of which were huge Public Relations disasters. In some cases, they have successes, with people settling with the RIAA out of court. However, in another case, they have won huge damages (link to articles):

A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs. Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said. Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at fine, noting that the price tag on the songs she downloaded was 99 cents.
This was the second trial for Thomas-Rasset. The judge ordered a retrial in 2007 after there was an error in the wording of jury instructions. The fines jumped considerably from the first trial, which granted just $220,000 to the recording companies.

Not sure about whether this will be a success, given that the accused is a single mother who works for an Indian tribe. Also, the RIAA has mostly given up fighting these cases, so this would be one of the few such cases that are still existing.

Problems with depending on cloud computing

2009-05-17T01:03:00.003+05:30

In recent years, we are being sold on the total promise of cloud computing, or to be on a much simpler level, storing our data on sites on the internet and depend on internet applications for a lot of their work. Some examples of these are using Google Mail, Hotmail, Google Docs, Online Maps, Online photo sharing and storage. Corporations also depend on applications running off the internet such as Salesforce, Google Apps, etc. In fact, the entire concept of Software as a Service (SAAS) depends on companies basing their primary business applications on 3rd party hosted apps. We are now at that stage when companies no longer have a backup for these services; consider your own case - when you save something on Google Docs, do you also have a local copy of that data ? Do you have a backup way of running your business when the internet app goes down for whatever reason ?
Most companies now depend on these hosted services / data storage being always available. After all, if you are a photo storage company and depend on customer photos being stored on Amazon's S3 service, the service better be always available. If the service even goes down for a couple of hours, that is a time when your customers can no longer access their photos, and would not be a pleasant experience. Now consider the recent case of Google services being unavailable for a few hours due to a traffic jam at one of its data centers. This means that services such as Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and so on were unavailable (link to article):

Google has apologized for yesterday's service outage that left 14 percent of its user base without Google's wide variety of online services for a few hours. Google said in a blog post the outage came down to a simple traffic jam at an Asian data center. Well, a quick look at this graph from the Web security company Arbor Networks shows a canyon-sized hole in North American Internet traffic during the G-outage. With a wide variety of practical services like Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Calendar, and even Google search gone, online activities came to a standstill for many people during the Google blackout.
Just how smart is it to depend on a company to store all your data online? Some smaller storage companies have even gone under without giving users a chance to collect their precious bits and bytes. Canadian photographer Ryan Pyle told Spring how he lost more than 7000 edited and retouched images after the storage company Digital Railroad abruptly shut its doors last year.

Leads to 2 problems - with many companies operating on wafer thin margins and in a recession, there is a greater chance of many companies disappearing. If these companies were in the service of either data storage or app hosting, then customers will be hit when these companies go down. In some cases, when the disappearance is sudden, then customers may be hit with data loss.
In the second case, it may be possible that a company does not go down, but operations are hit for some time due to some technical issues, planned downtime, or even hacker attacks. Customers dependent on them will need to suspend activities during such a period.

Huge China based computer ring broke into computers worldwide

2009-03-31T00:38:00.001+05:30

For the past several years, there has been an active discussion among researches about the impact that a sustained attack on the computer infrastructure of developed countries could achieve. With modern infrastructures such as electricity, water, transport, finance, etc all being controlled through computational technologies, there is a persisting fear that all of this infrastructure is under threat from any clever band of cyber attackers. Modern military games incorporate threats by hackers who are affiliated to sovereign countries, and in many cases, it is claimed that developing the ability to bring down the computer networks of other countries is part of the game plan for offensive action. In the past, it has been feared that countries such as China and Russia have developed capabilities for offensive cyber-warfare.
Consider this case where a computer network, based in China, and dubbed as the 'GhostNet' by a team of Canadian researches turned up a huge network based on computers located in China; these computers were the initiators of hacking attempts that broke into computers all over the world; this probe was based on a need by the Dalai Lama office in India to ensure that its own computers were not infected (link to article):

In "Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network," issued over the weekend, the Canadian researchers say that the GhostNet comprises 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries, almost one third of them being "high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs."
The breaches tended to stem from a so-called social-engineering exploit, in which targets in the Tibetan community were sent an e-mail that appeared to be from the address campaigns@freetibet.org and that carried an attached Word document titled "Translation of Freedom Movement ID Book for Tibetans in Exile"--and that Word document was infected with the malicious code. The University of Cambridge report, "The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement," doesn't refrain from charging that the Chinese government was directing malware attacks: "(I)t was a targeted surveillance attack designed to collect actionable intelligence for use by the police and security services of a repressive state, with potentially fatal consequences for those exposed."

These incidents are also warnings to Governments about how their infrastructural systems are only as strong as their weakest links. One node in the system getting hacked can lead into other nodes also falling, and lead to a risk that the entire system is being compromised. In the current system, it was also found that the exploit had the powers to turn on the voice recording and the camera systems of the infected computer, leading to a spying of the proceedings happening in front of the computer.

PhoneGap

2009-03-30T15:39:00.001+05:30

PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.

If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.

PhoneGap Creators
Rob Ellis, Creator, JavaScript Maintainer

Rob is a developer at Nitobi Inc. As one of the PhoneGap creators, Rob is focused on trying to make mobile device app development easy and open. At Nitobi, Rob is part of a team that makes web applications easier to use by building software that allows both developers and end-users be more effective.

Brock Whitten, Creator, iPhone Maintainer and Repo Maintainer

Brock is a software developer at Nitobi Inc. He is one of the brains behind PhoneGap and recently presented on PhoneGap at MobileCamp Vancouver. Brock wants to see developers get really creative now that the barrier of entry for developing on mobile devices is getting increasingly lower.

If you want to read more, click this link.

Satellites crashing in space - Russian and US satellites

2009-02-12T17:43:00.002+05:30

One always thinks of space as a large open area, with plenty of space in all directions. You combine this space with the concept of satellites being well regulated and following controlled orbits, and then it is difficult to believe that satellites under the control of such countries such as the United States and Russia could actually collide, and yet that is exactly what seems to have happened:

The collision between a U.S. and a Russian satellite over Siberia may have been accidental and the first of its kind, but experts say more crashes will inevitably occur and could have geopolitical consequences. "This is an event that really makes us realize that things are not so straightforward as we originally thought," said Francisco Diego, a senior research fellow in physics and astronomy at University College London.
The collision, between a spacecraft operated by U.S. communications group Iridium Satellite LLC and a Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite, happened 485 miles above the Russian Arctic on Tuesday afternoon. The crash sent at least 600 pieces of debris off into space, officials said, increasing the risk that other satellites, including the vast International Space Station, which orbits 220 miles up, could be struck and damaged.

This crash may have been accidental, but what is to prevent countries from investing in such technologies. For example, a couple of such crashes have the effect of impacting the GPS and communication technologies that are used by the US military to great affect.

Internet users reach 1 billion

2009-01-27T00:53:00.002+05:30

This was a landmark that people have been waiting for some time. It has always be portrayed that internet usage is something that does not affect poor people in developing countries (and this may still be true), but the fact that the overall number of internet users the world over is now past 1 billion (as reported in December) is a big landmark by itself (link):

The key metric in the number of users is that most of them are from Asia, predominantly so: 41 percent, compared to 28 percent in North America and 18 percent in Europe. Although a sizeable percentage of Europe speaks English in some capacity (as does Asia), the numbers indicate that most of the world's Internet traffic will most likely be communicated using some non-English language. China, for example, had 179 million users, topping the list of wired countries; the U.S. was second, at 163 million. Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom rounded out the top five.

The growth areas are also significant. Slowly, the world is moving to incorporate more languages; however this is counter-balanced by the growing prevalence of English as a global language.

Valuing Twitter at $250 million

2009-01-26T23:28:00.002+05:30

Remember those old style internet valuations, as when Google bought Youtube for 1.6 billion dollars. A lot of those valuations never made it much, such as the huge amount of money paid for AOL by CNN, something that killed the long term strength of the company. A offshoot of these kind of valuations was that other companies also started expecting the same sort of valuations, way out of their earning potentials (even if you were very optimisitic).
The standard model is simple, setup a site with something new or a better way of doing something that brings in the millions of users, and then poof!, the valuations start screaming upwards. In the midst of this, revenue and short-to-mid term potential cannot meet these valuations. And there are a number of companies who have done very well in terms of attracting users, especially social networking sites. So, a site like Facebook has a lot of heavy-usage users, including a lot who hunt for people to add to the network. However, very few people have been able to generate long term revenue generation plans. Twitter is one such network that has become extremely popular over the relatively short period of time of 2 years, although it has the same problems in trying to show an effective business model. Consider that this micro-blogging network gets a valuation of $250 million:

Rumor is Twitter hit up more than a few venture firms to pitch the $250 million valuation, and got more than one 'no,'" TechCrunch wrote Saturday. "But someone's bit, perhaps encouraged by Twitter's breakneck growth and the interest from Facebook. That means Twitter gets a new cash injection and time to figure out its business model at an even more leisurely pace."
That certainly would be a boon for Twitter, which until now has not shown signs of a viable business model. Though it is growing rapidly and has millions of users, no one knows how the company could support itself. Some have worried that while it is increasingly useful to the many people who rely on it, it might not be financially viable over time.

One can only hope that the world is saner now in terms of valuations, especially the considersation of revenue generation.

Twitter hacked

2009-01-07T18:23:00.003+05:30

Twitter is a service that has become tremendously popular, that too, within a very short period of time. The ability to post micro-blogging type messages (restricted to 140 characters) and for others being able to read them through a variety of means (SMS, RSS, via the Twitter site, email, or through specialist applications) made the usage of Twitter even more popular. With such a popular site, one can only imagine the number of attempts that would be made to hack into such a service, and it happened - the Twitter sites of many celebrities where hacked through the compromising of some internal Twitter administration tools:

Members of the online forum Digital Gangster may have been behind yesterday's Twitter hack. On Monday, hackers gained access to, and posted messages from, 33 Twitter accounts including those of Bill O'Reilly, Britney Spear and CNN's Rick Sanchez. According to this thread, a hacker named GMZ gained access to Twitter login information and then posted a different thread--that has since been removed--calling on other DG members to email him for credentials to individual accounts. At least another four members then claim to have been part of yesterday's Twitter hack.
The hack included several prank posts from Twitter users such as Fox News, Facebook and president-elect Barack Obama. The strange thing about some of these messages is that they included affiliate links--a common marketing program that pays the creator of the link for driving traffic to another Web site such as Amazon--according to reports. That may make finding the culprits easier as the affiliate programs in question should have a virtual paper trail leading back to the payee

No matter who did this, the hacking of Twitter (and not much apparent concern from users about this) is a reminder that security on the internet can be compromised; revealing personal details on the internet comes with a certain amount of risk.

What happened to the Sony PS3

2008-12-07T08:25:00.004+05:30

As a lot of people who follow the gaming console industry know, a couple of years ago, there was a duet between 2 of the major contenders - the Sony PS3 and Microsoft's XboX 360 (during their development, the entire discussion was about which of these would be the winner). And then there was a sudden winner, Nintendo was the surprise leader, with its Wii gaming platform selling much higher than the other platforms. Both the PS3 and the XboX are much more powerful in terms of processing speed and raw power, but the incredible user-interactivity built into the Wii made it much more attractive to people, and it started out-selling the others within a short time. And no matter what Sony and Microsoft are trying, they are not able to compete with Nintendo, even with price cuts and a lot more marketing.
The latest selling season further amplifies this trend, with the Wii pulling ahead of its competitors, way ahead:

Sony's PS3 is dying on the shelves. Alone among the three major videogame consoles, sales of the PS3 are down about 19% from November 2007, according to the latest stats from the NPD Group. Sony was only able to sell 378,000 PS3s this November, compared to 466,000 last year.
And the problem for Sony isn't the recession, it's the PS3. Microsoft (MSFT) put up respectable numbers with its Xbox 360, selling 836,000 units vs 777,000 in November 2007. And Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii continues to dominate the market, more than doubling sales from 981,000 to 2.04 million.

Sony is stuck with its initial plan to build a powerhouse, since that (along with a Blu-Ray drive) makes the PS3 much more expensive; in addition, since the Wii is much ahead, there aren't enough developers making quality games for the PS3 - causing further problems.

Yahoo's Yang steps down as CEO

2008-11-18T23:37:00.004+05:30

As a previous post on this blog had mentioned, the Yahoo-Google-Microsoft drama will not end so easily. The number of twists and turns this story has been taking are pretty dramatic, and forms a soap opera worthy of spinning into a hard-balled corporate story. For a matter of many months now, it has seemed clear that Yahoo does not have what it takes to challenger Google and Microsoft in the online space; the only logical path forward was to tie up with another party and then make a pitch to fight for the top. However, when Microsoft made its bids for Yahoo in order to form a much stronger team to challenge Google, it was the Yahoo Board led by Yang which played hardball, pitching for more money.
This was a traumatic situation for shareholders, since the Yahoo stock was around half the offer price, and here was this company offering a pretty good deal for shareholders. And then you have the Yahoo management refusing this deal, or finally holding out for a higher offer that never came. And then, the collapse. The Yahoo share, which was quoting close to $20 during this offer period, is now quoting around $10. Yang made promises during this period, and they have not come true, probably the reason why he is stepping down now:

Shares of Yahoo Inc soared nearly 15 percent on Tuesday on hopes that the departure of Jerry Yang, its embattled chief executive, would clear the way for a deal with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo announced late on Monday that Yang, whose leadership had come under growing criticism from shareholders after he failed to agree to a deal with Microsoft, would step down from his role as soon as the board finds a replacement.
Analysts said Yang's decision to step down is a sign that the board was frustrated with his efforts to turn around the company, which he co-founded. Yang took on the CEO role in June 2007. "Jerry's resignation as CEO reflects failed promises he made while fighting off Microsoft's offers, and the board's displeasure with his go-it-alone strategy," wrote Jefferies & Co analyst Youssef Squali in a research note.

Yahoo's board must be hoping that this new management decision may lead to re-starting of discussions with Microsoft, even though Microsoft is not likely to offer above $30 now. And given the collapsed deal with Google (due to anti-trust), Yahoo would most likely die down rather than reach a top position on its own.

Sinowal Trojan: Stealing financial information for 2 years +

2008-11-03T20:32:00.002+05:30

In the recent past, there has been a lowering of the apparent threat level of Trojans, it almost seems like people have taken them for granted. Well, here is news that should make you reconsider, should remind you that if you are unprotected, then there are many dangers out there that could affect your financial status:

RSA FraudAction Research Lab has discovered log-in information for about 300,000 online bank accounts and 250,000 credit and debit card accounts that have been gathered by a cybercrime gang over the past three years using the Sinowal Trojan. "This may be one of the most pervasive and advanced pieces of crimeware ever created by fraudsters," according to a blog entry posted Friday from RSA, EMC's security unit. The Sinowal Trojan infects computers without the owner knowing it by surrepticiously planting itself onto the computer while the owner is Web surfing in an attack dubbed a "drive-by download."
The Trojan is programmed to execute when the victim visits a particular banking or financial Web site; it is triggered by more than 2,700 specific URLs, according to RSA. The malware then inserts additional fields into the victim's browser prompting the victim to type in information such as PIN and Social Security number, which the Web site itself does not ask for.

This was truly a dangerous Trojan. Imagine being undetected for so many years, especially when the trade of user financial information is now manipulated by criminal gangs. With greater internet usage, the transfer of money is now much quicker and money can vanish from one place to another in no time at all. Further, there are a large number of people who would fall prey to such attacks and have their financial information revealed.

A paper vanishes from the printing area - Christian Science Monitor

2008-11-03T18:40:00.003+05:30

For many years now, it has been predicted that the online news arena will continue to have rapid growth, and giving new credence to the phrase, 'a zero sum game', this will also result in a decrease in the number of print newspapers out in the market. This has been happening to some extent, not with the shutting down of major print media publications, but with a decrease in the classifieds and advertisements. However, now there is a clear marker to the extent of this change. The Christian Science Monitor, a 100 year daily, is shutting down and will take on a internet only avatar.
They are offsetting this to some extent with the introduction of a new weekly physical edition, but it is not the same as having a thriving daily print edition. With this event, many other newspapers and media companies (especially ones that have shareholders) will be weighing the impact of this news and wondering as to when their turn will come:

Stop the press, it’s finally happened. A national American newspaper, with an illustrious 100-year publishing |history and seven Pulitzer prizes, has gone totally digital. Last week, the Boston-based The Christian Science Monitor announced its decision to shift its daily news business entirely on to the internet. In April of next year, The Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper begun in 1908, will stop printing its newspaper and will, instead, invest all its daily news resources into its enhanced, advertising supported www.CSMonitor.com website.
A hundred years later, the internet publishing platform, with its instant global reach and shrinking technology costs, has turned the news business upside down. In today’s online world of instant publishing, where news junkies are hooked on up-to-the-minute information and commentary, a daily newspaper, printed or otherwise, is quickly becoming both a cultural and economic anachronism.

This is indeed a major event, and will be heralded as a major indicator to the massive growth of the internet platform and point out the print version to be an anachronism.

Women kills husband in an online game, arrested

2008-10-23T23:43:00.000+05:30

Online games where people live in a virtual reality using 'avatars' have become wildly popular, with millions using such games. But if people think that online worlds are a more utopian alternative to the real world, they are mistaken. There are the same kind of emotions, same kind of strange behavior, same weaknesses that exist in real life; they are making their existence felt in such online games as well. Consider the case of this lady who was married in virtual reality to a person who actually lived more than 620 miles away. One day she found herself divorced, and this unnerved her so much that she decided to kill the 'avatar' of her online husband (no implication in real life, but his online character died):

A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday. The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May.
"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

There have been other cases like this, with people swindling virtual money (with this virtual money capable of being converted into real currency, this is a crime), people objecting when their spouses spend too much time in these games or get married in the virtual world to somebody else, and so on. As time passes by, the probability of such incidents happening would increase.

