Google Gears: Support for offline web applications

Sounds like an oxymoron, does it not ? Offline web application ? On a Google Developer Day, Google released an offline web application called Google Gears. Google Gears is a browser plug-in that will let users run web apps whether they are offline or online. Google released the source code for this browser plug-in, in an effort to create a standard for adding offline capabilities to web applications. The initial set of adopters is developers who work on the combination of JavaScript and AJAX, to entice them to move to a higher set of capabilities. Google Gears will work on a set of browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari) on a variety of platforms (Windows, Mac OS and Linux). Google also plans to submit Gears to a standards body so that it will be built into all standards compliant browsers. In addition, a consumer-ready release of Gears will be available within months, and in the meantime, google expects to get feedback from developers.
Google has a variety of web application, and customers have always complained about not being able to access these when they are offline, hence the quest by Google to bring about an offline version. The first application to use this will be Google Readers, an RSS reader. In a sign that this has not been a sudden development, Google Gears has been endorsed by the Mozilla Foundation, by Adobe Systems and by Opera Software.
The software has 3 components - a web server running in the browser, SQLite which is an open source database, and browser extensions that allow multiple JavaScript jobs to run in parallel. Being able to run multiple JavaScript jobs in parallel prevents locking up of the browser if any of the threads is causing a locking.

Apple launched DRM free music on iTunes

It finally happened. Apple launched iTunes Plus, a new service that will offer songs free of DRM protection, although at a higher rate and with a higher quality level of 256 kbps AAC music. A song will sell for $1.29 vs 99 cents for the DRM protected songs. These songs are currently restricted to only songs provided by EMI under the EMI-Apple deal. Apple is also letting people upgrade their previously purchased DRMed songs to DRM free for 30 cents per song.
Consumers have not been very appreciative of DRM. While it prevents piracy, it also restricts the choices available to users; for example, consumers cannot play these songs on a player other than iPod, which is considered an unfair restriction. Refer this article:

Today Apple launched iTunes Plus, a premium service that offers music tracks free of copy protection. The iTunes Plus service debuts, as expected, featuring EMI Group's digital catalog of recordings.
Apple says the copy protection-free music tracks will be available as high quality 256 kbps AAC encoded audio "virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings" and will sell for just $1.29 per song. That's 30 cents more than tracks with copy protection that sell on iTunes for 99 cents. The technology that is used to prevent music tracks from being copied and redistributed is called digital rights management or DRM.
Apple will continue to offer EMI's music with the DRM technology and at its current audio quality, for customers who don't want to pay extra.
Most notably, Apple's proprietary DRM system prevents people who buy songs from its market-leading iTunes store from playing them easily on any music player other than an Apple iPod. That restriction has attracted criticism, particularly from regulators in Europe who say it unfairly limits customer choice.

This is actually a pretty good deal for Apple. They get to be considered as responsive to customer needs, and at the same time, are able to up the price of songs that they sell. Surely, there's good money to be made in seeming to be responsive to consumer needs. There will be a number of other players, both in the online music category and the music albums other than EMI who will be waiting to see the user response to this campaign. If sales jump, so will they.

Samsung enables 4GB storage on cell phone

We get a large number of mobile phones promising the earth in features. These phones play video, audio, store other files, and a lot of third party applications can be installed on them. However, the base memory available on the phone is almost always very limited, and users have to buy extra memory storage. In the rush to make mobile phones smaller, or to fit more features while keeping the same size, this storage slot takes up a fair amount of the space.
Now Samsung has managed to put 4 GB of storage on a mobile phone chip set that could free up the need for putting external storage, thus also freeing up the space needed for an extra memory slot. It also means that users may not have the option anymore to not buy the extra card; it also means that users do not have to do the double tasks of first buying a phone, and then discovering that unless they buy an external card, all the promise of storing a number of songs is going to fall flat. Refer this article:

Samsung Electronics Co. has squeezed 4GB of storage into a mobile phone chip set that the manufacturer believes could eliminate the need for external memory card slots.
The embedded multichip system, called moviMCP, packs several memory functions into one unit, removing the need for an external expansion slot and thus freeing up space in tightly packed mobile phones, the company said Wednesday. The package includes two 16Gbit NAND flash chips and a controller, a 1Gbit mobile DRAM chip to support the processor, and a 2Gbit NAND flash chip for general handset operations.
The new multichip package will allow handset manufacturers not only to design smaller phones with higher storage capacity but also to significantly reduce the time required to develop these products, Samsung said.

Even though this could take some time to come to the market, this is overall a pretty positive development, and maybe contribute to the march of the mobile phone as the one device to carry everything. Add much more space, and this could be the mobile computer, with display and typing being the only restrictions.

Google in trouble with EU over privacy

Privacy experts have always been somewhat hesitant about the level of information gathered by Google about the people using the services provided by Google. People reveal a lot about themselves through the items they search for, and along with their IP addresses, a lot can be gleaned just from these records. And Google will maintain all such records for a period of 2 years. This data helps Google fine-tune its advertising, using these records to direct ads more efficiently at users.
However, the European Union is pretty gung-ho about maintaining adequate security and the time period that Google maintains does not seem to be acceptable to it. And this issue is getting heated up. In addition, the EU packs a hefty punch. It has 400 million consumers for Google, a very large number.
In a escalation, data protection chiefs from the 27 EU countries wrote to Google asking for a justification of its policies on data retention and storage. Refer this article:

In the latest example of a U.S. technology giant potentially being called on the carpet in Europe, Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing data on its users for up to two years.
Privacy experts said the letter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in the EU, whose 400 million consumers outnumber the United States.
Any EU effort to impose limits on Google, which as a U.S.-based firm operates under U.S. law, would be the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European policymakers to reign in global technology companies.
According to one member, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak for the group, the panel is concerned that Google's retention period is too long and is designed to serve commercial interests.