Google launches Adsense for Games

2008-10-09T22:37:00.003+05:30

Google is always on the lookout for how to keep on increasing its ad portfolio. Getting ads into more and more platforms, into different devices, and accordingly getting a higher amount of revenue is what Google has always been interested in. Its corporate acquisition program has also been geared towards this effort, buying more and more companies that it believes can help it in its ad serving platform.
The popularity of online Flash based games has been soaring over the last few years, with usage figures soaring. For a long time, there was a feeling that Google will jump into this space, and the acquisition of Adscape Media in 2007 increased this feeling into a near certainty. The ongoing Beta by Google in this space, involving some of the Game developers since earlier this year made the intention clear:

More than a year in the works, Google finally launched its in-game advertising platform Wednesday. Called AdSense for Games, the platform will offer advertisers access to millions of Web-based Flash games. The in-game advertising market is small. The games industry scored only $1 billion from advertising and subscriptions in 2007, according to research firm Parks Associates. Google's entry is expected to make it explode.
Google's new ad platform, which grew out of its 2007 acquisition of Adscape Media, has operated in beta since early 2008. Game developers like Konami, Playfish and Zynga participated in the beta, but now other developers and publishers will also be able to apply to the program. The most prevalent ads throughout the company's beta test were short video spots from Esurance, but the network will also provide contextual and text ads.

Some of the success stories from developers using Adsense for Games has made the likely success of Adsense for Games more of a certainty, and is likely to increase the space between Google and its competitors in the Ad space.

Another iPhone attacker: BlackBerry Storm from RIM

2008-10-09T22:01:00.002+05:30

Ever since Apple came out with the iPhone, and made it a tremendously hot selling gadget, most of the other providers of smartphones have been jealous of the success of the iPhone, and have been casting around for a successful product that could appeal to people. At the same time, it has been difficult going for them, there have been a number of phones that have been launched that have been advertised unofficially as iPhone-killers, but none of them have managed to stand upto the marketing might of the iPhone.
Here comes another of these devices. At some point, RIM realized that its safe world of selling gadgets to office workers was under threat; the iPhone has started acquiring acceptance among office IT administrators over the world; this is threatening the sale of devices of RIM:

Research In Motion is taking on Apple's iPhone 3G head on with the introduction of the touch-screen BlackBerry Storm. The much-awaited smartphone sports many of the features of Apple's handsets, and even outshines it in certain categories. The touch-screen smartphone may give Verizon Wireless a legitimate rival to the iPhone 3G, and it may help stem the loss of subscribers to AT&T.
The Storm has 3.25-inch touch screen that has a 360 by 480 resolution. Like the iPhone, the Storm has support for multi-touch interface, but RIM's device will have haptic feedback for its virtual keyboard, and it will be capable of cut and paste. The keyboard will have RIM's SureType layout in portrait mode, and it will be a full QWERTY layout in landscape orientation.

It will be a tough call. Getting consumers to switch from the ultra cool iPhone to the dull RIM Blackberry phones (most Blackberries have the reputation of being thick, wide and very boring). It does have several advantages over the iPhone, but will not likely appeal to normal consumers. That is a big killer, with trying to compete on the office platform / business user only. Does not give it the volume to compete with a phone that is spread over the entire consumer buying span.

Adobe launches Creative Suite 4

2008-09-23T23:52:00.002+05:30

For some time now, Adobe (the maker of such softwares such as Acrobat, Photoshop and Flash) has been bundling its major softwares such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Digital Video, etc under one bundle (with variations) called the Creative Suite. As a result, when the Creative Suite is finally released, it is a major release; for some time before it is to be released, people put a slow-down on buying the previous version; they would rather get the latest and greatest.
A big part of the CS release is the release of a new version of Photoshop, and it is one of the most eagerly awaited products of the Creative Suites. Now Photoshop CS4 has been announced, and would be available in October. The major changes in this release include being able to use the GPU for greater speed, something that is eagerly awaited. Using the GPU allows the application to do its graphics processing faster (and that is typically one of the most time consuming portions of the overall time taken in the product).
Another major change in the release details support for 64 bit processors on the Windows platform, not much of a benefit for regular users, but more easily appreciable once the user starts moving onto much more memory-intensive work. Another areas where there is much better support is by making it easier for 3rd party developers to deploy extensions - they can create their own control panels in the form of Flash and just drop it in. Photoshop will also be integrating the latest Camera Raw Plugin (v 5.0) so that the latest version of RAW files from newer cameras are supported.
The upgrade price for Photoshop is $199 for the Photoshop CS4 and $349 for CS4 Extended; full purchase prices are $699 and $999.

Google's chrome - shaking the browser market

2008-09-09T17:05:00.003+05:30

Just a few years ago, Microsoft would have thought that it had sewn up the browser market; then came Firefox (backed by Google as well). Firefox won a lot of converts, and seemed like the open source alternative to a market that Microsoft had almost totally won, and it won a significant minority of the browser market. For the first time after Netscape, there seemed like an open source alternative in the form of Firefox; and now, Google seems suddenly to buck all the open source support and launch its own browser called Chrome - in the process, it seems to have withdrawn support from Firefox.
Chrome however promises much more to people everywhere, an open source software that can actually serve as the backbone for an alternative to the standard desktop - no longer will applications have to choose between the desktop and the internet:

Far from a betrayal, Chrome represents the best possible future for open source developers everywhere. What Google has delivered is a giant-slayer, a self-contained WebOS that could one day supplant Microsoft's desktop hegemony. Chrome is the ultimate end-run -- around Windows, Win32/.Net, the whole entrenched ecosystem.
This is the future of FOSS, a future where Chrome becomes the OS and Linux is relegated to its rightful place as a glorified boot loader. You know that's where they're headed. You know that's Google's master plan. The wunderkinds envision a world where the OS is irrelevant, where everything revolves around their pumped-up browser and advertising-laced SaaS offerings.

Right now Chrome only exists for the Windows platform, but versions for other operating systems will be available; and one can bet that pretty soon we will start seeing applications that are made for Chrome, that showcase this platform and live up to all its promises.

The importance of news in today's world

2008-09-09T15:48:00.003+05:30

Computers have been blamed for a number of problems that occur in today's world, but the malfunction of news reporting (causing an older page to appear and seem as current news) and the impact on a company's stock price is not something that we hear too often; neither would the investors who lost money on such a thing happening have imagined that they were watching a computer glitch. They did not bother to check elsewhere, and sold at panic levels, such is the dependency that people have on news items. Read on:

Information can live in cyberspace forever. And that cost some investors in United Airlines parent UAL Corp. a load of money Monday. Shares of UAL briefly plummeted as low as $3 early in the day -- from $12.30 on Friday -- after a 6-year-old story on the company's 2002 bankruptcy filing resurfaced on the Web and was reported as news by an investment letter.
But investors who sold at the day's lows are stuck: The Nasdaq Stock Market, where UAL stock is listed, said trades triggered by the erroneous report wouldn't be rescinded. What's more, shares of other carriers, including Continental Airlines Inc. and AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, also briefly dived with UAL before rebounding.

All this was caused by a series of events in which an old story got posted on the home page of a newspaper, and then got included in Google's automatic story picker (because the story had appeared as a top item on the newspaper site), which was then forwarded as part of an investment bulletin (where the researcher saw it on both the company page and on Google news and concluded it was authentic). By the time that UAL saw the news posted on Bloomberg and issued a retraction, the share had nose-dived and people had sold in panic.
People are too much in a hurry nowadays to be the first with the news, and traditional methods of confirming news and such data no longer seem to be in vogue.

Microsoft ropes in Seinfeld to bring more zest to advertising

2008-08-25T14:35:00.002+05:30

The Windows Operating System is a massive money-earner for Microsoft; together with Microsoft Office, the software earns a huge portion of the total revenues for Microsoft. However, it has been 2 decades now since Microsoft rolled out the Windows brand and took a commanding share of the computer desktop software market. Users are slowly getting tired of this brand name, and seeking a cooler alternative, are latching onto the Mac platform in bigger numbers (they have not moved on in very high figures, but even a percentage decrease in Windows sales would be worrying for Microsoft). Another section of users have got introduced to the Mac through the Mac option of being able to load both the Mac and Windows on the same Mac machine; and there would be a number of such users who would find the Mac software more compelling (and of course, there are a number of Ads that show Mac users as cool, while Windows users are shown as nerdy). So what does Microsoft do ? It recruits Seinfeld to star in some ads designed to bring a cool look to the Windows platform:

Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld. The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded. But Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen, say people close to the situation. He will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in ads and receive about $10 million for the work, they say.
The attempted image overhaul comes as Microsoft executives privately acknowledge that Windows - the company's most important brand - has grown stale and has been battered by Apple's “Mac vs. PC” ads. Microsoft's immediate goal is to reverse the negative public perception of Windows Vista, the latest version of the company's personal-computer operating system.

The company must be really worried. Normally, the Mac has always been derided by Microsoft, and not worthy of attention; so the campaign to hire a popular comedian (even though his shows stopped production in 1998) along with a new Ad agency smacks of an effort to try and get back some freshness, some new enthusiasm among its market base.

Google's future besides search

2008-08-25T10:47:00.002+05:30

Google is a company that has a lot going for it. It has a reputation of being a great place to work, the leader in the area of search (a field that it essentially took over and made it the big size that it currently is), and has some solid public relations going for it (the fact that it continues to vanquish Microsoft means that more people see it in a positive light). The stock of the company continues to remain high. But all good things have to come to an end. Slowly, the sheen is starting to wear off and there are more critical analysis of the company that are starting to emerge. One major area for critical analysis is about the success of the company in fields other than search:

Google has been the world's hottest technology company for almost six years now. The Mountain View company not only completely dominates the search engine business, but it's had an absolute lock on Silicon Valley's psychology. Every new beta product that debuts generates enormous attention and seems to promise to revolutionize one more slice of the Web and communications. Just this week came the latest numbers from comScore indicating that Google increased its search market share over Microsoft and Yahoo. And the takeover squabble between those two has just reinforced the perception that Google has an almost unassailable position as the leading technology company.
"Name me anything they've been successful in beside search," Chowdhry said. "I think the board and management of Google need a total overhaul." OK, that's harsh. On the other hand, according to Google's own securities filings, the company expects its margins on advertising to continue to shrink and its revenue growth in this area to continue to slow. In addition, all those high-profile ventures the company has launched, and the acquisitions it's made, have yet to contribute much to the bottom line. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company noted that revenue from services such as YouTube, Google Checkout and a host of others "were not material."

Youtube in particular was much mocked (especially among the online community), since a purchase of $1.6 billion is not a small amount and a lot of analysts were unable to figure out as to how Google will make money on this transaction. It's other purchases such as Picassa, and initiatives like Google Earth, are seen as cool, and fitting into the ad space in the long term theme of things, but are a very long way away from making money. No one of its stockholders would grudge the purchase of something like Doubleclick, but stuff such as Picassa do not seem to make sense.

Apple willing to let BestBuy sell iPhones

2008-08-13T14:16:00.002+05:30

Apple has a gold mine in the shape of it's iPhone, a device that continues to generate significant customer demand, and in fact so much demand, that if a customer wants to buy an iPhone in a AT & T store, there is a waiting time of around a week. Outrageous, some people would say, it's a device after all. But the iPhone has turned out to be such a hot device that people queue up to buy the iPhone, and Apple has sold millions of them so far. However, Apple hasn't exposed the phone in the retail market outside of the Apple and AT&T stores, and this restriction must still be limiting the number of phones they are able to sell. Well, it looks like they have re-considered; there seems to be an agreement to allow BestBuy to stock iPhones in BestBuy stores. Given that BestBuy is the largest electronics goods retailer, seems like Apple could expect a bump in the sales:

In a move that will significantly expand its retail presence in time for the holiday season, Apple has agreed to let retailing giant Best Buy sell the new iPhone 3G through its nationwide chain of Best Buy Mobile outlets starting early next month. Best Buy markets cell phones in the United States through 970 full-size stores and 16 stand-alone Best Buy Mobile shops. All U.S. Best Buy stores will carry the iPhone except for a handful of outlets located in areas where AT&T does not provide cell phone coverage.
For Best Buy, which has been angling for the iPhone business for more than a year, the deal will add Apple’s cachet to its expanding smartphone offerings and help drive traffic to new Best Buy Mobile departments within its stores. Best Buy is aggressively marketing a variety of smartphones, from RIM BlackBerry Curves to Palm Treos, and is the exclusive reseller, with Sprint (S), of the Samsung Instinct, one of the iPhone’s nearest competitors.

This will push the iPhones into the hands of a larger number of consumers, and given impulse purchases, may lead to a bump up in sales for the iPhone. After all, a consumer going to buy some other phone may come across the iPhone and decide to buy. What is not yet clear is about how the activation will be handled for these iPhones.

Yahoo shareholder meet ends tamely

2008-08-02T13:45:00.003+05:30

With the recent agreement between the Yahoo board and the shareholder challenge of Carl Icahn which gave Carl 3 seats on the board, the issues confronting Yahoo in terms of shareholder challenge seem to have died down. Otherwise why would the proceedings from the Yahoo board meeting end like this ?

It's almost as if the past six months never happened. Yahoo's much anticipated annual meeting on Aug. 1 left its current board and co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang intact, in control, and still insisting they can return to contention with runaway rival Google. Despite rampant shareholder anger that the Internet icon couldn't close any of a series of deals with Microsoft since the software giant's unsolicited $45 billion buyout bid Feb. 1, the long-delayed annual meeting was remarkable mostly for how little happened.
Nonetheless, the vote still indicates that a significant portion of shareholders remain dissatisfied with Yahoo's direction. The most pointed criticisms during the meeting came from Eric Jackson, who runs a Florida-based firm called Ironfire Capital He called for Bostock and two other directors to step down and for Yang to give up the CEO seat to a more experienced executive. "They're basically saying, 'Believe in us,'" Jackson said after the meeting. "There are too many people who have been there too long and we need new management from outside."

I don't think that this is the last anyone has heard of this entire issue. Yahoo is not likely to be able to outwit Google, and shareholders will remain dissatisfied with the performance and the share prices. Future revolts cannot be ruled out.

Net neutrality: FCC scolds Comcast, but does not fine

2008-08-02T10:40:00.002+05:30

The subject of net neutrality has been occupying a lot of discussion bandwidth over the past several months; the basic discussion point has been about whether the internet service providers can discriminate between the different types of content flowing through their pipes. The current policy is that users have the right to do whatever they want with their internet connectivity; so if they want to do file-to-file sharing or downloading videos, then the service provider is not supposed to tell them whether this is a permissible activity or not. The various internet providers in the United States have been advocating that such a policy prevents them from being able to make improvements in their networks.
After all, the biggest flow of internet information is typically with sites that promote P2P (and for torrent and others, this is a client to client exchange without going through a central server), or with users downloading videos or watching live videos. The ISP's have wanted to be able to set limits on this, and this is something that has just been blocked by a divided decision of the Federal Communications Commission:

Federal regulators issued a warning to all Internet service providers Friday with a sharp rebuke of Comcast Corp. for blocking some customers from using file-sharing technology. By a 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission found that the cable company failed to tell its subscribers about the blocking, lied about it when confronted by the commission and tried to cripple online video sites that compete with its on-demand service.
Supporters said the FCC decision would set a landmark precedent in the battle over whether Internet service providers can give priority to certain types of traffic, an issue known as network neutrality. The FCC ordered Comcast to stop the blocking and provide details about its Internet practices, but declined to fine the Philadelphia-based Internet service provider, the nation's second-largest. Public interest groups, online activists and large Internet companies fear that cable and phone companies will start charging websites for faster delivery of their content or block access to sites that offer competing services.

It is not at all difficult to believe that if ISP's are given the permission to be able to set limits on certain types of data movement, then they could take this a bit further and set up deals with sites to promote their content or let it move faster. The internet cannot be made hostage to the machinations of ISP's and their corporate interests.

Nintendo keeps on leading

2008-07-20T17:16:00.002+05:30

The Nintendo Wii seems like magic. Good user design and usability considerations along with a great word of mouth publicity has done what no amount of marketing push and technical specifications could have done; for the past considerable period of time, it has kept on pushing both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox360 by the side, and kept on generating a huge amount of buzz for itself. If you look at these figures, you can see why both Microsoft and Sony are despairing:

Nintendo DS topped the selling hardware chart with 783,000 units sold, followed by Wii (666,700 units), PlayStation3 (405,000 units), PlayStation Portable (337,400 units), Xbox 360 (219,000 units) and PlayStation 2 (188,000 units). Nintendo maintained strong top 10 positions in terms of software sales, for DS and Wii: Guitar Hero On Tour at number 2, Wii Fit with Board at number 4 (372,700 units), Wii Play with Remote at number 5 (359,000 units), Mario Kart Wii with Wheel at number 7 (322,400 units), Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures for Wii (294,000 units) and DS (267,800 units) at number 8 and 9.

Both Microsoft and Sony are trying every trick in the trade, whether that means reducing the price of the unit (Microsoft) or releasing upgraded versions for the same prize (Sony). Both of them are more or less clueless right now as to how to catch up with Nintendo; the Wii is way ahead in terms of customer perception.

Yahoo proxy fight comes closer to resolution

2008-07-20T16:56:00.003+05:30

It's almost like a soap opera in the financial sense. The fight between a Microsoft looking for ammunition in its battle against Google, and a Yahoo that is fighting a losing battle in front of a rampaging Google and a fighting Microsoft seems to be approaching a point where Yahoo is still struggling to stay afloat as an independent entity. In the end, it comes down to a point where the shareholders of Yahoo (institutional shareholders) have to decide whether to stay independent or to join up with Microsoft in order to get a better price for their shares:

It looks like the bar room tete-a-tete in Sun Valley, Idaho last week may have helped one of Yahoo Inc.'s biggest institutional shareholders make up his mind.
Friday's news from Bill Miller, chairman and chief investment officer of Legg Mason, that he intends to support Yahoo management in its proxy fight with activist investor Carl Icahn was a big coup for embattled Jerry Yang & Co.
Now that Miller has indicated which way he is voting Legg Mason's 4.4% stake in Yahoo, all eyes will be on other institutions with large holdings in the Internet portal. Perhaps one of the most influential is Gordon Crawford, a portfolio manager at Capital Research Global Investors. Its parent company, Capital Group Cos. has at least three funds with a combined stake of nearly 17% in Yahoo, making it the largest institutional holder. Some pundits have speculated large institutional shareholders do not typically lead activist campaigns. But Miller coming out with a statement in support of Yahoo management two weeks ahead of the much-anticipated shareholder meeting scheduled for August 1 could inspire other funds to try and persuade other investors to take their side.

If it comes to a resolution where the shareholders back Yahoo, then the issue does not get resolved. It is a fact that Yahoo is losing in the fight, and unless this gets resolved, shareholders of Yahoo will not be able to see the value of their shares rising.

Microsoft teams up with Icahn for a Yahoo bid

2008-07-08T19:48:00.002+05:30

After the bid by Microsoft died, there was a lot of resentment against the cussedness of Yahoo in refusing this bid. Many institutional holders of Yahoo stock were thoroughly frustrated by the refusal of the Yahoo management to agree to the Microsoft offer, since that would have meant that they would have been able to get a higher return than what the market was offering. One result of that was that the stock raider, Carl Icahn made a bid to acquire control of Yahoo through hostile action. And now Microsoft has teamed up with Icahn:

A statement by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) that it remains interested in acquiring some or all of Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) has increased the likelihood activist shareholder Carl Icahn may gain control of the Internet company's board in a proxy fight next month. Microsoft confirmed on Monday that Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had met with Icahn recently to discuss the prospects of resuming its bid for Yahoo in order to bolster its Internet presence.
The blog said Gordon Crawford of Capital Research Global Investors, Yahoo's second largest shareholder with a 6.5% stake, told Yang and other board members that he was seriously considering voting against Yahoo. Some analysts said discussions between Icahn and Microsoft may allow the activist to push through his nominees. "This is enough to sway Yahoo shareholders," said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Stanford Group.

This whole Microsoft effort to gain control of Yahoo is now going on for many months, and does not look likely to go away anytime soon. They have support of quite a few shareholders, but at what point will a majority of shareholders decide that Yahoo just does not have it anymore to remain independent and switch over to a Icahn-Microsoft bid ?

Apple iTunes store has sold 5 billion songs

2008-06-21T20:15:00.000+05:30

This is a landmark for the music industry. For many years, the traditional music industry (with their physical media) has bemoaned the presence of digital music downloads. Initially, the presence of ripped off MP's (illegal MP3's) were blamed for the decline in sales of the traditional music media. The industry fought these networks with full fury, and managed to kill most of the organized rippers (although they are facing more challenges fighting the more dispersed Bittorrent networks). In the midst of this fight, Apple initiated the combination of the Ipod and iTunes (store combination) in 2003 and managed to slowly increase its market share. The traditional delivery industry slowly accepted digital availability of songs due to the legal restrictions and use of technology to prevent copying that were bundled along with these songs; and the combination of iTunes and iPod became such a huge success that it has beaten all the other retailers (even a behemoth such as Walmart):

Apple Inc. has surpassed Wal-Mart to become America’s No. 1 music store, the first time that a seller of digital downloads has ever beaten the big CD retailers. Apple sold more albums in January and February than any other U.S. retailer, market research firm NPD Group said Thursday, underscoring how the music industry is on the front edge of a digital media shift that is upending businesses as diverse as bookstores and video game makers.
U.S. consumers still buy more CDs than digital downloads, but the gulf is narrowing rapidly. Only five years after launching its iTunes digital store, Apple has dominated the fast-growing download market so completely that it jumped ahead of individual CD sellers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target. “It’s a major milestone,” said Tom Adams, president of consulting firm Adams Media Research. “It is the first instance of an electronic venue surpassing a [bricks-and-mortar] retail venue for any kind of media delivery.”

And this is not the only field; traditional newspapers are feeling the heat from online versions; even iTunes itself is slowly making its name for itself in the field of movie downloads.

The Browser wars - a new version

2008-06-20T21:05:00.003+05:30

Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that the browser wars were from a different era. After the initial clashes between Microsoft and Netscape and the victory by Microsoft in these wars (ignoring any possible challenge by the nascent Opera at that time), the era of the Browser soon stagnated. Microsoft puts development work on a new version of Internet Explorer seemingly in cold storage.
And then came in the 2 aspects that changed the game: The emergence of Firefox as a strong contender for the title of the most popular browser (it helped that it was seen as a better and more standards compliant browser + a number of add-ons started getting developed for the browser); the other major game that has changed the rules was the emergence of Google as a company that makes most of its money from ads (with most of these ads coming in from the ads that appear when a user makes a search). Now it seems that the competition is hotting up, with Opera and Firefox releasing new versions, and Microsoft currently working through the public beta. Already, the release of Opera and Firefox has lead to an evaluation of which is better, and the answer depends on which way you look at things of Internet Explorer 8:

Firefox 3 is, of course, the big news of the week, pulling down eight million or so downloads in its first 24 hours in the wild. However, the Opera browser updated to its much-awaited version 9.5 last week. Empirically, the two most-cited complaints about browsers are speed and memory.
Using the SunSpider JavaScript test, Firefox 3 scored around 5500 microseconds to process the tested scripts, with a margin of error at around three percent. Opera 9.5 scored about 7280 microseconds on the same test, with a margin of error around 1.5 percent, making it nearly one and a third times as slow as Firefox 3.

And we have not even included the effort by Apple to make the Safari browser more mainstream, depending on the iPhone bundling Safari to really give it a push. The winner may not be the best (and anyhow, it depends on which test you use).

Eye-Fi Card card helps catch thief

2008-06-08T13:11:00.003+05:30

This is a story seemingly out of science fiction, but in reality happened. People unfortunately have a recurring tendency to forget their belongings; remember the times when somebody claimed that they lost their laptop or phone in the cab or train, or left the purse or wallet in the restaurant / hotel. By the time you remember, it is too late, it is only rarely that you get your belonging back. And of course, if it has been stolen, then the chances of getting it back is almost nil.
Well, here is a case where the camera that was stolen (and from which previous personal photos had not yet been retrieved) phoned back through the medium of the Eye-Fi card and even sent back photos of the thieves (the precious personal photos were also sent back). This happened through some coincidences, but is still remarkable:

Here's a new use for the Eye-Fi wireless SD card that we hadn't considered: A virtual private eye. Eye-Fi user Alison DeLauzon lost $1,000 worth of photo gear while on holiday in Florida. The Eye-Fi SD card, once plugged into your camera, hooks up to the internet and sends your photos to either an online sharing site or directly back to your home machine. In this case it was the latter, and the hapless thief not only sent the precious vacation shots back to Alison's computer, but -- according to the email we received from Gadget Lab reader Joe Volat -- "pictures [of] the thieves proudly displaying Alison's lifted camera equipment."

Japan's phones - the wonders of the world ?

2008-06-08T13:01:00.002+05:30

Anytime when one looks at advanced phones, the market that most comes into mind. Top non-Japanese phones such as the iPhone, and Nokia's N series don't even come close to the advancement of the phones sold in Japan. It was many years ago that the NTT DoCoMo network had reached 3G capabilities and sold phones that amazed the rest of the world. However, such advancement comes with own problems; trying to pack in so many features and yet meeting goals of being able to make the phone very usable makes the task of designers very difficult. In the end, there is only so much that one can do with the limited number of keys and overall phone size, and the various combinations that Japanese phone makers have come up with to provide the range of applications available can confuse the most advanced of users. If you remember the old joke about not being able to set the time on the VCR, this is way beyond that. Get a glimpse of how things actually are:

Indeed, Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master. "There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,'" says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo. Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is "good for killing time during a long commute," Aoki says, "but it's definitely not elegant."
Japan has long been famous for its advanced cellphones with sci-fi features like location tracking, mobile credit card payment and live TV. These handsets have been the envy of consumers in the United States, where cell technology has trailed an estimated five years or more. But while many phones would do Captain Kirk proud, most of the features are hard to use or not used at all. Japan is a culture of spec sheets. When consumers go to electronics stores to buy a cellphone, they frequently line up the specifications side by side to compare them before deciding which one to buy.

In contrast, phone makers such as Apple and Nokia have been behind on the feature list, but are seemingly way ahead on making phones look good and be very usable.

A leading retailer drops Microsoft's Zune

2008-05-25T15:55:00.002+05:30

Microsoft a few years decided to step into the field of consumer electronics in a limited way, with efforts for both gaming consoles and MP3 / Media players. Both of these are fast moving items, with fierce competition, an extreme focus on features, and ability to turn users into die-hard fans. In both these areas, there were entrenched players in the field when Microsoft made its entry - in gaming consoles, Sony's Playstation and Playstation 2 (and Nintendo in a smaller way), as well as Apple's iPod in the field of MP3/ Media player were both established players with very strong market shares.
Microsoft on the other hand has a very strong marketing strength, as well as presence in the customer software segment; however, Microsoft had to build up a mind and market presence in the actual consumer devices retail positions. This takes time and effort, and you need to show increasing market share. This has now suffered a setback, with one of the leading retailers, GameStop deciding to stop stocking the Zune (Microsoft's personal media player) due to inadequate sales:

Microsoft's entry into the consumer electronics space came with a thorny channel problem. To succeed in capturing a broader audience, Microsoft had to broaden its retail channel. The Xbox business helped take care of that problem: once Microsoft proved that it was serious about developing and promoting the first Xbox, and once it began to show reasonable sales figures, a new class of retailers--including game-specialty stores like GameStop--were happy to make shelf space for Microsoft's consoles and games, right alongside Sony and Nintendo.
Apparently, after giving it a year and a half, GameStop has found that's not the case. Looking at recent NPD figures, it's easy to see why--compared with the first Xbox, the product just isn't moving nearly as many units (2 million in 18 months) or capturing enough market share.

Still a bit early to write off the Zune, but it just is not capturing any imagination, and in the meantime Apple has moved ahead with the iPod Touch / iPhone, capturing the wow effect.

Nintendo Wii Fit going to increase Wii sales

2008-05-25T15:20:00.002+05:30

The Nintendo Wii has been the leader in the field of video game consoles, leaving the much more powerful Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 way behind. Consumers have been attracted by the power of the simplicity of the console and its usability, specially the motion sensing capability of the Wii remote that allows users to be more interactive with the game and brings a much better handling of the games. This has continued, with the Wii steadily out-selling the other gaming consoles, and more games being written for the Wii over a period of time (inspite of the much more powerful marketing power of Sony and Microsoft).
Now, Nintendo is coming out with a game that is very eagerly awaited, and promises to let people overcome the couch potato effect of a video game console, instead they get a way to become fit:

Nintendo will be releasing the newest of its exercise games, the Wii Fit on May 19th and you can expect it to fly off of the retailer shelves. But just who will be buying it? Many expect that our mom's will be buying them, at least according to some analysts and some research. The Nintendo Wii has been more popular among women than the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3, but some analysts believe that this game that combines exercise and entertainment will help put Wii sales over the top again.
Wii Fit will retail for $89.99 and will include a balance board to facilitate the more than 40 yoga, aerobics, and strength training exercises. The user sets their own fitness goals and keeps track of their progress over time.

If this truly turns out to be well designed, then this well and truly ensure that Nintendo keeps its lead over the other game consoles; further, there are not many analysts now who actually believe that Sony and Microsoft will be able to challenge this dominance in the near future.

iTunes to allow movie download same day as DVD release

2008-05-03T19:55:00.004+05:30

Apple's iTunes had always been seen as somewhat of a threat / opportunity for the industry. The opportunity was always there since it was the legal way for the recording industry to make money from the downloading of music, while the way in which Apple behaves (driven by Steve Jobs) scares the recording industry. Apple is the one which always seeks more control over the entire process and does not seem to care as much for the dictates of the recording industry as other channels do. In a step forward, and scaring the conventional sales channels of the movie DVD industry, Apple has now declared that it will make downloads of movie available on the same day as DVD releases:

Although the vast majority of all sales of movies are done on DVD, likely at mass market locations such as Wal-Mart, there is a slowly growing population of those who are playing for digital downloads. Such a phenomenon is becoming well established in the realm of music, where users of iTunes will pay 99 cents to download a song. Apple is now hoping to bring the same level of success it did to music over to movies.
Movies purchased from iTunes can be viewed on an iPod with video, iPhone, Mac or PC or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV. New release movies will be priced at $14.99 and older catalog titles at $9.99. The iTunes Store current carries over 1,500 films at present.

This is likely to covert into an increased share of the market. So even though there will be people who will be wanting a physical DVD, there will be a large number of people who will settle for the convenience of being able to download a movie onto their device of convenience and jump onto the iTunes bandwagon. This is bound to have an effect on the regular store sales of DVD's and will make them more unhappy.. tough luck, this will not go away.

Impending News: Microsoft to increase offer for Yahoo

2008-05-03T19:44:00.002+05:30

There is a lot of buzz in the press that Microsoft may increase its offer for Yahoo so that a deal becomes much closer. The press reports claim that Microsoft is very close to increasing its bid so that the impasse can get over and Yahoo becomes amenable to a negotiated deal rather than a hostile offer. From Bloomberg.com:

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., closing in on the biggest acquisition in its 33-year history, may seek to end an impasse with Yahoo! Inc.'s board by raising its takeover offer, a person familiar with the matter said. Talks intensified this week after Yahoo spent three months hunting for alternatives to the deal.
A higher offer may win over Yahoo's board, eliminating the need for Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to go to shareholders with a hostile offer, which might have spurred an employee exodus. A deal also may halt Yahoo's efforts to forge an online advertising partnership with rival Google Inc.

The deal remains important for both Microsoft and Yahoo. The more that the deal remains out of touch, the more likely is that Yahoo and Google will come to sort of agreement that will pass regulatory approval, and leave Microsoft way behind Google. For Yahoo, it is a now a diminishing third player and no longer seems to have the ability to move to second position.
Ultimately, from all the discussion, it would seem that the entire issue now resolves around the price to be paid. Yahoo claims that the offer under-values the value of Yahoo, and many of the prime shareholders seem to agree. So if Microsoft increased the offer, it may break the impasse and convince the board.

MySpace will launch MySpace Music

2008-04-05T19:48:00.002+05:30

MySpace is a very popular social networking site with the tens of active million users making it a very important portal overall. One of the popular features that keeps a lot of users on the site is the music feature. This has always annoyed the music labels, and finally they are getting a solution that is making them happy.

The social networking heavyweight announced Thursday that it has deals with Sony/BMG, Universal and Warner music labels to transform its current music offerings into a full-fledged jukebox of streaming and downloadable music. As the new features are rolled out in the coming months, MySpace Music will evolve into "what we think is going to be a transformative music experience for the user," says MySpace cofounder Chris DeWolfe.
Under the new agreement, De Wolfe says that labels plan to offer artists' entire catalogs for free listening and for-pay downloads. "We are considering a subscription model as well if it makes sense," he says. In an earlier interview, DeWolfe did not announce a pricing scheme nor would he say whether downloads would be MP3s or another format, or whether they would contain digital rights management. "Not all the music companies have embraced full non-DRM downloads," he said. "I personally think that is where the market is going but that will be a decision all the music companies will have to make."

From initial trends, it seems that the deal is something that record labels are happy with, and that will translate into terms that a lot of users may not end up liking. One has to wait and see how this will turn out.

Microsoft not going to increase offer for Yahoo

2008-04-05T19:19:00.002+05:30

A typical takeover effort typically starts with a negotiating bid, that is normally not exceptional, and then over a period of time, there is pressure for the bid to go up. What typically happens at this time is that more contenders will jump into the fray, putting pressure for increasing the bid; also, what may happen is that the board of the company being acquired pushes for a higher bid as a condition of accepting the bid; and in some cases, influential shareholders holding significant shares may agree to tender shares if the price being paid is increased.
However, the saga of Microsoft's takeover of Yahoo is not following any of these trends. The refusal of Yahoo's management to accept this offer was not a surprise, but everything else is. The value of Yahoo's bid is overall so high, that no white knight could be found who would be willing to fork out that kind of money. Not much of relief to Yahoo in this regard. Microsoft has also steadily refused to increase its bid so far, maybe in the expectation that eventually the pressure of investors and employee morale decrease will force Yahoo to accept, and there are signs that this may be happening:

Microsoft Corp is evaluating its bid for Yahoo Inc because the Internet company may have lost value since Microsoft made its offer, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The news, first reported by Reuters, sent Yahoo shares down more than 5 percent in extended trade.
After weeks of silence, recent comments from various sources to journalists suggest the software maker is hardening its stance and pushing Yahoo for action. The sources told Reuters that Yahoo has lost key personnel, making the company less valuable, while generous severance packages it handed out to executives and full-time employees in the case of a takeover have made it more expensive.

Of course, if Yahoo starts to lose key personnel and the industry sees much lower growth, then any hint of Microsoft lowering its bid may have a very strong impact on Yahoo. To some extent, analysts have made this deal a done deal in the end, that is, no matter the discussions, the deal will be made (in order to give the 2 companies a fighting chance against Google).

Sony changes plan to charge for removing 'bloatware'

2008-03-24T20:03:00.003+05:30

When you buy a new OEM machine, it comes with a lot of programs that are on trial, such as anti-virus software trial versions, and numerous other software. There are 2 advantages for the makers of these software as well as for the computer manufacturers. The software makers depend on a proportion of consumers becoming attracted enough towards these applications that they are willing to pay for buying these programs. Getting these softwares pre-installed on the machine helps expose them to a much higher number of consumers and increases the chances of conversion. For this advantage, these trial software makers pay computer manufacturers for the chance of placing their software on these machines. It is estimated that xomputer manufacturers can make more than $50 per machine from such software.
For a vast majority of the final consumers / buyers of the machine, these software consume hard disk space, as well as run all the time slowing the machine down. Most consumers will not know how to remove such software, and suffer. For an advanced user, the options include removing the programs one by one, or by doing a fresh install on the machine that will remove these software, called 'bloatware'. So, imagine the pleasure of consumers when Sony declared that it will give a machine that does not come pre-loaded with such software; then this pleasure turned to shock when they found out that Sony will charge them $49.99 for removing this bloatware. There was a strong reaction to such a move; imagine paying extra to have the manufacturer not loading extra stuff on the machine:

"Bloatware" is a term that is familiar to many new computer buyers. Most new computers come saddled with HDD and memory-robbing applications like trial versions of antivirus programs, various desktop search and chat applications, or perennial offenders like Adobe Acrobat. Computer makers rely on these add-on programs to generate additional revenue in the age of decreasing computer prices -- bloatware can add as much as $60 in additional revenue for each computer sold.
Sony, however, made the unwise decision to charge customers a $49.99 fee for the bloatware removal. Whether the charge was intended to somewhat makeup for the estimated $60 windfall from the application publishers or just an effort to squeeze more money from its customers remains to be seen. News of the $49.99 Fresh Start fee quickly spread around the Internet Saturday with sites taking Sony to task over the blunder. Sony quickly recoiled and removed the Fresh Start fee.