Google in the past has shown that it is responding to privacy concerns by setting an absolute time limit of 2 years for how long the data will be stored (from the earlier infinite time interval). However, if this time period is not good for EU officials, then Google can be in for a fair amount of trouble. The EU have showed that they can take on large corporations, having taken on Microsoft earlier.
More interesting is whether Google will comply, and what that will mean for other search providers such as Microsoft and Yahoo that are not yet disclosing the interval to which they store their records. My feeling is that if pushed hard enough, Google will accept to reduce the time interval by a few more months to get a compromise.

Novell publishes details of Microsoft deal

Late last year, Novell had signed a deal with Microsoft that was puzzling to a number of people in terms of details. Now, under the annual 10K filings to the SEC, Novell has revealed details of 3 agreements. These are all the more important as well as controversial now that Microsoft claimed that Linux was in violation of 235 patents that it has, as well as Microsoft's denial to reveal details of these patents. It was claimed that Microsoft offered Novell patent protection for its Linux distribution, while denying this to other in the Linux community, this trying to drive a wedge in the Linux movement. Refer this article:

Novell on Friday published redacted versions of the three agreements it signed with Microsoft in its annual 10K filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, providing the public with its first detailed look into a deal that some see as critical to the future of Linux. The 10K filing had been delayed by an internal stock options review at Novell, which was concluded Wednesday.
Under the terms of the agreements, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on licensing fees and sales and marketing costs over five years, including US$240 million for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates. For its part, Novell has agreed to pay Microsoft a percentage of revenue from open-source products.
Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell in potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system.
Microsoft has claimed that Linux violates more than 235 of its patents, and because the deal offers patent protection to Novell users, it is seen as potentially driving a wedge in the Linux community. "Novell had a choice here, and Novell's choice was to be in the same boat with the rest of the free software community, or not," Perens said.

One issue that comes through the agreements is that Novell does not automatically recognize Microsoft's patents; as well as the fact that Microsoft may not have actually offered patent protection to Novell.
The nature of the deal as published by Novell was that these agreements were done in order to drive a better inter-operation of Windows and Linux and hence drive better penetration of Linux in the enterprise world, but open-source experts are pretty skeptical about the intentions of Microsoft. The deal has been good for Novell from a purely business point of view.

Microsoft delaying release of Halo 2 due to nudity scenes

Halo was one of the top selling games on the original Xbox, and helped increase the popularity of the Xbox. The next version of the game is eagerly awaited, but now Microsoft has released a statement that the release of Halo 2 for Windows Vista has been delayed by around a month due to 'content' issues. And what are these content issues ? Well, Microsoft discovered that due to an error in Halo 2's map editor, there are scenes of partial nudity, and hence unless these are repaired, the game cannot be released. Refer to this article:

Halo 2 for Windows Vista is now expected to hit the stores sometime in the first week of June, approximately two weeks behind the revised May 22 schedule. The game was originally scheduled for release on May 8, but was delayed due to some technical problems, Microsoft said at the time.
The software giant attributes the most recent delay to an "obscure content error" found in the initial production of Halo 2's map editor. That error was partial nudity.
The company has no plans to change the rating of its game, given it affects only the initial run of games and not subsequent shipments. Warning labels will be placed on packaging for the affected games, and Microsoft has developed a patch that can be downloaded to remove the content in question.

However, after the furore over similar scenes discovered in Grand Theft Auto and the political questions over it, it was impossible for Microsoft to discover that something like this occurs in the game, but is not yet fixed. They would rather bite the schedule and take a fix.

Using cell phones to lose weight

Cell phones have lots of uses nowadays; you use them for making and receiving calls (still number one use), for sending and receiving messages, for using as an alarm, for music and radio, for viewing movies, as a viewer for text books, for internet connectivity and browsing on the move, and so on. Well, add one more use to this list. You use a cell phone for losing weight ! Surprise, read this article:

Wondering how much of a diet-buster that banana cream pie on your plate is? Some Japanese have a novel way to find out: Photograph it with your cell phone and send the image to an expert.
With cell phones ubiquitous in Japan and rising concern over expanding waistlines, health care providers have put two and two together to allow the calorie-conscious to send photos of their meals to nutritionists for analysis and recommendations.
Nutritionists can work with photos from one day's meals to several weeks' worth, he said. Results come back in three days. Participants also can log onto a Web site to get further dietary information and upload photos from digital cameras.
"Patients used to fill out meal logs, but people tend to forget things or underestimate their portions," Kimura said. "Photographing meals and e-mailing them in is easier and gets more accurate results."

This seems like a very interesting use. You make full use of the data plans, you lock customers into an additional service that can provide a cut to the carrier, and has a peer pressure level. You see a friend or colleague doing this, and such a service will appeal to you as well.
Also, with obesity increasing, customers are more likely to use such a service, and if it can help reduce the obesity levels, then it will be a big boon for people.