This quick reaction by consumers and Sony's quick acceptance of this customer outrage shows that corporations are quickly cottoning onto the fact that customers, especially in this age of quick communications can turn reactions against a company very fast. Sony last suffered such a bad reaction over their Rootkit fiasco, and the prolonged bad press at that time would have made them much nimbler this time.

Some of Microsoft's dealings with Intel and HP revealed

2008-03-02T16:10:00.002+05:30

It is not often that the internal dealings of a company such as Microsoft are released to the public for analysis, especially when it deals with the interaction of the company with other major chip and computer manufacturers such as HP and Intel. But, a federal class-action lawsuit provides access to internal emails that are worrisome to customers who have bought machines labeled Vista capable; they can no longer be sure that the certification provided by Microsoft to such machines is genuine. Read this article and these excerpts to understand more:

But documents show that in early 2006, a full year before Vista's release, there was intense discord within Microsoft over its dealings with Intel, HP and others in preparing to roll out the new system. The documents suggest Microsoft bowed to Intel's pressure in certifying certain chips as capable of running the new operating system to enhance sales. Intel declined to comment on assertions that it had pressured Microsoft. "It's private litigation between plaintiffs and Microsoft, and we're not a party to it," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said.
At issue is whether Microsoft misled customers by labeling PCs carrying the Intel 915 chipset as "Vista Capable" when they were put on sale in spring 2006, ahead of the much-anticipated launch of the Vista operating system. Only computers labeled "Premium Ready" carried the more advanced Intel 945 chip and could operate Vista's touted features, such as Aero graphics.

If all this is true, it is tantamount to deceiving computers. Customers buying computers do not have the technical competency to evaluate whether a particular chip and computer were capable of running Vista; if the certification says that the chip is capable, the customer would believe so.

What will Google do against Microsoft and Yahoo ?

2008-02-05T22:44:00.001+05:30

Microsoft really threw a major push when it announced an offer for Yahoo. For some time now, Microsoft has been smarting at being beaten by Google fair and square in the world of online search and advertising. This was a field that was essentially (not completely true, but approximately) invented by Google, and they have a commanding lead over both Microsoft and Google. Google has essentially been a seach / advertising company that is now trying to do other things, while Microsoft has been a major desktop company that is struggling to replicate its success in the online world (through a spate of new technologies and purchases), while Yahoo has tried to be a massive directory (and seeing the success of Google, tried to also focus on the advertising world). Google has had the benefit of some focused approach on the advertising world, and has reaped the benefits.
Yahoo has been seen as a company on the downward path, and all its efforts have not been able to push it up; it has been seen as having been outplayed by Google, and recently suffered the fate of having to layoff people (not a good sign for a company trying to be the best). It makes tremendous sense for Microsoft to suddenly gain a massive catch up by getting all of Yahoo's business.

According to a Reuters report, Yahoo said it would consider joining forces with Google in order to prevent Microsoft from acquiring it. What sort of partnership could it strike with Google that would hold Microsoft at bay while not triggering antitrust issues? Oh, and Yahoo says $31 per share isn't good enough.
Yahoo's managers have a lot of thinking to do. Microsoft's offer of $44.6 billion was not exactly a low-ball first bid. That represented a 61% premium over Yahoo's stock price on Thursday (Yahoo's stock has since gone up). Yahoo feels that the $31 per share offered undervalues the company. It didn't say that it had requested a higher number from Microsoft, which has indicated it will use cash and loans to buy Yahoo. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay suggested that Yahoo's real worth is closer to $39-$45 a share.

The fact remains that the final decision rests with shareholders, who may feel that unless a white knight comes into the picture (who can afford to pay more than $50 billion), Microsoft represents the best bet in terms of growing the business and taking on Google.
Google is not likely to take this lying down. A good first bet would be to appeal to Yahoo's management who would be apprehensive (or rather sure) about their diminished status in a Microsoft pecking line; in addition, there is the entire history of Microsoft's uncompetitive behavior to be thrown up, another good approach is to talk about the obvious problems of pairing the market leaders in online email and messenger. Microsoft would have likely prepared for all this, and one can be sure that there will be a lot more focus on making the Yahoo shareholder see this as a good step forward.

Apples doubles capacity of iPhone and iPod Touch for $100

2008-02-05T22:22:00.000+05:30

The iPhone and iPod Touch (and earlier the iPod) have done wonders for Apple, given the massive customer demand and the can't get enough of iPhone need of customers. I was watching a couple of iPhone users give a demo of the phone to friends who did not have the iPhone, and you literally see these people (admittedly geeks) were positively in love with the gadget; you really don't see that happen to people having other phones and gadgets.
Now Apple has decided to try and squeeze more money from people. Given that a lot of the buying of the iPhone used to happen for the higher-capacity 8 GB phone, it was natural for Apple to add more storage, and in the process, charge an additional $100. After all, why not make money when people are willing to give.

Apple doubled the capacity of the iPhone and the iPod Touch on Tuesday for an additional $100. The iPhone once again comes in two capacities: 8GB for $399 and now 16GB for $499. Apple sold 8GB and 4GB varieties on iPhone Day, but it discontinued the 4GB model after it cut the price of the 8GB model to $399. Something like 90 percent of all early iPhone buyers opted for the 8GB version.
And the iPod Touch can also store more music and videos now, with 32GB of capacity for $499. That device is now available in three versions, with Apple also selling a 16GB model for $399 and an 8GB model for $299.

There was a slight reduction in the sales figures for the previous quarter, something that should scare Apple to some degree. So the announcement of these new models should be a good answer to industry analysts, since there will be a number of users who will buy the highest capacity device, netting Apple an extra $100 in the process. The question however remains as to when Apple will overcome some of the shortcomings in the device, such as addressing 3G connectivity, and providing an inbuilt GPS solution.

HBO joins the online TV content fray

2008-01-21T12:30:00.000+05:30

HBO, one of the last holdouts in the age of providing digital entertainment media online, has finally given up (or maybe acknowledged that it will lose out on a whole bunch of subscribers if it does not enter the race) and launched a service called HBO On Broadband that features 400 hours of both movies and serials that can be downloaded onto a computer. However, as of now, there are several restrictions, with these restrictions across computer platforms, and locations:

The catch: To gain access, you must be a digital cable customer who subscribes to HBO, and you must use your cable company as your Internet provider. And, at least initially, you must live in Milwaukee or Green Bay, where Time Warner Cable will first test the service. (There's no extra cost for online access.)
HBO Broadband offers a broad selection of programming, including 130 movie titles that rotate monthly and top hits ranging from The Sopranos to Sex and the City, as well as documentaries. Usually, about six episodes will be offered at any one time, but for one series every month, every episode ever produced will be available. HBO co-president Eric Kessler blames technological issues for the delay in offering online video but says the new service continues the network's plan to "enhance the value of the HBO subscription by giving viewers greater access to our content."

This is almost like testing the waters, and one can forecast that geographical locations will get added, and so will more controls to prevent piracy. And right now this service is free, but one can be sure that at some point, HBO will want to make money with this.

The porn industry and the Blu-Ray and HD DVD format wars

2008-01-10T19:57:00.000+05:30

The last time there was a major battle for the next generation of video formats, Sony was on the losing side, and the porn industry had a major role in deciding the winner. Sony, being unwilling to have any association with the porn industry, made it difficult for the porn industry to employ the Betamax format, and this played an important role in the loss of the Betamax against VHS.
And now there is a new format war, with Sony on one side with its Blu-Ray and Toshiba with its HD DVD format. However, this time, the porn industry is not that much of a factor. There are many other players, such as the major studios, players such as Microsoft (with its gaming console having a video drive), and so on. And there are pros and cons for each. Blu-Ray is seen to be more expensive, and more complex to use, but then Warner Bros last week decided to move over to Blu-Ray giving it a major shot in the arm.

The adult film industry is still taking a wait-and-see approach to the Blu-ray /HD DVD wars. But while Blu-ray's perceived costs have pushed some companies into the arms of the HD DVD camp, Warner Bros.' decision last week to exclusively support Blu-ray has some thinking that the end of HD DVD is nigh.
The Blu-ray camp, led by Sony, has been fighting Toshiba and its HD DVD format for years in a battle reminiscent of the VHS versus Betamax battle. In that fight, Betamax maker Sony's refusal to work with the porn industry helped usher in a VHS victory when the adult industry capitalized on the burgeoning popularity of VCRs and video rentals.

Right now most industry players are straddling the fence, keeping both options open. The porn industry has been playing both formats, and has not really taken a firm stand. A good probability is that they will watch the way things trend and then take a decision.

Apple working on volume control for iPod's ?

2007-12-25T15:50:00.000+05:30

One of the problems with using an iPod and listening to some of your favorite music is that you may not realize when the music volume is too loud and liable to hurt your ears. Apple initially did not care too much about this particular problem, but then got hit with a class-action lawsuit over hearing loss caused due to a person. The claim was that the highest level of volume possible in a iPod was enough to cause permanent hearing loss. Apple had at that time responded by releasing a patch that allows users to set a maximum level of volume, but after that, there was no further news in this regard.
However, now Apple seems to have moved further in this direction, and it would now seem that Apple is developing a device that would allow the iPod itself to calculate how long the user has been listening to the iPod and at what volume, and then automatically reduce the volume. Refer this article.

Citing a new patent application, the report--to which Apple declined to comment--says the "device will also calculate the amount of 'quiet time' between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, allowing the volume to be increased again to a safe level."

This could be interesting. Granted, it would be a useful step, but imagine the surprise when a user listening to the device for some time suddenly feels the volume level dropping suddenly. Could be shocking unless the user knows that something like this is going to happen. And unless this is handled right, it could affect all the people who use an iPod as the base for all their music; they connect the iPod to a music system. Such a modification of the volume could also affect them negatively.

Ask.com allows erasing of past searches

2007-12-12T12:00:00.000+05:30

Once, there was the thought that all the searches that you made were not anything to be worried about; that thought did not last very long as it became clear that search engines were storing searches along with information. Fine, but even then a person does not know who are you - after all, your name and address are not revealed. And then there was research done on the basis of using the various searches conducted by the same computer, and enough information was able to be extracted that the actual address and person could be found. During this time, the question of privacy came to be raised more and more, and there was increasing pressure on search engines to modify their search archival to address privacy concerns.
And now search provider Ask.com has thrown the gauntlet much further. It has announced a feature called AskEraser that seeks to project an image of handling customer-privacy concerns by allowing users to set that their searches on Ask.com be deleted from the company's servers:

When enabled by the user, the feature will completely delete search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers -- including IP addresses, user IDs, session IDs and the text of queries made, according to the company. In most cases, the deletion will take place within a few hours of the time a search is completed, the company said.
But there are important caveats to keep in mind, Chester said, Ask.com, for instance, will still collect and store user search data by default, unless the user specifically enables AskEraser, Chester said. And enabling AskEraser does nothing to prevent third parties with whom Ask.com has relationships from collecting and storing search data.

There are some exceptions, but this is a further movement in the area of search engines being more concerned about privacy. One wonders as to whether Google will react to this move in some way, after all, Google is seen as the market leader in search, and it needs to not be concerned about the privacy of its users. At the same time, Google has made change only after some amount of pressure in the past through privacy experts and through the media.

Facebook forced to reverse plans on Beacon

2007-12-06T06:55:00.000+05:30

It seems so logical a business plan; you create a social networking site. Put in effort, put in a lot of useful features, and you start to get a lot of good publicity. People start pouring in, and you start salivating about how to use these large number of people. You get the perfect method, based on advertising. Everything seems fine, and then suddenly there is a large amount of uproar about the loss of privacy implied in this feature, and reluctantly, you have to withdraw the feature. And this is exactly what Facebook had to do over the 'Beacon' feature it introduced.

Facebook is giving members of its social network the ability to completely decline participating in the company's controversial Beacon ad system, a reaction to intense criticism that Beacon is too intrusive and compromises people's privacy. Beacon, part of the company's new ad platform, tracks certain actions of Facebook users on some external sites, like Blockbuster and Fandango, in order to report those actions back to users' Facebook friends network.
The idea is to generate advertising that is more effective because it is intricately combined with people's social circle, so that products and services are promoted in a more organic way via the actions of friends and family.

In this case, the analysis found that Beacon gathered a web of data about the activities of the user even under certain circumstances. For example, Beacon tracks users even if they are logged off from the social-networking site and have declined having their activities broadcast to friends. Beacon captures detailed data including for users who have never signed up to Facebook (but who are transacting on partner sites) or have deactivated their accounts.
Facebook went too far in terms of gathering and using data; however, this is also an example of how even the most fervent supporters can turn against you if they feel that they are being exploited - a sort of warning to developers of such sites.

The Mac gets hit with a virus

2007-11-02T23:36:00.000+05:30

For years, nay decades, Mac users have claimed that it is poor security prone OS's like Windows that suffer security issues, with regular patching and virus protection needed, and comparatively, Mac's are much more secure. Windows users and people from Microsoft have always countered that Windows is the pre-dominant OS sold, and with the low percentage of Mac users, hackers have not really concentrated on the Mac.
For what seems to be the first time, a Trojan has been found that is made for the Mac and infects it. The Trojan is a file made to look like a video codec, but is instead a piece of malware that will infect the Mac.

The first-ever "fake codec" Trojan malware for the Apple Macintosh was identified yesterday by Intego, a maker of Internet security software for the Mac.
A fake codec pretends to be a free video codec -- often it's posted on a pornography site -- to fool victims into downloading it. It's not a video codec at all, however. Rather, it's a piece of malware intended to compromise the victim's machine. Although there are many Microsoft Windows-based fake-codec Trojans posted on porn Web sites today, Intego's find is thought to be the first Macintosh-based fake codec.

As the Mac grows more popular after the shift of the platform to the Intel chip, it is likely that now hackers will start to pay more attention to the Mac, and to find out security holes.

Apple starts disabling hacked iPhones

2007-09-30T15:20:00.000+05:30

After the release of the iPhone, there was some consternation over the non-release of the iPhone outside the United States; it was speculated that hacked copies of the iPhone would be available outside the United States and that this was a natural occurrence. Apple would not be able to do anything about this. Well, looks like the design of Apple's engineers had actually planned for this. So, the latest firmware update to the iPhone has actually disabled the iPhone, apparently permanently for those people who have hacked iPhones. But is this the last statement on this matter ?

The iPhone 1.1.1 update, released Thursday, breaks phones that have been hacked so that they work with providers other than AT&T Inc., the only U.S. provider Apple has allowed to carry its mobile phones. Apple has said that it would fight any attempts to unlock the iPhone. Earlier this week the company released a warning that unlocked iPhones "will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed."
The new software is Apple's biggest iPhone update to date, and it fixes a number of security flaws in the mobile phone's browser, mail client and Bluetooth networking server. The majority of the flaws do not appear to be critical, but the update fixes a larger number of bugs than the first iPhone update, released July 31.
Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone's iTunes music player. iTunes checks for these updates once per week, so it may take up to seven days for all iPhone users to see these updates. Apple advises users to install the update immediately.

Now, while this patch fixes bugs in the iPhone and should be installed by users, it is unlikely that the hacker community will accept this matter as a fait accompli. It's a gauntlet that Apple has thrown to the hacker community, and with the hacks spawning a new business, there is a major commercial angle to it. Thus, it is likely that hackers will now start to put their creative thoughts on how to defeat this latest attempt by Apple.

iPhone in Europe

2007-09-22T21:32:00.000+05:30

After much hand-wringing and puzzlement over the US only release of the iPhone, Apple is slowly releasing the iPhone in European markets, although, not as attractive to users as it was for the US market. The plan is to release in the UK sometime in October 2007, and then go onto Germany on November 9, 2007. Although one can expects some amount of anticipation, there will not be the same buzz about the release as there was in the US market near its release. Many reasons for this lack of a buzz:
1. The industry to release a patched version of the iPhone that is not carrier restricted is in full swing, so a number of users would already have the iPhone in use with European networks.
2. Europe is far ahead of the US in terms of speed of telecom networks, with 3G being common, and the iPhone currently only supports EDGE which is a lot slower. For people already using 3G or planning to buy a phone to use 3G and get the high speed, the iPhone is a non-starter unless it gets a 3G version
3. Pricing is a major issue. The phone in the US sells for $399, and will sell for a converted value of around $540 in Europe which is a significant premium. Not sure how many people will buy the device at these prices.
4. Apple in the US has gone with a 2-year contract with AT&T for the service plan, but a long service plan is not par for the course in European countries. For customers used to paying on a regular basis and not getting locked into a contract, especially when the contract does not lead to a cheaper device, the iPhone will not seem so attractive.
will all these factors, one will just have to wait and see whether the buzz factor of the iPhone as a must have device is enough to overcome all these.

Get to the moon, win $20 million as a prize

2007-09-14T21:56:00.000+05:30

The X Prize foundation is a way to use money an as attraction to get people to use their talents and ingenuity to come up with solutions to intractable problems. So, for example, the first such prize, the Ansari X prize had an open prize to the first group that would send a spacecraft to sub-orbital flight twice within a period of 2 weeks; the prize, $ 10 million. Enough to invite a dedicated group of people who believed that they could do it, and if they did it, then they would not only walk away with fame, and a certain promise of further riches. Then they have open prizes for an effort in human genomes and another prize for the first group to have a vehicle that can go 100 miles per gallon. All these are creditable efforts. But now they are approaching a new frontier, with the moon offer (bankrolled by Google):

Google GOOG will sponsor the newest contest by the X Prize Foundation, which three years ago handed $10 million to a team that sent SpaceShipOne into suborbit and back twice over a two-week period. The nonprofit foundation seeks to promote scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity. In the new contest, which officials referred to as Moon 2.0, teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon. It will have to roam at least 500 meters of the lunar surface and complete several missions, such as transmitting photos and videos back to Earth.
The idea for the Lunar X Prize emerged from a meeting in March between Google co-founder Larry Page and X Prize Foundation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis. Page is on the foundation's board. Google is the exclusive sponsor. Google already has a Google Moon site, with photos and data focused on the Apollo moon missions. People thought Google Moon was just for fun, "but now you know we are serious about this," said Page, who helped make the Lunar X Prize announcement. "Science and engineering, if you ask an economist, are the only ways that we have to increase our economics and productivity. We believe that these kinds of contests, in setting an ambitious goal like going to the moon, are really a good way to improve the state of humanity."

The Moon is a strange episode in human space history. The US sent a number of missions to the Moon, and then curtailed them; after all, would anybody in the early 70's have believed that a few more flights would have the last people walking on the moon; they would have instead believed that the 80's and 90's would have seen moon bases.
Governments have their own agendas and impulses regarding why this needs to be done, but to get private foundations to do this is a new direction. Any such effort has many positive spinoffs, and if it can succeed, it will be a superb new effort.

Apple reduces price of iPhone by $200

2007-09-07T15:38:00.000+05:30

This was not something that anybody would have expected. There was the usual sense of expectation regarding what would be new products introduced by Apple, but nobody would have expected the price of the iPhone to drop by a third, to $399. This is good for the people who were thinking of buying the iPhone but the price of $599 was too expensive for them, or maybe they just did not want to spend so much on the iPhone.
It sure looks like Apple felt that the sales figures for the iPhone were not meeting the desired levels, and the cost is a significant factor, and hence the reduction in the price. This price will make the iPhone more attractive for the holiday season and should spur sales. However, there is a very vocal group of uses who feel extremely dissatisfied with this decision, and it is quite expected. After all, to buy a new gadget is good, and then to find out after you buy it that the price has dropped by $200 would make you look like somewhat of a fool. The users were fairly vocal on the Apple website, and the company decided to give all of them $100 as compensation.

Apple on Thursday offered a $100 store credit and an apology to early adopters of its iPhone mobile handset after they reacted angrily to a large price cut within 10 weeks of its launch. The move, designed to boost sales during the holiday season in the US, was an unusual one for the company. It commands premium prices for its products and tends to add features to them to justify maintaining existing prices.
IPhone owners, some of whom queued for days to buy the handset before it went on sale on June 29, had by Thursday besieged Apple with complaints that they had been taken advantage of and overcharged. Apple’s price cut had also disappointed the market. The company’s shares fell 5 per cent on Wednesday on concerns about the effect on profitability and the decision to cut the price so soon. Apple shares closed a further 1.3 per cent lower on Thursday at $135.01.

This may actually be the first time that Apple has to had face the backlash of customers in such a way, and would not have been pleasant for them. However, it must have been necessary for Apple to make such a move in order to avoid getting a bad backlash from customers; at the same time, given the need to increase sales, the price cut would have been necessary.

Microsoft releases version 1.0 of Silverlight

2007-09-07T12:24:00.000+05:30

In the latest development in the battle for getting the leading technology in the area of browsing capabilities and internet applications (also known as Silverlight vs. Flash), Microsoft has released the first version of Silverlight 1.0, touted as a rich media player. And, since no release is good without showing some level of support and incorporation, Microsoft also announced its early bird partners, organizations that have started using Silverlight. These include Home Shopping Network, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Entertainment Tonight (a TV show), Netflix, CBS Corp's TV division, MLB.com and with an additional 35 companies signed on.

Microsoft hopes such partnerships will help drive more than 200 million downloads of the player by the end of June next year. Microsoft is consciously not pushing Silverlight to users out via Windows Update, preferring to stimulate demand for the product through its partnerships.
Microsoft is making its move on turf currently controlled by Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash player, which is used by YouTube videos, for example. The beta and release candidate versions of Silverlight, which boasts 720p high-definition video that trumps the existing version of Flash, have garnered several million downloads so far, Goldfarb said.

And this is the true test. Adobe so far has been the owner of this space, with Flash and Flash Video being the dominant players. Now with the entry of Microsoft, which has its massive OS base and an equally massive marketing strength, it remains to be seen as to how this challenge will fare. Microsoft is also trying something different, with actually partnering with Novell to release a Linux version of Silverlight, a indication of how seriously it views the future of Silverlight.

AT & T provides new service to give parents control

2007-09-05T20:04:00.000+05:30

Nowadays a lot of parents feel that they have lost control on the internet and phone habits of their children, and feel distressed about this. However, it is difficult to act as a policeman at all points of time, so, to leverage on this demand, AT & T has come out with a new service that provides some sort of control facilities on the use of the wireless phone.
So AT & T's new Smart Limits for Wireless is a service that enables parents to set usage limits on the talk time, text messaging, instant messaging and downloading, and also setup filters for mobile web sites. The service provides for parents to control the total bill on their children's plans.

The new service, which is part of AT&T's Smart Limits program across multiple technologies, helps parents protect children from inappropriate calls, texts and Internet content by allowing them to block numbers they deem inappropriate and filter access to content on their child's phone.
The service also lets parents establish a maximum dollar amount that can be spent on download purchases such as ringtones and games, and control the time of day and days of the week that the phone can be used.
When a child nears the established usage limit for any wireless capability, he or she will receive a warning notice; once the limit is reached, the service will be restricted.

The service costs $ 4.99 per month, and given the number of parents worried about their kid misuse of the service, and also to protect them from harm, AT & T would expect this service to be a hit. However, this is not something that a lot of kids would appreciate, given the controls on overall text messaging and call when the total amount nears due.
The service also allows parents to go online and modify the limits that they have set up at any point of time. Of course, given that most parents are behind their kids in terms of technological understanding, it remains to be seen as to how many of them are able to figure out how to use this service effectively.

iPhones sales top that of Smartphones

2007-09-05T17:31:00.000+05:30

The iPhone is not a Smartphone as per many analysts, but industry specialists, grabbing at sales data proclaimed that when compared to other Smartphones, the iPhone was the market leader; and in the general handset category, it sold approx 1.8% of all handsets sold. These were based on figures from July, although I would doubt whether the first few months of sales should be an indicator for future trend. After all, the iPhone was one of the most publicized devices, with a halo like aura around it, and proclaimed as the new revolutionary device. It would not be surprising that so many people wanted to be the among the ones to carry the device as it would seem like a major new gadget, a cool thing.
The sales figure from iSuppli for iPhone sales till now have been used to project for sales figures for the next few years:

Apple's iPhone was the top-selling smartphone in July, research firm iSuppli reported Tuesday. On the basis of sales figures so far, iSupply predicted that 2007 iPhone sales would reach 4.5 million, would triple in 2008, and would hit 30 million in 2011. "This is a remarkable accomplishment for Apple," iSuppli said in a statement. It's "likely," the firm said, that iPhone sales so far represent the strongest start for a handset in history.
Greg Sheppard, chief development officer for iSuppli and the author of the study, said that there "was a lot of pent-up demand" for the phone. "The follow-up months will be the real proof of the pudding," he said in a telephone interview. Still, he said, it is a data point that iPhone "popped out ahead" of BlackBerrys, Palms, and other leaders in the smart phone category.
Steve Jobs' latest device tends to be seen as straddling two market segments -- smartphones, which allow users to install applications, and feature phones, which allow users to play multimedia. The iPhone matched sales of the leading feature phone, the LG Chocolate, Sheppard said, noting that some people probably wouldn't put the iPhone directly in competition with smartphones. "But," he said, "if you really look at it, it's a smartphone."

The advantage of the iPhone is that it is seen as having multiple advantages, being a very must-have gadget kind of appeal, being a iPod in terms of playing audio and video, and also having the features of a smartphone. This is a great combination and if Apple can maintain that, it will continue to surge ahead in market share.

Microsoft starts planning for the release of Vista SP1

2007-09-02T23:18:00.000+05:30

It's the inevitable. After the release of a new application or Operating system by Microsoft, come the regular questions about the Service Pack. There are a number of people who actually believe that the software becomes stable only when the first Service Pack is released; so it is important for Microsoft to release information about the Service Pack. One can be sure that information will be released in bits and pieces, but it seems clear that the Service Pack will be available for restricted beta testing in September (this month) and then finally out sometime early 2008. Given the complexity of this new system, Microsoft will need a lot of time to make sure that the Service Pack can get as wide a testing as possible; after all, nothing hurts the company as much as the news about bad service packs. For example, when I installed Service Pack2 for Win XP, one of my hard disks became unusable and had to re-formatted losing all the data on the system. This may be an isolated case, but if it happens enough times, it makes for a lot of noise on tech forums and among Microsoft baiters.

After lots of whispers, rumours from beta testers and confusing messages from Microsoft executives, Microsoft has finally revealed the full details about Windows Vista's first service pack. The company confirmed a three-month launch window, with a beta testers getting their hands on the update during September.
Microsoft is saying only "a few weeks" and "September", which are, after all, one and the same, for the beta. As for the final release, the software maker finally acknowledged rumours circulating June that the service pack be fully available until the first quarter of 2008.

As time goes by, doubtless we will hear more about this service pack.

Sony admits defeat to iTunes

2007-09-02T23:07:00.001+05:30

Sony had been trying for 3 years now to defeat iTunes in the market for digital music sales. And Sony is not a small player, after it is a conglomerate with a big studio, builds a variety of electronic devices and fast selling mobile phones, but it does not have an iPod. But Sony has also been scoring self-goals in its fight with the emergence of the Apple-iTunes combination. It was slow to adopt MP3 (doing so only in 2004), but its music players have remained locked to Sony's online music store (the same as Apple with iTunes), but this constraint did not work for most people. For the iPod after all, it was the much appreciated design that got people buying iPod's and then getting locked onto the iTunes store. In addition, Sony has been lagging behind the iPod in terms of features, with video incorporation happening only this year.

Sony Corp.'s three-year effort to beat Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store is over. The company, which is one of the largest movie, music and consumer electronics companies in the world, said Thursday that it will be closing down its Connect Music Store in Europe and the U.S. In its place, Sony is adding Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media technology to its music players and allowing consumers to download copy-protected content from numerous Windows Media-compatible music stores on the Internet, including those from Napster, Audible.com and WalMart.
Its first players weren't compatible with the fast-growing MP3 format and would only play Sony's proprietary ATRAC format -- something that didn't find favor with consumers. MP3 was eventually added in late 2004 but the players have remained locked to Sony's online music store for music purchases -- until this week's adoption of Windows Media. On the hardware front Sony has also had trouble keeping up with Apple. A video version of the iPod was launched in late 2005, but the same features weren't added to a Walkman player until April this year when devices went on sale in Europe. Walkman players with video still aren't available in the U.S. but will go on sale from September, Sony said Thursday.

This would be a big shock to Sony, it is not often that Sony has admitted defeat, but in the current case, it must not have been able to see any projections that would have enabled it to at some future point of time take on iTunes and win. But better to cut your losses and run.

YouTube returns to Thailand after it agrees to censorship

2007-09-02T22:57:00.000+05:30

So the web is not as all-powerful as we thought it would be. After Google and Yahoo changed their policies to agree to censorship in China, and then Second Life buckled down to US pressure and removed gambling from the online game, YouTube agreed to some amount of censorship and remove some videos that were critical of the country's highly regarded king. This agreement related to existing videos and new ones as well, which means extra overhead for YouTube as they will to review all videos referred to them by Thailand and remove the ones deemed insulting to the King:

Thai censors lifted their ban Friday after five months of blocking the online video site because it had carried material seen as insulting to the country's highly venerated king. The site's management has agreed to block any future clips that are deemed offensive to Thai culture or that violate Thai law, said Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the minister of information and communications technology.
Sitthichai said the agreement with YouTube — a site that allows people to post and share video clips — had been reached some time ago, but that there had been technical problems in implementing it. "Any clip that we think is illegal, we will inform YouTube and YouTube will have a look independently," he said. "If YouTube agrees that it is illegal for Thailand or against Thai culture, they will block it from viewers in Thailand."

Thailand has laws that prohibit any disrespect of the King, and people have been penalized in the past. However, there is no difference now if Iranian and Saudi Arabians censors prohibit a lot of videos that are either disrespectful of the Prophet or show too much skin. In addition, since China has an unstated law that any mention of democracy or openness is equivalent to sedition and must be punished, they must be justified in their attempts to censor what all people can read.

Nokia trying to get into mobile services

2007-08-30T19:36:00.000+05:30

It appears that Nokia does not learn easily. Long ago, in the year 2000, when it tried to launch mobile services that included downloading of song snippets as ringtones, operators were not very happy since that would have eaten into a revenue source that they were eying themselves. It seems like Nokia would like to try this approach again. After all, being just a handset provider may not be enough in these times of touch competition from other handset providers, and a seemingly easy pot of gold sitting there waiting for them to just grab it. And why would they not think such a thing, with operators failing to get a strategy that would help them grab users for high-data plans; and Nokia having an incredible number of music enabled phones in the market today, and in the hands of users.

On Aug. 29, at a London press conference in a converted fish market alongside the Thames, Nokia's chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo unveiled plans to launch a slew of services for mobile users—initially in Europe and Asia, and perhaps later in the U.S. Called Ovi (Finnish for "door") the gateway to music, photos, maps, and other content will be available starting later this year.
This time around, mobile operators may be willing to join in. The scheme includes an online music store rivaling Apple's iTunes, aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at the 200 million music-capable Nokia mobile phones already on the market. It also features an interactive multiplayer game service accessible to the 40 million Nokia Nseries phones now in use. And early next year, Nokia will add a service that lets consumers swap personal photos, videos, and audio.

The plan is ambitious, but it has several pitfalls. For example, operators are not likely to be very happy because they see service revenue as something that belongs to them, and not to a lowly hardware maker. In addition, this is a very fickle market and Nokia needs to let this particular section be very creative if it wants to attract users, and one is not sure about whether Nokia is capable of that.

Unlocking the iPhone

2007-08-27T22:20:00.000+05:30

Ever since the iPhone was released, there has been a quest among the hacking community to break open the restrictions placed on the iPhone. There would be 3 primary reasons for the hacking effort:
- It's a new device, hence the need for a large section of the hacking community to try and break it; after all, it's a device out there with a major reputation to be made for the first person who successfully is able to demonstrate a break
- The iPhone is locked to the AT & T telecom service for 5 years, and hence there is an effort to break it such that the phone can work with other services inside the US
- There is currently no announced service for the iPhone outside the US, and with a number of people having seen and heard news for months about this great new device, there is a strong factor in trying to get the device to work outside the US.
There have been some news in the past, but no confirmed hack for the iPhone that will break the AT & T activation need. It is of course only a matter of time, and there seem to be some credible news about these breaks:

The iPhone unlocking game heated up considerable over the weekend with no less than three people/groups claiming to have unlocked the coveted Apple device. The first and most impressive iPhone unlock comes from a New Jersey teenager and involves soldering, but most definitely works. Shortly after that came word from Engadget that the somewhat questionable outfit iPhone Sim Free had succeeded with a software only SIM unlock (Engadget claims to have an iPhone that was successfully unlocked).
What about the iPhone Sim Free hack? Engadget is pretty adamant that it works, the iPhone Sim Free folks unlocked one of their iPhones, which led Engadget to throw some bold tags around this statement: “Again: we can confirm with 100% certainty that iPhoneSIMfree.com’s software solution completely SIM unlocks the iPhone, is restore-resistant, and should make the iPhone fully functional for users outside of the US.”

Once such a news is confirmed, and hacking of the iPhone becomes easy, it is very likely that there will be a small industry that will grow around the concept of easy hacking of an iPhone so that it can be used outside the country.

Google Earth now adds Google sky

2007-08-23T21:29:00.000+05:30

If you are an avid watcher of Google Earth, use it regularly, and visit or create sites that create mash-ups from Google Earth, then you are going to love this. Google Earth, earth bound for so long (forget the parts about showing maps from Mars), has now turned to the skies, and is showing a new service called Google Sky, literally aiming for the skies. The service will allow users to view images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, the space based telescope:

"The basic idea is to take Google Earth and turn it on its head," Ed Parsons, Geospatial technologist at Google told the BBC News website. "So rather than using it to view imagery of the Earth, use it to view imagery of space."
Dr John Mason of the British Astronomical Association, Britain's largest body for amateur astronomers said: "Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars. "If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing."

Users will still need to have Google Earth, and need to select a geographic region from which to view the sky. The clarity will be good, and this could be an excellent tool to impart knowledge as well. Just imagine a scenario where students are given assignments for scientific research and that entails using Google sky.

Bank shutting down: Problems inside Second Life

2007-08-16T00:12:00.000+05:30

Second Life is a game where you can feel that you are in a different world, and indeed you are. It is a world with different rules, totally online and where you can be somebody different from what you are in real life, and also do something different. This lofty objective seems to have been getting badly bruised in the last few months. First, it was the whole concept of gambling inside Second Life that got clobbered by the real-world rule about no online gambling in the United States. And now this, a closure of a bank in the online world has prompted calls for monitoring of Online Financial Institutions by the actual real world monitoring bodies. Calls for monitoring of something that happens in an Online Game may seem crazy for an outsider, but things in Second Life are not so disconnected from the real world.
The currency of Second Life, the Linden is not disconnected from actual Dollars of the real world, with there being an actual conversion factor. And hence, the closure of a bank, Ginko, located in the online game, has had an impact on the real life wallets of people playing the game. The affected people are now obviously calling for greater supervision:

The recent collapse of Ginko Financial, a "virtual investment bank" in Second Life, has spurred calls for more oversight, transparency and accountability, especially when it comes to business practices in the metaverse. Last week, Ginko Financial -- an unregulated bank that promised investors astronomical returns (in excess of 40 percent) and was run by a faceless owner whose identity is still a mystery -- announced it would no longer exist as a financial entity.
The declared insolvency meant the bank would be unable to repay approximately 200,000,000 Lindens (U.S. $750,000) to Second Life residents who had invested their money with the bank over the course of its three and a half years of existence.

Combined with recent stories about the link between people who have had romances online and the obvious resentment felt by their offline mates, it seems that the original dream of 2 separate worlds, an offline world where you live in reality, and an online world where you live the life you want to lead, this dream is gone. There is just too much linkage between these 2 worlds, and to wish otherwise seems unlikely. What all of us are just waiting for is the first divorce case based upon a person being too dedicated to an online partner, and real world spouses. This will get to be even more problematic as you get better game playing equipment that provides a sensory feeling of the game.

Research unveils a paper battery

2007-08-15T17:02:00.000+05:30

Think about your current battery, big, bulky, hard, and full of chemicals. Somehow, it seems battery research does not move much, otherwise why would you need to have a mobile phone whose smallness is limited by the size of the battery. Cars running on fuel cells have similar large batteries, and even electric cars can only store batteries that will allow 50-60 miles of travel without re-charging. But as we develop newer devices, the demand on batteries to be more capable and to do more is going to grow. So, in a sign that research in this area is alive and kicking, here is a new paper based battery that still has some time to get into production:

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have come up with a working prototype of a battery made out of cellulose, a coating of lithium and carbon tubes the size of a virus: a sheet of black paper that stores an electrical charge. While it works on the same principle as any battery for sale in a corner store, the paper battery from Rensselaer is much different than a typical AA. For starters, it can be as large as a newspaper page, or cut to the size of a postage stamp. It can be inserted under human skin, and be powered in part by body fluids.
Dr. Linhardt says the device works, but cost will be the biggest barrier – which is why use in the extreme cold of outer space by customers with budgets running into the billions is the most promising takeoff point for the technology. “If you need something to work in outer space, money is no object,” he said. The paper battery also holds promise in medicine, where it could be implanted under a patient's skin and used to power medical devices such as pacemakers. And it can use electrolytes in bodily fluids such as sweat or blood to draw power. In a paper published yesterday, the Rensselaer team details its efforts, including the use of urine to power a test version in the lab.

As always, the development of such technologies take time, and go through several stages of on / off development, with many such technologies getting actually dumped because of infeasibility, but as long as research remains alive, and the demand for such battery solutions remains high, things will continue to improve.

Anti-SCO verdict to increase usage of Linux?

2007-08-15T16:27:00.000+05:30

Seems very likely. After the judgment of the Single Judge (which can be appealed), the case for more people moving to the Linux platform seems to be much more likely. For quite some time now, SCO has been threatening people with the promise of billions of dollars to be paid in royalty to SCO. When a corporation has to take a decision about purchasing an Operating System for use, it looks at the total cost. Now, Linux is free, has some support cost, and may seem more difficult for Windows-comfortable users to use, but the threat of royalty payments and the uncertainty was prohibitive. With that gone now, one can expect Linux sales to go up significantly:

The court victory likely means better business for Novell, which sells Linux software. Brent Williams, an analyst at the Benchmark brokerage, explained that many businesses interested in switching to Linux had been sitting on the sidelines while the SCO suit played out. They worried using Linux could obligate them to pay royalties to SCO or make them lawsuit targets. SCO has sued AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler for using Linux without paying them.
Companies like Novell and Red Hat make money by packaging and supporting Linux. IBM, which failed in its attempt to market a proprietary operating system of its own, has championed Linux as an alternative to Windows.

With this judgment, SCO gets a body blow, and investors reacted in the same way; the SCO stock was down 70%, and given that SCO is primarily a Linux patent earning company, it is expected that their current business model will be significantly affected. The biggest loser of course could be Microsoft, if more businesses move to a Linux based solution, the direct impact would be on the MS businesses of the Operating System and Office.

iPhone resulting in more trees being felled ?

2007-08-15T16:11:00.000+05:30

Sounds a bit strange, does it now. After all, the iPhone is a device like any other (well, maybe somewhat more advanced than other such devices), so what does it specifically have to do with more trees being cut? In fact, if you send more email and messages from the iPhone, it is less likely that you will use less paper, and hence save trees.
However, if you balance that with a telecom company that is bound in hide-bound policies unwilling to be changed, then you will realize as to what the association with AT & T is costing Apple. Well, a long preamble, the actual story is that now that customers have started receiving their bill for usage of the iPhone, the bill displays every login, every message and every call. So if you are a frequent user of the iPhone, you will get a bill that is very big in terms of number of pages:

Unlike most cell phone bills, the statement for the iPhone, which was released at the end of June to unparalleled frenzy from gadget geeks across the country, itemizes every data item -- including every text message, every Internet log in and every e-mail.
"AT&T should get a new tagline -- use AT&T, kill a tree," he said. But to Enderle, the biggest incentive for AT&T to change its itemized billing is financial. "You would hope that a manager at AT&T is looking into this. It's a huge waste of money for them. It's not like this cost of paper is passed through the user. This is straight cost to AT&T," he said. "Not only is this costing more money, but it's pissing off users."

And this is bang on the point. At a point when corporates are trying to become more responsible in terms of their environmental costs and responsibilities, such a billing policy that actually consumes this much paper, even more so because most people are not going to go through the bill in detail, is clearly irresponsible. It is also a very bad business decision by AT & T if they continue, since the cost of paper, printing and postage directly hits their profits and affects their shareholders. Users who are environmentally sensitive will certainly not appreciate this particular policy.

Universal to try out DRM-less music

2007-08-11T22:29:00.000+05:30

First there was music on CD's, then came the MP3's followed by Napster, swear words in the language of music studios. As a fight-back, DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology was developed to protect against this increasing piracy. Users did not appreciate all this stuff about DRM since it had some quirks, such as not being able to play bought content on other media devices, and so on, plus restrictions on moving the songs onto multiple devices.
Then came the change. EMI and Apple made a change, by allowing users to purchase DRM-less songs (although at a higher charge). Other music recorders were aghast, and made snide comments at that time, but it was pretty clear that they were waiting to see whether the strategy would be successful, and seems like a small step to test the waters. So, Universal is now going to allow music sellers to sell DRM-less songs (interestingly, not to Apple's iTunes):

Vivendi's Universal Music has said it is to test the digital sale of songs from artists without the customary copy-protection technology. It will allow the sale of thousands of albums and tracks available in MP3-form without the protection, known as digital rights management (DRM).
Universal said: "The experiment will run from August to January and analyze such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s." Retailers including Google, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com, will participate in the DRM-free trial, Universal said.

An experiment indeed ! I am pretty sure that if they taste success, they will make this experiment a strategy, and also start to seed songs on iTunes. One does not know the price point as yet, but there is no reason why they would not try to make money as iTunes does.

SCO no more a threat to the Unix Community

2007-08-11T21:46:00.000+05:30

Some time back, there was a major commotion in the open-source community when SCO, now effectively a patent-holding vulture, staked claim to some prime Unix patents and filed a case against IBM for contributing Unix code to Linux, and followed suit next year by filing similar claims against Novell, claiming that Novell's claims to owning Unix were false.
Well, how things have turned. In a judgment that overturned all these claims, and instead put SCO on a path to closure, a judge ruled in the case that it was indeed Novell that owned the Unix and Unixware copyrights, and closed SCO's claims. In addition, in a judgment that will create immense trouble for SCO, the judge also ruled that after SCO's deals with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, it is SCO which owes Novell a share of the revenue such generated. And since Novell owns the license, SCO no longer has a leg to stand on in its case against IBM and Novell can force SCO to withdraw the case.
This judgment is something that will be welcomed by most people, especially people from the open-source industry, who always had the threat of SCO's cases open, and reinforced recently with the threat from Microsoft that it also owned some patents that were at the core of Linux. Read more details of the judgment:

In the ruling, the judge said SCO must pay Novell, but the amount will be determined in a trial, said Pamela Jones, founder and editor of Groklaw, a Web site that follows open-source software legal issues.
The ruling is good news for organizations that use open-source software products, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "From the perspective of someone who is adopting open-source solutions to run in the enterprise, it proves to them that the industry is going to defend the platform, and that when organizations attack it from a legal perspective, that the industry collectively will defend it," he said.
The decision is "abysmal" news for SCO, according to Zemlin. "Their future is looking bleak," he said.

Now the boot is on the other foot. It is Novell that can file claim to recover revenue from SCO's earnings, something that a number of people in the open-source community will really welcome. In addition, the fact that there is no longer a threat to the Linux community is sure to be welcomed. Next to Microsoft, SCO must be the next most disliked name among these people.

Hacking the iPhone and ease of hacking the Mac

2007-08-05T18:20:00.000+05:30

For a long time, Apple and Mac users have disdained the PC and Windows as very bad in security, and instead tom-tommed the relative lower number of hacks on the Mac. Microsoft has always been on the defensive in terms of security, and the large number of cracks and holes available on the OS and apps have always led them to be worried. There have been people who have been saying that Mac has not shown so many cracks just because it has a 5% market share, and people have not found it worth their while to try and break through the Mac OS security:

Though there has yet to be any documented criminal hijacking of the iPhone outside of a lab, Miller says his research shows the relative ease of hacking smart phones, as well as Macs in general. He spoke with Forbes.com about the iPhone's vulnerabilities, Apple's short-lived patch and the company's undeserved reputation for building secure computers.
There are two issues with the iPhone. First, the specific weakness that we found in its Web browser. But there's a more fundamental problem. The iPhone runs everything as "root." In other words, there are no privileges for different users. They should have built layers of security. Instead, if you can find a single crack, any user has the entire phone at their disposal. Last week they basically patched a hole in the wall. But inside, it's still pudding.
Bad guys aren't yet targeting Macs because they want to maximize their time. That means writing viruses that target 95% of computers rather than 5%. Apple currently has around 3.5% of the market, but its market share is growing by around 35% a year. As Mac's numbers creep up to 30% or 40%, cyber-criminals will start asking whether it's better to spend two weeks writing a bug for Windows or just a couple days to write one for Macs.

Almost nothing in this interview is complementary to Mac, but one tends to agree with what he says. Windows is the dominant OS, and most hackers are anyhow biased against Microsoft, in addition people are ready to believe that Windows is inherently insecure, and hence most hackers target Microsoft. Now that the iPhone is a well advertised target, one can expect many more Black Hat hackers to target the iPhone for benefit, and for Apple to be on the backfoot.

Real life invades online world: Gambling banned in 'Second Life'

2007-08-05T16:02:00.000+05:30

'Second Life' is a very popular online game, with 8.5 million avatars (representing real people). Now, since creating an avatar is free, this figure is not representative of all the total number of people involved in Second Life, but the number is still a fairly high number. Second life promises a real world online, where you can . Since gambling is a major part of life, gambling inside second life is also common, with the ability to gamble at baccarat, poker, and other games. Now, the difficulty for Linden Labs, the makers of Second Life is that online gambling is explicitly banned in the United States, and in the past, authorities have taken steps to enforce the ban. Second Life may be different, since the gambling is done by avatars, and not by the real person, yet Linden Labs has backed down, and enforced a ban on gambling, and threatened to take a number of measures if it sees gambling happening:

Although "Second Life" is home to large corporations such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Intel Corp., which have virtual advertisements and marketing promotions, thousands of gambling shops dominate commerce. Virtual characters, known as "avatars," may compete at baccarat, poker, slots or other games.
San Francisco-based Linden Lab, which operates "Second Life," imposed the gambling ban last week, citing in a blog "conflicting gambling regulations around the world." The company may remove violators' virtual equipment and may suspend or terminate accounts. Linden Labs also threatened to report user information to authorities.
Numerous "Second Life" fans complained in message forums and on their blogs that the ban was a heavy-handed move to restrict freedom, and experts said the ban could crimp revenue.

This step would be a big shock to users, who would have not had the expectation that constraints from the real world would come zooming in, and the company would buckle down. Depending on user reaction, and given the sense of shock that a lot of users would have felt, the membership and revenue would go down to some extent (there was some initial reaction at the blog, refer this link). On the whole, not a good thing. There are numerous other things that happen in online games, and if the reason for curtailing this is because the US Government is not getting a cut of the online gambling revenue, then it seems very mercenary.

Tech Titans challenge copyright claims in the media

2007-08-05T14:05:00.000+05:30

Sounds a bit long-winded, but is a simple thing. When you watch a baseball match or a football match, you will get bombarded with warnings that tell you what you can or cannot do with the thing that you are watching on TV. They never tell you what you can do, instead it is all about not reproducing nor transmitting it any form, coupling this with an official warning and with logos of the league. This practice is now being challenged by a tech association, Computer & Communications Industry Association (comprising such titans such as Google and Microsoft) who contend that these warnings do represent the whole truth, and hence are essentially misleading customers about their rights.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission Latest News about Federal Trade Commission stating that such organizations as Major League Baseball, the National Football League and NBC/Universal, to name just a few, have been misleading consumers for years about their rights under the fair use doctrine in copyright law.
"Every time an American consumer opens a book, plays a DVD or watches a wide range of broadcast programs, he or she is confronted by strong language warning of what they are not allowed to do with that product," the executive summary of the complaint reads. "By design or effect, many of these warnings are misleading and harmful to millions of American consumers, customers and businesses," it continues. In fact, these statements grossly misrepresent federal law, which allows use of this material in certain circumstances, the CCIA contends.
"Uses of copyrighted works unauthorized by the copyright holder are not only permitted by federal law," reads the complaint, "they are actively encouraged by it. Section 107 of the Copyright Act, for example, encourages the unauthorized use of copyrighted works for various purposes, including criticism, commentary and news reporting. Under some circumstances, fair use permits the reproduction of an entire work by consumers."
Further, it goes on to say, MLB's claim that news accounts or "descriptions" of the game cannot be "disseminated" is, no pun intended, completely off base. "No author may copyright facts or ideas. Copyright serves to promote the dissemination of information by ensuring that every idea, theory and fact in a copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public exploitation at the moment of publication.

This seems an important issue. For years now, viewers have been essentially threatened that even if they take a section of the recording for doing a critical commentary, it is illegal; and how many users are so aware of that their rights that they don't get dispirited by such challenges.
The concept of fair use is subject to a fair amount of interpretations, and with the rapid advance of technology, legislation and legal compliance is typically falling behind. And for fundamental issues affecting the First Amendment Rights of a citizen, it is even more difficult for a court to refer to the Constitution and interpret it in such cases. Not to talk about how this complaint may even be biased, since many of the complainant companies are running searches, user to user networks, on which many of these clippings get posted.

Gphone: Google Phone ?

2007-08-02T22:22:00.000+05:30

There have been rumours of a Google phone (short form 'Gphone') for some time now. Now Google is a search company, or rather it is a company that is trying to do a lot of things, but which makes most of its money from search. It has tried to enter the mobile world through a tie-up with carriers about placing Google search in the mobile space. Now carriers are typically very hard creatures to work with; they don't allow much freedom.
And there was this revolution that happened. Apple released the iPhone in a tie up with AT & T, but shockingly for the telecom industry, it was Apple that called the shots. This was a new type of device with a lot of hype, and hence AT & T would have allowed this. But any such move does set a precedent that Google could easily try and copy:

The company, which has made billions of dollars in Web advertising on computers, is courting wireless operators to carry handsets customized to Google products, including its search engine, email and a new mobile Web browser, say people familiar with the plans. It wants to capture a big chunk of the fast-growing market for ads on cellphones.
Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the cellphone project, say people who have been briefed on it. It has developed prototype handsets, made overtures to operators such as T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, and talked over technical specifications with phone manufacturers. It hopes multiple manufacturers will make devices based on its specs and multiple carriers will offer them.

For Google, the mobile market is the hottest new emerging market, and must be the focus of a lot of strategy sessions at Google headquarters. Carriers have been not so easy to convince, but Google's might and the precedent of the iPhone could change things. If Google does come out with a cellphone, then one would expect more Wi-Fi integration and other methods of browsing, something uncomfortable to carriers since that is outside of their data plans.
The further advantage of having ads on cell phones is that they can be targeted better, and hence Google can ask for and earn more revenue per ad. One thing is sure, Google will do all they can to get an entry into this business, even if it means buying up spectrum and launching itself as a carrier.

An apple patch that you might want to take

2007-08-02T00:26:00.000+05:30

Apple has recently released a patch, 2007-007 update for MacOS X, 10.3 and 10.4. This is a mega patch, fixing over 45 defects, out of which 17 are serious security issues where hackers could compromise systems and are classified as equivalent to 'critical'. Since Apple also uses a number of open-source projects, approx 75% of the patches were in the open-source software that Apple blends in with its own code.
These open-source bug fixed include fixes in the following apps: Kerberos, PHP, Samba, SquirrelMail and Tomcat. Components of MacOS X patched as part of this release were CFNetwork, the Mac OS X library of network protocols; CoreAudio, the API (application programming interface) that handles sound on Macs; the zgrep file compression utility; iChat; and WebCore, the part of the WebKit application framework that handles HTML rendering. Fixes also included fixes in Safari (including a fix for a problem on Safari on iPhone)
One normally hears primarily of Microsoft releasing patches at regular intervals to fix security holes and other bugs, so it would be interesting to evaluate whether this gets an negative publicity for Apple. Microsoft would like to advertise this as claiming that OS X has also a number of flaws, and equally, open source technology has a number of security holes for which there are no clear owners, and the total cost of ownership of open source systems is high, as per the Microsoft argument.

Laser printers being a health risk

2007-08-02T00:18:00.000+05:30

It was bound to happen. Almost everything that we come into contact with over a period of time will be classified as a health risk. So, the latest article to join the category of being classified as a health risk are some laser printers, model numbers unspecified. Why are they health risks ? Well, a report from the Queensland Institute of Technology in Australia has claimed that out of 62 printers tested, 17 laser printers generated enough spray particles that were so easily inhaled that they could be classified as a health risk:

A report from the Australia's Queensland University of Technology says the particles emitted from some laser printers were as harmful as cigarette smoking. They tested 62 printers. Seventeen printers generated enough fine particles that were easily inhaled and gave you some face time with a "significant health threat," according to Physics professor Lidia Morawska. Swell.
While the study named names -- Canon, HP Color Laserjet, Ricoh and Toshiba -- they unfortunately didn't say anything more about the brands other than "popular models in the U. S. and Australia sold internationally." Hey, come on kids, we need more.

So now, when evaluating a model of a laser printer, in addition to evaluating the dpi, the number of pages printer per minute, cost per page, etc, you will also need to evaluate the danger quotient. And soon, you might find a person filing a class action lawsuit against his company and against printer manufacturers for an unsafe working environment.

Sprint network to use Google Search

2007-07-28T13:47:00.000+05:30

Google is already a leader in the Internet Search market, is competing with Microsoft in the desktop search, and now has made an entry in the mobile search market. It has announced a tie-up with Sprint Nextel Corp that will add the Google search and mapping services to Sprint's high-speed wireless network. This is a good deal for Sprint in the sense that Google is a world-leader in the area of search and has an excellent brand name.
Sprint's plan is to create a high speed WiMax network that will be 5 times faster than today's networks, and will cover a city wide area. It can be used by devices other than mobile phones, given that it is actually a wireless network accessible by all devices that support this kind of connection. Once this network is rolled out, it is a service that Sprint will charge for, and Google will be available on the home page of this network.

The agreement gives Reston, Va.-based Sprint the prestige of working with the most popular search engine, along with a source of revenue, West said. For Google, the deal brings a way to extend its search engine into the mobile-device market.
West said Google will pay Sprint as part of the agreement, declining to be specific. Sprint and Craig McCaw's Clearwire Corp. said last week they would use a technology called WiMax to build a wireless network that's more than five times faster than today's standard.

This deal is a big deal for Google. Given the speed with which the mobile platform is proliferating and the increased tendency to build devices that allow for internet access, it is important for Google to be available on this platform. In addition, given that there is a class of devices that use Microsoft's Mobile platform, one can be sure that Google will not be the default search on those devices, so Google needs to network with all other providers and platforms.

Microsoft drops price of HD DVD add-on for Xbox 360

2007-07-27T17:49:00.000+05:30

The battle for the next generation of DVD players is getting hotter, although it is a long way from decided right now. Sony's Blu-Ray seems to be ahead in the race with the HD DVD, with increasing adoption by the retailers and media industry. However, these are such early days that things can change a lot in the next few months, eventually leading to a decision on the winner. The ones who lose out are the early customers, who end up choosing Blu-Ray or HD DVD players and discs, and then it turns out that the format they choose is the loser and not supported later, or that they buy a player and do not get movies for the player later.
Microsoft is doing its bit in the fight against Blu-Ray and for the HD DVD player, by reducing the price of the HD DVD add-on to the Xbox360 by $20 to $179. In addition, Toshiba extended the offer of 5 free HD DVD movies to people buying this add-on:

"With the price reduction to $179, the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player continues to be the most affordable way to enjoy high definition," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of the global marketing, interactive entertainment business, entertainment and devices division at Microsoft.
This price drop and movie giveaway may entice some buyers who already own an Xbox 360, but Sony and Blu-ray's recent victories in retail and rental outlets may prove to be a more powerful weapon. $179 HD DVD players won't be too attractive if consumers can't easily find HD DVD content in their favorite stores. Conversely, if Microsoft's price drop results in sales of large numbers of HD DVD players, retailers may change their tune.

Still a long way to go, and the fight to attract people to these respective platforms will keep on happening for some time more. It would seem like that Blu-Ray is currently leading the fight, and Sony will keep on pushing for more alliances and adoption.

Ask.com goes for anonymous search

2007-07-21T23:32:00.000+05:30

Google has faced some rough times over the past few years due to its policies on privacy getting thoroughly questioned by privacy experts. It has had to reduce the amount of time that it carries information about users, and is now down to 18 months, from the previous years and years that it used to carry such information. Well, Ask.com has thrown down the gauntlet significantly, and if another search engine were to implement such a policy, the pressure on Google would grow significantly.

Ask.com took a major step toward protecting protecting the privacy of its users when it announced yesterday that it would be launching a new tool that would allow users to use its search engine anonymously. The tool, called AskEraser, will ensure that users' search records will not be retained by the company in any form for any period of time. Users will be able to set AskEraser settings in their privacy preferences, and the company says that the settings will be clearly displayed on results pages so that users will always be aware of the privacy status of their Ask.com searches.
The move comes after Google's recent attempts to placate privacy advocates by shortening the lifespan of its search preference cookie (as long as users never return) and anonymizing its server logs after 18 months. Ask.com also decided that it will anonymize server logs after 18 months, ensuring that even users who don't make use of AskEraser will be able to rest easy knowing that their search histories won't be kept around forever.

This is currently a voluntary measure on Ask.com, and users will have to change their settings for this to work. However, one is always curious about this major fight regarding privacy, since all such time limits such as 18 months is based on the fact that a user does not return to Google, and it is hard to find people who have used Google once and not used again for 18 months, at which time the user's information will be wiped off from the servers.

Duke and iPhone resolve problems

2007-07-21T23:21:00.000+05:30

Earlier this week, there was a major issue over the iPhone apparently causing a Denial of Service attacks on the Duke wireless network, and the issue quickly blew up. Apple would have been in the forefront of attempts to make sure that this issue gets resolved due to the potential bad publicity for the iPhone. Well, it's now blown over, and Apple gets a clean chit:

Initial reports of the problem placed the blame for the outages squarely on Apple's iPhones, which flooded the Cisco WAPs (Wireless Access Points) with thousands of address requests per second. However, in a statement released this afternoon, Cisco Systems admitted that the problem was caused by a Cisco glitch.
The problem could be particular to Duke. Other large universities—specifically the University of Wisconsin at Madison—have not experienced problems with its registered iPhones and Cisco-based Wi-Fi network, according to Dave Schroeder, an administrator in UW's Division of Information Technology. "We have seen upwards of 120 unique iPhones since June 30 on our campus-wide wireless infrastructure, which also uses Cisco 802.11b/g access points. To date, we have not encountered or detected any undesirable behavior from iPhones," said Schroeder. "As I have also not heard reports of errant 802.11 iPhone behavior from any other institution or site, it appears that the issue at Duke may be unique. There may be something unique to Duke's particular wireless installation configuration that the iPhone may be exposing," he added.

Of course, that is something that needs to be investigated further. There is something in the Duke network that was causing the problems to happen, and there is no certainty that such issues will not happen again.
There is an additional comment in the bottom of the article quoted above that could also cause certain problems

"My suspicion is that Duke's network requires Cisco's (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) security encryption and the iPhone doesn't have that incorporated into it. That could be a source of the problem," said Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner in San Jose, Calif.
"Cisco's LEAP is an enterprise deployment not seen in the consumer market at all. The iPhone doesn't have a lot of the features you'd normally expect to see in an enterprise class phone," he added.

This was certainly a negative comment by an analyst, and this is something that Apple needs to quickly address. Apple would want this phone to be adapted in the enterprise segment as well, those segments carry a number of phones with them.

iPhone causing denial of service attacks

2007-07-18T23:30:00.000+05:30

Could it be too good to be true ? The iPhone is one of the tech marvels that happens once in a few years, and it has shown itself to be a revolution in the designing of phones, although the restriction on carriers and the relatively slow network are acting as hobble-stones.
Well, in the latest news on this area, the iPhones have been caught to be behaving very strangely on the Duke University campus, with around 150 iPhones (a fraction of what would be available once the students come back from holiday) bring several wireless access points to a halt, in an imitation of a Denial of Service attack, probably the last thing that Apple wants to hear at this point:

The iPhone is flooding wireless access points at the US Duke University with MAC address requests, resulting in a denial of service-like attack that is taking out 20 to 30 access points for 10 to 15 minutes at a time – weird! The iPhones are asking for an address that isn’t on Duke University’s network, and when the iPhones don’t get a response, they keep on sending out requests, flooding the available bandwidth.
Help has been sought from Cisco, the maker of the school’s networking equipment, and technical support has been sought from Apple, although there is only speculation online as to precisely what might have caused the problem – Apple isn’t saying anything yet as it no doubt investigates the problem. When the fix inevitably comes, either the iPhone, Cisco’s equipment, or both, will simply be patched with a software update to resolve the problem.

So even though it will probably be a short-lived problem, the fact that such a problem occurred reflects badly on Apple's quality regime. And it is good that it happened at a time when the university was thinly populated, otherwise at peak times and if happening in a number of places at the same time, the problem would have been magnified many times and probably resulted in a loss of face for Apple.

Security company warns against using iPhone's web dialer

2007-07-18T22:34:00.000+05:30

The iPhone has a great new feature, and since it is a combination phone and browser, the feature can work really well for most users. But like any other new great feature, there is tremendous capability for misuse, and seeing the ease of misuse, security companies are warning users against using this feature, or to be very careful when using this feature.
What is the feature? Well, the iPhone uses Safari as a web browser. Now, if the web site displays a phone number, all that the user has to do is to click on the phone number in the browser, and the number will get dialed. This is a great feature, but so is the scope for misuse. Imagine the phone in the hand of a neophyte who is viewing some 'interesting' site on the browser, and there is a number displayed along with a catchy slogan. Press the number, and if the number is an international number, or a fraud number, the calls could become very expensive very soon.

Attackers could exploit a bug in this feature to trick a victim into making phone calls to expensive "900" numbers or even keep track of phone calls made by the victim over the Web, said Billy Hoffman, lead researcher with SPI Labs. The iPhone could even be stopped from dialing out, or set to dial out endlessly, he said.
In order for the attack to work, the bad guys would have to either trick iPhone users into visiting a malicious Web site or make a legitimate Web site send untrustworthy information to the iPhone using what's known as a cross-site scripting attack. "Any time someone could control the content that's getting sent to the iPhone [the possibility of an attack] exists," Hoffman said.

It is not as difficult as it looks. It is actually as easy as letting the iPhone be used by a child or by somebody else who is not so experienced, and it is not difficult to create a site that will look attractive and feature this kind of mischief. But as of now there is no way to prevent it, so being careful is the only good way of dealing with this problem.

Some Democrats criticize carrier restriction for iPhone

2007-07-15T00:48:00.000+05:30

This seems a bit funny. During a Congressional hearing on regulation in the wireless industry, some Democratic leaders lit up on Apple and the iPhone for restricting usage only to AT&T as an exclusive carrier for 5 years. It was sought to be portrayed as a limitation to customers who either had other providers or who were located in areas where AT&T did not provide coverage. Seems a bit strange to be objecting to something that seems so central to how the wireless industry works:

The iPhone "highlights both the promise and the problems of the wireless industry today," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecom and the Internet. "This cutting edge technology breaks new ground … [but] consumers can't use this service with other wireless carriers" and those in areas not reached by AT&T cannot use the iPhone at all, he said.
Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., was less concerned. "Competition spurs carriers to innovate and build a better mousetrap," he said. "The iPhone is the newest mousetrap and now other carriers will be working to top it." Members convened the hearing to debate whether wireless service agreement regulation should be transferred from state public utility commissions (PUCs) to the federal government. The wireless industry has long favored a more national approach, but state PUCs are hesitant to give up control.

This restriction to AT&T has long been sought as a major weakness for the iPhone, since there will be a number of customers who will not be able to switch over to AT&T because of existing contracts. However, the iPhone is not a device that has a major share of the market, and there will be more devices that will come out of a similar nature that will allow people to use these devices. It is not in the nature of an anti-trust deal that requires lawmakers to comment. It would be nice if there was no restriction, but this is a commercial contract.

Google buys Postini for $625 million

2007-07-13T09:13:00.000+05:30

Continuing in its quest for trying to beat Microsoft in the office category, Google made another big buy, buying a 'communications security' firm, Postini, for $625 million. What does Positini do ? Well, it lets corporations set security rules for all communication happening inside the company, such as e-mail, instant messenger and browsing activities. Such policies are necessary for companies, be it to maintain a track of communications for legal purposes, to filter e-mail for spam and viruses, or to prevent employees from accessing certain type of information.

When corporations adopt Postini's software, they can access, filter and impose restrictions on their employees' e-mail, instant messaging and Web habits. And because Google's moving into corporations -- it's fighting Microsoft for the right to rule over our cubicles -- helping firms keep an eye on their workers is an important goal.
There's a useful purpose to these corporate lockdowns, of course. Google notes that companies are under regulations to preserve all their data; the SEC is going to want to know if you discussed setting up Cayman Island shell corporations over AIM. So companies that are itching to use Google's office apps -- Gmail, Google documents, Google Talk, etc. -- can't switch over until the software can be made to obey such archiving rules. Companies are also targets of espionage, they're subject to leaks, and they suffer losses due to viruses and other network attacks. By keeping workers' computers pinned down and monitored, Postini can mitigate all these risks, it says.

Postini is not meant for the employee, it is meant for the corporations to better enforce policies. This acquisition by Google will help make Google's apps (such as Google Pack, Google Talk, etc) be more usable in an office context, and give them a realistic chance of competing with Microsoft's products, Google's prime goal.

Don't use iPod in a thunderstorm

2007-07-13T09:00:00.000+05:30

In a report on a man struck by lightning while jogging and using an iPod, the report concludes that even though the iPod did not attract the lightning, once struck, he suffered far greater harm to his body due to wearing the iPod. Refer this report:

His eardrums were ruptured, his jaw fractured and he suffered first- and second-degree burns from his chest — where the device was strapped — up into his ear channels, along the trail of the iPod's earphones. He also had burns down his left leg and foot, where the electricity exited his body, blowing his sneaker to smithereens in the process.
Heffernan said in an interview with the Canadian Press that the man's experience ought to be a cautionary tale for anyone wearing earphones outdoors during a thunderstorm. "Using things like this, a mobile phone or an iPod, there isn't actually an increased risk (of incurring a lightning injury)," he said from Vancouver. "But we just suggest that if you are unlucky enough to be hit by lightning while listening to anything with earphones, you may be more likely to do yourself some damage."
"But once electricity contacts the iPod, then the metal will conduct the electricity and can cause secondary burns, as this gentleman had to his chest underneath where the iPod was and up where the wires went up into his ears, and possibly even cause enough muscle contraction that either caused the jaw fracture or perhaps he fell forward onto his jaw."

Sp, even though the iPod did not cause the electricity to hit him, once he got hit, it amplified the damage and caused him some permanent damage. So this is more of a precaution to not use devices such as iPod's and mobile phones in a thunderstorm or when there is a higher chance of electricity hits.

Selling security exploits

2007-07-07T14:05:00.000+05:30

The biggest fear of software makers, application system makers and the like (Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and numerous other big entities) is coming true. Ever since software holes and bugs started to come into existence, there was always the pressure between the software company trying to release a patch, and hackers trying to exploit this defect. In the past, software makers would try to apply pressure on the defect finders to keep it quiet till the patch is released. If the patch was found by a big company, they would normally respond to pressure from the likes of Microsoft and not release into the public domain.
However, this was not happening more and more, with the security companies releasing their findings independently of the software makers. Some of them would even sell these to people who would exploit them for nefarious purposes. As an example, review the number of botnets that exist in the internet today, with millions of computers being hacked into and controlled. The situation was literally demanding a market-place for such bugs:

An eBay-like auction site that sells vulnerabilities will improve security by ensuring researchers get a fair price for their work, its founders say. "The existing business model to reward researchers is a failure," said Herman Zampariolo, chief executive of WSLabi, and the man behind the WabiSabiLabi auction site. A tiny minority of vulnerabilities currently get patched, he said, because IT experts aren't paid for their work in uncovering them.
"As long as vulnerabilities are bought and sold privately, the value can't be the right one," Zampariolo said. "Our intention is that the marketplace facility on WSLabi will enable security researchers to get a fair price for their findings and ensure that they will no longer be forced to give them away for free or sell them to cybercriminals," he added.
So far, no bids have been posted, possibly because of delays in identifying the buyers, each of whom must use snail mail or fax to deliver proof of their identity and their bank account--electronic currencies are not accepted on the site. Around 20 buyers have been registered so far, as well as 30 sellers, who have provided another batch of flaws that should be on the site next week.

In this case, the intention may be genuine; however, where is the control mechanism to ensure that these sales are happening to the right people. If we are just dependent on the operators of the exchange, then there is no guarantee. Later, if the number of such buyers increases, it would be very easy for the cyber-criminals to pretend to be a genuine buyer and get access to top-notch holes on a very quick basis.

Playstation prices to reduce

2007-07-07T13:39:00.000+05:30

Sony's Playstation 3 has got walloped by the Wii in its major markets, and the fact that the PS3 is much more expensive than the Wii. One thing that is expected to happen is that the price of the PS3 would be dropped, not only to compete better with the Wii and the Xbox 360, but also to promote Blu-Ray movies more effectively. This is a particularly critical time to promote the new standard, since a lot of the decision making by other stakeholders such as major studios, etc is being done. Their decision will have a big impact on which of the 2 rival formats (Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD) eventually gets selected as the default format.
Currently, the President of Sony (Ryoji Chubachi) sticks to the no-price-drop-for-PS3 stand, but things may change before the Christmas season:

The fact is that Sony, bereft of PS3 games at present, has flushed out most of the hard core gamers who would buy Sony's latest latest console at any price. The Wii is in a different class and the real competition for the high end of gaming is Xbox 360.
Sony will cut the price of PS3 for two reasons. One is to bridge the gap with Xbox 360 and the other is to drive the nail deeper into the coffin of the HD DVD high definition format.
Given the fact that there are hardly any PS3 games worth buying yet, Sony's nextgen console has done remarkably well to have sold nearly 4 million units worldwide so far. Despite the naysayers, I believe much of this has to do with the PS3's capability as a Blu-ray player. After all, until PS3 games hit the market en masse why would you buy the most expensive console on the planet?
Sony has promised 380 PS3 games will hit the market by next March. If that promise is kept, it will provide a huge filip to PS3 sales. Meanwhile, Blu-ray movie titles continue to grow, HD flat panel TVs continue to sell and PS3 continues to be the best selling HD video player on the planet.

Sony would be constantly trying to evolve its strategy. Both the Blu-Ray and PS3 are high-stake strategies for Sony, and if a price cut is required for sales to increase, a price cut it will be.

Open document formats push by states and Microsoft

2007-07-03T21:39:00.000+05:30

There is a large amount of money in software contracts by American states. Hence if a state makes a push for moving onto an independent document format, it has a major impact on Microsoft, since Office makes around 1/3rd of Microsoft's revenue, making around $14 billion.
There have been attempts by some American states to try and push through legislative bills to mandate the use of an open document format (ODF), something that Microsoft's Office did not have. Such a measure could have a domino effect on other states also trying out similar efforts, and hence Microsoft's intense lobbying of legislators paid off. The states of Florida, Texas, California, Oregon, and Connecticut had these bills defeated and never became law. Chalk one up for Microsoft. Remained Massachusetts.
To get around the obstacle of not having an Open document format, Microsoft proposed a new format called 'Open XML' and promised to allow any company to make software that will produce documents in the Open XML format. In addition, the new format was also validated by an open standards body called ECMA International.
These gambits seem to have worked. When Massachusetts finally decided on this topic, the decision was 'Okay, fine'. This means that Microsoft Office is still on the list of softwares that can be bought by the state of Massachusetts, handing Microsoft a great victory and crushing the hopes of some open source competitors such as Open Office. Now that state agencies can continue to use MS office, there is much less of an incentive to switch to open source software.

Bethann Pepoli, Massachusetts' acting chief information officer, said her office is seeking public comment through July 20 on the plan to approve the Microsoft format. But Pepoli already seems convinced. "It does meet our criteria for an open standard," she said.
Andrew Updegrove, a Boston lawyer who tracks the open document dispute, said that Microsoft's embrace of its Open XML provides more choices to consumers, because rival software companies can make compatible products. "If you look at it from the standpoint of Microsoft customers, it's a good thing," Updegrove said. But he warned that if Microsoft's Open XML becomes the dominant format, driving out ODF, Microsoft could try to modify the standard in ways that would put competing software products at a permanent disadvantage.

And that last point is the major one. Microsoft has not been known for its usage of business ethics and has been known to use all sort of tactics to get victory. The hope remains that things will change this time.

iPhone: The hacking race begins

2007-07-03T14:38:00.000+05:30

In the past, there was a great market for cracking the service linkages of phones. The concept being, SIM based GSM phones in many countries are locked to service providers. They are much cheaper than their cost because of the service conrtract, with a subsidy being provided by the telecom carrier such as AT&T, SPrint, etc. This subsidy is provided because the contract normally locks the user in for a 2 year conract, and the company can recover the subsidy during this period.
The iPhone is a somewhat different model. AT&T does not provide any subsidy for the iPhone, with the full cost of the phone being the amount charged ($499 for a 4 GB one, and $599 for a 8 GB one); but Apple, presumably in a bid to repay AT&T over the allowances allowed to Apple while designing the phone prevents another SIM from being used in the phone. In addition, no functionality of the device such as music playing, video, camera, etc can be used without activation (which can only happen with AT&T in the US - and not yet allowed outside the US).
Thus the cat and mouse game between a company and hackers has now begun. The iPhone is a prime target for hackers and crackers, many seeing it as a game / test; and many seeing it as something worth a great deal of money. When Apple would have designed the phone, it would have been a priority to set the security of the phone such that the protection would have difficult to crack:

Locked phones can only be used with cellular service from one carrier, a move designed to guarantee carriers recover the cost of subsidizing a handset through monthly service charges. But the cost of the iPhone, which is priced at either US$499 or $599 depending on the model, is not subsidized by AT&T. Users must pay full price for the handset and sign a two-year contract, which requires them to pay from $59.99 to $99.99 per month for cellular service.
Unlocking the iPhone will enable the handset to be used with any cellular provider with a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) network, not just AT&T's network. That's an attractive proposition for users who already have a cellular contract with another carrier, or users outside the U.S. who can't wait to get their hands on Apple's new handset.
Efforts to unlock the iPhone are being tracked on several Web sites, including Hackint0sh and the iPhone Dev Wiki.

This is also something that is a bit odd. If users are being made to pay the full amount for the phone, then they should be able to use the phone at their discretion. It is understandable if the iPhone was subsidized, in which case the service provider locks the phone until the subsidy has been paid. But to lock the phone till activation and prevent usage of other functions is very strange, and once could argue, an extra charge that a user has to bear for having the iPhone. Especially because the AT&T network has been shown to be a slow one, and limiting the speed of wireless browsing.
It is bound to happen sooner or later that the unlocking scheme will fail, and when that happens, it will be a pretty simple job to do this in mass. That will be time when the world proliferation of the iPhone begins.

The time involved in getting the iPhone to actually start working

2007-07-02T14:30:00.000+05:30

In all the launch buzz of the iPhone, there has been an incredibly successful publicity campaign that has been run, and market watchers have been waiting to see whether Apple will do anything to trip up on this success story. Well, there is some news, just not enough to trip up the iPhone story, but enough to give a serious headaches to the thousands of people affected.
Normally, the process of wireless activation involves the sales person in the shop handling the activation process, something that would take rougly an hour. However, to make things easier for the large crowds expected, Apple changed the activation process to something that can be done via the user's own computer, through their version of iTunes. However, in the end, this caused problems for a number of buyers, with no clarity regarding contact numbers, and in many cases, with buyers having to spend more than 10 hours waiting for activation to happen.
This can actually be the most frustating thing in the world as of that point, if you imagine spending some time in queue to buy a new phone for around $600-700, and then having to wait while customer service tells you that you need to wait. Obviously, these are teething problems, and Apple should be happy that otherwise people are happy with the phone, otherwise this issue would have escalated into a disaster.

Apple and AT&T unveiled an innovative activation scheme with the iPhone launch. Usually, activating a new cell phone means spending almost an hour or so in a wireless store as the sales representative lights up the phone. But with the long lines expected last Friday, Apple came up with a way to use iTunes to connect to AT&T's activation process so iPhone customers could set up the device at home.
Activation was supposed to be a snap: hook up the iPhone to a Mac or PC with the latest version of iTunes installed, and the software would automatically walk you through the process. After entering a credit card number and selecting a rate plan, the system was supposed to send an e-mail confirming the iPhone had been activated. But waiting for that e-mail turned into a frustrating experience for some iPhone customers.
Other iPhone owners on Apple's Web site reported problems with the SIM (subscriber identity module) cards inside their iPhones. SIM cards hold information unique to a mobile phone account and allow users to easily switch between phones while keeping their numbers and contacts--except on the iPhone, which uses a SIM card that works only with the iPhone. It seemed that the activation system was unable to recognize the SIM cards in some iPhones, which led it to bypass the activation screen and move straight into syncing music, movies and contacts. One user reported that his local AT&T store switched the SIM card that originally came with his iPhone for a new one, fixing the problem. Others said they had done the same thing.

Of course, Apple made a feature that caused a lot of worry to those users who were not activated. Unless the phone was activated, users could not even access other features on the phone; this was something that Apple should have thought through much more clearly, and from the perspective of phone users, not from the perspective of AT&T.

Some relief for the Playstation 3 down under

2007-06-30T11:32:00.000+05:30

In the US and Japan, major markets for the gaming consoles, the Nintendo Wii is beating the Playstation 3 by large margins. So it must be some consolation for Sony that in the market at the bottom of the world, that is, the Australian market, Playstation 3 is the largest selling gaming console, outselling the Xbox and Nintendo Wii.

According to Ephraim, the Playstation 3 has sold 50,000 units since its launch March 23, 2007. The Wii, which launched December 7, 2006 has accumulated 100,000 consoles sold.

This is good news, even though the number of actual consoles sold is not that much. May make sense for Sony to keep on investigating as to what worked in the Australian market (maybe a specific campaign or something like that) and see how they can use such inputs to get out of their losing position in the US and Japanese market.

The iPhone finally on sale

2007-06-30T10:23:00.000+05:30

Finally, one of the most-awaited devices is on sale, and as expected, there are long queues waiting to buy the phone. But with prices of between $1,100 and $2,000 being quoted on Craiglist and eBay, it is an open question as to how many people are waiting to get it first and then immediately sell it, as opposed to those who are waiting to be one of the first to get their hands on it for personal use. Anyhow, the initial response would be good news for Apple. The iPhone is a major business milestone for Apple, and the success or failure (not meeting projected targets) would have a major impact on Apple.
If Apple can show the iPhone as a major success, they will be known as the company with a Midas touch, in tune with customer requirements and on the bleeding edge of design. If, however, there is a failure, then things will move the other way. The Apple stock, that has gone by more than 200% in the last couple of years will show the impact as well. Of course, as the example of the Playstation3 shows, it will only be with the passage of time that success or failure can be measured. Right now, it is the device fetching customers to shops:

Take San Francisco resident Jerry Taylor, 54, who was first to buy the iPhone from Apple's store near Union Square. After a brief moment in the media spotlight, he said he was selling the device, apparently to a mysterious man with a Scandanavian accent who stood next to Taylor, but who declined to give his name. In spending more than $650 for the gadget, including taxes, Taylor said he was "gambling with this month's rent."
In case you're one of the few who haven't heard, the iPhone is Apple's first attempt at a cell phone. Hyped for months - even years - the device is built around a large, touch sensitive screen, which takes the place of a physical keypad. Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a coterie of analysts, consumers and enthusiasts have predicted that the device will change the cell phone industry as much as Apple's Macintosh computers and iPod MP3 players changed the PC and music businesses, respectively.

It could be similar to what the iPod has turned out to be. The iPod is more expensive than most other music players of its category, but yet is an incredible success, chiefly because it has an incredible reputation. It is known as having an excellent design, with a great brand value and with a complete service infra-structure including good integration with a music purchase and download process (iTunes and store).

T-mobile allows cheaper calls through Internet

2007-06-28T23:26:00.000+05:30

T-mobile has come up with a new concept to allow reduction of call plans overall cost, by allowing the use of alternative calling networks. What does that mean ? For a T-mobile user, if they have bought one of the 2 new handsets, and are either in a home wireless network or a Wi-Fi hotspot, they can move to using that mode of Internet access for their phones. This will typically prove to be much cheaper than the costing of a regular call plan.
Another plus promised in this new service (T-Mobile HotSpotAtHome) is the ability to get a much better coverage inside homes, something that a lot of customers typically complain about:

The service is the first time a cell phone carrier is using Wi-Fi to make calls. That could lead to a shift in the cellular industry as more operators begin to build dual-mode technology into phones, allowing people to cut down the cost of voice minutes.
To get HotSpotAtHome, T-Mobile customers will need to buy one of two $49 phones that can switch between cellular and Wi-Fi calls. In addition to paying for broadband, they will need to pay for the calling service, which can be added to cell phone service initially at $9.99 a month for unlimited Wi-Fi calls. After mid-September, customers will pay $19.99 a month to add the Wi-Fi service.. Family plans for up to five phones are available now for $19.99, then go up to $29.99 in September.

The handset is new, but the wireless router at home can be an existing router. There is switching between when a customer is making the call in a Wi-Fi area and then moves outside this network and onto the regular cellular network. People who have tested this service have found that it works well.

Apple restricts sales of iPhone

2007-06-28T23:11:00.000+05:30

To 2 per person in the Apple store. For gaming consoles in the past, there have been trends where the newly awaited consoles are in short supply. This leads to unmet demand, and the price going up. What would normally happen is that people would buy these gaming consoles and then put them up for auction on eBay at a much higher rate. One would have expected something like this to happen for the iPhone as well, after all, it is one of the most awaited gizmos of all time. Apple however nipped this in the bud:

Apple on Thursday said customers buying the combination phone, multimedia player, and Web browser through one of its 164 retail stores in the U.S. will be limited to two on a first come, first served basis. The only other place where the phones can be purchased is through AT&T, which requires the buyer to sign up for a two-year service plan. AT&T is the exclusive wireless carrier for the iPhone in the United States.
People willing to endure hardship to be among the first to buy an iPhone started forming a line at 5 a.m. Monday outside Apple's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York. The high demand has led to others running online ads on Craigslist, offering to either hold a place in line for iPhone customers, or to buy the phones outright for people willing to pay for the service.

This really sounds so strange. Is there a premium on buying it one the first day, as opposed to buying it a week later, when there have been some reviews that will help determine whether the gizmo is worth buying. If you were interested then, it would be easy to walk into an Apple store and buy it outright. One would think that policy is a logical policy, but there is no questioning a feeding frenzy around a new, must-have device.

Nintendo to expand game makers club

2007-06-28T21:56:00.000+05:30

Building on its high selling rate, Nintendo has opened the platform and the innovative controller for any game maker who wants to get a chance to build games for the Wii console. Not everybody can start making games immediately, they will need to know programming. People can start creating their games on their computers, but final work needs to happen on the console. The plan is to allow a lot more people to start making games based on their ideas, and these games will be available via the Wii shop channel so that Wii owners can buy these games. This is not a new initiative, since Microsoft's Xbox also introduced a smaller version of its game making tools called XNA for making games for the Xbox.

Home and independent game makers are getting a chance to put together titles for Nintendo's Wii console. The hi-tech firm has released a game making tool called WiiWare that gives budding game makers the data they need to use the console and its innovative controller.
The company said it expected game makers to use the Wii's motion sensitive controller to create "fresh takes on established genres". "Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit," said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president in a statement.

This is a bright idea from Nintendo to try and do further consolidation of its leadership position. It could also benefit from an approach where some independent title catches customer fancy (you never know!) and Nintendo sales also benefit from this approach.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it will be good to evaluate the situation in 2008 to see how many new titles have emerged.

The first Apple crazie start lining up 100 hours before iPhone release

2007-06-27T15:39:00.000+05:30

Ever since the news of the iPhone was released, there has been a constant chatter about the features, about the geekness, about the wizardry, about the user convenience and so on. The impending release of the iPhone on the 29th, this Friday afternoon has been one of the most awaited events in the tech calendar this year. Apple has hardly had to do any publicity, but even they would not have expected this kind of positive publicity; people always queue up before the release of a major much awaited product, whether that be the new Harry Potter book, or a new gaming console. People have even been known to queue up for a new Operating System.
But this one takes absolutely the pits; for just a phone plus a few other things embedded in it, people are queuing up 100 hours before the release ( a full 4 days to go).

For an Apple devotee, queuing for three and a half days in the baking heat to be the first to get their hands on an iPhone is nothing. And that is exactly what a group of dedicated Apple fans is doing. Outside the company’s flagship store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, they have set up camp, and – flopped on deckchairs and writing blogs – are whiling away the time until the new device goes on sale at 6pm on Friday.
When asked how they would cope with the 34C temperatures and severe storms that are predicted in New York for tomorrow, both replied: “We’ll deal with it.

This would seem might strange to a number of iPhone devotees, but it is just a phone slapped onto am iPod; is this worth spending 3 plus days waiting in bad weather? I wouldn't think so. And it is not even a very cheap phone, along with a service plan, it costs a minimum of $500.
Apple wouldn't mid at all. This is all free publicity, and is sure to get more people convinced that this is a new device that must be great.

iPhone data plans out

2007-06-26T21:27:00.000+05:30

As the time period for the release of the iPhone on Friday evening rolls out, the Apple PR machine cranks out on full speed, releasing articles one after the other. So here's the latest update, the data plans for the iPhone have been released, with the lowest one starting just below $60, instead at $59.99 per month.
There are essentially 3 data plans that have been released, with each plan offering unlimited data, offering 200 text messages, mobile-to-mobile calling and a new service, visual voicemail. These plans do not offer much variety, with $59.99 plan offering 450 minutes, the $79.99 plan for 900 minutes and the $99.99 plan valid for 1,350 minutes. The plan is for a 2-year service agreement, with a one-time activation charge of $36. In addition, the users need to have an iTunes account as well.
Visual voicemail is like email, and the user can review all the email that they have, and select the one they want to hear. Apple is expecting sales of 10 million devices by the end of next year, which is a fairly high expectation. It offers the user a great device, combing a great phone with internet access and the quality of an iPod. However, it is expensive, so there is some amount of doubt over whether Apple can meet the target. If for some reason, the phone under-sells, it will hit AT & T and Apple pretty hard.

Google wants court supervision of Microsoft to continue

2007-06-26T20:49:00.000+05:30

In 2000, a federal judge had found that Microsoft had committed a violation of federal anti-trust law; forcing PC makers to use Microsoft software products on the computers sold by them as opposed to similar software made by other software makers. In a massive scare to the company, the federal judge had ordered the breakup of the company. The part about breaking up of the company was set aside by an appeals court, and the case went back to district court and a new judge did not order the drastic breakup step. Under the new settlement, Microsoft reached an agreement with the Justice department and nine states which ordered Microsoft to modify licensing and to provide competitors with adequate technical information such that their products would run on the OS as a first-class citizen, equal to Microsoft products.
This agreement was valid for 5 years, but Google wants this agreement to be extended, accusing Microsoft of a repeat behavior with regard to changes in the desktop search function introduced in Vista.

In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Google (GOOG) asked for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief outlining its concerns. The filing came on the eve of a regularly scheduled hearing to update U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Microsoft's compliance with a federal consent decree. "Microsoft's hardwiring of its own desktop search product into Windows Vista violates the final judgment in this case," Google wrote.
In a filing last week, the Justice Department, 17 states and the District of Columbia detailed changes Microsoft agreed to make to its desktop search function, and said the measures would resolve any issues raised by the complaint. "Microsoft went the extra mile to resolve these issues in a spirit of compromise," Microsoft said in a statement. "The government has clearly stated that it is satisfied with the changes we're making. Google has provided no new information that should suggest otherwise in their filing."

Vista introduced a new search capability in Vista called 'Instant Search' that allowed users to search for items in the hard drive. In April, Google filed a complaint that this prevented other companies from providing their own desktop search function, and in a settlement, Microsoft agreed to make changes to its search function to resolve these issues.
With the change, Microsoft will allow computer manufacturers and end-users to select their own preferred search engine, similar to what is being done for other third-party programs. Google, however, does not believe that Microsoft has really turned a new leaf and wants the settlement period extended so that a check can be kept on whether Microsoft is indeed making the required changes.

Nintendo briefly goes past Sony in market value

2007-06-25T22:25:00.000+05:30

Sony is a behemoth, much larger than Nintendo with a range of items that it sells. It's sales are 8 times larger than Nintendo, so it must have been very shocking for Sony that Nintendo, even briefly, crossed Sony in market value on the stock exchange. This was for a short while, and eventually Nintendo dropped to below Sony in market value.
All this is arising out of the sales figure for the Nintendo Wii. It out-sells the Sony Playstation 3 by 3 to 1 in Japan and 2 to 1 in the US. Those are figures that are pushing a lot of respect and expectations for the Nintendo stock, even if all those expectations cannot be met.

"It is becoming quite clear that Nintendo is taking back its market share from Sony in the console market while well defending its stronghold of portable games," Mizuho Securities analyst Takeshi Koyama said.
Demand for Nintendo's DS handheld game players also far outstripped that for Sony's PlayStation Portable. Koyama said, however, that investors should watch out for a possible pull-back after two year-long bull runs.

It is of course unreasonable to expect this to continue, Sony is a far larger company, into a number of different projects; while Nintendo is effectively a one-horse company; after all, if some other company comes out with a great new innovation, Nintendo could suffer the fate of Sony.
Nintendo has turned itself round pretty fast in the recent past, and grown at pretty good rates, and the stock has grown faster. Whatever they are doing, they are obviously doing right.